A/N: Remember, the more you review, the more I will write.
Where I come from, opera houses didn't have lairs beneath them. Actually, we didn't really have opera houses where I come from. We did have plenty of caves, and even underground lakes, but none of them ever looked like this. As I looked around, I was again forced to wonder if this was a delusion.
Hundreds of candles illuminated a giant cavern. Below me was the glistening smooth water of a lake, and walls of natural stone surrounded me. Other than that, I could have been standing in a normal home, albeit one belonging to a rather eccentric decorator. In my fatigue-induced haze, I found it hard to pinpoint details that would give me a clue as to the identity of my rescuer, but my eye was quickly drawn to the center of the cave, where a large organ stood surrounded by candles, looking for all the world like an altar to some pagan god of music.
In the dim lighting, I didn't notice at first the dark figure seated at the instrument. He was sitting so still that for a moment I wondered if he was awake, or even alive, but after a few moments, he stirred, and appeared to be writing something. Then the organ came alive with music. Now, I had always considered my education in music to be quite formidable, but I had never heard anything like this. Not in the gypsy camp I was born in, not in the wealthy home I was raised in. Music was something that you danced to, or sang to, or played to impress callers, but this was different. Even half-conscious, it made me want to cry, listening to the raw emotion it seemed to contain. I felt drawn towards it, as though it had taken hold of my very soul. I started to stumble my way down the stairs, and realized too late that my traitorous legs would not support me. They slipped out from under me, and I collapsed onto the floor below me, fresh pain shooting through me where there had only been dull throbbing before. The music stopped as its creator turned toward me, and the spell was broken.
He had started playing to drown out the terrified noises the girl made as she slept When he picked her up and carried her, she had been completely limp, and when he laid her on his bed, he feared momentarily that she was dead. A quick check of her pulse reassured him that she was not. He told himself that he was only worried because he had gone through so much trouble to bring her here, and would hate to have to dispose of her body. He would never have admitted to himself that he truly wanted her to recover. He wanted to know why she was here, who was pursuing her, and why her forearm was branded with the shape of a cross.
While he cleaned the wounds on her face, and coaxed water and a pain-reliever down her throat, she had lain quietly, but as soon as he reached to touch her arm, she had begun to fight him, as much as her feeble body was able. She wouldn't have been able to hurt him in her weakened condition, but he feared that if she had internal injuries, she might worsen them in her mad struggle to escape whatever nightmares his touch had induced.
It seemed that the blood on her shirt was mostly old anyway, and she wasn't bleeding except from her head wound, which he had already bandaged, so she would probably be alright. For a while, he just paced about his home, wondering who this girl was, that she had been beaten and branded. She seemed harmless enough. He also did not fail to note, with some irony and much self-loathing, that she was not the first woman he had inspired with such terror, though most of the others had waited at least until they were conscious. Despite his attempts to reason with himself, that her cries were the result of past experience, not his presence, the thought preyed upon his mind until he could no longer stand the sound of her unconscious battle.
That was when he started to play. The music started out as a few desperate notes, with no harmony or thought, just meaningless noise. Then the desperation started to melt away, and his mind began to work, his fingers following the tune played by his emotions. Anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and a myriad of others began to show themselves. He felt as though he had been set free. For a year, he had played funeral dirges, or nothing at all. He hadn't even bothered to compose since the disastrous performance of his first and only opera, the product of years of labor, Don Juan Triumphant. He stopped for a short while to find a pen and paper, then began to play again, taking breaks every few minutes to make a new notation. He continued like this for hours, unaware of the passing time.
Suddenly, a loud thump followed by a low moan broke his reverie, and he whirled around to see the girl sitting crumpled on the ground next to the short flight of stairs, her face white and her eyes closed.