A/N: I hope you like it so far...please, please review and tell me what you think! A huge, huge thank-you to GhostOfMusic for being the very first to review out of 53 cold, callous people who visited my fic without leaving behind a word or two about what they thought. You really made my day, GhostOfMusic! I think I should have warned people this will not be a fluffy, idealistic fanfic...oh, well. Anyway, here is chapter 2 of my un-fluffy, bitter-reality fic...
Erik was sinking down, down, down, into the black depths of a bottomless ocean. He sank slowly, gently, his limbs so heavy he could not find the will to move them. But whyever would he wish to move them, anyway? He was experiencing such comforting peace...As he drifted through the murky darkness, he wondered if he had at last died. Had the God who had long forsaken him finally answered his last, hopeless prayer?
Vaguely surprised that he was still conscious of himself, he let himself float...
Something cold was suddenly pressed against his forehead, abruptly jerking him from the blissful darkness. Erik gasped and opened his eyes, his entire body jumping. At first he thought he was still underground, but then he realised with a jolt that the air was too warm, and he was not lying on cold rock, but on a bed in a dark bedroom. Crisp white sheets covered him, and beneath his head was a pillow. Shocked, his mind reeling, he sat up and was horrified to discover that somebody was in the room with him.
A gentleman with oval eyeglasses and a thick, large moustache was sitting at his bedside, holding a dripping flannel above a small tin basin of water. A beastial snarl issued from Erik's lips, and he immediately drew himself up against the wall, as far from the man as possible, startled and defensive. He regarded the man with fierce distrust, still trying to work out where he was and what this person was doing here. Instinctively, his hand leapt up to his face, covering his ghastly features with his long, spidery fingers.
The other man was watching Erik calmly...perhaps the darkness of the room had stopped him from seeing the deformity of his face? Erik stared back, still flattened against the wall with his long body curled up, his amber eyes wide and calculating between his fingers. A memory swam blearily through his mind...abruptly he recognised the man before him as the doctor Giry had spoken of, the foolish clot who had dragged him from his lair against his will. He glared at him appraisingly. The man seemed wealthy in years, so he could not pose much of a physical threat...but Erik was ill and thin, too weak to fight if attacked. Perhaps if he could find a weapon he would stand more of a chance against -
Erik unexpectedly lost his dark train of thought as the man smiled gently at him.
'Please calm yourself, monsieur - you are safe here,' he said, making Erik's defensive stance falter from sheer surprise. Noticing this, the man continued: 'I'm afraid I did not get the chance to properly introduce myself, so let me do so now: I am the Docteur Victor Bayard. I believe we have met once before, but you may not remember as you were still a child. Since you are ill and in grievous need of medical help, I have taken the liberty of bringing you to my own home. I hope you do not mind...'
Erik blinked, taken aback. So this was indeed the Docteur Bayard he had been told of? He had never expected the man to treat him as...as an equal...as a normal person...
Still wary, he slowly let down his guard and came away from the wall. Bayard smiled at him encouragingly.
'There is really no reason to be so guarded, monsieur - you must rest, as it is quite late,' he said, then cocked his head to one side slightly. 'But I suppose you must be hungry by now. I shall bring you some broth directly; you need to regain your strength in order to fight your fever.'
As soon as the man was gone, Erik slumped back down onto the bed, sweating, then smiled in the safety of the shadows. He could see beyond Bayard's smile; the doctor was merely attempting to put him at ease, for Erik could perceive a certain grimness that lay in the undertones of his voice and in the depths of his eyes. This knowledge did not bother him in the slightest way - he had never expected to be accepted without question, and he was even content somehow that he had seen through the doctor's kind looks. It would have troubled him to no end had Docteur Bayard shown genuine liking and compassion. However, the man was just doing his job, and that was that.
His limbs felt very light all of a sudden, his skin very hot. Putting a hand to his own forehead, he noticed he had been dressed in a loose dark grey shirt that was not his own. His sharp cheekbones flushed blotchily with bemusement and outrage at the thought of a stranger dressing him, and he tugged the sheets up to his neck.
Downstairs, Bayard methodically heated water and chopped vegetables in his kitchen, his thoughts on the strange guest upstairs. The man's face was truly quite a harrowing sight...Giry had never said whether this was the result of a terrible childhood accident or the mere cruelty of fate. The doctor's bushy eyebrows knitted at the memory of the missing nose, the scowling mouth, the painfully thin, almost transculent skin that stretched over the blue net of veins...it had looked so much worse by flickering candlelight, with every dip and peak thrown into sharp relief...
He stirred the broth vigorously, adding a sprinkling of pepper that would help fight the chill lodged in Erik's bones. The sight of that horrendous face reminded Bayard of the many times he had been called to tend to poor souls who had suffered grave accidents; he remembered arriving at a workshop one bleak day to treat some sorry fool who had fallen into the machinery and consequently had his face mangled in the works. The employee had lost his nose and one eye, and his skin had been badly torn until only a thin layer of it remained. Many of his co-workers had been unable to look at the man from sheer horror, and although Bayard surmounted his own fearful disgust enough to tend to him, the man had died several minutes later. Bayard could recall the sight of the corpse as it grew pale, and found that Erik reminded him awfully of it. However, Bayard had always managed to maintain an air of detached professionalism when it came to gruesome injuries, and the unnerving sight of Erik's face was no exception. Now ladling the broth into a bowl, the doctor pondered the man's life. How had he managed to live with such a disfigurement? He knew that Erik previously lived under the Opera house - Giry had led Bayard down to his underground home only yesterday to fetch him, after all - and he also knew that he wore a mask to hide the deformity. What a trying existence the man must have...
Bayard only vaguely remembered tending to Erik as a boy. The sole memories that had remained in his mind all these years were the sight of the child's emaciated, skull-like face, the sickly smell of sweat and illness, and the sound of the then-young Madame Giry's desperate voice saying tearfully: 'Je ne sais plus quoi faire...aidez-le, je vous en prie, monsieur!' I do not know what to do...help him, I beg you, monsieur! Bayard sighed, extracting a small silver spoon from the cutlery drawer. If he had helped Erik once, surely he could do so a second time...Three days passed, one after the other. For Docteur Bayard, they passed in a relatively normal way, since he still went to work, having other patients that also needed his care. For Erik, however, they passed in a dream-like haze. Time had lost all sense to him, but it did not matter - all he had the strength to do was to eat and sleep, as all those sleepless years were being slowly but surely paid for. Now he could sense that he was gradually beginning to recover; he had stopped pissing blood and his breathing was no longer harsh and wheezy. However, what he did not know and did not wish to think about was what he would do once fully recovered. His life no longer had any sense, and he had no wish to stay in the room in Bayard's house any longer than necessary. His only choice would be to cease being a phantom and to become a man. But how? How? He would never recover from his deformity, and what man could live with such a hideous face? Erik clawed at his revolting features bitterly until he drew blood, feeling his stomach twist with the agony of being struck with such a curse. Where was his mask? He felt so unbearably naked without its comforting security. At least with it on he did not have to hide his emotions himself...
Raising himself up into a sitting position, he cast around the room. Surely it could not have been left in his lair where he had thrown it all those weeks ago...that meddling old woman Giry must have thought to -
Aha!
Erik's lips curved into a tight, rare smile as he caught sight of it, right next to him on his bedside table. He picked it up reverently, lovingly, running his abnormally long, pale fingers over the familiar hard white leather. It was a small comfort, which he was grateful for as he put it on, adjusting it so that it fitted his face perfectly, showing only his mouth and chin. With the mask on, he could easily hide the nose that was not there, and it covered all of his deformity. Touching the surface of it and caressing the length of the mask's own nose, he smiled to himself once more. He felt almost...whole.
Almost.
Considerably less anxious, and slightly more confident, Erik let himself lie back down and fall asleep, mask securely in place.
Bayard put his bulging bag on the sideboard, after making sure he had packed all of his necessary equipment. The Tomas family's youngest daughter was ill again, and needed tending to, which was why he was being called out so late. He was about to put on his coat when he remembered the strange gentleman upstairs. He would need to tell him that he would be away...
He swiftly walked up the stairs, and into the guest bedroom. The man was lying on his side, his eyes closed but fluttering open immediately when Bayard entered the room. The mask's permanent, rather off-putting frown hid the rest of his features. So, thought Bayard, he has found it.
'Monsieur, there is a little girl I must tend to urgently, so I shall be leaving the house,' he informed Erik. 'Please be sure not to agitate yourself in my absence; I shall only be gone a short while.'
'Good evening, then, Docteur,' said Erik almost dismissively, and closed his eyes. Docteur Bayard left him. His patient seemed to be a very odd man indeed. However, this was wholly understandable - from what his old friend Giry had told him, he had experienced many hardships that had left deep scars in his heart. Several days ago when she had let him take Erik away, she had warned Bayard further of the man's unpredictible and often tempestuous dispositions. She had told him that his emotions were terribly hard to discern, and that Bayard must be wary of Erik's temper. Fortunately, Bayard had not witnessed Erik's volatile moods, and he was glad of it, too. Hopefully the man would not attempt to escape while he was out working...
The house was dark and silent, the fire in the grate only a heap of glowing embers. The only inhabitant of the house was asleep, and everything was still.
Then, the door opened, and a figure made its way into the house, closing the door behind it and dropping a large suitcase. The figure gave a small, feminine sigh, stretched, and carried the heavy cases to the foot of the stairs before relighting the fire. Soon the flames were flickering and dancing in the grate, the firelight illuminating the tired face of a young woman dressed in travelling clothes. She paused a while to warm her hands, and then pulled off her thick, warm cloak, hanging it on the brass coathook by the door. It surprised her to see the house dark and empty, but she knew it was probably because the doctor had been called out to see some patient urgently. She would just have to surprise him, then, she thought with a smile. Walking over to her suitcase, her boots rapping softly on the wooden floorboards, she contemplated heaving it upstairs herself, then immediately dismissed the idea. It had taken the coachman, herself and a helpful gentleman who had been passing by to get the trunk down from the carriage's roof. Oh, how glad she was to be home...
Deciding to change into some more comfortable clothes - and remove that damned uncomfortable corset - she made her way upstairs after lighting a candle and placing it in its bronze holder. She tugged her long dark hair free of its modest plait, running her fingers through it to straighten the waves in it, then walked across the landing and into her bedroom. Her bed was made and exactly as she had left it, with the covers neatly folded back, and her clothes were still in the wardrobe. Smiling wearily at the sight of her familiar bed, she collapsed onto it, burying her face into the pillow. She lay there exhausted for a while, then frowned and sniffed the pillow. It smelled rather musty; it would need to be washed. She would just have to get herself a new one before she retired for the night...
Now where did he keep the fresh pillows? The young woman sat up on the bed, tapping her booted foot in thought, then remembered. Of course - in the large chest that stood in the spare bedroom! She marched out of her bedchamber with the candle and walked across the corridor once more, smiling in recollection at the familiar framed likenesses that hung on the walls before entering the unused guest bedroom. It was dark, only lit by her small candle, but the room was small and she remembered where everything lay. She arrived in front of the wooden chest and bent down to lift its lid -
The young woman froze as she noticed something white on the bed, illuminated by the dim light of her candle. Turning her head towards it with a frown, her blue eyes widened in shock as she saw there was a man lying there! Blood rising to colour her cheeks with embarrassment, she was on the verge of rushing out for fear of having disturbed this guest when she realised he was fast asleep. Curiosity got the better of her, and she moved forwards cautiously, shielding the candle with a hand so the light would not wake him.
Who was this man staying in the bedroom? She had not known there would be guests here...
This man was very strange-looking indeed, and she could not recognise him for his face was covered completely by a white, leather mask that only showed his mouth and eyes. She frowned. Why was he wearing it? It did not seem as if it were for some bizarre medicinal reasons, as it had the appearance of a finely-made theatre mask. What could its purpose possibly be, then? From the look of the proud curve of his jaw and chin, the stern, strong line of his mouth and the delicately lavender-tinged eyelids with their black eyelashes - their dark, thick lashes that cast their forked shadows across the mask in the candlelight - he was a very handsome man. Her blush deepened, then she seized control of herself. He surely wore that mask for a specific reason...but what could it be?
Heart beating rapidly, she approached him. This was madness, she told herself. She should not be doing this...
Hesitantly, slowly, she reached out a hand. Her trembling fingertips drew nearer and nearer to the edge of the mask...her heart was thundering in her ears, not knowing what she would find under it...her fingers were so close she could feel the heat of his skin...so close she could almost -
'Je vous le deconseille fortement, mademoiselle,' a smooth, hypnotic voice purred warningly. I strongly advise against it, mademoiselle. With a start, the young woman realised it had been the man who had spoken, and she snatched her hand away immediately, shamed and frightened. How had he known she was there? If he had been aware of her presence, why had he not spoken to her? Had he been testing her somehow? The man's eyes opened and stared straight at her. They were amber-gold and glittered in the dark, full of intelligence and a strange, intense power.
She ran from the room.
When Docteur Bayard came home, the young woman was downstairs, sitting tensely in an armchair, looking very scared indeed. His initial look of shock when he saw her was quickly replaced by a huge, radiant smile that broke over his face.
'Oh, what a marvellous surprise!' he said joyfully, putting his bag down on the floor and rushing to her, his hat still in his hands. 'I thought you were coming in two days' time...oh, how wonderful it is to have you back home -' He broke off, noticing the young woman's expression of distress. 'What is it, ma chère?' Her eyes were wide and she was silently but frantically jabbing her forefinger towards the ceiling. Bayard frowned, then suddenly understood.
'Of course - yes, I forgot to tell you of our guest...dear me, I am sorry you had to find out for yourself...' he said. 'My old friend Madame Giry recently put him under my charge - the poor man was dying and in fever when I came to see him. I am afraid I shall have to save introductions for tomorrow...I hope he did not startle you in any way...'
She flushed and shook her head fiercely, trying to hide her guilt. Bayard shrugged, then smiled at her again, opening his arms wide to embrace her.
'You have no idea how much I have missed you, ma fille - it is truly marvellous to have you home,' he said, enfolding her in his arms. 'I shall take your trunk up for you in a moment; there is something I must do first...'
Ignoring the young woman's frantic gestures, he ran up the stairs, and then entered Erik's bedroom where he came to an abrupt halt. The prone figure on the bed sat up immediately, the mask glowing eerily in the darkness.
'Ah...I see you are awake,' remarked Bayard, unsure how to start as he approached the man's bedside. Erik gave him a humourless half-smile that, with a heavier hint of the insolence already there, could easily have been a smirk.
'Could you possibly be so kind as to tell me, monsieur, who was the young woman attempting to see the horror behind my mask?' he asked politely, his expression invisible to Bayard beneath the hard lines of white leather.
Docteur Bayard sighed.
'She is my daughter, Lucie,' he explained. 'Please forgive her. I had not had the chance to inform her of your presence, and I am sure she did not mean any offence.' He tried in vain to discern the other man's expression. After a brief pause, however, the corners of Erik's mouth drew upwards in an odd smile.
'None taken, none taken, mon cher monsieur!' he said, in a tone that could almost be described as pleasant. However, Bayard was not really sure whether he meant this or not...Madame Giry was correct when she had described Erik to him as frustratingly unfathomable and with a very changeable temperament. Bayard settled on the thought that Erik was being kind and he should leave it at that.
'Well...I am glad to hear it,' he replied eventually. 'Please excuse me for this. Now, I think I shall have to bid you goodnight.'
'Goodnight then, Docteur Bayard,' said Erik, his melodious voice taking a strange, unnerving sing-song tone, as if he was mocking him. Deciding not to pay heed to this, Bayard left the room to join his daughter, intent on reassuring her and finding out the details of her holiday.
The following morning, Lucie Bayard passed the masked man's silent bedroom with apprehension and went downstairs to find her father sitting at the breakfast table poring over sheets and sheets of paper. He looked up at her with a smile when she entered the room.
'Ah, good morning, Lucie,' the Docteur greeted her. His daughter smiled back, her blue eyes still bleary with sleep. Even though she was in her early twenties, she still felt just like a child on mornings like these when she came downstairs and saw her father hard at work over breakfast.
Docteur Bayard shuffled the papers distractedly, then looked up at her again as she made her way to the kitchen. 'Lucie,' he called after her, 'could you be so helpful as to take a bowl of broth to our guest upstairs?'
Lucie blanched and looked terrified. She began to shake her head.
'Please, Lucie,' sighed Docteur Bayard tiredly. 'I have such a lot of work to do, and the two of you still need to become acquainted one way or another. He is our guest, after all, and we must not be rude to him, now, must we?'
The young woman's shoulders sank, and she nodded her head in resigned agreement, still looking scared. She wanted to please her father, and surely bringing up a bowl of broth to a sick man was not so difficult...
Ladling it out into a small bowl and putting a spoon into it, Lucie placed the broth on a tray and walked upstairs with it. Her father smiled at her gratefully as she passed him and continued up the stairs. Her heart was beating loudly. Would the strange man be resentful after what she had so foolishly attempted last night? Those eyes of his...so penetrating, so commanding, so proud...they unnerved her almost as much as the mask he wore.
As she entered his room, she prayed he would be still asleep, ill as he was. However, when she arrived at his bedside, she found to her dismay that he was most certainly not. The man's eyes were well and truly open, and a small smile was playing on his lips. He sat up as Lucie put the tray down on the bedside table, unable to look him in the eyes.
Erik found himself amused by this young woman, as she seemed to fear him even with his mask properly on. Childish creature...he would doubtlessly be able to amuse himself further by scaring her even more.
'Good morning, mademoiselle Lucie,' he murmured from the shadows, shocking her with his knowledge of her name. 'Why do you avoid my gaze so, child? Am I truly frightening you to that extent?'
Lucie still seemed afraid, but now she looked him straight in the eye with a small frown. To his mild surprise, she was older than he had initially guessed. She was definitely somewhere in her twenties...not a child at all, though she had behaved like one the previous night with her cursèd curiosity.
Realising she had not replied, Erik narrowed his eyes with a taunting smile.
'Well? Can you not speak?' he asked her mockingly.
Lucie's fear suddenly seemed to evaporate and he was taken aback by the expression of hurt on her face. For a long second she watched him, as if at a loss what to do, then looked at the floor and shamefully shook her head.
The crooked smile slipped from his face.
'You truly cannot?' he said softly, quite alarmed.
Lucie's kind face suddenly creased in anguish and she left the room in silent, seething anger, leaving Erik stunned and feeling almost...guilty?
He shook himself inside. Guilty? He had tormented and terrified hundreds of ballet rats and had never felt any flicker of conscience, not even when they ran off screaming and sobbing. But that look she had given him...he had, for one horrible second, recognised that very look. It was the look of hurt and pain that had so often contorted his own features as a child when the gypsies had taunted him for their entertainment.
Erik ran his hands through his black, tangled locks agitatedly. Why had Giry let him live when all he was doing was tormenting innocent young women like Lucie? He truly was a beast...
For a while he grappled with his conscience, and then, as it was weak and new, smothered it easily, coming to the conclusion that the brat deserved it. Just like the rest of them - too curious for her own good. He lay down with an angry sigh, lip curling as he twisted a fistful of bedsheet in his hands, and he spent several minutes glowering at the ugly, gaudy spots of sunlight that danced on the ceiling before he fell asleep once more.
'Yes, monsieur, she is mute,' Docteur Bayard said regretfully, later that day when he had brought Erik's next meal. 'But not in the way most would believe it...'
'How so?' asked Erik detachedly, taking the bowl.
Bayard sighed, looking to the door and pursing his lips beneath his moustache.
'She does not speak because she has no wish to - a sort of voluntary dumbness, if you will,' he explained. 'I suppose it is due to nothing other than the shadows of the past haunting her, for as a child she witnessed something that traumatised her, and caused her to lose her will to communicate.' His eyes turned sad. 'She saw her mother killed before her very eyes, monsieur. Helène was a just and kind woman, but it did not spare her.' He gave a short sigh, bemused by the tears that now glistened behind his spectacles at the memory of his dear wife. He took a deep breath. 'Highwaymen,' he said matter-of-factly. 'A band of them. Lucie was eleven years old at the time...she and Helène were in the carriage on their way back from the seaside. I had stayed at home, to continue with my work...' The lines on Bayard's face grew deeper, and he shook his head. 'They did not stand a chance. Helène was brutally murdered, as was the coachman, but Lucie herself escaped. To this day she can only get into a carriage if it is within Paris - if it is in the country, she takes the train instead. After the encounter with the highwaymen, she was found by a charitable young farmer who brought her back to me...the last words she spoke were my name and our address, and then...silence. And that silence has continued for thirteen years...'
'My condolences for your wife, monsieur,' Erik said quietly and formally, his masked face in darkness. As soon as the words left him, he almost laughed. He, the Devil's Child, the infamous Phantom, was being compassionate towards an old fool of a doctor who had only lost his wife? How could this be! How could this be when nobody had ever shown him any sympathy for his lost life - the life he would never have?
His musings of wives and lives were interrupted by Docteur Bayard's exit from the room, and the knowledge that he was once more alone. Erik sighed, dispassionately stirring the contents of the bowl with his spoon. Solitude he did not mind, for it was what he deserved...
Swallowing a few tentative spoonfuls, he remembered the small furry rodent he had gorged himself on down in his lair when the hunger had become too much. He could not think what possessed him to reach out and snap the terrified creature's neck with his long fingers as it ran past him. His thoughts had been obliterated completely by the primal urge to nourish himself, to end the rodent's life in favour of feeding his own. But of course, the small, unidentifyable mammal - that had probably been a rat, now he thought about it - would have had a far better future than he. Far, far better...
Yet he had succumbed to the mind-numbing hunger clawing at his insides. Erik looked at the hand he was holding the spoon with, and noticed the tiny, dull-red scars on his fingers where the rat's little teeth had frantically torn at his skin in a desperate bid to escape. He had been reduced to something beastial then, deaf to the creature's high-pitched shrieks as he broke it and then pulled away its fur to thoughtlessly devour the warm flesh beneath. Erik's stomach contracted at the memory, and he shuddered, making his bowl tremble in his spidery hands. He could still taste the acrid flavour of its blood...he closed his eyes in disgust. What a fall from dignity...well, from what little dignity he had left...
Painfully, he put the full bowl on the bedside table and sank down, wanting sleep, but in its stead finding memories of his own past surging up to claim him as he fell once again into the black depths of pure, bitter self-loathing.