Flawed
It had all been so meticulously thought out. Even the annoying reappearance of that boy, faithful shadow to the last, had not been able to shake his iron certainty, the inevitability of Erik's ending. The final act was upon them – the audience waited in their neat rows, arrested by the promise and the thrill of the crescendo, wondering, wondering – it was all so logical. Their parts had been ordained long ago.
And the boy would die, of course, because that was how things went in the world of opera, and especially this particular work. It was his finest yet – surely Christine could see that, and surely she would give it the ending such a masterpiece deserved..?
It did not really matter either way. Erik was the master with his hand on the puppet strings, and those blank-eyed dolls lolled limp and boneless until he brought them to life with a snap, a clap, a twist of his magician's hands. It had worked for Christine, had it not? He had taken her into his hands, into his thin, strong piano man's hands, and his long fingers had crawled all over her, like spiders.
He shivers at the memory.
Those hands had shaped her, had melted her down into the essence of herself and built her a new shape, one that was pleasing to his critical eye and cynical heart. He had painted onto that blank little face wide, curving sloppy grins and perfect crystalline tears, stroking her shining hair and admiring her newborn perfection with an artist's eye. He had carved the jagged outline of his soul onto that creamy slate, and made that broken receptacle into something beautiful. He was an artist, after all.
And then he had breathed life into her still form, had given up a little of himself in return for this…creation of his. Live, he had willed her. Sing. And sing she had, for him, always for him, because the hands of her maker still rested cold and bony inside her warm chest, still kneaded her unresisting flesh and ran longing fingers through her hair.
But something had grown out of that sooty oven that he had not put in – for when he brought the new thing, mewling and writhing, out of the fire, this new Christine-flesh that he burnished to a rich, roseate shine, that something had hardened like rock inside the flames of his imagination, and was somehow grafted onto his work. He had not known until too late of the thing that had attached itself to Christine, and split her perfect heart neatly down the middle.
She was afraid of him, of course. It was only to be expected.
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Don Juan was a blur. He has been living increasingly in dreams over the past few days. Betrayal. He welcomes it like an old friend.
And what came after was a whirlwind of colour, of raw and ragged emotion as he screamed out his soul for her. The boy. Long rope lashed to a gate, as one would tie a horse after a long journey. It's almost done, now. The cabaret of Erik's life is coming to a close. He roars at her, hearing only the blood pounding in his ears. Tired. He feels so tired. And sick of everything.
She kisses him.
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It is not a thing of beauty, this kiss. It is desperate and misjudged and sloppy, and her eyes leak warm tears that track salty stickiness down his cheeks. She wrenches her lips back from his as she once tried to take back her self, not realising that freedom was his alone to bestow. He stares mutely at her, and wonders what she is trying to achieve with this ridiculous, over-rated act, even as she pulls him fiercely to her. Again.
Another kiss, and this one is not beautiful either. He can taste the salt of her tears on his tongue.
It is laughable, really. The broken doll turning her sightless, accusing gaze onto her creator, and pressing her cracked lips to his warped ones. The flawed kissing the ruined. Like a child, believing that one magical kiss can save the monster from his own wretchedness.
Perhaps she hopes for redemption.
He had given up on it long ago.
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It did not have to be kiss, he understood dimly, later. It could have been anything.
It was the idea that counted, the shape of the thing hardly mattered. It was a very old law, far older than he, and going back to the time before time. Still, he wondered how he could have forgotten it. It was timeless, after all.
So he let her go. He had no choice, really. Her sacrifice compelled him, though she did not know it. She risked all to burn in the fires of her creator once more, at the end as it was in the beginning, back to the darkness and fire, and he had had no choice but to plunge his beautiful hands into the flames and save her. Draw her from the mouth of hell with his blistering, peeling hands, paying for it with every second of unbearable pain, cradling her, shielding her with his own living flesh. No choice. To do otherwise would be to forsake his humanity once and for all.
He could not bear that.
That piano man. He brought her out of the fire and collapsed, leaking hissing-hot tears, kneeling at her feet like the broken thing he was. Spread his cracked and bleeding palms before her to show her, to force her to understand that this was his last gift to her, his last terrible sacrifice in payment for her own. She nodded, weeping now but – merciful God! – unharmed, her skin unmarred even as he filled the small room with the acrid smell of burning. She nodded, and understood.
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He closes his eyes, and with one awful, wrenching motion rips in two the deep heart-bond between them. It was meant to anchor you. He tries to say, but his misshapen lips refuse to form the words. It was meant to keep you here, keep you safe. His hands reach out for her blindly even as he gasps at the nausea and pain tearing through him, and through streaming eyes sees her crumple in agony. He has to press both hands to his heart. He has never felt anything like this before.
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And then somehow she is going, and he is not in the little house by the lake but on the grey lake-shore itself where nothing will ever grow, nothing ever bloomed but her, only her…he is watching her leave, on that boat, and he can feel nothing except tiredness, and a great empty weight in his chest where the frayed end of that severed rope still dangles uselessly. Numbness engulfs him from head to toe.
He stands there, and watches her getting smaller. She looks strong and proud and beautiful, God, so beautiful, in the bright light filtering in. Where did all the light come from, anyway? It steals into his darkness like a thief, ignoring all protests. And then she rounds the bend and is gone, throwing him only one, last, fleeting glance to leave behind her. He wants to cry out, Come back! He needs to know that she will be safe, that the boy will look after her – for what craftsman does not worry about the care of his creation?
He muses on that glance, that last memory of her, and thinks that perhaps she will not need to be taken care of after all. She looked so strong there in the boat, so self-assured, so sad. He feels the sharp edges of the ring bite deeply into his palm, and wonders where it came from. A gift. He feels like screaming. How can he repay this one?
She is so flawed, his Christine. Maddeningly, unchangeably, beautifully flawed.
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Damaged, but not ruined. Shattered, but not broken. Somehow, despite the gaping heart-flaw, or perhaps because of it, Erik's greatest mistake has attained perfection. And in that moment of mending, of healing over the fault he had not been aware of making, the creation has redeemed the creator, unmade the maker.
He stands there, alone and bereft on a dark shore where the scummy water wears away at the stone, inch by painful inch. And wonders where it all went wrong. He still doesn't understand. For now, though, he begins to trudge his way uphill, towards the light.
Perhaps some day he will.