Quite A Night
"As new beginnings go, I fear we are failing rather abysmally."
Christine jolted at the intrusion of Erik's rich tenor into what had been a perfectly awkward silence. She lifted her dark eyes from the table and regarded him thoughtfully, taking note of the sardonic arch of his brow and jaded expression. He sat across from her at a corner table (far from curious eyes by his request) in Ristoranté la Rosa (and how thoroughly him to choose the one restaurant in Venice with such an apropos moniker.) A single candle flickered between them, creating a seductive dance of light and shadow across the contours of his mask that seemed to mirror his very nature.
His bitter assessment of the evening was the first he had spoken to her in more than twenty minutes, though in all fairness, she had been equally as quiet. For three years, she had often allowed her thoughts to travel freely along the path toward a reunion with Erik, and the imagined results had run the course from agonizing to passionate. The reality was proving beyond the scope of her musings. An uncomfortable tension had begun to bristle between them from the moment he had appeared in the doorway of her little flat, and had yet to dissipate, though they were more than halfway through their meal. Christine recognized her own nervousness as one part awareness and two parts fear, but she could not account for his and was feeling more than a little out of her depths.
"Failure is nothing more than the absence of practice," she murmured absently.
A reluctant smile curved his sensual lower lip. "Well, at least you remember some of your lessons."
Christine sighed and returned his smile. "I remember them all." Her grin faded only slightly as she confessed, "They were my only moments of happiness for so long."
His shoulders grew rigid once again, and his eyes glittered with irritation. "A delusion, Christine," he snapped. "We cannot rewrite history."
Her chest tightened at his obvious distrust of her words, but she knew he had every reason to doubt her. She had thoughtlessly denied him and all that he had given her without ever acknowledging the years she had spent as his willing pupil. There had been so many days when the only thing that had kept her from curling into a ball and dying had been the thought of her angel and the lessons they shared. None of his subsequent actions could negate the beauty he had brought into her young life. "No," she murmured. "But neither can we erase it."
"My point exactly!"
Christine wanted to scream in frustration at his intractability. He sat with a look of angry triumph upon his face and his knuckles turning white where they gripped the edge of the table. Forgiveness, it seemed, was not to be so easily earned from Erik. With a mournful shake of her head, she pleaded, "Would you have me remember only the pain we inflicted upon one another?"
She wished, not for the first time, that she could read the tiny nuances of his expression. A muscle jumped in his cheek before he visibly forced his jaw to relax. With a surprisingly calm voice, he countered, "I cannot comprehend why you are choosing to ignore it."
"I am not ignoring it, Erik, merely accepting it. Forgiving it." Driven by instinct, she reached across the table and placed her hand over his, determinedly ignoring the way he flinched almost imperceptibly at her touch. "Our past is what makes us who we are today, and I happen to like who I have become."
Erik tilted his head thoughtfully, his eyes intent upon hers. Gradually, his posture began to relax and one corner of his mouth lifted in what might have been a smile. "And who are you Christine Daaé?"
Now there was a question for the ages.
She hardly knew herself at times, so many transformations had she made in so short a period. Erik undoubtedly knew her best as the lost little girl who had been so easily led by everyone around her. Little Lotte, indeed. Her demise had been, at least in part, at his hands, and Christine could not bring herself to mourn the loss. Only a glimmer of the woman she had become had been visible in Paris, and she had long wondered if Erik would even recognize her now. Raoul certainly had not.
She sighed, "I do not think that one evening is time enough to answer such a question."
"Then merely a beginning will suffice," he said with a casual shrug. "How did you come to be in Venice?"
The force of his gaze upon her belied the seeming innocence of his query. She understood what he had left unasked; the challenge evident in his eyes. He had been genuinely surprised when they had danced together during the Carnival that she had not been a married lady, even though he had addressed her as Signorina. After all, countless women continued to use a maiden name for appearances on stage. It often simplified matters, especially if the lady had a habit of changing husbands as often as she changed her costume. Erik had obviously expected that she would be a Vicomtesse, safely tucked away somewhere in the French countryside.
"Would you not prefer to ask me why I did not remain in France?," she challenged.
His visible brow lifted elegantly. "Is it not the same question?"
Christine was acutely aware of how easily she could be outmaneuvered in these little verbal spars he seemed to favor. She liked to believe that she had grown much stronger in the past three years. She was a well renowned diva (even somewhat demanding in the role on the rare occasions when her temper sparked,) respected by her peers, indulged by her manager, and adored by her pubic. Yet Erik could reduce her to a quivering, childish mess with a single look. It would not do to let this conversation get away from her. "You know very well that it is not."
His mouth curved into an almost brutal smile as he settled back into his chair and urged, "Then perhaps you should begin with a brokenhearted Vicomte."
No, she thought. I must begin with a brokenhearted angel.
She dared not speak the words aloud, however, afraid to place him on the defensive again. His volatile moods shifted so quickly, and she wasn't yet confident that she could keep up with them. She had failed so miserably before. The twisted pleasure that Erik so obviously received from the idea of Raoul suffering served to remind her that she must tread carefully with this subject.
The memory of that last night beneath the opera came unbidden, and Christine dropped her eyes in shame. "I am not proud of the pain I caused, Erik. To both you and Raoul."
He sneered at the hated name on her lips, hissing, "I would prefer you not compare me to the boy."
Christine met his hard stare and shook her head sadly. "There is no comparison. I will not insult your intelligence by claiming that I did not love him." She watched Erik tense at her words, and she could almost feel his pain burning through her own blood. She paused for a moment, waiting for the explosion of anger and derisive comments, but he remained silent so that she could continue. She inhaled deeply, slowly releasing the calming breath before she confessed, "But my experience with the emotion was decidedly limited. You, more than anyone, should know the truth of that. I was all of seventeen, and suddenly my childhood sweetheart appeared with flowers and compliments and invitations to supper. He was a welcomed light in the darkness that I had been living in."
"Please, Christine," he growled, "tell me no more of your lover's virtues."
"He was never my lover," she was quick to assure. It was far too embarrassing to admit that while Raoul had held her heart for a brief time, he had never enflamed her body, nor possessed her soul as Erik had. Only one man had ever had the ability to inspire such wanton desire within her, and he sat before her now with his face as impassive as the mask he wore. "Raoul was…" She struggled for the right words to describe what her one-time fiancé had been to her. "My shelter," she finally completed. "I was so frightened and confused by everything else that was happening all around me, and he was there promising love, safety, a life free of worry and fear. In that moment, I so desperately wanted all of those things."
"Things I could not offer you." Sullen resignation colored his words, and her heart broke just a little more.
"You terrified me, Erik," she admitted, and his face grew darker. "Whenever I was near you, your presence would so overwhelm me that I could scarcely even remember how to draw breath. Raoul was…comforting, and in my naivety, I believed that love should always be the gentle emotion I felt with him. Always soft and warm and uncomplicated." She had failed to recognize that passion was every bit as necessary to her as security; and passion was powerful and uncontrollable and all consuming.
"I was wrong," she admitted shamefully, "about so many things. After Raoul took me away from Paris, I spent months existing in a protected world of wealth and luxury…everything I had thought I wanted…only to cry myself to sleep each night longing for all that I had left behind. Everyday I was forced to face the reality of what my life as the Vicomtesse de Chagny would be. Forever living in a gilded cage, a prisoner of propriety…completely devoid of true freedom, of passion and…music."
Christine stared meaningfully into Erik's eyes. "And you, Erik. I could not escape the memory of you…of your kiss. It was my own personal hell that I came to fully understand my feelings for you only after I had destroyed every chance that we might have had to find happiness together. In the end, I could not destroy Raoul as well. His only sin had been loving me, but I had already betrayed him a hundred times over in my heart and my mind. I refused to betray him even further by binding him in marriage to a woman who would always be in love with another man."
She watched him freeze at her words, the meaning of them taking a moment to become fully clear to him. "Oh Christine," he rasped as he seized her hand desperately, his face a mix of hesitant joy and barely concealed anguish. "You choose to tell me this now, when I can barely even touch you?"
She smiled enigmatically. "You did ask…" She turned her hand over so that she could rub her thumb in tiny circles over his skin, taking more pleasure from the simple act than she reasoned was respectable. "Needless to say," she continued conversationally, though her skin was tingling with the heat of his touch, "my engagement was promptly broken and I returned to Paris eager for any word of you, but as always, I was too late. The Phantom had disappeared without a trace. I had no choice but to settle for the little pieces that Madame Giry knew of your past, and her assurance that you were still alive, though she knew not where. I stayed with her and Meg for more than four months before I secured an audition at La Fenice. Signor Dellano, the manager, offered me a contract at once, and I have never looked back. Nor have I ever regretted my decision to break with Raoul."
Her angel sat across from her, adoring her with those beautiful green-blue eyes that she could so easily drown in for the rest of her days. Those eyes had haunted her dreams for years. "I am exactly where I belong," she whispered huskily.
For endless moments, they simply sat with hands clasped, savoring the quiet joy of being. They were finally together once more, and Christine felt certain that nothing could part them again. She chose to ignore the ocean of unspoken secrets that still lay between them, confident that in time they would exorcise all of Erik's demons (some of which undoubtedly belonged to her as well.)
The intoxicating spell around them was only broken when Erik abruptly stood and all but dragged her up from her chair and away from the table. "Come…we are leaving."
"But Erik," she laughed as he gripped her hand firmly and began to lead her out of the restaurant, "we haven't finished."
He glanced back over his shoulder, and the hungry look in his eyes stole her breath and enflamed her blood. "No, mon ange," he grinned wickedly, "we are only just beginning."
A/N: Ah, I love a wicked Erik, don't you?
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