The Same Verse

[Namira]

"What I've dooone𝅘𝅥𝅮

Forgiving what I've...𝅘𝅥𝅮

done."

He let his voice quiver in that final whisper, dropping his head, and the crowd went up in clapping and cheering. He let it ride for a moment, and then raised his hand in a wave of acknowledgement.

"Thank you, you've been a great audience." His voice was soft, only carrying thanks to the microphone. He couldn't bring himself to raise it much louder.

The stage lights shone harshly upon him, highlighting the paleness of his skin, turning his hair almost white under the beam. Sweat trickled down his face, clammy and sickly.

When enough time had passed, he rose and took himself and his guitar into the back.

There was a short staircase down from the stage, flanked by brick walls to form a narrow tunnel. He paused halfway down, wobbling a little. He took a breath, gripping the railing tightly, gripping the guitar neck tighter. Closed his eyes. In. One two three. Out. One two three. In. One two three. Out. One two three. He opened his eyes and continued the rest of the way down, into the narrow hallway. Two doors along was his dressing room, which was repurposed storage. More brick walls, some posters and a slightly grimy canvas hanging up to try and mask the cellar vibe. This wasn't the worst venue that he'd played, but it wasn't the top drawer either.

That was fine. It helped, knowing that there were people who cared. Posters with his name could sell tickets. Fill a decently sized club such as this one, or a few extra rows of seats opening in concert. They cared about the music, not the man, but... often it was enough. He couldn't expect them to know or to see, and he didn't. He held no resentment towards the audiences. What they gave him was what kept him going, many days. Not resentment, no.

He laid the guitar down carefully, then slumped into the chair in front of the dresser. He looked at the haggard figure in the mirror, took a cloth, wiped off the stage makeup. Saw the dark circles, sunken cheeks, the hair laying lank across his face. A walking dead man.

But at times, he wished that even one of them would, even for a moment. See. So many thought that this was a story about overcoming, about clawing back up out of a black pit, and it was, it was. They just... they didn't know that the climbing and the clawing were still happening, and that the fight wasn't one that just someday ended. These stories continued onward and so did the battles. Recovery was a path he walked, not a destination he'd reached.

For a time, guilt had weighed him down even further, but he was past that now. Accepting his struggle was valid had been in itself a huge part of the struggle.

His hand trembled as he dropped the cloth back on the dresser. More breathing exercises. In and out. He didn't even like his hair down, nor long, but that was the look, and that was what he had to go with on stage. He'd had to argue for a month about letting his facial hair grow out, to the point he'd nearly submitted to the browbeating and just shaved. Then the subset of social media that followed him so intensively had dropped pictures of him with some scruff and collectively melted, and suddenly the criticism had vanished. He was beginning to break into the public consciousness as an artist, enough so that music had been his full time job these last two years. Image had never been more of a buzzword. He wondered what kind of stories they would run if they saw him like this, pallid and sweating and losing ever more weight. He'd never been a large man, a slender five and a half feet tall in lifts, and now there was even less of him.

Something was rattling the dresser. It took him three seconds to realise that it was his jittering leg. He put a hand upon his thigh to quell the motion. Instead his hand joined in. He almost smiled, then.

There was a knock at the door. The faint wisp of good humour vanished in an instant. He looked over at the entrance.

He hadn't even opened his mouth when the door opened and his manager slash agent strolled inside. James Palmer 'Call me Palmer, kid, only my mom calls me James' was a large man, six feet tall and barrel chested. He wore a checkered shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. His skin was ruddy, and he had a lot of laughter lines.

"Nice job out there, kid."

"Thank you," he murmured.

"I know you're not having the easiest time right now, but I gotta say, I admire how you take your hurt and you harness it for your performances."

Great, he didn't say. I'm glad that my pain has artistic value to you.

Actually, he didn't say. My favourite work is when I'm enjoying myself.

He just nodded.

Palmer leaned against the wall. "I was thinking..."

Ah, code. Here, Palmer meant 'I'm about to insist on something'.

He did not visibly brace himself.

"Ending on a cover isn't a very strong note for your brand. The covers in general, actually: I think you should ease more towards your original material." Palmer smiled, his arms folded.

He did not sag. "I don't have a new song in me right now." How tired did he sound, he wondered. Did it emanate from his bones, his guts, his heart?

Palmer smiled. "That's understandable. Perhaps for now you can rearrange the set list, shuffle some of your other songs in and the covers out?" Palmer said it like he was asking, but they'd sang this duet before. He knew the verses. He certainly knew the chorus.

"I'll think about it."

Palmer chuckled. "No time like the present for some thinking."

He did not sigh. "A lot of people got to know me from the covers. The youtube days."

Once again, Palmer chuckled. "I think you've grown past that now."

He didn't say anything. Palmer was wrong, but he was wrong from a place of such fundamental failure to understand that he couldn't begin to explain, not on his best day and certainly not now. The importance to him, the link back to those first fans, back in the darkest of the dark days, where he'd choked up in most of his recordings, where he'd barely functioned as a human being rather than an artist. The connection was so much of who he was, so much much of why he still performed.

Palmer continued. "How about we put together a rough list? I think I've got some paper here..." Palmer patted his pockets performatively, as if he didn't keep a notepad in his breast pocket. It wouldn't be rough. Next time they had a show planned, the setlist would materialise as if this discussion was etched in stone, and if he disagreed, well, that was what the chorus was for. "Ah, here we go." Out came the notepad. "My first thought was to slot Us into the finale, since you've concluded the stage show with that piece a couple of times before. Of course, we could consider—"

Tipping back his head, he let the words wash over him, barely listening. In. One two three. Out. One two three. He was tired, he ached. He needed a drink. He wanted to stare at a wall and cry. He wanted to curl into a ball and not speak to anyone for a week, until this all ended. Instead, he steeling himself for a fight.

He could take care of one of the matters, at least. He leaned across the dresser and took a mouthful of water from the bottle there. He swallowed, felt it ease his parched throat just a little. He was going to need his voice for this.

"Kid? Are you listening?"

He took another drink. He glanced back to Palmer, but more through him. He couldn't hate the man, didn't even really dislike him. Without Palmer's help, he wouldn't have the makings of this career he now found himself bearing. There were just things that Palmer couldn't understand and that he couldn't explain.

"This is important. Don't go all space cadet on me now."

There was something owed to those days back then, when there had been as many tears as there had been lyrics. Something owed now more than ever when another kind of chorus was ringing out in another place, ten years down the line.

"Winston! Take this seriously!"

He drank one more time, swallowed, and then set the water to the side. His eyes focused again, seeing Palmer's scowl, the notepad, already three sheets deep, the way Palmer had shifted, halfway filling the room.

He spoke. Tired, so damn tired, but this was another little piece of the battle and it was worth fighting. He wanted to think that there was a little steel beneath the aching exhaustion.

"I'm not changing the setlist."

And the first verse went...

like...

this.