Chapter Twenty

Mad Imaginings and Friendly Interventions


Éponine was glad he hadn't been looking at her when he first removed his mask, because she hadn't been able to control whatever initial expression appeared on her face. He was right, she never would have imagined it. One side of his face was incredibly handsome, just as she had initially thought it must be. A high forehead, a defined brow over those piercing eyes. Well-cut cheekbones and a nose—half of the nose—with a strong sculpted presence. But on the other side...the flesh so twisted and malformed over the bone, the nose gone, what looked as though a piece of skull was missing over his temple... It was as if some sadistic sculptor had carved the most beautiful statue of a man that had ever emerged from marble, and then taken a chisel to half of the face and globbed clay onto it at his whim. It was impossible to comprehend, a cruel joke—but it didn't change the fact that he was still Erik. It broke her heart that, clearly, he'd thought it somehow could.

He hadn't been in on her thoughts just before she'd told him that he was a very attractive man. He hadn't seen inside her mind, to know that she was musing that even if his face were the very worst thing she could even conjure up, there were a myriad of ways in which he was still attractive to her.

That's why she forced herself to continue to look, even to touch the malformed flesh. She looked. She touched. And she held it firmly in her mind that all of this was Erik. You didn't get to pick and choose pieces of people. Erik wasn't his brilliant mind or his seraphic voice, or the gentle, kind way he had cared for her. He wasn't his dark moods or the bruises on her skin or the remorse and self-loathing he felt for causing them. Erik wasn't the piercing, gold-and-jade eyes that sent a fluttering deep in her abdomen whenever he turned them on her, or the way he carried himself like a visual manifestation of music. He wasn't the almost inhuman perfection of the left side of his face, nor was he the twisted, contorted flesh which created a mockery of that on the other half. Erik was more than the sum of all of that, and she knew there was still more to him that she didn't know yet—beautiful things and shameful things—but she wanted to learn. And when she looked and touched and thought about that, his face didn't frighten her or upset her. It was just a part of Erik. And she was beginning to think she was a little bit in love with Erik.

She told him so, or at least, told him in the only way she knew how. And he looked...frightened. He removed her hands from his face and just held them, and she thought he was going to cry.

Biting her lip, she rummaged for something she could say. "You know, what I was imagining your face might look like? What I imagined was so much worse."

"What could possibly be worse than this?" he asked tiredly.

"I imagined if it was like—if there was just nothing. Like the night sky with no stars, or the bottom of a bottomless river. And your eyes were just floating in it. And if I reached my hand through, I could reach forever and ever and never touch anything. That would actually be awful."

His eyes were incredulous, and his mouth smiled slightly. "You're an extremely peculiar girl, Éponine. That your mind would even imagine something like that."

"Oh, I know. I'm absolutely mad." She laughed and shrugged. "But do you know, when I told you that earlier, that I think you're very attractive? Well, I was staring at you that way because I was thinking that even if your face was like that—like the worst thing I could even imagine—you'd still be you, and I'd still find you a very attractive man."

He smiled at her, and his throat bobbed. Then he looked down at her hands. He brushed his thumb over the bruised flesh on her wrist. He gave a little shudder. "These ones," he muttered, so softly she wasn't even sure if she heard him correctly. He let go of her hands and stood up abruptly, pushing her aside. He found his mask where he had discarded it on a table and replaced it.

"What's the matter, Erik?"

Without answering her, he went into his room and emerged again, shoving his arms into the sleeves of his tailcoat. He glanced around the room, landing on his hat where it had been carelessly tossed onto his desk, grabbed it and slammed it onto his head. "Come. "

"Where are we going?"

"Out."

—●—●—●—●—

Éponine couldn't get him to talk. He fidgeted impatiently, and he was irritable, and her stomach was all twisted in knots. What had she said that made him so angry? Maybe he wasn't angry at her, per se, but he was certainly taking it out on her.

When the fiacre came to a stop, Éponine did not recognise the building in the daylight, but she knew the neighbourhood, so she had a pretty good idea of where they were. Erik leapt out and put out his hand to help her down. He practically dragged her inside and up a very elegant staircase to the second floor, where he rapped impatiently at the door and stood tapping his foot. Éponine was exhausted. They had been through a lot in the past several hours, and now he was behaving like this, and she didn't understand.

The door to the flat opened, and standing there was the younger foreign man—the Daroga's servant.

"Good morning, Darius," Erik said impatiently, pushing his way past the man and dragging Éponine along. She gave the man an apologetic smile as she passed.

"DAROGA!" Erik roared, while Darius, looking uncomfortable but not alarmed or surprised, closed the door. "Where are you, booby? I know you're up and have finished your prayers."

A door at the end of the small foyer opened, and the Daroga emerged, fully dressed, and looking weary but, like his servant, not alarmed or surprised. His emerald eyes took in the impatient Erik and the dishevelled and exhausted Éponine. He gave her a kindly and polite smile.

"How are you, mademoiselle?" he inquired, as though Erik had not been standing there.

"Fine, thank you, monsieur."

Erik looked extremely annoyed at being ignored. Still, he was gentle when he took Éponine by the shoulders and held her out toward the Daroga. She bit her lip and glanced back at Erik with tons of questions, but he wasn't looking at her, let alone providing answers.

"Here. I shall return later with her things."

The Daroga rubbed his temple. "...What?"

"As much as it pains me to say this, even a booby is right occasionally. It was right for you to be concerned. She shouldn't be staying with me. It's not a good place for people to be, underground with only myself for company. I'm afraid she's gone mad."

Éponine was furious, and she wrenched herself away from his grasp so she could turn around and face him. "Excuse me, what?!"

The Daroga looked between the two of them. "Erik, may I speak with you?"

Erik pulled out his watch and made a show of consulting it. "Fine. I have a few moments."

The Daroga opened a door, through which Éponine could see a little office or study. Erik reached for Éponine's hand.

"I thought we might speak alone—begging your pardon, mademoiselle. Darius?" he said something to the servant in that language that Éponine did not understand or recognise, and Darius nodded.

"Please follow me, mademoiselle," Darius said, in very careful and precise French. He showed her into a simply but comfortably furnished drawing room, which opened off the other side of the foyer. She reluctantly sat down. "Please wait. I will bring coffee."

She nodded and smiled at him. She hadn't interacted with him much when she had stayed at the house before. As soon as he was out of the room though, her smile fell away. Mad?! Erik had shown her his face, and she had told him the most vulnerable, fragile thing, and then he had decided she was mad and hauled her unceremoniously to fling upon the goodwill of his kind friend—who, incidentally, he didn't much treat like a friend. Neither Éponine nor the Daroga got to have any say in this? She clenched her hand into a fist and felt it was well Erik wasn't in front of her at that moment.

She stole silently to the door between the drawing room and the foyer, which Darius had left open, and leaned out to see if she could catch any words from Erik or the Daroga. She could faintly hear Erik's raving voice (she was the mad one?) but she couldn't make out any words. She stepped lightly across the foyer and put her ear to the door.

"...did not even flinch. No horror, no fear, no loathing. ATTRACTIVE! And you cannot believe what else she said to me. I—I—ME?!"

"You did say that you wanted to be loved for yourself." The Daroga's voice was gentle, almost fond.

"I don't—I can't understand." It was clear from his voice that he was weeping. "It doesn't make any sense at all. Oh, Daroga—don't look at me, I need to remove my mask—I am a wretched man. A monster."

"Whatever fears I had regarding you keeping her, it does not sound like you have behaved monstrously toward Mademoiselle Éponine. If you did, she wouldn't care for you as she so clearly does."

"She has gone mad. It's all my fault. I have driven her mad with my music and with my underworld of darkness and death."

"Did you even ask her if she wanted to come stay here?"

"I offered it earlier this morning—before she saw my face. You can look, now, Daroga. I have dried my eyes. I offered it, and she said she wished to stay with me."

"Well there, you see?"

"She doesn't know what she's saying. She has lost her sanity. Taken leave of her senses. It is all my fault."

"And what about her family?"

"From what she has told me, she is far better off without them. I don't think she wishes to return."

"You haven't spoken to her about any of this, Erik. You need to have a conversation with her, you can't just drag her here and deposit her in my flat like a parcel. If she wishes to stay, she will be as my own daughter—you have my word. But I don't believe that she does."

"I am doing what is best for her! She deserves someone better than me. I will not be the latest in a line of men who have hurt her."

Éponine remembered the way he had looked down at her bruised wrist. It bothered him, she realised, the way she'd said 'these ones are from you.' But he was nothing like anyone else who had left cruel marks on her flesh before. He was not a monster. She wanted to make him understand that.

"Then you must see that you do not hurt her. As she trusts you." Those words lingered in the air for a moment. Then: "And in my personal opinion, out of the pair of you, Mademoiselle Éponine is by far the sane one."

Éponine grinned.

"Booby!"

"Poor, unhappy madman."

Éponine heard a faint clinking behind her, and turned to see that Darius was setting a coffee tray down in the drawing room...and looking straight at her. She flushed at being caught eavesdropping, but he gave her a reassuring smile and put his finger to his lips. Grateful, she slipped back into the drawing room and sat down, and when the Daroga opened the door she had just been listening behind and emerged, she was sitting innocently in the drawing room and sipping her coffee.

"I believe the two of you have much to discuss," the Daroga said.

Éponine nodded, and glanced past him to the doorway where she would expect Erik to also appear. But there was no sign of him. Then she thought, maybe she was supposed to go in there to talk to him. "Oh," she said, standing up, "Did—is he waiting in there? Am I supposed to..."

The Daroga looked at her confusedly, and glanced behind him for Erik, who he evidently thought had been following him. Obviously not finding him, he stuck his head back into the room and called his name. He went back into the study, and Éponine stepped out into the foyer. Through the open doorway she could see into the little study, and she thought that it was probably at the same moment that both she and the Daroga noticed the glass doors which opened out onto the balcony were slightly ajar.

She clenched her fist and gritted her teeth.


A/N: Erik no! Why must you be such a mess? All he wanted is someone to love him, and then Éponine's all, "hey guess what I think I love you" and he goes "wow that's nice but you must be out of your mind because clearly I'm a monster, let me dump you at my friend's place and run."