//------------------------------// // Metal Lyra Solid V: The Phantom Limb // Story: Hand In Hand // by Bysen //------------------------------// “Um… I think I remember one.” she answered as she hit a few keys, finding the tune and trying to remember. “Really?” Lyra asked in return, having only been joking about the girl that had never even seen a piano before knowing any songs. And as it turns out, Bon-bon wasn’t lying either. Though Lyra wished she had been… “Hot… cross… buns. Hot… cross… buns. One-a-penny. Two-a-pen-ney, hot… cross. buns…” Bon-bon said with glee as she finished her song. It wasn’t exactly in key but it certainly was… ‘a song’ she knew. Honestly, if you don’t know that song then simply put you went to a horrible school. [this may or may not be the case outside of Australia] “Well that was certainly… ‘a song’.” she said aloud and had an odd sense of dé jàvu. She got a look from Bon-bon in turn that somehow both conveyed pride and annoyance in that she had performed a song but been mildly mocked for it. “Here.” Lyra said as she reach down and hit three keys. “Those are the ones you want.” showing her the correct keys so that it was only half as horrible. Bon-bon taking that as encouragement turned back to the piano and placed her hands onto the keys once more, using one finger from each hand to hit the keys. But instead of repeating the same song, she surprised Lyra with “Wild thing! *dung dung, ding ding, dung dung* you make my heart sing! *ding ding, dung dung* you make everything! groovy…” she sang and played. Lyra began to notice a pattern here: three-note songs. That being said it was still pretty good. Of course the keys for this one were off as well but it was still leagues above hot cross buns. “Not bad.” Lyra applauded. “That was leagues above the last song… wow, I keep getting dé jàvu today…” she said as she looked up towards nothing in particular. “Anyway. Not bad at all. But let me show you something.” she said as she reached down and put her hand onto the keys and with one hand and three separate fingers played hot cross buns. But thankfully didn’t sing along with it. “Try doing it with just one han….d...” she trailed off. Without realising it, she’d just played a piano for the first time in three years. For the first time since… her thought was cut off by a loud smashing of keys as Bon-bon tried to play the simple three tone song with a single hand. She had playn the last two songs quite slowly but Lyra hadn’t taken note of it due to the songs she’d been playing having a rather slow beat as it was. Despite her fluid larger motions of arms and legs, the finer actions of individual fingers were still out of Bon-bon’s reach. Pun intended. Trying to push more than two keys with more than her single index finger pointed out had just ended with her placing three fingers down onto key keys followed by her sliding them across and mashing a few more. “Uh… I think I’ll just stick to using both hands.” Bon-bon said as she put both index fingers out again and once more in the slightly wrong tones began to play the third and final song she knew: the main chorus to Smoke on the Water. As Bon-bon played, Lyra’s eyes drifted down to her left arm. He prosthetic hook had been taken off ages ago while fixing the the strings, only getting in the way of things. Her bare stump twitched slightly as she flexed her upper arm’s muscle unintentionally. She felt it still, every now and then. And now was one of those times… obviously. Memories of her last performance came to mind. The song she’d spent hours upon days upon weeks upon months perfecting… “How was that?” Bon-bon asked as she turned around. She only caught a glimpse of it for less than a second but she saw the look on Lyra’s face and the clear fact that she was looking down at her own missing arm. “Huh? Oh, pretty good.” she covered. She had done that thing where she hadn’t really been listening and didn’t hear what Bon-bon had been playing but after remembering that she was meant to have been, her brain auto-replayed what she’d heard to itself in a fraction of a second. It was actually pretty… adequate. She knew Bon-bon was smart but music was it’s own beast. Some people had a knack for it, some people didn’t, and she wondered if Bon-bon would have good enough memory to do what Lyra was about to ask of her. “You ever played Simon?” “Um… like Simon Says?” Nob-nob deplier “Like the memory game. You know, the button flashes and you have to remember what order to hit them in and you see how far you can get.” “I’m pretty sure there’s an easier way to go about asking if I wanna learn how to play the piano.” Bon-bon chuckled back. “Learn to play and memorise a song are two different things here.” Lyra said somewhat defensively. “And it’s only half a song. Sorta like… I’ll show you.” and with that Lyra walked around to the other side of Bon-bon where she’d been standing to the right of her before, now she was standing on her left. “It’s about twenty notes each with two keys each. Think you can handle it?” “I think so.” “Right, here’s what you do.” Lyra leant down and without the hesitation she’d expected to have at putting her hands back on the keys, hit the first two notes. It was two of the ebony keys about four keys apart from each other in quick concession, then there was a pause before hitting two more black keys slightly to the left of the first two twice in concession like the first two but without a pause before hitting the two next to them once and then hitting two ivory keys once then two more black keys just beside them twice. “Got it?” “Uh… can you show me again?’ “Sure.” Lyra said and showed her once more what she wanted. Lyra then removed her hand and let Bon-bon have at it. She nailed it first try, though slowly and with two hands of course. She celebrated for a moment before Lyra told her there was a part two. And a parts three through five that didn’t have a break between them. It took many attempts on both of their parts. Bon-bon would usually get what she had been shown the first time or second time but when asked to string the parts together and at the correct pace she would mess up at some point. Over the course of an hour she eventually got it, though Lyra would wager that even if she got it perfect, which she wouldn’t seems what she was teaching her friend was a dumbed down version to begin with, she suspected that Bon-bon wouldn't remember it tomorrow anyway. There were a few instances of ‘Can we try a different song?’ which was only answered with ‘Don't worry.’ and ‘Trust me, you’ll like it.’ which she did. Since they began just over an hour passed and by that point Bon-bon had it down pat. Yep, one hour to learn ten seconds of song. Time well spent. “Got it?” Lyra asked as she stepped back, having just given her last piece of tutorial. Bon-bon nodded and turned back to the keys.Using her two index fingers she began. And nailed it! “Awesome!” Lyra announced. She didn’t expect this… she felt great. All these years of avoiding the piano, all the fear and painful memories. They were all still present, she wasn’t going to kid herself about that. But all the good ones, all the joy and excitement it had once brought to her, that was there too. Bon-bon, smiling back at her friend who had for the first time let her play solo, having stood back instead of being right over her shoulder, asked “So what now. What was the next step you wouldn’t tell me about.” she paused, letting her smile drop slightly and not jokingly, she seriously asked “Please tell me it’s not just the next verse.” “Relax, it’s not. Well it sorta is. But don’t panic. The next verse is the same tune over again. A lot of songs do that actually. But anyway, I want to to play the tune three time in a row. Just leave about the same pause between the first two notes and the second lot between the end and the new start, Ok?” She said as she stepped up beside Bon-bon, hovering over her shoulder once more, but this time to her right side. She pulled over a seat and sat beside her friend who without having to be asked, moved over slightly to let her down. “Well…? Start.” And with that, Bon-bon began to play once more. This time though, this is where Lyra flinched. She had planned on doing this ever since Bon-bon had managed to copy her showing her the first few notes. Now however, she had her doubts. She knew she could, it wasn’t something she'd forget how to do. Like riding a bike… also something she hadn’t done in the last three years. But in fairness she hadn’t done that in the last five maybe six years… point is, she was sure she'd still know how to do it. She had to! As Bon-bon finished the first play through of the tune, Lyra watched and the second Bon-bon began the turn anew for the second iteration she began to play along side. What she'd taught Bon-bon was what she'd used to play with her left hand. Her right hand began to dance across the keys, hitting nearly twice as many as Bon-bon was with her thumb, index, middle, ring and pinkie fingers all acting as if seemingly on their own accord. Despite all the time that had passed, she was still perfect and never missed a millisecond of timing as she worked the keys to make these beautiful, beautiful sounds she’d missed for so long. She was playing just like she had been all that time ago. In her mind she was once again in front of thousands of adoring fans, there for the simple act of watching her work her magic across the ebony and ivory. Her hands, once again dancing across the keys as the song went on, seemingly without her even thinking about it, simply knowing what to do on pure instinct alone. Her hands suddenly jarred as she made a mistake, she hadn’t changed to the next pa… she hadn't been the one playing it. Her right hand had gone on to the next verse of the song and although her left hand had also changed to play the next verse of the song, Bon-bon hadn’t. Instead she had just repeated the same verse over again for a fourth time. But… Lyra had felt it. She felt herself playing. She’d felt each of her individual fingers on her left hand pressing the keys down and getting a response from the piano in turn… she’d felt… everything! Yet hadn’t. Her right hand hit a wrong note and quickly pulled away as the shock set. Bon-bon played for about a second more before she too stopped. She had played longer than she had been told to and only assumed that the mistake Lyra had made was actually part of the song. She had no idea what was wrong as she turned, smiling and said “Wow! You were right! You were SOOO right! That was amazing and totally worth it!” Lyra however didn’t respond and had stood up halfway through her saying it. Her back turned to Bon-bon, not wanting to acknowledge what had just happened to her and the dead look on her face from ever being seen. It was only a couple of seconds but she had no sense of time during it and only snapped back to reality as she heard her name being called. Once again, though she hadn’t been listening, everything that had been said got processed in her head. “H-hey, uh, let me go get something. You keep on keepin’ on, kay?” she said as she began to walk off. She was pretty sure she had sounded alright and that Bon-bon was none the wiser. It wasn’t that she was trying to hide what had happened to her for Bon-bon’s sake but rather that although she didn’t consciously know it she blamed Bon-bon for doing that to her. She’d later realise that and brush it off for what it really was, her own imagination still feeling what wasn’t real, but until then she just wanted to be away from her friend. She returned about five minutes later with an iFruit and put it down in the spot meant to hold sheet music. “This thing used to help me out.” she said coldly, lacking her usual exuberance. She walked away again before Bon-bon could ask what it was. Instead Bon-bon just hit the big play button on the screen and watched as it began to scroll. It was called a synph. And it reminded her of a game she’d seen a few years ago called Guitar Hero, where the notes would scroll down and then you hit them as they came. Only this had about fifty buttons and had about four or five notes coming all at the same times. She watched it through once in it’s entirety just in awe at all that went into playing a song like this. She watched it again in full before she decided that Lyra had given this to her for a reason. She watched the opening chorus part and quickly realised what she had been playing. Or at least half of it. Though what she’d been taught was slightly different to what was on screen the result was very similar, there were obvious imperfection compared to this robot playing it. She had to have replayed the opening nearly a hundred times and had done pretty well with it if she did say so herself. She’d made attempts at the second verse with moderate success. She’d also played the song through a few times trying to play along with it. To much less success. Regardless of how well she played, she was having an absolute blast! The only thing stopping her from continuing was the fact the the tips of her fingers were starting to hurt. She’d have to learn to not hit the keys so hard so that she could go for longer without having to take a break that would ultimately lead to her stopping all together. She looked and… “Holy guacamole! Two and a half hours?!” the last time she’d looked at her watch/phone was just before Lyra had started teaching her. It had only felt like thirty minutes, forty-five at the max and yet some how nearly four times that had passed. And though she’d though it only about twenty minutes, she hadn’t seen Lyra for over an hour now she assumed. She stood up and stepped away from the piano, it must’ve been her mind playing tricks on her because she swore she could still hear that same song playing. She walked away from the piano and it slowly faded out. She still had no idea where Lyra was though. Then the obvious idea of looking in her room came to mind. She walked back the way she’d came from, passing the piano as she did, beginning to hear the song again. She walked over to it and checked the tablet to see if it was playing it still somehow. It didn’t have anything running on it as she inspected it and even lifted it to her ear to be sure. Nothing. Yet there was definitely music coming from somewhere. Putting the pad back down on top of the piano, the almost too obvious answer came to her as she walked closer to Lyras room only for the music to grow louder. She mentally said ‘Duh...’ to herself and palmed her forehead as she approached her friend's room door. She knocked on it twice, both because it was polite to knock, and because she wasn’t 100% sure that this was Lyra’s room. Could’ve been her parent’s or even for brother’s for all Bon-bon knew. The music stopped a second later but no other noise came from the room. Bon-bon stood there waiting for the door to open but after ten seconds or so just got a “Come in!”called out from inside. she grabbed the knob and turned, pushing the door inwards to see Lyra sitting in her computer chair facing her in just a bra. Well, also the same pants as before too, it was just of note seems it wasn’t what she’d been wearing before. Most likely the one she’d been wearing under her top before. “Hey Lyra.” Bon-bon said awkwardly. She had the sharp impression that she had interrupted Lyra masterbating. “It’s getting late, I’m going to have to leave soon.” she added, feigning a smile. It wasn’t entirely disingenuous but it certainly wasn’t what her genuine expression right now would be. “Oh, well… that’s too bad I guess.” Lyra half muttered, clearly as embarrassed as Bon-bon was. “But hey, feel free ta go back to playing the piano if you want. Don’t let me stop you or anything.” she said, much more enthusiastically and like her usual self but still clearly trying to get her to leave the room. It wasn’t in Bon-bon’s nature to do this but Lyra had really been rubbing off on her in the last few weeks. Which given the current situation should probably be dramatically rephrased. That didn’t stop Bon-bon however from instead of leaving, asking “No, that’s alright, I’ve been playing it for hours. My hand’s started to cramp. How about yours?” she said with a smirk. “Uh yeah… sometimes. After I played for a while.” she said looking away. “So what have you been doing for the last however long?” “You know. Just watching some videos on viewtube.” “Mind if I watch them?” it would be awkward but hilarious. But still a very fine line between the two if this went south. Which, like everything else said in the last few seconds had a double meaning too. Before Lyra could reply Bon-bon had stepped up to the computer and grabbed the mouse. She opened internet exploder but Lyra stopped her there. “Here, let me.” she said reaching for the mouse. Bon-bon however just shifted herself in a way that blocked Lyra’s right side from being able to grab the mouse away from her. Bon-bon, with more accuracy than she usually mustered, went to recently closed pages and clicked reopen last session. She only missed the buttons twice and nearly closed the tab once. “Let’s see what you were looking at shall we?” she said evilly. It wasn’t porn. Not what Bon-bon had expected. Instead the tab began to load a video on viewtube, just like Lyra had said. Discord Piano Cover performed by Lyra Heartstrings. There was a moment of buffering as the little dots spun on the screen before it began to play, already fully loaded from previous views. Bon-bon stood there, slightly confused at first, but that quickly passed as she instead just began to marvel at what she was seeing. It was obvious to her that Lyra was good at playing the piano from her short display earlier but this… this was incredible. That her hands shot across the keys and she even leant into each movement slightly emphasizing the notes with her body language and clearly showing that she enjoyed playing just as much as Bon-bon enjoyed watching. And as the song finished and the beautiful piano sounds changed to thunderous applause, so did hundreds of other people watching enjoy it too. As the video ended, related videos popped up on the screen. All of them named ‘some such song Piano Cover by Lyra Heartstrings’ which Bon-bon only just now figured was her friend’s last name. She went to click the first recommended video but instead clicked the second as the movement of her click pushed the mouse to the right slightly. It was still one of Lyra’s covers though. She turned back to Lyra, all smiles to see… to see her crying as she made eye contact with her friend. “Lyra?...” Bon-bon asked as the second song began to play. She only then realised nothing of what she'd thought was going on had actually happened. Her tone of voice hadn’t been embarrassment like she'd thought, but sadness. Her eyes drifted down to her friend’s missing arm for a moment but was quickly pulled back as a loud sob escaped the girl. “Damn it!” Lyra said softly as she turned around in her chair, stood up and then fell face first into her bed. She grabbed a pillow and pulled it into her face, squeezing it tightly with both hands. The act of what she had just done only made her cry even harder into it. A few moments passed before she lifted her head from the pillow and turned back towards Bon-bon. She was standing beside the bed now, one hand to her mouth and the other folded across her stomach in a worried manner. Lyra simply just turned her face back into the pillow. Bon-bon was hesitant to do so, not sure if she’d only make things worse, especially after what’d borderline made fun of her friend a few minutes ago mistakenly but she reached down and put a hand on Lyra’s shoulder. She kept it there for a moment, still not entirely sure what to do before she, while still keeping her hand on Lyra’s shoulder, spun around and sat down on the bed beside her friend. “Is… is there anything I…?” she half asked. “Just… leave me alone.” Lyra responded, her words muffled from not having lifted her head from the pillow to say it. While Bon-bon was inclined to do so and very much wanted to, she couldn’t do that. She’d seen enough TV shows and movies with situations like this to know that she had to stay. She didn’t know what she was going to say or do, but she still had to stay all the same. She remained silent as she sat there, letting Lyra cry. Every so often she’d pat her shoulder while keeping palm stationary. Something she’d never really realised was just how hot another human’s body was as her hand heated up. After about twenty minutes she removed it and placed it down on the bed beside the girl’s arm. That was when Lyra did anything other than have her head buried into a pillow. She turned to barely face Bon-bon and said “Are you leaving now?” “I’m… No, I’m not leaving.” she replied, still not entirely sure what to do. Lyra just turned her head back and buried herself once more into the cushion. Bon-bon wasn’t sure but she swore she heard her mutter ‘Good.’ or ‘Thanks.’ Of course since those two words sounded nothing alike and yet she thought she’d heard one of them, she could’ve just imagined it entirely. “I mean it…” Lyra muttered, though loudly enough to be heard clearly through her pillow before she removed her hand from under it and found Bon-bon’s. She took old of her gently at first, but began to squeeze once Bon-bon accepted the hold. She’d definitely said one of those words. “Don’t mention it…” Bon-bon said happily, repeating what Lyra had said to her the first time she’d helped her out. Lyra had been pseudo-sarcastic in saying it then but Bon-bon didn’t know or care about that. They were words that meant alot to her regardless of the true meaning. Lyra had stopped crying, at least outwardly. There were no sobs or gasps and she’d turned her head slightly to the side, letting her breath easier. She stayed like that, lying on her belly, looking out the side at nothing in particular for what had to have been nearly an hour. But unlike before on her shoulder, Bon-bon didn’t release her hand from Lyra’s own. And neither did Lyra. It was well past the time she was meant to have called her mother to come pick her up and Bon-bon could only assume her phone was dead if her mother hadn’t rung her up in turn yet. “Why won’t you just go away?” Lyra asked without moving in the slightest. It came as a shock to Bon-bon. Both because of its suddenness and the fact that Lyra had been the one to grab her hand. “Well, because… I, don’t think you really want me to. Do you?” There was a long pause. Long enough that Bon-bon was just about to ask another question before Lyra finally answered “I guess you can stay… I guess.” but with more movement than she had before, be it only slight. She turned her head a bit to attempt to make eye contact with her friend, but still not quite enough to properly do so. Bon-bon wasn’t sure it was the best idea but honestly, she’d been here for at least an hour now and despite how much she cared and how worried she was, she was getting a little tired of it. “Come on…” she said softly yet forcefully as she pulled on Lyra’s hand and lifted her out of her pillow. “Stop being so quiet and talk. Didn’t you tell me once you like to cry? It gets it all out right? Well, so does talking about it. You’ve had plenty of your way about by now. What do you say you give my way a try? So, what’s wrong?” Lifted up slightly and turned further on her side, she faced away from Bon-bon at first and once again left a very long pause in the conversation. She sighed and resigned herself to it as she rolled fully onto her back and then pulled herself into a sitting position. “You really can’t guess?” she replied hostilely and waved her stub about. She reached under her and grabbed the pillow from beneath herself, flipping it over her head and onto her back as she scootched up against the wall to lean against it. Bon-bon, shifted herself too so that she was more facing her friend now. “Yeah… I guess I can.” she said, looking away for a brief second before flicking her eyes back to Lyra’s. “It’s just… a little scary to see you like this.” “Pfft…” Lyra retorted, if you could call it that, disregarding her friend’s emotions. No seriously, screw her! “You’re scared? About what? Little bit of reality? What?” she asked callously. “It’s just… you’re normally so happy.” “Hah!” Lyra laughed. “Coming from little miss Bubbles?” “Well, yeah.” Bon-bon replied. Both not exactly understanding the insult and thinking it actually sounded more like a compliment. “You’re usually the happiest person I know. And so… well it’s scary to think that someone like you could actually… be sad ever.” she said with genuine fear in her words. And with those words, Lyra’s anger disappeared entirely. “You… think I’M happy?” to which she received a nod yes in response. It blew her mind. Bon-bon: the poster child for well adjusted, carefree smiles, sunshine and rainbows thought she, LYRA one-arm life-long-dream-lost Heartstrings was happy. “You’re happy! I’m not! How am I happier than you? When are you not?” “Well… sometimes. Not now, but I guess you guessed that much. But… normally, you’re always so much happier than I am. You’re always laughing… even if it’s at my expense sometimes. But you laugh at yourself too. I can’t do that. I… I… I just feel awful when something that you’d laugh about if it happens to you happens to me. And… but when you laugh at me…” “I’m sorry, I didn’-” she began but Bon-bon didn’t stop. “...it’s alright. Because, you laughing, it makes me happy to hear it. Because… you’re always just so much happier than I am ever am.” she said, beginning to lose her own words as she too began to tear up. “I can’t believe it… you, you really think I’m happier than you. It’s like… wow! I, hate, everything… everything! I hate that I can’t balance properly anymore, I hate that I can’t go anywhere without getting stared at I hate that I ca-” “Do you hate me?” Bon-bon asked. She hadn’t been hurt by Lyra’s word but from what Lyra heard, she thought she had been. “No… no I don’t hate you.” she said as she leant forwards and reached for Bon-bon’s hand once more. Then with her stubbed arm, moved the upper half of it in Bon-bon’s direction. “I hate… I hate that I can… I still… I sti....” she scrunched her face and tears began to fall once more. “It’s alright…” Bon-bon said gently. “I can’t balance properly either…” she said, trying to laugh at herself like Lyra would. She pulled Lyra into a hug and let her cry into the side of her head and in turn dropped a few tears onto Lyra as well. “I can feel it.” “I can feel it too…” Bon-bon said happily, completely misunderstanding. “No… no my arm…” she returned as she pulled away from Bon-bon. “I can still feel it! Right now, I can feel it holding your hand. Like, having my fingers interlocked with yours. And I could feel myself grabbing the pillow. Too tight, that pressure you get trying to pull a pillow that’s stuck under you, pushing on the tips of my fingers. And the piano… I, I could feel it! Every single key as I watched the videos. And when I played… I hadn’t played in years and I couldn’t remember why and now I do and it’s horrible! I can feel everything! But I can’t! It’s not real but I can feel it! I did everything I used to and it happened and then you didn’t and I didn’t and everything hit me, just everything and I wasn’t playing and I was and I wasn’t and I just can’t take this and I don’t want to and I can’t and I just can’t do this and I wasn’t doing it and I don’t… don...” Her words grew incomprehensible as she just fell apart, so distraught she couldn’t even speak properly anymore. Bon-bon put the tips of her fingers pointed upward gently over Lyra’s mouth. Tears instantly began to pour over the top of her hand but she still kept it there for a few seconds before she was sure Lyra had stopped. She removed it and slowly pulled the once more heavily crying girl into her arms, hugging her tightly. She understood now what’s she’d done to her friend and just wanted to make things right. She wasn’t sure there was a way to though. Not right now at least. She stayed there, sitting on the bed, shifted to up against the wall like Lyra was, holding onto her as she cried her eyes out. Easily another hour passed before her crying ceased. But it wasn’t because she’d stopped, Lyra had just fallen asleep in her arms. Once again, Bon-bon wasn’t entirely sure what to do in a situation like this, opting to try and just let Lyra sleep. She gently removed her arm from over her friend when Lyra’s arm came up and grabbed hers. Without opening her eyes Lyra muttered “Don’t go…” and leant her head up against Bon-bon’s. Whether she was awake or still half asleep didn’t matter to Bon-bon. She just lay her head against Lyra’s.