A/N: Depression is a great motivator, and so I was motivated to sit down with my carrot cake and write my little heart out. Quite the mess it was too. Sorry if this A/N sets the wrong tone, but I'm slightly giddy. Must be the carrot cake.
Title: The Edge
Summary: The truth behind what Erik was thinking as Christine kissed him, and the truth behind what happened afterwards, when she returned so briefly.
It was dark, and I was frightened, and I was not alone.
My whole life I had welcomed the dark as a friend; a companion, aiding and abetting me in whatever crimes I chose or was forced to perpetrate. It had clothed me and covered me, a forgiving shelter from the world. As my eyes adapted, slowly over the years, I came to realize how quickly I was accepted, if my face could not be seen, and I began to have the first suspicion of my own power— the power of my voice, of my watching intelligence behind eyes distrustful and mismatched.
In my mind I sang the words I'd held so close, so long.
It was the simple things I always wanted
A gentle wife, a loving home
Chased like a villain, openly denied
The only question I was ever asked was why would I show my body if I would not show my face
What is worth living in hell?
Why do I not let go?
If you cut me open, you would find this dark love inside
And nowhere you could run would conceal you from me,
If you let me in once, I will take over,
I will control
A warning, a prophecy, a promise.
I'd never told her, though. The poor child had no warning; she thought she knew how deeply her mind was involved with mine, but truly she had no idea. Those words she sang as she performed Don Juan— so beautiful, this girl, her voice taught by mine, following where I led— she didn't know about succumbing, or sacrificing herself, or giving herself up.
Perhaps I let her believe that she could escape?
She opened to me, a mistake that could well prove fatal. I have not yet done anything to prolong anyone's life, save my own.
The man she thought she loved was watching, eyes cold and blank with disbelief; his hair straggled over his forehead and down his neck, encircled with the taut line of the catgut. Not an experience he'd ever suspected was in front of him, I imagine; nor one he'd wish to repeat.
I am an old man, and strong, and rage lends strength to determined hands.
What was this, that she was doing?
No, not her lips only— those lips had lied and sung their way through life thus far, doing their inadequate best to seduce, belying the innocence in trusting eyes.
No, but her hands— her hands! those fingers tiny and soft like a child's, they crept like a spider tender-touched across my face; finding twisted, scarred, skinless flesh and caressing— stroking as though it mattered not what I looked like, as though the feel of the skull just beneath the surface did not revolt every human aspect of her mind.
Had she fallen even then?
No.
She opened to me and I slid silently into her heart, this foolish child, and though she spend the rest of her days regretting it, there's no changing what has happened. What's done is done.
I sent her away.
No! she did not leave me, I sent her away.
I feel a knife slide between my ribs, the blade cold and precise, separating skin and muscle to penetrate till it hits bone. That was only one scar.
There were too many others— the ring of whitened tissue around my neck where someone once tried to slit my throat, to steal my air— the scars on the back of my head, there from when I was a child. A series of no doubt well-meaning adults had decided to take my life out of my own hands, to put an end to me— mercy, they must have repeated to themselves, we are human and we show mercy. None of them succeeded, not even my mother, and she tried the hardest, the oftenest, being struck by pity, a strange pitying loathing as she would come upon me crouched on the ground with a book or paper and lead— she did not see these as indications of an intelligence worth preserving— she did not see hardly anything— when she looked at me all she could see was a small and tangible death looking back at her with her husband's eyes.
The horridness of my face is nothing compared to what I carry inside.
And Christine— she wounded me— oh, she wounded me unto death. Am I less than human because I choose to strike back any way I can, or am I only human?
Disdain me and you will die, child. Disdain me and I will see to it that you die.
But she found a slower way, a slower and more painful way, and she opened to me, and I slid in.
Seduction is sweet, they say; revenge is sweeter.
She came back; she pushed the still-horrified, still-terrified, still-nearly-dead Vicomte out in front of her, and she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind; I heard her voice, the sweetness gone, replaced by something wholly different, something that brought a smile to my face. Oh the rush to be with me again, the awful unholy lust to hear me; accompanied as it was with a morbid fascination for the sight of me, the urge was too strong to bear.
"I forgot something—"
I nodded slowly to myself. Yes, the more often you lie, the easier lies slip out at a moments notice, ready to trot themselves out and put themselves on display, a stable of beautiful horses that only amount to something if you never let on that they're pretend.
She was back; she stood in the doorway, tentative and unsure; I could see her body shaking from where I sat, well back on the chair, my hands on my knees, my head down; I looked at her from under my lashes, I hid a smile for fear it would frighten her away.
Dearest child, however much you beg, you cannot have me.
She didn't know.
And I confess myself curious.
As I looked at Christine I felt the words forming deep inside; how long will you stay?
How long will you look on me, such as I am?
How long can you bear it?
How far can you go?
Such a child, she was— I was struck by that youth as she knelt beside me, her hand skimming the air just above my skin— not quite bold enough to touch, not quite frightened enough to draw away.
"You are too young," I said, and I turned away from her.
She caught her breath at that, and let it out again a second later in a rush of shaky air.
"Do you think it matters to me?" she whispered, low and fierce. "We will all die in the end, Erik— if it comes sooner or it comes later, of what account is it?"
I would not look at her.
"You say this as one who does not even know my age," I said.
"It doesn't matter, I tell you!"
"Were you to choose an age for a man," I asked, almost idly, "what would it be?"
Her fingers crossed the last narrow breadth to my chin, and turned my face towards hers.
"Yours," she whispered.
I let her eyes linger on mine, and took note of the fact— coldly, of course, no emotion whatever enticed into being by her fingers on my flesh, her breath a gentle warmth that only reminded me of my maskless face— that she did not allow them to waver for a moment. She looked in my eyes, and only in my eyes, and did not, would not look away.
"Such control," I said, softly but through my teeth.
"I defy the world," she said; the abruptness of the comment made me think she'd held the words in her mind for some time, waiting for me to speak first, before she told me— she defied the world.
A slight tilt of my head and her fingers slid from my chin; she twisted them into her other hand, and her eyes fell as I said, "How utterly pointless."
Ah, a setback, my dear.
Ah, a snub.
Ah, I'd take you by your shoulders and shake you like the spoilt child you are, did I not fear to touch you. Mustn't touch you, whatever the provocation, whatever the enticement, whatever the lure.
She recovered admirably, I must say.
A pause of a second or two; the best thing to do when snubbed is to surge back with something, let your anger carry you forward, past the hurt. Of course, one always runs the risk of sounding like an idiot, but it is simply not human nature to let this hazard prevent one from speaking.
She said, "I defy anything and everything that wishes to keep me from you."
"Even I?" I whispered almost-silently.
She didn't believe what I said, what I hinted, what I tried to tell her, what I lied. Yes, a lie, I see that now. I see everything quite clearly now.
"Even you, Erik," she said immediately; it was her quickness to reply that told me she didn't believe what I said.
Foolish Christine. Wise and brave Christine, my perfectly flawed child, and her hands were upon me again.
She was determined not to give me a choice.
At first I responded quite stiffly, and when she removed her mouth from mine with a disappointed gasp, I said, "Is not your Vicomte waiting, just out of sight?"
"Oh, let him wait!" she cried in her frustration. "Erik, you love me and I know it— why do you not—"
A child! I laughed at her. A child, and she could not even finish her sentence, because she did not know what she wanted; not truly. Humans are extremely adept at deluding themselves. I believe she thought she wanted me to kiss her, to kiss her and sigh with happiness, take her by the hand and swear my undying adoration, bend down and kiss her feet, and let time go by as quickly as possible until she was defined as my wife, and I was defined as her husband, and our lives were so entwined that you could not separate them without irreparable damage to us both.
But oh no, the look on her face when I laughed at her. Such a pout! Such a childish frown!
Such force in her hands and her lips and her grasp and her gaze as she threw herself at me, her body slammed hard against mine, arms about my neck and hands on the back of my skull, pulling me against her and into her as she did everything she could to show me I was mistaken in my assumption.
A knee on one side of my hip, she shifted her weight to sit in my lap, legs bent beneath her, pushing her up till she towered over me, her hands shifting round to cup my face and turn it up, turn it up to her.
She wants control. She wants to command. She wants me to weaken.
Well, weaken I did.
But a child— a child, a foolish child, Christine! If one wants to play the game, one must know the rules.
Sobbing, she let me go, and silently she asked me why.
I have always heard unspoken words more clearly than those that were hurled at me.
"I have been nothing but a teacher to you, Christine, for all the time I knew you; but one cannot teach what one does not know."
She cried, she wept hard, because I refused to lead her down that path— she thought she could see the brightness at the end of it, thought she could see into the future, and the future was beautiful and strange. Her body still close to mine, she lowered her head to my shoulder and her tears flowed down my neck, underneath my collar; and despite everything my hands buried themselves in her hair, twisted the strands around my fingers, and my breath caught in my throat.
I took hold of her shoulders as I felt anger grow, and I pushed her from me, holding her still in front of me.
"You take from me," I said to her, voice steel, voice controlled, voice implacable, face immobile. "You take from me, and you don't wish to give back."
"What have I taken, Erik?"
"My heart— Christine, you damned child, you took my life and you made it your own and now I cannot escape from you!"
The tears were turning to joy before my very eyes— so selfish! So selfish, not to care that I no longer belonged to myself, but only to rejoice that I belonged to her!
I will control.
I will command.
I will possess.
Perhaps we can belong to each other.
I know the difference between right and wrong, but fortunately this rarely hampers my efforts to do exactly as I please.
I didn't want her tears and I didn't want her declarations of love and I didn't want to bother with taking her to the bed. I wanted her to be silent, and I would be silent, and we would lay aside our awesome powers and be two misbegotten humans together.
Together.
Christine does not play by the rules; perhaps because she does not know them.
My mouth had moved to her throat and she tipped her head back and as I moved lower her breasts pressed against my neck and shoulders and I felt her say, "What is it that you want?"
Was she utterly baffled? Could anyone truly have been? No.
To play coy in these moments is in the worst want of taste, I hope she knows. I hope all women know.
But I answered.
I answered because she spoke, and her voice enslaves me; her voice is my master because I belong to it, and it to me.
"I want you," I bit out, my own voice harsh, the words clipped and devoid of all emotion.
She sank down to sit in my lap again, her legs shifting to stretch out on either side of me, and she opened her eyes at last and looked at me.
"What do you want me for?"
Persistent, if nothing else.
"Everything, and eternity."
I know what it takes to instill fear in Christine's heart— her intended waiting with desperation in his eyes and herself a few moments away from becoming another man's lover.
Her back arches, her neck arches, she throws her head back as she grips my shoulders and she sobs, "God help us! God help us!"
No words to tell her that I doubt he has anything to do with it.
Her weight on me is unbearable.
I cannot stand it.
I will not stand it.
Something must be done.
The child brings me to tears, she brings me to the edge of everything, the very edge. Madness is so forgiving; it absolves one of needing a reason for anything one does. But there was a reason for why I suddenly pushed her away.
The strangest pain.
The strangest feeling.
The strangest heat.
I pushed her away, and she knew why— she was pressed so close she knew why, but she still thought everything would be alright; she wasn't as easy to frighten as I'd thought— I was frightened. I knew too well that the beautiful strange brightness she thought she saw, would not be shared with me.
I suppose, ironically, that my chief problem is realism, a cynical practicality that transcends the boundaries between madness and sanity and makes a very wise lunatic of me indeed.
I must send her away again, no matter what.
I must not let her convince me otherwise.
How does one say farewell to one's possession and possessor?
Her eyes closed, she steadfastly refused to open them; still frightened of my face, perhaps, but more likely unwilling to realize that I was denying her yet again.
I slid my hand up from her waist, rested it on her breast and found her heartbeat; leaned forward to find the pulse at her neck with my lips; counted beats, so close together it sounded as if there were two people, two pulses, two hearts.
There I was.
There, I hoped, I would stay.
So deep inside; so far gone, I would never come back.
Her tears never stopped, the whole time she was with me, from when she left the Vicomte to now. They flowed on still, harder for what I was telling her, and finally she opened her eyes and accepted.
I suppose I should be glad that, then, my voice was proved to still be the stronger.
Scant seconds later, her face still flushed, her breath still staggered, she turned in the doorway and asked me if I would be alright.
Somewhere deep inside me I found the strength to reassure her.
"Do not worry, Christine—" I whispered; my lips cracked and broken and bruised, my voice strained from singing, and from speaking both truth and lies— I'd given all my power that night, emptied myself of all I had; I had wagered everything, and I had lost. "The devil takes care of his own."
She left; she left, poor unhappy thing, and she went her way. What became of her afterwards, I do not know. I sat for a moment, staring sightlessly into the empty air; and then stood, brushing my trousers till they fell once more into straight lines, rubbing a hand over my jawline, still warm from her lips, letting my fingers fall down to my collarbone, so recently graced with her touch, letting them travel further, chest with slowing heartbeat to the concave line of my belly to below, to ascertain what she'd done to me, her last act. An accident, as she'd never been taught the rules. A mishap. A mistake.
The first warmth I'd felt, in and from myself. Ever.
Tipping the bottle slowly and carefully, I filled the wineglass halfway with deep, deep red. A hellish creature, sipping from a glass of blood— I mixed in a few things to bring me release. In my situation, what would you have done? Seating myself once more in the chair, I watched the last bright red embers of the fire flicker and die, watched the wisps of smoke that curled through the air, felt my heartbeat slow further, slow and slow and slow, felt Death, which had pursued me through a life that was far too long, finally catch me up.
My own end, my own end, my own ending.
I wish to tell Christine, I wish to tell her.
There is nothing beyond the grave, beloved. Only a blessed peace.