Fantasia

LXIII

"Brett!", Eddy yelled, his voice echoing in the vast hallway where the bridge-like construction was standing.
"Dude, no need to yell! I'm here!"
Eddy shot up and looked around. There he was. That wonderful person in a reddish shirt and black pants, holding his violin and sitting next to Eddy on the floor, surrounded by countless music scores. Eddy reached out and grabbed Brett's arm.
"You're here..."
"Of course I am. You should know that by now", Brett said with an amused smirk.
"And I'm here."
"Yeah?", Brett tilted his head.
"I didn't play the violin today! I thought I wouldn't come back."
"Oh?", Brett made, "But you're here, evidently."
"Yeah... How?"
"Beats me."
"I flew back to Australia and I've been looking for you all over Sydney, so I had no time to play."
Brett's eyes behind his dark frames widened. "You're back? You really made it?"
"Yeah, I did. No forgetting the violin this time. And no coming late. I was so beat though that I went straight to sleep."
"And you were looking for me? Legit?"
His features were soft, open, vulnerable, eyes shimmering with surpressed tears, Eddy guessed. How Brett still couldn't believe him despite knowing that Eddy flew down for him was beyond Eddy. The taller smiled and nodded firmly.
"Of course I was looking for you. I didn't spend that much money on a ticket just to chill out on the beach, you know."
"Did you..."
"Nah", Eddy answered, his smile faltering a bit, "went to four different hospitals. None of them knew anything about you. It was quite late when I got to Sydney, but tomorrow, I'll have more time to ask around."
"I see...", Brett made, absentmindedly plucking the strings of his instrument, but then looked at Eddy intensely, "Please look after yourself though, Eddy. You just travelled to Sydney. Take it easy."
"Bro, all I wanna do is find you", Eddy stated very honestly, "This drives me. Even if I wanted to take it easy, I could never. Not until I find you."
"How cheesy."
"I know. It's the truth though."
Brett chuckled warmly, and then, stopped in his tracks.

Eddy looked at him. "What?"
"Have you asked Hyung?", Brett said calmly. Eddy's mouth fell agape like he'd just witnessed a car crash. He closed and opened it several times, increasing his resemblance to a goldfish tenfold.
"Hyung...", his voice scratched.
"He might know something, wouldn't he?"
"Hyung..."
How on earth did Eddy not think of the cellist who had freaking TOLD him he'd seen Brett in a hospital in Sydney?
"I totally forgot about him!", he yelled, grabbing his head in desperation about his own amnesia.
Brett nodded slowly. "It might help if you ask him."
Eddy stared at Brett in horror. "How did I NOT think of him?"
"Hey, don't beat yourself up about it", Brett consoled and put a hand on Eddy's shoulder. "I didn't think of it either till now. Maybe they've transfered me since then, but at least the hospital where Hyung visited me might know where I am."
"They will!", Eddy half yelled, grabbing Brett's arm in return, "I'm sure they will! Brett!" His eyes were shining, glittering, "I'm gonna see you in real life soon! Tomorrow, we will finally meet." Brett's gaze meeting Eddy's wasn't less moved. "We will, Eddy. Finally. And I will try my best so we can talk to each other soon. Not just here I mean."
"Can't wait, man!"

"Alright", Brett exclaimed after a short, kind of blissful silence, "Maybe we can actually do something to let this dream become reality, literally I mean."
"Yes, of course!" Eddy let his eyes wander around all the sheet music laying on the floor. "Did you start working on something?"
"Not really", Brett shook his head, "I figured I'd wait for you, since this piece should be about both of us, not just me."
"And my violin is..."
"Right here!" Brett grabbed the instrument next to him and handed it Eddy. The bow followed suite.
"What do you feel? What do you think this piece should kind of represent? What feeling? Maybe we can start from there...", Brett suggested.
Eddy lowered his head and closed his eyes to let his mind wander, to try to catch an essence of what had been going on and what was needed to bring them further.

"Minor key...", he finally whispered.
"Hm?"
"Minor key. What we both went through, Brett... it was painful. Very painful and lonely, at least for me and the way you described how you kept your anxieties and self-doubt to yourself, I guess for you too. We worked through some stuff together, but I think this piece has to represent some of that pain."
"And the longing", Brett added, seemingly very much on board with what Eddy said.
"Yes!" Eddy's mind was thrown back to the countless times he'd been drawn to that mirror. "That was, and still is, a big part of my life after we parted ways and first and foremost, in this dream."
"Okay, minor key then", Brett concluded, "It should be slow too. No allegro or presto."
"Adagio then?", Eddy asked, surprised by himself that he still remembered the correct term.
Brett took the empty score and stared at the first blank page like he wanted to make the word appear with pure imagination. "Adagio", he said slowly. "Yeah, that'll work."

They sat there, each in their own process of spinning a melody or a structure. Then, Brett placed the violin on his shoulder and started on a long D-sharp, followed by a slow triplet. Eddy soon recognized the key of the piece to be in G-sharp minor. Bold, he thought, but the sweetness, the pain, the longing, it was all there. Eddy closed his eyes and mirrored Brett's actions from seconds ago. Guided by Brett's new melody, he started to accompany his best friend. Brett repeated the motive on a lower note twice and went up high before going down on a D-sharp again.
"That something?", the smaller then asked, expectantly looking at Eddy. It took a moment for Eddy to come down just after those few bars of them tentatively finding a new tune.
"Dude...", was all Eddy managed at first.
Brett laughed and lowered his instrument. "What?"
"You didn't tell me you had compositional talents too! That was beautiful."
"There's no use if it's just beautiful. Does it represent what you feel?"
"Definitely! Man, I reckon this is the start we need!"
"Good! You wanna continue?"
Eddy's eyes widened, a mild shock clouding his brain. "Me?"
"Yeah. Should be our thing right? Not just mine and you playing some accompaniment."

Brett was probably right. If it was about both of them, Eddy had to contribute his part. But composing? He'd never even dared picking up a pen and scribbling some notes. How was he even supposed to come up with something out of thin air?

"Just try it out. It's our thing. It doesn't have to make musical sense, I reckon, as long as it represents parts of us." Brett's smile was encouraging. Still, Eddy suddenly felt so self-conscious it was like he was back in class, being called out by a teacher to come up to the blackboard and demonstrate some mathematical proof in front of everyone.
"I'll play it again", Brett said calmly, "you just try to add to what we already have, alright? I remember you being quite good at music theory..."
Really? Had he been? Eddy didn't even recall himself.
"...so you'll be fine for sure! And even if not, no one's gonna die."
"Hope not", Eddy muttered. Brett ignored his last comment and started playing again and once the melody soared through the air, all of Eddy's fear seemed blown away and he simply found himself enveloped by the beautiful music Brett was producing. He closed his eyes, placed his instrument on his shoulders and when Brett's part came to an end, Eddy's fingers found their place on the fingerboard almost automatically. The melody went down a bit, changed the motive with the triplets slightly and touched higher notes, expressing all the pain Eddy had surpressed the last decade, all the loneliness, the feeling of everything he did being meaningless, the inner cries that never made it past his lips. He mourned, and his violin mourned. For him, for Brett.

Eddy played for way longer than he'd expected and when he stopped, there were tears rolling down the side of his face already.
"Eddy...", Brett's soft voice made and when Eddy glanced at him, he saw Brett's eyes swimming as well.
He sniffed loudly. "That something?"
It was meant to lighten up the mood a bit, if it wouldn't have come out so croaky.
"That came from the heart, didn't it?", Brett asked.
Eddy sniffed again and wiped those droplets away. "Yeah..."
"See? This is exactly what this piece needs. This is us, telling the story of what we've been through individually, but somehow together."
The taller nodded. How was Brett so good with words? Suddenly Eddy realized, that their lives couldn't have been more different since he had broken off all contact. One basically lived the dream of the other, had become a musician in a famous orchestra, concertmaster even. The other had caved to his parents' wishes and had thus betrayed his own dream.
And yet, the outcome was so similar, their ways and their pain so relatable for the other there was barely a dry eye whenever it got serious.

Just when Eddy dwelled in his own thoughts, his sight caught something that let him gasp loudly out of surprise.
"What?", Brett called?
Eddy pointed a finger at the empty score.

Or rather, the once empty score.

Brett turned around and when he saw what had shocked Eddy to an extend that he'd lost his speech, his eyes widened.
"Wha... how is that...?"

The formerly empty music sheet had filled itself with notes.