Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, just dozens upon dozens of DVDs.
AN: This takes place after Enemy at the Gate, and therefore may be a bit spoilerish.
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Forte:
n. A strong point, as of a person; that in which one excels.
adv. & adj. (Music) A direction to play loudly; strongly; with vehemence. From the Latin fortis, meaning strong.
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Jeannie winced as a particularly dissonant chord once again came tumbling over the air to clash in her ears. Leaning back to peer around the doorframe, she spotted the tiny pianist, forehead down, pressing it into the piano's keys repeatedly. Slam, slam, slam, came the crushing sound of notes never meant to share existence at the same time.
"Okay, okay, OKAY!" she called, having to raise her voice to be heard over the cacophony.
From her place at the counter where she was chopping vegetables, Jeannie gestured at her brother with the chef's knife before pointing in the general direction of the child and the piano in the other room. "Do you mind?"
"Hm?" he questioned absently, speaking around a bite of apple pie. "No, not at all."
Jeannie waited for further response from her brother, but Rodney simply continued eating despite the raucous noise coming from the piano.
"Mer."
"What."
"Do you mind giving her a hand? The recital is next weekend. She's feeling very nervous."
"Oh. Oh! I thought you meant, 'Do you mind the noise.' I don't mind the noise. Not really, anyway. Another ten minutes of that, though --" he winced, "-- and I'll have a headache." Rodney gestured briefly to the temples of his head and leaned in to pick up his fork again, settling himself more comfortably into his seat at the table.
"Meredith."
"Hm?" He raised his gaze from the slice of pie once more, finally meeting Jeannie's eyes as the disharmony from the living room trailed away.
Jeannie's arm was still outstretched toward the living room, knife in hand. She raised her eyebrows at her brother, expressing the request again, silently.
"Oh. Yes. Right. I'll just …" Rodney waved the fork erratically before tossing it down on the plate where it clattered noisily, almost obscuring his loud sigh.
Rodney stood and gave the pie a final, longing glance before leaving the kitchen.
Jeannie went back to chopping and began assembling the ingredients, dropping the vegetables into the large pan of fava beans and placing it onto the stovetop to simmer.
It was bizarre having Meredith -- Rodney -- home for a visit. Now that Atlantis was here in the Milky Way galaxy (at least temporarily, because as Jeannie understood it, the arguments in Washington on that subject continued to this day), her brother was free to drop in on his extended family on the weekends.
Jeannie shook her head distractedly as she stirred the succotash. The man still had friends in high places. Every visit began with Rodney appearing from one of the ships in orbit via a flash of light and the Asgard transporters. Jeannie wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it for herself -- the friendship factor, not the mode of transportation. A few short years ago, the word "friend" and "brother" would have never even appeared the same sentence as Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay.
She'd gone years without speaking to the man. He'd had to travel to Russia for work and had been away for an entire year before she even knew he'd been gone. Jeannie closed her eyes briefly as she came to the realization that if he had ever died, she most likely would have read about it in the obituary section of the newspaper as a stranger.
She listened. The rude smashing of keys in the living room had ceased, but Jeannie didn't hear any forthcoming kind notes either, and she peeked into the room to see what, if any, progress Rodney had made.
Wiping her damp fingertips on a dish cloth, the sight before her came as a surprise. Rodney had commandeered the broad black piano bench but had little Madison balanced carefully on one knee.
"You have to be very careful of the finish on these," he was explaining in a low voice. He ran a reverent finger across the gloss-black surface of the baby grand piano, leaning in to murmur conspiratorially in the little girl's ear. "This is a true black lacquer finish. Nitrocellulose, not an acrylic or polyurethane. Hand-rubbed. You can't get this kind of finish anymore … well, not in any civilized countries. You'd have to travel to someplace like -- like China or Korea. Somewhere without laws to protect workers from toxic conditions."
Rodney raised his eyebrows before concluding dramatically, "People probably died of some rare lung disease after making this piano for you."
Jeannie's daughter was nodding now, her eyes widened with awe, and she trailed a tiny finger along a highly polished edge.
The piano was an antique, one inherited from Grandma Miller when she passed away. Jeannie had never learned to play; her husband was the one with all of the musical talent. She liked to joke that he was the yin to her yang -- using only the creative parts of his brain, while hers held court with all of the technical pieces. Left brain, right brain and all that.
"Find middle C," her brother was saying. He halted Madison with a, "No-no-no, not like that," when the girl's head dipped as she visually looked for the key and reached out a small thumb to press it. "Close your eyes," he whispered, placing his hand atop hers to guide it.
He trailed her fingertips slowly across the black keys, allowing her to feel the staccato rhythm of their placement. Trio, duo, trio, duo. They all came in raised sets of twos and threes.
"These two here, in the middle -- are your eyes still closed?" he interrupted himself to ask, continuing at the small girl's nod. "These two. Place your first two fingers there, and now pull back until your thumb settles on the white key … there."
They pressed down together, and the sound of the middle C rang out solidly in the room. Rodney removed his hand from Madison's and asked her to do it again.
"Middle C is always there. Use the black keys to find it." He looked satisfied as the child showed him for a third and fourth time she could find middle C with her eyes closed. "I can't believe your instructor never showed you how to do that," he muttered with a huff.
"Missus Eustace just yells at me when I get it wrong," came the tiny voice. Madison continued in a high and squeaky, mocking voice, "No, no C sharp, C sharp!"
Jeannie smothered her laughter at the look of horror flitting across her older brother's face at his niece's impression of the elderly piano teacher.
"Mrs. Eustace?!" he squeaked out. "That old crank is still alive?"
A peal of laughter rang out in the room from Madison at Rodney's protestations that his own first piano teacher was still alive and well.
"Well, it's no wonder you're not catching on. That woman has the instructive ability of a -- a -- a fruitbat."
Jeannie kept quiet, turning back into the kitchen, ignoring the impulse to point out that until this very moment, she would have thought the same of him -- the brother whom had almost nothing to say to her as a child other than, "You're going about that all wrong," and "Here, here, let me."
Meredith had continually been quick to criticize and had always had zero patience for those who knew less than him. Jeannie had lost count of the number of times he had pushed her out of the way, taking over for her in a game or conversation.
She vividly remembered the one time he'd tried to teach her to play chess: tiny Jeannie had ended up sitting quietly in the chair, hands folded, as Meredith had played her side of the board in addition to his own, forbidding her from touching the pieces because she had no concept of strategy or foresight.
She'd gone into astrophysics in part because of the disconnect between herself and her brother, pushing herself to master more and more of the subject, trying to be seen as an equal in his eyes, hoping she could finally -- just once -- hold a conversation with the man and have him meet her eyes and listen.
It hadn't worked. And her abandonment of research in the field in order to live life and have a family had only served to solidify the gap between the two siblings. They'd lost years of each others' lives before finally being brought back into contact by the Atlantis project.
Pulling bread from the oven, Jeannie leaned in and sniffed deeply, the steamy aroma of the fresh-baked loaf warming her mood. The cheerful and melodic sound of scales filled the house, and she hummed along, occasionally singing softly as she worked in the kitchen.
"Do, re, mi …" Setting the bread to cool on a rack, Jeannie pulled the pan from the stove and placed it at the table along with three place-settings, heading to the door so she could call her brother and daughter to dinner. Instead, she found herself pausing, leaning against the doorway, watching her daughter's tiny fingers as they moved gracefully across the keys.
"Nice," Rodney praised at the end of the set. One hand patted the knee of the little girl in his lap, the other hand was outstretched, pointing to the sheet of music in front of them. "And this?"
"Mezzo forte," came the small voice, clearly and proudly. "Medium loud."
"Right." The smiling uncle leaned in close to Madison's ear and spoke softly. "Can I tell you a secret? One the blue-haired witch will never share?"
The little girl nodded, her head brushing against Rodney's cheek as they both gazed at the music on the page. Hanging on her uncle's every word, she waited expectantly.
"It doesn't matter what this paper says," he said, sotto voce, still pointing to the page. "It has taken me a -- a -- an entire lifetime to figure this out, but it truly doesn't matter. All that matters is what you feel, in here." He brought his hand in to tap gently at Madison's breastbone, over her heart. "What you feel inside is what brings the music to life.
"Listen."
Rodney shuffled through the sheet music, eyes scanning the notes rapidly as he discarded page after page before settling for a single classical melody.
He began to play, Madison seated squarely between his elbows, her head tilted to the side so Rodney could see the music. At first Jeannie's brother followed each note with his eyes, getting a feel for the piece, note after note flowing from under his fingertips with perfection.
He quickly found the rhythm of the piece, his right foot working regularly, heel to the floor, toe expertly depressing the pedals, alternately softening the blow of one note before sustaining the flow of another. His fingers skipped lightly over the keys.
Music poured from the piano, expertly and impeccably wrought, and Jeannie heard it gradually warming as Rodney reached the refrain. As he moved to play through the piece again, her eyes came up to her brother's face and she was surprised to see his eyes had closed, his head tilted slightly to the side, lips parted as he concentrated on the song.
Madison leaned back, relaxed, her eyes shutting in admiration as she absorbed the melody coming from beneath the piano lid.
The third time through the piece, Rodney's upper body began to sway gently with the flow of the tune as his fingers danced over the keys, rocking his niece in a fatherly way where she lay against his chest. The music began to take on a decidedly melancholic air as he shaped the song into a creation of his own making -- both emotive and tender at each lingering chord.
The scientist in Meredith dissolved away before Jeannie's eyes as he lost himself in the music. He played on and on, expressing incredible devastation and desolation, the tension in the arrangement's melody slowly giving way to a sweeping crescendo that brought with it an overwhelming sense of lightness and joy.
Rodney gradually brought the song back to the original melody, while playing it more slowly than the composer had written. Lovingly drawing out each and every note, his fingers meeting each of the sleek keys like an old friend, left hand sustaining the final harmony while the right danced out a closing cascade of poignant chords.
As the resonance of the last note died away, a silent stillness came upon the room and Jeannie watched her daughter and brother open their blue eyes slowly and simultaneously.
"See?" Rodney asked. He cleared his throat gently, swallowing for a moment before tilting his head to get a good view of Madison's face. "Always listen to your heart, okay?" he said, meeting her eyes carefully -- his voice softer and more tender than Jeannie had ever heard.
The tiny girl gazed at her uncle adoringly, nodding, and Jeannie found herself having to turn away and move back into the kitchen to wipe at the tear escaping from the corner of her eye.
Sniffing quickly, she closed her eyes to clear their tears, turning in time to see Madison and Meredith come walking through the kitchen door, hand in hand.
Jeannie met their smiles with a warm one of her own, hoping her eyes weren't still shining with tears.
"Dinner's on, Mer. Can you stay?"