Weeks ago. . .
Stadio Olimpico wasn’t the most luxurious setting Matt Knox had ever found himself in, but at least it was familiar. Rustic. Hallowed ground perfect to bury a monster and a rivalry in.
He sat dutifully in his dressing room, having left the door wide open in case any of the students in attendance wanted to wish him well or work through the jitters for their own matches. He would have smiled, if he weren’t dutifully applying his face paint.
He does however allow himself to hum ‘Claire De Lune’ as he was apt to when apart from home and all who awaited him within it now. He did his best to focus on the task at hand, the battle that awaited him. He knew he’d need to be at more than a hundred percent to pull it off tonight.
The last thing he needed was a distraction.
It came in the form of a tall woman wearing a silver-gilt mask across her face – cobalt-coloured heels click-clacking against the concrete floor as she stepped just over the threshold of the door; matching hem settling down over her feet as she stopped. A white cardiganc hung loose, its arms tied around her neck.
MASQUE: The Moon is an errant thief, and her pale light she steals from the Sun …
He froze, eyeliner pen hovering over his left eye before he continues its path, doing all he could to recalibrate his mindset and better prepare for possibly the one he should have never expected. Or perhaps, the one?
MATT KNOX: And yet…she controls the tides, controls the water. And what are we, but meat bags filled with water? She shifts, we shift with her. . . forever connected in some…celestial umbilical cord type way..
He set the pen down, turning to reveal a half-done job of his would-be war paint.
MATT KNOX: Hello, Masque. I wasn’t expecting you here tonight.
She stayed in the doorway, metal-in-place-of plastic face panning around the walls and spaces, taking in her surroundings. She stretched out a heel, pressing the tip down on the floor just ahead, testing her weight against it, before pulling the foot in again. Repeating.
MASQUE: No … I expect not. But then, I was not expecting your letter.
Her prosthetic pulled free from behind the small of her back, folded paper held between its plastic fingers.
MASQUE: I think you made me look and feel foolish. Congratulations …
Her foot stretched forwards again, back. He hoped the paint at least helped hide the twinge of guilt. He broke his gaze from her, letting out a small chuckle.
MATT KNOX: For what it’s worth, which I’m sure isn’t much…It wasn’t all malicious, Masque. I never really meant to lead you on, or into believing there was anything…
He lifted a pair of befuddled hands, swaying them from her and to him to symbolize the implication with equal clarity.
MATT KNOX: I meant the rest, though. What I asked of you What I offered. There’s a dawn for us all, if you’ll let it happen.
She took a single step forward, planting her foot down flat.
MASQUE: Is that so?
Another step forwards.
MASQUE: You absolutely meant to lead me, because it suited your ends. Are you really trying to convince me otherwise, Songbird?
She unfolded the paper, rereading the words, bright blue eyes scanning across the creases.
MASQUE: You offered to put me inside a cage, so you could listen to me sing in vain for your attention, while you focused on other things. While you watched for the weather to turn. Looking out for your storm.
And then she laughed, briefly. Sing-song.
MASQUE: Your hurricane. I wonder, why do so many people think me so blind. I hide my face … Not my eyes. I have to admit, you almost made me fall.
MATT KNOX: Ab…Masque. I implore you, look beyond that. Look, really look at what will become of us all if everything you envision comes to pass. Who benefits? Maybe you swim better than some, but eventually that flood? It’ll drown you too.
He stood from the chair then, approaching her brazenly for a man who had managed to deceive and had set out to do so, as if maybe he believed the lie of his 11th hour redemption plans to save all those who ought not to be.
Or maybe, it was genuine?
He dared reach out, planting a hand on her shoulder, the other coming up to accentuate his point as he spoke.
MATT KNOX: You don’t need the mask, you don’t need to reshape the world around you. You fit into it fine, if you let yourself.
The fingers of her prosthetic flare outwards down at her side, plastic rhythmically clicking together under the whine of their servomotors. She looks up at him, then aside at this hand and, eventually, back up.
MASQUE: And if I took off this mask, now, would you take me away from all this? Rebuild me anew, so that I might even use the name that used to be mine?
She cocks her head to the side.
MASQUE: Or would you dismantle my armour, unload my guns, and leave me mewling on the floor? Where will you go when you leave this beautiful place?
She reached up with her flesh-and-blood hand, running the tip of her forefinger under his jaw.
MASQUE: I think you will go back to her, and your child. And you will fix the oil leak in the car and bleed the radiators, and invite the neighbours over for a barbecue …
She steps forward until they are metal nose-to-face.
MASQUE: And what will I do? Will I go and work for a bank? Buy a hybrid? Get on the property ladder? Be disarmed? Be charming?
MATT KNOX: You’re not…
He paused, reaching up and gently taking her hand into his if only to pull the contact from his face.
MATT KNOX: You need not be rebuilt, nor would I leave you. I only ask…that you let yourself be the girl with that name, and not the one you made to protect her from dying the rest of the way. If that makes sense…
A squeeze, before he took a conscious step back and let a breath out.
MATT KNOX: Abandon your mission. Put the energy into you. You don’t need me or anyone to do that, but I do offer my help. Vague and confusing as it might be, which..not unlike all existence, isn’t it?
Driven by subconscious feeling, her prosthetic lifts up to run along the wavering lump of twisted tissue hidden by a thick tangle of blonde. She cannot feel the scar running across her head, of course – there is nothing but a pressure transducer to convey anything meaningful from composite fingertips to organic brain – but she feels it all the same. Where her hand presses down, she thinks she can feel it under the skin and bone of the skull, where they cut …
MASQUE: I have been rebuilt before … Remade. Reforged. You are talking about someone who no longer exists. All that matters is …
She flinches at his mention of mission, and the fingers of her prosthetic jerk outwards as she pulls it away from her head.
MASQUE: Yes. The mission and my purpose.
Her blue eyes flick down to the paper still held in her other hand.
MASQUE: That is why you wrote this. To distract me – and perhaps you succeeded. If I had been more focused in Los Angeles …
Nodding to herself, she brushed another tangle of hair back behind an ear and free of the black fabric straps crossing the back of her head.
MASQUE: Unfortunate, but not irrecoverable. There were bound to be challenges. She will rise again. I will make sure of it. The Rapture will proceed as designed.
A genuine look of sadness overtakes his face as he nods in acceptance, taking another half step back and allowing himself a sigh.
MATT KNOX: And I will…stand opposed. Much as it pains me and much as I want nothing more than to surrender and be swept away I…
He shakes his head, letting the motion finish his sentiment. He returns his gaze to her, face twitching as his brain feverishly works to realign his perception of what he sees.
Away from wanting to save them. Back to destruction.
MATT KNOX: I wish I had known you before…maybe before we both ended up how we are.
Sentiment and wistfulness riding the death rattle of what might have been.
MASQUE You were always opposed, you simply convinced yourself – almost – that you were doing this for some altruistic purpose above self-serving desires. You wanted everything. Save her, disarm me, go home to your wife and your life and yet here you are on another continent …
She tapped a pink finger against the brushed silver metal of her mask.
MASQUE: I gave you the opportunity to be swept away. You had a chance to change both our fates. My Songbird, I think you might have been able to stop the Rapture but you could not. No …
Shaking her head, Masque breaks eye contact for a few moments.
MASQUE: You would not. To think, my design could have been undone by whatever this was … Whatever you tried to make me believe this was. Despite my … Name …
She laughs again, short and sharp and sweet.
MASQUE … Despite my name, I will not be a moon circling your world and all the things that happen on it. An observer, a junior partner. An associate. A satellite. No. A change is coming. Not the cool, serene face of the moon but a bright and vibrant sun …
Cocking her head to the side, she closes the space between them again, chin tilting up.
MASQUE: Tell me, those short weeks ago, when you seemed as if you might change both our fates … Was it entirely a product of your desire to distract me from my mission? Or, were there other desires at play. I wish to know how much of it was artfully spun deceit …
He prayed silently for intervention. For Donny Mason's lumbering ass, for the twins, hell. For Supreme Machine to barge in for an Ill advised sneak attack.
But it was not to be.
MATT KNOX: The temptation was true. The sentiments were true. The motives to allow them were entirely self serving.
He held her gaze as he slid the blade known as truth past the rib cage, sad and resigned to what came next. More war rooted in his failure and ill advised intervention.
The paper in her hand crumpled, crushed tight.
MASQUE: You are to be congratulated. Your deceit was beautifully sculpted and I did not see it for what it was. Still …
She continued to stare up into his eyes, only an inch or so separated.
MASQUE: It was not equivocal. I had no such ulterior motive to distract or deny you. That did not serve the Rapture, my design. But … Now I think about …
Her blue eyes glanced sideways, then back to his.
MASQUE: … I think about things that did not seem so important before. Perhaps I was wrong, and they are very important. Tell me, Songbird …
She takes a deep breath, cologne mingling with face paint and sweat.
MASQUE: How is Marika? I would so very much like to meet her.
In a flash, the pale hand that had been reassuring and caressing in its touch flew up and wrapped long digits around her neck, giving one half squeeze as he took in a calming breath, buying the second to stop himself from trying to snap it. He stares directly into her eyes, the other hand coming up to rest on the mask in another, more venomous caress.
MATT KNOX: She is miles away from me, from you, and from all the machinations you spin. She is no longer a part of any wars that concern you, and will remain that way. If you want a pound of flesh, carve it from me if you can…
The squeeze returns as he closes the inch, pressing his nose to her mask now. Faces finally as close as so many though they would end up, but with far less romantic intent.
MATT KNOX: Touch her, any of my students, or any of my children? And i’ll leave you the kind of stump they don’t make prosthetics for.
Her voice was rasped, grated where her throat squeezed slightly shut. Hands remaining limply by their sides, she leaned slightly forwards into his grasp.
MASQUE: Do you think I am scared, Songbird? You have no idea what real suffering is. I do. I have lived it twice over.
Without warning, she brought the point of her knee up and drove it into his gut, delivering enough force to loosen the grip around her throat. The fingers of her prosthetic curled in tight to make a solid, composite fist and she delivered it across his jaw with all the force her body could muster with the limited momentum to swing for.
Turning her head, she caught sight of herself in a cracked, floor-to-ceiling mirror and lifted her chin to inspect the red fingermarks standing proud around a pale neck. He caught himself on the wall, raising a hand instinctively to where her blow landed. He moved his jaw to inspect for any damage then straightened up. He turned to watch her quietly for a moment, seemingly satisfied with what went down.
MATT KNOX: Well…
He stood idle for a moment, then turned and returned to the perch she found him on, picking up where he left off and speaking in a gentler tone.
MATT KNOX: We both did promise this would only end terribly. At least there weren’t any lies in that, right?
She watched the fingers of her prosthetic unfurl and flex, their plastic phalanges smeared with fresh paint.
MASQUE: I have never lied to you. The same cannot be said on your behalf, can it?
She turned on her heels, extending a foot out and pressing it down against the concrete. It took a few, long seconds for her to reach the doorway. Taking a hold of the frame with both hands, Masque looked back over her shoulder.
MASQUE: You must understand, my Songbird, that what happens next is because you would not let yourself do anything but win. You could have left me to my mission, but you had to save our Resplendent Hurricane, only to fail in your surrogacy anyway. You could have left me to my devices, those few weeks ago, everything said that was left to say between us, but you had to keep me in your orbit. Influence. Possession without ownership.
Her fingers pressed down against wood, and some left a trail of paint against the varnish.
MASQUE: By the time you have faced down your opponent tonight and returned to sit there, I will be on my way home. By the time you reach home, I will …
She paused.
MASQUE: You will find out, maybe.
And then she slipped away into the corridor and out of sight.
