week 6 | Friday, Post-Investigation

[concasse]

[It will be coincidence, like most of their conversations. The chef doesn't know the other Ion well enough to look for him during such a charged Friday, but should the boy pass by the music room later in the evening, he will hear someone inside.

Plucking a harp.

... Just one note, over and over, letting the sound breathe and die, inhale and exhale.]

Comments

[fonlines]

[ ...

As the piece plays itself out and the last strains of the melody echo out into the empty room, he'll quietly fold his hands into his lap to stare up towards nothing in particular. ]

In truth... I only knew for sure that he liked one particular song, and it was neither of those two.

[ It doesn't mean that he couldn't have, but simply that if he had, this Ion had known nothing of it.

This room is too big for just two people. And such terrible things have happened in it... Even so. Despite everything, music is too important to the pair of them for the deaths that have occurred here to keep him away. ]

I wonder if it would be disrespectful to play it now.

[ It's a happier song. Calm, but still, it feels as if it would be misplaced levity after such a bleak evening. ]

[concasse]

... He would've liked it.

[Spoken quietly, towards the opposite corner of the room, but echoing loud enough to hear. It is not meant as a demand for the other to play the song if he doesn't feel like it, and Sanji hopes that message is present in his reply.

It's just the simple truth of things, that they both know. Was Ion not always looking towards the light? And he would have asked his other half to play a warmer melody, for no other reason than it might give the two people in this room peace.]

[fonlines]

... It's a song meant more for his instrument than for mine.

[ Still, it isn't as if they haven't both played it before here. Not all that long ago, even, when Varian had requested something less somber, less solemn than the hymns their Order had been known for.

He'd let the other Ion take the lead on the melody then, and not only because of their respective choices of instrument. After all, regardless of their positions, regardless of their dispositions... regardless of his own feelings, as far as he was concerned, the other Ion had always been the one who was meant to survive.

But when he plays Finale - happiness in my hand now, he takes over for that part, trading backing for lead. Despite this, he doesn't add any flourishes, any excess, despite it being well within his ability if he wanted to try.

The result is a quiet melody that, while soft, and calm, and soothing, and all of those things that the other Ion had so cherished... Despite any warmth or sincerity to the song, there's still something quietly lonely about it regardless.

Perhaps it's the most fitting send off he can give to his replica. ]