Disclaimer: I do not own POTO or any of the associated music or characters, nor the song "Night Ride Across The Caucasus" by Loreena McKennitt. I own only the storyline and the unaffiliated characters.
Thank you for all of the lovely, encouraging reviews.
Hope this is a good start to your weekend!

Lee

Atelier

Christine

She looked around her in something akin to wonder as she entered his sanctuary. The music room. It was... beautiful. The embodiment of the potent, soul-wrenching music he made. Baroque, ornate. Exquisite. Almost like the throne rooms of the old monarchies. Cream-colored, unlit candles were all around, sharing their space with Grecian busts. A bronze phoenix stood at the end of a mahogany divan.

One entire wall flooded the room with the light of dawn, roseate, aureate. Flames of light trailed through the room, caressing and warming. They brushed her bare feet, traveled up as she made her way in, warm as a touch on her skin, gilding her skin with light, touching her hair with fiery fingers.

Christine turned her eyes to what was, to her way of thinking, an oddity. The other sides of the room were draped in deep red, like dying flames, but where the fabric lifted away, she saw a silver glint of bright light.

Mirrors. She realized. They were mirrors. But why did he cover them?

For the same reason he covers his face.

But then, if that were true, why have them in here at all?

The paradoxes and the questions flew through her like wind coaxing a melody from harpstrings. Like wings beating against the sky, wind shivering green leaves. What was the meaning of this room, where his music became tangible? Where she could feel it as a physical reality, brushing against her skin?

What does he see, in those mirrors, that he must keep them covered? Not for the first time, she wondered just what- or who- Erik Destler was afraid of.

She glanced over at him as he came into the room. In this room, his sanctum, this altar to music, he seemed suddenly more powerful, a magnetic figure drawing in everything around him. A king in his domain, a surety and a potent grace to his movements. His eyes were bright, glowing almost, a light and a presence gathering about him.

He gestured. "Such as it is." Even his voice had changed, softened, deepened. Slipping inside her mind with frightening ease. He seemed to be waiting for her reaction.

She smiled shakily, still absorbing the strange majesty of the room, the odd power it seemed to convey to him, cloaking him in some enigmatic aura. "It's beautiful." Her voice rippled around the room, breathless and wondering.

His eyes lightened. "This way." He swept past her to the piano, gleaming in the dawn light, the refracted sunbeams broken only by a scattering of papers across it. She followed in his wake, feeling the fantastical mystery of the room envelop her. She glanced at the piano again, where she could see an intriguing title in a bold, flowing hand, amidst the papers, like a splash of brilliant color in a drift of autumn leaves.

Don Juan Triumphante.

He saw where she was looking. "Not that, Christine."

Christine gave him an inquiring glance. "Will I ever see it?"

A slight smile curved his mouth, warmed his eyes. "Perhaps someday. Now." The level of his voice did not change, but there was a new and subtle power to it. Soft undercurrents that ran like the swirling waters beneath the still surface of a river. His hands caressed the keys with loving tenderness. "Scales, Christine."

Erik

Her voice was... heavenly. Seraphic. He was amazed at her range, amazed at the strange windfall he had received in her voice. To think that he had the chance to train and develop that voice made him catch his breath, unsure if this were not a fantastical dream.

He was tempted, as her voice soared and suffused the room with a resonant glory, to see what she would be able to do with his own music. To find out if his imaginings would be fulfilled in that ethereal voice. He could envision the angelic voice, filling the spirit with a strange, sweet sound.

What would happen, if the two were combined? His music and her voice?

Lost within his own musings, he was brought back to reality as her voice faltered. He half-turned to face her as she fell silent. "Christine?"

Her voice was unsteady. "Yes?"

Christine's eyes were wide and not altogether calm. There were dark things stirring beneath the surface, an odd, familiar shimmer gilding the chestnut depths. The light glittering on her eyes trembled. She looked down briefly.

"I'm sorry. It's just-" her voice caught. "- remembering."

He lost himself in the maelstrom in her eyes for a moment, trying to look beyond the strangely glimmering surface.

There was pain. There was a stark and shadowy loneliness. Guilt, regret, a bitter longing. And something that hid just beneath those, something that touched him like a finger to a piano key, a purity that vibrated through the air. It was tremulous, fragile as a moment in time.

He remembered, with a small pulse of shock, that there was more to her than the voice he'd just heard. That there was a soul behind the sound, a spirit behind the voice. Something like shame crept through him as he reminded himself of that.

I'm sorry, Christine. To have thought of you as only a voice.

It was selfish of me.

She was watching him with eyes like the ocean in a storm, tempest-tossed. A desperation and a despair beginning to surface in them.

He stood before that could happen. Leading her over to the window, he laid his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the dawn sky. Her breath shook, her skin hummed underneath his hands.

"Do you see the heavens, Christine?" he asked softly. She gave a slow, slight nod. His voice lowered, intensified with the power that had soothed her when she had reached out to him that night.

"Sing to them, Christine. Sing to Heaven."

Christine

There came a time, in that room, as the sun ribbed the clouds with breathing opalescence, like the inside of a shell, where her throat closed and her eyes filled. She could feel them all around her. Her mother, her father. Their music wove through her mind, their hands on her shoulders, their presence at her side. She heard a murmur in her mind, reverberating through her soul.

Christine, Christine.

Her parents voices at her ear.

She must have made a sound, for he turned from the piano. His expression changed from distraction to concern as he looked at her. "Christine?"

"Yes?" Her voice was a bare whisper. Inside her she felt something rising, desperately tried to quell it before it came to the surface.

It took her two tries. "I'm sorry. It's just- remembering."

He studied her for a moment, she felt the breath leave her body at the force behind that look. Not that it was a dark look, nor one of anger or disgust. It was the power behind that gaze, as though he were looking past the surface of her eyes, beneath the ripples and reflections to the depths beneath. Seeing- and knowing. Eyes that looked straight into her.

At last he stood. Coming over to her, he guided her to where the dawn imbued the sky with glowing color. Standing behind her, he placed his hands on her shoulders. His voice was soft in her ear.

"Do you see the heavens, Christine?"

She nodded, half-hypnotized by the voice that seemed almost to come from within her own mind.

"Sing to them, Christine." he whispered. "Sing to Heaven."

To my parents. she thought.

To my Angel.

Christine breathed in deeply, the sunrise filling her lungs, her soul, with light, rejuvenating. She felt some mystic energy enter her, vibrating through her, humming through her veins. She felt herself tremble.

Her voice lifted like a phoenix from the ashes. In a blaze of glory, vivid and alive against the dull and darkened ash. Bright and pure and liberating. Soaring to the heavens, in this dawning over the world. She could feel their touch in the light that hit her skin.

To them.

She had heard their voices in the night, and upon waking in the morning, had felt their music and their memories brush against her in her dreams. Her parents and her Angel. Their music had touched her, had soothed her when she dreamed once more of death. In her night's journey, in her day's struggle, they were by her side.

"There are visions, there are memories,
there are echoes of thundering hooves.
There are fires, there is laughter,
there's the sound of a thousand doves."

Her mother's eyes smiled at her, endless pools of spring edged in sunlight. Laughter seemed to echo through her, the sounds of her childhood. The sounds of the sunlight, the hopes, the dreams they had given her.

She could smell the warm earth and rain of her mother's garden, where she had played as a child. She could feel the sun-warmed soil beneath her, feel the smooth caress of leaves against her skin. The heady scents of growth drifted in the air. Somewhere, a mourning dove called, voice a plaintive question.

Were there doves in Heaven, she wondered. Doves adding their sweet echo to her mother's voice?

Mom... are there doves in Heaven?

"In the velvet of the darkness,
by the silhouette of silent trees-
they are watching, they are waiting.
They are witnessing life's mysteries."

Christine had felt their eyes upon her as she lay down to sleep, a child comforted by her parents, a guarding, loving presence as she smoothed her small hands over the pale cotton. She had felt a hand rest on her curls, caress them briefly. And then a voice would begin to sing to her, softly, sweetly, with the soothing melody of the violin in the background, lulling her into dreams of sunlight.

She could feel them now, watching their daughter. Hearing her as she sang to them. Her voice seemed to bridge the distance between them, a tenuous connection like spider silk cast out in all directions questing for a pillar to anchor itself to.

"Cascading stars on the slumbering hills.
They are dancing as far as the sea.
Riding o'er the land, you can feel its gentle hand
leading on to its destiny."

She could hear the voice of the ocean. She was a child again, dancing along the shore, spray and sand flying beneath her feet, the endless blue sky whirling above her. Her feet sinking briefly in the damp sand as it gave beneath her. White foam scattering under her steps. Waves frothing against her ankles, wind brushing against her hair. Her parents looked on, until at last, they came to stand beside her and all three of them were still before the sunlit waters, watching the sun bathe the sea in flame as it rose, golden, above the horizon.

"Take me with you on this journey,
where the boundaries of time are now tossed.
In cathedrals of the forest,
in the words of tongues now lost."

You've gone where I can't follow, not yet. But promise me that you'll follow me? Promise me that you'll be with me when I need you?

That my Angel of Music will stay with me?

If there was an answer, it was not one of the tangible or the flesh. It was one of the forgotten answers, one of those found deep within the self, there from the time of birth. A presence at her core, an omniscience, a strange, half-dreamt of sentience. A presence that, when touched, sent ripples of emotion, energy, coursing through her. An echo of its surety, its reassurance that filled her skin. A chant singing through her veins like the answer to a prayer.

"Find the answers, ask the questions,
find the roots of an ancient tree.
Take me dancing, take me singing,
I'll ride on till the moon meets the sea."

Christine's voice faded as the words ended. Inside, she felt a warmth, a glow that pressed against her skin, a pulsing vibration like fire through her veins. A song in her spirit.

She opened her eyes and remembered that it was dawn. As the sense of her parents faded from her, she felt the protective aura of her Angel of Music envelop her. The Angel her father had promised her held her under his wings in the morning light. A serenity flowed through her, easing and ebbing through her spirit like waves upon the shore.

She realized she was leaning back against him. But with the echoes of the music, the presence of her Angel, still glowing like embers within her, she couldn't bring herself to care. With the strange currents that wove through her, the music trailing like wings across the sky within her, she couldn't summon the energy to move, caught within the fantastical rhythm singing through her, uplifting her.

She glanced up over her shoulder at him. "Very good, Christine." His eyes were warm, approving. She had a sudden sense of genesis, an emergence. His hands slipped from her shoulders, she suppressed the vague sense of vertigo. He faded back from her and she rested her forehead against the window, the golden light anointing her brow. "I could feel them." she whispered, not trusting anything louder. Her heart began to pound low in her ears, beating a throbbing tattoo against her ribs.

His eyes were unreadable. There was a warmth, a concern, but also the same complexity she had seen when he had first heard her sing. The same tentative feel, as though she looked into the heart of a flower opening under sunlight. When she had opened her eyes and seen him looking at her with wondering, startled eyes.

Eyes like the sea upon the shore.

"I could feel them." Her voice shook.

"Christine-"

She felt tears start at the corners of her eyes, a burning heat. Her throat tightened, heart constricting. She closed her eyes, feeling water brim against them, clinging to her skin. The salt-sweetness of the ocean against her lips. She shivered as she allowed the enormity of it to hit her.

I felt them. I heard them. As though they were right here beside me. As though...

She felt a sob rise, fought it and coughed. "Sorry." she mumbled, not meeting the eyes she felt upon her. Christine crossed her arms over herself, trying to cling to composure.

It was a battle she was doomed to lose. Her vision blurred, smearing into stripes of color, her mouth suffused with the tang of tears, face stinging under the rawness of her mourning.

She moved blindly toward him; her arms went tightly around him. She felt him tense again, as he had that first time, felt him freeze, taut, the blood suddenly racing. Felt him look down at her in surprise.

She didn't care. He was safe- someone to hold onto.

And, at this moment, that was all she needed.

Erik

He hadn't expected this. He hadn't expected this- break- in the walls she'd built around herself. Not so soon. Not so suddenly. He certainly hadn't expected that she would come to him for comfort. He felt adrenaline rushing through him as she clung to him. This was not something he was particularly comfortable with. His experience with sobbing girls was minimal, he had all but forgotten the sensation, and was not entirely comfortable with remembering it. He felt her shaking against him. She's going to make herself sick. He recalled that much, at least.

She was also completely soaking his shirt, he realized.

Awkwardly, he patted her shoulder, it seemed like the right thing to do. "It's all right, Christine." His voice was pitched softly, soothingly. "It's all right."

The tightening of her arms was the only answer he received. "Shh." He embraced her tentatively, stroking the head buried against his shoulder. A nervous tension jumped through him.

I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

Her sobs subsided after a while, though her body still shook. She turned a tear-streaked, reddened face to him. "Sorry. I'm crying all over you and-" she hiccuped, laughed a little hysterically.

"Don't apologize for it, Christine." he said quietly. "Everyone cries at some point or another."

Christine

God- I can't believe I did that. Just went and broke down on him. What kind of dysfunctional idiot am I?

He was looking at her in something like shock. As though he was still trying to absorb the idea of a teenage girl sobbing all over him.

Her breath shook. "I didn't mean to do that, you know." Her voice was small. A tiny ball of fear coalesced inside her. What would he think of her after this? After she had lost all control-and in front of him?

"It's all right, Christine." His voice lowered, softened. "Don't you think it's time you mourned them?" His arms were firmer around her now, as though he were more sure of himself. As though he genuinely cared. Christine's lungs felt abruptly tight, airless.

It was suddenly hard to meet his eyes, so bright, so intent on hers. She looked down, resting her forehead against his shoulder. "I don't know." Her throat burned, heat pricking her eyes again.

His hand rested against her hair as the tears began to flow once more.

Hope you liked.

Lee