The Strength and the Will
"Passion is the source of our finest moments: the joy of love, the clarity of hatred, and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace…but we would be hollow: empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd truly be dead."
If the state of his house could reflect the state of his mind, it would be burning and screaming, the gilded walls consumed slowly and completely by the greedy inferno. But no, his house was not burning. Unfortunately. He wished it could, so he could have some kind of outlet to the overwhelming emotions begging for release inside his soul. But there was nothing, nothing that was burning except himself.
He was dying. Not in body, but from the inside out: slowly, painfully, inch by inch; every part of him, screaming.
The deep red walls, covered with beautiful works of art, stood silent, the warm painted colors stabbing into his vision. They had no mercy, no comfort to offer him. Standing witness to his presence, his silent actions as he wandered the halls and ate and slept alone, they only were…nothing more. He wished he could be like that, wished he could be anything but flesh and blood and beating heart right now.
Christine…
The thought, the single name pounded through his head and froze his blood. How had he found it so easy to hate her after her betrayal upon the rooftop of the Opera Populaire? Hadn't he declared war upon them both after the tense confrontation in the cemetery? …So why was there nothing now, except a horrible feeling of emptiness where she was concerned?
The mere thought of her name made him want to smash something. Her name, her memory, everything connected to her, he wanted to destroy. Not in hate, but in self-anger and in grief.
But there was nothing left to destroy. He had seen to that, having taken a torch to every stack of musical compositions, every sketch and watercolor inspired by Christine before departing his lair through the mirror passageway. But the fact that there was nothing left did not lessen the desire to hurt something.
He was living on the very outskirts of France now, in a house he had bought long before he had first laid eyes on Christine, long before rumors of an Opera Ghost reached the ears of its few citizens. And if they did happen to hear of the Opera Ghost's latest feat of bewitching a young singer, they would probably do nothing. And that was what he wanted. Nobody would seek him out here, friend or foe. True daylight could not touch him now, and neither could love nor happiness. He did not seek them out, did not want to. He would live out his days alone and die alone, his bones crumbling to dust to mingle with the fine carpet underneath his feet.
No hope or joy was left within him. Christine had taken all that with her when she left with—
His apathetic mind, now sharpened by the wounds Christine's name had given it, forced the thought to die out unfinished. The Vicomte's name could not be mentioned. Erik felt hate towards him, hate and reluctant acceptance and hollow nothingness. What was there to say, to think in regard to him? What had happened had happened, and there was nothing that could be done about it.
Part of him wondered why he was still here, eating and sleeping and breathing and bathing like any other human being, when the inside part of him was so destroyed from that night. How could he continue to exist as if nothing had occurred, perform the actions of a normal human being? He certainly wasn't one. Treated as a pariah and an animal because of his facial deformity or devastated that night under the Opera Populaire, all the human nature in him had been burned out long ago. So many times he had been tempted to take his dagger and just end it all—no one would miss him—but in the end he had always flung it aside violently, his teeth gritted with denial and a refusal to die. Weak. He was weak. Weak if he couldn't make a decision and follow it, and weak if he decided to end it all. There could be no victory either way.
He swam upwards from his well of bitter musings, raising his head to stare at the small garden plot, where some flowers peeked out in plain sight under the waning light from the setting sun. No roses were there. Roses were too painful to look at. Looking at one made him want to grab the bloom and shred it to bits.
Did rose petals burn? What would they smell like? Sweet and clean, or cloying, like a rotting corpse?
The knock on the door battered his senses, shattering the wall of apathy muting the inner thoughts eating him away like acid. Shaking himself slightly, he cleared his throat.
"Enter," he said, his voice slightly raspy from disuse.
The heavy oak door creaked open and a petite lady stepped in, closing the door behind her and bringing the lost sound of rustling taffeta into the room. Erik's heart hammered mercilessly for a moment before settling back to its frigid rhythm as he recognized her. Alexandrie Giry, the ballet mistress of the former Opera Populaire.
She launched into conversation without preamble, the stern lines in her face clear in the semi-darkness. "So, the vague rumors were correct. You are indeed hiding out on the outskirts of France."
Part of him longed to shun all humanity and turn her out coldly into the oncoming night, but it was Alexandrie Giry. Since the fateful day when she shielded him from the angry cries of the Gypsies shouting for justice over one of their slain brothers, he had come to know her sharp tongue and blunt mind, but also her softness. Before Christine's arrival, she had been his one acquaintance, albeit a busy one due to her duties as ballet mistress which limited the time they could spend in each other's company. Even then, Erik knew she had found it difficult to become emotionally intimate with men after her husband had left her, and he himself was unused to the idea of frequent interaction with others. Despite their rare meetings, the arrangement had nevertheless worked, and she had remained fiercely loyal to him, and he to her. If he threw her out of the house, she would never let him get away with so brutal an action.
He jerked his head once in greeting. "Alexandrie."
She returned the nod. "Erik. It is good to see you."
"Is it?" he asked between gritted teeth. "Are you truly glad to see me? Or are you only saying that because society requires you to always sweet-talk the host when you come visiting?"
Madame Giry's eyes flashed for a moment with surprise and hurt anger, but her voice remained calm. "I am glad. I feared that you had died that night."
"Would that have made a difference, if I had died?" Erik countered, spinning away from her gaze to look out the window again. The flowers waved slightly in the early evening breeze. The colors tortured him.
Madame Giry took a few steps closer to him, crossing her arms. "It would make a difference to me. And it would have made a difference to Christi—"
"No," he said sharply, bracing his arm against the wall as the word crashed around his ears. Those two syllables made his head spin, his breath jagged, but he ruthlessly forced it down, controlled it. "Don't you dare mention that name. She has made her choice. She doesn't care about me anymore." He had lost control of his breathing again and fought to subdue it, make it disappear. "I won't have anybody mention that name under this roof."
"She does care about you, Erik," Madame Giry replied in her steadfast way, unperturbed by his cold reply. "Whether you know it or not, she does. I raised her and I know her heart. She didn't want to hurt you, never meant to—"
"But she DID!" Erik roared, turning around from the window to face her. Madame Giry did not flinch as Erik pinned her down with his furious glare, her words having finally broken down the walls that had contained his silent grief and rage for weeks. His hands bunched up into fists as he started pacing up and down before the window, raging at her. "You know what she ended up doing. I'm alone, again! Alone and more broken than she could ever imagine. I have been shunned to tears many times in my life, Alexandrie. I have been whipped for others' enjoyment until the floor beneath me ran with my blood. I have been publicly scorned countless times until I wanted to kill myself, the ultimate sin! But this is a level of agony that nobody on earth has ever reached. After I let her go, she came to me in my bedchamber. I thought she had changed her mind, and decided to stay with me forever, but she only gave me her ring and left! Do you know how incredibly much it hurts to glimpse a beautiful future, then have it stolen away from you? Why did she choose him in the end? WHY?"
"If she chose you, her fellow Parisians would destroy her with their scorn. She's fragile, you know that. She has to live by society's rules. She had no other choice," Madame Giry said calmly as Erik continued striding furiously back and forth, giving no indication that she had been wounded by his backlash. "She does not live exclusively for others' approval, she is above that; but Parisian society would have little trouble making her life miserable with the fallout that would have resulted from her being with you. She is not as strong as you, you know this. She was already engaged to Raoul, and as you know, in this day and age it is the foolish woman who breaks a promise as binding as that. She is not a survivor by nature, and cannot dull herself to such contempt."
That's not fair!" he yelled, pausing in his pacing only to slam his clenched fist into the wall. The window glass rattled loudly in their panes, but he didn't appear to notice, and neither did Madam Giry. "She should have been brave enough to choose me! I proved myself human that night!"
"Yes, you did. And yet, you could not have given her a true life, Erik. Think about it: living as a recluse, having to dodge society, having to deny her interaction with others…"
"I have music. We have music," Erik said through gritted teeth, turning to look at her. "I could never hurt her."
"I know," Madame Giry said, taking a step closer to him. "Christine knows too. But she can't choose the both of you. You and Raoul are different, and together the two of you bring her a balance. But her having the both of you at the same time? Both of you would destroy yourselves over her. What good would that do? She never would have wanted that. There was no solution that was painless to all involved, but she still had to make a choice. Either way, someone was going to suffer, she knew that. She wanted a happy ending too, just as much as you did."
"She doesn't care about me," Erik muttered bitterly, his jaw hard as he broke off his gaze to look at the floor. "She never did."
Madame Giry's eyes filled with a burning passion that Erik had rarely seen. Faster than he had ever seen a woman move, she strode across the room to slap him hard in the face, snapping his head to one side. Stars waltzed in front of his eyes as he cupped his burning cheek and turned back to stare at her in shock as she glared at him.
"Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better, Erik," Madame Giry said icily, "But you never heard everything she told me about her Angel of Music, when you had left her room after your lessons together. You never heard…you don't know anything about what she said."
"Oh?" Dropping his hand from his cheek, Erik straightened up to his full height, crossing his arms to look at Madame Giry again, a challenge in his slitted gaze. "Enlighten me. Stun me into silence with your revelations."
Madame Giry raised her chin and gazed at his unmasked face without flinching. "She told me about your voice. How every syllable you ever spoke, whether approving or chastising, burned into her very soul and made her heart shake and tremble. Her body often became weak under the influence of your voice, but inside she was supported, uplifted by the wonder and glory of it, her belief and awe that she had indeed been chosen by the Angel of Music as worthy of receiving even a small portion of the wonders of Heaven. She said that when the two of you talked, you listened, truly listened, and had such an infinite wisdom evident in your words that she sometimes felt that she was not in the presence of a human being or even an angel, but in the presence of God himself."
Erik's lips felt numb, and he almost felt his heart cracking yet again, whether in sardonic surprise or a pang of long-lost love, he did not know. In the presence of God? He hadn't believed in God since he had known the cruelty of man…
"She never told me so because she never realized it, but I know that inside, she was already in love with you from several years ago. Not the fervent devotion you would expect from a child to an Angel, but love. Real, true love. Do you know how many people get to experience that? Feeling true love for another is so rare that it's considered a miracle, and not without reason. It sees through every facet of a person, and yet it is flawless. It refuses to give up on someone. She loves you even now, Erik, and she prayed so hard after that night that you would understand, and if you could not find it in your heart to forgive her for eventually choosing Raoul, that you could at least accept the outcome, and perhaps later on, find peace."
A silence fell between them, as loud as a throttled scream. Erik released the breath that he had held for the second part of Madame Giry's speech and collapsed heavily into a chair, leaning forward to brace his arms on his thighs. He closed his eyes, teeth shut tight to prevent the turbulent mix of emotions within him from erupting. Half-formed thoughts of passionate love, mocking terror, and futile passion churned inside his heart, battling each other in an endless feud.
"I still love her," Erik admitted shakily. "And…that night I was broken beyond repair, and yet I was still too dangerous for her, and so she left. I was always too dangerous for her." He looked up at her from his chair, his bare face twisted with guilt and regret.
Undaunted by the sudden surge of emotion displayed in his eyes, Madame Giry continued. "Christine still loves you. Only months ago, she was thrust into a new world full of danger and crucial choices. She did the best she could. And think of her age, Erik. She's not even twenty yet, and already she's lived and loved and lost, the same as any grandparent you would meet here in France. She's so young, and she was trapped in a gray area where neither black nor white existed. For that, you do not have the right to lay all the blame on her if you remain unhappy with her final decision. What would you have done if you were in her place, knowing that whichever choice you made, someone's heart would be broken, or someone would die?"
Erik lowered his eyes. "I would have done what I thought was right. Or what I thought was the best thing to do."
"That's right." Madame Giry seated herself in a chair facing him, arranging her dress expertly around her so that her skirt fell around her in dark magenta swirls. "You offered Christine a choice between life and death. She has a greater heart than even she knows, and she chose life, vowing to sacrifice everything she knew so that everyone might live. She chose to save Raoul's life, and in the process saved your soul as well, pulling you back from the hell you had sucked yourself into."
Erik's eyes flickered as he leaned his elbows on his thighs, shoved both hands through his hair with a sigh. "And her giving me back the ring before leaving me again?" Despite the weariness of his voice, his tone demanded answers.
Madame Giry's shoulder lifted in a gesture almost like a shrug. "I am not the one to answer such questions. My guess is that she wanted you to have something so that through it, you could remember her and all the memories connected to that time. How else could she have done it? Sent in the Vicomte to give the ring to you? The two of you would come to blows. Leave it next to your organ? She knows that you abhor indirect communication such as that, unless you were dealing with the owners of the opera house. She knew what she meant to you, and that your devotion was and remains much fiercer than many husbands'."
"What if I don't want to remember?" Erik asked bitterly, his voice hardening.
"I think, Erik, that deep down, years from now, through the pain you will want to remember—remember and honor her while cherishing what you had," Madame Giry said with a slight edge to her voice. "The only light you've ever seen in your dark, painful life? The one who gave you agony, but hope as well? The sole being who had the courage to save you when all else was lost? How can you even speak of casting away her memory into the abyss like that? For if you do, you will have nothing left but the remnants of old nightmares and the memories of new ones to sustain you day after day unto death."
"That is all I deserve," Erik muttered.
"No, you do not!" The fire had rekindled in Madame Giry's voice and stiffened her already ramrod-straight spine even more, and for a moment Erik thought she was planning to slap him again. "I've told you, and Christine…the very light of your universe also told you through word and action that you do not deserve to live in the dark and know only tears and unspeakable horrors for all your life. You deserved a normal life, Erik, and it greatly saddens Christine and me that in this day and age, people are not so enlightened as to look past appearances and respect you for the great artist and man that you are. And you are. You are without a doubt one of the most gifted souls that ever resided in the opera house. But do not allow Christine to drag you down into the dark to stay. That is the last thing she would want, and something tells me you would not want this either. This darkness too shall pass, Erik, but only if you have the strength to put it behind you one day at a time."
With her words, the last of the fight went out of Erik's eyes and body and he buried his head in his hands once more. Memories of Christine washed over him like a cold wave, but along with the bittersweetness he sensed a great strength welling up inside of him until it filled his veins with the ironclad determination of a young sapling bent on becoming a majestic oak. He took a deep breath for the first time in what felt like days, the cool air rushing into his lungs and filling him with clarity.
"I will." The words slipped out of his mouth. Erik swallowed and spoke again, his words echoing off the walls. "I will move on, or try to. I've been drowning in my own despair for too long, and Christine could be the final thing that drags me into the dark for all time. She will now be my strength, my source of hope. She made me believe that more people like her exist, that there is a better world for me out there, if only I allow myself to believe it. I will hold on to that. But—" He deflated, sinking back into his cushions. "How do I—move on?" He ran a hand over his face, his gaze unfocused. "I feel that I cannot stay in France, I won't be able to heal here. In this time and place, it suffocates me day by day. I must get out…"
"Then get out," Madame Giry said. "I daresay you have more than enough money after your years of getting twenty thousand francs a month from the owners of the opera house. "You are many great things, Erik, whether you are aware of it or not, and you have seen the world, or all of Europe at least, when affiliated with the Gypsy circus. Why limit that to only one phase of your life?"
"That is an idea," Erik replied, his eyes suddenly focusing on her. "I will do it. I will leave Paris. I will become an explorer, a traveler, a student of the arts, and of man himself." He suddenly stood up and started pacing. "I will set my affairs in order and set out straight away—" He paused mid-pace and turned to her still figure, seated in a pool of deep magenta taffeta. His unmasked face bore of look of something like sadness. "I do not know if I shall return."
Madame Giry nodded in understanding. "That is not up for us to decide," she said calmly. "the gods may lead you back to Paris yet."
"I will show you out now, then, if you are willing," Erik said, leading her towards the front door. "I must go now, I feel that I must not delay a moment."
"Do so, then," Madame Giry said, stepping out the door and turning around to face him.
"So it is here that we say our goodbyes." Erik walked towards her, a look of resolve on his face. "Farewell, Alexandrie. May the years ahead be generous to you and your relations prosperous." He paused for a moment, then added, "And thank you…my friend." He gently picked up her hand and kissed the back of it briefly.
"Not at all," Madame Giry said quietly. "Thank you for showing me the power of ideas, the power of hope, and introducing a profound beauty into my world, and Christine's."
Erik nodded once, releasing her hand. "Farewell."
"Farewell."
They held each other's gaze for a moment, then Madame Giry turned around and descended down the stairs with graceful steps. Erik watched her carriage until it was out of sight, then he slowly withdrew into the shadows of his house and closed the door, bounding silently up the stairs to begin his preparations.
The March sun shone with a pale, cold light that could not penetrate the chill in the air as Erik, wearing a cloak with a deep hood and a flesh-colored mask that was thin enough to nearly blend in with the plane of his face, loaded his trunks into the carriage, with the help of a footman and the carriage driver.
"Is that all, sir?" the driver asked Erik, taking care not to stare too much at his face as he gave a last heave and push to settle a particularly large trunk into place.
Erik looked up and around at his soon-to-be-empty house, the front doors thrown open, and the many trunks, boxes, and packages that were now crammed into the nondescript carriage beside him. "Yes, that is everything."
"Very good, sir," said the footman, coming up to them. "I can let you into the carriage, then I can get the front door for you."
"No," Erik said suddenly, startling the two men. "Let me. There is no closure for me any other way."
"Very good, sir. We will be here waiting," The driver said, turning to clamber into his seat as Erik walked away towards the house.
For the first time in weeks, Erik did not try to suppress his thoughts of Christine as he strode along the walkway to his house. They arose now of their own free will: Christine's hand caressing his cheek gently in the cellars of the opera house, her look of longing just before they met on the stairway during the New Year's Eve masquerade ball, and her kiss, both of them…and in her eyes, her continuing love, her begging him to understand…
His own words came rushing back to him then: She will now be my strength, my source of hope. She made me believe that more people like her exist, that there is a better world for me out there, if only I allow myself to believe it.
He had to step over the threshold onto the rug of the foyer in order to reach the doorknob; already it felt like stepping into a foreign world from someone else's life story. He swung one door closed, than the other, and locked them both securely, slipping the key into his breast pocket. Taking in a deep breath, he turned around and peered up at the sky. Spring was coming, and the clouds of an hour ago were already on their way to the west, making way for a spotless, soaring arc of light, pure blue. He still didn't believe in God, but the words came out from him, natural and without hesitation, to a higher power he couldn't yet understand or name.
"I place my life and destiny in your hands."
As he stepped back down the brick stairs and started back up the walkway to the carriage where the footman stood waiting at the open carriage door, Erik could have sworn that the sun had begun to warm.