Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 37: Fixed Again

//TW: swearing\\

I think this song is really appropriate for this chapter.

Thomas

Fixed.

The state of being repaired after being broken.

There is no better word to describe everything I am, everything I have become, especially as I stood surrounded by darkness, the old, comforting wood pressed against my throat. A silence had fallen upon the room the second the lights had blipped out of existence, silence to be filled with endless potential. I closed my eyes, exhaled softly, and waited.

There is such comfort in that darkness, something that makes the light shine all that much brighter, for it can triumph over the worst of it all in the end. Because it always does.

The darkness persisted a moment longer, perhaps not eager to relinquish its hold upon the world. A heartbeat passed, and within a single beat, the spotlights flickered on. I stiffened as they flooded the stage, obscuring the faces of the audience to me, but it hardly mattered. For I knew he was out there just the same, watching and waiting with baited breath, just as he always did.

I smiled to myself, gave a cautionary glance to the conductor seated at the foot of the stage. A moment later, and the first trill filled the air. Followed by another, another, until finally, I could add my voice. It stole my breath away, the simple power of the instrument resting against my body, and it blended itself with my very being until the two ideas were inseparable. The music, flowing from the second-hand violin given to me as a Christmas gift a little over fifteen years ago, became an extension of who I was, of the soul fluttering in the confines of my chest.

The audience sat in silence, enraptured by the melody of New York Philharmonic. Of the story built within the climbing scales of the stringed instruments, of the fantasy world unlocked by the pleading nature of the song. Starlight peaked through the glass roof, shining in upon the world, and I risked a glance up at my old friends with a soft smile.

I played for them. I played for them, I played for the beautiful man and the beautiful children seated in the third row in the reserved chairs, but most importantly, I played for myself. I played because it unraveled my soul, I played because it brought me closer to the being I truly was deep within, and I played because it reminded me so often of the freedom I had made for myself almost fifteen years ago locked in the dark, enclosed corners of a room that offered me no love.

But that was fifteen years ago, and now? Now I played because I would sooner die than go back to what I had been before: a sad, vulnerable boy trapped in the belief that he did not deserve love.

I played because I loved to do so. Because I loved the starlight symphony that poured out of the simple violin, and the knowledge that there was nobody else in the world who could create that music quite like I could—nobody else could ever fill the space I occupied.

Oh, how I fell in love with the music. Even if I played the same score five nights a week, it did not matter. My heart took flight, and I existed for nothing else. And perhaps I never would. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that I could spend my entire life sitting in the spotlight's beam, creating something, rather than destroying.

The music around me died away, and yet, I continued onward, a traveller in a path that had not yet been forged. I could feel the hundreds of people gathered within the theater, hooked upon the worlds I brought to life in the startling solo. I could feel the boundless anticipation as the sonata climbed, the single violin the only barrier between us and silence. It told of the coming of spring, the end of a cruel, cruel winter's storm. It told of the stars and their untamed dance as they glistened across the sky, ballerinas twirling and spinning with an easy grace.