Work Text:
Piano is their sanctuary.
Each key tethers them back to reality, accompanying them from childhood where everything was still strung together. The notes were unchanging when everything else did.
Warm lighting would seep into their living room, painting the keys in various golden and grey hues. Their parents might, for a moment, lower their voices to praise the youngest for another freeform piece. Their brother knew the basics; Kris wanted to claw their way back into memories so blurred by history to catch even a segment of an amature collaboration. They’d started to wonder if any of it was real, or just what they needed it to be.
No matter where they sat, which keys their fingers brushed, it was always the same. Echoing throughout the Holiday’s mansion in the dead of night, under the fluorescent lights of a hospital lobby.
When Kris knew they were alone, alone in the ways that could matter enough, they forced themselves back to the church, the sanctuary. Their sanctuary. Stepping back inside mere hours after the fountain had been sealed felt like a sin in itself, the room was watching, waiting for them to try again. Kris felt it owed them one last attempt; they could still do it. They weren’t a vessel, they had a name. They had a story. They had a piece.
When they had hunched over that monumental instrument, an imposing musical force of not only their own sense of normalcy and control, but bearing raw energy of the dark, part of them knew. Surrounded by their friends, they breathed. Their own fingertips pressed on each key with purposeful intention, true authenticity. Tears trickled down their cheeks as Kris shielded their expression from the others, another part of themselves fading away with the notes.
Their last song; a plea for mercy or a final refrain, aching to hold on for just a moment longer.
They’ll never play again.
Maybe they weren’t empty, that parasite was hiding away deeper into their chest as they begged to remember the cords once more. Their hands wavered shakily above the keys as they stared down in anticipation which unraveled into horror. Their own heart had hollowed them out, Kris pressed their hands down onto the keys for a saving grace. The sound startled them, so much that a cry wretched itself out of their normally toneless voice while their nails scraped against ivory pieces in protest. They told themself it wasn’t true because if it was, then they weren’t who they thought they were, and they knew they were who they weren't.
Even as the shallow glow of a soul that doesn’t belong to them peers into the room, separate from its host. They know, they know it’s not an excuse.
Piano was their sanctuary.
Neither body nor mind belonged to them now.