Performance--RP with badass_charger, <lj site="livejournal.com" u

[fey_fire]

Takes place after this post.

Why do you keep on hiding from me
I know how it feels to hold you and just how it ought to be
My memories burn and taunt me
Your eyes so softly haunt me
But I'll still wait patiently
If you need to be
hiding from me.

The final harmonies drifted out over the crowd, followed by cheering and applause. Outwardly the scene looked like any night that Breaker Street played at Last Call. Inwardly the band's front man was struggling to put on the performance of his life, when what he really wanted to do was scream.

When Tadhg told him what was in the latest gift from "your newest fan", he'd nearly done just that.

Her finger. The filthy bastard had taken shears to Pippa's finger and then sent it to him. Sick. Hideous. Obscene. No word in any of the three languages he knew could encompass the thoughts sending horror and rage pounding through his gut. Tadhg had refused to let him look in the box, and this time Rory hadn't pushed. Anraí had also been shaken by the now too-vivid picture of Pippa screaming his name while some cac who shared his face cut a piece of her away. And Tadhg -- he'd not seen his little brother look so grim since their mother died more than two decades ago.

But they couldn't give in to emotion, not now. Anraí wore a glamour that changed his features to something unlike himself as he moved through the crowd, searching faces and keeping a sharp eye on anyone who approached Rory or the other members of the band. Tadhg had slipped away to weave the box and its contents into his ever-narrowing search spell, but would be back before the second set. And Rory had the toughest job of all, to marshal his strength to get back on that stage and thrill the crowd, to draw their hearts and minds and belief into utter focus on him in a musical ritual that would fill him with the energy they'd need to heal Pippa's wounds.

If they found her in time.

No. No. They would find her still alive; he had to believe that or lose it completely. A flicker of energy from his ward drew his eyes to the bar's entrance to see a glamour-clad Tadhg returning from his errand. Anything? he sent back.

Nothing yet.

For the love of God, how long was this going to take? Rory started at the feel of a hand on his shoulder, looking up to find a sympathetic Junie. "Rory, are you sure you wanna do the second set? I could take it on if you'd rather head home."

"No, it's okay, a chara." The entire band cared about Pippa as more than just his girlfriend; his heart sank at the thought of the information he was keeping from them. "I can manage." He gave her hand a squeeze as he got up to return to his guitar and mike. When Breaker Street swung into "Done by the Heat", he poured every ounce of his turbulent emotions into setting the place on fire.

Comments

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"Done by the Heat" ended and "Take it and Go" began. He was taking refuge in Breaker Street's more forceful songs tonight, he thought grimly, able to deliver them as the audience expected. The crowd resonance stirred up by the few tender love songs he'd sung had come too, too close to breaking him down; he hadn't been able to even face the thought of singing "Believer Girl".

The current song's driving rhythms couldn't disguise the fact that something was raking along the edge of his nerves, fraying them with its touch. A dissonance, a wrongness ... he tried to write it off as a product of his own fears, only to feel it strengthen the more he fought it. Something ugly.

What was it? Normally he tried to at least partly shield himself from the energy of an audience, knowing that the overload of sense impressions, needs and desires could leave him disoriented and high as any drug. But for Pippa's sake he'd thrown his gates open wide tonight. Was this nails-on-chalkboard sensation the result?

His eyes sought out his brothers, still circling through the audience ... whatever this was didn't seem to be touching them. Restless and uncertain, he tried to pick out faces in the crowd. Where the hell is it?!

[badass-charger.livejournal.com]

Larch didn't know what he was doing to the lead singer of course, but if he did...the thought that his intense focus on the man at the mic could actually physically affect him, Larch would find that very enjoyable. As it was, Larch contented himself with scrutinizing the performance. The way every note was played, every bar sung.

He ducked his head and chuckled into his curled fist when he noticed Stone's restlessness on stage. The way his eyes scanned the crowd wasn't that of an artist trying to connect with fans. Someone was getting paranoid, Larch decided.

He moved closer to the stage, leaned over to murmur a quiet question of one of the other patrons. "Do they take requests, from their own song list, of course?"

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

The young woman he'd asked turned, then smiled artlessly at Larch. "Sure they do," she said. "Rory's real good about that. They'll even do covers sometimes, but really their own stuff is the best."

She nodded in the direction of a wiry young blond man, monitoring the boards with a single-minded look on his face. "Just get it to Morrie there, and he'll get it to one of the band members."

[badass-charger.livejournal.com]

Larch gave her the most charming smile he could muster, dimples deep and eyes bright. With a playful wink, “Thank you.”

Leaving her smiling herself, he headed over to this Morrie. Larch scoffed at the make and model of the monitors, the board the blond man was running. Had to give the band credit for not sounding like complete shit if this is what they were working with. But his task wasn’t to critique, no he had something else in mind.

“Hey, you’re Morrie, right? Sweet set-up there.” Larch nodded at the board, offered him a few more words of praise that hinted at being someone who knew sound on a professional level. Then he offered a bit of a hapless shrug and smile. Nodded at the woman across the bar that he’d just spoken to. “Ah, this is sort of embarrassing but…is there any chance you think the band might play Silky Touch? My girlfriend really wants to hear it.”

He lied so often and so easily that it came out sounding perfectly natural. Just a guy out with his girl; trying to keep her happy—even if it meant she was currently making eyes at the man with a guitar. Anything to get what he wanted.

After he made the request, he went back to stand next to the woman, make it look believable that they were together. Just until Breaker Street played him the song. He might have been standing with her but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking about what he’d done to the woman still at the Circe. Her screams and the fear she held in her eyes every time he came near her. The look on her face when he played Rory’s music for her.

Larch wanted that particular song, he enjoyed the fact that Stone would likely think about the redheaded bitch as he sang about all things sensual. Her touch, the one he’d forever altered when he relieved her of one digit. The touch she was never going to give again because once he left here…oh, he was going to touch Pippa Kerr one last time. Cut off more than just a finger.

[fey-fire.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, the lady with the blond braid at the far right of the bar. Her boyfriend requested it for her." Morrie gave a slight shrug of his own as he passed on the request, a little hesitant about adding even so small a concern to the lead singer's load just then.

For his part, Rory was just able to keep a wince off his face. Silky Touch wasn't Believer Girl or Word is Tender, but it still ranked near the top of the list of songs he'd rather not play tonight. But it was a request. He could handle just one.

One thing he wouldn't do, however, was sing it directly to the woman in question. Light flirtation was so often expected of musicians, especially those at the front of the stage, but he couldn't find it in himself. Not now. He murmured the request to Nil to pass on to the others, then stepped back to his mic.

But from the very first bars, the raw rasp of irritant came back redoubled and built even further. Someone out there was taking the twining melodies and voluptuous lyrics and twisting them into something -- something Rory's brain tried to pull away from, and couldn't.

Sweet like sugar on my tongue, light as misty morning rain/Burning slow and strong as whiskey fire, slipping through my veins. In an effort to distract himself for long enough to finish, Rory sought the blonde Morrie had pointed out, standing and swaying with a delighted smile on her face. And there next to her, her b--

God ... NO!!!

It only took an instant of eye contact to hammer down the last of Rory's defenses. He barely even saw the close resemblance to Anraí as his mind's eye was flooded with grotesque imagery laced with perverted triumph. Pippa, bruised, battered, screaming and then still and silent-- no! --broken on the altar of this man's loathing and then tossed aside to die ... and if she happened to live, that was easy to fix as soon as he left ...

PIPPAAA!!!

And still Rory couldn't pull away. Other scenes followed the nightmare images of Pippa's torment, other women, other violent deaths found only after every kind of torture their captor could think to inflict. Burned, dismembered, impaled, electroshocked, all by this monster ... this hideous disease in human form, who looked on suffering and laughed ... oh, Rory knew him now, a depth of knowledge he would have torn from his mind if he could.

Stupid sack of shit. Here I am, relieving you of your biggest weakness, and you'll never even see that I'm doing you a favor. Hell, you'll probably collect another one before long; your kind always does. Pa-thetic. Should probably kill you too, Rory Stone--

"Rory?! Rory!!!"

With a shuddering gasp, Rory yanked open his eyes to find himself on hands and knees, staring at the stage beneath him. His mic was gone, sparing the crowd the sounds of him trying to retch up a meal he'd never eaten. He looked up to find a circle of frightened eyes, Dave, Kreske, Sascha, Nil, Junie -- Junie, she was speaking ...

"--does it! Rory, you're going home right now, and no arguments! I shouldn't have let you back on stage to begin with ..."

He could barely find the sense of her words in the tumult of his own mind, but one thing cut through the chaos: his brothers' fear coming through the ward under his shirt. Finding the medallion with his hand, he pressed it into his chest.

Anraí, Tadhg -- he's HERE! No need to look to confirm where he was, he could tell the bastard's location as surely as he could feel the direction of an icy wind with his eyes closed. He'll kill her ... as soon as he leaves, he'll kill her!!!

[badass-charger.livejournal.com]

His eyes met Rory's, just for a moment before the taller, more slender man crumpled to the stage. Did he know him? That there might be some instinctive sort of recognition made Larch's hazel eyes light up with a wicked gleam. Oh, yeah...puke. Right there on stage in front of all your adoring fans.

He definitely chose the right song to ask for. Larch used the moments of chaos to start mingling through the crowd, meandering back towards the exit. He'd seen what he wanted.

Stone broken.