A/N: Music had always been an integral part of Griffin's life, and even more so after she heard the song of Valtor's heart. Singer AU.
There was melody to every life. Each heart sang its own song, weaving happiness and sorrow together, sometimes even in the same note, making it hard to capture but music was capable even of that magic. It transcended language, time and social divides. It had the power to unite and make people understand. You only had to listen to the melody of one's heart if you truly wanted to come to know that person.
She'd listened to his all those times he'd come to kiss her without saying a word first, all the times she'd let him take off her dress when he'd taken down his walls and let her get close, all the times he'd touched her body with the feelings he couldn't voice. She'd listened and she'd fallen in love with the way he loved her when he couldn't love anything else. She'd fallen in love with the gentleness and openness he'd shown her despite his fear of judgment. She'd fallen in love with the heart bleeding in the same way that her own was when the hands it had been put into had dropped it in a field of thorns as if on purpose to see how much it could take before it was just a torn, bloody mess that even tears wouldn't come out of.
She'd fallen in love and he'd caught her, falling with her in the depths of the feelings they shared. And there'd finally been some light in the darkness that had always been wrapped around her. There had been warmth, a flame to keep her safe by burning everything that dared breathe at her the wrong way. But she couldn't have stayed in the middle of so much destruction. It hadn't been just about the protectiveness. He'd given her countless roses but he'd never been like them. They only used their thorns to defend themselves but he was using the jagged edges he'd been left with to cut others. And even though she'd understood his pain, she couldn't have stayed in his garden where their love couldn't blossom in the middle of all the violence he was growing.
So she now listened from afar just like he did. He came every night to the club where she sang and she read every morning about the crimes he'd committed in the newspaper. And because she'd listened she knew it'd been him and didn't know whether to be glad or upset the authorities couldn't catch him to stop him from wreaking havoc since she hadn't been able to. And because he'd listened he kept coming back to hear her song.
He couldn't live without her and she understood that, for she had the same notes in her own melody that was much simpler and clumsier when his heartbeat wasn't a part of it. So she let her voice make love to his heart just like his gaze did to her soul. Every night. At the club where she sang. With all the people around. She was naked in front of his eyes, for he was the only one who heard her melody, he was the only one who loved her truly. But that was the only way she could allow herself to be with him without being torn apart by guilt too viciously.