A/N: I originally wrote this for the Morbidity Writing Contest on PFN (I AM BOYCOTTING PFN! Along with like a bazillion otehr people...join PPN! That is, POTOPhans dot net). I am, quite frankly, utterly shocked that I didn't get dead last in the contest. After all, the other phics were really creepy :shudders at , and , among others...: and mine doesn't merit as morbid. Just sort of dark and twisted. Oddly, based on ALW stage (for simplicity reasons). It's a one-shot. Tell me what you think.
Disclaimer: I disclaim, I disclaim...and I shall disclaim all that is not mine for eternity.
Figments
of a
Shattered Soul
by
IChooseTheScorpion
(also known as)
Little Sultana
(or)
Erika Ash Lynn-Decroix
"Angel...you have deceived me...I gave you my mind blindly," I whispered, choking back more tears.
"You try my patience. Make your choice!" Erik growled, tugging on Raoul's neck. I held back a whimper, knowing that it would only test Erik's short temper more.
"Oh, Erik," I sighed sadly. And I opened my mouth to sing for my angel of music, perhaps for the last time. "Pitiful creature of darkness...what kind of life have you known?"
The tormented expression on the Phantom's distorted face as I said these words was enough to break anyone's heart.
"God," I whispered, looking at my fallen Angel sadly. Did I even believe in God anymore? After all this? "Give me courage to show you, you are not alone!"
As I sealed my own fate and Raoul's along with my lips against Erik's twisted ones, and I felt the warm, salty tears against my face, I realized that I could never give this man what he wanted. He was the dark, tantalizing one. Raoul was the safe, secure one; my childhood friend and companion.
I pulled back, staring into Erik's mismatched golden eyes a moment, examining the wet streaks down both sides of his face. The flawless, beautiful side that made it so that if someone looked at his profile, he looked like he could be the Angel of Music. The other side, a hideous, twisted mass of dead flesh and jutting skull, pulsing veins and a collapsed, undeveloped lump of a nose. Angel and demon, in one.
Without thinking, I pulled Erik back into the embrace, tightening my arms around him and allowing him to tentatively wrap his own thin arms around me. I barely registered Raoul's cry of dismay as I held onto Erik, our lips again pressed together. My mind was a mix of confusion and certainty, doubt and decision, weakness and strength, resulting in the confusion triumphing over all other emotions and feelings.
We finally pulled back, and I immediately missed my Angels' warmth. Abruptly, this realization clicked in my mind: Angel's warmth. Angels hold no warmth. Erik was no angel. He was simply Erik.
And Erik was walking away. The lasso had dropped from his hand, and Raoul had fallen with it. He sputtered, clutching at his throat as I stared after Erik, who was presently beginning to speak.
He was telling Raoul to go, to take me, for both of us to leave him. I did nothing but stare, realization crashing down on me that this man was not an angel. Even when he had taken me down to his lair in the cellars the first time, I had not realized this. As I ripped his mask away, revealing the twisted demon underneath, I had not realized this. Seeing the result, twice, of his murderous nature, I had not realized this.
Now, however, staring at this broken man before me, I saw him for what he was for the first time. A man. A man that I was in love with. But I hated him for this. Hated him so much, it overpowered any love I felt. He made me fall in love with a being that didn't exist.
Why, oh, why did I only begin to believe the truth now? Not when I ripped his mask away, or when he dropped the chandelier, or when he murdered Buquet and Piangi. No, then he was still my dark knight. I was his princess...just like in the fairy tales Papa used to read me as a child.
Now here were the shambles of that being before me, crying for me to leave now with Raoul, and I saw my heart on the floor along with the shattered illusion. Even if he had been the angel of death, I would have taken him. But he was no angel, nor demon. He was a human being. And I hated him for it.
Raoul was calling my name. No, not Raoul. My brows furrowed and I frowned, trying to place the name with the female voice I was hearing. I continued to stare at Erik, but his expression changed. The right side of his face rearranged itself, repaired itself, and perfected itself. Before me was an angel. It would have taken my breath away, but I realized there was no breath to take.
"Christine," Erik—no, not Erik. Erik was human. This was an angel. "Go now." This time as he ordered me to leave, his voice was soft and reassuring, albeit sad. "I'm going now."
"No," I protested, almost inaudibly. "No!"
I resounded the word over and over, continually increasing the volume of my voice until it reverberated off the walls almost mechanically, metallically. My whisper had risen to a shout, to a scream, then to a shriek.
"No! Erik, don't leave!"
"Christine," he said calmly. His expression had not changed at all.
"NO! No, Erik no!"
"You know that this isn't real," I heard another calm voice come from behind me. It was Erik's voice, but when I turned, I saw Raoul. But when Raoul opened his mouth to speak, it wasn't his voice that echoed off the cavernous walls, but Erik's.
No, not Erik's. For now, as I stood there, the two men on either side of me, I began to place this masculine voice to a face, to a name.
"Father..." I said quietly.
Erik and Raoul were now both beside me, Erik on my left, Raoul on my right, and they were moving in front of me. As I watched, they came together, shoulder to shoulder, then their shoulders pressed into each other and they began to mold together.
Their bodies came together to make one man, standing before me, a mix of both of their features, both of their talents, both of their personalities.
In front of me stood a young version of my father.
I choked, staring at him as he looked back at me sadly.
"Christine, go back now," he said in Erik's voice.
"Christine," that female voice that had called to me earlier resumed its quest. "Christine, come back to us."
"'Us'?" I echoed, looking around the entire area for the source of the voice.
"Yes, 'us'!" another female voice, much younger and higher in pitch, answered me.
"Meg and me, dear," the older voice said.
"Madame...Giry?" I asked uncertainly. I heard a sigh of relief, and then the older voice seemed to turn away and I heard its voice as though much farther away from me.
"Thank God she recognizes us this time," Madame Giry's voice said.
A male voice answered her: "Yes, she's getting better. I'll be glad when this whole fiasco is over."
"Well," Madame Giry's voice said reprimandingly. "If Meg hadn't brought the Vicomte de Chagny here to see her—"
"Her father had just passed away!" Meg defended. "How was I supposed to know that he was engaged? He shouldn't have brought his fiancé with him!"
"It is no one's fault!" the male voice interrupted. "No one was to know that the sight of Monsieur de Chagny with his fiancé would send her into fits of insane lunacy and hysteria! She thought she was two or more people! She created people, personalities, souls! Honestly...the entire Opera Populaire, if anything, is to blame! Those bloody ghost stories going around only sent her into further fits of hysteria! I should have been notified the minute she went babbling about her 'Angel of Music'!"
"The ghost stories are just rumors created by the corps de ballet to justify creaking floors and practical jokes. Nothing more, Monsieur," Madame Giry's voice calmly explained.
"I know that!" the male voice exclaimed. "Everyone knows that!" His tone changed and he quieted, as though informing the Girys of a highly interesting bit of gossip. "In all honesty, I have never seen a case quite like this: three personali-well, you couldn't actually call them personalities. This isn't a form of Schizophrenia in its stereotypical extreme. But what an absolutely extraordinary case of insanity! Christine Daaé, Raoul de Chagny (her version, of course), and this man, 'Erik,' her 'Angel of Music.' She created a whole alternate universe and world! One that included her as the divine star, being fought over by two dream-like gentlemen."
"Not quite gentlemen," Madame Giry corrected. "Remember, her 'Erik' is...or was a murderer. An obsessive lunatic hell-bent on keeping her to his own."
"Yes, yes, but, you see: both men in her little fantasy world are derived from none other than her own father! Obviously Charles Daaé had his outward appearance: charming, suave, safe...perfect gentleman. But he must have had a dark side that scared and intrigued his daughter at the same time. He was most likely rather obsessive, both about Mademoiselle Daaé and his music, because of the unusual sequence of events leading to Madame Daaé's death—"
"Do not speak of it Monsieur," Madame Giry interjected. "Not now...not here."
"Never mind it," the man said. "When she wakes, she will most likely have been rid of her unstable mentalities. Then we shall take her to the court next week on trial for Signor Piangi and Monsieur Buquet's lives. I'm certain that she will be found insane and sent to a sanitarium for quite a while until a qualified doctor can conclude whether or not she shall redevelop her...odd behavior, to put it lightly."
"Thank you, Monsier," Madame Giry said appreciatively. "For bringing that psychiatrist here, I mean. Most lawyers don't get this involved in their cases..."
"Well, I felt rather...attached, should I say? To that one creation of hers: 'Erik.' He had an odd disfigurement, did he not?"
"Monsieur," Madame Giry began assuringly. "She was not basing 'Erik's appearance on your own-"
"Yes, yes, I know," the man, the lawyer, hushed her. "She has never met me, after all: how could she?"
"I thought she met you once—" Meg started.
"No," the man sighed. "I met her 'Raoul.' 'He' was trying to explain his plan to capture 'Erik' to me...he addressed me as two persons, though, rather than one. I do believe that she created new managers of the Opera Populaire in her fantasy land as well."
"How odd," Madame Giry commented. "Monsieur Lefévre isn't due to retire for quite some years, too."
"Yes," the lawyer agreed. "But her world isn't, or (hopefully) wasn't, reality. We must remember that."
"Yes, well...she should get some rest."
"Yes," the man said. "I believe so. I shall leave then, now...Au revoir."
Meg and her mother echoed him, turning back to the pale, unconscious figure that was tangled in the sheets. Meg sat beside her acquaintance: you couldn't really call them friends. They had only talked once or twice before Meg thought that bringing the "boy who retrieved her scarf from the sea" would help the distraught orphan.
The little Giry put her hand into her pocket and felt a prick on her finger, withdrawing her hand quickly, she opened the pocket wider and saw the rose she had meant to bring Christine. It was from the Vicomte. The real Vicomte. Meg retrieved the flower and placed it on Christine's bedside table, hoping that Christine's personalities were all gone, except for the last one.
In her sleep, Christine was mumbling something, half-singing in her sleep. Meg leaned forward to catch Mademoiselle Daaé's words, but paled when she realized what Christine was singing. The song wasn't entirely unknown to Meg. No, not at all. In fact, Christine had said the same words, hummed the same tune, months ago when this whole ordeal had just started.
"Angel of Music, Guide and Guardian...Grant to me your glory..."
Meg shakily stood on her feet, still in her ballet garb, and turned to leave the room, to inform her mother of the digress when Christine's adequate soprano was suddenly replaced by a low, almost masculine alto:
"I am your Angel of Music...Come to me: Angel of Music..."
Fin