The Fall and Rise of The Black Parade, 9/10
VIII.
IX.
The next morning finds the five of them gathered in the living room, Bob’s leg bandaged and propped up on a pillow. Everyone’s quiet, and Gerard is suddenly reminded of the morning after a really intense party, the kind where even if your hangover’s not all that bad, you really don’t feel like doing much but sitting still for a change.
Burned out, he thinks, and has to swallow an urge to laugh.
He looks around at the others: Mikey and Ray are squeezed into the same armchair, obviously not willing to be too far from each other. Gerard gets that-there’s a reason he’s sitting on the end of the couch nearest to Mikey and Ray’s chair. Bob’s at the other end, his leg propped up on the coffee table, and Frank’s between them, perched on the back of the couch with his feet on the cushion.
“So,” Gerard begins eventually. “I’ve…been thinking about what happened last night. Shut up,” he says to Frank, when it looks like Frank’s about to laugh. “I mean…I’ve been thinking about the whole thing, obviously, but some parts more than others. Like what the wolves said to all of you.”
He pauses, looking around at each of them again. “I’m not going to try to make anyone talk about it if they don’t want to. But if anyone wants to say anything, I think it should be now.”
No one says anything for a minute.
Frank rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “What Fear said last night about us walking into Hell…you think she really meant that as, y’know, Hell, not just a figure of speech?”
Gerard nods slowly. “I think she might’ve. Like I’ve said before, I was never sure if I believed in Hell or not, but…well, it feels like it fits.”
Frank shrugs. “You and I talked about it already, then. I used to think…but I know where I belong now, and that’s not it.”
Gerard reaches over, squeezing his hand wordlessly.
Ray speaks up next. “I’m worried about fucking up. And when I’m worried about fucking up something that’s important…I sometimes think about bailing, ‘cause if I don’t do it at all, I can’t do it wrong, y’know?” He winds himself a little more tightly around Mikey, and finishes, “Doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
“It’s the same for me, kind of,” Bob says. “It’s like…for a long time, I figured that if I stayed on my own and wasn’t part of anything, I couldn’t let anyone down, and no one could let me down.” He looks at his own leg, and smiles crookedly. “But shit, I got set on fire for you fuckers, you’re stuck with me now.”
“Damn right,” Frank says, leaning over to give him a one-armed hug.
Gerard smiles, and then looks over at Mikey.
Mikey looks back at him for a long moment, then says, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Gerard says.
“…And sometimes I wonder how things would’ve been if you weren’t my older brother,” Mikey finishes, then adds, quickly, “But, Gee, that doesn’t mean-”
“I know,” Gerard says, looking at him steadily. “I’ve…I’ve put you through a lot, Mikey, I know that. I’m sorry.”
Mikey shrugs. “It doesn’t matter what you put me through. Maybe that makes me messed up for not being more independent or having more of a backbone or whatever, but I don’t care. You’re my brother, and I wouldn’t change that if I could.”
Gerard’s eyes are stinging. He looks down and blinks a couple of times, taking a deep breath.
“I think this is where you two hug,” Frank says eventually, and gives Gerard a helpful little shove.
Gerard stands up and walks over, and Mikey untangles himself from Ray and reaches up, and they hug for a long moment, Gerard bending down and kissing the top of Mikey’s head before he steps back.
“What happens now?” Ray asks.
Gerard looks around at them. “What do all of you think?”
Again, Frank’s the first to speak up. “If what happened last night was a test, then believe me, I’m as pissed off at the twins as you are, and I’m not in a hurry to do them any fucking favors. But the whole Black Parade thing…we’re not doing it just for them. Are we?”
“Frank’s right,” Mikey says. “They might have helped us figure out what to do, but-bottom line, we’re in this for us. Ourselves, and everyone who believes in us.”
Ray and Bob both nod their agreement.
“I think you guys have it right,” Gerard says. “If we were just in this for the twins and Mother War’s sake, I’d be willing to take my chances with refusing them-I might not be able to, but I’d try.” He turns towards the window, looking out over the city with his hands clasped behind his back. “Jeanne told me once that war-and by extension Mother War-could be right, but wasn’t ever kind. That the things she does or wants other people to do can be just causes, but she doesn’t care what casualties get inflicted along the way. If I needed any confirmation of that idea, last night was it.”
Gerard turns back around to face the others again, jaw set in a firm line. “But what we’re doing is still right, and it’s still what needs to be done. Not for Mother War, not for Fear and Regret, but for ourselves and everyone who’s with us.”
Bob leans forward, careful of his wounded leg. “So what do we do now?” he asks.
“We have until the Patient gets here to finish putting the parade together,” Gerard says. “And he’s still alive, but he’s getting closer. We’ve got some work to do.”
Gerard goes down to the House of Wolves that afternoon, and spends several minutes just standing outside the club, looking up at the sign out in front, at the jaunty cartoon wolf and the flickering letters. It’s a grim joke, he thinks to himself, but then grim jokes seem to be exactly The Black Parade’s style.
Inside the club, Brian waves Gerard over before anyone can approach him.
“The, ah-the twins are here to see you,” he says. “They said they promised you’d talk again soon.”
Gerard’s eyebrows go up. “They did, but I sort of figured I’d have to wait longer than this for them to grace me with their presence again.”
Brian shrugs. “What can I say? Those are two mysterious ladies, my man. They’re in the back.”
The back of the club, behind the bar, is home to both the storeroom and the office Brian uses to keep as much track as he bothers to of peoples’ tabs. There’s round table with a couple of chairs in the office, and Gerard finds Fear and Regret standing in front of it, hand in hand.
“Sit down, if you’d like,” Regret says, gesturing to one of the chairs. “We have much to talk about.”
Gerard can’t hold back a dry huff of laughter as he pulls out a chair. “You two have never seemed to have that much to say to me.”
“We needed you curious,” Fear says, as the two of them sit as well, moving with a coordination that’s downright eerie. “We needed you thinking and wondering and trying to figure things out. We couldn’t simply tell you everything you wanted to know.”
Gerard looks back and forth between the two of them. “And I have figured it out now, is that it? Or figured out enough, anyway.”
“That’s what we’re here to talk over,” Regret says. “Give us your understanding of things, and then let us see if you still have unanswered questions.”
“All right.” Gerard looks down at his hands, clasped together in front of him on the table. “As far as the big question of what we’re doing and why goes…I figure Frank was right about this being Purgatory, or something like it. And everything we faced last night-the fire, the wolves, all of it-is Hell or its equivalent. And if we’ve got Hell and Purgatory accounted for, I suppose we’re setting out in search of Heaven, but I guess I shouldn’t expect you to tell me if we’re going to find it or not-I have to just trust my instincts, right?”
Fear nods. “That’s right. As your friend Jeanne says, it’s a question of faith. Not faith in us, but in yourself and your dreams.”
“Great,” Gerard mutters, and then goes on. “Speaking of Jeanne: I know that she and I are both, for whatever reason, people who can’t be touched by the wolves, and I’m pretty sure the Patient is as well. But I’m still not sure about why-if it were just because I’ve been chosen for this by your mother, then shouldn’t my friends be untouchable as well?”
“It’s a question of degree,” Regret tells him. “Certain people have…potential for greatness, and some have it to a greater degree than others.”
“Some-like the former Maid of Orleans-were able to fulfill their potential in life,” Fear goes on. “Some are only able to do so in death. The man who’s coming, your Patient, is one of those. Your greatest potential is as a prophet, a forerunner, someone who gathers followers to a cause. His is to lead those followers-but only here.”
“…What about me?” Gerard asks. “Could I have done something like this when I was alive?”
Regret studies him calmly. “You could have, yes. If-”
“If I’d been stronger,” Gerard finishes for her. “If I hadn’t fucked it all up for myself.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, and he shrugs.
“I’ve come to terms with it. What about Mikey and Frank and Ray and Bob?”
“They have potential, too, in their way, but not the same kind,” Fear explains. “Theirs can only be brought out when lead or inspired by that of a greater potential. None of them could have dreamed your dreams, but they had what you needed to make those dreams take shape. And none of them could have defied the wolves or the fire on their own, but together, the five of you found a way.”
“What if we hadn’t all been here?” Gerard asks. “What if any one of us hadn’t died when we did, or hadn’t come here, or if the Patient wasn’t dying? Or-or was that all controlled by fate, or something?”
Regret looks at him with her calm, sad eyes for a moment before answering. “Yes and no. Your potential, the way all of you were drawn to one another-those things were fated. When and how you came here was not. If you had not died young, then we would have simply had to wait longer, until you did.”
Fear leans back in her seat, smirking at him. “As for the fact that all of you came here upon your deaths…that, my friend, you can chalk up to human nature. Which we have a hand in, being what we are, but not us alone.”
Gerard nods, with a faint, wry smile of his own. “I think I understand. As much as I understand any of this.”
“You’re human,” Regret say, simply. “There is only so far you can understand anything.”
The only song still unfinished now is the parade song, so they’ve been working hard on that one. They’ve been trying things out only to scrap them and start over so many times that it’s like a Frankenstein’s monster of at least three or four different songs by now, Gerard helping identify the bits and pieces that seem to fit best-the melody Frank came up with, a guitar solo from Ray, a tight snare drum roll from Bob-and then trusting the others to stitch that into a coherent whole.
They’re working on it when Gerard comes back from talking to Fear and Regret and gathers them together.
“There’s some stuff I need to tell you guys,” he says, and fills them in on his conversation with the twins, finishing, “The last thing I asked them about was the parade. There’s something I’ve been wondering about, from the lyrics of the song…”
Mikey leans forward, elbows on his knees. “It’s his memory, isn’t it? It’s-we’re how death comes for him.”
Gerard nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”
For a long moment, no one says anything. The moment of death, the way it comes in the form of a memory, is something intensely personal, something they’ve barely talked about even at their most intimate and open with each other.
“We have to do this right,” Gerard says eventually. “It’s-I mean, the whole thing is important, of course, but even without the rest, how we handled this part would be important. We’ve been trusted with what makes the Patient who he is, and we’ve only got one chance to get it right.”
Ray nods, and stands up. “Let’s get back to work, then.”
X.