A Series of Anti-Climaxes Part 3

[arqueete]

A Series of Anti-Climaxes, Part 3
(Parts 1 and 2)
Because I never explained it before: A Series of Anti-Climaxes is a collection of one shots exploring possible starts for pairings that do not exist, at least outright, in canon, without playing them out to any large degree despite the set up -- anti-climatic.

Title: My Latest Mistake
Fandom: Spring Awakening (general, with musical leanings)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Melchior/Ilse
Summary:
The ghosts inside his mind carry his burden with them, and this time there is nowhere to go as the weight begins to crush him. She dances out of the trees like a phantom from his childhood and it's the dying embers of innocence and memories that attract him...
Notes: For labellacaracol, who suggested it, and also summary courtesy of her. Takes place post-canon.


"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us." - Robert Louis Stevenson

He had a lot of time to think recently. He thought he'd have himself sorted out by now, but if anything his thoughts and feelings were more a tangle than ever. His memory had two divisions now: Melchior before the reformatory and Melchior after the reformatory. The latter was new, a recent concept, but it seemed less like a period in his life and more like a different life entirely.

Right now he was staring into a mirror that seemed to break his face into a hundred pieces with a network of hairline cracks. Yet again, he brought the wet cloth to his face and scrubbed at the layer of grime that lingered there. After he managed to dump some water over his head, soaking the mess his hair had become, he was beginning to look a little less like the runaway he was and more like that other Melchior – Melchior before the reformatory. Water still running down his neck, Melchior met his own hard gaze yet again, and he could see a kind of fear in those foreign features – his own fear and uncertainty as he failed to fully connect the person in the mirror with himself. It was certainly not the first time he felt that way.

Decisively, he pulled on the borrowed shirt that hung alone on the clothes line. It was loose on him, he had to roll the sleeves up to his elbows to keep them from falling in his way, and it carried a musty smell – but anything was better than what he had before.

The trees that surrounded him were ominous and uninviting, but in the days that passed he had come to embrace that darkness, that seeming endless stretch of woods and back roads, for their cover allowed him another day of freedom. However, he couldn't help but glance back at the dilapidated shack behind him -- that was his mistake.

When he had spotted Ilse in the woods as the sun set, he had been faced with a choice. He could keep on going through the woods, try and find the road and see where he could go from there... or he could approach her. Beg her assistance. After all, she was a sort of outcast, and now so was he, and though he should have perhaps been more cautious, he was so beat down with grief, hunger, guilt – the things that kept him going, the need to repent for the part he played in Wendla's tragic end and to carry on her and Moritz's spirits in his actions, seemed far off. The thought had even crossed his mind that if Ilse betrayed him, maybe that was for the better...

But, she hadn't. He found himself now outside this little shack she'd led him to, with the water and shirt – he had no knowledge of its previous owner – she had acquired for him, and he had been planning to bolt, to take advantage of whatever little she could offer him and then continue on... but as he looked back now at the shack -- surely she was inside still -- the idea disgusted him a little. It wasn't him to not at least offer thanks, a goodbye. He wasn't so sure who he was anymore, but with a determination that comforted him a little, he was sure that that was not him.

The door, sitting uneven on its hinges, creaked as he pushed it open. Ilse looked up from the armchair she was sitting in – the only piece of furniture he could make out in the room – and the moonlight pouring in from behind him made ghostly shadows of her features.

“Now you're looking more like yourself,” she said, her voice carrying a cheeriness that seemed otherworldly in his current state of mind. He didn't care for the phrase, and he thought, disconcertingly, that she couldn't possibly see him so well with his back to the moonlight. She ushered him, reluctantly, to the chair and perched herself on one arm, her form a dark shadow next to him.

“Thanks, Ilse,” he said, and somehow the words sounded strange on his tongue. “I know you didn't have to help me...” His voice trailed off, sounding so foreign to his ears.

“I don't know if you deserve help or condemnation, Melchior,” she said. She turned her head, looking straight ahead, and the moonlight outlined the profile of her face. “But I can say that for a lot of people.”

Melchior didn't know how to respond, and he wished he didn't have to. There was a sort of sweetness in Ilse's voice that was so familiar to him -- brought thoughts of Moritz, Wendla, school, thoughts that felt much further in the past than they should have and seemed to belong to a happier, more innocent time. Melchior had always spent a lot of time alone -- but there was a difference between being alone by choice and being lonely. The thought made him realize how alone he really was now, how much the thoughts of the people he'd lost had kept him going but how unsatisfactory they seemed in the face of living people.

In the midst of these thoughts, Melchior had abandoned the conversation, left it in an awkward, stretching silence. He almost didn't notice that the shape of Ilse's shadowed form had changed, that the worn fabric of her skirt was brushing up against his leg now, and though he was very aware at the light touch of her fingers in his hair, he didn't stop her.

“Your hair's still a dirty mess,” she commented, her tone a little mocking, a little laughing, thick with an innocence that contradicted the way she now slid from the arm of the chair into his lap. He gripped her forearm roughly to push her off him, chastise her for making this into something so inappropriate to the moment at hand, but suddenly there was her mouth against his and everything seemed a lot less straightforward.

It was a horribly unfair situation to be in, and he felt like he was struggling for mental footing.

Ilse's fingers were brushing against the back of his neck and in a sudden feeling of despair he pulled her hand away. She pulled back abruptly, almost teetering off his lap and the chair. “Don't,” he croaked.

Melchior could feel the heat rising to his cheeks, a mixture of guilt and – part of that guilt – a lingering thrill heavy in his chest.

The moon shone brightly on the curled mess of Ilse's hair as she returned to her feet. At the angle she stood now he could see the playfulness in her expression almost entirely absent. With one hand she clutched the opposite elbow, with the other her fingers rested at her lips in thought.

There was something sort of heavy in the room, a sort of despair. They said nothing. Melchior stood and just watched her for a moment, her eyes meeting his and he couldn't read them. They were both lonely, he realized. Both pulled far away from the joyful childhood they shared. The guilt that had been eating at him turned cold, distant. The whole incident carried a sort of air of tragedy now.

Uncertainly, he reached out and touched her arm, fingers lightly brushing the fabric of her sleeve.

Then he walked away from her for what he knew may be the last time.