#((i think randall assumed he would live and die in the opera house; never to leave it again; and i think to a point he was okay with that))

[theheadlessgroom]

https://www.tumblr.com/beatingheart-bride/709860458159570944/theheadlessgroom-beatingheart-bride

@beatingheart-bride

“What indeed...” Randall murmured, as he peered out at the orchestra, listening to the gentle hum of the instruments as they warmed up with a little smile, loving the sound as he offered Emily a seat beside him (it felt odd to have someone else sit in Box Five with him, but he welcomed it all the same), before adding, “And what is a life without passion?”

To him, it was no life at all: It had been a long time since his boyhood in the circus, but still he remembered those mind-numbing days that seemed to blur together for him. Those days spent sitting in a cage, reliving the same nightmare over and over again, listening to the same introduction, before his mask was wrenched off his face...he heard the same screams, jeers, mockeries again and again...he’d go to sleep, and then live the horror all over again. It was no life, just a never-ending hell.

But then he came to the opera house, and when he did, it felt...it felt as if he had long been trapped in a colorless, mute, dead world, only to then find himself in a beautiful world of light and color and music, a world that was alive...it filled with an energy and a passion he had never known until that moment, making him feel as if he had been somehow reborn. It awed him to think so, and it made him grateful that he chose this to be his sanctuary-this world, that gave him life at last.

“It feels,” he confessed softly, “It feels as if I wasn’t even living until I came to the opera. But now that I am here...I feel more alive than I ever did before, and it’s... ...it’s wonderful...”