A/N: I know I said I wouldn't be writing for a bit but I had this idea… I hope I can pull it off. Minor challenge me thinks.
Short chapter to start… Don't know if I will put the second up or continue at all.
Disclaimer: I don't own Erik or Christine or any other character from the book/ musical/ movie. However, I own my own plot, characters and my characterisations.
When the Bough Breaks.
Chapter 1- Cradle and All
She placed the crying child into his arms and backed away from his solid frame. The baby looked so small in his hands, so tiny... his little mouth was open and he was wailing hard into the cave. The sound bounced around the walls and echoed back into their ears. She looked at her baby, her brown eyes soft and his so, so blue and then she looked up at the broken man standing in front of her... holding her child like it was an object.
But she had no choice.
His eyes watched her as she stepped away from him, they were stark in contrast to her child's... to her little boy's... still blue but without the soft texture of her baby's. They were icy and hard, the coldest blue she had ever seen but so intense that she couldn't draw herself away from them.
Had they always been so harsh?
She could feel the tears flowing freely down her cheeks, they were warm and burned her skin but still she couldn't stop them. Her hand lifted almost involuntarily to her eyes and swiped away the tears so that she could see. No amount of tears could ever wash away this pain.
'I...' she began but stopped, there were no words to express this and there was no satisfactory explanation to give. All that was between the three of them now was deafening silence and soon, distance.
He shook his head at her but still she moved away.
The baby was foreign to his hands, it's warmth scolded him and it's screaming almost shattered his ears.. he held it out to her... take it back... but she too shook her head in his direction. This was the hardest thing she had ever done, so hard that she felt her heart crumbling as she stood there looking at the boy she was leaving behind.
It was a moment before she could compose herself enough to take her final look, to realise that this was probably going to be the last time she ever saw him... either of them... and then without a word she turned and fled. He grasped the baby, still weeping, in his arms and ran to the exit of his home where he was just in time to see the blue of Christine's cape vanish into the market place.
Erik turned and walked numbly back into his home, placed the baby onto the settee, turned his back and walked away from the screaming.