A/N - First of all, big hugs and thank yous to Maya for helping me sort out this chapter!! And of course, sooo much love and cookies to everyone who's reviewed!! Thank you so much!! :)
Chicketieboo - calm down!! *hugs* Don't get too overexcited!! And actually ... no, I don't hate Cosette. I actually feel rather sorry for her, because I know her past (which I may or may not put into the fic, depending on how lazy I am!!) Just take my word for it that there is a reason she's such a bitch. I promise!! :)
Firmin was pacing up and down the managers' office.
"Are you sure this will work?" he asked.
Cosette rolled her eyes inwardly. "If I wasn't, Monsieur, you would be the last person I'd tell." Cosette was wearing a long white dress and, with her hair loose over her shoulders and the radiant smile she could turn on and off like a tap, she looked deceptively angelic.
Firmin stopped pacing to look at her. "How you can remain so calm is utterly beyond me."
Cosette shrugged. "Take it as proof of my faith in this strategy."
He nodded, seeming briefly appeased. "Oh ... I forgot to ask. Do you want Christine to know what's going on?"
"Definitely not." Cosette shook her head firmly. "She'd ruin everything, somehow - I don't say she'd mean to, but her middle name is incompetence - she'd never be able to pull it off." She shook her head again. "How she has ever managed to make her name as an actress is quite beyond me." She paused. "And Monsieur le Vicomte mustn't know, either. You know how compulsive he is regarding her welfare."
Firmin nodded. "Very well." He stopped to look at her. "Mademoiselle ... you are aware that your contract states that your presence will be required until this creature is caught, aren't you?"
Cosette tossed her hair coolly back over her shoulder. "Of course, Monsieur. I fully expect to be relieved of my duties later this afternoon."
"With a little luck ..." Firmin murmured, sitting heavily down at his desk and taking out his pen to finish work on the accounts.
* * *
Erik glanced in on Box Five as he returned to the theatre. He knew there would be nothing there, but a spark of hope at the back of his mind which would not be silenced forbade him to pass it by without even checking.
And today - he almost missed it, his glance was so cursory - there was a letter, a small white rectangle propped up against one of the columns. He picked it up, forcing himself to resist the temptation to rip off the envelope, savouring the brief scent of her perfume.
The note was short, and to the point. He read it once, and his face darkened with sudden concern. The unfamiliar slant to her handwriting convinced him that it had been written in a hurry; tucking it into his cloak, he disappeared back into the column from which he had emerged, and made his way towards Christine's dressing room.
* * *
Christine looked up in surprise.
"Erik!"
He took a step into the room, his eyes skating over her with concern.
"Are you all right?"
Before she had a chance to answer, the room erupted into confusion. Armed gendarmes burst in through the door, almost knocking it off its hinges, and even as Erik retreated with lightning speed back through the mirror, a gunshot rang out. He felt a searing pain slice through his shoulder, and staggered backwards into the safety of the passage behind the mirror. He could hear Christine screaming, and then, through the tumultuous shouting which echoed down the path from the small dressing room, another voice.
"Shh, Christine, darling, it's all right, you're safe now ... it's all over, you won't have to do anything more ..."
Erik stopped, a sudden ringing in his ears momentarily eclipsing the pain in his shoulder. It's all over ... you won't have to do anything more ...
She knew about this? He stumbled, reaching out for the wall to steady himself, momentarily blinded by the pain which tore through his shoulder.
Christine ...
"No," he said aloud, his voice sounding weak in the echoing expanse of underground passageway. "No ..." She couldn't have been involved ...
No.
She couldn't have known.
He was on his feet again, forcing himself downwards through the red haze of pain.
No.
He stumbled, catching at the wall, grazing his hand. He hardly felt the pain, though he stared at the blood for a moment without comprehension.
Christine ...
No.
He had reached the door, and staggered, fumbling at the catch. Somehow he found himself inside, his vision blurring, his step unsteady.
A trace of her perfume caught him as soon as he entered the room, and suddenly everything clicked into perfect vision, his head swimming. Everything here was hers. The cloak draped over the chair - the blue one, with the red trim - the music spread out over the piano ... the drawing of Ayesha she had so laboured over ...
Moving slowly, feeling detached from everything around him, he approached the couch and touched the cloak. The sensation came as if from a distance ... so soft. Just like her hair ...
He knelt beside the couch and hesitantly took the cloak into his hands, brushing the material across his cheek. Her scent still clung to it ...
No!
He was still kneeling on the floor with the cloak in his arms when the alarm went off and the door burst open.
* * *
Raoul was pacing up and down the floor of the managers' office, absolutely livid.
"What the bloody hell was going on today? Christine could have been killed, and it didn't occur to either of you to do us the courtesy of informing us that you were setting a mantrap with her as the bait?!"
"Monsieur, please calm down ..." Andre was almost as distressed as Raoul - he hadn't been informed that Christine was the prize the Phantom had come to claim, and the thought of what might have happened had something gone wrong made him shiver.
"No harm was done," remarked Firmin coolly, crossing out an entry in his accounts book.
"No harm?!" Raoul exploded. "Christine is in bed, sedated, at this moment because neither of you thought to mention it to her that she was going to have her dressing room invaded by the entire Paris Surete! She could have been killed!"
"But she wasn't," interrupted Firmin. Of the three, he was by far the least agitated, and seemed to be the only one in the Opera House to remain undisturbed by Raoul's fury. "She's fine ... and we've finally managed to rid ourselves of that creature." He paused, glancing up at Raoul with a cool eye. "I should have thought that you of all people would be happy about that."
Raoul hesitated. "You don't know that he's gone. He had strength enough in him to disappear again, didn't he?"
Firmin rose and laid a paternal hand on Raoul's shoulder. "A party of gendarmes are going down into the cellars tonight. Believe me - he won't escape this time."
* * *
Nadir slammed the door behind him and moved towards his friend with concern.
"Erik, what's going on ... they're saying they've shot the ghost ..."
Erik looked slowly up at him, his eyes dull.
"It was a trap," he said, very quietly, his fingers closing convulsively in the fold of her cloak again. "She sent me a note ..." He made a self-derisive sound of contempt. "I walked straight into it ..."
Nadir stared at him for a moment with blank incomprehension. "She helped them to trap you?"
Erik turned away. "I suppose that when it all comes down to it, love calls with more persuasion than the voice of an angel ..." His fingers sought out the wound in his shoulder.
Nadir remained silent for a few more moments, unable to understand what would have effected this sudden change of heart in Christine. A sound from above made him look up sharply.
"You have to leave here at once," he said with sudden urgency. "They will be down after you again ..."
Erik drew a caressing hand across the softness of the cloak. "It doesn't matter ..."
"Of course it matters!"
"No ..." He laughed with a sudden weak bitterness. "I always said she'd kill me one day ... I suppose the day has just finally come ..."
"No!"
Erik found himself unable to summon the willpower to resist his friend's furious determination, and when Nadir helped him out by the Rue Scribe passage, supporting him as best he could without attracting undue attention, and bundled him into a carriage, he closed his eyes and drifted into unconsciousness with an image of Christine burning against the insides of his eyelids.
* * *
Nadir closed the door very quietly. Erik was finally sleeping, the bullet removed, the wound neatly bandaged.
"Damn you, daroga," he had murmured. "Why are you always so intent on preserving my life?"
Nadir sank down slowly into a chair, suddenly feeling very tired.
"Is he all right, master?"
Nadir looked up to see Darius standing over him.
"He'll live," he said finally. In the following silence that fell, they both knew that that wasn't what Darius had meant.
"Do you want me to go and sit with him?" Darius asked finally.
Nadir shook his head. "No, let him sleep ... I gave him enough laudanum to knock out a horse, he shouldn't wake again until morning." He glanced up at his servant and for the first time saw the dark circles under his eyes. It had been a long night.
"Go and get some sleep yourself. I'll see you in the morning."
Darius nodded and left Nadir alone, sipping a glass of brandy and staring morosely into the fire until morning.
* * *
Nadir had been wrong. Erik wasn't asleep.
He stared up at the ceiling, seeing nothing, feeling no pain in his shoulder - feeling nothing but the pure anguish of Christine's betrayal.
Raoul's voice echoed in his head, merciless, mocking.
It's over. You're safe now. Darling. It's all over ...
He could still hear her screaming.
Oh God, no ...
He closed his eyes, his hands clenching into fists. It had all been a sham. Every moment they had spent together ... every time she had sung for him, every conversation they'd ever had ... every moment they had ever been together, she had been wishing herself somewhere else. One long series of little moments which were everything to him ... treasures which meant nothing to her.
He had genuinely believed there was a chance. Against all his reason, the logic which he had long since forced to the back of his mind, he had wanted to believe in her so much. She had seemed so happy ... lingering in his house long after her lesson was finished, trying to play his music on the piano, laughing when she couldn't ... she had even stayed in her old room one night when they had talked until it was too late for her to safely venture home alone.
All an act ... every nuance of her smile, every note of laughter, every word of a song ... it had all been an act, waiting for the final, ultimate betrayal.
Maybe tomorrow would bring anger. Anger at her wilful manipulation of his helpless adoration of her, rage at her cruelty - she of all people knew how much she meant to him - perhaps, for a while, anger would help him to forget.
But tonight ... tonight he could feel nothing but the pain, see nothing but the slow sight of his dream disintegrating before his eyes.
He sat up, very slowly, careful of his shoulder. From a pocket in his cloak, which Nadir had draped over a chair, he withdrew a sketch he had once made of her.
He stared at it with anguished longing for a long moment. He remembered the day he had drawn it so well ... many months ago now, her embarrassed laughter as she tried to sit still, fading to admiration as he showed her the first draft. She had laughed, and leaned closer to examine the paper, her hair spilling over his shoulders. "Is there anything you can't do?!"
He touched the paper hesitantly, tracing the line of her jaw with infinite tenderness.
Oh, God ...
He didn't know if he could bear it if this this was to be the closest he would ever get to her again.