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The song is so Elliot it hurts.
Leo can feel him in the chords as his fingers glide across the keys. There's a chaotic energy to these notes, this tempo that drops and spikes and careens out of control. He can hear Elliot's temper in each brisk staccato, as vivid as the music echoing through the piano room. If it were anyone else, this song would be a mess. But somehow, Elliot has tied it together, filling in the holes with pieces of himself and blending it into art. Statice, he'd called it. Rememberance, an homage to the unchanging. For his mother, before he'd changed his mind and gifted her a simpler, gentler song for her birthday. This one, he'd finished on a whim, but Leo knows it was originally intended for the mad duchess, too enthralled with her newfound religion to care about the rabble her son has decided to befriend.
In truth, Leo can't say he's all that familiar with the Nightrays. He's particularly blind when it comes to the woman this song was meant for, before it ended up in his hands. But he does know Elliot. (Despite his best efforts.) He knows that Elliot cares about his family. He knows that Elliot loves his mother as much as he hates her, that he is as angry as he is worried, that he is confused and upset and a little afraid. He exists in a different key, so many octaves away that he cannot even begin to comprehend her choices. Elliot is made of these staccato quarter notes ringing in Leo's ears, and for some incomprehensible reason, he seems to think Leo will know how to play him.
Elliot is many things, but he is not easy to understand.
This song is not a Statice. It is too sharp, too erratic, too much like Elliot to hold such a gentle meaning. If Elliot truly meant to play a Statice for his mother, he would've made it softer, slower. A reminder of peaceful times, and an unspoken plea, perhaps, to return to those bright days. Nothing so uncertain as the piece laid out before him now. Leo has a hard time believing this song was ever intended for the duchess at all. But if it wasn't meant for her, then it was always meant for him. And Leo doesn't know what to make of that.
He lets his fingers slide off the keys as the final notes hover in the air, and in the silence that follows, he considers the problem of Elliot Nightray. Oddly enough, he believes this is the one gesture Elliot hadn't meant as a means of persuasion. Elliot still wants to be around him, he's made that much abundantly clear. It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, but he hasn't given up, more likely due to stubbornness than any true attachment to Leo.
(People don't get attached to Leo. That's how it works, Elliot. Keep up.)
Leo has insulted him, ignored him, and refused him for weeks, and yet it seems like Elliot is always there, whenever he bothers to look up from his books. Elliot is annoyingly persistent, a terrible quality for someone with such an abrasive personality. Then again, what does Leo know about people, beyond those laid out on paper? How does one interpret a human being that plucks out pieces of himself and buries them between ledger lines?
With ivory keys and flower language, apparently.
Leo sighs, because his hands are inching back to the keys, overflowing with the melody already taking shape in his head. He plays, stops, shifts his hands, and plays again. And again, and again. But it's not right. Just like he could sense Elliot in the notes of Statice, there's something missing, here, something lacking. Whether he likes it or not, Leo has a feeling that something is another pair of hands.
He sighs again, for good measure. He suspects it's going to become a habit.