First and foremost, I want to thank you for reading, especially if you've stuck with me over the years. Thank you for coming back, and being patient, and, if you're new, thank you for being curious and picking this up! I won't make any promises about updates (because, clearly, I'm jinxing myself when I do that) but hopefully, it won't be months between chapters now. I love you all.
Erik might have unlocked her door, but her windows were fastened shut, with no apparent latch, and no matter how far she wandered downstairs, she couldn't find a single door to the outside. The house was a giant, beautiful cage. Though her room had plenty of books, her cell phone was gone - in fact, there didn't appear to any phones in the house at all, or computers, or anything that could possibly let Christine contact the outside world.
She hadn't dared to go down to the music room since that first night. She couldn't trust herself - really, it felt like she didn't belong to herself any more. She heard him playing at night, and the music swirled around her and tugged at her, almost begging her. But she wouldn't give him the satisfaction - or give in to the music whispering in her mind - and so she slammed her pillow over her head and spent her nights scowling at the wall, sleepless.
After the first week, she felt like she was going to go insane. There were only so many times she could walk up and down the stairs, to the library, and back up to her room. Or pace the hallways. Or read a book, and become so fidgety that within an hour she ended up with her head hanging off the bed and her feet in the air.
Christine never saw Erik during the day, only at dinner every evening. She would have forgone those dinners too, but they were the only variety in her days, and soon, she was almost looking forward to them. At least they gave her the opportunity to interact with another person.
It wasn't like she hadn't tried to escape. After she failed to find the latches on the windows, she tried to break one with one of the heavier books. The book just bounced off the glass and she had to duck to avoid a braining.
The second week, she spent a lot of time crying. In exhaustion, in frustration, in anger, in anxiety...it would have been easier to think about what wouldn't make her want to cry. She was helpless. She knew Nadir would drive himself through a wall to find her, and that somehow made it worse. She felt so stupid and weak, nothing more than a damsel in distress - couldn't she do something? Anything? Anything other than sit still and cry and hope her boyfriend rescued her? Surely there was something she hadn't thought of yet.
She didn't let him know how afraid and upset she really was, and that inevitably made her moments alone worse - a torrent of tears and shaking and forgetting how to breathe. She had never felt so utterly alone.
The third week, she shut herself away. She refused to go down to dinner. telling Erik that she was sick each time he came to walk her down to the dining room. She did feel sick, that wasn't a lie; but it wasn't the kind of sick that would make her sneeze all over the food. She just wanted to lie in bed - but the bed wasn't her own, and it smelled wrong, and it felt wrong. And she was always so cold, but she hated the feeling of the blankets.
Christine knew exactly what was happening in her brain, but that didn't mean she wasn't susceptible to it. She tried to sleep, but she couldn't, so she just laid in the dark and thought about nothing.
"Christine? Christine? Open this door immediately."
"No."
"I can just walk in, you know. I'm only asking for politeness' sake, it doesn't lock on your side."
"Go ahead."
"..."
"Well, go on."
"Christine, are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not."
"Then why did you bother asking, if you knew already?"
"I...you...you are being rather infuriating."
"Good."
An exasperated sigh leaked through the door. "Christine, what's wrong?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Why not? Why not?" She sat upright, clutching a pillow. "Gee, Erik, how about you use that genius brain of yours, and really think about that. I'm sure you'll figure it out."
There was a long silence from the other side of the door.
"Will you talk to me?" Gentler, this time.
"We're talking now."
"No - ugh - I mean, may I come in?"
"No."
"Will you come out? Please."
She stared at her lamp for a long moment. Really, it wasn't like she could feel worse than she did now. "Okay."
She slid out of bed and opened the door. Erik was significantly less sartorially inclined that usual - he was just in shirtsleeves and trousers, and he was wearing striped socks. It was the socks that got her; in less than a minute she was hysterical with laughter, sliding down the wall until she sat on the floor and shook uncontrollably. Erik stood over her, perplexed. Gasping, she managed to get a hold on herself, wiping tears from her cheeks.
"What on earth was that?"
"I believe the technical term is 'mental breakdown'," said Christine, climbing to her feet. She leaned back against the wall. He was the last person she wanted to have a conversation with right now, but she wasn't going to last much longer without human contact. Even if the human contact was Erik.
He looked a little bashful at the moment - bashful! as if she could really tell how he looked, from that stupid mask over his face - and he didn't quite meet her eyes as he said, "Christine, you haven't sung at all since you arrived."
She crossed her arms. "I haven't felt like it."
"I was wondering - I was hoping - would you come sing with me? Please?"
The only two times she'd heard him say that word, and they'd occurred within minutes of each other.
"You love to sing, Christine." His voice was soft, cajoling. "And I think it might make you feel better. I know you haven't gone down to the music room. Don't you miss it? Don't deny yourself just because you are angry with me."
She bit back a sharp retort to the last, because he was right. The last few months had opened a floodgate she had dammed up since her father's death half a decade earlier, and she couldn't ignore the hunger in her soul.
"Okay. But I want to take a shower first."
"Of course. Of course." He reached out half an inch, but dropped his hand quickly. "Thank you, Christine."
Christine stared at Erik from over the piano. He couldn't hold her gaze, shifting his eyes away every few seconds, but she gave him no quarter, glowering, daring him to say something. He didn't, instead opting to flip back and forth in the score on the music stand, deliberately avoiding her.
"Well, Erik?" she said at last. "What would you like to sing?"
"You pick."
"Oh, for heaven's - this was your idea."
"Yes, well, really, I thought perhaps this might be more for your benefit than for mine...I didn't really think..." He stopped and sat up straighter. "We will sing whatever pleases you, Christine."
"Then you sing something. Let me think." She was taken aback by her own suggestion - and clearly he was, too. He hadn't sung for her since that first day after he'd been arrested for the second time. And she had nearly lost her mind, that first time, and was terrified to hear him sing again, and starving for it.
He looked at her. "All right," he said slowly. He put his hands on the keyboard, then transposed them down a step and began to play. "Du bist wie eine Blume, so hold, und schon und rein..."
Christine had to smile. It was a repertoire classic in her music department; she'd heard probably heard at least a dozen young men sing it, with varying degrees of capability. He'd put it in the baritone key, but the timbre of his voice was lighter than a typical baritone's, but with those same easy depths and a decadent richness. And yet it was sweet, almost youthful, like being in love for the first time. And he was watching her the entire time, his eyes like twin fires, boring into hers. No, not fiery, bright and burning, ready to scald, but warm and gentle. Now she could not look at him.
"Have you decided?" he asked when he finished.
"Barber," she said, staring down at the carpet. "Vanessa."
"A departure for you, isn't it?" There was a smile in his voice.
"You're the one always telling me to expand my range," she retorted.
"Very well, very well." He chuckled and shuffled through the scores. "Must the winter come so soon, I'm assuming?"
"Yes."
It was an aria for a mezzo-soprano, true, and leaps and bounds simpler in terms of tempo and agility, but it was a test of her breath control and legato - and besides, it was lovely and eerie and it had lodged itself inside her heart the first time she'd heard it in a voracious YouTube search.
"Night after night I hear the lonely deer wander weeping through the woods..."
She kept her eyes closed, feeling the sound unravel from her belly. The highest notes pinged easily off her soft palate and she breathed low and deep. She felt his eyes on her but when she was singing, they didn't matter. She was herself now, and she couldn't think of anything else except the music, and her breath, and the tug on her heart as she began the last phrase.
"Must the winter come so soon?"
There was silence.
Her last note hung suspended in the air, echoing faintly in the room.
"Christine," he said hoarsely.
She opened her eyes. His were damp and overbright, his lips (the only part of his face visible under that mask) trembled.
"Christine, I love you."
