burns_so_brightly | First Stanza: [Action/Written]

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First Stanza: [Action/Written]

[The gentleman walking out of Community Building 1 does not live there, and in fact didn’t even walk in there in the first place. He’s dressed in a suit, tie, and trench coat and is tossing a fedora between his hands. Julian Bell walks through Luceti with a smile, as if this is nothing more than an exceptionally lucky day. He’s keen to explore and peers into every shop, sometimes actually going inside. The library holds his fascination for some time, and he’s delighted to find his own published books of poetry there (even if he’d admit it’s a faintly narcissistic pleasure).

He eventually sits down at the tea shop to read, looking for all the world like this is a vacation day and not the day after his death. That part, he’ll address once this actually sinks in.

At night, he’s at Cloud Nine, enjoying a Scotch on the rocks and a cigarette and listening to the music. For a crappy oppressed town, this place is doing very well!

Eventually, he works past an unusual (for him) nervousness and writes over the journals.]

Am I allowed to take any empty flat, or is that supposed to be assigned?

-Julian Bell

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Guy had left House 32 sometime that afternoon, leaving his journal at home, as per usual. He rarely walked around with it, finding that if he was set on perusing the recent twaddle-speak of other citizens he'd need to be properly set for it. That usually meant being set at his desk in his room. Otherwise, the journal was less than carefully thrown into a trunk in a corner of his room. He didn't like the idea of accidental recordings since he'd heard of them and he doesn't like the idea of the Malnosso even after researching for them. It wasn't for them anyway. It was for him.

Regardless, it was better he didn't have his journal.

It's a rather mundane Monday that brings Guy to the club. Sometimes he frequents Good Spirits because he's keen on the conversations he has with Buffy, but tonight he fancies something a bit more... well, a bit more says it nicely.

It isn't during the initial stroll in but when he's finding a place to sit down that Guy spots something too familiar. He'd sworn he'd seen that figure in two blazing fires, that in the wavering lick of flames there'd been a flash of that brightness that made up Julian Bell.

There's a ghost in front of him and suddenly Guy's jaw is slack, cigarette hanging on his bottom lip in desperate need of a flicking, ash clinging to the paper as it smokes without him. A bonfire ago, Guy had all the time and reflection in the world and the mindset to wonder what it is he would say to the poet he loved. Still loves. He finds himself as utterly crushed and silent as he was then, shoulders rounding as his frame sinks.

He hadn't drank that much, or at least he can't recall it. He doesn't know the last time he's eaten anything, but he also doesn't bloody know how that's important when he's hallucinating the man he loves into full form in front of him.

Every single line is right. The smaller tendrils of hair. His posture in the chair of the club. The way he holds his scotch. Julian Bell is fucking perfect in front of him, like a photograph in colour. Except there are no ripped edges, and this isn't Cambridge.

How cruel, though, to see Julian with wings, bespeckled like the print of morning news, like volumes of poetry and feathered gently because only heaven could cradle such a soul.

All the moments of madness Guy has ever felt creep on his mind have given warning. Utter madness falls on the men that don't know they're mad. Guy Burgess has moments of madness, but with a certain brilliance, he has always controlled them. It dawns on him--the moment his eyes begin to water and he feels every inch of clothing on his skin and he can't tear away from that face--that he has to be completely fucking insane.

He never saw it coming.

His voice is quiet... breathy... weary and wary all at once.

He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know anything but that little bit of Auden from bursting into flames.]

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day...

Excuse me?

[It's a familiarish voice. Very familiar, but with the gravel in it, he can't immediately place it. Looking up from the journal, he glances over his shoulder at the speaker.]

[And freezes. Dumb.

Looking more careworn and sporting his own pair of wings but still recognizable is the one and only Guy Burgess. Running into anyone familiar around here had been something Julian had never expected, but for it to be Guy of all people...

This was not likely to go well. Julian didn't like the way things ended between them, but neither did he blame himself for any part in it. Now, here they are, reunited in the most unlikely place possible, and despite his sadness at their parting Julian has absolutely nothing to say to this man.]

[Guy swallows at that look. It's the sort of shock he didn't expect from a ghastly accurate spectre. All the times he's seen Julian in his mind, he's been perhaps blissfully unaware that Guy looked on, the man who "changed" his politics and didn't believe in it all any more. It didn't matter that he stood for them secretly, that the past was buried but that such passions weren't dead. Julian had never known that Guy felt alive because he, all along, had wanted the same thing and found a way to fight for it. His fighting wasn't on the front lines, in an ambulance as Julian had been. He'd fought for these things differently, in games of cloak and dagger.

Still, never had he watched Julian look at him in such dreams. Yes, Julian had always remained lost, even in Guy's dreams. Lost to his own world. Lost to the world. Lost.

Now, he turns?

Guy suddenly remembers the cigarette and reaches over to the table he chose to ash it. His eyes never leave that face.]

You read Auden, didn't you?

[Hell of a thing to ask, with all that's hanging in the air around them both, with Guy's heart pumping away on his bloody sleeve.

He doesn't know what to ask.
He doesn't know how to ask a ghost.
He doesn't know.]

[Now Julian has something to say to him. He's been asked a question.]

Of course. I'm just...not familiar with that one.

[A beat.]

How are you, Guy?

[Is this even real? For the first time since arriving, the question really presents itself. This is crazy. He was hit by shrapnel. Metal sticking out of his chest. The pain was everything, and then there was no pain at all, just a morphine haze followed by an easy sleep and blackness. Now he's standing in a night club talking to Guy Burgess and they're both sporting a pair of wings and discussing Auden?]

[Guy bows his head for a moment because despite the fact that he's the sort of fellow who answers things smartly without thinking, he just can't do that with Julian. He never has. Instead, he finds himself being honest.

He wants nothing more than to be honest, for all the things that could happen.]

Well enough. Tired.

[Luceti has given him a break enough from the hush-hush, but only enough that his mind has started to addle without it. Particularly because he doesn't trust this place, as beautiful as near-communism is. It isn't truly, and with fascist control over it, there's plenty to be wary about. It makes him tired, wondering how he can play his game here. It shows in his eyes.

Though where to proceed from stark honesty evades him. He can't ask a man who has been dead the same question. "Oh yes, how is the afterlife? Plenty of white, I gather!"]

It isn't so terrible, here. I've read your volumes. Wrote down the poem you don't recognize for you.

[Okay. Maybe Guy lost his spine. Maybe he got in bed with fascist sympathizers. But the man is an old friend. Moreover, he is clearly not in the greatest state, and Julian is starting to wonder what's going on and whether or not he should quietly walk Guy home and put him to bed. It's not like he's never done that before, except Guy wasn't this...scary, before.]

Guy...what year is it, where you're from?

[He reaches out to put a concerned hand on the man's shoulder.]

[Guy looks startled at the question, and his eyes shoot to the place on his shoulder where Julian's hand now rests.

Ghosts shouldn't be able to touch those who imagine them.]

Julian...

[When his gaze returns to look in those bright eyes, he seems pleading. He hasn't drank this much. He doesn't remember there being any pills. His neck has long since healed, the scratches and the blood faded memories of a time he thought Luceti to be the beginnings of Sobibor, then Bergen-Belsen. There are faded lines in his skin when he tried to claw it off, but he never sank this far. Never once could he feel Julian Bell.

No one ever told the spy the dead could bear wings and call themselves a Lucetian, and that important piece of lacking information is killing him.

Bright, beautiful flames burn out...]

Nineteen forty-five.

[His voice shakes with fear, not icy with chill but warm with the press of a palm on his sleeve and his heart hammering heat throughout all of him. It's bombastically loud, that passionate organ, and yet it can't bear to tell Julian the Spanish Civil War ended six years ago and fell to Franco. Franco may have disbanded the military and stopped supplying Germany with materials critical to their fight in the war, but Spain is still his, and Guy doesn't have the heart to tell Julian it's so.]

[Forty-five.

Eight years. That year starts to drive it home. The blink of an eye turned into eight years, and Guy is a tired mess who seems to be taking the sight of a dead man in stride. He reaches for his coat with his other hand and pulls it on, then moves back to take both Guy's shoulders, increasingly worried and increasingly chilled, although he tries not to let Guy feel the slight tremor in his hands. He speaks, and tries to sound gentle and warm even though, for the first time today, the winter outside seems to touch his very bones.

Dead. Done. Stuck here. No telling how long he'll even be alive.]

Let's get you home. Where do you live?

[He looks at Julian and knows that it's for faces like this that he does what he does. It's for the poets and the artists, the wonderfully bright people who have a little faith in humanity still. Even though few of them are optimistic, they see a worthiness in everything. He spies not because he hates England, but because he loves her too much, and has faith in her still. He has faith in the faithful.

Those like Julian Bell who stands before him, winged, and worried over him. It's like a dream on the grasses of Trinity and Kings.]

A guardian angel.

[He starts to laugh but the sadness gripping it chokes him. He ends up having a cough and the sheen of his eyes heavy with weighted saltwater. It's nearly too much... that worry in Julian's gaze that besets a wider panic. Guy can read it, even in his own spiral-down cling to what he believes are remnants of reality. Oh Julian.

He turns his head toward the door. Julian can follow him, can't he? But there's a flick of a look back to the man with the printed wings.]

You'll be gone when I get there, won't you?

[Not we, but I. He still believes, with all his heart, that Julian is a figment of the wounds beset in it. He's scratched over them for years, and the festering pain of it all has brought him to this.

A delusion of grandeur. What a grand thing, to have a glimpse of love.]

Of course I will. [It is beginning to dawn on him, in horror, that Guy thinks he's not real. A guardian angel? Eight years for their bitter parting to fester some awful guilt? He shakes Guy slightly, turning him back to look at him.] Guy, it's me. It's Julian. I'm here, and I'm not dead anymore. I-I mean I know I died back home, but I'm here now.

[Is he really saying these things? Reading about it is strange enough, but at least it can float on the surface of consciousness, taken for granted. When something is spoken, it must be believed in order not to sound wooden, and Julian's words sound wooden in his ears.]

Guy. Look at me. [He tries a gesture that got the man's attention last time, cupping his face in his hands.] Feel. I'm here.

I always felt it.

[Guy's eyes close, and those heavy waters give way for rivulets down his cheeks.]

The rain.

[He swallows back what might have been an audible sound for the crying that has begun.]

You remember it well, I'm sure. Sometimes it seems close, so very close and if I close my eyes like this it's as though I can recite Auden to you and you'll know. You'll know what I always meant to say.

[This is not good. This is, in fact, very bad.]

Guy, stop it. I'm right here. Let's...fuck, let's get you home, all right? Tell me where you live and I'll take you there.

[That seems to shake Guy a little. He blinks away streaks of moisture in a hazed look of confusion.]

Stop what?

[His lips seem to move with something he can't say, as though he's gasping for words and hasn't the lung capacity to breathe them out.

So he talks, because he doesn't understand.]

You're beautiful.

[A swallow.]

And bright...

[Then his voice begins to cave again in a way that is hollow, the tones speaking leagues of anguish in them and so much uncertainty.]

... and I've seen you here before....

[Julian is at a loss. He's not sure if giving the man a drink will calm him down or make him worse. Doing the first thing that comes to mind, he shushes him gently.]

That's right, you have. Come along, now. I'll be sure to get you home safe, just...please, Guy, let's go home.

[Guy's head is bowed as he takes up the fedora he'd dropped on the table before spotting Julian and he fingers the brim. With melancholy steps, he goes for the door, hoping Julian will follow. A hand runs over his face, like it had that day just outside the flat in London, taking a trail of rain and blood and tears with it. The things a man is made of.]

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky...

[He walks toward the door of the club, uncaring of the scene he has made.]

[Julian keeps his hand flattened between Guy's wings, trying to keep the touch going. Maybe it'll bring him back to reality eventually, or perhaps just being here is only making things worse.

He walks quietly with his old friend, trying not to read too much into the poem he spouts, but oddly discomforted by it. They had been close in school, but they hadn't corresponded too often after Cambridge. Like with Anthony, it had been a gradual fading as they replaced their school friends with new ones, never forgetting each other but never being in the same country long enough to meet up. Not till recently, of course, and that...did not go well.

Why does Guy have to be so dramatic about it, though?]

[Julian, Julian, if only you knew.]

...And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

[He keeps walking, steadily, and reaches for the bottle in his pocket.]

I wrote to you, once.

You don't have to tell me what it said.

[Really, the longer this goes on, the less Julian wants to hear about other peoples' reactions to his death. His mother would be broken.]

I gave it to a fire. It burned.

[Thankfully there isn't much of a walk to the house. House 32 is so very close to all the shops in town.]

I already have, in part.

[He takes a deep pull from the bottle, then another. He wants to feel something other than the bristle of his clothes and that warm hand on his back. It's too good. He wants a burn of something.]

I don't think you need more to drink. [But he doesn't take the bottle away. That bottle is sacred to Guy, and it's not surprising it followed him here. Seeing Guy without that bottle would be like seeing him missing an arm.]

[Strange, to be sobered by alcohol. Yet it calms him.]

No, perhaps not.

[He restoppers it and places it back in his pocket.]

In a world of double everything, it keeps a man sane. Double crosses, double agents, double and triple copies of every file. I'd go mad without it.

[This is too real. Too damned real. Every minute with Julian's hand on his back and them walking and talking together is making this illusion too damn real to be nothing.]

[Julian's known Guy to rant about inane things, but never to speak complete nonsense. This disturbs him deeply.]

Well, drink, then. [He pats Guy lightly on the back.] Which house is yours?

It's just there.

[He points as his path leans an odd sort of winding toward House 32. Steps being weighted and shuffled make for a bizarre wind, like an emotional drunkedness sans liquor enough to be so.

Eerily, his voice is far more sober than it has been since speaking to Julian.]

My dear Anthony will have quite the mess on his hands.

[Kim too, but Guy knew he'd reach for Anthony in his moment of collapse first. Perhaps Kim would see Julian. Perhaps this was a chance he'd never asked for by the fire with Jilly. Regardless of what it was, his chest ached with it.]

[Julian stops in the middle of the street.]

Anthony? Anthony's here?

[Because yes, the break-up was amiable, but the ex showing up is never totally without awkwardness.]

First Stanza: [Action/Written]

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