Title: Afterward
Author: AngeGlorieux, a.k.a. SunandShadow
Version: Mix of Leroux and Kay
Characters: Nadir, (Erik), Christine, (Raoul)
Rating: PG for some morbidity
Afterward
Early that morning, as the two of them fled
the crumbling remains of his Opera,
a pair of eyes followed their ragged progress
– hesitant, exhausted, still half in shock at being allowed to leave.
Not his eyes, turned away and blind with pain, betrayal
and at last a hope of peace –
but mine.
Eyes darkened by sorrow and concern for my friend
(for so I must call him, after all that he was to me,
to my son),
I watched the child-woman, her naiveté stripped ruthlessly away,
led near-swooning by the halting steps of her lover.
My heart was heavy:
Would the memory of these fatal hours
trapped in the madman's lair fade from their battered minds,
or were they to be forever choked by its poisonous grasp..?
For the boy I was less afraid; his ego was strong enough
to withstand the torments of the last few days.
The girl, though… the girl was another story.
Gentle, innocent, more fragile perhaps than even she seemed;
she had been swept helplessly on a tide of unsuspected strength,
and carried by her own guileless trust over the
edge of a dark and twisted obsession,
her flawlessly blue eyes fixed only on the heavens above.
I must believe that he meant her no harm,
that he himself was moved by a force that was as beyond
his understanding and control as was the magic in his voice.
I must believe that, because I have seen corners of his heart
which he keeps secret even from himself, and found no darkness there.
In the shadows in which he lived, he found one shimmering beam
of hope and light – his Christine,
the angel on whom he pinned all of his hopes, and in so doing
doomed himself to lie forever beneath these ruins, with a heart as cold and dead
as the fractured stones which will surely soon cover him.
'His heart is broken.'
How often we hear that phrase without understanding.
In his case, it was true.
Though the muscle continued to beat for almost three hours
after his angel fled, I believe he had already ceased to exist far earlier –
perhaps at the moment his misshapen lips touched her porcelain forehead.
Unable to bear the strain of loving her any longer,
the wondrous fruition of his endless longing
for a girl never destined to live in darkness,
he surrendered his soul to her and, before the echo of her footsteps
was beyond his ken, and their tremulous whispers, began to die.
I cannot bring myself to say goodbye yet to my friend,
to this man some have called a monster
(but who could have killed me a hundred times over and yet showed mercy,
mercy beyond naming, to a little boy with a heart larger than his destiny).
I have sheltered him from the elements,
and shielded him from the prying eyes
of those who would come to view the site of the 'mysterious tragedy',
but I wait still before putting him forever beneath the earth.
Months have passed, long months.
You may call me the monster now,
for leaving what was once a man to rot unburied like
a morbid relic of some freakshow long gone,
but in all honesty I think he would find it some small comfort now
that at last in decay he is what he could never be in life –
he looks like any other man long dead.
I visit him daily.
There is more.
There are no words to give it birth, and if there were,
I would not speak them so soon after the events
of that terrible night.
Erik is gone where no cruel slander can hurt him,
but while his story ends, another continues.
Those who figure into it know its details well,
and those who do not – well, it is none of their concern.
She came to me here, the wind blowing her long, blonde hair
in cold gusts like a breath from a tomb.
She came alone, below, risking her delicate neck
on the shattered steps that led to his ruined domain,
and found me here, as always.
Had I kept track of her movements throughout this time,
told her of his passing,
perhaps sent word for her to come?
I will not say.
Nor will I tell how she sobbed on the strong shoulder
of her husband and love, weeping for a loss
neither could comprehend.
She did not come to him then, but she came now.
I heard as if from miles away the stomp of a shod hoof on a cobbled street,
the impatient jingle of harness bells where her husband waited above.
Clutching the rich brocaded cape around thin shoulders,
those painfully blue eyes met mine as she thrust her nearly weightless burden
into my unsurprised and unprotesting arms.
She turned then, as if to seek Erik's face one last time,
but I stopped her with a shake of my head.
"Let him rest."
I do not know if I spoke aloud, but she heard and understood.
Dropping her head, she drew the emerald hood over
the shining spill of yellow hair.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"You are a better friend to him than I ever was…"
She fled then, swift and fluttering like the frantic beat
of a sparrow's wings on the wind, and was gone.
I glanced only once at the tiny bundle in my thin, shaking arm
before laying it on Erik's chest.
I covered them both with a tapesty I dragged from his rooms,
a somber medley of silver, argent and blue that I was sure
he would have found wryly appropriate.
I drew it over the two of them,
all of the questions unasked and unanswered,
and left them to silent sleep.
I tell you now, I do not know.
The timing was near enough that it might be so, but who can say
without fail that a baby has never come early..?
The face, now – withered and blue as if it had never drawn breath –
could it have been his?
Perhaps some accident of nerves and physical mystery had
marked the infant as it slumbered in the womb.
Or perchance the child-bride was not intended to carry children,
and any babe that she conceived would suffer such disfigurements.
I repeat – I do not know.
She will go home and will keep on living.
She has her husband, no longer a boy, to hold her and make her strong.
Perhaps they will try again one day, when she can think of Erik
without weeping.
For without a doubt, whatever the truth, Christine knew
the child was his, in soul if not in blood.
My heart weeps for my friend, who lived and died
in lonely pursuit of beauty – beauty hidden deeply inside,
where only one soul could see.
And I weep for poor Christine, for the child she is and the child she bore.
She will never be free of Erik, for she carries him inside her
as surely as she carried the tiny doomed babe,
and her love for them both lies deep.
---
AMH
27 April 2006