Loneliness. So bleak and encompassing, he thought he would be lost in it, swallowed whole and gone, never to be seen again.
As if it would matter... . And yet, he couldn't drown himself completely in this sorrow. He felt instantaneous desolation, remembering that odd expression as she pulled away, drew her lips away from his twisted mouth. What an excuse for a human being, not even fit for a kiss! And yet.. That look, unlike anything seen on anyone else. Sadness, pity, perhaps even.... Regret?
Or a contempt for this monster, this face, this looming atrocity to be satisfied only through an appeasement of the most intimate sort. Regret, perhaps, but likely that of a more self involved nature. Regret at having known him at all!
Locked in internal conflict, he ran his hand over his face. His curse, the infestation of a deity more apathetic than even himself, this face, a cancer upon him! Where he would have held reverence as an artist and above all a man, he was reduced to an animal, a mere beast!
Such a fate! The implications sent him reeling, as he logically tried to assign himself to this role, this walking breathing tragedy that he embodied further and further with the death of each new day.
Yet, he could not seem to place himself in this role. He had his music, and for an interminably brief time he had possessed his angel. And yet, it wasn't a possession, for she had followed him, eyes wide and hands clasped as he led her through the darkness of his world. She had learned from him, and she respected his talent supreme, his art, his music. She respected and exemplified all that was good in the world, and she wanted nothing more than to further the distance between them.
And even still, in the back of his mind lingered that nagging thought, that sliver of hope which so badly needed to be extinguished for him to be immune to such pain. No, it's nothing but foolishness. It's over, as it was never meant to be. Who could feel compassion, let alone love a being so monstrous? No one... No one, his fickle and fated companion 'till the end of his days.
But it was that voice of hope which pulled him to his feet in the darkness, pulling him out of his days-long trance of despair. How long had he been sitting there? He had no recollection.
Only of stumbling through this web of subterranean passageways he had come to know as home. Was the search over? Had his hunters desisted in their vigor to see him hanged, to have his head on a pike, to see him smolder at the stake?
He did not know. He did not much care, either, as he knew these paths a thousand times better than any of those imbeciles.
Imbeciles! Yes! And they dare to hunt me in my own theater! They will soon see the consequences of their unfortunate decision, then. They had to. This anger, all to familiar, building into the blinding white rage which had often proved fatal, was, in the end, what drove him to his feet. Drug him up from the depths of his despair, and pulled him through the blackness of the corridor.
He would make Christine see. Really see. But not before he would punish those who's lack of sight had poisoned their love.
Their marriage was tomorrow. Six months had passed since that fated performance of Don Juan Triumphant which had brought the drama and turmoil of the previous months to a climax. And what a strange ending it was, she mused. A tragic end to a tragic affair. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Blue eyes danced over a white nightgown, in sharp contrast with the thick black curls which fell about her face wildly. The candle light flickered, making her appearance seem liquid, ever changing in the soft glow. She traced the lines of her face with her fingers. Soft white skin, features perfectly symmetrical and well proportioned.
An image of another face, one less perfect, flashed behind her eyes. A face so horrible and at the same time so lonely, so sad. She wanted nothing more than to erase it from her mind's eye, but she knew she could never forget. That poor tortured face, the face of a man who had sung to her in her sleep, who had helped her know her voice and herself, was grafted on her psyche forever.
Why then, not acceptance? Why this rush of emotions every time the slightest instance brought her wandering mind back to those now far away happenings? She was uncomfortable with what his memory evoked in her, a passionate mix of guilt, pity, sorrow.. And something deeper. Something she could not name, smoldering and dark.
She was ashamed. She knew if she ever told these things to Raoul, he would be angry. As far as he was concerned, she was happy to forget everything that had then transpired. He thought her to be utterly horrified by those events, in such way that she pushed them from her mind as often as was necessary for them to recess into the darkest corners of her subconscious, waiting only to be invoked through her darkest dreams and nightmares.
She had been horrified by the murders, and the intensity of the shocking things she had been through. But that was not where it ended. Her emotions were much more complex.
She sighed to herself, and for a fleeting instant wondered how a man who could not understand her depth of emotion concerning this could love her as passionately as Raoul proclaimed to.
She dismissed this immediately. Of course he loved her, bore she not his ring to prove it? And besides, he had not been through all she had. He could never know.
She looked around her room, in the opera dormitory which had been her home since the death of her father. She noticed the warmth invoked by the artistic touches, tapestries, blankets and such, which she had added over the years. Still, it was small, and cold. Her one window looked out over the alleyway behind the opera house.
How anxious she was to leave this place! And so she would, come the morrow. And then she would be happy, living with her beloved in relative wealth and comfort. Nothing in the world could hold them apart now.. Nonetheless, she thought, absentmindedly trying to staunch the sentiment before she could admit it to herself, I shall miss that voice which sang to me in my sleep.