It's like a heartbeat in my stomach, thought Nina to herself, clutching the pinching wound in her abdomen. She wondered vaguely for a moment if perhaps she would die from it. She had certainly been sure when she had first pulled the hilt of the fine blade from her abdomen in a panic and her life had begun to pour over her hands like a scarlet river, but now that the bleeding had stopped she was not quite sure. Running through the events of, first, the afternoon, and then the night she felt a little hint of sadness beneath her seething anger. She had thought this was finally the beginning of her life. But it had all been one, well played out lie.
One of the many servants of the Rousseau household had been sent for the police after, she shuddered at what Miseour Rousseau had called it, the incident, but had returned frantically soon after, stating of an empty Officer's station and fire in the sky and a mad man in a mask missing and on the loose after destroying the Opera Populaire, gesticulating avidly and occasionally giving a wary glance at the bleeding girl on the floor. However, he would not say a word to his currently intoxicated master, like many other people in the world seeing fault and simply ignoring it. Then he had swallowed something about a phantom, a phantom of the opera, and Miseour Rousseau had laughed drunkenly, muttering something unintelligible to himself, and had motioned for one of the maids to clean up 'the incident' before leaving the damask women's chamber. And she had the best she could, the maid that is, the poor dear, ripping a length of cotton from her own uniform and wrapping it tightly about her lady's abdomen. Unsure of what else to do she said a prayer for the girl not much older than herself and had nervously brushed the hair out of the unconscious Madame's face before dismissing herself. A doctor would be called in the morning, she would be sure of it.
But when Nina had heard the last click of the door signaling the maid's leave she had sat up in a hurry, despite the mortal agony she felt, and despite the rush of light headedness she experienced. She needed to leave. She would damn herself before dying here. She would not die in the home of the man that had trapped her into this mad land for his own sadistic pleasures. Well, she wouldn't die in the home of any man that harmed her, she told herself smirking even as a new flow of blood seemed to pour out over her hand. She had long ago promised herself she would not let others control her, a bad trait in a woman, she had been told many times before.
Pushing down on the bandaging of her right side she stood, despite her body's scream of protest Nina dressed herself with difficulty, only using one arm. She needed to apply pressure to stop the bleeding, she knew that. She had learned that much in her pitiful life at the orphanage, and now she would return to England, back to London, if she lived. Smiling she remembered what Emily had told her when she was a child. She was like a candle in a spring breeze still burning hotly even though she flickered and dimmed, her light remaining infallible. No one would put her flame out.
Finishing with the hastily thrown on shift, dress, coat and boots, she had begun to pack her bags, haphazardly throwing clothing and objects into her one suitcase, meanwhile saying goodbye to her home of the last few months. Although she would not much miss it, she snorted to herself. Her life here had been tedious and boring, however many gifts her 'fiance' had showered upon her, and she had been unhappy. In fact, she had much preferred her life at the orphanage over life here in this wretched place, despite near poverty and everyday chores and even frequent punishments. Any beating was a day short of the pain inflicted on her here.
When she was done choosing which objects to take with her, and after a moment when she had swayed alarmingly and then righted herself, she rang the servant's bell and stood next to the finely carved oak door. When the same maid who had attended to her entered and looked about confusedly at the apparently empty room, Nina raised a suddenly weak arm and closed the door behind her, causing the maid to jump in alarm, her fair hair bouncing once, then falling across her shoulders as she gave a curtsy to the lady.
"There is not time for that," The distressed women said in a barely audible whisper, pulling the girl to her to use her for a support. "You must aid me in my escape." The little maid nodded in comprehension and she continued. "You will get me off the grounds, do you understand me? And I will give you this." She pulled the large, and no doubt highly expensive, engagement ring off her finger and waited for another nod before handing it to the girl, who took it with a trembling hand, her eyes wide with amazement. An excited thought popped through her head that she may finally be able to resign her horrid job here, watching person after person submit to her master's games.
Now, raising a solitary finger to her mouth, the maid with the fair hair quietly opened the oak door, walking outwards with soft feet, motioning for the lady to do the same, helping her in her stumbling gait and then holding her up.
Walking through a maze of servant hallways, eerily empty, for what Nina seemed an endless amount of time, they eventually reached a back entrance and the girl lit a candle by the door and then, as a second thought, grabbed a black velvet cloak hanging on a metal peg before leading her out into the chill night air.
Conveniently, the Rousseau manor was built almost directly before a pocket of forest, and that was where the maid with fair hair led her, leading her like a trained dog across the moonlit yard. Stopping at the line where neatly trimmed grass met with an ill attempted tame of a forest, the maid wrapped the velvet cloak about Nina's shoulders and whispered a high and quavering, "God bless." And watched the older girl's leave, her eyes quietly and almost sadly illuminated by the stars, the moon absent from the vast sky. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach, a great concern for the lady she had served.
For one of the first times of her stay at the House de Rousseau Nina smiled almost triumphantly and thanked the girl before stepping into the vast wood, hands still pushing down on her wound, although the wound itself seemed to protest still with yet more throbs and pounds, like an internal drum, and the occasional sharp twinge of an extra pain.
She had been walking for some time now, lurching more than walking really, leaning from tree to tree and the thought crept to her mind now, though her mind seemed sluggish and slow.
"Will I die?" She asked aloud, and then repeated herself again and again, to the point where a passing homeless man might think her mad. And maybe she was mad, she mused to herself. Where was she now? Wandering in agony, having no idea where she was headed, but still set on her journey. She certainly felt like she was mad, though her pain had seemingly and mysteriously vanished, something that alarmed her even more than the wound itself.
She could smell the overwhelming metallic scent of blood that had by now begun to soak through the cotton bandage and through the taffeta dinner dress, and even the thin traveling jacket she had hastily buttoned and she only now remembered the frantic servant man's stutter about a mad man. She wondered for a moment who the mad man could be. A man of course, a human being, perhaps with a wife and children and friends who had all loved him before said madness. But the curiosity of the rumored man's mask tweaked at her befuddled mind as she tripped once, then twice over a tree root. Battle wounds maybe, hideous scars earned by a noble deed. And now he was scapegoated, shunned, despised, even loathed perhaps, such things, however bearable one might believe them to be, could drive anyone to madness.
Ahead, she smelt a peat fire and coughed once before continuing forward, this time with a totter until she fell before an empty camp sight, a piece of luggage seemingly abandoned, the peat fire still burning, but dimming even as she watched. She felt like she had let someone down, some figure of a higher standing, and it was all that man's fault. She would kill him if given the chance, she swore to herself, it would not be a sin to purge such vileness from the earth.
"I'll only rest for a moment." She promised herself, curling into a ball and applying yet more pressure, though she was certain she had stopped bleeding. She began to shake as if with a chill though she no longer felt the chill in the air and tried to take a deep breath to calm herself, though she prevailed and the small image of a candle in a breeze made her scrape the ground around her for a small collection of leaves and twigs and even pine needles to place on the fire.
She had almost closed her eyes when a frightening sight overtook her, for when she looked up at the tops of the trees that almost floated against the stars for a last look of night, she saw a figure donning a white mask and black cloak kneeling before her. The mask encased about a third of the man's face and seemed to give off a palpable coruscation that showed through the dampened night light and made her eyes ache at the sight of it against the darkness. What was most frightful about the man however, which was obviously male for it's broad shouldered silhouette, was its eyes that seemed to blaze a cat like yellow in the dark, illuminating like the first spark of a kindle. It seemed as though the specter's yellow eyes seemed to concentrate on the hand placed over her abdomen, the palm sticky and red with her blood, before its lips turned into a silent 'o' of understanding, no doubt taking in the heavy stain on the fine navy taffeta dress. She knew who this man was. She was certain he was the one the frantic man servant had been speaking of. The one who Paris was in an uproar over. The Phantom of the Opera.
The girl let out a small exclamation of fright as the figure leaned down towards her ear and began to speak in a soft, melodious voice. "You must promise me you will not move again. It will only make it worse. I promise I will try to help you." Closing her eyes the apparent half dead girl took in a long cool breath, the air almost icy in the winter's air, and held the arm of the man in front of her in an almost vice grip clinging on to this life line, if he was a life line. God had sent him, she was sure of it. God had sent this man to save her from death. God wanted her to live. He was her savior and her salvation and so was this man.
The man in the mask looked about warily and then laid the girl on her back to address her condition. Just by glancing at the abdomen he could tell that she had been stabbed with a small blade, something that could cause serious injury but certainly not death if tended to properly.
Looking down at the girl in his arms, the man swore once under his breath, something he did rarely, and glanced about warily before reaching behind the girl's back to unbutton her dress. He could just imagine being found undressing an injured woman in the middle of such a remote place. Thinking of conclusions, a rush of blood went to the man's face as he pulled the front of the dress off of the woman's torso and undid the metal clasps of her shift, just around her middle, unwinding the poor bandaging done there, meanwhile she stared at him with only half conscious eyes, filled with an almost fury, or frustration; he couldn't tell which. He frowned when the girl let out a gasp as the cool air met with her raw skin.
Opening the leather suitcase at his side, the alleged Phantom pulled out a needle and thread.
"This is going to hurt, but if I don't do this you'll be in a larger state of pain later." He said, holding the needle over the fire for a moment and then threading it. He waited for an answer, a nod, some sort of confirmation that she understood him, but she said nothing, only looking at him with large blue eyes. A brief thought passed through his mind that maybe she didn't understand french, she was a fairly dark complexioned woman for this region.
Cursing himself for not having anything more suitable to clean the stab wound out he tore his sleeve and brushed away what blood hadn't dried already, and began to sew the lesion shut, the girl still remaining surprisingly silent. When he was done, he left the wound unbandaged and re-clasped the white cotton shift and contemplated what to do about her dress. It wouldn't be wise to leave her in the stained gown, nor would it be proper to go through her own things she had left abandoned a few feet away and change her clothing.
A hand crept to his mouth and he listened to the girl's breaths and sighs as she drifted into sleep. Her tangled hair radiated raven against the ground around her, and the shape of her face suggested Spanish, her eyes narrow, her cheek bones prominent, and her full lips, bent in a cupid's bow. She was a beauty, but she was no Christine.
Taking a dress shirt from his suitcase he wove her arms into the sleeves and buttoned the front before pulling the rest of her dress off of her slim body.