Chapter Text
The pain of a heartbreak they say can be quite literal. One’s cortisol can rise too high, depression can sink in, old habits like cigarettes clawing their way back. Sometimes it’s fast but for others it lingers for a long time. It truly varies for everyone and their circumstances.
So why did Orpheus feel nothing when the composer left Oletus Manor and Orpheus behind?
The last he had seen of the man he shared mortal sin with had been with the composer’s silver barrel to the back of his head, issuing threats to him and the journalist. How the tables had turned. A flirtatious walk turned into distrust and violence. But did Orpheus deserve it? Perhaps. While interested in the plight of the journalist and stepping in to distract Kreiburg, he knew his morbid curiosity for the bitter untold truth was the nail in the coffin for this short joining of hearts. He just couldn’t keep his hands clean, out of other’s business. A detective he was— but perhaps the perpetrator in truth. His delve into the Kreiburgs and the death of Mary Kreiburg was his creation and undoing. With his own hands buried their souls together in shallow graves.
Perhaps he felt nothing because he hadn’t had the time to truly know Kreiburg as a lover. Perhaps it was due to the times— homosexuality was a sin that somehow stained harder than murder if one was seen. Perhaps Orpheus had no heart to begin with. He was often a cold and arrogant man, surrounded by new money and a retinue of paparazzi fighting for the novelist’s secrets. No one knew his real name and that alone created a stony cold distance between him and any who dared to get close enough and survive the frustration. His pen name was his only continuous motif, his only memory of his fragmented past. He didn’t say his name because he had no name that truly mattered. It was burned and buried with his dead family in a shallow grave. He hadn’t used the name Blanche for a long, long time. Fragmented memories indeed.
Then, Orpheus mused, how can something fragmented expect something whole? Something an optimist would respond with “you just need the right person to come along”. No one could stand Orpheus’ cold arrogance and Orpheus couldn’t stand the heat stroke of being close to someone. It was why his gravitation towards the composer Kreiburg was so novel and foreign—Orpheus had never given love a thought—familial or otherwise— ever since he had lost his best friend and family. Money and fame for his writing filled the place where a child’s heart laid, in the shallowness of his chest. Though he circles back to that thought— he wouldn’t call what he and Kreiburg had “love”. A loaded word that insinuates gentle hugs and mumbled words of praise, coming home to one another with hushed smiles. Kreiburg was just as arrogant and isolated as him and in that he found intimacy and similarity. Did Kreiburg hold him and pet through his hair as they talked of piano and gemstones? It may have happened once or twice but nothing more, but Orpheus was convinced his mind played tricks on him.
Orpheus claimed to feel nothing and perhaps at one point he did indeed feel nothing when Kreiburg disappeared after nearly putting a bullet through Orpheus’ skull. Seeing him wordlessly disappear the day after brought on a series of guilty feelings and the worry that perhaps the secret of his sins in particular would fetch a pretty penny for the composer on the run—he wasn’t exactly on good terms with his family. He kept to himself and avoided attention, avoided anything that would get him too tangled up. Orpheus thought the same. And now, days after, he felt a gray nauseating mix of emotions that left a sour taste in his mouth. High and mighty indifference did he possess and yet a longing for what could have been throbbed in his heart–or what was left of it. He didn’t think he was ever in love with Frederick Kreiburg. But it’d be a lie to say he didn’t exist on in his thoughts and writing despite having disappeared from his life altogether. It would be more apt to say Orpheus was in love with the *idea* of Frederick Kreiburg. It was always an uncertain fever dream filled with gray memories and subconscious desires.
Heartbreak is a more complex thing that isn’t a one road path. Sometimes the more he thought about it the more he believed it was akin to reaching a fork in the road; making a turn and then ending back where you started. Perhaps heartbreak was a philosophical challenge meant to enhance one’s character and strength to avoid codependence and build rapport within yourself.
Again. Orpheus did not call it heartbreak for he hardly admitted to having a heart in the first place. He did not have one to break and that thought gave him some smug satisfaction to dull and blunt the sharp sword of what was in reality a cold abandonment. The novelist had faced a long series of these from the day his parents bodies were speared by rusty pitchforks and the smell of rancid ash in his nostrils to the day he lost his childhood best friend. He still sought to find her to this day and he vowed to himself never to let her down even if it cost him his life.
But Orpheus was a complicated man who sought complicated answers that got him into complicated situations. An arrogant orphan who went from old money to new money via writing under an alias to developing a psychotic need for the unknown— dipping into scientific literature like a starving raven seeing a seed among a barren field. His curiosity could and should get him killed but alas he found himself creating bottle after bottle of strange hallucinogenic drugs that took the edge off but didn’t remove his faults yet. He was under the impression that working with who he worked with would bring him closer to the resources he needed to find that girl from his memories but no one really knew her location. Everything he did was more like a sick perversion of free will, demonstrating to himself that he really was alive and no one puppeted him.
The consequent faults in his memories were due to something akin to drugs and trauma alike. When one asked his name, he replied easily as “Orpheus”. He didn’t think of his real name anymore and perhaps had even forgotten it amidst his library of knowledge and pursuit for more if he didn’t receive correspondence from that publisher. He doubted there was anyone left besides the man who stabbed his father to death who remembered his name. And the orphanage that had denied him to see the warm light of day.
Ruminating on dark incessant thoughts and festering envy, Orpheus pried himself out of the blinkless stare at the crackling fireplace he had been engaging in. This train of thought came to a halt when he threw another rotting log into the fire, embers floating up with a dazzling brilliance before sputtering out harmlessly within seconds. The innocent fungus and plant remnants burned instantly at the laps of the flames and his brows furrowed. Fire was such a fascinating thing–its uses were extensive and sometimes uncontrollable. Using it to heat reagents in the basement or warming himself from the frigidness of his isolation or memories were among the most prominent. That now ravenous fire cast its mocking glow upon Orpheus’ pale cheekbones and set him as an ominous figure in the living room. It was nearly dark save for the fire and a cold lamp lit to the back of the room that cast a sad glow in the corners where the fire couldn’t reach. No one came here anymore, not since the composer left and the piano stayed unused, building a thin layer of dust that settled where Kreiburg’s fingerprints once pressed. In fact, the only reason Orpheus was here was to browse the books. But reading things in this manor tended to make him think and when that tunnel started, he had to see it through and imagine the reasoning to everything.
Nietzsche the philosopher wrote that nihilism was to be overcome, that one could prove life wasn’t meaningless. “God is dead” rung clear and true in the cold halls of Orpheus’ mind, for if God was alive, why would he allow his people to suffer to cruelly to the hands of pitchforks, disease, famine, and fire? Orpheus shut the book with disinterest, a hand reaching to the pack of promising cigarettes awaiting on the mahogany coffee table. He hesitated with some deliberation, detesting the idea of smoking inside, but it was too damn cold out, even for him. Nothing good laid in wait out there in the snowy blizzard. If one couldn’t see the physical, how dare one to believe they can see that which isn’t there?
Kreiburg’s replacement in this game of wits and wants came a few days later from his departure. In addition to Orpheus, the journalist Alice DeRoss, and the entomologist Melly Plinius, there was now a newcomer to succeed Kreiburg after his wordless breach of conduct. He was a sour man, in his late twenties, who reeked of rotting sawdust and earthy mud the moment he arrived. It settled in Orpheus’ nostrils like an unwelcome guest. A poor prospector from the suburbs, Norton Campbell came to the manor for a chance to get what he wanted after years of being trapped below. And Orpheus had no doubt that anyone here, save for the girl Alice, would kill to get what they wanted. Kreiburg had even shown this— but would he have really pulled the trigger had Alice not obeyed him? Orpheus didn’t think an old money–or should he say, ex-old money– like him had the guts to get his hands dirty. It was unlikely. Orpheus wore white but he was more than glad to stain it red to get what he wanted. After all, clothes could be replaced.
This Norton Campbell skulked around in the day and disappeared at night. If he didn’t disappear, he refused your company even remotely. He didn’t talk to anyone willingly, not even to the journalist. In this monotone moment of his life he still found the desire to carve out just who and what kind of person the newcomer was. He would simply grunt at Orpheus’ directed questions to know him, sometimes deigning to respond with a “hmmph” or a “I don’t want anyone’s pity.”Pity was a funny thing. Everyone instinctively goes towards it until a subconscious effort is made to undo the habit. Everyone here made one hell of a pity party together.
Orpheus knew who Melly Plinius was and what she came for. He knew what her history was and how the two had a tentative alliance in the immediate days following Kreiburg’s departure. He too knew Alice was here for her investigation and knew not how to kill. Her hands were much too soft and even the rich Mrs. Plinius had suspicious callouses on her slender hands. And just a few moments getting to know—or moreso just being in the unwilling presence of— Mr. Campbell, Orpheus could tell he had no shame. Plenty of conviction but no moral boundaries and plenty of roughened skin from the hells below. He had a long and twisted scar that mangled the side of his face around his eye and shrapnel lodged in his nose that, he assumed, could not be removed during the incident. Or was if some kind of piercing? Moreover, what Campbell had been through had hardened him to a stony exterior and personality, often deflecting any attention off of himself like a mirror. He knew not what caused it but that Norton was the only survivor of his trauma, bearing the scars of it down the entire left side of his body and the startlingly obsidian shrapnel lodged in his hooked nose. He had no doubt the flashbacks wracked him like a boat on storm-torn seas.
He wanted to know more. He refused to believe a survivor like Norton would come to the manor for just any sum of money. Orpheus wouldn’t give up in knowing Campbell’s secrets and intricacies and he’d be damned to let him win this game. Not when his own thirst for more guided him down the winning path. He wanted to study him and dissect him apart to his bare ideologies and the morbid valediction and fear in his heart.
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Dinner was served a week or so since Orpheus’ pensive thoughts by the fire and the long, elegantly decorated wooden table was neatly filled with entrees and shining red wine alike. It was a feast for the four of them— Mrs. Plinius, Alice, Mr. Campbell, and Orpheus himself. Orpheus entered moments later after hearing the melodic and languid voice of Alice the journalist and the low sultry reply of Mrs. Plinius. He was the third to arrive excluding the manor staff.
“Good evening, Ms. Journalist and Mrs. Plinius,” he said smoothly as he sat neatly into his assigned chair, sipping at the blood red wine before even digging in to the food. It was rude to eat without all the guests present. And the wine looked too good to be true. A flicker of interest sparked in his mind if the staff would dare to drug his own drink.
“Mr. Orpheus,” the journalist greeted and Mrs. Plinius nodded her head in silent and polite acknowledgement. Ever the epitome of manners, Mrs. Plinius was someone he could understand and relate to— at least in this regard. He knew the woman was after the culprit for her husband’s murder and also knew that below trained calmness laid a swarm of mysteries. She kept to herself yet tended to hang around the Journalist most, avoiding Kreiburg, Orpheus himself, and now Campbell. Her role here was suspicious—but who was he one to talk? Her enthusiasm for her trade was evident but her manner of speech was subdued and she avoided showing her face.
“Mrs. Plinius was just telling me that she saw you in the greenhouse the prior night,” Alice tilted her head at the novelist, curiosity shining bright in her hazel eyes. “I didn’t know you appreciated nature so much so as to visit and even pluck a few weeds.”
“Ah, so Mrs. Plinius was spying on me,” Orpheus charismatically teased, his dark eyes slipping to the entomologist. “Nothing I’m not used to, I’m afraid, given my status.”
“Certainly,” Melly replied with calm reserve, “it isn’t a problem that we all want to get to know one another. If we’re to be allies, it’s good practice to know the other’s habits.”
“Of course,” Orpheus agreed without a twinge of unease— with a fake smile. “I do have nothing to hide after all. We shared why we’re all here. I like to stroll the gardens for inspriation for my novels. A flower is a good motif for symbolism and underlying messages.”
“Insects serve as symbols too,” the scientist conversed back easily, her lips the only sign of life on her otherwise still and obscured form. Her face was mostly covered by wisps of lace save for her lips. “Have you ever considered the Death’s-head hawkmoth? Or perhaps the more easy one the black widow spider?”
“I’ve read about such bugs,” Orpheus murmured, his hand moving to hold his own chin as if in thought, considering her words. “I have used insects for symbolism in limited droves before, but the hawkmoth would be a great addition to my prose. Have you read my novels before, asking questions of this nature?”
“I have not,” Mrs. Plinius responded earnestly, folding her hands neatly in front of her on the table. “But as an entomologist, I have a fascination for reading and understanding how insects are viewed in society. All too often, species who are no harm or are, to a subjective degree useless, to humans are the first to be killed.”
The novelist chewed on this for a moment before agreeing. “The bees are one such example that comes to mind first,” he offered offhandedly.
Mrs. Plinius nodded her head solemnly. “Only now is the literature proving their ecological importance becoming mainstream. And who knows when they’ll become critically endangered? It’s a sad state of affairs but I wouldn’t work any other profession.”
“Isn’t that the sad tale of many animals, Mrs. Plinius?” Orpheus appealed to her weak spot, raising his glass of liquid scarlet towards her direction— and then to Alice as well. “All the more reason why writers ought to work with the scientists.”
The entomologist didn’t say anything audible in reply, hesitantly raising her glass as well after a moment. The glasses didn’t even clink before they were withdrawn back to each owner’s lips. A most tentative alliance indeed.
“Mr. Orpheus,” Alice invited after a brief moment of uncomfortable silence where the three of them eyed each other over their plates. “Have you… seen anything of Mr. Kreiburg since that day?”
Orpheus’ jaw clenched unconsciously with irritation at the mention of the composer’s name dropped so suddenly. “Nothing at all. He has no reason to come back, not after he broke more than one of the rules.”
“Even with the gem…?” She drawled off, eyes slipping from Orpheus’ tensed figure to behind him— or more precisely, the doors. Wondering what her attention diverted too, he twisted around in his seat to get a look.
“What gem?” A raspy, irritable voice came from the doors as the man leaned in the doorframe, staring down the three people at the long table. When no one responded, his gaze moved from Alice, to Orpheus, to Melly in which his eyes narrowed.
A deafening silence was created when Campbell spoke aloud, his ominous presence in the doorway halting the conversation between Alice and Orpheus dead in its tracks. Of course the prospector would be interested in a supposedly useless gem a rich noble had cast aside— like a moth to a flame.
“What, surprised a prospector is appraising a supposed gem?” The prospector scoffed at the brief moment of silence. Orpheus had opened his mouth to speak but Norton interrupted him with this typical insult. “Leaving behind valuables because of course there’s more at home. How privileged.”
Orpheus hummed as he watched Campbell sit a few chairs away, his posture slumped and lazy. With some distaste, Orpheus noted how he hardly had manners for a dinner table such as this when he himself, Alice, and Mrs. Plinius were all sitting at attention. Did he not know? Perhaps he did not care— and to this the novelist realized this to be the more likely situation. Free spirited and skeptical of the upper class, Campbell was a pessimist and didn’t care what people thought of him regardless of their status or his own. This much Orpheus could glean just from these basic, one-sided interactions of theirs.
“Good evening, Mr. Campbell,” Orpheus commented after Campbell’s rude entrance. “…I am under the impression that Mr. Kreiburg left behind a family heirloom on purpose here after he disappeared.”
“Like I said, he can live without it,” the prospector talked around a loaf of bread, biting into it like a starved man with little decorum. “So therefore he ditched it. Finder’s keepers is how it goes and from what I know about him and all of you is that you’re upper class who do as they please.”
His manners were truly and utterly appalling and it made Orpheus grip his silverware tighter as he ate delicately at the vegetables on his plate. “The gem’s in my possession, at least as of right now,” Orpheus stated calmly. “I plan to investigate what Kreiburg’s intention is, if you don’t mind.”
“Always butting your nose where it don’t belong,” was all the older man said in response to the novelist, brows furrowing. It made his scar ripple his face into an ugly scowl. “You’ll find out someday that knowing too much gets you killed.”
Alice and Melly glanced at each other warily at the open hostility between the two. Before Orpheus could bite back a reply, Alice invited more gently, “Mr. Campbell, there’s wine and more drinks at the other table. The butler told us to help ourselves, if you’re interested.”
Campbell grunted in a sign that he heard the journalist’s words, eating ravenously as he always did as if each meal was his last. Orpheus sipped from his wine with distaste for the prospector’s rugged ways. It would seem Alice was more palatable to him, but Melly and Orpheus were the subjects of his disdain. Perhaps it was because the two of them carried themselves differently— Alice tended to be more outgoing and perhaps seemed more outwardly friendly whereas he himself and Melly were more reserved.
Alice’s voice arose again. “If you’re any more late, you may miss the main course meal, Mr. Campbell. What has been keeping you so busy?”
The man didn’t answer her immediately, nothing but the sound of the ticking grandfather clock across the room breaking the silence. “Figuring this place out,” he shrugged, his dark eyes not meeting the speaker. “Still can’t get used to this place even with days of being here. It’s as if the doors change every night.”
Orpheus stiffened at this description. Campbell was wandering the halls at night while they slept, potentially. If he wanted to figure out the halls and various rooms of the manor, why didn’t he do it during the day? A strange man indeed who snuck around no matter the type of day, avoiding any and all interactions with people.
“Perhaps it’s because you do it at night, skulking around when only the candles are lit and all the lights are dimmed,” Orpheus hummed a skeptical laugh. “If you do it during the day and break this nocturnal habit of yours, you will surely get the hang of it.”
As if a mirror to the novelist himself, it was the prospector’s turn to stiffen in his chair, sitting upright from his previously slouched position. “Because it’s the only time I have some semblance of peace from you.”
This sparked a genuine laugh out of Orpheus, setting his wine glass down with a small smile. Perhaps there was a way to reverse the tables and get under Campbell’s skin instead. “You’re quite crude with your feelings towards me, Mr. Campbell. I only try to get to know everyone if we’re all stuck in the manor together.”
“Your friendliness will get you killed,” Norton growled before standing, taking the large piece of bread with him. He turned his head, inky black curls falling into his eyes as he warned Orpheus. “Take it from someone who’s had it beaten out of them. Someone like you would never know that, though.”
With a scoff, Campbell left as soon as he came, leaving Orpheus with the other two women who sat there wordlessly watching the two men fight. “Did you do something to him, Mr. Orpheus?” Mrs. Plinius asked warily, turning her gaze onto the merry novelist. “He seems quite taken with you in a negative way.”
“Nothing but pleasantries, Mrs. Plinius,” Orpheus smirked, standing himself and adjusting his tie with finality. If there was one thing Orpheus knew better than Norton—which was a great many things, but in particular—it was the manor. “Someone like him just doesn’t understand what good graces are when he sees them.”
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