Always With Me
"You are not a monster," Christine persisted.
"Silence," Erik cut off her protest, "Sit down, Christine," pointing to the chair that he had abandoned. She sucked in a breath and stood staring at him for a long moment before wordlessly complying, as if sensing that he meant to reveal something that she had best not be standing for.
He inhaled deeply and turned away from her, knowing that, were he to look at her now, he would lose his courage.
"I first left the Opera Populáire when I was no more than seventeen," he began. "Until then, I had been content to live and play in my kingdom, greedy for the life that I saw pulsing in its secret backstage world. I was…almost happy there for a time, as I am certain that Madame Giry informed you during your tête-à-tête in Paris."
"Antoinette was my first friend in this world, and I came to rely on her presence. I had long since stopped needing her aid to sneak me into the kitchen or bring me supplies, for I had taken to stealing all that I required. Whispers of a ghost had begun to circulate in an attempt to explain the strange disappearances, but I had yet to delight in the role," he said with a humorless chuckle.
"Then Jules Giry entered the picture, and Antoinette informed me that she had accepted his suit. I had no desire to share her attention, and so I…reacted badly, venting my displeasure with an inelegant loss of temper. It was the first time that Antoinette had ever truly appeared frightened of me."
The memory was a painful one. Erik had spitefully severed his only tentative human contact all for the fear that he would once again become an unwanted burden, just as he had been to his mother.
"I angrily told her that she need not worry about her hideous little secret any longer, as I would be leaving Paris. True to my word, I was gone within the week."
"I began a journey east with only the meager supplies that I had stolen from the opera house, the Harlequin mask that I had long ago appropriated from the prop closet, and a violin that I had more recently liberated from the poor third chair who had so violently abused it. I foolishly believed that I might find more acceptance in the world as a man than I had as a child. I was wrong."
Behind him, he could hear Christine attempt to muffle a sniffle, but he forced himself to continue. "I attempted to survive as a traveling magician, performing the tricks that I had perfected during long, lonely days beneath the fifth cellar. I played the violin and sang, all for the few paltry coins tossed into my case. Far too often, the crowd that would gather to see me would turn to chants of 'take off the mask,' and I would be forced to run or submit to the utter humiliation of their stares and screams before being beaten and left for dead."
Christine gasped, "Oh Erik…"
"Do not pity me, Christine," he growled with a glance back over his shoulder. "I had my vengeance upon the world that scorned me! I only needed to find my way to Persia."
He drew another breath, shaking his head as he continued to focus on the wall before him, scenes of blood and torture playing before his eyes. "The Shah ruled there…a vile, sadistic tyrant with a taste for the macabre. The story of a mysterious, masked magician reached his palace in Mazandaran, and he immediately ordered his chief of police to hunt me down and drag me to his throne room for his own amusement."
"Nadir," she queried softly.
"Yes, the Daroga," he confirmed. "I had no desire to perform like a trained monkey before the royal court, but Nadir swayed me with stories of the vast riches and jewels that the Shah possessed, and the promise that I might be made a wealthy man. So we journeyed to Mazandaran, and I soon found myself performing illusions before the Shah and all of his wretched minions. I was warned by the Daroga before arriving that no one refused the Shah and lived, and I understood what he did not say. Had he failed to persuade me to accompany him, he would not have been welcomed back to Mazandaran with his skin intact."
"Dear God," Christine whispered.
Erik sneered, "God had no dominion in that place, Christine." He finally turned to face her and was impressed that she was valiantly keeping her tears to a bare trickle. "I managed to amuse the Shah for a brief time, but, as everyone else before him, he soon asked that I remove my mask and show him my face. I denied him. Would that he had killed me outright for my insolence, but he had a more satisfying punishment in mind for me."
Christine squeezed her eyes shut as a shudder passed through her fragile frame, but Erik grit his teeth and pressed forward. "The Shah often took pleasure in watching blood sports, you see? Torture was a favorite. Kindly leaving me my mask, he escorted me to a chamber, had me spread out upon a rack, and proceeded to have his displeasure for my disrespect demonstrated at the end of a whip. He meant for me to beg him, to grovel for forgiveness, but I had already suffered worse forms of torment in my young life. Thinking that I had little to lose, I withheld from him my screams of pain and proceeded to coldly offered him a critique of his primitive methods, teasing him with a hint of the more entertaining horrors that my fevered mind could envision."
Eyes still closed against the picture he painted for her, Christine pressed a hand to her mouth to quiet her sobs, and Erik turned his back to her once again. He could not bear to see her so, and he knew the worst of it was yet to be told. "The Shah was…impressed by my vision, and my utter lack of fear, I imagine, so he offered me a reprieve of sorts. I was to build him a new torture chamber, and should he be pleased with it, he might reconsider my punishment. As you might imagine, he received my gift with enthusiasm and commended my talent for creative deaths. Indeed, he offered me a chance at complete redemption…by becoming his assassin. I accepted."
The room was silent at his announcement, save the stuttering, gasping breaths of Christine as she wept.
Poor girl, Erik thought distantly, to finally realize that she has allowed a cold blooded killer into her bed.
"I suppose that I could attempt to justify the lives that I took, and believe me, my dear, there were many, by the poor excuse that the deaths were all ordered by the Shah himself and, therefore, sanctioned in Mazandaran. Even Nadir could not arrest me for such reprehensible deeds, for he was forced to shamefully condone them. The executions that he presided over were as questionable as any mercenary act that I committed, though he always did think that I enjoyed my assignments a bit too much. The truth is that I simply never cared for any of the lives I took."
"At least, not until the day that I was ordered to kill a woman whose only offense had been denying the Shah the pleasures of her body," he added with his throat suddenly tight. "Before then, I had only disposed of his enemies…all men who undoubtedly would have been as vile and evil in the wielding of their power as the Shah had been. Yet this woman was no threat to him…merely the beautiful wife of an advisor whom he had coveted for many months. She had rejected his advances, and paid for it in blood…her husband arrested for treason, her body violated by the Shah, and still it was not enough. I was expected to kill her for nothing more than a desire to keep her promise to her husband. I refused the Shah for the second time, and I would not escape his wrath again."
Turning back to Christine, Erik cringed at the sight of her pale face and trembling shoulders. She was looking determinedly down at the floor, fearful of meeting his eyes, and his heart shattered into pieces at the knowledge that he had surely lost her once again. Exhaling raggedly, he forced himself to complete his tale.
"I was bound and brought before his throne. The Shah himself claimed the pleasure of slicing into my flesh…twisting the blade as he cut into my side. The lovely scar that you once so admired," he mocked as she nearly doubled over in misery before him. He hardened himself against her pain, and his own.
"He removed my mask, exposing my twisted face to his subjects, and then ordered that such a disgusting beast be removed from his sight…taken to the prison to bleed out slowly, or be executed come morning should I somehow survive the night."
"The Shah did not expect to be betrayed by Nadir, but the Daroga simply could not allow me to die. You see, for some reason, he felt responsible for me, as he had been the one to take me to that Godforsaken palace. He mended me as best he could, and left another unfortunate prisoner in my cell whilst he spirited me away from that place. How we managed to escape Mazandaran, I shall never fully understand, but we eventually found ourselves in Paris where I slithered back into my cellars beneath the opera house, and the rest, I think, you know."
Erik watched her silently weep and swallowed past the lump in his throat. His voice nearly failed him as he whispered, "My carriage will be at your disposal, Christine. You may leave whenever you choose." Placing his hand upon the door, he bowed his head and choked out, "Thank you for…what little happiness you have given me."
He simply could not bear to stay in the room with her for one moment longer…to watch her finally turn from him in disgust. Jerking the door open, he disappeared down the hall, brushing past a lurking Nadir with a growl and heading as far away from his broken dreams as he could get.
xXx
"So now comes the true test of your love, little one."
Christine lifted her tear streaked face to look dazedly at Nadir, who stood at the threshold of the room. "I…I never imagined," she sobbed.
What had she expected? That Erik's past had been filled only with the pain that had been inflicted upon him? She had seen him in Paris. She knew the cold detachment that had taken the lives of Joseph Buquet and Piangi. Could she forgive him this? An assassin?
"He is the same man that he was yesterday," Nadir said harshly. "The only difference is that you now know what made him such. Just as I am the same man…with the same blood upon my hands."
And I am the same foolish little girl…but that is at an end as of this moment.
She stood shakily, wiping at her tears away as she whispered, "You saved him from that hell."
Nadir sighed, "I placed him in that hell, Christine. You see now why I must make amends. Despite his genius, and his stubborn pride, Erik is still very much an abandoned child…surviving at any cost…always searching for any means of acceptance. Men like the Shah would take advantage of that. Yet for all the evil that he has seen and done, there is still goodness and beauty within him. You have seen it," he reminded her emphatically. "Will you turn your back on him now?"
Christine shook her head sadly and stepped closer to Nadir, placing her hands upon his shoulders and pressing a kiss to his weathered cheek. "You and Erik have so little faith in me."
She left him standing there, no doubt looking after her in bewilderment. Her only concern lay ahead of her. Her wayward fiancé was off sulking somewhere and she would not have it. She had made a promise to him, and it was one that she intended to keep. Erik's past was just that…the past. If he believed that he could send her running from him now…yes, what he had revealed was horrible, but his confession could only free them from the shadow that had been clouding their future.
Instinct guided her to him, and she found him in the grove behind the villa staring off into the sky. They had sat there together on many an afternoon since her arrival in Milan, and she was grateful that he had not decided to disappear from the property entirely. She slipped onto the bench next to him, and heard his labored sigh.
"You need not feel obligated to say goodbye, Christine."
"I have no intention of saying any such thing," she rebuked.
His startled gaze collided with her loving one. "Mon ange," he whispered questioningly.
"I love you, Erik," she told him passionately. "Nothing that you have revealed to me has changed that fact."
She watched the muscles in his throat work convulsively before he finally managed to ask, "You would…still…have me?"
Christine smiled and took his hand firmly within hers. "I will," she vowed.
xXx
Three weeks later, Erik and Christine once again stood in the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio, this time to vow their love before God and a few select friends. Nadir Kahn was positioned at Erik's side, looking more than a little uncomfortable in the midst of the Christian ceremony. A generous donation to the priest's dearest charity, and the connections that Erik had made in Milan were enough to smooth over the rough edges of this very unusual wedding mass.
Beside Christine was Sophia Miele, beaming in happiness to see her father's protégé finally wed. Her position of honor next to the bride had been born of the bond forged between the women after Alonzo's death, each having lost a father who had been so dear. Sophia had thrown herself into aiding Christine with wedding plans, as much out of her own generosity as a means to distract herself from her grief, and it had seemed only natural for Christine to ask the older woman to stand beside her during the ceremony.
Franco and the children, all on their best behavior, lined the front pew behind Erik. In the next row back, Roberto Cipriano sat next to Isabella. The young woman's attendance at the ceremony had been something of a surprise to Christine, considering her previous behavior, but Erik had suspected that Sophia was the deciding factor in her sister's quiet acceptance. The girl's hand was once again tucked into Roberto's, and it seemed that perhaps Alonzo's dearest wish might yet come true one day.
The pew behind Christine was occupied by her manager, Leonardo Dellano, and his wife, Theresa, a husky Italian woman with rosy cheeks and an outgoing manner. Next to the couple was a lovely young woman with auburn hair named Josette Perrault, the mezzo soprano at La Fenice. A native of Amiens in the north of France, she was one of the few members of the opera company that Christine considered a friend, and if Josette had ever heard of the events in Paris, she had never made mention of them…not even upon meeting Christine's intended.
Erik felt immense joy as he slid an engraved band of gold onto Christine's finger next to the ruby that she wore, and the feeling grew and swelled as she placed its mate upon his hand. At long last, the priest said his blessing and pronounced them as husband and wife. His angel's face was radiant with love for him as he bent to kiss her tenderly amidst the enthused applause of their guests, save Isabella perhaps. Erik had never in his life known such happiness as he did in that moment when Christine truly and irrevocably became his own.
What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
A/N: I've borrowed a great deal from Susan Kay for Erik's back story in Persia and attempted to weave it into the movie plot. He would likely have been gone for the years of Madame Giry's marriage and returned a year or so before Christine was brought to the Opera Populáire.
Again, not a favorite chapter, but a necessary one.
Next chapter…you all get to finally find out just what Raoul de Chagny wants with our diva.
Thank you for reading and reviewing.
