Part XI: Hell the Prison House of Despair
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"The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." –John Milton
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Christine awoke to the smells of eggs and toast.
Gingerly, she sat up and watched as Erik put the tray across her lap.
There were times when she still felt as weak as a newborn kitten, but she could tell her body was gaining in strength. And just last night, she was served a delicious supper of vegetable beef stew. And Erik even allowed her to feed herself… under his strict supervision of course.
Again, he sat in the chair facing her and again he watched her eat with a gimlet eye.
Her lips twitching, she cut a small piece of egg and unhurriedly ate it.
He nodded and sat back, his demeanor still stern. "Not that you have written them, Pandora, but Erik imagines that you have a great many questions you would like to ask. Is that so?"
Setting down her knife and fork, she bit her lip.
The night of The Bath had made a marked change in her.
Ever since it occurred to her just how much Erik had cared for her, what he did for her, she found herself growing more and more discontent in her past thoughts and actions towards him.
His small lecture about her stubbornness and impatience curtailed many of the questions she wanted to ask. In fact, since he had brought the stationary to her, she had yet to use it again, nor the bell. The last thing she wanted to be was an inconvenience to him and pepper him with questions, summoning him by bell as if he were a servant at her beck and call.
The thought made her nauseous.
Besides, what did any of her questions matter now?
Erik was here, she was safe, and she just wanted to forget.
Forget and move on.
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Now this was curious.
Erik was offering his Christine a chance for information. He was offering her the chance to get her questions—all of them if she liked— answered. His eyes narrowed. "Do you even have any questions you want to ask, my Pandora?"
She looked unsure for a moment, but then shook her head.
He watched as she set down her breakfast half-finished and pushed it away.
His jaw tensed. "Take back up your fork, Christine, and finish your breakfast."
Reluctantly, she shook her head and gestured to her stomach.
Rising, Erik went over to her, and reached to examine her, but she gestured for him to stop, moving away from him.
Again, he studied her through narrowed eyes.
She looked at him sadly, and Erik's narrow-eyed expression morphed into confusion. What could his Pandora be thinking now?
She mimed the need for sleep, and Erik backed away.
He knew her body's rhythms, after watching her, he knew her body's every need; hadn't he been observing them for years, taking care of them for weeks? "You still need to use the facilities, Christine. I had thought to try a bit of a walk to and from the lavatory today. You need to begin rebuilding your muscular strength."
At first, she looked hopeful, but then her shoulders drooped.
Later, she mouthed, I'm tired.
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Why?
Erik had chosen to ignore her question. The only question she had deigned to ask. Talk of his enduring love for her had only gotten him so far, and it always seemed to drive her away more than endear him to her.
And so, he had ignored the note. And yet, in the week since she had asked that question, it seemed his Christine had taken a backward turn.
She slept more throughout the day instead of less. She began eating less and less even though Erik was adding more and more variety and complexity to her diet. He even played her the new composition he had made in her honor.
She had smiled her sad smile, the only smile he could get from her of late, and then gestured that she needed to rest.
Things were not progressing as they should. And somehow he knew he was losing her, slowly. Incrementally.
He was losing her…to herself.
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"It's time to rise, Christine. You are to break your fast with the daroga and Erik this morning." Erik watched carefully as the pile of covers moved but only slightly.
"Christine. You need to rise. This is not a request." Erik used the power of his Voice to make certain she heard every word.
Still no reaction.
Her behavior was inexplicable, unless…
He sat heavily on her side of the bed, and placed a gentle hand on her covered shoulder.
She changed position, and his hand slid away…away from her.
"Christine…"
No response.
"You still have not told Erik what happened to you, my dear."
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Gentleness. He was offering her his gentleness once more, and she—she didn't know if she would be able to handle it!
Her mind had been over and over her failures in Rome…in Paris. Over and over her failures. She had lost herself in them, in quiet contemplation of them. And how she loathed herself.
Hated herself!
Her first time truly alone, and she—well, she didn't quite know what to call the experience. She didn't quite know what to think or even how to even explain it to him.
And she couldn't understand why Erik was there with her; why he still was with her. Why he chose her? Why he chose to still care for her?! For surely, surely after everything she'd been through, everything she put him through, she was undeserving of his attentions, of his love.
She gasped as two arms came around her and lifted, drawing her blanket and all from the bed.
Erik turned her until she was facing him, and swaddled like a babe, he set with her in his arms in the chair by the window.
She closed her eyes, as unused to the sun as she'd become, but grateful, she absorbed its brightness, its warmth.
And she leaned her head against his chest, hearing his strong heart beat percussively against her ear.
"Are you going to tell Erik, Christine?"
Opening her eyes, she looked up at him and quirked a corner of her mouth up. She pointed to him and then gestured to her throat, shaking her head.
He returned her slight smile with one of his own. "Touché, mademoiselle." he whispered, drawing her closer to him so that his cheek rested near her hair. He let the silence settle between them, and Christine once more closed her eyes to bask in the rays of the sun that seemed to be both warming her inside and out.
Only a thought occurred to her, and they flew open again as she looked at him and then out at the sun-lit afternoon.
She looked back at him a question in her eyes.
"Ah, now Erik's Pandora has a question. What is it and make it good." he mumbled in her hair.
Pulling back, she gestured to the window, and then biting her lip uncertainly, pointed to his mask. The hands holding her tensed minutely, and Christine saw his jaw harden a little.
She shut her eyes tight; she never should have mentioned it! Always wrong. Always a prying Pandoric failure!—
"Shall Erik tell Christine how he made this mask?"
Her eyes flew open once more as did her mouth.
He shifted her weight, and then his finger was coming towards her face and drawing up her chin. A corner of his mouth lifted, "Erik's Christine makes for a very charming fish when she's surprised."
His hand remained caressing her cheek.
"It is made out of India rubber."
He reached for her hand and slowly brought it to his mask—to his face. "Erik had been working for years to find the right texture, the right balance between the sulphuric compound needed to lessen the stickiness of the rubber and the many additives Erik had to create to make it feel and look like natural human skin."
Cautiously, he allowed her to touch the mask, and Christine's fingers explored as her eyes feasted. He had even gone so far as to add minute imperfections, wrinkles and fan lines around the eyes, a few spots and freckles, and even eyebrows in order to give it authenticity. If Christine looked closely, she could see the seam, but only just, and only because she was looking for it.
The mask fitted so tightly against his real skin that she almost couldn't tell where one began and the other ended. Her fingertips glided from his mask to that of his real skin, and other than a slight change in temperature, she couldn't feel a difference. Her finger stumbled upon the seam, and she saw his eyes widen briefly in fear.
But she had learned her lesson there too, had she not?
And so, she held her hand there, feeling the line between mask and skin, watching him carefully as he most assuredly watched her.
And she felt him relax, felt his chest release the pent up breath it had been holding.
And Christine smiled…she smiled fully up at him and held his masked face. And once more, she closed her eyes to bask in the rays of the sun.
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"Alright, Christine. If you cannot vocalize to Erik what occurred, you can write it. The time for answers is come."
She looked up from her thoughts to find Erik seated beside her on the bed, a mound of stationary and the pen placed on the tray in her lap. She hadn't even heard him come in as lost in her thoughts as she had been.
She shook her head and pushed the tray away.
Narrowing his eyes, Erik brought it back to her and pointed. "Erik wants answers now, Christine! What happened to you? Who did this to you? For when Erik finds these things out, Erik is going to become Christine's Angel of Vengeance. Now, write!"
And he went so far as to place the pen in her hand, and hover over her.
In the heavy-handedness of his command, Christine grew incensed. How dare the man?! She gripped the pen tightly wanting to hurl tray and all across the room!
What he was asking was personal—very personal!
And at this moment, she couldn't even begin to wrap her head around where she had been or even how she had arrived there. Besides, as if he was some open book himself?! If the tables were turned, she knew he wouldn't have stood for this type of behavior, so why should she?
She just wanted to forget! Forget that it ever happened!
But then an idea came to her; it was a charmingly sweet, funny, and light idea; one that just might help chase away the demons plaguing her.
And so Christine began to write…
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Erik was hovering.
Erik knew he was hovering. But damn the woman! He needed answers and quickly. They could not stay in Tuscany indefinitely. The daroga had just spotted a few of Lazarro's men loitering in the village, and that was a passel of trouble he wanted his little Pandora nowhere near.
He waited anxiously beside her as she wrote; his eyes narrowing in curiosity when he would see her smile, the pen she was holding tapping gently on her bottom lip when she was deep in thought.
Her bottom lip… he needed to stop staring at it… Erik drew a deep breath to calm the wayward emotion filling him.
Mon Dieu! But she was beautiful. Even as bedraggled and half-starved as she was. As pale and in need of sunshine and laughter as he knew her spirit required.
She was beautiful.
Finally, she finished a page, and Erik reached for it, but a sharp rap on his knuckles had the page drifting to the bed once more.
He looked down at her perplexed.
She just shook her head and smiled. A real smile! A genuine, Christine Daae stunner that had his heart beating triple-time within his chest.
And her eyes were bright with excitement and her cheeks flushed with the rosy-hue of discovery...
His eyes narrowed.
He waited until she had returned to her writing, and then quicker than the eye could see, Erik had snatched the page off the bed, and was leaving an engrossed Christine behind, none-the-wiser of his deed.
Taking the page to the hallway, he quietly shut the door to her room and began to read.
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A/N: Thank you all for your input regarding Gasparo's punishment! So far, it's a mixed bag of 'death's too good for him' and 'death by a thousand cuts'…you can possibly see a future chapter title in there …if you squint…
The authoress promises you she really was going to write that scene today, but a pesky little love scene got in the way… and I do so love it when that happens!
Also, please note, I do try to keep things as historically accurate as possible. The making of Erik's mask is feasible through the process of Vulcanization- a process just invented/discovered/refined by Charles Goodyear in the mid 1800's—yep, that Goodyear.
Also, I thought it believable that Christine would suffer from depression after her ordeal. After all, she was depressed throughout it, and those thought patterns, once they are established, don't just go away.
And so, keep me posted on what you think of my little tale. I do so like to hear from you! And as an aside, if you're not signed in, I cannot reply back to you, and oh, how I do enjoy replying back! :D
Your servant,
DGM