pieces from the whole
A lie is truth, until you recognize it as a lie.
To see the truth behind those lies is probably the right thing to do.
However, it may not necessarily bring happiness.
--
It's not hard at all to hole up on herself. After all, she'd seen it done before -- the slow removal of yourself from the world, keeping yourself away from everyone else as if they never existed. So Jade turned the corner of the barracks into her own solitary fortress, back pressed into the wall's intersection, knees pulled up to her chin. Her hands were still vaguely bloody -- from what, she didn't remember. But her dreams were filled with the stuff, blood pouring from the eyes and ears and bodies of loved ones, sending her screaming. One night, as she awoke from a nightmare of darkness, the metallic sound of laughter ringing in her ears, she realized that she'd been scratching at the floor.
So that's where the blood came from. It was hers.
To keep the nightmares away, she started listening to music. The station was filled with endless sources of the stuff, from techno to classical and everything in between. Jade had never been a music listener the way Dave had; her interest in it had been purely to connect herself with her friends, as they seemed to enjoy it as well. The exception being her bass -- Jade could play for hours on end, rhythms and melodies that she created herself. Traditional music, however, was beyond her grasp most times. But here, in the solace of her corner, she could listen to anything she wanted. It kept the voices out: Dave and Sollux, Terezi, another Dave, Xavier and Jin and all the people who wondered if she was safe. Closing her eyes, she was lost in sound of a different sort. She started with music from the 1400s, of which there seemed to be an abundance -- motets were interesting, she discovered, the discordant melodies of five chants being sung at once. As she worked her way forward, the music changed. It grew louder -- looking it up, Jade learned that it was the introduction of the piano and forte symbols, along with the increased sophistication of playable instruments. The page had so much information on the physics of the instrument that she listened to the 1700s on repeat for hours, eyes glued to the screen, bloody fingers brushing against her hair to keep it out of her face.
She couldn't sleep, though. Even the music -- Debussy now, and Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Berlioz, Mendelssohn -- couldn't keep away the voice that told her things would be okay. It had been over a month now, and Jade still wouldn't sleep without a light on. The voice could get her -- it would tear her to pieces and kidnap her friends and wouldn't it be better anyway because she couldn't help them? More than once, thoughts ran through her mind -- if she had still been with her, she could have saved them. Robots weren't catching the disease. Just humans: pathetic, weak, useless--
Closing her eyes, she turned up the volume of Firebird Suite.
Fire.
Her firebird sat across the room, absorbed in his own thoughts. One of them, at least; Jade knew that they were all fire in their own ways, each Dave a little different in his execution but burning all the same. She watched him (the burning, soaring flames a mile high that kill with precision and leave new life in their path) flip through his wearable, looking down at her lunchtop when he glanced her way. He was mad at her, she thought. He wouldn't talk to her -- probably because she wouldn't let him, but Jade dismissed the idea quickly. The other one (the flame that's left to die but refuses to give up its embers, living on in the roots of the firepit) sat somewhere as well, but she hadn't seen him. The third (smoldering, sometimes, but if the heat was right, a wildfire) was in quarantine. Still sick. Not getting better.
Jade turned the music up louder, ignoring the protests of her ears.
Finally -- it doesn't take long at all, the way she's listening to music day and night -- she gets to 'modern' music, taking in the familiar tunes of ragtime and prohibition era like one might greet a familiar friend. Jade's knowledge stretched from the 1920s to the 1950s, her playlist for each decade spanning a much longer time than any had before. Familiar songs made her hum, lost in the words and trying to forget that other people sat around her. As the 1960s approached, her recognition grew more vague -- a few songs from the Beatles, and later, the Rolling Stones -- until she knew nothing at all, picking songs at random from a selection of top tunes on a sit called Billboard. This was Dave's area -- something she tried to forget -- and as she looked through the charts she attempted to pick the most vague sounding titles, a brief remembrance to the flames scattered across the station.
2009 approached.
Her fingers hesitated, looking at the list of hits and deciding, one by one, that these were wrong. None of these were songs from 2009 -- the year the world had ended for her, the year she'd ended up here, where it was who knows how many years in the future and she couldn't tell up from down. Finally, she knew why they were wrong. They weren't hers, the songs her friends had created and sent to her, the pieces she had written for them over the course of a sunny afternoon. The songs in her list were written for people who had nothing better to worry about than the lip gloss on their face and how many boys they would pick up. But…
She flipped her music to FreshJamz, looking at the numerous mixes and remixes stored within. These were her songs, the ones she remembered. And sometimes, she thought, they were the ones that Dave had written for her. The ones that Rose had lovingly critiqued, the ones that John thought were dumb but listened to anyway. These songs held memories that the others never would. As Jade hit play on the first selection (the last one Dave had sent to her, she remembered it as if it was her own breath), she pulled the hood of her jacket over her face and buried her head in her arms. The beat washed over her, a gentle tug on her memories, a permanent reminder of the way things were before everything went wrong.
For the first time in three days, Jade Harley let herself cry.
To see the truth behind those lies is probably the right thing to do.
However, it may not necessarily bring happiness.
--
It's not hard at all to hole up on herself. After all, she'd seen it done before -- the slow removal of yourself from the world, keeping yourself away from everyone else as if they never existed. So Jade turned the corner of the barracks into her own solitary fortress, back pressed into the wall's intersection, knees pulled up to her chin. Her hands were still vaguely bloody -- from what, she didn't remember. But her dreams were filled with the stuff, blood pouring from the eyes and ears and bodies of loved ones, sending her screaming. One night, as she awoke from a nightmare of darkness, the metallic sound of laughter ringing in her ears, she realized that she'd been scratching at the floor.
So that's where the blood came from. It was hers.
To keep the nightmares away, she started listening to music. The station was filled with endless sources of the stuff, from techno to classical and everything in between. Jade had never been a music listener the way Dave had; her interest in it had been purely to connect herself with her friends, as they seemed to enjoy it as well. The exception being her bass -- Jade could play for hours on end, rhythms and melodies that she created herself. Traditional music, however, was beyond her grasp most times. But here, in the solace of her corner, she could listen to anything she wanted. It kept the voices out: Dave and Sollux, Terezi, another Dave, Xavier and Jin and all the people who wondered if she was safe. Closing her eyes, she was lost in sound of a different sort. She started with music from the 1400s, of which there seemed to be an abundance -- motets were interesting, she discovered, the discordant melodies of five chants being sung at once. As she worked her way forward, the music changed. It grew louder -- looking it up, Jade learned that it was the introduction of the piano and forte symbols, along with the increased sophistication of playable instruments. The page had so much information on the physics of the instrument that she listened to the 1700s on repeat for hours, eyes glued to the screen, bloody fingers brushing against her hair to keep it out of her face.
She couldn't sleep, though. Even the music -- Debussy now, and Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Berlioz, Mendelssohn -- couldn't keep away the voice that told her things would be okay. It had been over a month now, and Jade still wouldn't sleep without a light on. The voice could get her -- it would tear her to pieces and kidnap her friends and wouldn't it be better anyway because she couldn't help them? More than once, thoughts ran through her mind -- if she had still been with her, she could have saved them. Robots weren't catching the disease. Just humans: pathetic, weak, useless--
Closing her eyes, she turned up the volume of Firebird Suite.
Fire.
Her firebird sat across the room, absorbed in his own thoughts. One of them, at least; Jade knew that they were all fire in their own ways, each Dave a little different in his execution but burning all the same. She watched him (the burning, soaring flames a mile high that kill with precision and leave new life in their path) flip through his wearable, looking down at her lunchtop when he glanced her way. He was mad at her, she thought. He wouldn't talk to her -- probably because she wouldn't let him, but Jade dismissed the idea quickly. The other one (the flame that's left to die but refuses to give up its embers, living on in the roots of the firepit) sat somewhere as well, but she hadn't seen him. The third (smoldering, sometimes, but if the heat was right, a wildfire) was in quarantine. Still sick. Not getting better.
Jade turned the music up louder, ignoring the protests of her ears.
Finally -- it doesn't take long at all, the way she's listening to music day and night -- she gets to 'modern' music, taking in the familiar tunes of ragtime and prohibition era like one might greet a familiar friend. Jade's knowledge stretched from the 1920s to the 1950s, her playlist for each decade spanning a much longer time than any had before. Familiar songs made her hum, lost in the words and trying to forget that other people sat around her. As the 1960s approached, her recognition grew more vague -- a few songs from the Beatles, and later, the Rolling Stones -- until she knew nothing at all, picking songs at random from a selection of top tunes on a sit called Billboard. This was Dave's area -- something she tried to forget -- and as she looked through the charts she attempted to pick the most vague sounding titles, a brief remembrance to the flames scattered across the station.
2009 approached.
Her fingers hesitated, looking at the list of hits and deciding, one by one, that these were wrong. None of these were songs from 2009 -- the year the world had ended for her, the year she'd ended up here, where it was who knows how many years in the future and she couldn't tell up from down. Finally, she knew why they were wrong. They weren't hers, the songs her friends had created and sent to her, the pieces she had written for them over the course of a sunny afternoon. The songs in her list were written for people who had nothing better to worry about than the lip gloss on their face and how many boys they would pick up. But…
She flipped her music to FreshJamz, looking at the numerous mixes and remixes stored within. These were her songs, the ones she remembered. And sometimes, she thought, they were the ones that Dave had written for her. The ones that Rose had lovingly critiqued, the ones that John thought were dumb but listened to anyway. These songs held memories that the others never would. As Jade hit play on the first selection (the last one Dave had sent to her, she remembered it as if it was her own breath), she pulled the hood of her jacket over her face and buried her head in her arms. The beat washed over her, a gentle tug on her memories, a permanent reminder of the way things were before everything went wrong.
For the first time in three days, Jade Harley let herself cry.