Author's blurb: This is a WIP, keep checking back for updates! This story is a little out of character in Erik's case; I think many people would agree with me when I say that he would have been suave enough to escape successfully. Anyway, I just wanted to see what would happened if he hadn't. Come and join me on my journey and his…
Chapter One: Chained Heart and Hands
Glass exploded in all directions as the candlestick made contact with the mirror. He felt little nipping stings as shards embedded themselves in his hands, but he did not feel the pain as they began to bleed. The pain of his heart outweighed and outlasted them all, and it was all he could feel, the agony dragging him down…
He did not, could not think as the final mirror shattered into glass and ashes, revealing the cramped passageway he had built years ago in his youth. He had used it only once or twice, long enough ago that he had forgotten where exactly it led to. But he dropped the candlestick and stepped into the narrow corridor without hesitation, releasing the heavy curtain and shrouding himself in darkness. His mind screamed for flight…not from the soldiers and the angry mob, but from his own heart, his own memories…
Christine.
He forced her image away and concentrated on walking straight. He had forgotten much about this particular passageway among the dozens he had constructed and roamed as the Opera Ghost, but he knew that this one was fairly straight and had no turns. The fingertips of his hands skimmed across the rough rock as he continued on his way, staring straight ahead, seeking the light at the end of the tunnel that refused to reveal itself to him.
Every time Christine's face appeared in his mind, he brutally expelled it. He did not want to relive what he had just experienced, what he had just done. He only wanted to run, to flee…and deal with the memories later.
Exist. Keep breathing. Keep living. Do not fall again.
He had fallen twice, once at birth and again only ten minutes ago. He dared not fall again. He was sure there was a rock bottom, a place where if he touched, he could not ever return to the light.
Exist. Do not feel. Do not break. Do not fall. Ever.
His knee made contact with something and he almost hit his head against the door blocking his way. Mindlessly, automatically, he drew to a stop, his fingers searching the wooden slab blindly, feeling for a handle, a knob, anything…
His fingertips brushed against something cold and hard, and in an instant he turned the knob, opening the door a crack.
An anonymous bricked wall greeted him. Screams, exclamations and the sound of running feet came from his left, and he remembered. This passageway came out into a system of small alleyways that wrapped around the opera house. Although he had lived in the opera house for years, he had never fully explored the network of labyrinthine alleys around it.
To his left, the alley connected with the main street running in front of the Opera Populaire. To his right lay the unknown. Awareness of the outside world and his lack of a mask made him stop dead, but he pushed down his fear and stepped out into the dark alley, closing the door firmly. He had come as close as anybody could possibly come to total destruction. He did not fear anything anymore.
Or so he told himself.
He allowed himself a glance at the large crowd gathered in front of the burning opera house, their faces illuminated by the great fire. Interspersed within the crowd were smaller pockets of struggling people, performers in full costume and operagoers alike as they fought their way through the masses to escape the burning building. His eyes did not miss the soldiers donned in dark uniforms as they made their way through the throng, trying to sedate the Parisians as they screamed at the loss of their beloved opera house and tried to find their friends in the chaos. Although the soldiers were preoccupied with keeping the large group under control, Erik knew that they also had their orders to capture him at all costs.
There were soldiers hunting him down in the opera house behind him. There were soldiers lingering in the crowd to the left of him. There was only one way to go.
Turning right, he turned his back on the mob, making his way deeper into the alley as fast as he could go without running. The high walls swallowed up the cries and calls of the crowd and he soon found himself surrounded by silence and darkness.
He turned right and continued, his feet the only sound in the gloom. He had no plan, no ideas, but one thing he did know was that he did not want to reach the light and open air. He only desired to wander alone forever in the darkness, breaking the overwhelming quiet with his silent screams…
He turned left and then right, only wanting to flee, refusing to think, the caverns of his mind as empty as the dim alley he was now running down…
A dark shape flashed by him and he immediately sped up, but before he could run another step, a pair of hands pinned his arms back, forcing him to a stop.
"Just where do you think you're going, monsieur? On your daily evening run down in the alleys behind the Opera Populaire…as it burns to the ground?" A voice asked.
Erik bit back his yell and struggled furiously, but his strength was no match for the faceless man, revealed to be a brawny soldier as he stepped around Erik to see him more fully.
"Let me go. I'll kill you!" Erik snarled, fighting his grip.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot do that, and I doubt that you can give me so much as a nosebleed in your situation," the soldier said in an almost bored voice, taking Erik's wrists around to his front where he held on to them in a death grip, ignoring Erik's valiant attempts to break free. "We were given orders to arrest any man we see in the vicinity of the opera house that fits your description and bears your appearance. You wouldn't happen to be the infamous Opera Ghost, would you? There is one last thing to check, and I must confess that I am quite curious and excited…word of your horrifying disfigurement has traveled very quickly through us soldiers…"
"No," Erik pleaded, struggling again to no avail.
The soldier ignored him. Easily restraining Erik's wrists with one hand, he reached behind his head, grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled downward, exposing his naked face to the narrow strip of sky above them, stained dark red from the smoke of the opera house as it burned.
"Ahh," another voice breathed in ecstatic satisfaction. Erik looked wildly around and out of the corner of his eyes, saw another soldier stepping out from the shadows. "Only one man in Paris is enough of a monster to have a face like that."
The soldier laughed and spat spitefully on Erik's face as he slipped a hand inside his winter cape and drew out a pair of handcuffs, carelessly tossing them to the soldier pinning Erik's wrists together.
"You, monsieur," he said, mockingly emphasizing the title of respect as the first soldier easily forced Erik's resisting wrists into the twin circles of imprisonment, "are under arrest for arson of public property, attempted murder and three counts of homicide…if not more."
The soldier's spit scorched Erik's face as it slid down his marred cheek. He would not be shackled, he would not be imprisoned again and be tortured for others' gratification and appeasement…
"Those can all be explained, I can plead guilty if that is what you want," Erik replied through gritted teeth, allowing some of his pride to crumble.
"But who will defend you? Who will save you? Certainly not the lass or the Vicomte, they're gone," the first soldier sneered. "Who will believe a filthy monster like you when you stand before the faces of the unmerciful Parisian court? Your very bones will rot in hell and not even the prison dogs will care to dispose of you in their own way…"
"NOOOOO!" Erik yelled, throwing a punch at the soldier's jaw with his cuffed hands. But before he could make his escape, he felt something hit his head. The last thing he registered before becoming unconscious was Christine's face and once again, the horrifying sensation of falling.
Please leave a review and tell me what you think! [D-squaredShipper]