A/N: This is a collboration between myself and drawnby27emilys on tumblr, who created some amazing art to go with this story! Please check her and her illustrations out, they're amazing. Also thanks to everyone who helped me create this story through peer review and advice, you're all great!
Erik
He had not left his home with the intention to spend his final night amongst the living filled with anxiety and nausea. He had hoped by this late hour he would be wrapped in the sweet embrace of morphine, not fighting against an ever-growing urge to gasp for breath and shake.
He wanted nothing more than to return home and slip into the familiar haze he craved painfully, but it was as if the letter in his coat pocket weighed him down- keeping him rooted in the same, shadowy spot.
Perhaps, Erik thought bitterly, he did not deserve to spend his last night retreating from the world and his crimes. What did it matter, really? Tomorrow he would calmly walk into the center of Paris, when the markets and shops were most busy, and remove his mask. The wanted poster he had eyed earlier that night showed that he was now worth more than triple dead than alive.
He had no doubt that someone, either an officer or an eager citizen ready to claim a hefty bounty, would happily do what he himself could not do. He did not fool himself with thoughts of redemption, or a last second ticket to salvation. Erik knew that a monster like himself would never shed the sins of his life- even in death.
An involuntary sigh left him, and with it, the last of his strength to ponder life and death. His gloved hand found its way into his pocket once more to ensure that the letter had not moved since the last time he checked. Satisfied, he let his fingers brush against the delicate hair pin that also hid within his pocket. He let the tips of his fingers trace over the small treasure. Erik had studied the pin more than enough to picture it in his mind perfectly.
It was hers, of course, his Christine-
He flinched and drew his hand out and behind his back. His heart skipped as he grit his teeth until his ears began to ring.
She was not his Christine. He was not here, lurking outside her guardian's residence, to pledge to her his undying love and changed ways. He would not dare subject her once more to the ruin and misery that was his presence in her life.
His eyes closed as he crushed down the immense wave of shame that overtook him. He had stood there for hours, searching for the courage to remove the letter from his person and leave it with her-somehow. He worried that slipping it under the front door exposed it to possibly being discovered by someone else, although he knew her guardian seldom stayed in the small flat anymore, not since a sick relative whisked her many miles away for weeks at a time.
He considered sliding it under her bedroom window, but the thought of his venomous eyes frightening her should she happen to see him nearly made him ill. He couldn't stomach seeing her bright, green eyes well up with fear, not when they already haunted his dreams.
His stomach knotted as the smothering anxiety began to rise. He wanted to scream at himself, to berate and scold himself for not being able to find the damn courage to-
The door to Christine's flat eased open, as if someone was surveying the street. He knew his place in the shadows concealed him, but he still cautiously took a step back further into the darkness. He watched dumbstruck as the unmistakable, petite form of Christine hastily slid out from behind the door.
With the hood of her cloak drawn up, she paced the opposite way from him. He blinked in disbelief before bringing his hand up to rub his eyes, though it did nothing to make him feel any less baffled. He could not process why Christine would ever fancy the idea of going for a late-night stroll completely alone. He felt his jaw grit once more in irritation, didn't she know what sort of vermin wandered the streets late at night?
"Like you," he scoffed.
Erik winced, scorned by his rightful assessment yet embarrassed that he had spoken to no one but himself. The heat of his shame stirred his body to move, and he silently prowled a distance behind Christine. Although he kept everything from his steps to his breathing as quiet as possible, his mind begged to turn around, to use her absence as a chance to slip the letter under her window.
Erik never was good at listening to the reasonable side of himself, and he thought it pointless to start on the eve of his death.
Ahead of him, a summer breeze ruffled the cloak she wore and blew her hood from her head, releasing the cascade of golden curls he once ran a single, shaking hand through. His feet stopped him cold, and he closed his eyes. He knew he needed to turn back, even if his entire body prickled with the urge to go forward. What right did he have to linger in her shadow and scrutinize her every move?
His eyes shot open at the sound of a second pair of footsteps ahead of him. Instinctively, he felt his shoulders hunch forward as he focused on the form of a brutish man cross the road. It was not often Erik felt small, but the massive man would easily tower over him. Still lingering in the shadows, he pushed forward with a faster pace.
He silently willed for the man to turn a corner, or enter a home, yet with each passing minute the lasso in his sleeve seemed to come to life on its own, until he found his hand firmly wrapped about the noose. He loathed the idea of having to kill in front of Christine, but he would do it without a second thought if it meant keeping her safe. He knew she already hated him, and for that he could not blame her. Besides, even if he butchered the man right before her eyes, could one hate someone even more?
His eyes left the giant man for a second, just long enough to glance behind him. The thought of having a target on both sides of him ate away at his nerves, especially when the man ahead of him was most likely capable of snapping Erik's back like a twig. Except, the man was not ahead of him when he glanced forward again.
Neither was Christine.
His blood ran cold, his heart started to beat so rapidly it muffled every other sound. He flew forward, no longer concerned with the shadows and safety in darkness. A man of that size, he knew, could not have gone far- not without stomping about.
Erik cursed his stupidity for not closing the distance between himself and Christine sooner, or eliminating the other man the moment he arrived. He wasted no time sprinting to the last spot he had seen the man, and he paused only for a second to listen.
A sharp gasp made his head snap to the right, where his eyes trailed to an alleyway just ahead, nestled between two condemned buildings. Erik shot forward once more, not even caring that his sharp footsteps seemed to bounce about the deserted street.
He had never felt such a heavy weight of absolute dread before, and he knew this new sense of panic that fear held on him would make him vulnerable. His last thought before he screeched into the alley was that he, once again, did not have a plan.
His sudden appearance made the imposing man jump, the slick knife in his hand twinkled as he lowered it from Christine's throat. Erik's fiery eyes took in the sight of her, shaking and cornered, with a knife just inches from her face.
Her tear streaked, terrified face.
Erik charged forward and threw his shoulder into the man's abdomen, sending them both tumbling to the ground in a pile of swinging fists and slashing blades. His mind screamed instructions at him like a cranky director in the midst of hell. He knew that here on the ground, he stood no chance, not against a man that likely weighed more than double his weight and had arms as big as Erik's head.
Luckily, the man didn't seem to realize the advantage he had on the ground, and instead kicked Erik off him with a firm foot to the chest. Erik felt his back meet a wall just before his head bounced against it. His vision dimmed on and off, like a lantern being adjusted, and his ears began to ring. His limbs seemed heavier than he remembered, but his vision came through just in time for him to dodge left as a streak of silver swung wildly towards his face.
Erik kept his back to the wall as he ducked left and right, desperately searching for a chance to escape both the knife and massive fist that aimed at him. A low jab to his gut made him hunch forward, and he hissed as the knife sliced across the exposed half of his face.
Oddly, he smelled the blood before he felt it, and he wondered if the man had managed to mangle his nose. Through stinging eyes, he watched as the man raised the blade high up into the air, and Erik immediately lunged forward through the new opening. The man growled and began to spin around, but Erik gripped onto the man's beefy arm and used the motion of his pivoting body to launch himself onto the man's solid back.
Erik brought his noose around the man's thick neck and squeezed until his knuckles grew white. He held on as the lasso began to bite into the flesh on his hands, and the giant man bucked and jerked like a horse trying to evict a pesky fly. The man reversed until his back collided with a wall, leaving Erik breathless. A small cry made him whip his head to the side, and he met Christine's horrified stare.
"What are you doing! Leave! Run, go," Erik wheezed, as the man crashed them into the opposite wall. The man's stone like head swung back to crash into Erik's face, making him loosen his grasp on the noose as his teeth clamped down on his own tongue. Blood filled his mouth and he spewed a thick string of spit and blood from his mouth with a gasp. The ground suddenly grew closer as the man reached back and ripped Erik forward.
The force from the man's rage made Erik land flat on his back with the limp noose still in hand. With all the air gone from his lungs and a sharp pain running up the length of his spine, his vision began to fade once again. He did not see the man's fist swinging down until it collided with his lower ribs. The ringing in his ears grew to screaming, an ear-piercing wail that made his mind feel numb.
Above him, the man sneered down, inches away from his own face. It surprised Erik just as much as it did the man when a small hand suddenly shattered a glass bottle against the man's head. Erik closed his eyes as shards of glass rained down on him. His mind was crystal clear for few critical seconds as he realized what Christine had done. Without another thought, he seized his chance.
Blindly, he reached out to his side and gripped the first shard of glass his stretched out fingers came across. He clutched at it until his hand was slick with blood, and in one quick strike he thrust it into the man's thigh. The man howled and clutched at the glass in his thigh as Erik used the last of his adrenaline to jump to his feet and side swept the man to his knees.
He felt weak as he slipped the noose once more onto the man's neck. Erik placed one foot on the man's back for support as he pulled the lasso until the man squirmed no more.
Exhausted, he let his lacerated hands fall and the dead man fell forward with a thud. He swayed on his feet until his back met a wall, and he tilted his chin up. A black canvas with endless white stars greeted him from high above. He wondered why he didn't notice how breath taking the sky looked before.
His cheek felt warm, and his tongue still bled enough to annoyingly drip from his mouth every few moments. By the way his vision continued to swim in and out, and how difficult it was to breathe, Erik knew there was something else deadly wrong. Something much more serious than a bleeding tongue and lacerated cheek and hand.
Strangely, he took comfort in the fact that at that moment, he didn't feel any pain, just an overwhelming sense of warmth.
Quiet sobbing to his side snapped him out of his daze.
He sluggishly rolled his head to see Christine on her knees with her hands to her mouth. He wanted to go to her and apologize, to look over any wounds of hers, or maybe just reach out and hold her in his arms. Truthfully, he really longed to just collapse next to her and thank her for….whatever her intention was, with the bottle. She hadn't meant to save him, he assumed. Perhaps she was just afraid her attacker would turn on her at any moment.
She seemed so far away one moment and then an arm's length away the next. He watched as she leaned back, and he feared that he had terrified her once again. Tentatively, he brought his foot forward to go to her, but a searing pain below his ribs made him groan and lean back. The black spots began to throb in his vision again, and his gut swirled with nausea.
He did not want to look down at whatever was digging into him. He wanted a few more seconds of confused bliss before whatever was searing into his body shattered the illusion. His chest felt tighter with each heartbeat, and it took him a moment to realize the shaky breathing he heard was actually his own.
His trembling hand trailed from his side to his stomach, where he closed his eyes and forced his hand to finish its journey to his ribs. There, he felt the worn hilt of a knife protruding just below his ribs. It felt like a bucket of icy water had been dropped on him, and he cringed as his eyes flew open and he stared down at himself.
He didn't know why he needed to see the blade before believing that he had indeed been stabbed. It didn't bring any sense of peace to his thoughts, and he gripped the handle with a hiss. Tentatively, he gently tugged at the knife and yelped. The pain was so terrible it made his knees shake as a flash of white disoriented him.
Across from him, Christine gasped, momentarily drawing his attention away from the agony in his body and to her once more. The panic in his gut morphed into a foolish determination, and he stiffly brought both hands around the hilt of the knife before tugging firmly. He heard a scream, but he wasn't exactly sure if it came from him or her. His senses were far to frazzled to tell.
A gush of warm blood flowed from the wound and soaked his clothes as it began to drip onto the ground. His hand came to press against the sticky gash as he stumbled forward. Each shuffle of his feet made his vision black out momentarily and his chest began to feel constricted. He had made it halfway to her before he could bare the suffocating sensation no more.
Blood soaked hands clawed at his coat as he fell to his knees. His chest heaved and he wheezed with each breath as he unsuccessfully tore at the buttons on his coat. It felt like the noose he had just used to strangle the life out of someone was now tightly coiled around his own neck.
Although he had been prepared to die come morning, he didn't expect to spend his last moments gasping for air and bleeding out with Christine as the sole audience member for the grand finale of his life.
Christine.
She was on her knees before him, her own delicate hands undoing the blood-stained buttons on his coat. He couldn't recall how or when she appeared before him, but he welcomed the sight of her either way. In a daze he watched as her hands quivered as they settled on his shoulders before pulling the soaked coat from him. With the moon as their only source of light, he was grateful she was a not able to see just how grotesque his wound was.
His white shirt stuck to him like a warm was cloth and he absentmindedly glanced down. The simple movement made him feel as if he were spinning, and he couldn't stop his weary body from falling forward.
His thoughts came in and out of clarity. One second he was falling, and the next his head was cradled on Christine's lap as she stared down at him. Behind her, the night sky and its endless stars painted a morbidly beautiful scene behind her grief-stricken face. A few of her tears fell on to mask and cheek, but he didn't mind.
Something stirred inside his half aware state of mind and he struggled to sit up. Christine whispered some sort of request he couldn't understand, but her hand on his uncovered cheek and the sad shake of her head convinced him to give up whatever pitiful effort he had.
"I'll stain your hand," he murmured. She gave him a confused tilt of her head before slowly lifting her hand from his cheek. They both stared at the red blood that covered her pale fingers and palm, but she shook her head before returning it to his cheek.
"It's alright, it doesn't matter," she promised him with a soothing tone in her shaky voice. It occurred to him that perhaps he had already ruined her clothes with his blood, but he didn't have the energy to inspect his suspicion. He began to feel a chill settle over his body, and he knew his time was running short.
"My coat, my coat pocket," he paused to draw in a painful breath. "Please, please forgive me. I had to," his lungs burned and he coughed. He felt the sticky feeling of blood trail from his mouth, and felt ashamed of how disgusting he must look to her.
He decided not to speak, for it was much too painful. Instead he watched her through fading vision as she reached over and searched through the bloody and tattered remains of his coat. He let his eyes flutter close and listened as she leaned back and began to tear open the envelope.
"Oh, maestro- I can't read it! It's covered in…" she trailed off and his heavy eyes opened. The letter was unrecognizable, it looked like red ink had been carelessly poured all over it. He blinked, he didn't remember spilling any red ink before leaving his home. The mystery was far too tiresome to investigate.
"Maestro?" Christine asked timidly. He met her teary green eyes and weakly shook his head.
"Erik," he rasped. "My name is Erik."
"Erik," she nodded, a sad smile appearing on her lips.
His heart felt warm then, and his body free. He shut his eyes once again, and knew nothing more.