Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

The Hideout

It was light that woke him, the small, warm columns that found their way through the shutters and braved the darkness to play around Erik's face. Exhausted as he was, he would have sent them away if trying to swat at light did anything other than make it laugh at the effort and burn brighter, warmer, until it forced him to face the wall and the window looking down on him.

Panic was what followed. A moment where he didn't recognize he was just where he had been in the morning, laying on the kitchen floor with this slightly crooked slab stabbing at his back. And panic made his mind toss him right back to a cage, a fairground's music, and the heavy footsteps which he now tried to listen to. It threw him too to the faded memory of a dark kitchen and the light coming from behind a ragged curtain, to a hand yanking him by the hair the instant he tried to look outside.

All of that would fade in a moment. It had faded every time before, leaving him to catch his breath and his scattered senses as he lied on his grotto under the city. This may be the first time, however, that the moment reality settled back in, Erik wished it hadn't at all. It was for sure the first time he lingered where he lied, gazing into the pale depths of the ring he held between his fingers. It was the first time he had to fight with himself to get up.

But still get up he did. Shivering, ribs screaming, the entire kitchen swaying around him, Erik got to his feet and dragged himself passed the cabinets, passed the iron stove, and towards the door. It was once he had moved passed it that he stopped, hopefully staring down a long corridor, attention going from the doors to the oversized living room, to the one leading outside, to, at very last, the one on the far off wall.

In just a moment, he could have laughed.

The doors were closed.

The house was silent.

What did he think he was accomplishing by standing here feeding on the delusion someone was here? Who did he expect that would be? Who had hehoped that would be? Christine? Was he thinking that—what? She would have deserted that fiance of hers and found her way to him? To a place she didn't even know existed?!He was alone. He had always been alone. There was no one here! NO ONE!

Expression in a snarl, Erik stormed off. Fingers closing over the golden doorknob on the door immediately to the right of the kitchen, he shoved it open and stepped right in.

What this chamber he had just now entered was, was a bathroom and much like in the kitchen the shutters were closed, the space was dark. And as for that last part, it was dark enough that it justified Erik reaching for the candle holder and matches he had left on the sink — the very same set Marguerite had lit in the pantry — and light the candle.

A timid yellowish light now struggled to fill the bathroom. Although its effort wasn't even enough to properly lit the sink, the obvious lack of any meaningful illumination registered about as much to Erik as the hard kitchen floor had. The walls around him were much stranger than all of that. The white tiles going up to the ceiling and the delicate blue drawings on every piece of porcelain, were stranger still. As was feeling this cold.

A cough escaped Erik's lips, forcing him to hug his ribs. A moment later, he was slipping out of his shirt, he was twisting it and watching as a curtain of water fell from it and rolled down the porcelain sink. It had barely disappeared down the drain, however, before he tossed the shirt towards the bathtub to the left and gazed down, fingers moving over his ribs.

That looked about as bad as it felt. Running all the way down the left side of his chest to his waist, the skin was tender and black. His entire torso was sprinkled with bruises. He supposed it would be shocking if it he hadn't seen this before. But even the lines around his neck, the ones on his wrists, weren't anything new. As it wasn't that he kept listening for that set of heavy footsteps, that in some far off place in his mind the fairground's music kept playing, and playing.

Erik shook his head, gaze being directed through the mirror to the bathroom behind him. The bathtub with its high back and the water tank with that same bathtub's shower head and faucet, were little but silhouettes among the shadows. The bidet and whatever else was here were all but invisible. And beyond all that, beyond the door Erik had closed and locked, there was no sound, no heavy footsteps, no clanging of a baton running over a cage's bars, there was not a single note of that deceivingly happy fairground music — or of shouts rising to catch him.

Erik swallowed, a groan crossed his lips as he leaned forward and turned his attention back to the bowl-shaped sink and its blue drawings. Flowers they looked like. Blue flowers. And watching as the water started flowing from the faucet, swirling around the sink as it went to fill it, Erik took off his mask, set it to the side and dived this piece of fabric hanging to the side of the sink under the running, freezing water.

There was absolutely nothing new to any of this, he kept telling himself, the thought getting slowly drowned by the sound of running water and the groaning of the barely used pipes as Erik moved the cloth to cleanse his face and neck, as he clenched his teeth and hissed and run the damp fabric over the black mass on his torso.

There was nothing new—

Erik clenched his teeth at the words, he raised his attention to the mirror, eyes meeting the pale green ones waiting from him there and that—that thing, that monstrosity that passed for his face.

The cloth Erik had just dived under the still running water slipped his fingers, swirling around in the half-filled sink as bile climbed up his throat. Repulsion sent his right hand flying for the candlestick that was to his left. In one fell swoop, he had raised it and aimed it straight for the reflection.

With a clash the mirror shattered. Shards rained over the sink, the still lit candle joining them before it was drowned by the water and the bathroom was plunged into darkness.

Hands clasped around the counter, the sound of running water giving way to silence, Erik pushed himself away from the sink. That was, however, as far as anger would take him. If he had hoped it would burn, that it would send him storming back into the kitchen, then he found himself sadly mistaken. Anger ran through him, yes, but it found nothing to ignite, no fire to feed, and failing in that it burned through him so intensely it robbed him of strength, sending Erik crashing to his knees.

Was this another day, any day prior to this one, he might have worried that the world had started to swirl again, that what little he could see of the bathroom was turning and rotating until the bathtub crashed into the wall and there was nothing left but this amorphous mass. He would truly have worried that he was feeling like he himself was starting to burn. Today, it made him chuckle until his throat was sore, until the world returned to normal and he was coughing his way out of the bathroom.

The corridor waited him outside, the very same corridor he turned his back to in favor of entering the kitchen and—

It went through him like lightning that same feeling from before. That very same feeling that had left him standing and gazing down the corridor and its doors while filled with a foolish hope. This time, however, one foot out of the corridor, hand still closed over the doorknob, the kitchen opening in front of him, he knew exactly where that feeling came from.

The kitchen window was open. Light had burst inside triumphant, sending the shadows scurrying away much in the same way Erik just did. And now, having fully retreated into the corridor, he stared in disbelief at the blade of light coming from under the door he had been so quick to close.

There was someone here.

There was—

Erik's eyes turned feral, the confusion that had kept him staring towards the floor, giving way to something dangerous that distorted his expression until it was almost a snarl. His fingers now dived for the pocket on his trousers and the rope he had hidden inside. It was a flimsy thing he had taken from a small box left unopened on the pantry, a frail thing for which even the gesture of twisting it to form a line between his hands seemed to be too much strain. Still, it was better than nothing. More so when the reason that had lead him to think he wasn't alone in the first place went to glare him in the face the moment he looked down the corridor.

The rapier.

He had left the rapier where it had fallen. It had crashed from inside his cape when he had given it to Marguerite and he had left it there, in front of the closest of the living room doors, over the impeccably polished floor. He had left itthere even after she had left and yet the rapier was gone.

There was someone here.

There was someone .

Loosening the strain on the rope just enough to be able to use his right hand, Erik moved silently down the corridor, listening, eyes narrowing at every voice and closing door and tapping of shoes, dismissing them one at the time, until the sound of the terrace doors being opened, the blade of light appearing under the closest of the living room doors sent him towards one of the wooden wall panels on the corridor wall.

Sturdy as it might have looked, the panel slid the moment he touched it, opening to a dark, tight space that — as he perfectly recalled from modifying the blueprints — ran along the living room wall.

It took him a pair of seconds to reach the other end, to walk under the spider webs and loose debris on the floor. In the end, however, he stopped in front of a second sliding panel and peeked inside.

The living room was as he remember. Large, with carved wood panels covering the walls and a chandelier hanging overhead. It was also empty safe for this bag on the floor and the rapier resting against the covered fireplace. The living room was empty which lead Erik's attention to the open terrace door.

Rope again getting strained between his fingers, he now slithered inside the living room, moving quietly until he stopped right to the side of the open doors. They opened towards the terrace rather than inside, a senseless design he had first thought, now, however, leaning to peek outside, it was quite advantageous, useful to the point the first shock came right then.

On the balcony, leaning over the metal handrail, looking down at the busy street with its carriages and horses, was a woman. No. Not the dark haired woman his mind had built there for a moment, smiling her timid smile as she surveyed the street. No, this was not her. Not his—

No.

Not his.

And Christine's image — that impossible dream, that forever ruined fantasy— couldn't survive long when reality was forcing its way through, much less when Erik wouldn't dare think he had guessed the intruder's identity right.

This woman, standing there with her head turned away from him in such way he could only see the back of it and the simple bum her golden her was kept in, couldn't possible be who he thought.

This woman, now leaning her head against her hand while stuck inside a simple green dress that looked far too long, far too tight, and that didn't, in any way, seem to fit any of her curves — not with the way her bosom seemed to be about to overflow from within — couldn't possible be her.

And yet, that very woman had turned. Attention still lingering on the city and the street and the carriages going by, her fingers slowly leaving the metal handrail, she was stepping inside. She was coming his way and her identity, the identity he hadn't dare to think he had gotten right, couldn't be denied now.

"Marguerite?"

Erik's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It descended on the living room like once it had the auditorium and at it Marguerite shrieked, she turned, practically stepping on that far too long dress of hers as she came to find him, standing to the side of the terrace door, right behind her.

"Don't do that!" she exclaimed, only for her attention to almost immediately fall down and away from his face.

If it had taken half-a-second for her attention to crash away from his eyes, it took just about the same for her face to burn red, for Erik to remember he was missing his shirt, and for Marguerite's attention to slip all the way down his torso—for her to grimace.

Then, their gazes fled each other. Marguerite's in favor of the floor and quickly stepping towards the bag she had left near the fireplace. Erik's abandoning her retreating back in favor of the terrace doors and the people and horse driven carriages going by below. In just a moment, he was back to the passage and the relative safety of the shadows waiting him in there.

As for what followed, awkward silence would have sufficed, but, even hidden inside the passage, even with his mind at rest he had not walked in on Marguerite face uncovered, a question had just stumbled from Erik's lips.

"How did you get in here?"

A pause. Inside the living room — of what little of the living room, Erik could see through the slender opening on the panel — Marguerite had just gotten to her knees, spread the skirts of the green dress around her and started to dig into her open bag.

"The doorman allowed me in," she now informed, voice about as flustered as she looked with her cheeks still red. "He seemed to be under the impression you had given him instructions to do so several months ago."

Erik's stomach turned, twisting so painfully it felt it had knotted itself out. Marguerite, in the meanwhile, was getting to her feet, eyebrows pinched as she walked to the wall Erik hid behind.

"I didn't inform him I'm hardly the person your instructions concerned," she said, a knock right to the side of the sliding panel, then to exactly the right one, culminating with it sliding a few centimetres and her arm appearing to Erik's side. "Here."

Erik stared at the white shirt hanging from her hand. He wasn't expecting that. In fact, he was expecting it about as much as Marguerite being back here and that made him take a step to the side, to stand in front of that opening between the sliding panel and the wall. Communication, however, was probably not at its best when Marguerite attention had once again found his chest, and she ended staring intently at the ceiling while shaking the white shirt she still held.

"Please, just take it," she practically pleaded and, then, she retreated, fleeing to the other side of the living room, cheeks burning, the moment he took the shirt from her hands.

As for Erik, he gazed at the shirt for a moment, and slid his arms into the sleeves, a shiver going down his spine at how warm the fabric felt.

"I had hoped to find you here," Marguerite, in the meanwhile, said, her voice finding its way back inside the passage. "The police has been at the Opera, they intend to drain the cistern. I thought you should know."

Erik wasn't sure if he had heard any of that. Pulling the sliding panel to the side just enough that he could easily see inside the living room, watching for a moment while Marguerite again knelled on the floor, spread her skirts and took what seemed like more clothes from that bag, he had just managed to grab hold of his senses and with that, what little irritation he could conjure came bursting through.

"Why?"

Even without looking his way, Meg tossed her chin up.

"I'm not here to insist you teach me," she said, speaking, it would seem, to the fireplace. "I'm perfectly aware of what 'no' means."

"Not that," he—Erik all but growled before continuing, hand stopping its gesture to swat away Marguerite's words in favor of pressing that sore line around his neck. His voice had sounded just like a croak. "Why are you back here?"

There were more clothes coming out of the bag. What looked like one of his waistcoats. Putting it over her skirt, fingers moving over the black and red pattern of fabric, Marguerite dared to remove her attention from the fabric to take this preemptive glance his way. He must have been judged sufficiently dressed considering her gaze remained.

"I couldn't find Mamam," she informed from her sitting position and Erik's irritation might as well be a balloon. It deflated with just that. "I asked up and down the Opera, nobody had seen her since—"

Marguerite's attention returned to the waistcoat she still kept on her lap, the question of how to finish that clearly leaving her with pressed lips. The silent part, however, was something Erik, now gazing at the frontier between the wooden floor of the living and the stone of the passage, could easily finish.

"She left with the Vicomte."

Marguerite was back to her feet. He could hear her footsteps, measured, but light as it fit a ballerina. It took a few seconds for her to stop on the other side of the wall panel, a few more for her head to appear inside the passage, light playing around her hair.

"So you saw her?" she queried, voice level, serious. "She was with Raoul?"

Her answer was a head shake and little else for Erik was sliding the panel close on her. A moment of standing in the dark, staring right ahead and he took a step to the side, moving up the passage until he was at the other end, until he stepped back into the corridor. That he heard Marguerite opening the living room door a moment later, that she stepped into the light filling the corridor, was no surprise whatsoever.

"You weren't at the Opera when they left," she voiced, quietly, carefully, and while speaking to to his back. "How do you know—?"

Erik stopped. The same empty gaze he had given to the darkness inside the passage, now falling on the kitchen door. Then, right hand moving over his throat, swallowing, he turned. He had hoped his tone would be poisonous — it was.

"If our dear Vicomte had found a way into my passages, Little Giry," he snapped. "He would have swept the catacombs with the police the first opportunity he found. Instead, what did he do? He remained at the surface. He set a trap."

A dangerous smile twisted itself on Erik's lips.

"So, Antoinette," he finished, fingers touching the carved frame on the kitchen door as he pulled it open. "It had to be her."

And that had stung. At the time, seeing Raoul de Chagny cross the lake, knowing exactly who had put him on the right trail, it had stung. Now? Now, he found he couldn't bring himself to rage, he couldn't bring himself to feel. He was just tired. He was so very tired—

Erik went to lean against the sink, forcing himself to cast away the dark shadow that had just threatened to overtake his mind in favor of facing Marguerite. Snarl still in place, he watched her walk across the kitchen, the door left to swing as she approached the window. Attention lost to the wall of windows in front, light around her, she now stood there, biting her lower lip.

If nothing had given pause to Erik until now, that small gesture, the way her teeth pulled and released her lower lip, did, and that corroded that empty display he had put on until there wasn't nothing left of it.

He knew that expression of hers, he remembered it. Just hours ago, she had followed behind him through this very house with it and a question she wasn't about to voice, not unless he addressed her concerns first.

"Antoinette wasn't waiting for you?"

Which surely begged the question of why he did.

"She wasn't anywhere in the Opera, Monsieur," Marguerite informed, the side of her fist knocking repetitively and nervously on the side of the parapet as she talked. "Please believe I asked around."

Leaning against the sink, arms crossed, Erik wasn't doubting her. Still, he made a gesture towards the still swinging kitchen door, towards what he hoped she understood meant the city beyond these walls.

"Might she be out there searching for you?"

Now, Marguerite stepped away from the window, hands closing over each other as she turned to face him. Her biting of her lower lip was now more pronounced than ever. And that made Erik frown, it lead him all the way back to the beginning of this conversation even though he felt he knew the answer to what he was about to ask.

"Why are you here, Marguerite?"

Which he did.

"You don't think she would go down there, right?" Marguerite put forward, taking a step towards him.

Erik tilted his head, locks of lose hair falling over the white mask as he did.

No, he might have answered. Antoinette wouldn't go into the catacombs. She wouldn't risk it—or my traps. Normally, he wouldn't even hesitate on telling Marguerite that. But — and at that he looked at her — all things considered Antoinette might have.

Erik pulled himself away from the counter, he hadn't taken two steps towards the pantry, however, he hadn't even been able to move passed the iron stove, when Marguerite rushed after him.

"Wait! I'm going with you!"