Chapter 16
2008
3 days, 0 weeks, 1 month, 0 years
Tony awoke to a sound he hadn’t heard in a long, long time. He had been pulled from sleep by the sound of music. It was gentle and disjointed, so clearly not a recorded piece being played from a speaker. There was only one explanation.
Someone was playing a piano. But not just any piano, his mother’s piano – the one that sat just off to the side of the apartment’s foyer.
If Tony really thought about it, the last time he had heard someone play that piano – other than that one time he found Stane smearing it with metaphorical filth he was saturated in, because Tony blatantly refused to let that man taint Maria’s beloved piano and so was simply pretending it had never happened - had been back when he was still in college.
December 16, 1991.
The last time he had seen his parents before their car crashed on the way to the airport.
He had been practically passed out on a sofa, home for a brief, early Christmas visit during his year studying abroad, just listening as his mother played endless carols. She had sung along, soft and melodic, adding in gentle harmonies from time to time as they came to while she played.
But his mother wasn’t here now to play her piano, and neither was Stane. Everyone else respected the history of the grand instrument enough to know never to touch it in fear of massively pissing him off.
Everyone else, except Peter.
Tony pulled himself from his bedsheets, sleep crusted in his eyes as he followed the sound.
He found he wasn’t upset by the idea of Peter playing his mother’s piano. In fact, the tight squeezing in his chest was there for just the opposite reason.
In the years since the crash, he had kept the instrument, believing that it would keep her there like her soul and memory was tethered to the thing. But, in all that time, he’d never let himself or anyone play it. He’d never realised just how much he wanted to hear that sound again until now – how it was the sound that made it feel like his mother was still there with him in some way.
“Mr. Stark?”
Peter’s voice dragged him from his thoughts.
“Mr. Stark, are you okay?” Peter continued. He’d stopped playing, turning his attention fully to the older man. “You look sad. Is it because I’m playing the piano? I can stop; I know you don’t like anyone playing the piano but I really wanted to. I didn’t do it to make you sad, I promise, Mr. Stark. I just wanted to play the lullaby Uncle Ben used to play with me when I was little, but I can stop if it makes you sad.”
Tony hadn’t realised how much his emotions had spilled through into showing on his face and quickly worked on turning it into a soft, fond smile.
“No, Peter, it’s okay. I’m not sad,” he replied. “It was my mother’s, no one else has played it since she last did but you can play it whenever you want to. She would want it to be played. Honestly, she would have head on a platter if she knew I had just let it sit there and collect dust for all these years.”
Rubbing harshly at his eyes for a second to wake himself up a little more, he joined Peter where he was sat on the Piano stool. For once, the kid wasn’t wearing the Snow-White pyjama top he seemed to love so much it could almost be considered a second skin. Instead he was wearing a t-shirt with an image her red and golden tiara emblazoned on the front paired with the trousers from the iron man pyjama set and white fluffy socks with dark blue stars scattered across them.
Five of the paper dragons were lined up on the dark, shiny edge of the piano lid, facing towards the ivory keys. If he was being honest, Tony couldn’t remember the names of them all anymore – he thinks the one with red zigzags and squares was called Ted but he couldn’t be sure (maybe it had been Ned?).
He looked down at Peter with the adoring smile that was reserved only for Peter and no one else, and said, “How about you teach me how to play Uncle Ben’s lullaby too.”
And that was how they spent most of the day. Sat in front of the black grand piano, laughing gently filling the apartment with the familiar sounds of the keys as the two of them played through Uncle Ben’s lullaby on Maria’s Piano until their fingers were sore and the sun had retreated to the point where the room was turning grey and tired in the still dark it left behind – just remembering the people they had each loved and lost and how deep down they knew those people loved them still.