A/N: I strongly suggest you listen to Fear Not This Night from Guild Wars 2 while reading this. It is the song that inspired it, and I actually imagine Elliot playing it (a piano version, anyway XP).
~Penelope
Theme: Heart Song
The piano bench creaked as he settled down onto it, the surface a cold jarring of reality through his nightclothes that chased away what remained of the sleep behind his cobalt eyes. He shuddered in the darkness, and set the lamp down atop the grand piano's lid. He watched the warm orange light flicker off the sleek black surface, and smiled slightly, even as he felt the dark circles weighing down his eyes, begging him to go back to bed at this time of night.
The instrument was beautiful. He looked at it as any other man would look at a prize stallion, or his reputable wife. Something more valuable to him than anything else, something precious that he cherished. When all else failed… he still had that piano. Even Leo, as good a friend and servant as he was, couldn't always give Elliot what he needed – peace, quiet, a listening ear, and a willingness to do exactly as he told it. He could never blame it for mistakes, for it was as a mirror, reflecting only what looked into it with a harsh reality that would pierce to the heart of any mortal.
He feathered his fingers over the keys reverently, like one might caress the cheek of a lover. A smile quirked his tired face, and steadied his hands.
He had no notes, no music sheets, nothing. The only time he dared playing like so was when he simply needed to pour his soul out in song.
The nightmares had returned. The awful ones.
He hit an A minor with his left hand, and let the low notes ring through the music room, echo off the walls, come back to send shivers up his spine. The wind howled against the windows like the low drone of an ethereal choir. Closing his eyes, he altered his fingers just the slightest, and let ring another minor chord, already composing a stirring progression to follow.
Once he had found a suitable chorus progression, he began to slowly moving his right hand along the high notes, working out a striding lead that sounded like a hopeless march into battle. Repeating that lead, he poured into it emotion – sorrow, hopeless valor, fear of not knowing what's to come – that soon brought both the lead and the progression to suspenseful crescendo before coming to an abrupt halt.
Still having not opened his eyes, he paused, bringing his fingers back to the starting point, and began again, quiet and careful as a music box. A melody began floating its way through his mind, and with a brief peek at the keys, he slowly tapped it out on the keys.
By the time he finished two verses, he'd already come up with the chorus, and it rolled from his fingers with the grace and power of ocean waves, flooding the room with the rush of its current and filled to the brim with the image of hope, vain hope, fool's hope, even when fire blazes about the innocent, when the blades of villains drip with their blood, and he didn't know why…
He didn't know why…
Grimacing, he kept building, the song climbing ever higher as he fought against the despair of his mind with the hope of his heart. Hope? For what? He shook his head to himself, pressing the keys ever harder.
He didn't know.
He never knew.
And when the hero fell at the villain's hand… The hope paused. It wavered. The song drifted with the trickling of minor notes, like drops of blood on a stone floor…
With a deep breath, he lifted his left hand off the keys, and tentatively played out the melody of the chorus again in the silence of the room. Once around, like the burning of a small, helpless flame after a torrential rain. Against all odds, hope rose once more.
Then it exploded into an all-out blaze once more. Good resisted the evil, and rose up to conquer. The song soared with triumph as Elliot's fingers flew over the keys with the passion that teemed in the deepest recesses of his chest, passion so often squelched, stifled for the sake of his noble name, for the sake of appearance, reputation, out of respect for his family. Passion that he could only truly express… through this.
Music.
The language of his soul.
Again, he brought the song to an abrupt stop, letting the notes vibrate until they were once more silent. A fleeting thought dove down to where he was immersed in the moment to whisper in his ear.
This… would sound wonderful… with a two-part harmony.
Someone sat on the bench beside him, at his left. Without even opening his eyes, he knew who it was. He slid over to give the other room, and then he revisited the chorus with slow, deliberate strokes of his fingers. By the trilling of the high notes, two other hands had joined him.
So he'd been there for a while, then. Elliot smiled to himself. At long last, the song ended with an echo of promised peace and resolution, like a new dawn over a bloody battlefield, reverberating with grief for the lost, and yet hope for victory. A victory nigh at hand…
He opened his eyes. He looked sidelong at Leo, smiled at him. Leo smiled back.
"When did you write that?" the servant asked quietly, voice sounding even softer after the power of the piano notes.
Elliot shrugged. "Just now."
"What do you call it?"
"…Heartsong."
