Chapter 136: Repose

Mary-Beth hadn’t just decided to ask Niall the question she’d asked him out of the blue, and neither did she feel like he would be able to give her a resolution towards how she felt about it.

Rather, ever since the very first day he’d asked her why she’d been holding back and had backed off without pushing further to leave her to her catacombs, she’d felt some metric of relaxation around him.

That feeling, intensified further after the whole photoshoot incident, one that had already been building up due to their shared time on set.

Simply put, the lady had begun to see Niall as the big brother she never had.

It was also why she’d been seriously contemplating asking him how he’d managed to have such passion towards his work given she was well aware of his time with Goldleaf and all the bullshit he’d had to deal with after he’d left them for Hellion was well-documented on the internet.

However, after the recent murder attempt, she just couldn’t wrap her head around how he managed to keep himself going without so much as a metric of disdain for his career path...

...something that would have very well sealed not just her, but several other individuals from acting for good, she believed.

That, especially, was what had prompted her to go ahead and ask the question nonetheless.

Given how she was also really comfortable around him, she’d been okay with sharing some of her tightly held secrets to really drive home why she was asking such question.

And now, as a bittersweet smile touched Niall’s lips, his hands rubbing the rim of his now empty bottle of water, she listened to him speak;

"You know, acting for me is the one thing I can’t ever give up on,"

"It’s the one thing that if I were ever to lose passion for... it’d feel like someone dug into my heart and placed a gaping hole in its center," he turned to face her briefly and then looked ahead.

"I’ve experienced it at some point before, so I would know, but..." he continued, his voice quieter yet honest.

Pausing for a brief moment, Niall then bobbed his head softly and said, his voice returning to its usual timbre and a deep sense of introspection;

"I think I finally understood something after getting it back."

"Passion’s such a gift and curse, you know?" he chuckled a bit, and Mary-Beth remained silent, listening intently as he continued;

"You choose to care about something so deeply that even when it hurts, even when it scares the daylights out of you, even when the world gives you a hundred reasons to walk away from it..."

"You still choose to reach for it." he said, his gaze settling upon her afterwards as he briefly gestured with a finger;

"And maybe that’s what acting has been for you all this time, Mary-Beth."

"A gift and a curse." he continued with an honest smile that made the lady stiffen.

"Every time you stepped onto a set, you had the gift to become someone else. Someone who wasn’t afraid. Someone who didn’t have to be Mary-Beth Brunhild for a few hours. Maybe it’s why you came back after a couple years of being on hiatus."

"But the problem with hiding inside a character--which perhaps, is where your curse lies..." Niall offered her a faint yet nonetheless bitter smile as he breathed out the next words;

"...is that eventually, you forget that you were never supposed to hide there forever."

Mary-Beth’s lips parted slightly, seemingly as if to say something as the realization dawned on her, only for her to quietly swallow the knot in her throat.

Noticing this, Niall then smiled, genuinely, to which he then said in the most understanding yet assuring tone he could muster;

"But you also have to be able come to terms with accepting yourself, scars and all, Mary-Beth,"

"You’re not that little girl, anymore. The one who was under the thumb of her parents. The one who has to hide to keep herself from getting hurt. The one who always has to act to meet up with whatever version of you people have created inside their heads."

"You can act, just because you want to. It’s as simple as that." Niall reassured her and the lady’s head lowered a bit, her vision blurry as she stared at the ground.

"And if you still hate acting because of everything it reminds you of, then hate the people who took something you once loved and made you associate it with pain... but don’t hate the thing itself,"

"Because acting didn’t hurt you, Mary-Beth," the young star leaned back slightly, his expression becoming gentler as he openheartedly concluded with a palpable fragility to his tone;

"People did,"

"People did." Niall repeated to drive home the point, his voice softer and his gaze drifting into the distance.

Afterall, he wasn’t just talking to Mary-Beth in that moment.

Right now, he was equally using the opportunity to reground himself with a reminder that an attempted murder on his life, wasn’t because he was an actor.

Rather it was because, Adrian Manchester was a pathetic human being who wanted to drive him away from his craft solely because he couldn’t live with his own insecurities.

And if that was the case, he would never allow people like them to win by trying to twist something he loved wholeheartedly into the problem.

Never again.

As for Mary-Beth, Niall’s words had struck her far deeper than she would’ve ever anticipated...

...so much that her palms had tightly gripped the hem of her dress as tears brimmed on her eyelids and spilled down her face.

After a brief while, she managed to choke out a few words whilst wiping her eyes as she raised her head to face Niall;

"And what if... what if I’ve spent my whole life pretending to be everyone except myself that I can’t imagine acting, just because I want to?"

In response to that, Niall placed a hand on her shoulder and said with the warmest of smiles;

"Well then... I guess it’s finally time you figured out who Mary-Beth Brunhild actually is."

"It’s not that easy for me, Niall," she replied, through a rather bittersweet smile whilst sniffling.

"I know," Niall bobbed his head softly in understanding.

"But I’d reckon you’re already starting to figure yourself out as is," he arched his brow knowingly, a light smile tugging on the corners of his lips.

"I mean, why else would you have come to ask me a question like this if you weren’t hoping for something to make you understand yourself better through my own experiences." he added, his smile widening into an assuring grin.

This time, Mary-Beth let out a choked laughter through her tears, a relieved smile settling on her features.

Then she wiped her eyes a few times and then said;

"Thank you, Niall. Thank you... thank you so much."

"Don’t mention it." the young star waved it off with a soft smile.

Then he said;

"You better go get your make-up touched up, though. You’re going to be on in about a minute or two by my estimate."

Chuckling in response to that, Mary-Beth promptly stood up... only to give Niall a hug of appreciation, her eyes tightly shut.

Granted a lot of the crew members on set had watched them conversing thus far, they were rather surprised to see the current interaction between them.

Still, they didn’t read much into it, especially since the expression on their features looked far too friendly to mean anything beyond whatever tabloid bullshit Hollywood press reporters would’ve loved to make out of it.

Gently patting her back in reciprocation though, the young star watched her leave for the dressing room a moment after, finding himself feeling that much more buoyant.

As for Mary-Beth, there was a notable air of repose to the way she walked as she made her way over to the make-up artists and informed them of the need to touch up her face, a liveliness to her they’d honestly never seen thus far with their time together on set.

Much like Niall had estimated though, it really didn’t take long before she was called on set to film the scene she and Johnny were supposed to.

Within the span of thirty minutes afterwards, they’d rounded up their time on set for the day.

And with that, there was only a couple more major scenes they were yet to film. One of Alistair being trapped in Time’s Castle of Eternity till he eventually found his way out.

Then the last fight scene between he and the Knave of Hearts.

After that, they would be mostly done with all the CGI-heavy scenes and then, they could finally move on to the real-life on-set locations for the rest of the movie’s production.

But even that, in its own right, was bound to take them a month and half before they rounded up production and segued into post-production.

Yet, Niall couldn’t help but be excited to film the very scene of him being trapped in Time’s Castle of Eternity.

Afterall, it was the scene that finally gave Alistair full mastery over Chaos magic.