The Pianist
Title: The Pianist
Fandom: Heroes
Rating/Genre: G/romance, het
Characters/Pairing: Angela Petrelli, original character, Alice Shaw, Mr. & Mrs. Shaw, Noah Bennet, Claire Bennet, Nathan & Peter Petrelli; Angela/Noah
Summary: Angela has another ability, one that was given to her as a gift - or as a curse? (Or as a future love potion?)
Word count: 2 105
Spoilers/Warnings: Nope.
Notes: This is based on a couple of my favorite ideas: Noah should at least have given Angela a hug after what happened in “1961”, and the idea that piano playing women are hot, therefore Angela plays the piano.
Notes2: I admit that this is more related to s3 “1961” (not enough to deserve to be called spoiler) than to Halloween, but I was thinking about the prompt “Supernatural beings”, for the Halloween theme at heroes_faves.
Angela Petrelli has the ability to see the future in her dreams. Her dreams are often confusing and they are not always right. They have often caused her pain and worries. They have been useful to her many times, too, once she stopped being afraid.
She has another ability; one that fewer people know about.
This other ability was not manifesting from within, but it was given to her as a gift. Or as a ‘treat’ that turned out to be a ‘trick’; oh, if only she had known! She had already seen in a dream that she was going to be given a choice of some kind. She did not see how the choice was going to affect her future.
***
This was how it happened:
It was a dark but lovely night late in October, and the Shaw family was going out. All around them were kids in Halloween costumes, but Angela and Alice were only dressed in some of their best going out-clothes. They were excited, because they had tickets to a concert by a very famous pianist; Mr. Shaw had won them in a contest organized by the local newspaper. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw had taught their daughters to love music, and Angela already knew that it was going to be amazing.
It had not been a nightmare. Only a beautiful dream and it came true; the concert was wonderful.
Clapping her hands in the concert hall, with her parents on her right side and Alice to her left, she wished ardently that she could play the piano; that she would one day be able to create such beauty with her hands.
Afterwards, they went to see the musician; a quick visit backstage was included in the prize.
The musician was charming; he was dark and quite pale - and quite handsome, too; Angela couldn’t help that she blushed a little when he shook her hand, although he must have been more than twice her age. There was a trace of a foreign accent in his voice, and he gestured when he spoke - and he smiled, but didn’t laugh out loud, and his voice was deep and calm - and Angela looked at his hands as they seemed to mould the air into some sculpture.
They were all captivated by him and he seemed to be no less captivated by them, or maybe he really only took a fancy to Angela. Or something. He chose her; that was what it felt like when he looked her in the eyes.
Mr. and Mrs. Shaw talked about his talent, his great gift, about all the hard work he must have put into it, maybe even made sacrifices.
“I always wanted to become a pianist”, he said, “I had no choice; to be a musician was all I ever wished for. And, alas; sometimes we do get what we wish for… Do you believe that, young Angela? If you were granted one wish, just one, what would you wish for?”
Angela thought: This is the moment when I make the choice. Her dream had been clear on that point.
But what choice? How could it be important what she wished for? There were so many things she could wish for, should wish for: that her grandmother could be cured of her cancer - but Angela already knew the date of her death - or that her nightmares could stop, or that Alice, who often was so nervous, anxious, could be happier and that she would have a long and happy life because Angela hated it when Alice cried, or she should wish for world peace, or at least peace in the school bus which would be good for Alice…
“I wish”, she said, “that I could play the piano.”
The man smiled.
“You want to grow up to become a famous musician?”
“Not really… I just like the idea of being able to create beauty, to be a part of something beautiful.”
“That is a good thing to wish for”, the pianist smiled. “May your wish come true, Angela Shaw.”
She did not believe, of course, that he had the power to grant her, or anyone, any wishes. What she did believe in, however, was her own power of persuasion, and it didn’t take her too long to convince her parents of her immediate need of piano lessons.
None of them could play any instrument. If they could, they might have been suspicious of the quick pace of Angela’s learning curve - it wasn’t even a curve, it was a straight line from A to Z.
“Oh my darling!” Mrs. Shaw exclaimed after a couple of weeks, “you can go so far - you can reach to the stars or higher - “
“I don’t care”, Angela replied, “I just like to play.”
***
Later in life, she wondered about that man. She never saw nor heard him again, she never got the chance to thank him - or to curse him.
She wondered if he was some kind of ‘special’; if he possessed the ability of making one’s wishes come true… but she decided, with time, that he couldn’t have been. Angela learned that people could do the most extraordinary things, but to make a wish come true - that was just too much. She hadn’t met anyone who could do that, like some kind of genie in a bottle.
But maybe the pianist was just that - something not quite like other human beings, not even like the special ones.
And decades later, Angela hates him for being a genie in a bottle, but without bottle - was it his piano? was it just him? was it something else? - and she hates herself for having made the wrong choice.
If only she had wished for a happy life for Alice. If only she had wished for her nightmares to stop - then they would never have needed to set foot in Coyote Sands.
She has played the piano over the years, but only in the presence of the family, and in doing so she feels great pain, but she also thinks that perhaps she owes it to Alice to take care of her gift, her other curse, because Alice, after all, liked to hear her play.
I can’t believe that I chose music before Alice she thinks to herself, for the umpteenth time, when she is sitting with the remains of her family, including Noah and Claire, in the diner where she once founded the Company many years ago.
The burgers and the fries smell just the same. Maybe they taste the same, too - she is not hungry. She is thinking about her music.
“Okay… Please; someone, say something.”
Angela looks at Claire and says with a very bleak shadow of a smile:
“How are the fries?”
Music or no music, they have to move on. But Angela is shaken in the fibre of her being by seeing Alice again, and by loosing her again, and it is only with a corner of her mind that she reacts to seeing Nathan making big speeches on TV when he is in fact sitting right next to her.
Nathan takes off because he wants to, he needs to, do it alone, all by himself. She shouldn’t let him, but she does, and only after a while she sends Peter after him.
Angela herself goes with Claire and Noah in his car. Claire leaves the backseat to her, because she is expected to be tired, worn out, exhausted, and they try to give her the little privacy they have to offer.
But she doesn’t sleep. She talks. She has been talking a lot already - maybe too much - since they started digging, but she needs to talk about it. Now, finally, she can talk freely about everything.
And then they fall silent.
Claire is dozing off next to Noah who keeps his eyes steadily on the road, except when he shoots a quick glance at Angela through the rear-view mirror.
“I just can’t get over it”, she says, or almost whispers, “that I had a choice and I could have saved her, but I chose music.”
“But Angela”, he answers, “we just talked about this. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what was going to happen; you couldn’t possibly know that that man had this power. And even if you had known… well, anyone would have made that kind of wish, especially a teenager. We never really believe that we can loose the ones we love. You didn’t know what was going to happen to Alice.”
“But I should have known…”
“No”, he says, “you can’t control your dreams, can you? Then how can you be blamed? Angela… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about Alice.”
Angela sighs.
“I mean it”, he persists. “I understand - I mean, I understand that family is the most important thing we’ve got, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through the rest of my life without…”
His voice trails off and she knows what he is thinking. Yes, but he won’t have to experience that kind of loss. So he can’t understand what it feels like.
“Anyway”, he continues, “I wish I could do something for you. You know that, don’t you?”
She knows that his concern is genuine.
“You have done something for me, Noah”, she says gently. “You have taken very good care of my grandchild.”
He nods.
“Yes. But that’s not quite what I meant…”
He glances at Claire, quickly; she appears to be asleep.
“I didn’t know that you play the piano…”
No, of course he didn’t know. Angela has always kept it private. Her piano playing is just one more thing he has never known about her.
“When all of this is over”, Noah goes on, his voice low and intense but there isn’t much space between them to swallow his words, “when the president has been warned and all of this is finally over and done with, you and I should go away somewhere.”
“What?”
Noah has never propositioned her quite that bluntly before, and the surprise almost makes her laugh. Almost.
“Yes, think about it - why not? What’s stopping us? God knows you need a break, Angela, and so do I. I’d like to take you away. We could go to… to the Azores, perhaps? We could rent a beach house, or a mountain villa with sea view, with a big and spacious living-room with polished floors and French windows that opens to a big terrace, and there will be a very nice grand piano, of course, and you’ll play on it…”
“Oh, but Noah…”
“And you’ll play on it”, he persists, “and I’ll watch you, silently, as your music floods through the air and fills my being… I want that, Angela. I want - “
“You do?”
She catches his eyes in the rear-view mirror, and oddly enough, her heart starts beating quite noticeably, as if she is taken by surprise and didn’t see this coming. Not that she has seen it, but she doesn’t actually have to see everything to understand about it. Twenty years of knowing someone can, perhaps, equal one single night of dreams.
“Yes”, he says, and then he leaves her to think about it. They’ve got time, he thinks.
Angela on the other hand is not so sure; she dozes off for a little while - the sleep is deep enough for her to dream - and she knows that their ordeals aren’t over yet.
And then Noah stops, and explains to them about the roadblock, and that they have to walk while he drives on alone. Angela knows better than to protest.
“Don’t worry”, he says to Claire and gives her a hug, “I’ll be fine.”
Noah looks at Angela - and just for a second, she thinks that he is going to kiss her, but he doesn’t; he just pulls her in too for a very quick hug, and then he pushes her gently away.
“Remember the Azores - we’ll get there, I promise. Now, go!”
Without wasting another second, he gets back into the car, and Angela and Claire watches as he drives away from them.
As they start walking, Claire asks:
“What was that about? Why did he talk about the Azores?”
“Oh, Claire… Your dad is quite a dreamer sometimes, did you know that? The imaginative, fanciful kind.”
The kind of dreamer Angela has never been. She doesn’t believe in the Azores; she rarely affords the luxury of believing in things she can’t see.
But in some corner of her mind - perhaps the corner where the love of music lives that her parents planted long ago - Noah’s words begin to grow like some kind of seeds of conviction.
She can’t quite see it, she can just barley imagine it - but maybe, one day, they will go away somewhere, just the two of them, and she will play the grand piano until the red sun sinks into the ocean.
.
Fandom: Heroes
Rating/Genre: G/romance, het
Characters/Pairing: Angela Petrelli, original character, Alice Shaw, Mr. & Mrs. Shaw, Noah Bennet, Claire Bennet, Nathan & Peter Petrelli; Angela/Noah
Summary: Angela has another ability, one that was given to her as a gift - or as a curse? (Or as a future love potion?)
Word count: 2 105
Spoilers/Warnings: Nope.
Notes: This is based on a couple of my favorite ideas: Noah should at least have given Angela a hug after what happened in “1961”, and the idea that piano playing women are hot, therefore Angela plays the piano.
Notes2: I admit that this is more related to s3 “1961” (not enough to deserve to be called spoiler) than to Halloween, but I was thinking about the prompt “Supernatural beings”, for the Halloween theme at heroes_faves.
Angela Petrelli has the ability to see the future in her dreams. Her dreams are often confusing and they are not always right. They have often caused her pain and worries. They have been useful to her many times, too, once she stopped being afraid.
She has another ability; one that fewer people know about.
This other ability was not manifesting from within, but it was given to her as a gift. Or as a ‘treat’ that turned out to be a ‘trick’; oh, if only she had known! She had already seen in a dream that she was going to be given a choice of some kind. She did not see how the choice was going to affect her future.
***
This was how it happened:
It was a dark but lovely night late in October, and the Shaw family was going out. All around them were kids in Halloween costumes, but Angela and Alice were only dressed in some of their best going out-clothes. They were excited, because they had tickets to a concert by a very famous pianist; Mr. Shaw had won them in a contest organized by the local newspaper. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw had taught their daughters to love music, and Angela already knew that it was going to be amazing.
It had not been a nightmare. Only a beautiful dream and it came true; the concert was wonderful.
Clapping her hands in the concert hall, with her parents on her right side and Alice to her left, she wished ardently that she could play the piano; that she would one day be able to create such beauty with her hands.
Afterwards, they went to see the musician; a quick visit backstage was included in the prize.
The musician was charming; he was dark and quite pale - and quite handsome, too; Angela couldn’t help that she blushed a little when he shook her hand, although he must have been more than twice her age. There was a trace of a foreign accent in his voice, and he gestured when he spoke - and he smiled, but didn’t laugh out loud, and his voice was deep and calm - and Angela looked at his hands as they seemed to mould the air into some sculpture.
They were all captivated by him and he seemed to be no less captivated by them, or maybe he really only took a fancy to Angela. Or something. He chose her; that was what it felt like when he looked her in the eyes.
Mr. and Mrs. Shaw talked about his talent, his great gift, about all the hard work he must have put into it, maybe even made sacrifices.
“I always wanted to become a pianist”, he said, “I had no choice; to be a musician was all I ever wished for. And, alas; sometimes we do get what we wish for… Do you believe that, young Angela? If you were granted one wish, just one, what would you wish for?”
Angela thought: This is the moment when I make the choice. Her dream had been clear on that point.
But what choice? How could it be important what she wished for? There were so many things she could wish for, should wish for: that her grandmother could be cured of her cancer - but Angela already knew the date of her death - or that her nightmares could stop, or that Alice, who often was so nervous, anxious, could be happier and that she would have a long and happy life because Angela hated it when Alice cried, or she should wish for world peace, or at least peace in the school bus which would be good for Alice…
“I wish”, she said, “that I could play the piano.”
The man smiled.
“You want to grow up to become a famous musician?”
“Not really… I just like the idea of being able to create beauty, to be a part of something beautiful.”
“That is a good thing to wish for”, the pianist smiled. “May your wish come true, Angela Shaw.”
She did not believe, of course, that he had the power to grant her, or anyone, any wishes. What she did believe in, however, was her own power of persuasion, and it didn’t take her too long to convince her parents of her immediate need of piano lessons.
None of them could play any instrument. If they could, they might have been suspicious of the quick pace of Angela’s learning curve - it wasn’t even a curve, it was a straight line from A to Z.
“Oh my darling!” Mrs. Shaw exclaimed after a couple of weeks, “you can go so far - you can reach to the stars or higher - “
“I don’t care”, Angela replied, “I just like to play.”
***
Later in life, she wondered about that man. She never saw nor heard him again, she never got the chance to thank him - or to curse him.
She wondered if he was some kind of ‘special’; if he possessed the ability of making one’s wishes come true… but she decided, with time, that he couldn’t have been. Angela learned that people could do the most extraordinary things, but to make a wish come true - that was just too much. She hadn’t met anyone who could do that, like some kind of genie in a bottle.
But maybe the pianist was just that - something not quite like other human beings, not even like the special ones.
And decades later, Angela hates him for being a genie in a bottle, but without bottle - was it his piano? was it just him? was it something else? - and she hates herself for having made the wrong choice.
If only she had wished for a happy life for Alice. If only she had wished for her nightmares to stop - then they would never have needed to set foot in Coyote Sands.
She has played the piano over the years, but only in the presence of the family, and in doing so she feels great pain, but she also thinks that perhaps she owes it to Alice to take care of her gift, her other curse, because Alice, after all, liked to hear her play.
I can’t believe that I chose music before Alice she thinks to herself, for the umpteenth time, when she is sitting with the remains of her family, including Noah and Claire, in the diner where she once founded the Company many years ago.
The burgers and the fries smell just the same. Maybe they taste the same, too - she is not hungry. She is thinking about her music.
“Okay… Please; someone, say something.”
Angela looks at Claire and says with a very bleak shadow of a smile:
“How are the fries?”
Music or no music, they have to move on. But Angela is shaken in the fibre of her being by seeing Alice again, and by loosing her again, and it is only with a corner of her mind that she reacts to seeing Nathan making big speeches on TV when he is in fact sitting right next to her.
Nathan takes off because he wants to, he needs to, do it alone, all by himself. She shouldn’t let him, but she does, and only after a while she sends Peter after him.
Angela herself goes with Claire and Noah in his car. Claire leaves the backseat to her, because she is expected to be tired, worn out, exhausted, and they try to give her the little privacy they have to offer.
But she doesn’t sleep. She talks. She has been talking a lot already - maybe too much - since they started digging, but she needs to talk about it. Now, finally, she can talk freely about everything.
And then they fall silent.
Claire is dozing off next to Noah who keeps his eyes steadily on the road, except when he shoots a quick glance at Angela through the rear-view mirror.
“I just can’t get over it”, she says, or almost whispers, “that I had a choice and I could have saved her, but I chose music.”
“But Angela”, he answers, “we just talked about this. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what was going to happen; you couldn’t possibly know that that man had this power. And even if you had known… well, anyone would have made that kind of wish, especially a teenager. We never really believe that we can loose the ones we love. You didn’t know what was going to happen to Alice.”
“But I should have known…”
“No”, he says, “you can’t control your dreams, can you? Then how can you be blamed? Angela… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about Alice.”
Angela sighs.
“I mean it”, he persists. “I understand - I mean, I understand that family is the most important thing we’ve got, and I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through the rest of my life without…”
His voice trails off and she knows what he is thinking. Yes, but he won’t have to experience that kind of loss. So he can’t understand what it feels like.
“Anyway”, he continues, “I wish I could do something for you. You know that, don’t you?”
She knows that his concern is genuine.
“You have done something for me, Noah”, she says gently. “You have taken very good care of my grandchild.”
He nods.
“Yes. But that’s not quite what I meant…”
He glances at Claire, quickly; she appears to be asleep.
“I didn’t know that you play the piano…”
No, of course he didn’t know. Angela has always kept it private. Her piano playing is just one more thing he has never known about her.
“When all of this is over”, Noah goes on, his voice low and intense but there isn’t much space between them to swallow his words, “when the president has been warned and all of this is finally over and done with, you and I should go away somewhere.”
“What?”
Noah has never propositioned her quite that bluntly before, and the surprise almost makes her laugh. Almost.
“Yes, think about it - why not? What’s stopping us? God knows you need a break, Angela, and so do I. I’d like to take you away. We could go to… to the Azores, perhaps? We could rent a beach house, or a mountain villa with sea view, with a big and spacious living-room with polished floors and French windows that opens to a big terrace, and there will be a very nice grand piano, of course, and you’ll play on it…”
“Oh, but Noah…”
“And you’ll play on it”, he persists, “and I’ll watch you, silently, as your music floods through the air and fills my being… I want that, Angela. I want - “
“You do?”
She catches his eyes in the rear-view mirror, and oddly enough, her heart starts beating quite noticeably, as if she is taken by surprise and didn’t see this coming. Not that she has seen it, but she doesn’t actually have to see everything to understand about it. Twenty years of knowing someone can, perhaps, equal one single night of dreams.
“Yes”, he says, and then he leaves her to think about it. They’ve got time, he thinks.
Angela on the other hand is not so sure; she dozes off for a little while - the sleep is deep enough for her to dream - and she knows that their ordeals aren’t over yet.
And then Noah stops, and explains to them about the roadblock, and that they have to walk while he drives on alone. Angela knows better than to protest.
“Don’t worry”, he says to Claire and gives her a hug, “I’ll be fine.”
Noah looks at Angela - and just for a second, she thinks that he is going to kiss her, but he doesn’t; he just pulls her in too for a very quick hug, and then he pushes her gently away.
“Remember the Azores - we’ll get there, I promise. Now, go!”
Without wasting another second, he gets back into the car, and Angela and Claire watches as he drives away from them.
As they start walking, Claire asks:
“What was that about? Why did he talk about the Azores?”
“Oh, Claire… Your dad is quite a dreamer sometimes, did you know that? The imaginative, fanciful kind.”
The kind of dreamer Angela has never been. She doesn’t believe in the Azores; she rarely affords the luxury of believing in things she can’t see.
But in some corner of her mind - perhaps the corner where the love of music lives that her parents planted long ago - Noah’s words begin to grow like some kind of seeds of conviction.
She can’t quite see it, she can just barley imagine it - but maybe, one day, they will go away somewhere, just the two of them, and she will play the grand piano until the red sun sinks into the ocean.
.