A/N: It's been two months since I posted any fic, and I am sorry for the extended absence. It's just been a very busy time, and I had a lengthy battle with writer's block, but I'm *hopefully* going to be more active now.

This fic was written for a prompt from rjdaae, and out of all of the unposted fics on my laptop I chose to post this one to mark my fourth anniversary of fic writing.

He still remembers the first time he heard it. It was more than twenty years ago. He was in Turkey, after recently fleeing Persia on horseback, with all his worldly goods tucked into his saddlebags, due to a rather unfortunate incident. It was a late night, clear and cold, stars twinkling in the heavens, and the mare beneath him was picking her way over the land with little input from him. He had had a banging headache all day, had spent most of it riding half-blind, and sleep pulled heavy at every part of him, warring with the impulse to keep riding. To just keep riding.

And then he heard it. Soft, at first. So soft he thought he was dreaming it, that his ears had conjured it out of desperation. The flickers of a heartbeat.

Even to his aching mind it made no sense. He had lived the whole of three decades by then, perhaps a shade more, and almost all of it spent wandering, directionless, alone. How could there be someone out there for him?

It was wishful thinking.

It was the result of the headache.

He took it as a sign to sleep, and bunked down, hobbled the mare and wrapped himself in blankets in the scrub, telling himself that by morning the heartbeat would be gone. It was the product of exhaustion, and nothing more. And he slept content in that knowledge.

But he was wrong.

Morning came. The first tendrils of sunlight stirring him to wakefulness. And the headache was gone, but the heartbeat was still in his ears, still there. A gentle sussurration that mocked him and all that he could not have.

How could he have a soulmate? How could there be someone for whom this face, this walking carcass, was meant? Surely God was laughing at his expense, in cahoots with Lucifer to bring one more torment into his life.

And under that bright morning Turkish sun, he resolved he would have no part in their joke. Soulmates are for other people. Not for him. Never for him.

Christine does not remember the first time she heard the heartbeat in her ears. It has simply always been there, her constant companion since she was tiny. One of the few memories she has of her mother is asking her about the noise in her ears. And her mother smiled at her, and kissed her forehead and whispered, "It is the heartbeat of your soulmate, älskling. The person whom you are fated to love."

Her mother was already coughing blood by then, and the memory is faded, worn. But Christine has treasured it every day since.

She used to dream that her soulmate was a prince. The dream, perhaps, of all tiny girls raised on fairytales and stories. He would be tall, and have blond hair. And maybe a moustache that would be neatly trimmed and simply seem a part of his face and not something foreign that doesn't belong, like with other men. And his eyes would be blue, a grey-blue like the sky just after dawn, still half-wrapped in mist. And he would come to her through the trees, and take her in his arms, and promise that they would always be together.

She only ever did the soulmate test once. On the beach of Perros-Guirec. It was not that she really thought Raoul would be her soulmate, but she thought it would be nice if he was. Standing face-to-face at the edge of the water, they rolled up each other's sleeves, and pressed fumbling fingers into each other's wrists.

Their pulses did not align, and she still remembers the flicker of sadness in Raoul's blue eyes. Grey-blue, like the sky at dawn.

That flicker of sadness has haunted her for nine long years.

Mamma Valerius and the Professor were soulmates. They sought out each other's pulses one evening in Stockholm, the sky blazing with the sunset though it felt as if it were for them and them alone. And he swept her into his arms, and they laughed and cried and danced, and married within the week.

Papa buried his soulmate in Sweden.

When Papa died, she set aside all considerations of who her own may be.

There was no one who caught her eye at the Conservatoire. And her heart leapt when she caught sight of Raoul in the crowd leaving the Garnier one night, she clamped down on the fluttering sensation.

She already knows it is not him.

But tonight. Tonight her fingers are gentle, holding the score to Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5. The Emperor. It does not have any singing part, but Erik has said that he likes it, and promises to play it for her some other night.

And she is just musing over how wonderful it will be to hear, when she hears It. It. The soft beat beneath the music that Erik is playing on his violin. Wrapped around her, cocooning her. His eyes are closed as he sways with the music, fingers delicate on the bow, and her heart lurches, the notes crying out to her, demanding every ounce of her attention.

"Erik," she whispers, breathes, and her heart is in her throat because if she is wrong then she is so very wrong, but the beat in her ears is content, and the beat in the music is as familiar as the one in her own throat, and before she realises she has moved at all, she has dropped the score, has stood and crossed the room to his side, has reached up and lay her hand on the back of his.

The music shudders and stops. The heartbeat in her ears faltered. Golden eyes are frowning at her, questioning, and all she breathes is, "May I?"

He opens his mouth but does not speak, and she takes his hand gently, eases the bow from his grip, and presses her fingertips gently into his wrist.

His eyes widen. Her own heart falters. And the beat in her ears is louder than ever, is pounding hard, like the one in his wrist. The same.

The same.

Tears well in her eyes, and still neither of them speaks. She turns her hand over, straightens his fingers, and guides them, gently, to her own wrist.

And he gasps, his mouth forming a little oh as he looks down at her, and she raises her hand to gently wipe away the tears that trickle down his cheek.

"Hello," she whispers, and stands on tip-toe, and brushes her lips lightly against his. "Hello."

A/N: I hope you liked it and please do review!