Chapter Text
There was a time after she had decided to leave the Philharmonic that Siobhan Sadler couldn’t bear to even look at music or touch her instrument. As per usual, as if nothing had changed, strains of harmony and cadences still burst into light in her mind, without paying any heed to the fact that they never would escape and be played to an audience. Cradling the dark-haired child in her arms who seemed all the more pale in contrast to her thick hair, she never regretted it - well, maybe she did; saying she hadn’t ever thought twice about returning would have been a lie - or at least she understood why she did it. She couldn’t blame Charlotte - who could? It wasn’t any fault of the youngling that she had a bad leg, or that she needed more help before she could stand on her own. They’d already been through the matter of depression with their eldest, and really, it was no different save the fact that Charlotte was so much younger. Marian had taken to spending the first hour she was home after rehearsals away from her, as if the music and the memories could somehow diffuse from her to Siobhan. It was strange on both ends, to say the least, and it had been so strained for a while that she really began to question if it was all worth it.
The door shut, downstairs, the panelling chiming her in with its familiar rattling of loose hinges. She needed to get that fixed soon, before it fell on Charlotte. Sharp, quick footsteps scattered up the staircase, and instantly she shot upright. Those were too crisp, too neat, too even to be Charlotte. The door to the bedroom opened just a crack, and with her back turned, folding linens to tuck into Elizabeth’s cupboard, Siobhan could not see who, or what, had entered. She felt hands ghost over her shoulders, drawing nearer before jerking away, finally coming down softly to rest on the warm, pressed flannel.
“Marian.” Her name escaped her lips like a gust of air through a reed, “This, sweetie, is a first.”
“There’s no point in me avoiding you, not anymore. I asked Duncan. He said he could take you back if I left. Or you could always come back as a guest player. No strings, so to speak.”
Turning, she faced Marian and enveloped the woman in her arms, holding her frame closer than she had in weeks.
“The Phil is your home. You were there first. This is my home now; our home, Charlotte needs at least one of us here all the time, for now. I’ll be playing again soon enough, once she’s older and okay on her own. I’ll be just fine, Marian, just give me some time.”
They stood there for a while, just holding each other, letting the music in the silence of the room surround them. This was their home now.
Siobhan picked up her viola again three months to the day that she left the Dyad Philharmonic for good. The bow was dry and smooth from the distinct lack of rosin, and the strings were slackened from disuse. Charlotte sat on a chair next to her as she deposited herself on the hardwood floor next to her instrument case, observing Siobhan as she first rubbed her bow thoroughly with a coat of rosin and then proceeded to tune her strings. The first stroke that she made, a downward bow, cracked the stillness that had settled over her features and the viola. It had been too long, too long without her old friend. In raptures, Charlotte beamed a toothy gap-filled grin as she tilted her head slightly to the left - a mannerism she learnt from Beth, no doubt - as the notes on each string came together once more.
Start simple, she told herself. Don’t expect the same sound to come out of those strings as they used to. She played this melody they used to sing in school, a folk song, the Lorelei. Then Charlotte reached her pudgy, small hand over and brushed over the strings with a mixture of wonder and clumsiness, and Siobhan broke from her reserved bonds and started playing with the feeling she used to play with. Out poured Ravel and Mozart and everything from Rachmaninoff to a by-ear transcription of Coltrane.
And that was where it all started. Coltrane on a rusty viola without any audience save the two and a half year old who sat on a wooden chair. That was where music began to fill the house again, old vinyls taking their place on the spinning stage once more, with the child exposed to all the music that her older sister had been.
Charlotte went with her to the music store one day to pick up a set of scores for Elizabeth, a trio piece that she had special ordered that had just come in. Siobhan let her wander a little, warning her not venture out of the store. When she had collected the thick stack of cream stationery that she had come to associate with nothing but music, Siobhan strolled around the displays of scores and instruments looking for a certain dark-haired child. She found her sitting in front of a glass case, her finger ghosting against the surface, tracing every key and spring that could be found on the instrument before her, enthralled by this new shape she had not seen before. If anything, it looked like Charlotte had found her calling, and it all went right back to the Coltrane she had played.
She didn’t need to be in the hall of the philharmonic to know what went on, and she heard everything she had to from Marian. She heard everything at home as well, listening to their own chamber group grow with both the girls.
There was a time, after she had come to terms with everything, that Siobhan Sadler would have, without a sliver of a doubt, told anyone that it was worth it. It was worth everything.
-
Was it worth it?
That was the biggest question in Delphine’s mind. The photograph she had of her parents and her brothers, it had been delicately stuffed to the back of the bottom drawer in her closet, hidden away from where it could eat away at her. Sure, she was happier; sure, she had found music; sure, she had found love, but was it worth losing her family over, that was the question.
She wished she could have said that music and love conquered all, and that it didn’t hurt her one single bit because she had all that mattered around her in this new land, but that would have been a lie.
Were dreadlocks, glasses, horns and cellos worth losing her home and heart of the past twenty-odd years? Delphine only wished she had an answer, yet she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to have to regret leaving to chase her dreams, or to forget that her home had ever existed to her in the first place. What Cosima chided, though, was her adamance over her inability to reconcile the two and have both. How could she? Understanding the music was something that her parents never were willing to do for her, and she could not bear to do it for herself. She felt their disappointment radiate through any and all interaction she had with her brothers, and she felt a certain sense of guilt. It was as it the - what was the word - onus was on her to make sure that she made them proud so that the responsibility was not on her younger brothers. She had failed.
Consciously she felt the neck of her cello in the crook of her hand, where her thumb sought to meet her palm, and she cradled it. It was her precious lifeline, her one way to her dreams. There were other things at stake, she had to admit, things that were more than her music at times, way too loud and jarring for her taste.
That was what she had to figure out, with Cosima, hopefully. Was it all worth it in the end?