Author's Note: To answer the question, Erik is "physically carrying the shaking girl around the gate, into the outer sanctum of his hideout so she may not lead a mob back to him". She was cast out of the hideout, and is trying to find it again but she can't. Erik is clever and has hidden all the exits. Use your imagination. :)
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9
Two weeks, and it seems the hunger and the cold can no longer be sustained by what was once Raoul's healthy body. His belly concaves to his spine, and the muscles of his torso are declining to fine lines instead of healthy, thick cords. His trousers hang off his hips, his legs. His eyes roll up to their highest point, bulging and misplaced in their sockets as they follow Erik's slow movements. He paces. Back and forth, back and forth.
Raoul moves, ever so slightly, and it catches Erik's attention. The dark figure pauses, and he crouches beside the bed, watching Raoul's face as the boy feebly struggles against his chains. Shadows catch the crevices of deformed flesh that make up half of the Phantom's face. Muscles push through the skin stretched across Raoul's back and shoulders as he arches up, gritting his teeth. He collapses, again.
"Let me go," he breathes, and Erik laughs, cruel and mirthless. Raoul burns with sweat, and he lifts his head. "Let me go, or kill me, make a choice, you pathetic, wretched creature." Such familiar words tear at the inside of Erik. He becomes a shell, for just a moment, and with fury he shoves a palm into the back of Raoul's head. His face is pressed into the sheets as Erik unfastens the chain, and mounts him, a leg on either side of his visible ribs and both hands on the back of his pale head.
Raoul cannot breathe. Erik's weight crushes him.
"Wretched," he snarls. "Pathetic, creature," Erik pulls his neck up from the sheets, and whispers hotly in his ear, "She is not coming for you, do you understand me, boy? She cannot love. She cannot love!" Erik thrusts his face into the sheets again, and below him there is no resistance. No last breath, no shudder. Raoul lays perfectly still, and waits for his breath to leave his body. Raoul waits to die.
Without another word Erik stumbles off of the bed, away from Raoul. As if for the first time in a week, he seems to realize that without food, and water, Raoul will die. Perhaps he also realized that he left without refastening Raoul's chain. The young man rolls onto his back, for the first time in too long, and inhales deeply into deflated lungs. The air is stale, but sweet. It smells of water, and underground, but it is the mortal world. He has not died yet. Raoul covers his shaking, thin frame with the discarded velvet blankets. He feels recognized, and tries to hide.
