Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, ALW, or the Really Useful Group. Please don't sue me.
Author's Notes: I have got to stop writing angst, but hey, it's fun.
'Our wrongs remained unrectified
And our souls won't be exhumed.'
Sing For Absolution – Muse
Absolution
She'd tried.
So hard.
It wasn't enough.
The night of the burial passed in a blur. Whenever she tried to remember afterwards, the shapes rushed through her mind too fast, blinding her. Cold, dead fingers and the smell of the damp earth beneath her, gold rings and coffins and tears. Black cloaks and siren song.
She'd asked Raoul to give her time and he smiled the slow, sad, golden-prince smile that she loved and agreed. Kissed her hand and left. She tried to act as if she hadn't felt a dead man's grip on her fingers instead of his. A death head's lips – could they even be called lips? – against her palm.
He stayed with her. Everywhere. From the sun on her pillow in the morning to the starlight at night. In the black and white of piano keys. He followed her outside. When she looked at flowers she only saw the blossoms he had bought for her, baskets and baskets of trailing, wilted blooms. Dying. She began to stay inside more and more. She shut out the sunlight and birdsong, remembering that he had never been able to enjoy them. Fingered the softness of her flaxen curls and wondered if they could be made into gold wedding bands. Tried to remember. Silly, senseless Little Lotte.
I am not an Angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost ... I am Erik!
But he was all those things now. Angels with soft fluttering wings and dizzy-sweet voices, ghosts that crept in with the shadows at night. Lurking in corners, watching her with furtive golden eyes. Weddings rings on cold fingers. The dead husband to the living bride. She picked absently at the lace on her dress and waited for him to take her, to give her everything she wanted and all she'd ever feared. But there was nothing. Only the torn, tear-stained scraps of her memories of him, black cloaks and siren song. And guilt. A terrible gap in the darkness where he should have been. Where she'd plucked him out.
She'd tried to give him peace when in life he'd had none. When she'd pressed her lips to his wasted forehead for the last time, she'd prayed for him. Prayed for the dreams and childhood joys he'd never had. For sunlight and birdsong and baskets of flowers that weren't dead. Laughter and living brides. And the love she'd never been able to grant him.
She'd tried.
Was it enough for him?
Was it enough for her?
She knelt in church, bathed in the dappled, half-light of the confessional, cheeks and lips as bloodless as his had been. Whispering secrets of angels and geniuses and ghosts. Forgive me, Father, she said, and in her mind the words echoed. Forgive me, Erik.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.
Forgive me.
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