Summary: Wylan doesn't know how much longer he can take it. With upcoming rent looming on the horizon, he can't afford to eat. And with the rate he's earning money, he'll be out on the street by the end of next week.
Warnings: starvation, mugging, grief, violence
word count: 1,391
A/N: prompt fill for day 2 of @juneofdoom | Dying Alone
{Read on A03}
Black dots danced across the sheet music.
Wylan blinked hard. The notes swam for a moment before settling back into place until the next whole note sent them blurring together again. Not that he truly needed them. He'd played this piece often enough that his fingers knew where to go before he even read the sheet. It was more of a comfort than anything. A soft place to land. He didn't have much of those these days.
Once, playing had been effortless. His arms could hold the lightweight of the wood for hours without protest. Once, he could lose himself in the music, forget the world beyond it. He couldn't afford that now.
The melody faltered.
Wylan drew a breath, trying to play off his silence as part of the piece. His chest ached. His stomach clenched so sharply, he nearly lost his grip on his flute. The next sound from his instrument wavered, a thin, unpleasant whine that made a few passersby wrinkle their noses.
A portly woman with a child on her hip dropped a coin in his case anyway.
There had been a time when he enjoyed playing the most difficult pieces. Loved the feeling when he finally got it right. He loved the feeling of playing until his lungs ran out of air.
Now, his lungs burned before he got even halfway through one song.
People continued to stream past him in steady waves. Merchants. Sailors. Wealthy tourists looking for entertainment before they disappeared into Ketterdam's clubs and gambling halls. Some slowed long enough to listen. Most didn't.
A few tossed coins.
Most didn't.
By the end of the song, there were only four people watching him. The air travelling from his lungs waned, a discordant whine echoing through the street as he fought to keep the high D note steady. The gathered crowd drifted away without a second glance.
Humiliation crawled up his neck.
He was better than that. His ma once had told him that he deserved to perform in front of royalty.
The pounding behind his eyes had become relentless. It felt as if someone had driven a wedge into his skull and was slowly forcing it deeper.
Carefully, he lowered his flute and scanned the day's earnings. He knew without counting that it wasn't enough.
His stomach sank.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten a proper meal. Two days? Three? Days blurred together out on the streets of the Barrel. Hunger had a way of warping time.
With numb fingers, Wylan packed away his music and slid the flute back into its case. Moisture still clung to the inside of the instrument, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He'd clean it later. If he made it home.
The thought nearly made him laugh.
Home.
Nothing more than a room with a leaking roof and a creaking bed with a mattress hard enough to be stone. With walls so thin he could hear every argument, every… other activity. It hardly deserved the title. But it was better than being out on the streets.
He was running out of the money his father had sent with him. And no matter how much he saved from skipping meals, it would never be enough to cover another week. He didn't want to think about that, though.
He pushed himself upright.
The world lurched.
For one terrifying moment, the street began to tilt beneath his feet. His vision narrowed into a tunnel of grey and black. He staggered sideways and slammed shoulder-first into a brick wall. It sent a shock through his shoulder well enough to keep him leaning against it even after his vision cleared.
The direct route home cut through several narrow alleyways. Stupid on a good day. Dangerous on a bad one.
Today, however, Wylan wasn't certain he'd be able to survive the longer walk.
He shoved himself off the wall, flute tight in hand. The Barrel blurred around him. Crumbling brick, overflowing gutters, sights he'd quickly grown used to.
Food, as always, occupied every corner of his thoughts. Fresh bread. Honey cakes. The sugared pastries his mother used to sneak him before dinner when his father wasn't looking. The memory was vivid enough to send a sharp ache through his heart.
Caught unawares, reminiscing on times he would never get back, Wylan lost the ground beneath him. He landed on his hands and knees, the stone eating into his flesh.
“What have we got here?” A loud voice disrupted the alleyway.
Wylan gritted his teeth. Keeping his head down, he muttered, “I don’t have anything. Leave me alone.”
“What’s in the case?”
A foot connected with his ribs. Wylan fell to his side, choking on his breath. His lithe fingers snatched the case from the ground, clutching it to his chest. He would not let them take it. “Nothing of value.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” the older boy sneered. “Whaddya think, Petyr?”
“Come on, kid, just give it up. It’s two against one, and you don’t stand no chance against us.”
Wylan’s eyes darted to the edges of the alleyway, but no one was there. Even if someone were, Wylan would doubt they’d bother to help him. That wasn't how things were done in Ketterdam. Every man and child for himself. “Take my money,” Wylan pleaded. “Just not this, don’t… you can have all my money.”
The two older boys shared a glance. The taller of the two spoke up, “How abouts we just take both of ‘em?”
“No!”
“You ain’t really in the position to be bargaining, now are you?”
The other boy, Petyr, lunged for him. Wylan curled around his flute. The last thing he had. The only material possession he owned that mattered. The one thing that reminded him of sunnier days. When he and his Ma would play: her on the piano, him on the flute.
He was just starting out. His grasp on the fingering was fragile, his notes never resonated in the way they should have, but she still applauded him—she still made a grand show of how he was meant to play for kings and queens. Sorry, Ma, I don’t think I’ll ever live long enough to see the dream through.
He blocked out most of the beating—went to that faraway place where his Ma is waiting on the piano stool for him to join her; the place he’d go whenever his father tried to beat literature into him. It wasn't really all that different. Except instead of gushing blood on the finest carpet imported from Shu Han, red painted the bleak cobblestone. And the fear that these boys wouldn’t stop before it had gone too far. For all the terrible things Jan Van Eck was, he was no murderer; he liked his hands clean. That didn’t, as he recently found out, mean he couldn’t get someone else to do it for him, though.
As his thoughts turned down that road, the vision of his mother faded until nothing was left but the dark streets of Ketterdam. The boys had left him at some point. Only the weight of his flute case was enough to dispel the panic of losing so much time.
As Wylan uncurled from his position, his entire body ignited with flames of agony. The spot where his head had rested on the pavement was damp, and not even he could convince himself it was something other than blood. Groaning, Wylan remained on the ground. He was going to die alone. No one to remember him; no one to care about him. He would be just another victim of the streets of the Barrel. Forgotten and unimportant as every other sorry sob who thought they could survive out here.
As he ran his fingers over the etchings in the wooden case, he hoped that it would go to someone who would appreciate it. He hoped that they could make good use of it, hoped that they, perhaps, could perform for royalty. That his mother’s dream would live on through someone else.
The last thing Wylan remembered before succumbing to the ever-present darkness was a voice. It was raspy; as if the man who spoke the words hadn’t had a glass of water in a decade.
“How pathetic,” the mysterious man said, and Wylan couldn’t help but agree.
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