After an exceptionally long hiatus from writing, I was struck with a short that wouldn't leave my mind this morning after listening to Nuvole Bianche played by Ludovico Einaudi. Apologies in advance for any lack of flow or grammatical pratfalls. Credit where credit is due, I own nothing but my own thoughts.
She was often awakened in the half-light of dawn by the soft strains of melody coming from her old piano downstairs. Since they had moved in together she'd caught him playing with increasing frequency, his long, elegant fingers stroking the ebony and ivory, classically trained but with a hint of his own flair. She'd never thought, in all their travels and trials together, the same hands that could so effortlessly and thoughtlessly gun down a monster in battle, those same hands that had, under Chaos' control, rend their foes limb from limb, could so tenderly and skillfully caress the keys of the piano. Though, she was coming to realize, she'd never thought a lot of things about him.
It had been shortly after he moved into the spare bedroom that she first caught him seated at the piano. He had missed the jangling of her keys in the lock, as she arrived home early from her appointment, far too tangled in the passion of his own playing to hear anything save the piano, missed the patter of her footsteps as she snuck to the stairwell and retreated to her room to listen through the floorboards. He had missed that she had returned at all until he spotted her shoes beside his at the back door once more, and she had questioned him bluntly, over a cup of coffee later in that morning, where he had learned to play with such perfection.
His mother had died when he was 9. Some form of cancer, he suspected now, though they had never diagnosed her with it. It was a different time, he'd said, she'd not ever seen a doctor. The piano was the only thing he could truly remember about her, save for the illness and distance. She'd been so detached from him for the final years, a ghost of a woman, too caught in waiting for his absent father's return to pay attention to him, her only child. The only times they had together were the times she sat him in front of their piano, her weakening hands guiding his, and taught him to play.
Once he had been brought into the Turks, he and Lucrecia had played together, she had refined his playing, finished what his mother had started and given him a way to keep his sanity in all the blood and turmoil of being who he was then. It had been his go to—when his fellow colleagues went out drinking to forget the horror, he sat himself in front of the ivories, a glass of whiskey on the key block, and lost himself in the sound.
An affectionate smile graced her features as she listened to him transition into another piece. In a few short moments he would rise from the bench as he did every morning and stride silently into her kitchen to begin making breakfast for them, only the spitting of the griddle and the gurgling of the coffee pot to give him away, and she would wander down in oversized shorts and tee-shirt to greet him.
"Good morning, Vincent. I'm glad you're here."
