Title: Sonata
Description: Through the soaring notes of a piano piece love can find each other, even through the greatest of adversity. Eliot/Ada with Vincent/Ada and a whole lot of Reo.
Chapter Title: Allegro
Chapter Description: For the first time the heir of Nightray and Ada Vessalius meet. Eliot's prejudice gets the better of them and one leaves their meeting in tears.
A/N: This has been a brainchild of mine for quite some time, and I'm just glad I could finally get it down on paper (well, a word processor, but it's close enough). Um… Other than that I don't have much to say! I hope you enjoy it. It'll be four chapters long, one for each movement of the sonata, by the way. Oh, and please review! Good reviewers get my everlasting stalk- I mean love. 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Pandora Hearts because if I did Reo wouldn't have had his… incredibly creepy moment in chapter 50.
…
"I came along, I wrote a song for you and all the things you do and it was called yellow."
-'Yellow' by Coldplay
…
Eliot hated to be in his home. He hated returning to that mansion and seeing all of his smiling, old servants and being with the people that he loved. There was nothing worse for him than returning to his childhood bedroom and lying awake in there for hours on end because sleep never came easy, and when it did all it brought were terrors that he was unable to escape from.
School was a relief. When his parents had first told him that he was going to be sent off he had refused; he had told them that he wanted to stay with his mother and his sister and that it was more unsafe for him to be away from his family than staying with them. His father had told him that he should give it a chance; that he would like being away for a while. Eliot disagreed, but was sent off to school, nonetheless.
Eliot wanted to hate it; he tried his best to hate the cheerful hallways and libraries full of books, but he could not. For a few weeks he walked through the buildings with tears brimming his eyes at all times and loathing every minute, every moment that he was forced to walk through that institution. Then he found the room with the pianos, and everything changed.
Suddenly school was like being on vacation; he could feed his mind and not have to worry about the stresses of being a Nightray. There were no fancy parties to worry about and no headhunter on the loose. For the first time in his life, Eliot could just focus on what he wanted to do, rather than what was expected of him.
He knew how to play the piano, but all he ever played were the select pieces and exercises that his instructors thought were proper. The music was all gorgeous and the best that was composed at the time, but he never chose.
That was why, when he first found the room with pianos, he set his fingers down on the keys and began to play the song in his mind, rather than what was written out for him on the paper.
…
"Ah!" And for the third time that day, Ada Bezarius trips over her own two feet and drops one of her books in the shuffle.
Around her the girls who she is friends with all giggle. Her clumsiness is endearing; it is one of the things that make Ada who she is. "Here, Ada." One of them, a brunette who is a year older than her, says to Ada as she picks up the book that her friend dropped.
Ada blushes a deep red and the girls all continue to laugh. She tries to giggle, but has difficulties keeping up with the rest of them. They mean well; she knows that, but it doesn't mean that she appreciates being laughed at for her clumsiness. It wasn't something that she could really control. She had just been that way her entire life.
"Anyways," The brunette one says as they all return to their normal walking. "Have you heard the news?" She asks the group of twittering girls.
"What news?" A redhead asks, her green eyes shining with anticipation of the gossip. "It couldn't be better than what we heard last week!"
What they had heard last week was nothing compared to the massive news that the brunette knew.
"It's even better than hearing about Duke Barma's drunkenness!" The brunette says and all of the girls, Ada included, now laugh at the story that they had heard the week before. It was fictitious, of course, the nasty rumor spread by a scorned woman whom he had lead on, but it was still one of the more amusing things that they had heard recently. Soon, however, they all quiet down, eager to hear what she has to say. "I hear that the youngest Nightray son and his servant are coming here for school!" She says, but no one laughs.
All heads turn to Ada. "Isn't that the household that hates you, Ada?" A kind blonde girl asks her, not meaning any harm at all, more concerned for her friend's safety, both mentally and physically, than anything else.
Ada shrugs, but she knows that what the girl wondered was true. The Nightrays did hate her, and she didn't know why. An old rivalry from days long since past was no reason to have vendettas against innocent people; it was a cowardly excuse for a pathetic way of life that only hurt everyone involved, in the end. It was horrible, being hated for no real reason, especially when that was the adoptive family of Gilbert and… Vincent. Yes, it was hard to be hated by the family that Vincent was part of, most of all. Ada looks down and her friends notice that she is hurt; they quickly change the subject, wanting to continue seeing Ada smile.
"Never mind it, then." The brunette says, a bit sorry that she hadn't remembered Ada's family situation. "I'm sure he's just a stuck-up prick; that's what I've heard about him, anyway. Apparently all he does is sit in his house with that servant and mope. He almost never goes out in public."
The girls all nodded in agreement. Few of them had met the boy –he had not yet been introduced into society- but they all heard rumors of the cold, self-centered Nightray child. Their hearts went out to him for the tragic deaths of his family, especially the deaths of his more attractive brothers, but none of them thought that they would be able to stand the boy, especially if he was cruel to their cute, little Ada.
"No, no, no!" Ada says, waving her arms in front of her frantically. "I'm sure that he's a fine person; we shouldn't think that way of him before getting to know him!"
As her face was turned to her friends, she did not notice the boy that was walking towards her with a huge pile of books until they made contact, both of them sprawled on the floor with his books all around them.
"Ada, you klutz!" The blonde says and the girls all laugh. "Catch up to us later!" They all run off leaving Ada behind with the boy, almost glad for the diversion. Ada was a sweet girl, but they no longer wanted to tip toe around her problems. Gossip was all they had and they wanted to do it the right way.
Frenzied, Ada starts to pick up the boy's books. "Sorry!" She says quickly as she begins to pile them up in between the two of them. "I'm so sorry!" Near to tears, she grabs all of the books she can and stacks them up, only to have them fall once the heap began to get too tall. "I'm so sorry!" She repeats again, using her arms to drag all of the books together in one pile.
The boy smiles and pushes his glasses up on his nose. "Don't worry about it, no harm done," He says as he grabs the books and puts them into a stack, this time with the larger ones on bottom and smaller ones on top so that they won't topple over. Ada blushes red, wishing that she had thought of doing the same thing. Sometimes she thinks that she's the most stupid and clumsy girl in the world.
"No really! I'm so sorry!" She says as she stands up. She knows she needs to find a way to make this up to him; he was probably in a rush somewhere and she must have really been a burden to him. That was unforgivable. "Let me help you carry those to wherever you were going," Before he can even get up, she's grabbed half of the books, making his stack quite smaller and his burden much lighter.
"If you'd be willing." He asks and she nods with great enthusiasm, happy for the help. "Then follow me."
The two of them walk in silence for a minute, Ada too embarrassed to say anything and the boy just content. "I'm Reo," He says realizing that she probably feels uncomfortable. "I just started going here with my employer."
"Employer?" Ada asks, confused.
The boy chuckles. "Yes, I'm his servant. But I get a top-class education out of it. That's pretty great."
"It is!" She says, then blushes remembering that she never introduced herself. "My name is Ada Vessalius."
The boy trips a little in his step, nearly dropping his books. Before Ada can ask him if he's alright, he turns to her. "You mean, Ada Vessalius from the Vessalius dukedom?" She nods her head. He forces a smile. "You know, it's a long walk from here to where we're going. If you don't want to go it's really-"
"No!" Ada says a bit too loudly, causing the few people who didn't have classes and were spending some time in the hallway to look her way. Noticing that, she lowers her voice. "Don't think that because I'm the daughter of a duke I would be insulted by helping someone who I knocked over!" Tears are nearly brimming her eyes. "I did something bad and I need to apologize."
He smiles. "All right, I just thought I would make sure," The truth was, he knew that she was willing and perfectly capable of helping him out. The reason that he didn't want her to follow him was much different than that.
…
He fiercely scribbles a few unrecognizable things onto a page lined with music staffs on the stand next to his piano stool, then turns back to the instrument itself, grabbing the music off of the stand and putting it on the piano for him to read off of. Gingerly he places his hands on the keys, like if he were touching a child. An instrument was a gift from God; nothing was more important or beautiful than a tool that he could produce music from. He had always felt that it needed to be treated with the tenderest care of all things.
Taking a deep breath, he presses his middle finger down upon middle C, producing a perfectly in-tune note. He exhales; this is what he lives for. His hands are positioned and ready on the keys, and he begins.
As he plays the beginning of his composition he notices that something is lacking in the music that he has composed. The piece itself is a sonata, a piece in four movements. The past night he had stayed up until three am composing the first movement, an allegro named Meeting. Now he was ferociously working on the second movement, an adagio that did not yet have a title or any spirit, apparently.
The problem was that it was lacking something, and he did not know what it was he could do to change the situation. What the piece was missing was soul; the allegro had something behind it, an emotional power, whereas this adagio was dull and lifeless. He felt like swearing.
Shaking his head, he throws the music for his adagio on the floor and picks up the allegro from the stand. He begins to play that, shutting his eyes for the music that he had written was almost already completely memorized by him already, so he was able to lose himself within the melodies that he had created.
An allegro is a fast movement; a happy movement. It is the beginning, what the listener hears first. The allegro grabs the audience and sucks them in, entrancing them in the notes of the piece and keeping them glued to the pianist's movements for the rest of the piece. He loved Meeting and how it flowed. He was angry that he could not get the adagio to behave, but the soaring melody of the allegro calmed him.
The door opens, but he doesn't notice, nor care, to fixated on the piece that he was playing.
"Set the music down on the other stand, Reo," He says absently as his fingers continue to traverse the keys with a skill that only the truly dedicated could ever hope to possess. "And bring those books over here."
Reo nudges Ada and points over to the piano. "You heard the man," He says with a smile that Ada returns to him, her green eyes sparkling, though not from Reo, but from the music that she was listening to.
She is already lost in the song; it's lovely, probably one of the most lovely pieces of music that she had ever listened to in her life. The melody soared and flew around her, a happy air in the coldness that had been her life up until that moment. Something that had been missing in her life a few moments ago was now returned, though she had no clue what. As she walked over, she shut her eyes, letting the music take her over, make her feel, making her remember emotions that she had buried beneath her skin and letting the happiness that she had been hiding warm her soul once again without regret.
That was when she tripped.
It wasn't even a big fall; she managed to stay upright, even. Still, one of the heavy tomes that she was carrying fell to the floor with a clunk. The music stopped abruptly and for the first time Eliot's focus was pulled away from the piano and towards Ada, his head popping up over the piano in almost a comical fashion.
"Who are you?" He asks, looking from her to Reo and back again. "And who let you in?"
Reo walks over to Eliot. "We bumped into each other in the hall and she offered to help carry the books you wanted-"
"I'm really sorry!" Ada says, picking up the book and then bowing in apology, only to make two more fall to the ground. Eliot rolls his eyes as she picks them back up. "I-I'll leave immediately!"
Eliot shrugs. "Don't bother," He looks down at the piano and then back up at her again. "Did you like the song?" There's a little red on his face, so he turns a bit to try to hide the blush. He hadn't wanted anyone but Reo to hear him play, especially since it was a new piece. It was embarrassing to be so exposed as to have someone he didn't know listening to a work in progress. But it was his own fault for not noticing the girl and if she was here she probably had an opinion and maybe something constructive to say about the piece that may help it. His pride was less important than the music; this was the one area in which he would listen to someone else to improve himself.
Ada's worries fade away and her eyes begin to twinkle once again. "It was beautiful," She says. "I've never head anything like it…" Eliot snorts and rolls his eyes once again. "What?" Ada asks, confused, wondering why he didn't seem as entranced with the music as she did, despite the fact that he was its creator.
"The ritardando in the second ending of measure thirty doesn't fit at all and the chords in measure one-oh-seven are all wrong," He sighs and looks down at the music. "This is far from being something memorable." He mumbles, then after being lost in his thought for a moment, looks back up at Ada, his eyes narrowed. "Who are you, again?" He asks, realizing that he had never learned this girl's name.
She smiles. "My name is," Reo winces next to Eliot, praying that she only gives her first name so that maybe Eliot wouldn't put two and two together. "Ada Vessalius, and you-"
Eliot stands up, staring at her. "Get out," He says, eyes as cold as ice, his voice a shard flung right at Ada's head with as much menace as he could muster.
"Eliot-" Reo says from next to him, but the boy puts a hand in front of Reo, ordering him to stop. Smiling feebly and apologetically at Ada, he takes a step back.
"What are you talking about?" Ada asks. Eliot stares at her so coldly that she turns to Reo, hoping for some sort of an explanation as to why this boy hates her so much with only knowing her name. It couldn't be that he was…
Guilty, Reo looks down at his feet. "Miss Ada, this is my employer, Eliot Nightray, heir to the Nightray dukedom," Eliot straightens up at the mention of his name, but his eyes remain locked on Ada, the fierce intensity of hatred within them frightening and chilling her to the core. "He and I are both in our first year here. It's our pleasure to meet you."
Ada tries to smile. "I'm also pleased to meet you too, Eli-"
"Just get out of here!" Eliot yells, knocking down the music stand that was next to his piano bench, sending pages of paper flying around him, landing all over the place. "You Vessalius piece of shit! Get out of my sight, you filth!"
"Eliot, you're being childish," Reo says, shaking his head and walking over to Ada. "It's probably best if you leave now; thank you very much for helping me with the books. You have my gratitude." He takes her hand, shakes it, and smiles.
Though she's a bit shell-shocked, Ada manages to shake his hand back and give forth a meager smile, nothing like the one that she wore when she was listening to Eliot's song. The fact that such a beautiful piece of music could come from such a cold person made Ada feel more alone and sad than she had in years; in fact, she hadn't felt this full of despair since her brother had been thrown into the Abyss. She felt like crying, she was so upset. "I'm happy to have met you, Reo. We'll-"
Suddenly Reo jerks back, his hand wrenched from Ada's; Eliot had grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him away. "Can you not understand what I say, you moron?" Eliot yells at her, his voice more breathy than loud. "Get out of here, now!" He's almost sweating, he's so angry, and his grip on Reo's coat makes his knuckles turn white. In his voice there is almost a sense of fear and urgency. There is nothing in this world he hates more than the Vessalius dukedom and will make that known to this girl, even if her only crime is being part of that heinous family.
A few tears sprinkle down Ada's cheeks; she doesn't even reach a hand up to her face to catch them she is so flabbergasted.
"Now you've done it," Reo says, not even struggling to get away from his master, just speaking plainly from his grip. "Apologize, Eliot. You're in the wrong, here."
Eliot lets go of Reo and walks back to the piano. "Just go." He says, facing out of a window that was behind the instrument. Ada turns to Reo and the boy nods; she leaves, knowing that she never wants to go back in there.
…
"There's music from the room with the pianos for the first time in forever! It's wonderful." Says the redhead, her eyes sparkling. She had spotted Eliot a week ago and in record time she had learned Eliot Nightray's schedule, preferences and habits and because of this she had the happy coincidence of running into him every day after all of his classes. Stalking was a mean term, but all of her friends knew that it was the appropriate way to describe what she had been doing, not that any of them were much better when it came to the tortured musical genius, Eliot Nightray. "And the songs are so pretty; I've never heard any of them before, either. Do you think that he writes his own music?"
Ada knows that he writes his own music, but she's not going to go mentioning that. It had been ten days since she had encountered him in the piano room and she had little contact with him since then. Honestly, she couldn't say that she was disappointed about that, either. Never before had someone been so rude to her for no reason. Just thinking about it made her want to tear up.
"That's what I hear," Says the brunette, whose type of man is much more like Eliot's bookworm servant. Every time she saw Reo in the hallway her face would turn red and she would do whatever she could to get his attention, if only for a moment. "He composes it by himself when he's not busy with classes. That's why he's always in there, even when there's not much music coming out."
"He's so dreamy!" Says the blonde, causing the group of girls, again sans Ada, to break out into happy giggles, playing out their fantasies of having him write them a song and play it in their honor before he proposed and they got to add their names to that of a dukedom. All of these were unrealistic dreams, but thoughts they had, nonetheless. They were teenage girls and their minds were still full of imagination and were not yet cynical.
As if on cue, Eliot himself and Reo walk by, Eliot walking fast with Reo looking as if he were struggling to keep up as he held a great deal of sheet music in his hands. The redhead waves at Eliot, which he ignores and the brunette tries to catch Reo's eye.
It's not the brunette's eye that Reo tries to catch. "Good morning, Miss Ada!" He says cheerfully. Eliot speeds up even more and Reo has to run to catch-up, beginning to chastise Eliot as soon as he gets in pace once again.
All of the girls turn to Ada, angry that she hadn't told them that she knew the two of them so well, but when they turn she's already begun walking down the hallway, the opposite way from Eliot Nightray.
When she gets to her classroom her teacher passes her a flyer at the door with a smile. Her eyes traveled along the words of the piece of paper. It told her that in one week there would be a school-wide trip and that all who would like to could attend. Ada smiled; there was now something to be excited for. The chance to go skiing with her friends would be wonderful. She walked to her seat with a new spring in her step.
In another classroom Eliot receives the same flyer and glances at it with a grimace.
"Are you going to go?" Reo asks him, interested.
"Do you want to?" Eliot asks, knowing that his servant has probably never been skiing before. Reo shrugs, although a small smile tugs at his lips; Eliot knows that he wants to go. "Then maybe I'll go. At least it'll give me something to look forward to in this crappy school."
Reo nods in agreement. "It's always nice to have something to keep you going," He says, taking his seat. "And I'm sure that it'll be a good chance for you to make some new friends, too." Eliot rolls his eyes and their teacher walks up to the front of the classroom and another day of school begins.
…
End of Chapter One
