Erik huffed and fumed at himself all the way back to his apartment. Was this jealousy he felt burning in his chest? Over what? That boy? That Raoul?
He had no reason to be jealous - after all, it's not like he wanted to be in that boy's place, hugging Christine like that and demanding she go to dinner with him... Did he?
Did he?
No, no, it couldn't be that. Erik just wasn't like that. He didn't want... Those things. Although, a small part of his mind reasoned, that didn't mean he didn't want to have dinner with someone, or be able to give a hug to someone cared about.
Cared about, he scoffed. When did he start caring about Christine? The very nerve of him! She didn't want his care.
Erik had made many bad choices in life, had done more regrettable things than he could count, but the one thing he could say for himself was that he had never made a stupid choice. Unsavory, cruel, wrong, illegal, even evil, but never stupid - until this night. Trying to talk to Christine at her dressing room door was the stupidest thing he'd ever done, and he burned with shame at the thought of it. If he had actually gone through with it, he never would have lived it down.
But still, for a few brief moments, it had seemed like such a good idea. Like he could have actually done it and it would have gone okay, like he could have been like any of those other people there chatting excitedly about the show.
But he would never be like any of those other people. That was a lesson he thought he had learned a long time ago, but somehow, somehow he had let himself forget. Never again, he swore. He would never do anything so foolish again.
He slammed the door to the office harder than necessary, hearing the hinges complain loudly, and even in the midst of his temper tantrum he mentally made a note to check on those in the morning and repair them. He stalked down to the basement and grabbed the half written compositions he had been working on, the ones for Christine's voice, and crumpled them in his fist. He yanked open a drawer and fumbled for a match, finally finding one and flipped it over his knuckles for a moment. A quick movement would be all it took, one scratch and those stanzas would go up in glorious flame, purged from the earth.
He paused, lost in thought as he stared down at the match.
He done the very same thing so many years ago in Persia. All of his compositions that he had worked his entire life on at that point, gone in a moment of rage and anguish. He still regretted that, what he had done. What he had lost, not because someone had taken it from him, as it had felt at the time. But what he had lost because he had thrown it all away.
He put the match back in its box, and smoothed out the crumpled papers before stashing them away behind a stack of books on the bookshelf. Maybe one day, he told himself, one day he could look at those works again and not feel like this. Maybe in another twenty years.
He sighed. Now that the fit was subsiding, all he was left with was growing ache in his head, the tension in his neck and shoulders. He wearily marched up the stairs, shucked off his jacket and vest, and fell onto the bed. Then, he realized with a groan that tomorrow was a work day. He scrawled a note for Antoinette, hoping it was legible enough, and left it on her desk before returning to bed, and this time he remembered to take his shoes and mask off.
There was no one to be mad at but himself, he thought as he blinked blearily into the pillow. It wasn't Christine's fault she was frightened, it wasn't Antoinette's fault that she wanted him to be able to do normal things like a normal person, and it wasn't that boy's fault he was in possession of the most perfect nose Erik had ever seen.
He was awoken in the afternoon by the sound of high pitched sobbing. He jolted upright, wincing at the pain still lingering from the previous night, and had to stifle the urge to simply run downstairs and see what the matter was.
"My dear, what's wrong?"
He heard Antoinette's fearful voice and a tear-choked voice that, by the time he finished dressing and righting his wig, he realized was Christine's. He caught pieces here and there of what was being said, but it was difficult to follow her story entirely.
He made sure that his footfalls on the stairs were extra loud as he descended slowly, wincing at each one magnified in his own head.
When he finally arrived downstairs he scowled at how bright it was. Antoinette was sitting on the edge of her desk, a comforting hand placed on Christine's shoulder. There was a letter in Antoinette's hands, and she frowned down at as she read it again and again. Christine looked up from sobbing into her hands, saw Erik, and cringed.
Erik looked away, hoping to lessen her discomfort, and took the long way around the desk to stand by Antoinette and read the letter over her shoulder, avoiding having to be near Christine as much as he could.
Christine sniffled into her hands, mortified. She must have snot dripping down her nose, she thought. How undignified. She knew she struggled to look presentable on a good day, and crying her heart out certainly hadn't improved matters in regards to that.
"Oh, I'm so afraid, Madame," she managed between hiccups. "W-what if h-he's...? Oh!"
"We'll find him, Christine, I'm sure he'll be fine until we find him. Look, dear, they wouldn't want a ransom if they intended to harm him."
Antoinette handed the letter to Erik and moved to embrace Christine.
"You have to tell us everything about what happened last night, okay? Even the smallest detail might mean something, so don't leave anything out."
Erik scanned the letter once, then twice, then again.
"Who the devil is Philippe," he stated.
Antoinette clicked her tongue at him.
"Erik! Show some decorum, please."
"What? The letter is addressed to Philippe, yet Christine brings it to us. Why?"
"It's about R-Raoul," Christine tried to explain, looking up at Erik.
Oh. Raoul. Erik stared back at Christine, who flinched away from his stare, but continued on.
"He g-got this letter this morning, you see. I was out with Raoul last night, after my performance - I was in the opera - and afterwards we went out for dinner, and I guess - I guess when we parted I went home and he... Well, he never turned up. And Philippe - that's Raoul's older brother, you know - Philippe received this letter this morning."
"And Philippe is not here because? Too busy to look for his little brother?" Erik sniffed.
"Philippe- he insisted that I bring it here," she countered weakly.
"And why?" Erik drawled.
Christine's face flushed.
"Well, he didn't tell me why."
"And you just agreed to let yourself be dragged into this for no good reason? This letter makes no mention of you at all, this matter is seemingly between that boy and his brother."
Christine was flustered at this and didn't know what to say. It was the most he'd ever spoken to her, and it was to scold her.
Antoinette shot him a glare.
"Oh, don't mind Erik, dear, he's just a grumpy old man."
"Hmm," Erik offered no denial, but he also offered no apologies.
He rose with a long-suffering sigh and made his way to the tea cart in the corner. He tuned out the soft murmurings of Antoinette as she tried to help Christine steady herself, instead putting his entire focus into the tea he was preparing. He then returned to the desk, placing a cup for Antoinette and surprising Christine by placing a cup in front of her as well. She looked up, hoping to make eye contact, but he was already facing away from her, drinking from his own cup.
"Thank you," she told him softly, but he made no acknowledgement and she wasn't certain if he had even heard her.
The warm silken taste of chamomile wrapped around her and she managed a small smile.
"Do you have any sugar?" she asked.
Erik turned at this.
"Sugar isn't good for your voice," he said flatly.
"Neither is crying, Monsieur," she countered promptly.
Well. She had a point. He brought the sugar bowl over for her.
"Whenever you're ready, Christine," Antoinette told her kindly.
Christine nodded and took a few more moments before beginning.
"Well, it was just after my performance, and I was in my dressing room. I had my door open, and there were a few fans there to talk to me - a little girl, two women, and then Raoul."
Antoinette nodded, writing down her notes.
"Raoul asked me to go to dinner with him."
Asked. That wasn't how Erik remembered it.
"So I told him I needed to change out of my costume and then I did, and we went to dinner."
"Where?" Antoinette asked.
"The Italian place on Rue Cambon."
"Details," Antoinette prompted.
"Well, we sat out in the middle at a table, we both had pasta, we- we had some wine... Rather a lot of wine, I suppose," she blushed. "So we had to get a cab to drive us back. Then we, ah-"
Erik trained his gaze on the floor. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the rest of this, and he stifled the urge to shift around in his chair, uncomfortable.
"Ha, well, you see, Raoul had the driver drop us off in the middle of the street and we- we continued on with our night."
Christine seemed to pause there, waiting for Giry to finish writing, but once Giry had finished and looked up expectantly, Christine was still silent, anxiously twisting her handkerchief between her hands.
"And then?" Giry asked.
"Uh, well," Christine cleared her throat.
Erik was about to suggest that perhaps Christine would be more comfortable telling the rest of that night's activities if he were not in the room, and was surprised that the normally tactful Antoinette had not caught on to this.
"And then, well, we walked around for a bit, and we-"
She looked nervously back and forth between the two of them and gave a fearful giggle.
"Well, I mean, you're not going to tell the cops, are you? Can you- can you keep some things, you know, off the record?"
Antoinette's eyebrows shot up.
"I can't promise that for certain, Christine," she said slowly. "But I won't take anything to the police without a very good reason for it - if it will help us find him, I might have to."
"We, er, we went to the zoo, as it were," she offered.
Erik placed his elbow on the table, resting his chin in his palm and letting his fingers and hand cover what little was left visible of his face under the mask. The gesture implied he listening, was interested, but it also provided him absolute privacy for his facial expressions - an excellent way to hide the smirk that was playing across his face at that very moment.
He, too, had broken into the zoo while it was closed on numerous occasions in the past. He liked the animals, but didn't care for the crowds of people, and he certainly didn't care a fig about the "no trespassing" sign on the locked gates.
"So we walked around the zoo for about an hour... Raoul had saved up some breadsticks from dinner, and we, well, we fed them to some of the birds, you see."
"Bread isn't good for them, you shouldn't," Erik interjected from behind his hand, but his golden eyes were shining with mirth at the thought of Christine's exploits.
"I know, I told him that, but he insisted they'd be fine 'just this once, Christine!', and he did it anyway," she shrugged helplessly.
"Is there anything else?" Erik asked.
"Oh, um- ha ha, well, Raoul loves cats, you know- and there's an exhibit of lovely black-footed cats from Africa," she twisted the handkerchief in earnest once more. "He quite wanted to- to appropriate one so he could keep it as a pet - and it really is a darling little cat - but I stopped him before he could go in the exhibit. He was terribly close to jumping over the fence, you see."
"And then?" Erik prompted.
Antoinette was trying her best to look disapproving, the silent laughing shaking her shoulders ruined the look.
"Well, it was quite late by then-"
"What time?" Erik cut in.
"Past midnight, I'm sure... I don't know the exact hour. So then he dropped me off at my apartment and that was the last I saw of him."
"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?" Antoinette asked.
Christine shook her head.
"No, nothing. I keep thinking that if only I had paid more attention, or if we had a little less wine, maybe I would have seen something, but-"
She cut herself off, at a loss.
Erik held up the letter.
"They mention a debt to be paid - can you tell us anything about that?"
Christine frowned.
"No, I don't know anything about that. Raoul didn't mention any debts, at least not to me," she paused. "But he is the new patron of the Opera Populaire. He invested quite a lot, from what I hear."
"We'll have to talk to Philippe, and the restaurant, and the opera managers," Antoinette mused out loud. "You take the restaurant, I'll take the manager's and the cab driver, and I want us each to talk to Philippe separately."
"What about me, what do I do?" Christine asked anxiously.
"Nothing yet, dear," Antoinette told her. "If we need anything else we'll contact you."
Christine nodded unhappily.
When she had left Erik and Antoinette set out to begin their questioning.