Title: Play for Me
Author: Freelance
Summary: "She closes her eyes, blocking out everything but the music, and plays."
Spoilers: Progeny
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters from Medical Investigation. The story, however, is mine.
A/N: My first MI fic. :D So proud. I'd appreciate any comments.
"Play me some more."
She smiles softly and looks down at the ivory keys. "What do you want me to play?"
"Anything you want."
"For how long?"
A soft breath and a cough. She twists around and leaps up. Her mother waves a hand at her before grasping a glass of water. Slowly she sits back on the stool and turns back around.
Her mother sighs. "Play me to sleep, Natalie. Just play me to sleep."
She nods and rests her hands on the smooth, pure keys.
She plays. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. Tchaikovsky, Pachelbel, Haydn. The Beatles, Elton John: her mother has always liked Crocodile Rock.
The music swirls around her, notes tumbling over each other like a gymnast on the bars. She thinks she can hear tears dripping down her mother's cheeks but she doesn't turn to look. She can't.
She plays and she plays and she plays. She plays fast, torrential pieces, raging like a storm. She plays lazy, trickling pieces that flow like a creek on a sunny afternoon.
She feels her father enter the room and sit in the bedside chair. The brown, worn-out chair that has been attached to that part of the floor since the day they found out that her mother was going to die.
She closes her eyes, blocking out everything but the music, and plays. Her fingers dance over the piano, picking out notes then moving onto the next.
She plays for hours. She doesn't realise. For her, time is the beat of the music and there is no way of measuring that.
She would play for longer but her father moves over to her.
"You can stop now, Natalie."
She shakes her head and continues playing.
"Natalie…"
She tries to focus. She tries to keep him out.
"Natalie!"
He grabs her hands and pulls them away from the piano. She struggles against him.
She wants to play. She needs to play. She has to play.
He makes her face him. She freezes and stares at him through tear-filled eyes.
He brushes back her hair. "You can stop, Nat." He looks towards the bed. Her mother is lying still, her eyes closed, her body relaxed. "She's gone now."
She stares at him and slowly nods. He pulls her to him and they sit there, silent.
She never touches a piano again.
