Slapped together at work, and proof I've probably lost it more than usual.

-o-o-o-

Piano keys were his defence.

He came home with memories he could not handle. Thoughts and emotions that were just too much.

His heart led him to save people. But saving those people broke him.

Each time he went out he had to be prepared to see and experience things that he wasn't built to process. Horrors that scarred his mind and tore his soul.

The piano was his saviour.

Gloves cast aside, he would sit covered in grime, desperate to shed what had happened, to repair the unrepairable.

The notes his fingers found were sometimes sour, sometimes dark. The comms room echoed with screams, ran with blood and cried so many tears.

Often his brothers would join him, often fighting their own demons. Scott desperate to help, to ease his pain, to ease his own. A shoulder if it all became too much.

John occasionally would be there to meet him, having watched everything unfold, knowing his brother was hurting. His care was quiet, loving and gentle, felt from afar even if he wasn't there.

Gordon was a bright spark that would bounce into the room and literally light everything on fire. Where John was quiet, Gordon was loud...and much younger. Virgil's resources had to be very poor for him to let go in front of his younger two brothers. Gordon at least was the older of the two, and often Virgil had no choice as the man would poke him until he exploded all over the room.

Alan would sit. He understood the age gap issue. He had it with all his brothers and he knew Virgil couldn't express himself fully, bar smashing piano keys in the disguise of composition. So he would sit quietly and just listen. Let his brother know that at least he could hear what Virgil had to say through his fingers. Be there so Virgil knew he was being heard.

Virgil was the only one who could play the piano. All four of his brothers had learnt, but let the knowledge slip away in preference to more exciting things. Virgil clung to it like a buoy in a storm. Their lives were often chaos, and that piano his saviour. So, in turn, he became the provider of release as well. Where he wasn't the one in pain, he could coax it out of another brother with the right keys.

The day Scott broke down and sobbed on his shoulder hurt as much, if not more, than if he had been the one who had lost the school bus full of children.

John had to be coaxed and occasionally kicked out of his 'bird by his daughter. The right music became the order, the command, the wish, the promise, the knowledge that his brother was waiting for him.

Gordon didn't cry, he exploded. It took a lot to break through the aquanaut's shell, but Virgil had the keys to his heart and he was strong enough to catch him when he broke.

Alan was soft music, not unlike the stars that drew him into the sky. Subtle background noise that eroded at his defences until he would turn and seek his big brothers.

The piano keys were Virgil's defence, for both himself and his brothers. While they could play happy moments, mild moments, and moving moments, it was for the desperate moments that they were needed the most. And his brothers understood it well.

The worst was when the keys fell silent. When Virgil was too injured or too absent to play. Then the family floundered. Recordings were found and lamented. Anger existed in the roving bear of Virgil himself, longing for the keys, but denied the release.

It was usually Scott, occasionally Grandma, who cornered the desperate musician and talked him down from his virtual ledge. Calmed him, held him, reassured both him and themselves that the music would return.

It had to.

That the time of silence would end.

Visitors to the Island, the few there were, would encounter the piano music almost as a background to the wind, sea and birds and wonder why. When asked, Virgil would declare it a hobby, an amusement to pass the time between rescues.

None would know its power.

The power of the keys.

-o-o-o-