Author's note: So here we stand – Erik's really really mad, panic reigns, and this is all what we call a normal day at the Opéra Populaire.
Disclaimer: Hasn't everybody already read the disclaimers on my other chapters? Come along now, people: I'm running out of creative ways to state that I don't own this!
Chapter Ten –
Silence and then the Storm
Christine resumes the narrative…
"Christine, I will stand by and watch no longer! I am taking you out of Paris – out of France – tonight!" Raoul exploded as he, André, and Firmin escorted Mme. Firmin and me back to the managers' office. We were in the hall just outside of the theatre, the doors of which had already been securely locked and barred.
As if that will help any, I reflected, darkly. Truth to tell, my mind was number than a pair of hands that had been exposed to the cold for too long and I honestly could not think. I didn't even hear Raoul as he spoke to the managers and me – although, if he had been saying anything to me, I wouldn't have been able to tell him what I was saying afterwards if it was for my life – so deeply was I absorbed in my thoughts.
Worse than anything I had ever known before, I knew exactly what had transformed my Angel into an unfeeling tyrant. He had seen Raoul with me on the roof. He had seen Raoul with me, he had heard what had been said, and he had seen Raoul kiss me. But didn't he know that I felt nothing for Raoul? Didn't he know that it had been Raoul who had kissed me, and that I hadn't even wanted for him to kiss me? Didn't he know—?
And now he wishes me dead.
Raoul, of course, had automatically assumed that because he was handsome, rich, privileged, and urbane, I wouldn't have any doubts about whether I wanted to receive his attention or not.
I did.
Then, I finally heard the words that he had said out in the hall and broke into his conversation with the managers, abruptly.
"Wait, Raoul!"
His undivided attention was instantly mine.
"Did you say that you were going to make me leave Paris? That you were going to make me leave France?"
He nodded, seeming to be unconcerned and I ignored the noises in the background of the room that were the gendarmes, who had been ordered by Raoul to stay close to me all night, in order to protect me from the evil, madman Phantom.
"Yes, my love! It's not safe for you here!"
He stepped close to me and scrutinized me with his unbearably blue eyes.
"I love you, Christine Daae, and I won't have a madman who thinks that he rules the Opéra Populaire dogging you at every turn and trying to murder you. We are leaving Paris – forever – on the first train available and I shall take you to my family's chalet in Switzerland. Christine," he said, catching my chin with his hand and making me look at him, "It's the only way."
There was no possible way for me to agree.
"No, Raoul, it isn't the only way." I told him, feeling my anger rising. "You don't know the Phantom – he isn't—"
"And am I to assume that you do?" Raoul exploded. He threw his hands out in the air, an exasperated gesture. "He won't stop until he has you where he wants you to be or until you're dead! I personally don't want to think about either of those options, Christine. That is why you're coming with me. It's for your benefit."
I regarded him stubbornly, my chin lifted and my eyebrows arched.
"If I survived well enough without your protection before, Raoul, I think I can manage now!"
With that, I walked towards the door, turning my back on them. Raoul's imperious call after me halted my outward progress.
"Christine!" he said, and I turned around slightly, pausing. He came over to me and put his hands on my shoulders, his grip firm and irritating, his gaze boring into my face and reading my eyes. "What will you do if you're wrong?"
"I'll just live with it then." I replied and walked away once more.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
I turned around, only once more. "To my dressing room, to get my things – where else can I go?"
And, with that final icy repartee, I stepped out of the room and practically ran up the hall, through several corridors, and down a flight of steps to the dressing room area.
* * * * * *
Once I had found my room, I fell up against its door and jerked the handle open, breathing hard as tears pricked my eyes. And then I was in the darkened, shadowy, silent room, staring at the space ahead of me as my eyes adjusted to the blackness.
Suddenly, the door swung noiselessly shut.
"Angel."
He moved out of the shadows and somehow, the lights in the room flickered on, so that we were able to see each other clearly. I stared into his eyes, his beautiful, mismatched eyes, which seemed to spark and burn towards me, and then I realized that I had just done something very dangerous. In a very low, very quiet, very deadly voice, he said, "Christine, do you realize what you've done?"
Suddenly, his voice had suddenly escalated from a barely above a whisper to an enraged, inhuman cry, and before I knew what was happening, he had grabbed me by the wrist and whirled me around so that my back hit his torso with vicious force. If I were to struggle against him, I would only fall. With the way that he had positioned me, I couldn't make a single move in my own defense, for he was the only thing that could keep me on my feet. But his grip was cold, vice-like, and harsh. I only just kept myself from crying out in pain when he wrenched my arm around.
And that very moment, I realized just how deadly this man was: what things he could be capable of. His strength was superhuman, his anger insurmountable, and he knew every secret that I could ever have!
Suddenly, without warning, he gave an unearthly growl and spun me away from him. Then, still gripping my arm with one hand, he forced me backwards and I saw his other arm make a swift, sharp, terrifying motion. There was a whooshing sound and then the noise of breaking china and other falling objects as he swept everything off of the top of my dressing table, pushing me up against it as I was borne backwards by the unthinkable, invincible force of his strength. My eyesight was dimmed in a spinning web of confusion and I looked up, trying to see him.
He was there: looming, black, and threatening, pinning me to there to the dressing table. His left hand was clasped around my throat, as if he wished to choke the life out of me, while his right held both of my hands completely imprisoned. I shook my head, trying to speak and beginning to gasp for air, as he spoke.
"Do you realize what you've just done to me? After everything I gave you, is this how you think you're going to repay me? And all of those things that you told me that morning at the other end of the lake – were all of those things lies?"
His eyes took on a fierce, murderous glint, as he demanded, punctuating each word with a jerk of his hand on my neck, "Tell me, Christine! Tell me what he said to you – I want to hear each and every word, so that I can have it written on your epitaph. I want to see your precious Vicomte writhe in agony as he recites them in your requiem after they find you dead!"
I shook my head then, my gaze clouded by tears of both pain and sadness, as I looked up at him, brokenly. "No, Angel…"
" 'No' what?" he snarled…but then he released me. He turned around and was silent for a moment, his shoulders bowed and his arms dropped to his sides, as the air burned with his rage. I remained where I was, unmoving, for a moment, leaning up against the table. My neck was warm and throbbing, my breath only then returning to me, from their encounter with his hand. I was afraid to move in that silent moment, afraid to speak, afraid to even breathe.
Finally, he spoke, breaking the quiet.
" 'No' what, Christine?" he repeated, and this time, his voice was a soft, deadly murmur. "No, don't carry out my vengeance on you because it isn't your fault that you were born with a desire to see beauty, because it isn't your fault that you love Raoul, even when he hasn't given you a single worthwhile thing in your life? Tell me!"
He whirled around, rounding on me, his eyes blazing, as his black velvet cloak swirled with his movement, like the wings of a giant bat. Then, he stepped towards me, until we were almost touching, and his fingers brushed lightly, deftly, mercilessly, at my throat, sending sensations of both rapture and fear up and down my spine. His blue and green eyes gazed into mine from behind their haze of long, smoky-hued eyelashes.
"Do you realize," he asked, his voice low and soft, almost alluring, drawing me to him, into his grasp once more as his fingers continued to caress my throat, deceptively gentle. "How easy it would be for me to kill you at this moment?"
"Do you realize how easy it would be for me to stand here and let you?"
My reply seemed to have taken him off-guard. He stared at me as if he thought me to be a madwoman. Suddenly, the door slammed open and I heard someone's tremulous, incredibly angry voice call out, "Erik, stop!"
Erik?
I was so startled by the use of that name in regard to the Phantom that I almost fainted with shock when I saw whom it was that had spoken.
Mme. Giry.
She stood in the doorway, hands gripping its frame, and her normally flawless, stark black garb and hair was in a wild disarray, as if she had just run all the way here. I looked back and forth in that single, frozen moment from the Phantom to her, and back to the Phantom again, not able to comprehend what was going on. Mme. Giry stepped into the room, never once taking her dark eyes – which were snapping with furious anger – off of the Phantom. He wore a look on his face that was something akin to either barely masked, explosive rage or total surprise that the ballet mistress would so confront him.
Or was it recognition?
But that expression melted away in the next moment, to be replaced by an icy cold, almost sneering twist of his visible features.
"Bravo, Madame – very well done. Now tell me, is there anything else that you'd like to reveal to Mademoiselle while you're at it, or would you be willing to keep silent and allow us to continue our interrupted conversation? It's very rude to come barging into rooms where the doors are closed, you know."
Mme. Giry stepped up close to him, and I was unnerved by the closeness of their height. She had never seemed so imposing before. Why was she here? Why was she doing this? I didn't understand. It seemed as if she knew him!
Stabbing an accusing finger at him, she snapped, "Don't you dare take that tone of voice with me, you unimaginably spoiled little brat! I knew that she would be the first on your mind after what happened tonight, but I hadn't any idea that you would actually choose her to be the first to suffer from your insane jealousy!"
"Jealousy?" the Phantom snarled at her, stepping away and circling her, circling the room, like a caged panther. "Spoiled brat? How can you call me that? How else was I supposed to react when she was with that boy? With him, instead of me – when I could have given her anything!"
Anything!
Mme. Giry was silent then for a moment, and her silence was very oppressive, and steely. She moved towards me, but she still didn't take her eyes off of him. "Christine, my dear," she said, in a strangely calm, flat tone, "Are you hurt?"
"No, Mme. Giry." I replied, mechanically, too distracted by my thoughts to realize what was going on, and then I returned to reality with one swift jerk of my mind.
"No, he didn't hurt me! Please, mon ange." I said, rushing across the room to the Phantom, who now stood beside my dressing table, glaring down at its top. He looked up at me, sullenly and bitterly, when I came to his side. "Listen to me." I begged. "Whatever you think, whatever you may have seen or heard, you must believe me. There is nothing between Raoul and me – nothing! He thinks that he's in love with me, and he's led himself to believe that I love him. But you must know that I do not feel that love. Mon ange, I cannot love him!"
The Phantom scoffed a little at that, glaring at me condescendingly.
"Then perhaps you would like to explain the reason why I saw you with him on the roof tonight, mademoiselle, and why, if you do not love Monsieur Raoul, you shared a lover's passionate embrace with him?"
It was my turn to become enraged.
" 'Shared'? You complete male chauvinistic blackguard, he kissed me!"
The shock that I saw in his eyes upon hearing my incensed outburst cut me to the quick; the pain in his gaze was too much to bear.
I took a long breath, calming myself, almost forgetting that Mme. Giry was in the room, watching us, and took both of his hands in mine, gazing up at him, feeling incredibly small but also incredibly powerful.
"Mon ange, Raoul told me that he loved me, that he wanted for us to be together forever…and I knew that things could never be that way between us! I could never feel those sort of affections for him – and I would never give him permission to kiss me!"
I stood back and watched as several emotions crossed his face.
He stepped back from me again, staring at me, as surprise, then shock, then fear, and lastly sadness flitted like inky shadows through his mismatched eyes. Finally, he looked down, boring holes into the floorboards beneath our feet with his gaze, and his words came up to me through the silent air.
"And the things that I've done – the things that I would have done – to you…"
He jerked his head up and our eyes met; he shook his head, seeming as if he were on the verge of an emotional breakdown.
"Christine, I—"
"Please, mon ange." I whispered, reaching for his hand. "Don't."
Something very much like the beginnings of a hesitant, although not-quite-real smile edged onto his face, behind and at the side of the mask. I wished that I could take it off and unmask him once more, if only to prove my loyalty to everything that I had told him…to everything that I believed in. I wished that I could see him once more.
"You're not going to marry Raoul?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"No, Angel – I don't love him."
Unsure of myself, I stepped towards him and took his hands in mine again. One of his hands was almost equal to both of mine, which reminded me how small and insignificant I was compared to him, the master of music, secrets, and darkness.
"Mon ange, don't ever be concerned of what I feel for Raoul – he's just another man as far as I'm concerned…and I don't love him."
The Phantom's strange, beautiful eyes watched me from behind the white mask, as if he was trying to read me, to see if my words were really true…and then his fingers moved and gripped mine. We were silent for a moment.
"Then…" he said, at length, "I believe you."
He turned, moving to face the other side of the room, and I belatedly recalled that Mme. Giry was still present. I felt incredibly ashamed at the thought of her having witnessed the scene between the Phantom and myself just then…and suddenly I recalled much more of what had been said only a little while before. As if guessing my thoughts, he turned back towards me, and smiled wryly, almost apologetically.
"I know, mon petite – there's a lot that you're confused about. I'm confused by it."
He reached up with one hand and mussed his golden-brown hair, seemingly at a loss for what to say next.
"How can I say this with any clarity? It's all so totally twisted and dark, just like some sort of labyrinth…Mon petite, this woman – Mme. Antoinette Giry – has known me all of my life. She was my mother's best friend."
The floor was uneven in front of me then, and I was vaguely aware of his arm about my waist, gently forcing me to sit down in the dressing table chair. I tried to regain my grip on my sanity, and finally succeeded in thinking clearly again.
"Mme. Giry, you've known him—"
"All his life? Yes." Mme. Giry supplied, speaking abruptly. She appeared to be much more calm by then, and the snapping black fire had gone out of her eyes, making her look more like the strict but sometimes kind ballet mistress that I had always known.
She looked at the Phantom for a moment then, leaving me to remain where I was, hardly able to believe what I had just been told. It was all so strange. I thought that I had known her, and yet…and yet it suddenly explained a great many things – things that I had noticed and yet not paid attention to…
"Erik here has always been a bit on the untamed side, I'm afraid, my dear," she told me, still looking at him as a bit of a dry smile curved her lips. "You see, he never received all of the mother's teaching and love that other children are privileged to."
"Because my widowed mother hated me from the moment that she saw my face on the night that I was born and allowed that hate to fully manifest itself in her relationship to me and because I was kidnapped by a band of circus gypsies and their slaver-driver ringmaster at a rather young and impressionable age." the Phantom supplied, in the same wry, half-amused tone that Mme. Giry had just used. "Or was it because I was simply too smart for my age?"
"It might have been all three of those," she conceded, carefully, "But I think the real problem with that came in when you spent several years as chief-palace-designer and overlord to the Shah of Persia."
"Please, don't bring too much of the past up. The poor child can't understand everything at once; no one could. Christine, mon petite…"
I looked up to see him kneeling before me, his beautiful eyes staring into mine, and he was smiling, almost hesitantly, it seemed, at me. "I'm sorry that I didn't tell you – and I am even more deeply sorry for doubting you. I don't want to think that my anger could have so blinded me to everything that I would have hurt you…but it did, and I can't bear to think what I could have done to you."
Brushing that off – I didn't want him to apologize to me; I knew that he hadn't meant his anger now – I held up a hand and said, "Wait, please. Don't say anything more about that. I just want to know who else knows about this."
They both seemed surprised by that. The Phantom exchanged glances with Mme. Giry, and then he replied, "No one. No one but you, and me, and Madame."
More secrets. Oh black underworlds, this is too much!
He caught the change of my expression and said, "Mme. Giry helped me when I returned to Paris, after managing to get free of the Shah of Persia, whom I served a very long time ago. She was always very kind to me when I was a child, unlovable as I was."
He then smiled dryly, but I saw the inner pain behind the expression. His own mother…had hated him. I repressed a saddened, chilling shiver as he took my hands in his, gazing searchingly – tenderly – into my eyes.
"We have never told anyone of this, because if everyone was to know that I was here, people from the past would come to find me, and I would no longer be able to hide from them here. You…" he hesitated, reaching for my hand to cover it with his. "You understand…don't you?"
I nodded, gazing at him.
"Of course I do, mon ange."
He stood, bringing me up with him, and said, "Don't call me only that anymore, Christine. It is you who are the angel, not me. I am only a man – a ghost, it might be said. No, you must call me by my real name now."
I smiled up at him. For all we knew, Raoul and the gendarmes and all of Paris might be headed our way right at this very moment…but I didn't care.
"Then what is it?"
He smiled back at me.
"My real name is Erik."
"Erik." I said, trying out the name on my lips, loving the way that it felt to say it. I remembered my dreams then. Is there a connection? How could that be?
"Erik – well, that's a new thought. The monster has a name!"
Raoul!
My worst nightmare was coming true. Yes, Raoul was standing there – right in behind of us, looming in the doorway, and I could see the terrible expression of mad protectiveness and anger on his handsome young face.
"Raoul, no, please don't—" I began, but he interrupted me.
"Christine, come over here by me while it's safe. I'm not going to let this freak hurt you."
"Over my dead body."
The Phantom's voice was cold and contemptuous. I looked up to his profile and saw the sneer that had come across his face. NO! my mind said, as I wished that I could tell them the very same thing. No, don't do this!
Of course, I was unable to stop them, and I knew it. I looked at Mme. Giry. She was also paralyzed where she stood, alarm and fear etched into her features.
"Do you have something to say to me, monsieur?" Raoul snapped.
"Yes. Are you ready to meet your Maker, or will you give the lady her choice?" the Phantom replied, squeezing my hand and then putting it away from him with a gesture for me to stand back. I couldn't disobey.
"I'm ready – more than a blackguard like you is!" Raoul replied.
"Really?" There was a taunting tone in the Phantom's voice – in Erik's voice. "Then let's go meet Him. I've got nothing better to do."
And that was what started the confrontation.
Raoul lunged at the Phantom, knocking them both to the floor. I heard a scream and thought it was one of them, however, in a moment, I was horrified to discover that it was my own throat that had made the sound. Over and over and over again they rolled on the floorboards, shoving, swiping, blocking, and tearing at each other like two rival stallions. I saw the Phantom's face – so handsome that it was blinding, even in the midst of the fray – and I knew, in my heart, that I would die if he were taken away from me. Raoul's hair tumbled over his face and his features wore a savage, enraged look, as did the Phantom's. I winced each time I heard the thud of their fists on each other, knowing that each blow was for me. I didn't want this to happen! Why couldn't—
Suddenly, I saw something silvery and small in Raoul's hand as it glinted against the candlelight and, horrified, I realized exactly what it was. My scream of warning didn't reach the Phantom in time, or it did, but it was already too late.
"No – no, please – don't!"
Time seemed to move in slow motion as I ran forward, trying to reach them in time; however, I was doomed to fail, for, by the time I had even gotten two steps towards them, the horrible inevitable had already come to pass.
He had shot my Angel.
"Raoul, NO!!!"
* * * * * *
Author's note: Oh, no, what will happen to Erik? I suppose we all know our dear Victome well enough to state that his aim is always quite abysmal when it comes to injuring our favorite masked man, so don't Punjab me – although the fact that he'll be all right is somewhat obvious, isn't it? Read on…