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Part Eight: Falling
Erik glanced at Mirielle. She held the rose he had given her. She surreptitiously lifted her hand to her cheek, resting her elbow on the chair. The rose's dark petals slid to rest on the gentle swell of her breast. She looked so peaceful. Is this how it was between men and women? The quiet comfort of knowing the other waited with you.
There was such an uproar at Christine's leaving that he had thought he would forever be numbed by the feeling of his hopes and his heart drawn apart. The days of begging her to love him, commanding her obedience, confronting her about the Vicomte. And the mask; she'd plucked it off with her slim, nimble fingers. He could not remember if she screamed, he could only hear his own anguished shrieks at her deceit.
And she'd lied. Show me your face without fear Erik. She'd called him 'monster' even after their two weeks together and their duets. She'd only wanted to go back to her little fellow. And he had let her. He'd been an aging man whose hope for love had come crashing down when he had realized that she would never love him as a man. She'd thought she loved the angel of music, until she saw his face.
The opera was in its final act. Don José had hidden, following Carmen to the arena in Seville. Outside, he confronts her claiming he loves her still, and her denial of that love will cause the ruin of his soul.
Have we not treaded this path, Christine? I offered you everything and you still denied me until the stroke of eleven. The grasshopper or the scorpion? You called me 'monster' again, and turned the scorpion that saved that boy and several square blocks of Paris. I was a monster, for the love of you.
Carmen is not so lucky. She declares she does not love Don José and that she has never lied. She tosses his ring down, and he speaks the last words she will hear: Well then, you are damned.
Mirielle gasped as Don José withdrew his knife, and pursuing the gypsy, stabbed her through the heart. Carmen stumbled and died, leaving her grieving lover to give himself up.
As the curtain came down, Mirielle turned to him with a sad smile. This time he thought he knew what the smile was for though. No matter how many times he saw his favorite operas, as the curtain came down, he wanted to see them again. "Did you enjoy it, Madame?"
"Yes," she replied wistfully. "Poor Don José, his life was ruined by her."
He nodded in agreement. She sat smiling, and he felt an odd tingling feeling as he saw one bright red petal resting on her bodice, as if she had been the one stabbed on the stage.
"Did you enjoy it?" she asked.
"With the exception of Michaela's part, I think the performance was flawless."
She asked in surprise, "You didn't like her?"
"No, not the part, the soprano doing it. She's quite pretentious."
"Mademoiselle Full of Herself," she replied. "I did get that feeling."
Erik examined her face as she spoke. He steepled his fingers and spoke with a slight tilt of his head, "You've done that before."
"What?"
"Called someone out with a description rather than a name," he replied.
She smiled again and rolled her eyes. "That's just something I do. It made it easier on me to remember peoples' names if I memorized a description of them. For instance, that baritone who portrayed Lt. Zuniga, I think of him as "Latin Lover", because to me he seems like he thinks he is. Or our matchmaker, M. Cigar-Smoker, he is actually M. Laval."
"And how do you describe me?"
She seemed to hold her breath. "I don't."
He grimaced inside the mask. "Come, come, you have to call me something." He shot to his feet and walked around the dome. "What am I? Am I Monsieur Mask?" His fingers uncurled gracefully next to his face.
Although his tone was light, Mirielle felt a change in his voice. Light and teasing it none the less held a razor sharp edge. She shook her head. "No."
"What else then? The Faceless Man, The Voice, The Cape Wearer," he spat. "The Ugly Man Who Has To Hire A Matchmaker?" He stalked towards her. "Perhaps I'm Monsieur No Nose?"
He was bearing down upon her, she instinctively sat back in the chair. Clutching the rose, she felt the sting of the thorn. His eyes had disappeared into dark holes, raising the hair along her arms. "I think of you as Erik."
For nearly fifty years he'd watched people. If he had learned anything at all, it was that her eyes were not lying. He took in a slow breath. "I've frightened you haven't I?"
She could only look at him; a mix of unease and confusion making her heart hammer and her breath shallow. She was alone with the Phantom, helpless to get back down to earth without him.
The golden eyes appeared again, "You've cut your finger." His skeletal digits reached for hers.
She transferred the rose to the other hand. A dark drop of blood swelled from the tip of her finger. Reaching into his coat, Erik pulled out a handkerchief and taking her hand, pressed it to the wounded flesh. "I'm sorry."
"No harm done," she replied softly.
The sounds below them were dying down. The final curtain was finished and the evening's patrons were filing out. Richard's hand crept towards the handle on the door of box five. With a quick turn, he and Moncharmin burst into the room.
No one was in the box. Richard went forward to run his hands along the backs of the chairs. Perhaps they were both ghosts and they still occupied the seats. He startled, yanking his hand away as Armand Moncharmin tapped his shoulder. "Where is she," he hissed.
"How in the world would I know," Richard retorted. "Madame Giry ushered her to the box, she has to be here somewhere."
His partner had retreated to the corner behind the door, his eyes white with fear. "She couldn't just disappear could she," he asked in a small voice.
"Brace up, Armand," Richard commanded. "They're here somewhere. And I'm determined to find out where."
"The stable," Armand blurted. He'd whipped out his handkerchief and it fluttered in his hand before his mouth as he spoke.
Richard glared at his partner. "What?"
"The stable. They took the horse remember? The performance is done; maybe he's taking her home."
"Good God," Richard sighed.
"Well," Moncharmin added, "he could be." He stepped forward and wiped his hands down his jacket.
Richard went to the front of the box, leaning his fists on the rail he scanned the seats below. The door swung open, to the surprised yelp of Moncharmin who flew to hide behind it. At the same moment, Richard dived for the far wall behind the curtain. Madame Giry stood with her hand on the knob and a vexed expression on her sharp features. "Monsieur Richard?"
"Where is she," he demanded, flinging aside the curtain.
"Who? Madame Montalais?" she sputtered
"Of course," he bit out.
"How would I know? My job is to usher people to their boxes, not sit and hold their hand through the performance," she huffed; the dark feather on her hat shaking in emphasis. Turning, she walked away from the box. Richard and Moncharmin followed, looking pensive.
Taking her hand, he pulled gently, "We go back this way as well." He stood on the platform suspended by ropes. Bidding a sad farewell to the solid catwalk underneath her feet, she clasped her rose between her teeth, grabbing for a rope with her freed hand, she stepped across to the platform.
Erik licked his lips, trying not to laugh at her. "Shall I hold that for you?"
She let go of the rope once she was steady, and withdrew the rose. Glancing over the edge, she saw a few people out sweeping the floor of the stage below them. "How long do they stay behind?"
"Another hour. The cast will be in the gallery flirting with the wealthy patrons, and the rest of the crew will be decidedly drunk in under an hour, crawling their way to their beds."
"Could I stay long enough to see the stage?"
He looked down at her in surprise. "You wish to see the sets?"
She gave an impish smile. "If I could."
Again, the slice of a smile along the edge of his mask, and he stepped back onto the platform with her in tow. "Of course, Madame, anything you desire," he bowed gracefully.
The light below them threw long shadows along the wall as he wove through the ropes and passed the pulleys and sandbags along the sections of the platform that had a rail. Going slowly down a few steps to another platform, and across the width of the stage, they made their way down in ever descending steps in and out of the shadows.
Waiting on a catwalk on one side, they stood silently until the last man retreated from the stage. Erik leaned over, capturing a rope that wound over a pulley. Reeling the rope up, he tied an end to another along the rail. Tying off the end of the last rope to a stanchion, he called, "Come, Madame."
Mirielle stepped forward, looking to see what platform he was going to magically summon, when his arm snaked around her, lifted her slightly and gave the rope a tug.
They were falling; the floorboards of the stage rushing up to meet them. The rope went taught with a sharp snap, along its length the pulleys squeaked in protest as the other ropes responded in succession, and a group of sandbags whizzed upwards in a sharp arc like a flight of ponderous geese. Before she could open her mouth to scream, she felt him jar to a halt, and her feet suddenly meet the floor.
Erik glanced over her head. "Madame?" She'd fisted her hands in his coat and buried her face in it once again. She really was afraid of falling.
"Mummph?" She tried to respond against his vest. She felt his body shake, and heard his deep masculine chuckle.
"Are you all right?" He heard another muffled answer, and told her, "No more ropes, Madame. We're on the stage."
She continued to hold on to him. He'd manage to start her heart racing in more than one manner. She exhaled slowly, and looked up.
Erik reared his head back, to better see her face. He hoped he hadn't frightened her that badly. But it wasn't fright on her face. She looked as if she had just awakened from a dream, soft and bewildered.
Unbidden, one of his hands slid up the dark sapphire velvet of her dress to caress the side of her neck. His other hand still clung to her waist, fitting her body against his. He'd burn in hell was his last thought as he leaned down to touch his lips to hers.
She closed her eyes as his mask descended towards her. His hands cradled her face as his lips pressed against hers tentatively. She could still feel the lithe muscles of his tall frame under her hands.
My God. Women came in flavors! He could taste the champagne and something else upon her lips. He went deeper some how. Her lips responded to the movements of his. Absorbed in a madness he would not even attempt to deny, he pushed his tongue against her lips and gained entry to paradise.
Her hands relaxed, splaying over his chest. He still held her head. Perhaps he was afraid the mask would be knocked askew. There wasn't that awkward moment when the two of them had to decide whose face would tilt which way to allow for the noses.
He broke the kiss, pulling away from her with a shaky breath. He was damned and twice damned again. It was hell living with the dreams of Christine's chaste kiss to his forehead, and now he'd been the man he had always longed to be and kissed Mirielle deeply and completely.
He stepped back from her. A slight flexing of her brows showed her confusion. "I should not have done that." His words seemed to confuse her more.
"Why? We both went to a matchmaker, Erik. Isn't this what you were hoping for?"
He'd ascended to heaven with the kiss, now it was time to come back on earth with his regrets. He stepped away from her, as if the distance would lessen the possibility of hurting her. "I don't love you." The words tasted like acid.
Her wondering eyes scanned the mask. "Erik, I like you very much, but I don't love you either." The golden eyes flickered. "Love takes time." She licked her lips and tried to smile. "You still love her, don't you? That Duvet girl."
"That's Daaé," he ground out. Oh hell. Why should that make him angry? "Who told you that?"
She saw his rigid posture and the firm set of his chin. She waved a hand and replied, "Oh, several people. It doesn't matter, really." She tried another smile that died quickly. "I understand."
He had hurt her, he was still hurting her. Her eyes betrayed her pulling away from him inside. "No you don't." He spread his hands before him. "I am hideous, Mirielle. I've spent my life's energies performing the most heinous of deeds." He paused, not being quite able to look her in the eye. "I'm not only ugly on the outside, but the inside as well."
She stood staring at the jewel in his cravat as his throat worked, he must be trying to say something else.
"Forget me, you aren't meant to suffer this," he gestured wildly. He stood very straight and tall and bowed, "Goodbye Madame." He turned on his heel and strode towards the back of the stage.
Mirielle took the rose and quickly tossed it, catching him on the shoulder. He spun and glanced down. "I'll never forget you," she said and turned away.
She listened to his retreating steps. There was a sudden soft sound, and turning she saw he had vanished. Closing her eyes, she felt the sting of tears building behind her lids. She walked slowly to the back of the stage. She'd find her way out and get a cab home.