Nothing Left to Lose
Dancing in the Darkness
A/N - This chapter ventures away from Christine and focuses pretty intensely on Erik's mental state ... but don't worry, it'll help him exorcise a few demons. :)
Big thanks to Myotismon13, Avelera, Felicia, T'Res, T'eyla Minh, Maya :), angela, Sara, AnandaStarChild and Chanita for reviewing the first chapter (*cyber hugs*)
(Avelera, I do take your point about Erik being more of a father to her by the end, and that actually becomes pretty important in later chapters but in my point of view he is still very much in love with her ... sorry if that's different to anyone else's take on it!)
Lily (no, don't worry, it's not turning into another woman story :p)
It was cold, so cold. I hate this country! I thought miserably. I hate this country and I hate having to degrade myself in this bloody manner ... It was so damned cold, and anyone who had betrayed a passing interest in me so far had left in disgust as soon as they discovered how bad my French was. Why am I here?! I wailed to myself. How had I come this far; from the daughter of one of the most respectable families in England to just another cheap whore trying to make a living out of her body on the Rue Scribe? And failing miserably, I might add. I hadn't eaten for at least three days, and the lack of food was starting to bring on dizzy spells to match the empty feeling in my stomach.
And it was so cold. No one had come along for hours ... I'd never thought it would be this hard!
And then, suddenly, he was there ...
Wandering aimlessly down the street, paying no attention to where he was going or what he was doing, his shoulders heaving and the most beautiful cloak swirling around his thin body. He didn't look very promising ... but God knows I wasn't spoilt for choice and I couldn't afford to be picky.
He hadn't seen me, so I ran after him as fast as the ludicrously high heeled shoes I wore would allow.
"Monsieur!"
He whirled around at the speed of lightning, his hands automatically rising as if readying himself for a fight. I wondered fleetingly what had happened to make him so wary, but the thought was cut off as I let out my breath in an involuntary gasp of shock. The right side of his face was covered with an expressionless white - it couldn't be! A mask? In this day and age?
Despite my initial shock at the mask, I found myself captivated. His every motion was so graceful, almost like a cat ... more sensual than any man I'd ever met before.
Suddenly aware that I was staring, I adopted my most provocative pose, pouting up at him with heavily glossed lips.
"Monsieur ... je suis ..."
I swore at myself. I still hadn't figured out what the hell to say to attract men. The tutor to whose unfortunate lot it had fallen to attempt to teach me French had - somewhat unsurprisingly - never taught me the phrases one would need in order to become a successful prostitute.
"You are English, yes?" he said slowly, as if he hadn't spoken my native tongue for a long time and was still remembering the correct phrasing. I nearly fell over with shock and relief. Finally, a client who spoke my language! But his voice ... soft and gentle, it was almost unbelievably beautiful. Who was he ...?
"Yes!" I said, thanking God for this strange phantasm who looked ready to be my first paying customer. I took a step closer to him, expecting some sort of reaction, but ... nothing.
He turned away, and I was filled with a fresh surge of desperation. He couldn't go! My God, I'd starve to death if I didn't start earning soon ...
"Please, monsieur!" I begged, catching hold of his cloak and pulling him back. "I'm very reasonable ..."
He looked at me, the eyes behind the mask strangely sad. I held my breath.
Slowly, never taking his eyes off my face, he produced a purse, seemingly from thin air, and held it out. I accepted it with a faint sigh of relief, then let out an involuntary gasp at its weight. My God, there must have been over a hundred francs there! I looked up at him, suddenly afraid. What would a man expect for such an exorbitant sum of money?
"Monsieur," I whispered, lost for words.
He smiled sadly, as if looking at a favourite daughter, and turned away. Electricity crackled through my brain - he's leaving? Impossible - he'd paid for my services and now he wasn't even going to collect? Instinct said let him go - you've got the money without even having to perform - but something more human in me said don't. Suddenly, I could hear my grandfather's voice in my head, as clear as if he were standing right beside me;
"Always pay what you owe, my dear ... you'll always pay for it in the end, in this life or the next."
"Monsieur!" I called, hurrying after him.
"I ..." I stopped, feeling myself go scarlet. I might be in France ... but I was still the well-brought up daughter of Robert Hammerstein and I had no idea how to go about offering myself to a man ... a man whose name I didn't even know!
I could feel his eyes on me, questioning, and all of a sudden I wanted to die of shame.
"I don't even know your name," I finished weakly.
He looked at me for a long moment, during which I realised I was holding my breath, then said, very softly,
"My name is of little consequence. Take the money. You must eat soon."
Despite the beauty of his voice, his sentences were oddly disjointed and overly short, as though he wasn't really paying attention.
"Are you married, monsieur?" I demanded suddenly, aware even as I said it what a grossly impertinent thing it was to ask, but some strange greater will seemed to have taken me over ... I had to know more!
His head came up sharply and he stared at me with an expression I couldn't quite fathom, halfway between soul-wrenching grief and amazement at my impudence.
"No ..." he said, very quietly. "No, I am not married."
He closed his eyes for a moment, then drew a deep, shuddering breath and turned away from me.
I moved after him again, but this time he turned on me with eyes blazing with sudden anger as he wrenched his cloak out of my grasp.
"My God, child!"
The anger in his voice was unmistakable, and suddenly I was afraid ... it was the same anger which used to explode into Father's voice before he would take his cane to me ...
I backed away, my hands automatically rising in a gesture of self-defence - God knows why, I'd learnt the hard way how thoroughly ineffective it was - paying no attention to anything but putting distance in between us ... until I tripped. I landed hard on my side, involuntarily crying out as a sharp pain shot through me.
He was at my side instantly, the expression on his face somewhere between alarm and contrition. I tried to back away from him, but the pain made me cry out and abandon the attempt. Through the haze of pain, I felt his long fingers efficiently exploring my ankle, which had already started to swell, and faintly heard him asking briskly,
"Can you move your leg?"
I nodded breathlessly.
He sat back, looking satisfied. "Good. Your hip will probably be a little bruised tomorrow, and your ankle is slightly sprained, but nothing that a few days' rest won't take care of."
Had I retained a little more control over my faculties, I might have wondered at the irony that it took an injury to arouse any interest of any kind in him. As it was, I was too upset to think about anything other than the bombshell he had just dropped - a few days' rest?!
"How the hell am I supposed to manage that?" I exploded, all the desperation of the past week condensing into anger and frustration at the one person who had shown me any kindness at all since my ill-fated arrival in this God-forsaken country.
He shrugged slightly.
"It would appear to me," he said with infuriating calm, "that you have no choice. Do you seriously believe that you can work in this state?"
"Yes!" I said defensively, standing up and glaring at him.
The pain shot through my ankle again, making me collapse with an involuntary yelp of pain. He caught me before I hit the ground, gently settling me onto the pavement with care not to catch my ankle as he did so.
"Get off me!" I snapped peevishly, uncomfortably aware that I was beginning to sound like a complete brat.
He took a step back, the eyes behind the mask oddly registering neither anger nor contempt, but a strange sadness and pity.
"Would you like me to escort you to a hotel?" he asked courteously.
"No!" I snapped.
He made no movement.
"That is of course your prerogative," he said calmly.
He turned and began to walk slowly away, sinking back into the melancholy which had claimed him before I first approached him, and I was suddenly struck with a wild panic and contrition for my insolence.
"Wait!" I called desperately, fully aware that if he chose to ignore me and leave now I could have no hope of stopping him. I wasn't even sure I could stand ...
He turned slowly, his eyes glittering behind the mask. He raised one eyebrow and looked at me questioningly. I was filled with the sudden uncomfortable feeling that he didn't see me as a person at all; merely another victim of the world, and felt nothing for me but pity.
"Please ..." I murmured without clear reason.
He moved slowly back towards me, and stopped a few paces short of me, standing above me like a great black shadow, the edges of his cloak billowing out in the wind.
I beckoned to him to come closer, and warily he did so, moving slowly and keeping his eyes fixed on me as if suspecting a trick. For some reason, I suddenly felt absurdly hurt by this ...
"Does your ankle hurt?" he asked.
I nodded silently, fully aware how stupid I must look.
He knelt down beside me and took hold of my ankle with gentle but firm hands and, inappropriate though the touch would have been from any other man, he had an aura around him which, coupled with his quiet professional competence, made me trust him where I might not have trusted another.
Producing a thin strip of material, seemingly from thin air, he proceeded to wrap my ankle with such gentle hands that I hardly felt his touch at all.
When he had finished, he looked up at me for my reaction, raising an eyebrow in silent question.
"That's better, thank you," I mumbled inanely, and then suddenly it came to me in a lightning flash of clarity what had been bothering me about this strange apparition ... as if in a dream, I reached out and pulled away the mask with sure fingers with a sudden senseless desire to know what lay beneath it.
Oh my God!
For a moment, I sat frozen, paralysed by the impossible horror of the sight which lay before me ... then I became aware of someone screaming; a high, shrill sound of terror ... and realised that the sound was coming from my own throat. In a desperate bid to get away from it, I covered my eyes and tried to pull myself upright; the pain shot through me once again but I didn't care - anything to get away from that face!
I realised I was still screaming as he reached towards me, his long fingers almost touching me ...
And then I slid into merciful oblivion as the darkness enveloped me.
When I came to, he was gone.
Erik
My God. My God! When will I learn to keep away from people? When she started screaming I could have killed her ... the unspeakable humiliation was nothing in comparison to the pain ... the unimaginable pain and grief! The last girl to unmask me had almost died for her trouble ...
It wasn't her screams that drove me almost to breaking point; I've faced enough people who react in similar ways to be - almost - immune to them by now. It was the flashbacks ... the flashbacks that almost broke me in two, the unbearable memories of the last pretty child to unmask me ...
I wanted to die. I staggered away from her, my hands over my ears ... anything to shut out her demented terror ... suddenly I had an overwhelming longing to be back home, safe underground, where blackness can envelope you and, if you try hard enough, you can almost convinve yourself you aren't really there!
I remember, I once told Christine "In the dark it is easy to pretend that the truth is what it ought to be ..." and I never spoke a truer word to her. She didn't understand, of course ... those were her last blissful moments of ignorance before she plunged headlong into the hell I had condemned us both to and her innocence was forever lost at her first sight of me ...
I can't do this anymore. I'm too old to endure anything like this, the scar tissue has been ripped open too many times, I can't just bandage the wound and forget about it as I could when I was young!
You can't teach an old dog new tricks ...
Morphia, alcohol, music ... such eloquently cruel paradoxes, the torments and delights of my soul ...
Let them swallow me tonight.
Nadir
I had never seen him drunk before. I have never seen him drunk since. Erik was one of those men who can drink any amount of anything they choose, and be completely unaffected by it. But that night ... that night he must have drunk his wine cellar dry, and God knows how much else on the side ...
I don't even want to begin to imagine what must have happened to get him into this state ... somehow I had a feeling that it wasn't just the desertion of Mlle. Daaé ...
He staggered into the house, his beautiful velvet cloak swirling around him as he collapsed into an armchair.
I rose slowly and walked over to him. I felt a wave of pity sweep over me; this total abdication of dignity from a man to whom self-discipline was so important was hard to watch without emotion.
He looked up and smiled; I was relieved - if a little surprised - that he retained enough control over his faculties to recognise me.
"Erik ..."
"Nadir," he slurred. "It's my fault, Nadir ..."
His fault? What was his fault?
"I told him to take her ... if she'd only stayed here ... that damned boy ... do you hear me, Nadir? It's my fault. My fault ..."
Christine. The omnipotent She. I should have guessed.
"He hit her ... God damn it, Nadir, she won't accept my help, what can I do ..."
His speech was slurred and the disjointed way he was linking sentences made his words increasingly hard to follow, but the basic gist was obvious.
By this stage, I was feeling seriously uncomfortable. I knew Erik would have hated me seeing him like this, and God knows he had enough private humiliations to deal with without my adding to them.
"Come on, Erik. You're drunk," I told him, offering him my arm to help him rise.
He brushed it away impatiently, ignoring my words.
"I love her, Nadir ..."
"I know," I said sadly.
It was now quite obvious that I was going to get nowhere while he was so blindly drunk ... I wondered briefly whether it might be wiser simply to leave him alone to let him sleep it off, and quickly banished the thought ... I had a seriously uneasy feeling that he might do something very stupid if left alone, and should he choose to venture out again he would be in no position to defend himself against the inevitable attacks.
I sat down wearily, resigned to spending another uncomfortable night on his sofa.
He slumped back in the chair, his shoulders shaking slightly as his grief poured out in a manner I was quite sure it never would have done had he been sober.
He told me details of his past such as he had never done before that night. Erik has always loathed pity, in any shape and form ... and yet pity was the only response open to me from the shock of the tales he told me. Unbelievable tales of bigotry and cruelty ... small wonder he always treated my attempts, however incongruous, to delve even a little into the murky depths of his past with dangerous hostility which I had always been uncomfortably aware could boil into violence should I push just that little bit too far.
And yet ... at the end, he seemed calmer ... his anger amazingly diminished, and replaced once more by the instinctive survival need he had always displayed, even in the most tense of moments. I like to think that perhaps it helped him to swallow a little of his long held-in resentment and bitterness, that perhaps just knowing that someone was there ... someone who cared ...
Perhaps I flatter myself. But an inherent peace came over him such as I had not seen in him since before Mlle. Daaé appeared on the scene ... perhaps the long span of months since her first departure was beginning to cauterize the wound, to dim the pain a little.
By the time he fell asleep in the chair, when I looked upon him sleeping more deeply than he had for a long time, I knew that although the inherent, unexpressed grief would never leave him, I felt sure that all he needed was time, and Mlle. Daaé would be little more than a distant memory.
I should have known him well enough by then ...