She could lie here in this bed for a year. It would be no great trouble – the pillows mould themselves to the shape of her head, and the mattress is so heavenly soft it's like being wrapped in a world of feathers. In truth, she has no inclination to leave. She can't even remember the last time she moved so perhaps she's been lying here for a year already. No matter. Nobody's come looking for her, so there is no need to stir.
She must admit, she's reluctant to disturb the man sleeping with his head nestled into her belly. Her husband, such a thought! She feels a little giddy thinking of him as such though his ring is on her finger. Such a delightful term, her husband! The two of them bound together for eternity, united in the face of any and all obstacles, their hands forever entwined. Her heart sings, fingers lightly carding through his hair.
He whimpers, a soft little sound low in his throat, as he nuzzles deeper into her, his hand a warm, familiar weight. Tonight, he's forsaken his mask, though he still insists on the fake nose, and all she can do is smile at his propriety. It's not as if she's never seen him without it. He's beautiful when he's afraid of upsetting her, though she's past the point of being upset by him.
You are the divinest pillow, my darling.
His words echo gently in her head as clearly as if he just uttered them, voice drowsy. It's oddly endearing to have him sound so tired, normally it's the other way around. Once before, he remarked how she makes it easier for him to sleep, she drives the thoughts from his mind that once sent him in pursuit of morphine. Since their wedding, he hasn't touched his old beloved drug and it's such a relief. No longer does she have to fear that she'll find him collapsed on the couch with the needle in his vein.
No. She must not think of that. Such memories have no place here, when she knows that he is safe, and well.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee," the murmured words are so faint she can't be sure she isn't dreaming them. And the voice, too, so familiar. Decidedly familiar, though she hasn't heard it since before her wedding – she used to whisper the first lines of that prayer to herself in search of guidance, then the voice would come in and disturb her thoughts so she'd have to start over. Perhaps the voice didn't want her getting the guidance she so badly sought for fear it would go against his wishes.
Raoul of the blue eyes and the golden hair. So young and foolish really. The slave of fashion, her husband's voice murmurs and she is inclined to agree. Raoul is still such a boy. What good is that to her now?
"Please, God, let her live." His voice cracks on the end of his prayer, and she finds she hasn't the energy to wonder.
His hand trembles in the air beside her cheek, so endearingly hesitant, a low glow in his golden eyes. As long as she has known him, he has been afraid to touch her. As if he is afraid that by touching her he will taint her, will condemn her to darkness (will kill her). As if touching her will push her away from him.
Which is a ludicrous notion, as she's told him on more than one occasion. They've touched plenty of times, bare skin to bare skin, and she hasn't shrivelled up yet.
Gently, she takes him by the wrist, running her thumb lightly over the veins which push their way to the surface. He sucks in an uncertain breath, swallowing hard, eyes darkening behind the mask. Though he is so strong, could kill her in a moment with one squeeze of his hand upon her throat, she is not afraid. How can she be afraid, when he trembles before simply grazing his fingers over her cheek?
Smiling softly, she closes the gap between her face and his fingers.
"There, darling," she murmurs. "That's not so bad, is it?"
A tear glistens in his eye and his voice cracks on her name. "Christine –"
"Shhh, darling. Don't speak." Still holding his wrist, she gently takes his mask off with her other hand, stroking her fingers over the newly bared skin beneath. "I would quite like for you to kiss me, Erik."
The tear threatening in his eye spills over and trickles down his sunken cheek, the candlelight turning it golden when it reaches his lip and he smiles, ever so slightly. "I would enjoy nothing better, my dear." He bows his head and presses a chaste kiss to her forehead, lips lingering a moment longer than really necessary.
Just as he pulls back, she grabs him by the lapel of his coat and pulls him closer.
"Not like that," she whispers, and in one fell swoop presses their lips together. "Like this." And the trembling hand cupping her face drops, settling on the centre of her back to pull her even closer.
"I hardly dared imagine," he murmurs softly into her mouth.
Charles. If it's a boy she'll call him Charles. She knows that with bone-deep certainty, she just hasn't told Raoul yet. Charles Erik de Chagny. The perfect name for him – her father, the baby's father and the baby's adopted father all in one. Nothing else would suit him.
She's too tired now to tell Raoul. She'll tell him later, when her eyes are not closing against her will.
And if he has any objections, he'll just have to get over them.
The candlelight casts a soft glow through the room, enveloping her in its warmth here, wrapped in Erik's arms, his chest solid against her back. She can hear his soft heartbeat, a gentle thrum beneath her ear. A lullaby to ease her dreams. His thumb strokes smooth circles on the skin of her stomach, ghosting caresses of wonder and meditation. This is how he likes to think now, to muse on he-only-knows-what. How could she begrudge him something so simple?
They could sit here like this forever. Let the world pass by. Nothing can harm them, nothing can pull him away from her down here. Why need they to go elsewhere? Can they not simply live a life wrapped up like this, alone with each other? What would be wrong in it?
The rise and fall of his chest is so slow, so measured. Such carefully timed breaths, soft huffs into her hair. She's almost certain he's dozed off again, holding her close as if she'll slip away on him. Why does she fear that those soft breaths will still? Why does it feel as if she'll fall asleep and wake to find him stiff and cold behind her, the hand so gentle on her stomach fallen heavy into her lap? It makes no sense, and tears burn her eyes, threatening to spill forth. But she must not cry in front of him, it would be ridiculous. The black fears twisting in her heart have no place down here, in this soft cocoon of peace. Best to put them out of her mind. It would not do to make him fear he has to worry for her.
Here they are safe, and no one can pull his mask off.
"I'm sorry, Raoul. I rather think that I loved you once. I love you still, you know. But it's not the same. It's not an all-consuming fire. It doesn't make my heart ache and my fingers tremble the way it once did. It simply is. It exists in some indefinable way that I can't explain. A low hum in the background, the tinkling melody that never comes to the fore. It's there nonetheless, but it's soft, and hidden.
"I would have married him that night, if he hadn't sent me away with you. I knew it, the moment I kissed him I knew what it was I felt, and I knew I couldn't marry you. It was so simple and clear, why did it take me so long to realise it?
"I think I knew, deep down, before I went to him that night, the way that things were going to go. I let myself think that I'd find him at his organ, or half-delirious with his morphine, but a part of me suspected that his illness would have caught up with him. I just wish that suspicion hadn't been correct, or that I'd gone back to him sooner. Maybe if I had, he would have fought it, could have held the illness at bay for another little while. Maybe if I had, he wouldn't have given into it, or maybe he wouldn't have taken so much morphine. I sometimes wonder if it was using that that brought it on with him. I remember hearing, once, that it can weaken the heart.
"If I had gone back, he certainly wouldn't have torn his rooms apart in a frenzy. Not even his laboratory was spared, that wonderful laboratory where he tinkered at inventions. He let me have a look in it once, and explore as much as I wanted and I was terrified that I would break something. But all he said was "Yes. I think that is a thing you might well do eventually." And it was his heart, Raoul, not his inventions that he spoke of so gravely. I as good as killed him when I left with you, and now I can never save him from it no matter how my heart cries out to turn back the clock and insist on staying with him.
"But maybe it was destined to play out like it did.
"I found him lying in that bed, as I'm sure you know. And he almost didn't know me. He was in so much pain, Raoul, and he was so ill, and the morphine wasn't helping him as it should. His eyes wandered as if he were seeing a different world, and I think that he was, that he was living in the past as much as in the present, or perhaps he was looking into the next life. He touched my face as if he thought I was a dream that his fingers would go right through, and murmured on in a delirium even as I bound myself to him with his Persian friend Nadir as our witness. And he tried to make me feel better, even though it should have been me comforting him. I like to think that he was happy to see me, even as he cried.
"We made love, Raoul. I think you've always known that. It was my choice, I wanted to. And it was the last gift that I could give to him, to lie beside him and love him and press small kisses to his skin. I'd already done so much to hurt him. What else could I do to prove to him that I really did love him? And that I love him still?
"He slipped away so quickly in the end. By then he was unconscious and it was a mercy that he couldn't feel it when his heart finally gave in. The softest whimper, Raoul. So soft, the last breath escaping him. I hear it sometimes, the saddest echo that ever haunts my dreams. And sometimes I can forget that it happened, can pretend that he's really here and I'm not imagining it when I hear him whispering softly to me. If anyone could find a way to come back from the beyond, even for a moment, you know it would be him. And he always was so skilled at throwing his voice. How else do you think he used to play those tricks in Box Five? I remember once when I staying with him he made it seem as if all of the furniture was talking to us. And when he told me stories, he had the character voices coming from different parts of the room.
"I love him, still. He drifts back to me in shadows, his voice and his hands and his eyes, his head leaning against my chest as if he were a baby. And I love you, Raoul, but it's not the same. There might have been a chance for us once, but not anymore. Not really. Not when I got to have him for however short a time. Though I love you too, I have no regrets over being with him."
And it's only when Raoul smiles at her that she realises that she hasn't said a single word out loud.
"I'm afraid, Madame de Courcy, that your husband is gravely ill." The doctor looks at her with quiet, pitying eyes, his very gaze seeming to drive the knife into her chest. "His heart is greatly weakened. I've made him comfortable, but I fear…"
He trails off, and squeezes her hand gently, as if that can make her feel better. There's no need for him to finish his sentence, it's written there in the lines of his face.
"May I-" and to her own ears her voice sounds strangled, the words choking off in her throat. She swallows hard against the lump they form and whispers, "May I sit with him?"
The doctor nods slowly, letting her hand drop. "Yes. But he won't know you're there. I gave him a large dose of morphine to ease the pain."
Erik is so pale, unconscious in that great big bed. Pale is his natural state, from keeping his face hidden under the mask, but now it is as if a deathly pallor has fallen over him. He is not merely pale, but grey, beads of sweat gathered on his forehead like death's shades. He can't be dying. Surely the doctor is wrong. Erik himself croaked that there was no need to get one, even as he lay half-curled on the floor gasping around the pain.
It was Nadir who insisted on the doctor, the moment that Erik's eyes rolled in his head and he passed out. They both feared that he was gone. And no matter how hard they shook him, trying to rouse him, he would not wake, his head simply lolling to the side, utterly lifeless though Nadir could feel a pulse and she could feel his heart beating with her hand against his chest.
She remembers that, sees the images pass before her eyes again and her stomach churns against them. She remembers that, but she doesn't remember leaving the doctor and walking in here to take her place at Erik's side.
God, he is pale.
His hand is in hers, lying so limp and still though she doesn't recall taking it. And she kisses the wedding ring that matches her own, and wishes that he would wake, just once. Before he goes.
Dear Raoul. Sweet Raoul. He's too good for her, too gentle and loving. More than she deserves. He has the right to know that it isn't his child she's carrying, but she can't bring herself to shatter his dreams. How can she tell him that? It would break his heart to know. He'd resent both her and the baby, and any love he has left for her would die.
He'd cut her off and leave her without any means to look after herself and the baby. And she can't let that happen.
She looks at him through the haze that veils her eyes, or at least tries to. Her lips twitch at the very least.
There's no need for him to ever have to know.
Scars. A web of scars on his back that he does not speak of. A scar on his chest that he's never mentioned, aside from noting that he was very young at the time. Scarred wrists, that he refuses even to acknowledge and which feel like a knife in her heart. Scars on his right arm, several small pinpricks that never quite healed (though he sleeps without the help of that drug now, and swears that having her beside him is all he needs).
The scars of what others have done to him.
The scars of his own vice.
She brushes her lips over those scars, where he once injected the morphine that pushed the memories out of his mind long enough to let him rest. And she brushes her lips over those other scars, all of them, even the ones that he won't speak of. As if her kisses can take the phantom pain away.
The darkness is nice. Her eyes don't hurt with it, the glow of the oil lamp soft enough that it's like a warm blanket protecting the world, keeping them all safe from the horrors that lurk in the night. She's so tired, it would be so nice to just go back to sleep, but she's been asleep for so long. She can feel it in the heaviness in her bones, the weight of so much past sleep pressing down on her.
She wants to sing. She'd like to sing, to dance on the beach in the moonlight but she's too tired for that, all out of energy, and no song will come to her, only vague words of an old aria but she doesn't remember how it goes and besides, it's supposed to be a duet.
But she doesn't remember who with.
My heart foreseeing your condemnation
It was a tomb. A tomb she crawled into for to die in his arms and she was wearing her wedding dress and he had his mask on, though she really doesn't mind when he takes it off, but she can't ever seem to convince him of that.
"Oh, Christine."
That voice, and it's not his voice so what's that voice doing sitting beside her? She doesn't want him here, doesn't want Raoul here. Why is Raoul here?
"It's all right, Christine. It's all right. You've nothing to worry about." His hand is light in her hair, so gentle but why is he here?
"It is all right, my dear." Erik. His voice echoes in her ear, deep enough to get lost in and her heart feels so much easier, as if something has cleared deep within its chambers. "You will be all right," He presses a kiss to her forehead and if she reaches up she can cup his face with her hand. It's right there, the mask hiding everything beneath that she used to be so afraid of and why can't she feel him? Why can her fingers not meet that mask even though it's right there? It's just beneath the palm of her hand, or should be. Of course it is, he's just there, smiling so sadly at her and she feels the soft leather of the mask for just a moment, smooth beneath her fingertips, and then he's gone, just gone.
Where did he go?
Slowly, gently, her hand cupping his cheek, he cracks open his eyes, the golden depths glimmering hazily in the candlelight. They rove slowly over the room, half-blind, before finding his left hand joined with hers, their fingers interwoven, and he frowns, ever so slightly.
"Chris…tine." His voice is so faint, so rasped, she almost doesn't hear him. "You…came." And now, at last, he looks at her, such a world of exhaustion in his eyes that her heart aches.
"I didn't have to come, darling. " She is whispering too, though she doesn't quite know why. The doctor is so certain that this is a deathbed (it can't be), and Erik is so weak (her poor, tired Erik), that to do anything other than whisper feels like a heinous crime. "I never left."
And his frown deepens, eyes so painfully confused that she regrets having said anything. "Dr-dreamt…you did." He swallows. "For a…V-Vicomte. I n-nearly killed...him. Was so…sure. Fe-felt real." A soft sigh slips past his lips and his eyes close, slowly, as if against his will.
A memory tugs at Christine's mind, vague and distant, half-dreamt. Raoul de Chagny, pulling her away from an Erik who could only stand there silently sobbing, looking so helpless and broken. Not real, of course. It wouldn't be real, couldn't be. She's sitting here holding Erik's hand in hers, how could it be real?
How can this be real? Erik is lying here so ill and so weak, dreaming untruths in his delirium. Each moment that passes pulls him further and further away from her, and how can that be? Why can't she just cling to him and make him stay?
"I love you," he breathes softly, and her tears break through her best defences, a lone drop landing in a desolate splash on the back of his hand.
It's so still, and so numb. Someone's rubbing small circles on the back of her hand, and the numbness is a relief. If she can't feel anything, then nothing can be real. And if nothing is real, then she has nothing to fear. Better to lie here, and enjoy it, and why does she think that there'll be time enough for pain later?
"Say you'll share with me," his words murmured warm across her skin, reverberating in her bones, stirring her blood, soft vibrations punctuated with kisses, "one love, one lifetime." A soft kiss to the crease of her right hip. "Lead me," breath ghosting over the smooth skin under her belly button, "save me from my solitude," mouthed along her left side. "Say you want me with you, here," a soft kiss, almost there, under her left breast, "beside you. Anywhere you go," his face nuzzles into her throat and it's all that she can do not to arch beneath the hand gripping her right hip, "let me go too. Christine," and he's over her now, twisted lips smiling so gently, eyes simmering golden, "that's all I ask of you."
She smiles up at him, at how beautiful and content he is, and strokes one finger along the edge of that face, before she draws his head down, one hand on the back of his neck, and captures his lips with hers.
"Say you love me," she murmurs into his mouth.
His tongue trails over her lower lip, and she pulls him closer, tingling at his very touch. "You know I do."
"I'd give you music, darling," the voice is a murmur, a soft caress, "all of the music in the world, but the doctor has forbidden it. He fears it will only make your condition worse. But if I could, I'd give you every aria, every sonata, every nocturne. I'd hire a violinist to play to you all night and all day if I thought it would help."
Not a violinist. A pianist. Give her a pianist to softly play and she's certain she'll improve. (Though what she has to improve from she isn't sure.) A pianist. That's all she asks.
But her lips refuse to whisper the words.
Think of me, think of me fondly, when we've said goodbye. Remember me, once in a while, please promise me you'll try. The words twist softly in her mind, the remembered aria, though no one is singing. Erik's fingers are light on the piano keys, the orchestration slowed though it is the same song nonetheless. And Charles' head is heavy against her chest, his black curls brushing her chin. But if you can still remember, stop and think of me. She sways slowly, rocking Charles gently. He can't sleep sometimes – much like his father – unless she rocks him just like this, his little arms around her neck.
He's almost asleep, his eyes closed against the candlelight playing across his face. She tightens her grip on him so he doesn't slip and kisses his forehead, Erik's soft playing washing over them both. There will never be a day when I won't think of you.
Little Charles, so small and precious, though he's grown so much over the last year. The first time she held him, he was so small against her chest that she was terrified she'd break him. Now he insists on music and stories and Ayesha, and points to make his demands known, those big frowning blue eyes so unlike his father's.
Erik enfolds them both in his arms, the music still softly swirling around the three of them. Masquerade, paper faces on parade. Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you. Slowed into a waltz that entwines itself with his fingers at the back of her neck. He's so gentle, his eyes crinkling behind the mask and he hugs the two of them close, his arms a barricade against the rest of the world.
"I'm sorry, Christine. I'm sorry. I promised I'd look after you. I swore never to harm you and now . . . now. Oh, God. What have I done?" A kiss, pressed lightly to her fingers, then a whisper, at once a confession and a prayer. "I'm sorry, Erik. I'm sorry."
It's Erik wrapped up in Piangi's cloak. She knows it the moment she sees him. Knows his walk, knows his stand, knows his hands. And, God, but she knows his voice too. Of course she knows his voice. She goes along with him anyway, lets him sing to her, sings back while pretending not to know the change. And his hands tremble as she takes them in hers, as if he's suddenly overcome with fear.
Then she pulls his hood off, and the surprise in his eyes goes right to her heart. They're all she can see, like beacons shining in the darkness.
For one crystal moment, she thinks he's going to kiss her. Thinks that he's going to bow his head and press their lips together, his fingers brushing her cheek so softly. The bullets miss him, whizz past. The music swells around them, just the two of them wrapped in its golden layers, and if he kisses her now it will reach its crashing crescendo, waves rushing around them.
Let him kiss her now. He needs to kiss her. It's written in the manuscript of his opera, or should be – Don Juan kisses Aminta in a rush of passion, the curtain falls. Why isn't he kissing her yet? Has he forgotten his own stage directions?
He just stands there, like a Grecian god, untouchable in his beautiful perfection. (It's the mask that makes him perfect, but that matters not.) The bullets rip the air around them, flashes of fire. They miss him, so this is her chance. Kiss him now!
She pulls his head down, her eyes closed, seeking out his lips. But their lips don't meet, and he slips through her fingers, forcing her to the stage with him.
He is so still on top of her, so heavy. And her dress is wet across her stomach. Is it raining? But it can't be. It can't rain inside and besides, the water is red.
Blood.
The realisation is so piercing she can't breathe.
There's blood everywhere. Blood on his hands. Blood on his lips. Blood seeping through the black cloak blending with the material, and her hands are claws ripping open the cloak, crimson blossoming over his white shirt. Petals unfurling.
Even his mask is stained, paint dashed across a canvas, those eyes screwed so tight. Through the screams (who's screaming?) she can hear the gurgling in his throat and he tries to whisper, but no words come out, only more blood. A stream of it, trickling down his chin. She leaves bloody fingerprints on the mask as she pulls it off.
She has to hold him closer, has to keep him warm. He needs her to hold him, it's why he's trying so hard to whisper but he shouldn't whisper because he's only bleeding more, and his blood needs to stay in him. He can't just go losing it everywhere.
Her finger to his lips shushes him, and he swallows, a trail of blood from his nose staining her pale skin. It's so hot, the blood. It'll burn her, but she can't let him talk, not even when his bloody fingers graze over her cheek, his whole body shuddering in her arms.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Raoul's hands are on Erik's chest, trying to stop the bleeding but the blood keeps seeping through anyway and his fingers are slick with it. Slick with Erik's life, oozing out of him through so many bullet holes. He can't stop it. How can he stop it when he's the one who caused it? He gave the order to pull the trigger, why is he here now? So he can hurt Erik even more? Is he not suffering enough, lying in her arms, each breath a shallow gasp, the blood bubbling from his lips? Is killing him like this not good enough?
He's not dying. He can't be dying.
(He is dying. He's dying here on this stage in her arms and it wasn't in the stage directions. He never wrote this scene, didn't compose the achingly soft music that the orchestra are playing, so who wrote it? Somebody had to.)
"I love you," she hears herself saying but doesn't feel her mouth move so is she really saying it or does she only want to say it or is it only part of the music? "I love you, Erik."
His crinkled yellow eyes flicker across her face, frowning, and she hopes that he can hear her, hopes he's not so far gone that the words wash over him like the waves crashing around them. She loves him, she does. The certainty of it is deep in her chest, as real and glowing as the blood that's coming from his. She loves him. She loves him so much she feels as though she'll bleed to death with the pain of it. She loves him, and he's bleeding to death here and there's nothing that she can do and nothing that Raoul can do because really, he's done more than enough, and there's nothing that Erik or God or anyone else can do either. She loves him.
He has to know.
He has to.
Her lips are on his before she realises it, and his copper blood is in her mouth. It's all she can taste. Blood. Just blood. It's all she knows. A world of blood. Everything soaked in scarlet, his lips and tongue and hers now too. And now the music drops, a shroud over them both.
Everything is blood, even when his jaw goes slack, and he sighs into her mouth, tongue stilling against hers.
She's choking on blood. Her stomach burns with it, eating her from the inside out, a poison coursing through her veins.
Raoul tries to pull her away, His hands wrap tight around her arms. This is his fault. It's his fault she's choking on blood, his fault Erik is lying in a pool of blood. He did this with his misguided sense of what is right. How is it right to riddle Erik with bullets, to ambush him as if he were an animal? If she could she'd throttle him, dash his head off the floor of the stage. Take him into this world of blood with her. But to do that she'd have to let go of Erik and she can't.
She just can't. She has to hold him, and keep him close. How else would he know she loves him?
"It's a little boy, darling." Raoul's voice is soft in her ear. "We have a little boy. He's so small, Christine. He's tiny. But the doctor says he should be all right. He's a little fighter." His voice cracks, and she can almost hear him smile through the tears. A boy. A son. Of course he's smiling if they have a son.
Her son. Why does Raoul think it's his too, just because it's hers? It can't be his son, and she isn't just after having him. He's months old now, he must be. Erik plays the piano while she dances with their son. And he whispers Arabic poems when he's trying to get the boy to sleep, though he thinks she doesn't hear him. And he brings him into his laboratory and shows him the little models, as if he's old enough to understand even though he's only a baby. Then he smiles so softly.
How can Raoul think the baby is his? Where is Erik, that he can let him think that? Surely he's around here somewhere.
"You just rest, darling. Just rest." Raoul. Why is it always Raoul?
He kisses her scars as gently as she kisses his. His fingers are soft on her hips, brushing gentle circles over her skin, and his lips so careful on the scar across her stomach. The scar that gave them Charles. He treats her as if it still burns hot and new, and his lips are the morphine taking it away. So soft. As if he blames himself for what happened, or feels guilty for the pain it caused her to give them their son. She remembers the tears trickling down his cheeks, his mask cast aside as he held her close. Even through the pain she could hear his heart beating in his chest, and it gave her something to cling to.
"Oh, Christine," he sighs, and the softness of his words make her eyes sting with tears.
"Easy, darling, easy. Don't panic. There's no need to panic. Charles is sleeping, he's all right. I promise he's safe. He just needs you to get well. Just rest." Raoul's face swims before her eyes, his hands firm on her shoulders. "Careful, Christine. Don't burst your stitches." Stitches? Why does she have stitches? Oh, God, it burns, a brand pressed into her stomach and she can't breathe with it. Stars dance before her eyes and she can't see anything. It's all bright and it's dark too and it's shifting all the time and she can't see Raoul and where is Charles? Raoul says he's sleeping, but where is he asleep? Why isn't he here?
Why does she have stitches? Were they attacked? And if Charles is sleeping, and she has stitches, then where is Erik? Were they attacked? They must have been. He wouldn't just leave them unless he had no choice and why is Raoul here?
"That's better, darling." His thumb strokes her cheek. "Don't cry. There's no need to cry." Is she crying? She must be, though she doesn't feel the tears, only his gentle fingers. How can she not cry? She doesn't know where Erik is, or if he's all right.
Charles is all right. And Raoul is clearly all right, if he's here and he's telling her not to burst her stitches. But he's so pale, and there are shadows under his eyes and he looks so worried.
What happened?
Where's Erik?
"Er-rik." Her voice – is it her voice? – cracks on his name, and tears shine in Raoul's blue eyes, his mouth twisting painfully.
"I'm sorry, Christine. I'm sorry."
"Can I have a mask when I'm older, Maman?" Charles whispers softly, cuddled in against her as they watch the fire flickering in the grate. A mask? What does he want a mask for? Yes, his cheeks are hollower than any child's should naturally be, and his eyes more sunken, but as Erik often mused to himself, he hasn't taken after his father when it comes to facial features. He has no reason to wear a mask.
"Why do you want a mask, darling?" She cards her fingers through his hair, and hopes he can't tell how much his words have unsettled her.
"Papa had a mask." His voice is so small it tugs at her heart, constricting her chest so it's hard to breathe. "I miss Papa." I miss Papa. Have any words ever hurt so much as these? Of course he misses his father. Any child would, and especially a father as gentle as Erik with his soothing stories and his music and his candlelight dancing when he thought she was asleep and didn't want to wake her to settle Charles back into sleep.
Her throat aches with the effort of fighting back tears. "I know." And she can't say any more, her voice is too hoarse.
"He used to play pretty music for us." Charles turns his face into her chest, the firelight glinting off the tears trickling down his cheeks.
Not the mask, please. Erik, his eyes glistening with his burning fever. Don't make me wear the mask. And the way he gripped her hand so tight, the desperate pleading in his eyes. How could she give Charles a mask after that? Even if he wants to wear it, other people would frown at him and pry and say the same nasty things they said about Erik, and she can't let that happen. Not to Charles too.
"Why did Papa wear a mask, Maman?" Charles' voice pulls her back, away from those long hours of sitting at Erik's deathbed, his mind unravelling before her so that the real and the invented were mixing with the past and present.
"Papa always wore a mask," she whispers into the still air, and prays that that's enough of an answer for Charles now. "He simply preferred wearing it." How can she tell him that Erik's own mother made him wear it from when he was a baby, and he came to need it to shield himself from people's stares and hurtful words? Her dear little boy wouldn't understand how anyone could be afraid of his father, or hate him just for how he looked.
Her eyes hurt so much she can't see him even though he's sitting against her.
Charles stays quiet a long time, so that she almost thinks he's fallen asleep, until he whispers, "Will you tell me a story, Maman? About the Angel of Music?"
"Of course," she says, or thinks she says but she can't be sure because she seems to hear someone whispering her name ever so softly and it's not Erik.
Not Erik.
Of course it's not Erik. She was holding him as he died and sometimes she still feels the weight of his body in her arms.
"It's all right, Christine, darling." And it's a pang that it's not my darling because Erik always called her my darling, he'd whisper it right into her ear, in fact, his lips so soft against her skin and it's just one more reminder now that this is not Erik. "It's all right."
It's not all right. This is Raoul, and the pain in her stomach is so heavy that she doesn't think it'll ever be all right again.