A/N: Trigger Warning! This story has moments of harsher themes of depressive and suicidal tendencies, so if you struggle with these issues, read at your own discretion.
I want to thank you all for deciding to read this. I welcome those of you who are new to my works, and also greet everyone who may have followed me from Down Once More, Swan Song, or Heights! Feel free to leave a review, I am curious to see what you all think about this story. Also, a big thanks to Phanatic01 for helping me with this! Enjoy!
Angel: a spiritual being that serves especially as a messenger from God or as a guardian of human beings
Erik lay face down in the gutter, feeling the soft rain patter down on his broken sides. It was as if God –were he to even bother to believe such a being existed- only wanted to punish him further. The drops might be small, but each one echoed through his ribs like they were falling knives. The cold of the air chilled through him as he continued to grow damper from the rain. Still, he had not the strength or the will to get up. What was the point? It would only hurt more to have to struggle to his most likely broken leg and then he would fall back into a potentially even more uncomfortable heap. No, he thought, it was not worth the extra pain. He decided just to lay there and wait for his inevitable death. Even if he did manage to haul his sad remains up, he would probably be beaten more in a couple weeks. He had experienced this all his life, he knew what to expect.
He tried to take a deeper breath, growing slightly light headed from all of the shallow panting he was doing, but this only brought further pain. He assumed he had several broken ribs to match his leg, his right hand was swelling from a boot that had unceremoniously been stamped down upon it, and he knew he had a black eye on his left side. He wanted to simply waste away already. It was not like he had a lot to live for, after all.
Oh, that's just wonderful, he thought went he heard a distant clap of thunder. Just what I need, more rain.
Sure enough, within moments it started coming down hard. He could barely see anything to begin with, but now, with the rain coming down in sheets, all he could make out was damp grey. This thankfully allowed him something of a noise buffer as he assuredly yelled quite loudly as he managed to sit up, leaning against the alley wall tiredly.
No, that was definitely worse than I thought it would be, he mused, still wincing from the sheer agony that wracked his ever fibre. He sat like this, feeling the cooling rain help calm the uncomfortable heat radiating around his swollen eye and hand. Though a numbness was slowly overtaking his legs, creeping up his fingers, and taking root in the small of his back. He knew the last was something very dangerous to be feeling, but he could not bring himself to fully care. He could not move, he could barely breathe, so why not welcome death?
From out of the misty rain came a single, silvery figure. It was lean and fairly small, but somehow held much power within its presence. It shone a light silver as it approached, stopping just a few feet away from where Erik sat. He ignored it as it stood over him.
Perhaps if I look dead or asleep, they'll go away. God! I sound like a child. He nearly shook his head at his own ridiculous thoughts.
Erik closed his eyes enough to look asleep while watching the figure carefully with hooded lids. He heard a soft sigh before he felt something wash over him. It only occurred to him too late that it was sleep.
A soft, lilting sound resonated through the air. It was gentle and sweet, filling the space in its shiny echo. Bouncing off the walls lightly, it rang like a spring breeze through his ears as he struggled with consciousness. Everything seemed vague until he tried to sit up, and then everything was undoubtedly fuzzy and now also spinning. Catching hold of what he could, he drove his head forcefully back, trying to assure himself that he was, in fact, not spinning around at a brisk rate. It was only when the circling sensation abated that he was able to comprehend where exactly he was. This information, he found, contrasted greatly from what he had expected.
The grip he had and now realised was causing the dull burning sensation in his hand, was on the bed clothes of his own mattress. The thing he had so ardently pressed his head back against only to feel a slight ringing pain later, was his pillow. He was in his bed, which meant he was in his home, which then meant someone had dragged his unconscious and broken body all the way here.
Instinctively, his hands flew to his face. He breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the familiar white porcelain still in place and concealing the monstrosity beneath. Thinking about it further, however, he came up short. Who knew about his home besides himself, Nadir, and Madame Giry? The latter had never seen him without his mask, so perhaps it was her. Though, she had not the strength to haul him all that way by herself, and he could not remember anyone else there besides the singular figure in the rain.
Looking around himself again, he noticed his vision was quickly clearing. He was surprised not only to fully realise he was in his home, but also in the Louis-Phillipe room that he had made for reasons of his own vanity and potential boredom. He looked about confusedly, wondering that if the person who had brought him here knew him so well, then why not lay him in his own room. In his coffin.
His musings were somewhat broken as he noticed that still, the gossamer sound of music filtered through his senses. It was one of those sounds that made one wonder if it was always there and one had simply never noticed. It rang through him and made him feel like he were floating upon the wings of a clouded sky.
Looking to the door, he was stunned into silence as it gently opened to reveal the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
It was a young woman with long, flowing curls of chestnut-auburn and large blue eyes that shimmered and shone like sapphires. She wore a simple gown of storm-cloud grey and carried in a tray laden with a cup of tea and a few cloths, bandages, and bowl of clean water. She continued her song as if he were still peacefully asleep and not staring at her as if in some sort of twisted dream.
He watched her as she came over and perched on the edge of the bed, examining his hand from afar. She never ceased her little song and Erik began to feel as if he should know it somehow. As it was, his mind was awhirl with questions as to who this ethereal beauty was before him and why she was so unabashedly close.
'My, my, you have certainly done a number on yourself this time, haven't you?' She observed coolly, breaking effortlessly from her song before picking it back up like it were a breath in a crescendo. She went over to his bedside table and froze, suddenly glaring as her music harshly ceased.
'Morphine? Again?!' She asked of the small bottle beneath the lamp. She picked it up and hurried to the washroom where he distinctly heard her wash it down the drain. 'I worked too hard the last time to get you off that vile stuff. I will not have you relapsing!' She scolded, coming back into the room. Her dress matched her stormy mood perfectly. She stood there, looking at him, though it felt to him more like she was looking through him. She did nothing to acknowledge his gaze. If he did not know better, he would say she was blind.
Finally, her face softened and her shoulders slumped.
'It's all my fault.' She muttered to the floor. 'If I just knew what I was supposed to do, I would do it! I have tried everything, but still, it all ends up the same!' She looked distantly to the ceiling. 'How am I supposed to do this?' she demanded of the heavens. 'Tell me what to do!' She nearly wept.
'You could stop blithering on, for a start.' Erik told her dryly from the bed.
This exacted a great change in her countenance. Her already large eyes grew wide as she stared at him in total shock. He almost wondered if his mask had slipped.
'Y-you can hear me?' She asked as he continued to look at her.
'Unfortunately, yes.' He remarked a little venomously.
'Can-can you s-see me?' She asked, leaning forwards a bit as if she were the one trying to see.
'Distinctly.' He replied, growing a bit unsure of this whole thing.
This time he physically checked his mask's placement as she leapt back several feet, pressing her back to the wall and covering her mouth with her hands. He groaned slightly as the sudden excitement made his heart work harder than it had anticipated in his damaged body. She relaxed in concern over this.
Erik, who had pushed himself up onto his elbows when she had grabbed his morphine, now slumped back painfully onto his pillow. He closed his eyes against the hurt as he tried to control his breathing. He suddenly became aware of a presence hovering beside him and opened his eyes to see her sitting next to him again. She reached out a hand to his chest, but he wincingly pulled away.
'Who the Hell are you?' He demanded, gritting his teeth to the pain.
'I'm Christine.' She answered, her brow puckered with sympathy and –he hated it- pity.
'What are you doing here, Christine?' He asked, noting how her slender fingers snaked effortlessly around his weakly batting arms to touch his chest. He instantly caught his breath and took it in greedily. He looked at her confusedly as she bent forward slightly, wincing and holding her chest. He watched as she took rasping breaths.
'I'm-' She took a short breath in. 'I'm your guardian angel.' She explained, still clutching her chest as if her lungs were refusing to work properly.
'What did you…?' He trailed off, watching her close her eyes to the pain he evidently saw she felt. He sat up quickly, watching with a mix of wonder and horror before noticing he was not in excruciating pain, himself. 'Wait,' he stopped, remembering her explanation to her presence. 'Guardian angel? You're my guardian angel?' He asked incredulously. She whimpered a nod as she tried to regain her breath. Erik looked distantly across the room for a moment, desperately trying to remember what he had been doing in the past few hours. He thought of the morphine bottle, but did not distinctly feel the wooziness that generally accompanied one of his drug induced states of calm. Perhaps he had overdosed, or Nadir had given him something for his injuries and this was all a dream. Yes, a dream seemed far more likely.
She sat up suddenly, plucking him from his thoughts rather sharply. He looked at her as she still struggled a bit before quickly calming her breath. She was back to normal…he supposed.
'I took your rib injuries away.' She explained as if it were nothing. 'Apparently you had a bone jutting into one of your lungs. It was starting to tear, so I fixed it.' She told him with complete calm.
He stared at her a long moment. He looked like a dog who was trying to understand maths. Finally, he found a more humouring side to his confusion and felt, what the Hell? Maybe this could be fun. 'How exactly did you manage that?' He asked, looking at her with limiting patience and he was certain to be obvious lack of sanity. He must be insane to hallucinate a beautiful woman who claimed to be his guardian angel.
She shrugged tiredly at him. 'I literally take your pain. Angels heal much faster than humans so I'm fine now.' She assured as if he were worried. 'I am afraid you will have to wait until tomorrow for the leg, though. I can only heal so much at a time.' She told him calmly.
Erik stared at her blankly again, trying to find a way to accept this ridiculousness with as much calm as she was irritatingly putting forth with minimal effort.
I must have overdosed, or perhaps hit my head on something, he thought. Certainly this cannot be real. He looked at her harder now, squinting a bit to see if she changed any. She did not and he sat back a bit, paying no attention to her slightly worried expression.
'I still do not know how you can see me.' She observed, cocking her head slightly as she regarded him.
'I was wondering the same thing.' He told her, ignoring her unwavering gaze. It was hard to do, but with so many strange occurrences within the last few hours, he knew he could muddle through somehow.
'Perhaps it was because you were injured.' She tried out more to just speak than to fully explain.
'I've been injured worse before.' He noted dryly. 'Or were you not an angel then?' He asked, feeling the barbs in his tone. He thought of all of the injustices he had been dealt over the years. If there were such things as guardian angels, then he got the broken one.
Of course I got the broken one. It's my job to receive every short stick known to man. He thought to himself.
'Did you ask for me?' She looked at him questioningly. He shot her a glare that told her that was most definitely not how they were going to explain it.
'How could I ask for you if I did not even knew you existed until just a moment ago?' He asked her, feeling his temper rising steadily. It was as if she were not even thinking her words through.
'Did you ask for God?' She tried.
Erik glowered at her even more with this one. 'Hardly. He and I do not get along.' He told her sternly.
Something in her amazingly vibrant eyes darkened. 'Did you give up?' She asked, looking at him deeply. Her voice was low yet small, as if she did not want to say the words.
'Give up on what, life?' He asked, looking at her sceptically. She nodded slowly as if accusing him of something. 'So what if I did? Are you going to alert the angel Sûreté to my sudden plight in conscience? Well go ahead! It's not like I have anything to live for anyways!' He snapped, watching her shrink from his side. He wondered why he felt so angry when he was not even certain she was real, but the idea of yet another person being disappointed in his existence set him off.
She rose silently and fluidly from the bed, looking at him with quickly watering eyes. 'I would never do something like that to you. I only want to protect you.' She told him in a small voice.
'Well you've done an excellent job of that over the years!' He yelled, feeling the heat rise to his head, making it throb slightly.
Her brimming eyes overflowed as she caught a sob in her throat. 'I'm sorry, Erik.' She said before practically flying from the room.
He watched her go, once more amazed by her. She knew his name, and she said it so wonderfully.
After a few minutes of being alone, he started to wonder if he had come back to a normal state of consciousness. He had run over the past few hour's events thoroughly in his head and had come to no definite solution to this mysterious, yet beautiful girl's existence in his home. He thought briefly that maybe the best option would be to just continue humouring her and see where things lead. At the very least, he needed to get out of the bed and move around. He hated being trapped in one place and the idea of a strange woman -or angel, if she was to be believed- wandering around his house was not a pleasurable one to him.
Though he could now breathe and move his upper body well, his leg still gave him trouble. He realised as he shuffled his lower body out from under the quickly stifling comforter that this Christine had put a splint on his right leg, securing the break. How she had managed to care for him so well amazed him, but he supposed that if she were what she claimed to be, then nothing could truly stand in her way. How freeing that must be, he thought dryly.
Hobbling out of the room, he noted that the drawing room was warmly lit by the fireplace. Everything looked just as he had left it but all felt slightly warmer. Something about the place had changed. It was more than a simple domicile, or the place Erik forced himself to remain to avoid such infractions with the natural world as he had experienced so painfully earlier, it had become a true home. He had never really had a home before, but the places he had been that came anywhere near it felt vaguely like this. There was a lightness as well as a suffocating weight to the air that spoke of more than just one cold being breathing it in. He saw on the sofa before the fire place the brunette beauty he had been seeking.
He came over and watched her for a moment. She was staring distantly at the fire as tear tracks failed to dry from the still flowing droplets. Her pale, ivory skin shone, as did her whole being. She seemed like she held an inner light to her as if he were seeing into a silver lined coffee pot. Her grey dress only accentuated this. But it was her eyes that drew his attention the most. Most blue eyes held a washed out version of the colour, but hers were so vibrant and bright it made one wonder if they were real. In the light of the fire they deepened somehow further, shining more cobalt. He was struck by their intensity and found words dying on his lips. It mattered little, it seemed, for she turned and spoke for him.
'Erik! You should not be up. Oh, and your leg is still hurt.' She fluttered about him, looking curiously like a butterfly.
'Christine,' he said it firmly, but something in it refused to come out lacking elegance. Her name was simply too lovely to mar with a disregard for its natural beauty. She stopped and looked at him, her eyes looking like they were about to fill with tears once again. He took a breath.
'Say I believe you, and that you are an angel.' He told her not being able to look at her as he conceded to something. 'Then that means that I am meant to believe in God, yes?' He looked up at her now.
She thought for a moment, biting her cheek. 'Not necessarily. You can believe whatever you like. I have never actually met God, so I cannot say for certain. All I know is that I am your guardian angel.' She told him, shrugging it off.
Once more he was growing impatient with her passiveness.
'But you are an angel. Angels were made by God.' He explained steadily.
'Yes, but guardian angels are different. We were once human. I suppose we did something very good to earn the position.'
Of course they are, he thought, mentally rolling his eyes at the convenient excuses religion always seemed to make up for itself. 'What did you do?' He asked, curiosity taking over his frustration.
'I do not know.' She looked down at the floor.
'Well, how did you die?' He pressed.
'I do not know that either. I do not remember any of my life before. I was only told that my name was Christine and that I was supposed to look after you. Heaven never told me how or why; they simply wanted me to keep you safe, I suppose.' She glanced up at him, seeing his frustration growing again. She knew from experience that he did not like not knowing. He sighed hotly and closed his eyes.
'So Heaven is real, then?' He asked.
'I suppose it is.' She said as if she had never thought about it before. He nearly throttled her for her lack of concern or rational thought, but sufficed to press his tongue to the front of his teeth and look down at the floor. This girl, angel or not, was infuriating.
He stood there for a moment, trying to regain his quickly slipping patience. He was too busy with this to notice how light his head was becoming. It was not until he uncontrollably slumped into Christine that he realised his strength was going from being on his leg so long. She gave a slight cry before completely catching him off guard once again. As he fell into her, instinctively grabbing hold of her fortuitously outstretched hand, she instead slipped her arm around his shoulders as best she could and used the other to catch the backs of his knees. She stood up, him in complete shock in her arms while she casually started to carry him back to the Louis-Phillipe room. He could find no words of protest or simply any words as a girl who barely came up to his collarbone carried him like he was nothing but a feather. Now he desperately worried for his sanity. Last he had checked, it was fairly limited, but now he feared it had completely left him.
She set him down gently on the bed as he continued to gaze at her in disbelief. She was just pulling the covers up over him again when his voice found itself.
'How did you do that?' He asked wonderingly.
She looked at him with that same, unnerving calm. 'The same way I got you all the way back here in the first place.' She remarked.
He somehow found the presence of mind to glare at her for her vague answer, but she did not seem to notice. He then thought of what she had purportedly saved him from. 'Who said I wanted to come back?'
She looked at him earnestly at this. She gazed deeply into his amber eyes, hidden partially by the shadows of his mask.
'Erik, I will not let you throw your life away simply because you do not see any value to it.' She told him with complete conviction in her tone.
He was about to ask what she would do to stop him if he tried to defy her, but thought better of it. As it was he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Something told him that she had a power in that. Slowly, he slipped off to sleep on the drifting tones of her song. Her voice rang through his home like none other's and he began to wish he could stay conscious long enough to hear the end this time.