6/12/14

Ivories

part one
serendipity

—only instance where one genius discloses to us...what is heard in the work of another—

[chapter two / fantaisie-impromptu]

Elsa had never quite understood the allure of roller coasters.

She'd end up sitting in a tiny car that would be enough to make a claustrophobic scream, with a very uncomfortable metal bar shoved flat against her hips that may or may not fail at any given point in the ride and send her hurtling to the ground up from a hundred feet in the air. There was also the matter of upset stomachs, an issue that she only knew too well of. The last time she had gone on a roller coaster was in Hershey Park, in America's Pennsylvania. She went with her cousin Rapunzel and her boyfriend, Flynn—both of whom lived in the Keystone State—and said boyfriend had lost it halfway through Fahrenheit on one of those upside-down loops. Rapunzel was laughing her head off while simultaneously screaming and Elsa was feeling quite sympathetic toward poor old Aunt Agnes when a dangerous projectile, otherwise known as cotton-candy-colored puke, made a beeline to land on her shoes.

It was truly the feeling of her stomach rebelling and apparently trying to force itself up her esophagus that she hated, and Elsa stopped going onto roller coasters after she began to regularly attend competitions. Certainly, it was partially due to lack of time, and she rarely ever saw Rapunzel or Flynn nowadays. But she also didn't want to experience that feeling more than she had to, because it hit her every damn time without fail before some big event she would be required to play at—such as this moment. She thought that she'd be able to conquer the fear over time, but evidently, it'd never gone away.

So she turned to medication. Her father had suggested it at first, but he thought now that she had long since gone off of them. Elsa didn't tell her father about the bitter, orange, stupid, hexagonal shaped pills she was still taking. She usually took one of them before a performance, and struggled to choke the vile thing down with water. It was revolting and embarrassing and quite frankly, she felt a little ashamed for taking them—honestly, how many concert pianists were there who took anti-anxiety pills before a performance? (Oh, that's right, none)—but after that enormous fiasco in her first big concert performance, she didn't want to take any risks.

She had been twelve, winner of her division on some small-scale England competition, and was playing Copland's Cat and the Mouse. It was quite the speedy piece; her fingers practically dashed themselves across the keys whenever she played it. It had been based upon some French author's fable, Le vieux chat et la jeune souris, and always brought into her mind those two cartoon characters Tom and Jerry.

This particular performance, it had started out well enough, until she hit the wrong note, somewhere in the sixth measure.

Elsa hated hitting wrong notes.

Everyone hated hitting wrong notes; especially during such an imperative concert, she was sure. But she, in particular, grew extremely flustered by her slipping fingers. Once she made a mistake, she tended to make another, and then another, and soon an unstoppable string of fumbled notes and stilted rhythms would begin to emerge in her playing. It happened no matter how hard she struggled to gather herself together again, no matter how hard she concentrated. And it frustrated her to no end.

It was only human nature, she tried to reason with herself (and failed miserably at that), that once she made a mistake she would be somewhat distracted by it for the rest of the piece. Her trouble with piano performance laid not in her technical aptitude, nor her musicality—in fact, this was what she considered was her greatest strength—but it was in her embarrassing, absolute incompetence to control her nerves onstage without backhand assistance.

Every time she thought she had her nerves under control while she was prepping backstage, they returned with a roaring vengeance as soon as she trotted out into the spotlight. She'd be brilliant for about the five seconds she hitched a demure, practiced smile onto her face, bowed, walked to the piano, and put her hands on the keys—and then maybe she wouldn't mess up until halfway through the piece, but maybe she'd mess up on the first measure. It haunted her every touch, every breath; she knew that she should not be concentrating on worrying over whether she would make a mistake or not, but simply on every measure, every note and telling herself—knowing—that she would not screw herself over. Alas, her thoughts drifted to that every single darn time, and it was becoming quite a major problem. Her father was beyond furious, he was besides himself—and he knew perfectly well what was troubling Elsa so greatly during the concerts, but for all his pushing and shoving and shouting, he couldn't change Elsa's most primal, basic worries and fears. All he could do was reiterate again and again what Elsa already knew—while performing, do not worry about making a mistake, and if you do, simply move on past it—and hope that something would just click into place.

And for a while, it never did. She started fretting, started losing interest in the piano. Started growing disenchanted. She couldn't love what she was doing when she made mistakes whenever she performed in public, it just couldn't happen. She couldn't love what she was doing if she screwed herself over half the time she played. Elsa hated the feeling, but it was becoming rooted inside her core, a malign parasite sucking her dry of all the passion she used to have for the piano.

The doctor prescribed her medication a mere two weeks after the disaster with Cat and the Mouse, and Elsa suspected it was highly due to her father's prodding as well. He told her to take a dose every time before she went out on stage, in hopes that it would calm her down somewhat.

And it did. The pill tempered her fear, if only artificially and temporarily. It reduced the feeling of sharp crystals of ice running through her veins, the poison clutching desperately at her chest, at her heart.

But however much relief it brought, Elsa was still slightly ashamed to have taken it. It didn't matter she had been on the medication for almost six years and counting now—gods only knew why Elsa hadn't developed much of a tolerance to the drug already—but, and she always thought to herself on those gray and rainy days, why do I have to depend on a fucking pill to get me through a concert? Why can't I be like a normal person and learn to control my fear and play just as well as when I am on medication—?

And the fact remained, that a pill was only a pill. It couldn't bring back the love she had for the piano, the kind she had before her mother died. It couldn't bring back all of her passion for playing, couldn't bring back what had been lost into the void. She wanted to love the piano, wanted to love what she knew she would end up doing for a living—and she did. She did love the piano, but it wasn't as hot of a fire as it was before. Wasn't quite as strong.

Those were the times when Elsa wanted to seize her hair and pull those beautiful white-blonde strands right out of their follicles. Her dependence on a single, tiny orange pill frustrated her to no end. But she knew, resignedly, that she would not be able to perform at her prime without them.

Although that didn't stop her from trying to find another way.

—

Arendelle Concert Hall was about as extravagant as Anna had ever seen it. Midnight-black velvet draperies with flashing golden tassels hung like a funeral shroud in the back, covering the back stage from any prying eyes. The stage itself was made of huge, golden-brown slabs of polished hickory and strangely enough, a base of mottled black granite.

She had only been here once before, for the only competition she had ever attended, and that was when she was nine. Back then, everything had seemed so grand, so beautiful, so fancy. Arendelle Hall was as awe-inducing as it ever was, but its beautifully carved arches seemed a bit too over-the-top. The golden lights illuminating the area was too bright, the glass chandelier too...sparkly. Maybe glamorous was the right word. Although, Anna wasn't really upset by that. She liked sparkles.

Mother had apparently managed to secure prime tickets to Elsa Vinters's concert, and they were right up in the second row to the front: Anna's parents, Marshall, and Anna herself. The piano—a Steinway grand, Model D, as Marshall had so kindly informed her, and it was apparently the best piano there was in its class if not the whole world—loomed above them, a great black behemoth of a thing sitting patiently on the stage and simply waiting for someone to start playing upon it.

Anna squirmed uncomfortably in her tiny red chair, wondering if it would have killed the administration to simply have gotten a long line of comfy couches or something instead. This seat was going to bruise her ass beyond repair.

"When is it starting?" she practically whined, wringing her hands on the dark, mahogany armrests as she wriggled around and tried to get in a comfortable position without having to lay sprawled across four seats, which would have ended up with her head on her father's lap and feet in Marshall's nose.

Marshall checked his watch, "It should be any moment now. Be patient, feisty-pants." He grinned at her, showing a mouthful of unusually blocky white teeth.

"How can I be patient for something I was never looking forward to in the first place?" Anna had complained in return, but no one was listening to her. The concert hall was growing steadily darker and Anna was growing steadily more agitated as the main spotlight blinked to life, beaming onto the back of the stage at the velvet black curtains.

Then she glided out, all pale five feet and six inches of her. Anna hadn't really taken notice of it before, but fuck, Elsa Vinters could have passed off as a goddess. Platinum blonde hair tied into an practical yet intricate bun at the back of her head glimmered brightly underneath the reflected fractals of light the glass chandelier threw off in lieu of the overreaching glare of the spotlight. She wore a somewhat conservative black dress that covered her arms up to the wrists, leaving her hands bare. Porcelain features were arranged into what was placid smile, blue eyes glinting curiously in the sharp white light.

She looks...different, she hesitantly acquiesced to herself. Compared to the last time I saw her...well yeah, it was when I was nine, but...ahh...it's a good different.

Anna clapped, somewhat apathetically, along with the rest of the roaring audience as the concert pianist gave a small bow, resting her left hand on the edge of the piano before sitting smartly down on the bench, flicking out her wrists.

Obviously, Vinters had perfected the art of establishing a strong presence whilst on stage.

Goddamn. Is everything that woman does so freaking elegant?

And apparently so, because when the music started, Anna could swear she had just been transported to another fucking world.

According to the paper program in Anna's hands, Vinters was playing a sonata by Beethoven, nicknamed Pathétique. Sonata Pathétique's ulterior meaning was apparently meant to affect the emotions of pity, grief or sorrow. And Anna looked up, impressed against her will, as the blonde managed to draw such a sharp contrast between two small parts within the same phrase that it was almost as if there were two different personalities in those separate measures, which Anna figured was what Vinters pretty much wanted them to infer.

She sat there, in slight awe, with her eyes glued to Vinters's fingers as they descended down a chromatic scale at almost breathtaking speed before the blonde launched into what must have been the Allegro con brio. Something fantastic, something brilliant—when Vinters reached the part with a staccatoed left hand and the echoing second theme in the right, Anna could only feel like she was hearing how it must have been to...well, flirt with death, almost. Something Anna had never really thought of until now, and she was perfectly content to listen to the musical interpretation of the literal rather than take the idea into reality.

From what Anna could tell, the repertoire was mainly a mix of late Classical and Romantic era musical pieces. Vinters moved on from the Sonata Pathétique to two of Liszt's most famous pieces, the Liebestraum and Hungarian Rhapsody; and then she played her way through Rachmaninoff's entire Morceaux de fantaisie. Marshall, Anna noted, looked particularly misty-eyed through the Prelude in C-sharp minor.

Anna was only beginning to come down from her Vinters-induced high—she was almost positive that she hadn't blinked for more than thirty minutes, given the burning in her eyes—when Vinters hit those enormous G-sharp octaves that even Anna recognized began the only piano piece she could listen to on repeat, over and over again. She practically fell out of her seat at the power behind the chords.

Fantaisie-Impromptu.

—

Reportedly, Chopin had dedicated his Fantaisie-Impromptu a close friend after he wrote it and requested that it not be published.

Chopin, you see, apparently hated the impromptu. Or, at least, strongly disliked it. Elsa was sure that if he could have disowned music, Chopin would have claimed one of his most famous works, at it had turned out, as not his. But it had gotten out and had gotten published, and what else could the Romantic era composer do? In fact, it was supposed to have been burned in a fire. (Evidently, it hadn't.)

Yes, Chopin had disregarded this piece, and so did Elsa, in fact.

It was beautiful—on par with some of her favorite Rachmaninoff works, true—it played like something from another dimension, she thought, which was exactly why she avoided playing it.

Even more so than the Sonata Pathétique, it held too much sentimentality with it to her. For the fact that—no, she hadn't played Rachmaninoff after her whole, carefully-built relationship with the-girl-who-must-not-be-named fell into absolute shambles, she had played the impromptu. It was tied in too closely with some of her darker, broken memories that she kept locked away in some shadowy corner of her mind that she refused to pay any attention to.

Yet the fact remained that the Fantaisie-Impromptu was one of her more celebrated pieces; her interpretation of the piece had been exulted after she played it when she had just turned fifteen. So her father had insisted upon it being included in her repertoire, and like with everything that involved her father's demands, she gave in without arguing.

She never practiced it, though. And Father had never said anything about it. This was the one piece that Elsa was positively sure she would be able to get right, pill or no pill. This was the one piece where she knew she could totally lose herself in, where she knew she could dive into the bars of music that played in her mind, with no mistakes made.

Rachmaninoff's works may have composed her crown, but the Fantaisie-Impromptu, it was undoubtedly the crown jewel. It was her Hope Diamond.

Not that there was much to hope for, when she played it.

—

It was undoubtedly the best interpretation of the dubbed "Fantasy Impromptu" Anna had ever heard. If she had been honest with herself, she'd have said that Elsa Vinters's rendition of the piece was nothing short of heartbreaking.

The beginning, it started off soft, almost hesitant. Anna looked closely and she could see that Vinters' eyes had drifted shut, whether of their own accord or on purpose. It began to grow agitated quickly enough, though, with Vinters' pale right fingers darting across the keyboard at almost ungodly speed, yet each not came out as crisp and clear as the evening breeze.

Elsa Vinters, she didn't play the Fantaisie-Impromptu with single-minded desperation, or mere discontent. She didn't play a score, didn't play a story. What she played was pure emotion manifesting itself into strains of melody, and those absolutely wild sixteenth notes coming from Vinters's right hand. The Largo portion of the song was quite tender, yet had also a more melancholy tone running underneath the notes, as if Vinters was attempting to plead for something through the piece.

Anna didn't really know what to make of the end. She couldn't quite tell what was trying to be said through the music—the ending was completed on a major chord, yet there was still something that Anna couldn't pin down, something beneath it that eluded her grasp—

...Um...maybe it's resignation?

—

The applause was earth-shattering.

Elsa only smiled politely, trying to catch her breath a little, bowed five more times than necessary, was given about ten thousand bouquets of flowers, before she allowed herself to walk across the wooden floor and toward backstage once more, wiping a hand across her brow as she did so.

Her father nodded brusquely, once; his way of stating his nonverbal approval of the performance. and Elsa looked away.

She hoped no one noticed the tear running down her cheek.

—

When Anna was nine, she entered a submission into the Arendellian Protégé Concerto Competition under the suggestion of her then-teacher, a soft-spoken young man barely in his twenties from Denmark named Frederick Westergaard.

What was different about this particular contest, was that all types of instrumentalists could enter. Whether that be piano, flute, violin, clarinet—anything, really—they were all eligible. Five different age groups, consisting of ten and under, eleven to fourteen, fifteen to eighteen, college students, and professionals. It was supposed to be specifically geared toward concertos, this competition, and Anna had nicely polished up one of Vivaldi's in A minor. Her teacher had even smiled at her during the last practice run they had; Frederick Westergaard's smiles came rarely, but when they did, they were sure and warm and genuine, and Anna absolutely adored them.

"I have a little brother, who is around the same age as you," Frederick had told her one day after practice. They were sitting at his table, as Anna's parents hadn't arrived to pick her up yet and Frederick had offered her some hot chocolate. How could Anna have refused?—hot chocolate was simply divine.

"Urnngh," Anna mumbled intelligently around a mouthful of sweet, creamy liquid.

Frederick sipped his own drink thoughtfully, peering at Anna with honest green eyes from over the rim of his ceramic cup. "Yes," he said cryptically, "he plays the piano, yet you remind me of him, sometimes." He allowed a gentle smile, "I believe that it is your pure enthusiasm for what you do—your strong and untainted love for music. Both you and him have that mindset. And that"—he reached over and tapped Anna's nose playfully—"is what distinguishes a true musician from merely a player. Finding the simple joy in what you are doing at any given moment...now that is something that cannot be taught, something that cannot be learned. You should not be playing the violin, playing any instrument for that matter, for the merely sake of playing it, because you are forced to do it. For the sake of entering competitions and winning—you should play an instrument, because you enjoy playing it." He shrugged, the brightness in his eyes growing a bit dimmer. "A sentiment that many people do not appear to hold, these days..."

Anna's mother had rang the doorbell after that.

Honestly, Anna hadn't really understood what Frederick meant by what he had told her, not until long after he had left Evigvinter (and Arendelle, altogether) suddenly and without warning, but she would slowly grow to appreciate his words.

In any case, Anna entered her first live performance bouncing up and down and grinning as toothily as she could to the four severe-looking judges who were sitting stoically in front of the stage.

And she set her bow on the strings, and she played. Articulate notes, as best of a vibrato as she could manage with her little hands, with a clear and crisp tone. Straight posture, a loose and flexible wrist. She pulled the bow across the violin, matching note for note, stroke for stroke. Alright, so she made a little slip here, shifted half a step lower there. She didn't care. It didn't matter, right here, at this very moment. She loved what she was playing, loved what she was doing: doing what she did the best. Lending herself over to the sound of the violin. Her violin, it was no longer just an instrument, but also a medium between herself and the music, the concerto—just something used to help convey the essence of who she was with the music she played.

The moment her last note rang out through the hall, she was absolutely sure that she had done the best job out of all the contestants who went before her. The roars and groundshaking applause of the audience confirmed that much. There was only one more contender, some pianist girl, who would be performing after her, but Anna was not too worried. As far as she was concerned (and indeed, she was biased), she had just done a bloody brilliant job and she was quite content with how her performance had turned out.

And after that girl had finished, some ten-year-old blonde whose name Anna had missed—Elise, or something?—she was more than sure she had secured herself the first place in her age group. The girl had been good—crazy good, Anna granted her that—but she had made one major error somewhere around the halfway mark of her piece and ended up stumbling back to the beginning of the phrase to correct her mistake.

Going back in music simply for a few incorrectly played notes one made was an enormous no-no.

So when they announced the honorable mention in her age group, and it wasn't Anna, she was happy. When they announced third place, and it wasn't Anna, she was happy.

And then they were announcing second place and they were calling the name Anna Engström, and Anna had about five seconds to hitch her jaw back up onto her face before she stumbled from her seat and accepted her certificate and two-hundred-fifty-euro prize with good grace.

And that Elise girl received the grand prize.

Anna had just gotten snubbed, she was sure.

Her small fingers fisted themselves tightly in her lap even as she gazed up at the podium, up at the little blonde smiling in such a bashfully gorgeous way at the crowd that her grin should have been illegal, receiving her certificate and flowers and check.

Elsa Vinters, they called the blonde. Anna's teal eyes never left the girl's back even as she made her way back to her seat, sitting straight up; prim and proper as a victor should sit. The girl's icy blue eyes caught Anna's for a moment, and the small redhead thought she saw a flash of surprise and almost guilt cross across those ethereal azure irises.

Then Elsa turned her head away and didn't look back again.

Stupid. Elsa. Vinters.

She could hear Frederick's voice in her head, that attending this competition was not really about winning, but about the learning experience. But Anna knew that she had done better than this Elsa girl. She deserved what the blonde had gotten. It was a constant in an ever-changing equation. It was a fact. That look the blonde had shot Anna, the redhead knew that she knew it, too.

Anna looked down at her lap, and while her nine-year-old mind still couldn't quite pin down the whole concept yet, she couldn't shake off the feeling that she had been absolutely, undeniably cheated.

—

When Anna ran into Elsa that day with her violin case, it was clear that the blue-eyed blonde beauty didn't remember her. Didn't remember the redhead who she had given a small grimace at when she was ten; didn't remember Anna, the-girl-who-should-have-won-first-place-in-that-one-competition-waaay-back-in-the-day. And why would she have any reason to? Anna was undoubtedly just another contestant whom Elsa had beaten out in another competition, whether it be fair and square (or not).

And Anna told herself it was probably for the better, anyway.

Whatever she told herself, though, there was some gnarled place in her heart that remained discontent. Violated. Still snubbed. Still cheated.

It still stung.

End Notes / So we got some Anna backstory here. And oh, god, thank you so much for all your love for the story :') A fast update, then, to make up for the wait that'll probably be with the next chapter. Hopefully I haven't bored you guys to death yet with all this musical stuff being sprouted #_# Just trying to introduce the character in a different way. The exposition is almost over. Well, I think it is ^^' Also, Anna's only about a year younger than Elsa here.