The Fall and Rise of The Black Parade, 6/10
V.
VI.
Bob’s always been something of a loner.
Growing up, he’d learned pretty fast to depend on himself-moving from one group home to another, unable to remember his parents or a time when he’d actually had a home. By his teens, he’d been a bad candidate for adoption but a good candidate for cheap labor, a quiet, solid boy who was good at learning on the job and good at making do with little.
The closest he’d ever had to a home was Chicago, and the girl he’d met there. Bob had arrived in the city with a job on the railroad, stayed there as a steelworker by day and a drummer in a jazz club by night, and fallen hard for a waitress with dark hair and a warm smile. When the war broke out and Bob left, they’d written letters back and forth for a year before hers stopped coming. He wasn’t sure what to think, but between her finding someone else or something having happened to her, he would’ve taken the former in a heartbeat.
The letter from the girl’s mother hadn’t reached him until almost six months later, brief and tear-stained, with a newspaper clipping attached to it. Someone had tried to hold up the club, the clipping said.
After that, it was back to being a loner, back to depending on himself. He’d made it back to Chicago, but hadn’t stayed there long. Too many memories. Two years later, it was another city, another short-term, dead-end job-and another son of a bitch with a gun, looking for a quick fix for his problems with someone else’s money.
Bob could’ve kept his head down and looked after himself, and he might have walked away. It wasn’t as if he had any reason to try and be a hero. Except that if someone had been a hero two years ago in Chicago, his girl might have walked away then.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he’d had anything much to lose.
Bob’s left the city twice, since he got here. Both times he ran into the wolves, and fuck it, he doesn’t want to leave that badly. It still feels like an itch he can’t scratch, not being able to just take off when the urge strikes him. He compensates by moving around within the city, switching jobs fairly often.
There aren’t many people he knows that he’d really call friends, but Frank and Ray are two of them-particularly Frank, who was here when Bob arrived. If Bob hadn’t preferred to get by on his own, even when he was new in the city, he might be a part of Frank’s little collection of strays.
Bob’s probably crazy to want to get involved with anyone who’s having dealings with Mother War and the twins, he knows. But these are some of the best friends he has in the city, and, once again, it’s not like he has all that much to lose.
Besides, a few days after he talks to Mikey, Frank and Ray play him what they have so far of Gerard’s song. And once Bob hears it, even as a rough guitar tune, he knows he wants in on this.
Bob doesn’t have a drum kit of his own, so the day after he first talks to Frank and Ray about it, he meets up with them at the House of Wolves, during the day when the bar is pretty empty and the kit set up there is unoccupied.
Toro lays out what he has in mind for the drum line so far; this isn’t the first time he’s written music, and he’s made it his business to know at least the basics of instruments he doesn’t play. But at the end of the day, he’s a guitarist, which is why he finishes up with “But seriously, man, anywhere you get your own ideas or think there’s room for improvement, feel free.”
They run through the song a couple of times, during which the Way brothers drift in. Mikey brings his bass and sets up between Ray and Frank, and that makes what they’ve been playing sound better, more complete, but it’s still missing something. A voice, maybe-Gerard stays sidestage, watching them with a solemn expression and his hands clasped behind his back.
They break when the other members of the House band show up, Frank and Ray shrugging off questions about their ‘side project’. Bob and Mikey head over to join Gerard, who’s already made a beeline to the bar for coffee.
“Hey,” Gerard says as they get there, teeth clamped around the cigarette he’s lighting. “Hey, Bob, you sounded really good up there. I mean, really.”
“Thanks,” Bob says, with feeling. No one’s said as much explicitly, but from the way Frank, Ray, and Mikey all defer to Gerard, Bob knows that whether or not he actually gets to do this is going to depend on Gerard’s say-so.
It’s early evening now, around the time that the House starts filling up and the noise level raises accordingly. Over by the stage, Bob can hear Frank’s voice raised above the general din, which isn’t unusual. He’s swearing a lot, which isn’t unusual either.
A few minutes later, Frank stalks over to where Bob and the Ways are sitting, glowering. On his heels, Ray also looks kind of frustrated, and he’s got a longer fuse than Frankie does.
“So, we’ve got a problem,” Ray announces.
Mikey raises an eyebrow. “What kind of problem?”
“The kind of problem where our drummer doesn’t think he really wants to do this anymore, and also doesn’t feel the need to inform us about this in advance, because it’s not like he’s a professional, or anything,” Frank grumbles.
“Shit,” Bob says, and then, “Look, if you guys want, I know at least some of the stuff you usually play-”
“Wait,” Gerard interrupts, and leans forward. “Ray. Do you think the song is ready?”
Ray blinks at him. “…What, you mean ready for tonight?”
“Yeah,” Gerard says. “I mean, I figure it’s not ideal, but if it had to be?”
Ray stares at him for another moment, then rakes a hand through his hair. “Uh. Maybe? The guitar parts definitely are. I think we could’ve used a little more time to work on the drums, but that’s really Bob’s call, and there’s the part where we’ve never done a complete run-through with vocals, but…”
Without waiting for Ray to finish, Gerard turns to Bob, raising his eyebrows questioningly. He’s got a wide-eyed, slightly manic look that’s a little unsettling. Bob raises his hands, palm-up.
“If I had to play it tonight, I think I could, yeah. It’d probably sound better with more work, but-”
“Gee,” Mikey begins, looking at his brother, “What’s going on?”
Gerard draws in a deep breath, looking around at the four of them. “It…I don’t know, it feels like it’s supposed to be now. Even the fact that it’s not, like, polished yet-it feels like maybe we’re supposed to just…jump in like this.”
“You think you’re ready to sing it?” Frank asks him.
Gerard swallows hard, but nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I-I’m pretty sure I can, anyway.” He punctuates the statement with a long drag on his cigarette, looking anything but sure.
“Okay, then,” Ray says. “I’ll go see if the other guys feel like taking a night off.”
He heads back to where the rest of the band are still standing, and Gerard watches them for a moment before turning back to the bar.
“Oh, god,” he mutters. “Frank, come outside with me for a second?”
Frank downs the rest of Mikey’s drink (without asking, but Mikey doesn’t protest) and stands. “Sure, why-?”
“I haven’t wanted a drink this bad since I got here,” Gerard replies urgently, and Frank takes him by the elbow and steers him towards the door without another word.
Bob looks over at Mikey, who’s pale and quiet. Neither of which is really unusual for Mikey, from what Bob’s seen, but Bob still leans over and asks quietly, “You okay?”
“…Not really,” Mikey replies. “But. I think I’m more okay than Gee is, right now.”
Bob glances over his shoulder towards the door. “He’s really, really nervous about this, huh?”
“Last time he sang in front of people was high school,” Mikey says. “It’s not so much worrying about his voice-he knows he can sing fine-but he’s not crazy about being up in front of crowds.”
Bob grunts. “Know something? Neither am I.”
Mikey quirks an eyebrow at him, and Bob grins sheepishly. “Hey, it’s easier to deal with when you get to just sit behind a drum kit. I’d hate to be the poor bastard out in front.”
The crowd at the House is used to having music by this point in the evening, and some of them are making their displeasure known by the time the five men take the stage. Bob ignores the heckling as he slips behind the drum kit, looking around at the others.
They’ve grouped themselves in kind of a diamond formation; Ray and Frank on either side, Gerard out in front, and Mikey towards the back, right in front of Bob. Both guitarists look okay, steady and calm as they don their instruments and make last-minute tuning adjustments. Mikey’s expression has gone blank and smooth, not giving anything away, but he’s gripping the neck of his bass a little too tightly.
Gerard’s face is ashy, and he stands facing the crowd for approximately two seconds before he turns around, breathing heavily.
Frank walks over and says something to him, and then, apparently not caring who sees, presses a brief kiss to Gerard’s temple. Mikey catches his brother’s eye and something passes between them that Bob can’t catch, but it makes Gerard square his shoulders and lift his chin a little. He lifts his eyes to glance at Bob briefly, and Bob gives what he hopes is an encouraging nod. And when Ray leans over, saying something in Gerard’s ear, Gerard nods as he replies.
Ray moves back to his side of the stage, looks around at the rest of them once, and then strums the opening chords, sharp and clear over the noise of the crowd. Gerard counts out the beats with brief nods of his head, gives Ray a few measures-and sings. His voice is good, but a little bit scratchy and a little bit weak, and he’s still turned around to face Mikey and Bob.
Bob takes a very brief moment to be worried, and then starts in on the drums, backing Ray up. His eyes are still locked on Gerard, and that’s how he catches the change that takes place when Mikey and Frank come in as well, filling out the sound. It’s hard to describe, because Gerard doesn’t really look any different than he did a second ago, but there’s something new in his bearing and something stronger in his tone, and as they charge into the chorus Gerard spins around and strides to the very edge of the stage, one arm flung out to the crowd.
They respond to it, some raising their own arms in return, some applauding or giving yells of approval or pushing closer to the stage. The music’s reaching them-Bob can see heads nodding to the beat, people tapping their feet or clapping along, but it’s not until Gerard engages them that they really start getting drawn in. And Bob can see Gerard feeding off of that, drawing confidence and courage from both the crowd’s reaction and the wall of music at his back, and then Bob has to put his head down for a second and concentrate, because they’re about to hit one of the parts he’d thought could use more work. There’s this crazy breakdown after the second chorus, with Ray playing his guitar the same way you’d punch someone in the face, if that makes any kind of sense, and Gerard pretty much just screaming into his microphone, and Bob improvises his way through at least half of it. He thinks it comes off okay, and if not, who gives a fuck, the crowd’s attention seems pretty much riveted to Gerard at this point.
Right after that, the music drops away into just a guitar melody again, and the vocal suddenly sounds more like a ballad or a lullaby. In the sudden quiet, Bob hears Gerard falter, his voice wavering suddenly on if you would call me your sweetheart, I’d maybe then sing you a song, and hesitate just a moment too long after it.
Which is when Frank rushes across the stage, presses himself against Gerard’s back, and sings the next line with him. Frank’s voice is loud and glaringly off-key, but he strikes every chord on his guitar like a bullet hitting home, and Bob sees Gerard tip his head back and grin as he slings an arm around Frank’s neck and keeps singing, strong and self-assured once more.
Ray joins in as well, on the last verse, and the three of them suddenly sound like the guys in Bob’s unit used to, singing in camp or in the trenches themselves to keep their spirits up. They finish the song that way, and Bob throws in a little more improvisation in the form of a few tight, heavy drumrolls as the guitars bring the song crashing to a close.
The crowd is roaring by now, more than half of the people in the room on their feet and pressing close to the stage. Gerard looks around at them, seeming dazed. Frank bounds across the stage to say something to Ray, and then throws himself back at Gerard, nearly knocking him over.
“They want us to keep playing,” Ray shouts eventually over the din, and Gerard looks over at him with a startled, almost panicked expression.
“I don’t have anything else to-” he begins, and Ray gives a brief laugh.
“Yeah, you might want to work on that. You go on, I’ll find some stuff we can play.”
Gerard nods, disentangling himself from Frank. He reaches out to grip Ray’s shoulder briefly, then turns to pull Mikey into a quick, tight hug, looking up to exchange another nod with Bob before he staggers offstage. The crowd voices its displeasure at that, but Ray ignores them, thinking for a few moments and then glancing over his shoulder to call out the name of an old jazz song, one Bob could play in his sleep.
There’s something they had when Gerard was out there singing, beyond the simple fact that they had vocals then and don’t now-some kind of spark, the feeling that the five of them were combining into something with the potential to be great. That’s gone now-but from where Bob’s sitting, the four of them on their own don’t sound too shabby, either.
Gerard stops just long enough to grab a bottle of water from the bar (“Where the fuck have you been hiding those pipes, man?” Brian asks as he hands it over), and then makes his way outside. He skirts the crowd as much as he can, and manages to make it out without too many people trying to talk to him.
Outside, he leans against the wall of the House and tilts his head back. His legs feel like jelly and his head is pounding from the music, and as he stands there, an enormous grin spreads across his face.
“Well done.”
The voice startles him a bit, but when he tilts his head down and opens his eyes, he’s not terribly surprised to see the twins there. Fear’s grin is as wide and sharp as ever, and Regret looks as pleased as Gerard has ever seen her.
“Was it?” he asks, his own voice sounding quiet and small in his ears after earlier. “Am I on the right track with this?”
“We told you to trust your instincts,” Fear says. “You won’t find a better guide than them, not even if we told you everything.”
Gerard gives a wry smile. “Maybe so, but I gotta say, you could tell me a little more and I wouldn’t complain.”
Regret looks sympathetic, but only says, “You know what to do, now. Finish the other songs.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know why,” Gerard protests. “And no offense to you or your mother, but I’m not wild about committing myself to something when I don’t know the reason behind it.”
“You would be a disappointment if you didn’t ask questions,” Fear tells him, her tone approving. “But there are rules to this game, and we didn’t set them.” Looking across at her sister, she adds, “We can reward you for a job well done, though, I suppose.”
Regret nods, and looks at Gerard. “Your task is to prepare the way for what’s to come.”
Gerard looks between the two of them, eyebrows raised. “…Do I get to know what that is?”
“You will,” Fear says. “I can promise that. Follow the path you have started down, and you’ll know.”
Gerard sighs. “You know, I’m starting to almost feel fond of the cryptic non-answers.”
Regret smiles her sad smile at him, nodding towards the door of the House. “Go back to your friends, Gerard. Stay close to them. They’ll help you find your answers.”
Bob sees Gerard slip back in, but he seems content to hover at the back of the room, watching the four of them onstage. They play until the list of songs all of them know has been exhausted, then cede the stage to the piano player for the usual band, a guy named James who’s able to put on a pretty good solo act.
Gerard grins when they head to the back to meet him, and hugs Mikey again.
“You sounded awesome,” he says, and Mikey grins as wide as Bob’s ever seen him.
“You were fucking amazing,” Mikey replies. “Did you know you could do that, this whole time?”
“I had no fucking clue,” Gerard says, and then looks around at the rest of them. “We should talk. Not here.”
“Lead the way,” Frank says, and attempts to leap on Bob’s back, to which Bob responds “Uh, no,” and stands unmoving until Frank gives up and slides back down to his feet.
They head up to the apartment, talking about the performance and still buzzing with adrenaline. Gerard waits for them all to run down their energy a little before he turns serious, telling them about his encounter with the twins.
“‘Prepare the way for what’s to come’?” Frank echoes, and makes a face. “Well that’s nice and ominous.”
“And you don’t have any idea what she meant by that?” Ray asks, and Gerard shakes his head.
“Not yet. For now I’m going to concentrate on the songs-I have a couple that I think are close to being done, lyrically, if you guys want to start working on some music for them.” He looks around at them all, and adds, “Assuming you all want to stick with this.”
“Are you fucking kidding?” Ray says. “You’re definitely not getting rid of us, after tonight.”
Gerard smiles faintly, and then looks over at Bob. “What about you?”
Bob glances around uncertainly. He’s painfully aware of the fact that he was a last-minute addition, that he hasn’t been involved as much or as long as the others, that he still doesn’t know Gerard all that well, and Gerard doesn’t know him.
“I’m in if you want me,” he says eventually.
Gerard looks at him for a moment, expression solemn. “I’m starting to accept the fact that a lot of what’s been happening hasn’t been an accident. So…I think if you’re in on it, it’s because you’re supposed to be.” He smiles then, holding out a hand, and adds, “But I think I’d want you in, anyway.”
Bob’s a little surprised at how relieved he feels at those words-at how much of a stake he has in this, how much he cares already. He steps forward and reaches out, expecting a handshake, and gets a hug, which he returns a bit awkwardly.
After a moment, Frank says “Okay, okay, enough of this touchy-feely crap,” (like he hadn’t been sitting with his hand on Gerard’s knee just a minute ago), and when Bob sits back down Ray asks him something about tempo, and they’re back to discussing the song, all of them calmed down enough to be analytical now, talking about what was good, what could be better, how to fine-tune it.
It feels good, Bob thinks to himself, sitting in the midst of the others, joining in with the conversation when he has something to say and just watching the back-and-forth between the rest of them when he doesn’t. It feels like he belongs.
Frank’s yawning almost wide enough to dislocate his jaw by the time the conversation breaks up, and Mikey’s half-asleep, leaning against Ray’s shoulder. Bob starts to get up, only to have Frank wave him back towards the couch, declaring it “too fuckin’ late to walk all the way back to the warehouse district, Bryar, come on”.
Which is how Bob ends up falling asleep on the couch, wondering before he does if he’s just taken a longer time to end up as part of Frank’s collection of strays, after all.
Bob wakes up early the next morning to find Gerard standing by the balcony doors, one hand pressed against the glass while he looks out at the skyline.
“I had a dream that we were leaving the city,” is the first thing he says, and Bob’s not sure if Gerard’s talking to him or not, so he sits up attentively, but doesn’t say anything.
“It wasn’t just the five of us,” Gerard goes on. “There were a lot of people-not everyone in the city, I don’t think, but a lot. It was like…a procession, or a parade, or something. We were all singing.”
Bob does speak up, then. “Were the wolves there?”
Gerard nods slowly. “Yes, but…there were soldiers with us, not fighting each other anymore, keeping the wolves back instead. And there was someone out in front, leading us-I’d never seen him before, but I think he was like me, and the wolves couldn’t touch him.”
He stands there another moment, then turns around, glancing over at Bob. “I think it has something to do with…all of this. It kind of-it didn’t feel like just a dream, y’know?”
“…I don’t know, really,” Bob says wryly. “I’ve never had a dream I thought wasn’t a normal dream before. But after everything else you guys have told me about, would prophetic dreams be much of a stretch?”
Gerard looks down at that, brow furrowing. “I guess not. I…shit, I hadn’t really thought about it that way.”
Bob blinks. “What way?”
“As prophecy,” Gerard says. “I’ve had other dreams that felt the same way this one did, and…I suppose you could say it fits, objectively. I just…never would have thought to describe them that way.”
He falls silent after that, and Bob gives a sympathetic shrug but doesn’t know what to say, so doesn’t say anything.
After a moment, Gerard shakes his head and walks toward the kitchen. “Fuck, I don’t have enough caffeine in my system yet to deal with this. You want coffee?”
Bob leaves while the others are still stumbling out of bed, heading for the warehouse where he’s been working. He has a feeling he won’t be sticking with that job too much longer, but he doesn’t want to just cut out without any explanation.
Walking through streets of the city, he thinks about what Gerard said, the dream he described. The idea of leaving the city is exciting and more than a little daunting at the same time. Bob’s always felt hemmed-in, eager to see what else might be out there. On the other hand, this isn’t like setting out for a new town when he was alive-what if there’s nothing out there, or something worse than the city? After last night, Bob trusts Gerard’s intuition as far as writing and performing songs goes, but he’s not sure yet how far that trust extends.
He’s almost at the warehouse when the siren starts, and he ends up ducking into the nearest shelter he can find, surrounded mostly by strangers. The skirmish passes close by as he listens; running, booted feet, shouts and gunfire, and the wailing siren above it all. Sounds that seem made to inspire fear and panic in people who get stuck sitting and listening to them, but in the faces around him Bob doesn’t see fear so much as resignation.
Bob’s heard a lot of people say, over the years, that whatever can be said about life in the city, you have to admit that things could be worse. And, well, he supposes that’s true.
But maybe they’ve all contented themselves too easily with could be worse, and not thought enough about could be better.
He heads back to the apartment across the street from the House that afternoon, after explaining to the other guys at the warehouse that he might not be back.
Frank’s sitting out on the spiral staircase when Bob gets there, a cigarette in one hand and a stormy expression on his face.
“Hey,” he says when Bob comes up the stairs. “Just so you know, things are kind of weird right now.”
“And that’s new and different how, exactly?” Bob asks, sitting down next to him and taking a cigarette when Frank offers his pack.
Frank makes a face. “Apparently, Gerard’s been writing songs about us without realizing it. About how we all died.”
“Uh.” Bob pauses, cigarette halfway through his mouth. “What?”
Frank shrugs. “It’s all stuff he’s been dreaming about. He didn’t even realize any of it was about us until he showed us the songs-well, not me and Toro, anyway, he knew what was up with the ones about him and Mikey.”
“Fuck,” Bob says. “…Is there one about me?”
Frank shrugs. “Gerard thinks there probably is? He’s a little freaked out about the whole thing.”
Bob glances at him. He knows freaked-out Frank, and he knows angry Frank, and this seems more like the latter. “What about you?”
Frank shrugs again. “I’m kind of pissed off? Not at Gerard, ‘cause it’s not like he asked to have the dreams. But it’s…okay, it’s not like I don’t want him knowing anything about me, there are some things I’ve told him about. Hell, I’ve told him stuff more personal than anything in the song. But that was me choosing to tell him, and I’m not crazy about having that choice taken away.”
Bob nods; he knows just enough about what Frankie did when he was alive to know why he’d want control over who knows what about him.
“So,” Frank finishes, flicking the ash off his cigarette. “Things are weird right now.”
Bob sits outside with him for another minute or two, then heads inside, leaving Frank still out on the stairs, and finds Gerard and Ray sitting at the kitchen table, both looking equally broody.
“Hey,” he says. “I talked to Frankie outside.”
Gerard’s journal is lying on the table in front of him; he opens it, flipping through the pages for a moment, and then holds it out to Bob.
“I think that one might be yours,” he says, voice a little shaky. “I wasn’t sure-the dreams are always from the point of view of the person they’re about, and a lot of things aren’t always clear.”
Bob takes the book a bit warily, eyes scanning the page Gerard opened it to.
He wasn’t sure what to expect after his conversation with Frank, but if this is a song about him, it’s vague, nothing specific about how he died or what brought him to that point. Then his eyes land on the words there’s things that I have done you never should ever know, and his hands tighten on the edge and spine of the book-he remembers writing something a lot like that, in one of the last letters he’d ever written home from the war.
“I’m sorry,” Gerard says, seeing his reaction.
Bob glances over the words one more time-without you is how I disappear, he can’t say that doesn’t fit-and then closes the journal, placing it back on the table, and swallows hard before answering. “Like Frank said, you didn’t ask for this.”
Ray speaks up. “We figured we should talk about it, once we’d all seen our songs. See if we can figure out what to do with this.”
Bob nods. “Want me to see if I can get Frank back inside?”
Gerard shakes his head. “Give him a little longer. He’ll come in when he’s ready”
Frank stalks back in a little while after that, hands in his pockets and a fresh cigarette clamped between his teeth, and finds the rest of them (including Mikey, who’d done his own brooding out on the balcony) gathered in the living room. Gerard looks up at him, at first uncertain, then visibly relieved when Frank takes the empty spot next to him on the couch.
“So what are we doing?” Frank asks.
“That depends on you guys,” Gerard says. “Right now, each of you is the only one who’s seen your song, aside from me. If you want it to stay that way, it will, and if the twins or their mother don’t like it, I don’t give a fuck, they can find someone else to do this job.”
Mikey raises an eyebrow. “You think you’d be able to get away with that?”
“I’d try, at least,” Gerard replies. “If any of you are okay with your songs being set to music and performed, no one but the five of us ever has to know where they came from.”
He falls silent, looking around at the rest of them. Ray is the first to speak.
“Why do you think this is happening?” he asks. “I mean, why these songs?”
“Not sure,” Gerard says. “But I think-I feel like the stuff I’ve written about is stuff that they want us to face up to. Things we need to confront and deal with before we can do what we’re supposed to do.” Looking down, he adds, “I know that’s what mine is, anyway.”
Ray thinks about that for a moment. “Well. For my part…I’m okay with it. I mean, having read those lyrics, I wouldn’t want just anyone knowing how they relate to me. But the four of you?” He shrugs, and repeats, “I’m okay with it.”
Mikey gives a short, bitter laugh, and holds up one arm. He’s wearing a t-shirt, but there’s a black armband covering his wrist, just like there has been every time Bob’s ever seen him in short sleeves. “What the hell, all of you already know how I got here except Bob, and for all I know, he’s guessed by now.”
Bob has an idea, but he doesn’t say anything.
Frank slouches in his seat, a stubborn look on his face. “I don’t know. I just…I need a little more time to think about it.”
“Me too,” Bob chimes in. “No offense to any of you guys, but…I’ve spent so long not talking to anyone about the stuff those lyrics deal with…”
Gerard nods, before Bob can finish.
“Of course,” he says. “We can work on Ray’s and Mikey’s and mine, for now, and just…let me know when you decide, both of you.”
So that’s what they do. Ray takes first crack at the songs, working on the main guitar parts as well as the baseline. Gerard keeps working on some other lyrics that he says aren’t quite finished yet, and don’t deal specifically with any of them.
They spend a few more evenings playing (trading off with the other members of the former House band, who all seem glad enough to pursue their own new projects), but Gerard has yet to sing again, waiting for some of the other songs to be finished before he gets up in front of the crowd a second time.
In the meantime, there are some practical matters to consider, like rehearsal space. Gerard’s been using the empty apartment next door as a studio, and there’s enough space for them to work on the songs without his art supplies getting in the way. Bob’s also going to need a drum kit besides the one in the House of Wolves, so he makes some inquiries, arranges for help getting one brought over. One room for music and one room for art still leaves the second bedroom over there, and Bob’s got his eye on it; he’s still been hanging on to his place in the warehouse district and walking back and forth to the apartment every day, and Frank’s been bugging him to just move in with them already, but he likes having his own space a little too much to move in to the living room of an apartment that already has four people in it, even the four people who are probably his best friends in the city.
He’s heading over to check out the spare room, see if it needs cleaning out or anything, the day he finds the instruments in the second apartment’s living room.
“Guys?” Bob calls, sticking his head back through the doorway to the others’ apartment. “When did the kit get here?”
Ray, bent over his guitar in the living room, looks up with a bemused expression. “Huh?”
“The drum kit next door,” Bob says, as Gerard looks up from his journal and Frank and Mikey emerge from the kitchen. “I was gonna help whoever brought it over, but they didn’t let me know they were bringing it today.”
Frank blinks at him. “No one’s been by next door all day-we would’ve heard them on the stairs.”
Bob frowns. “Well, uh-there’s a kit over there. Guitars, too, I figured you guys had gone in for some new gear.”
“…Okay, that’s weird.” Ray sets his guitar aside and stands, heading towards the door. All five of them end up trooping across the hall, filing into the other apartment to look.
The kit dominates the group of instruments, set up in the center of the room, the drums gleaming white and bound with silver. The guitars and bass are set up around it on stands, in the same positions Ray, Frank and Mikey have taken every time they’ve played together in the House. The guitar in Ray’s position is an inky black; in stark contrast, the one in Frank’s place is bone-white, and the bass between them is a deep, blood red.
Frank’s the first to move forward, picking up the white guitar and running his hands over it carefully.
“She’s gorgeous,” he says almost reverently, and Bob quirks an eyebrow at him.
“‘She’?”
“I know a classy lady when I see one, Bryar,” Frank says, waggling his own eyebrows.
“It’s, uh, nice that you’ve made a new friend, Frankie,” Ray says, “But…how did ‘she’ get here?”
“Don’t care,” Frank declares, looping the strap around his neck and strumming an experimental chord. “I’m keeping her. Go try yours on for size and see if you don’t feel the same way, Toro.”
Gerard opens his mouth as if to say something, only to be interrupted by Mikey, who’s walked over to look through the door of the room Gerard uses as a studio.
“Guys, there’s more stuff in here. Uniforms, it looks like.”
“Uni-” Gerard hurries in that direction, shoving past his brother and into the room, the others following.
They’re uniforms, all right-five of them. Five jackets set up on dress forms, with five pairs of folded pants and five pairs of boots beside them on the ground. They’re black with white accents and silver buttons, they all look like they go with either a marching band or an old-school military unit, and no one of them is exactly alike.
Bob looks at them for a moment, then over at Gerard, who’s got that wide-eyed, ashy-faced look again, standing frozen as he looks at the uniforms.
“Gee?” Bob asks, gently. “You okay?”
In answer, Gerard strides across the room to a canvas set up by the opposite wall, covered by a sheet. He lifts one corner of the drape, looking under it.
“I finished this painting two days ago,” he says, his voice low and tightly controlled. “I haven’t shown it to anyone. Anyone.”
He pulls the sheet off, carefully, and then steps back to let the others see it.
Bob’s almost not surprised by what he sees: the five of them grouped in a loose line-Gerard’s style is a little cartoony, not portrait-like levels of realism, but they’re all recognizable as themselves-each wearing one of the uniforms.
“…How come Mikey gets a medal?” Frank says after a moment, when no one else speaks up.
“Because I’m awesome,” Mikey returns, completely deadpan. “Gee, what’s that say, down at the bottom?”
There are a few words written in careful brush strokes in the bottom right corner of the picture, where a signature might go. Gerard runs one finger over the letters before reading it aloud.
“‘The Black Parade’,” he says.
VII.