A/N: Happy 2016 everyone!
Chapter 11
Émilie seemed to understand that there were certain places off-limits to her in the house. Her parents' room, for one. Erik's locked bedroom. His study. The mirrored torture chamber. Now three years old, he did not doubt that she was talented and curious enough to find her way into all these places, and yet she did not. For once, someone followed Erik's unspoken rules. He was at a loss for where she had learned that. Certainly not her parents.
When she wanted something from him while he was in Christine's room or his study (even he had no cause to visit the other two rooms) she would stand at the door and quietly request his attention. She was so quiet always. Then again, she never had a reason to be loud. Her father could pick up on her every whisper with his sharp hearing and she had no one else to compete with or demand attention from. Unless Erik was in a rage, in which case she was adept at fighting back, she remained quiet and calm, not prone to hysterics or temper.
Until she turned four. Suddenly she seemed to be bored with everything. She was reading Erik's books now, in French and German. She could draw somewhat, though with no notable gift and no pleasure. She painted from time to time with admirable skill. And sometimes she still played with her dolls and toys. For all her knowledge, she was still a little girl.
But mostly she paced. Without her father's single-minded obsession with tasks, each hobby was only a temporary distraction from the nervous energy that seemed to be consuming her. She walked about anxiously, tapping her fingernails on walls and tables as she passed. Their daily walks grew longer and longer as Émilie begged not to go back quite yet, and consisted mostly of the little girl starting off to look at whatever caught her eye and Erik pulling her firmly back to safety at his side.
When they sat down to dinner, her inane chatter was no more. Instead her attention was caught every few seconds by something new, only occasionally Erik, and usually something that existed only in her mind. All the while, her fingers, now bandaged after the tapping had torn her nails, made nonsense rhythms on the wood table.
They were driving each other insane. Or rather, insaner than usual. Erik did not know what to do for his daughter and Émilie had no patience for him to figure it out. He could not leave, though he longed to escape and find solace in the city's deserted streets at night. It was what he had done when he could no longer face Christine. But Émilie was still too young and his home too dangerous for her to be left alone for the more than an hour or two such an excursion would take.
So Erik could only attempt to manage his own temper and despair as he bandaged her bloody fingers and watched her pull unrelentingly at her beautiful curls. He looked at her and saw himself.
Normally he liked seeing traces of his own habits in his daughter, his talents, his genius. It reminded him that she was his. This he did not like. He recognized his own misery and madness and found he could not witness it without feeling some of the insanity himself.
"Émilie, stop!" he roared, hearing those tapping fingers on the doorframe of his study. He looked over to find her standing there on the threshold. "Your incessant noise is driving Erik mad! Go read a book or something!"
"Émilie is tired of reading!"
"Well, Erik is trying to work. Leave him alone."
"Émilie feels strange. I don't like it."
Erik set down his pen and summoned his daughter to his tall drafting stool so he could pick her up.
"Why do you feel strange, mon cœur?" he asked softly. "Are you sick? Tell Erik what to do for you."
She laid her head beneath his chin, still for a precious moment.
"I want to go out," she sighed. "I don't like it here. I am bored."
Erik's chair fell over with the force with which he stood up, now clutching Émilie to him and gazing about wildly as if this new threat to his peaceful existence came from an outsider rather than his own daughter.
"No, you cannot leave," he moaned. Why could he not comfort her? He had done everything, everything. "You ungrateful brat!" he sneered in a surge of anger, before beseeching, "What do you need that Erik can't give you?"
"I hate it here! It's dark and I am bored."
Immediately he set her down and began to pace as she did, wringing his hands as he went. "Don't lie! It is me you hate-!"
"I don't hate-"
"Don't deny it!" he shouted as temper won out over despair. "You have been looking for ways to escape. You have planned this with the Persian. Perhaps I should throw you out then. Then we shall see how well you do without Erik. Christine, come here and control your child, the lying wretch-"
"Listen to me!" Émilie screeched.
Erik seized her by the wrist and dragged her down the hall to the front door and out into the arms of a shocked Nadir, who had just arrived for his weekly visit.
"And don't come back!" Erik shouted before he slammed the door shut.