Slings & Arrows fic: More Fools Than Wise (PG-ish)
Fandom: Slings & Arrows
Pairing/Characters: Geoffrey/Ellen, Oliver
Rating: PG-ish
Length/Spoilers: 3400 words, spoilers through season 1
Notes: Muchas gracias to kernezelda for quick-like-a-bunny beta! :)
Written for nos4a2no9 for the Slings & Arrows Ficathon, hosted by loneraven. Nos asked for Ellen and Geoffrey (together, apart, what-evah); Geoffrey during his "institutional" phase; Ted from Accounting on the opening night of "Hamlet."
More Fools Than Wise
by Stars
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
- Mary Oliver, The Swan
And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
- As You Like It
Ellen hates swans.
Geoffrey doesn't quite understand why. He thinks maybe it has something to do with an ill-advised stage adaptation of Tchaikovsky's ballet in which Ellen played Odile, the black swan princess; but that was before she came to New Burbage and she won't speak more than a few tight-lipped words about it. So Geoffrey shrugs and changes the subject and turns his attention to a different piece of the complex, tempestuous puzzle that is Ellen.
They walk together by the river, holding hands and bumping hips companionably; on the little wooden footbridge Geoffrey turns her in the circle of his arms and lazily kisses Ellen as the summer dusk deepens to twilight. In the darkness, a trio of passing swans glows soft-white, pale feathers nearly incandescent, as they swim beneath the bridge, lowly honking.
The moon hangs high in the sky, reflected in Ellen's wide, dark eyes when they pull away to breathe. Geoffrey drinks her in, the delicate lines of her face, the alluring pink wetness of her well-kissed lips and the tantalizing curve of her ear. He can feel the flutter of her pulse beneath his fingertips, pressed along the elegant length of her neck, and the trembling in her belly as she leans her slight weight heavily against his body, joining them from breast to hip with her head tucked beneath Geoffrey's chin.
The fit is perfect. They are perfect - Ellen is his Juliet, simmering with concealed desire; his waifish, clever Rosalind; and soon, his devoted Ophelia. Perhaps, one day, his Kate - Geoffrey pictures it in his mind's eye: his petite Ellen dominating the stage, flaying strong men with the lancet edge of her wicked tongue before finally taming that stormy passion, first into a grudging respect, and then love, for Petruchio - for him.
Later, in the shadowed privacy of Ellen's bed, they lie curved toward each other, sharing a single pillow. As Ellen sleeps, one curled hand just touching his, Geoffrey silently revels in the glorious rightness of his life at this moment: Ellen by his side, onstage and off; Oliver, their mentor and director, who knows precisely which parts and staging suit them best, who pushes and pokes and coaxes and cajoles unthinkable performances from them while looking ahead to what should come next; and The Swan itself, with its old wood and creaking floorboards and ringing acoustics - the third party in their love triangle of actors, director, theatre.
Geoffrey, lying sated and near to bursting with happiness, wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life - his allotted seven acts - here, in New Burbage, with Ellen and Oliver and Shakespeare… and Lear, at the end of his days.
Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.
- Antony and Cleopatra
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
- Mary Oliver, The Swan
He stares down into the black void of the grave. Laertes hovers behind him, a hostile shadow, as Gertrude blathers on; Geoffrey fancies he can smell the damp, rich earth, a humid, thick scent rising from the tilled soil piled at the edge of the rectangular hole.
Realism, indeed.
His head is as empty as the grave, devoid of absolutely everything - he cannot think. He feels nothing but a vague, tingling numbness, as if he has been swaddled in cotton-wool, bandaged and mummified and then beaten with a thousand telephone books. He isn't terribly surprised; he's read somewhere that bleeding to death is relatively quick and painless. What does shock him, what jolts him back from the fugue state he's slipped into, when he looks down at his scuffed leather boots where there should be red, where he expects to see an obscene crimson puddle of his life's blood pooling at his feet - there is only the bare stage floor.
I slept with Oliver, Ellen had said, carefully scrunching her face into that expression women put on to apply lipstick.
Geoffrey blinked. He waited, but she said nothing more, just flicked him a quick glance in the mirror and grabbed a tissue to blot the excess red from her mouth.
What - who? When, where? Why? Why? Geoffrey thought about asking. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out; he couldn't speak because he couldn't breathe. Ellen caught his eye again, frowning, but he was saved by the five-minute call crackling over the house intercom. Geoffrey spun on his heel for the door, cast a final disbelieving look around - yes, this was Ellen's dressing room, those were the roses he'd brought to her opening night, there on a little shelf was the picture of the three of them, celebrating… there he was, drunkenly kissing Yorick's skull, Ellen leaning close and Oliver laughing, indulging them. This was real.
Ellen. And Oliver.
Ellen and Oliver.
Ellen and Oliver.
Now he stands at the edge of the grave and thinks nothing, says nothing, feels nothing; but in the background, like some perverse soundtrack to his suddenly fucked-up life, he hears the deep mournful tones of a cello. Saint-Saens, a melancholy adagio, sadly beautiful; the melody of Geoffrey's heart, breaking.
The music in his head lets loose the pain. Now the pain, now the cutting, white-hot agony of a knife thrust deep (in his poor shattered heart, or his back? he wonders idly). He sways, stares down at his feet, where the gaping black emptiness of the grave beckons, promises oblivion.
Geoffrey spreads his arms wide, jumps - and welcomes the fall.
Ego: The fallacy whereby a goose thinks he's a swan
- Anonymous
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
- Sylvia Plath, Winter Landscape, With Rooks
Oblivion is not so easy, Geoffrey finds. Once he escapes the stage, thoughts come rushing back and his brain is suddenly a crowded, chaotic place - a teeming minefield overflowing with excruciating images, speculative adultery that he cannot control or stop. Ellen, naked. Ellen, riding Oliver in wild abandon, small hands fisted in her short hair as she undulates, shudders, moans.
Saint-Saens is drowned out by a crushing inner voice of self-criticism: of course Ellen slept with Oliver, why shouldn’t she? Why should what she had with Geoffrey be something special, be anything other than sex?
Geoffrey knows he can be arrogant. He knows his is a rare talent - Oliver has told him so, and Ellen, and other members of the company, and the critics and the audiences. Geoffrey believes his own press, because he knows it to be true. Geoffrey needs to believe it, because his father had detested the theatre and scorned Geoffrey's obsession, had repeatedly and loudly rued the day he'd taken his eleven-year-old son to see Charles Kingman as Falstaff.
Slouched with a beer at Yong's, ignoring the not-so-hushed whispers commenting on his attire and (admittedly surly) demeanor, Geoffrey realizes with a choked laugh that Henry IV was the first time - though obviously not the last - that he cried over a betrayal.
He gets fantastically drunk… not that it helps.
Really - why should you be any different? Geoffrey picks meticulously at the soggy beer label, wincing at the smug superiority of his inner critical-voice, and hunches his shoulders as if to deflect the unspoken words. People cheat on each other all the time.
He chugs the rest of his beer, slams it down onto the glass tabletop with a loud crack, and glares at the disapproving faces around him, cursing them and his inner-voice, both. Because I wanted to marry her!
He's angry, now; furiously railing at the unfairness of it all, at the incredibly inopportune timing - fucking Ellen. Why did she have to tell him at all? And why just then? And what the fuck is he supposed to do now?
An answer to the last, semi-rhetorical question arrives quickly in the form of one hulking, pissed-off fellow diner - and the physicality of the fight feels fucking fabulous. Pushing and shoving, hands and feet scrabbling and slipping, thudding fists against flesh, fingers tangled, ripping at his hair - it's over too soon, but does wonders to clear Geoffrey's head. He focuses on the anger, the rage pumping hotly through his veins and throbbing in places he'll be sore tomorrow; after he's thrown out of Yong's, he knows exactly where to go.
When he spies them through the window, stolen prop-dagger in hand and perhaps ready to shove under Oliver's nose - Geoffrey's not entirely committed to vengeance, not yet, and his anger is slowly draining away, leaving behind a profound sadness, the combined effect of too much beer and heartache - his purpose falters, distracted by Ellen's beauty.
Even now.
The sight of her steals away his breath: flowers circling her brow, flowing white gown nipped tight at the waist, embroidered bodice clinging to her slight curves, her breasts (the perfect size to fit Geoffrey's hands, he'd thought it was another sign that she'd been made for him - God, he was so stupid). He catches just a glimpse before the moment is ruined, when Oliver - because Oliver is here, of course Oliver is here, just as Geoffrey suspected he would be - Oliver bends his head and tenderly kisses Ellen's brow as they stand embracing, arms wrapped tight around each other.
The kiss has all the awkward gentleness of new lovers, and is more exquisitely painful than Geoffrey can bear; a shattering proof of their intimacy far more devastating than abstract knowledge of the fact. Geoffrey feels as though he is splitting apart at the seams - aching head stuffed too full to contain his rampaging thoughts, clenched hands shaking with fear and helplessness, gut churning in turmoil, knees locked as he stands trembling in Hamlet's boots. His face reflects back in the glass panes, pallid and shiny with sweat, eyes glazed, lips drawn into a tight-lined grimace.
The dagger drops from his numb fingers.
It is too much - he sees, now, and God, he feels. He is fucked-up beyond any hope of recovery, and he cannot contain it, but he cannot vent any of it here. Not here, not in front of Ellen.
Geoffrey turns away from her doorstep and staggers out into the shambles of his life.
A strange, unearthly peace settles on him as he wanders toward the river. The night is cool and still, stars glittering silently overhead. Insect song fades and resumes in tempo with his footsteps, an irrepressibly cheerful refrain supplemented by the occasional frog-croak and the underlying sound of the river lapping rhythmically against its banks.
Geoffrey breathes, and tips his head back to gaze at the stars, and turns his cheek as a tiny wisp of wind washes over his face.
And he thinks he might just survive, might endure the ruinous events of today and this night, until he hears a noise from behind and turns to look - just as the swan, wings extended threateningly, lowers its neck and charges at him, flapping and hissing.
dry frost glazes the window of my hurt
- Sylvia Plath, Winter Landscape, With Rooks
Thus does the white swan, as he lies on the wet grass, when the Fates summon him, sing at the fords of Maeander.
- Ovid
Geoffrey doesn't recall much of his time "away." He doesn't know, and resolves not to care, if anyone came to visit him - he hopes not, because he's got plenty of humiliation to live with, already - and besides, it's not like he's going to be seeing anyone he knows again any time soon.
When the doctors release him, declare him fit to be among ordinary people once more, label him sane and healthy and ready to try living, Geoffrey gets as far away from New Burbage as he practically can considering his appalling lack of finances. He decides that he likes Toronto, settles in Toronto, and throws everything he is and what little he has into starting his Theatre Sans Argent.
His theatre. His creation, cradled safely in his own two hands - no one to take it away, no one to destroy it. He might go bankrupt, but Geoffrey won't get hurt again.
Part of his not-getting-hurt-again plan is remarkably easy: the theatre occupies most of his waking hours, keeping him too busy to wallow in nostalgia over birthdays and holidays and absent friends and the like. Geoffrey quickly discovers that his theatre will consume him as much as he allows; so by living mainly in his head, plotting how to break this scene or stage that one, how to stretch a meager costuming budget and evade his landlord, he is acceptably content with his new life.
Sex, oddly and blessedly, is no problem at all. Geoffrey plunges from the indulgence of regular gratification to the celibacy of a monk, and does not miss carnality - he tells himself he does not miss it, even as months add up into years, because he likes his life simple, now. He does his best not to think of Ellen, and is largely successful; he never thinks of Oliver. A simple life does not allow for explosive, messy emotions - so Geoffrey does not think of many things, managing to maintain a degree of happiness that persists even with periodic threats of eviction, and stage-duel mishaps, and the occasional small on-stage fire.
Every now and then, to reassure himself that he is no longer insane, Geoffrey walks through the park to the water's edge. Sometimes, at night, he lies down in the damp grass, close enough to hear the soft mutterings of the swans at rest, but far enough away to respect their territorial nature.
In the afternoons, if he needs a break from the latest vexation impeding his creative vision, he takes along a stale baguette or the last few slices of bread, and tosses small pieces to the birds as they paddle and float, heads dipping gracefully under the bright blue water.
It is not the life he once thought he would have, but Geoffrey doesn't think of what-might-have-been, anymore.
I was like a swan - sort of gliding on the top, but my legs were paddling underneath.
- Lee Westwood
Now wakes the hour
Now sleeps the swan
Behold the dream
The dream is gone
- Pink Floyd, A Pillow of Winds
Hamlet opens at New Burbage. Jack throws up three times before the final curtain, and Ted From Accounting - Geoffrey cannot remember the man's surname to save his life - doesn't faint or piss himself onstage, though his cameo role as one of the soldiers-without-lines will be memorable only as a personal accomplishment. Still, though, in the eyes of his coworkers and his corporation, Ted is the ugly duckling turned swan - a real actor, hidden in plain sight amongst the dull and boring number-crunchers of the revenue department.
Ted intercepts him in the hallway, bouncing on his heels in high spirits, babbling out his excitement and gratitude. Geoffrey warily disengages from the impending hug; his own emotional state is teetering, has been so ever since he came back to New Burbage. Juggling Ellen and Oliver is exhausting enough, would be even if the rest of the production had run smoothly - but he'd had to cope with a deficit budget, and Claire (good God), and Richard's meddling, and Darren Nichols (again, God!) and The Boy, and only two hours ago talked Jack down from his escalating freak-out.
Tonight had been… unsettling. Geoffrey hadn't noticed at first - he'd been preoccupied and not a little worried about Jack, and what to do if Jack pulled a Tennant and ran screaming (or vomiting) from the stage - but sometime after the witching hour speech, Geoffrey had turned his head and there was Ellen.
Ellen, in the wings, watching him.
Geoffrey doesn't quite know what to make of it - an old habit, dying hard?
And then there had been the near-disastrous premiere of Oliver Welles, not in the flesh. Geoffrey had meant to say goodbye to him weeks ago, had left Toronto and his nicely simple life behind to lay their intertwined pasts to rest, only to end up more entangled than ever - with Oliver's skull and lingering ghost, and his memories of Oliver, and with Ellen, and with his new understanding of Oliver and Ellen.
Hamlet is a success; Geoffrey can look forward to a sold-out run, and the return of his own name to the headlines - it's exactly the kind of improbable story that makes the best fodder for the stage. If he chooses, he can stay in New Burbage and continue to direct, cast Ellen in roles to showcase her own formidable talent, nurture Ted's fledgling career and determine if he's truly an actor or merely an accountant playing an actor.
New Burbage could be part of him, again - his vision. His future - but would he be happy?
Geoffrey isn't sure.
But calm, white calm, was born into a swan
- Elizabeth Coatsworth
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,
Fading in music.
- The Merchant of Venice
They meet again at the footbridge, all of them older and more weathered. Geoffrey understands so much more, now - why Ellen hates swans, how to her they will always represent personal failure (the second daughter, instead of the heroine; a laughably pathetic pseudo-attempt at suicide) and how, for him, they will forever be linked to madness and death.
He shudders once, remembering the gray haze of Oliver's remains carried by the wind, how blunt orange beaks dabbled among the ashes and mud-silt in the calm current below.
Oliver Welles is dead. I poured him into the river and swans ate him.
An elbow digs sharply into his ribs. Geoffrey oofs but manages not to spill his coffee, raising one eyebrow at Ellen, who strolls by his side. She's been especially tactile today, bumping up against him on the walk to the vendor's cart, wiping cappuccino foam (didn't anyone make basic black coffee anymore?) from his lip with a napkin.
She smiles briefly, but remains silent as she collects his cup and tosses it into a nearby trash can with her own.
They stop by the river's edge, hands in pockets, faces turned up toward the sun. Ellen peeks at him sidelong, but doesn't press him to speak, and for once she seems to have nothing to say.
Geoffrey imagines she will have plenty to say before long, depending on what he decides to do with the rest of his life.
Standing next to Ellen in the warmth of the sun, the cut grass soft and fragrant beneath their feet, Geoffrey is uncomfortably aware that he cannot continue his now-customary self-denial for long - not in Ellen's proximity. He vividly remembers hiding curled-up in the cramped confines of swan boat number six to avoid spooking Jack, with the weight of Ellen's head resting on his belly and the gentle swell of her breast pressed against his upraised thigh. His fingers had itched to trace the line of Ellen's cheek, to cup her pointed chin and turn her face toward his; only with great effort, and the surprising but welcome distraction of Ellen baring part of her soul, had Geoffrey been able to keep his hand fisted on his knee.
Geoffrey isn't sure of much, but one thing he does know is that he doesn't want to continue that way, not with Ellen. He isn't sure he can - it will be far too hard to maintain the same level of detachment without the distance Toronto affords.
There is Sloan to consider, of course, and whoever might come after. Geoffrey will not stay to be a third wheel in the long string of Ellen's casual affairs - not for an artistic directorship, not for New Burbage.
Another poke to his ribcage. Ellen looks at him thoughtfully, nibbling on her lower lip, then tilts her head toward the dock. "I'll let you steer, this time?"
Geoffrey eyes the oversized swan boats for a long moment, considering the question. His coat flaps around his knees while he stares, tallying up all of the reasons he should say no. Beside him, Ellen wraps her arms around herself, shivering in the gauze-thin Armani pantsuit, gazing off over the water as if his answer doesn't decide their future.
"Only if we take number six," Geoffrey answers finally, matching Ellen's slow curving smile, and he tucks her under his arm as they saunter along the winding path together.
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
- Mary Oliver, The Swan
Pairing/Characters: Geoffrey/Ellen, Oliver
Rating: PG-ish
Length/Spoilers: 3400 words, spoilers through season 1
Notes: Muchas gracias to kernezelda for quick-like-a-bunny beta! :)
Written for nos4a2no9 for the Slings & Arrows Ficathon, hosted by loneraven. Nos asked for Ellen and Geoffrey (together, apart, what-evah); Geoffrey during his "institutional" phase; Ted from Accounting on the opening night of "Hamlet."
More Fools Than Wise
by Stars
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
- Mary Oliver, The Swan
And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.
- As You Like It
Ellen hates swans.
Geoffrey doesn't quite understand why. He thinks maybe it has something to do with an ill-advised stage adaptation of Tchaikovsky's ballet in which Ellen played Odile, the black swan princess; but that was before she came to New Burbage and she won't speak more than a few tight-lipped words about it. So Geoffrey shrugs and changes the subject and turns his attention to a different piece of the complex, tempestuous puzzle that is Ellen.
They walk together by the river, holding hands and bumping hips companionably; on the little wooden footbridge Geoffrey turns her in the circle of his arms and lazily kisses Ellen as the summer dusk deepens to twilight. In the darkness, a trio of passing swans glows soft-white, pale feathers nearly incandescent, as they swim beneath the bridge, lowly honking.
The moon hangs high in the sky, reflected in Ellen's wide, dark eyes when they pull away to breathe. Geoffrey drinks her in, the delicate lines of her face, the alluring pink wetness of her well-kissed lips and the tantalizing curve of her ear. He can feel the flutter of her pulse beneath his fingertips, pressed along the elegant length of her neck, and the trembling in her belly as she leans her slight weight heavily against his body, joining them from breast to hip with her head tucked beneath Geoffrey's chin.
The fit is perfect. They are perfect - Ellen is his Juliet, simmering with concealed desire; his waifish, clever Rosalind; and soon, his devoted Ophelia. Perhaps, one day, his Kate - Geoffrey pictures it in his mind's eye: his petite Ellen dominating the stage, flaying strong men with the lancet edge of her wicked tongue before finally taming that stormy passion, first into a grudging respect, and then love, for Petruchio - for him.
Later, in the shadowed privacy of Ellen's bed, they lie curved toward each other, sharing a single pillow. As Ellen sleeps, one curled hand just touching his, Geoffrey silently revels in the glorious rightness of his life at this moment: Ellen by his side, onstage and off; Oliver, their mentor and director, who knows precisely which parts and staging suit them best, who pushes and pokes and coaxes and cajoles unthinkable performances from them while looking ahead to what should come next; and The Swan itself, with its old wood and creaking floorboards and ringing acoustics - the third party in their love triangle of actors, director, theatre.
Geoffrey, lying sated and near to bursting with happiness, wants nothing more than to spend the rest of his life - his allotted seven acts - here, in New Burbage, with Ellen and Oliver and Shakespeare… and Lear, at the end of his days.
Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.
- Antony and Cleopatra
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
- Mary Oliver, The Swan
He stares down into the black void of the grave. Laertes hovers behind him, a hostile shadow, as Gertrude blathers on; Geoffrey fancies he can smell the damp, rich earth, a humid, thick scent rising from the tilled soil piled at the edge of the rectangular hole.
Realism, indeed.
His head is as empty as the grave, devoid of absolutely everything - he cannot think. He feels nothing but a vague, tingling numbness, as if he has been swaddled in cotton-wool, bandaged and mummified and then beaten with a thousand telephone books. He isn't terribly surprised; he's read somewhere that bleeding to death is relatively quick and painless. What does shock him, what jolts him back from the fugue state he's slipped into, when he looks down at his scuffed leather boots where there should be red, where he expects to see an obscene crimson puddle of his life's blood pooling at his feet - there is only the bare stage floor.
I slept with Oliver, Ellen had said, carefully scrunching her face into that expression women put on to apply lipstick.
Geoffrey blinked. He waited, but she said nothing more, just flicked him a quick glance in the mirror and grabbed a tissue to blot the excess red from her mouth.
What - who? When, where? Why? Why? Geoffrey thought about asking. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out; he couldn't speak because he couldn't breathe. Ellen caught his eye again, frowning, but he was saved by the five-minute call crackling over the house intercom. Geoffrey spun on his heel for the door, cast a final disbelieving look around - yes, this was Ellen's dressing room, those were the roses he'd brought to her opening night, there on a little shelf was the picture of the three of them, celebrating… there he was, drunkenly kissing Yorick's skull, Ellen leaning close and Oliver laughing, indulging them. This was real.
Ellen. And Oliver.
Ellen and Oliver.
Ellen and Oliver.
Now he stands at the edge of the grave and thinks nothing, says nothing, feels nothing; but in the background, like some perverse soundtrack to his suddenly fucked-up life, he hears the deep mournful tones of a cello. Saint-Saens, a melancholy adagio, sadly beautiful; the melody of Geoffrey's heart, breaking.
The music in his head lets loose the pain. Now the pain, now the cutting, white-hot agony of a knife thrust deep (in his poor shattered heart, or his back? he wonders idly). He sways, stares down at his feet, where the gaping black emptiness of the grave beckons, promises oblivion.
Geoffrey spreads his arms wide, jumps - and welcomes the fall.
Ego: The fallacy whereby a goose thinks he's a swan
- Anonymous
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
- Sylvia Plath, Winter Landscape, With Rooks
Oblivion is not so easy, Geoffrey finds. Once he escapes the stage, thoughts come rushing back and his brain is suddenly a crowded, chaotic place - a teeming minefield overflowing with excruciating images, speculative adultery that he cannot control or stop. Ellen, naked. Ellen, riding Oliver in wild abandon, small hands fisted in her short hair as she undulates, shudders, moans.
Saint-Saens is drowned out by a crushing inner voice of self-criticism: of course Ellen slept with Oliver, why shouldn’t she? Why should what she had with Geoffrey be something special, be anything other than sex?
Geoffrey knows he can be arrogant. He knows his is a rare talent - Oliver has told him so, and Ellen, and other members of the company, and the critics and the audiences. Geoffrey believes his own press, because he knows it to be true. Geoffrey needs to believe it, because his father had detested the theatre and scorned Geoffrey's obsession, had repeatedly and loudly rued the day he'd taken his eleven-year-old son to see Charles Kingman as Falstaff.
Slouched with a beer at Yong's, ignoring the not-so-hushed whispers commenting on his attire and (admittedly surly) demeanor, Geoffrey realizes with a choked laugh that Henry IV was the first time - though obviously not the last - that he cried over a betrayal.
He gets fantastically drunk… not that it helps.
Really - why should you be any different? Geoffrey picks meticulously at the soggy beer label, wincing at the smug superiority of his inner critical-voice, and hunches his shoulders as if to deflect the unspoken words. People cheat on each other all the time.
He chugs the rest of his beer, slams it down onto the glass tabletop with a loud crack, and glares at the disapproving faces around him, cursing them and his inner-voice, both. Because I wanted to marry her!
He's angry, now; furiously railing at the unfairness of it all, at the incredibly inopportune timing - fucking Ellen. Why did she have to tell him at all? And why just then? And what the fuck is he supposed to do now?
An answer to the last, semi-rhetorical question arrives quickly in the form of one hulking, pissed-off fellow diner - and the physicality of the fight feels fucking fabulous. Pushing and shoving, hands and feet scrabbling and slipping, thudding fists against flesh, fingers tangled, ripping at his hair - it's over too soon, but does wonders to clear Geoffrey's head. He focuses on the anger, the rage pumping hotly through his veins and throbbing in places he'll be sore tomorrow; after he's thrown out of Yong's, he knows exactly where to go.
When he spies them through the window, stolen prop-dagger in hand and perhaps ready to shove under Oliver's nose - Geoffrey's not entirely committed to vengeance, not yet, and his anger is slowly draining away, leaving behind a profound sadness, the combined effect of too much beer and heartache - his purpose falters, distracted by Ellen's beauty.
Even now.
The sight of her steals away his breath: flowers circling her brow, flowing white gown nipped tight at the waist, embroidered bodice clinging to her slight curves, her breasts (the perfect size to fit Geoffrey's hands, he'd thought it was another sign that she'd been made for him - God, he was so stupid). He catches just a glimpse before the moment is ruined, when Oliver - because Oliver is here, of course Oliver is here, just as Geoffrey suspected he would be - Oliver bends his head and tenderly kisses Ellen's brow as they stand embracing, arms wrapped tight around each other.
The kiss has all the awkward gentleness of new lovers, and is more exquisitely painful than Geoffrey can bear; a shattering proof of their intimacy far more devastating than abstract knowledge of the fact. Geoffrey feels as though he is splitting apart at the seams - aching head stuffed too full to contain his rampaging thoughts, clenched hands shaking with fear and helplessness, gut churning in turmoil, knees locked as he stands trembling in Hamlet's boots. His face reflects back in the glass panes, pallid and shiny with sweat, eyes glazed, lips drawn into a tight-lined grimace.
The dagger drops from his numb fingers.
It is too much - he sees, now, and God, he feels. He is fucked-up beyond any hope of recovery, and he cannot contain it, but he cannot vent any of it here. Not here, not in front of Ellen.
Geoffrey turns away from her doorstep and staggers out into the shambles of his life.
A strange, unearthly peace settles on him as he wanders toward the river. The night is cool and still, stars glittering silently overhead. Insect song fades and resumes in tempo with his footsteps, an irrepressibly cheerful refrain supplemented by the occasional frog-croak and the underlying sound of the river lapping rhythmically against its banks.
Geoffrey breathes, and tips his head back to gaze at the stars, and turns his cheek as a tiny wisp of wind washes over his face.
And he thinks he might just survive, might endure the ruinous events of today and this night, until he hears a noise from behind and turns to look - just as the swan, wings extended threateningly, lowers its neck and charges at him, flapping and hissing.
dry frost glazes the window of my hurt
- Sylvia Plath, Winter Landscape, With Rooks
Thus does the white swan, as he lies on the wet grass, when the Fates summon him, sing at the fords of Maeander.
- Ovid
Geoffrey doesn't recall much of his time "away." He doesn't know, and resolves not to care, if anyone came to visit him - he hopes not, because he's got plenty of humiliation to live with, already - and besides, it's not like he's going to be seeing anyone he knows again any time soon.
When the doctors release him, declare him fit to be among ordinary people once more, label him sane and healthy and ready to try living, Geoffrey gets as far away from New Burbage as he practically can considering his appalling lack of finances. He decides that he likes Toronto, settles in Toronto, and throws everything he is and what little he has into starting his Theatre Sans Argent.
His theatre. His creation, cradled safely in his own two hands - no one to take it away, no one to destroy it. He might go bankrupt, but Geoffrey won't get hurt again.
Part of his not-getting-hurt-again plan is remarkably easy: the theatre occupies most of his waking hours, keeping him too busy to wallow in nostalgia over birthdays and holidays and absent friends and the like. Geoffrey quickly discovers that his theatre will consume him as much as he allows; so by living mainly in his head, plotting how to break this scene or stage that one, how to stretch a meager costuming budget and evade his landlord, he is acceptably content with his new life.
Sex, oddly and blessedly, is no problem at all. Geoffrey plunges from the indulgence of regular gratification to the celibacy of a monk, and does not miss carnality - he tells himself he does not miss it, even as months add up into years, because he likes his life simple, now. He does his best not to think of Ellen, and is largely successful; he never thinks of Oliver. A simple life does not allow for explosive, messy emotions - so Geoffrey does not think of many things, managing to maintain a degree of happiness that persists even with periodic threats of eviction, and stage-duel mishaps, and the occasional small on-stage fire.
Every now and then, to reassure himself that he is no longer insane, Geoffrey walks through the park to the water's edge. Sometimes, at night, he lies down in the damp grass, close enough to hear the soft mutterings of the swans at rest, but far enough away to respect their territorial nature.
In the afternoons, if he needs a break from the latest vexation impeding his creative vision, he takes along a stale baguette or the last few slices of bread, and tosses small pieces to the birds as they paddle and float, heads dipping gracefully under the bright blue water.
It is not the life he once thought he would have, but Geoffrey doesn't think of what-might-have-been, anymore.
I was like a swan - sort of gliding on the top, but my legs were paddling underneath.
- Lee Westwood
Now wakes the hour
Now sleeps the swan
Behold the dream
The dream is gone
- Pink Floyd, A Pillow of Winds
Hamlet opens at New Burbage. Jack throws up three times before the final curtain, and Ted From Accounting - Geoffrey cannot remember the man's surname to save his life - doesn't faint or piss himself onstage, though his cameo role as one of the soldiers-without-lines will be memorable only as a personal accomplishment. Still, though, in the eyes of his coworkers and his corporation, Ted is the ugly duckling turned swan - a real actor, hidden in plain sight amongst the dull and boring number-crunchers of the revenue department.
Ted intercepts him in the hallway, bouncing on his heels in high spirits, babbling out his excitement and gratitude. Geoffrey warily disengages from the impending hug; his own emotional state is teetering, has been so ever since he came back to New Burbage. Juggling Ellen and Oliver is exhausting enough, would be even if the rest of the production had run smoothly - but he'd had to cope with a deficit budget, and Claire (good God), and Richard's meddling, and Darren Nichols (again, God!) and The Boy, and only two hours ago talked Jack down from his escalating freak-out.
Tonight had been… unsettling. Geoffrey hadn't noticed at first - he'd been preoccupied and not a little worried about Jack, and what to do if Jack pulled a Tennant and ran screaming (or vomiting) from the stage - but sometime after the witching hour speech, Geoffrey had turned his head and there was Ellen.
Ellen, in the wings, watching him.
Geoffrey doesn't quite know what to make of it - an old habit, dying hard?
And then there had been the near-disastrous premiere of Oliver Welles, not in the flesh. Geoffrey had meant to say goodbye to him weeks ago, had left Toronto and his nicely simple life behind to lay their intertwined pasts to rest, only to end up more entangled than ever - with Oliver's skull and lingering ghost, and his memories of Oliver, and with Ellen, and with his new understanding of Oliver and Ellen.
Hamlet is a success; Geoffrey can look forward to a sold-out run, and the return of his own name to the headlines - it's exactly the kind of improbable story that makes the best fodder for the stage. If he chooses, he can stay in New Burbage and continue to direct, cast Ellen in roles to showcase her own formidable talent, nurture Ted's fledgling career and determine if he's truly an actor or merely an accountant playing an actor.
New Burbage could be part of him, again - his vision. His future - but would he be happy?
Geoffrey isn't sure.
But calm, white calm, was born into a swan
- Elizabeth Coatsworth
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,
Fading in music.
- The Merchant of Venice
They meet again at the footbridge, all of them older and more weathered. Geoffrey understands so much more, now - why Ellen hates swans, how to her they will always represent personal failure (the second daughter, instead of the heroine; a laughably pathetic pseudo-attempt at suicide) and how, for him, they will forever be linked to madness and death.
He shudders once, remembering the gray haze of Oliver's remains carried by the wind, how blunt orange beaks dabbled among the ashes and mud-silt in the calm current below.
Oliver Welles is dead. I poured him into the river and swans ate him.
An elbow digs sharply into his ribs. Geoffrey oofs but manages not to spill his coffee, raising one eyebrow at Ellen, who strolls by his side. She's been especially tactile today, bumping up against him on the walk to the vendor's cart, wiping cappuccino foam (didn't anyone make basic black coffee anymore?) from his lip with a napkin.
She smiles briefly, but remains silent as she collects his cup and tosses it into a nearby trash can with her own.
They stop by the river's edge, hands in pockets, faces turned up toward the sun. Ellen peeks at him sidelong, but doesn't press him to speak, and for once she seems to have nothing to say.
Geoffrey imagines she will have plenty to say before long, depending on what he decides to do with the rest of his life.
Standing next to Ellen in the warmth of the sun, the cut grass soft and fragrant beneath their feet, Geoffrey is uncomfortably aware that he cannot continue his now-customary self-denial for long - not in Ellen's proximity. He vividly remembers hiding curled-up in the cramped confines of swan boat number six to avoid spooking Jack, with the weight of Ellen's head resting on his belly and the gentle swell of her breast pressed against his upraised thigh. His fingers had itched to trace the line of Ellen's cheek, to cup her pointed chin and turn her face toward his; only with great effort, and the surprising but welcome distraction of Ellen baring part of her soul, had Geoffrey been able to keep his hand fisted on his knee.
Geoffrey isn't sure of much, but one thing he does know is that he doesn't want to continue that way, not with Ellen. He isn't sure he can - it will be far too hard to maintain the same level of detachment without the distance Toronto affords.
There is Sloan to consider, of course, and whoever might come after. Geoffrey will not stay to be a third wheel in the long string of Ellen's casual affairs - not for an artistic directorship, not for New Burbage.
Another poke to his ribcage. Ellen looks at him thoughtfully, nibbling on her lower lip, then tilts her head toward the dock. "I'll let you steer, this time?"
Geoffrey eyes the oversized swan boats for a long moment, considering the question. His coat flaps around his knees while he stares, tallying up all of the reasons he should say no. Beside him, Ellen wraps her arms around herself, shivering in the gauze-thin Armani pantsuit, gazing off over the water as if his answer doesn't decide their future.
"Only if we take number six," Geoffrey answers finally, matching Ellen's slow curving smile, and he tucks her under his arm as they saunter along the winding path together.
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
- Mary Oliver, The Swan