Author's Note: Yes, I know, all these late posts... I can't help it, these are my peak hours. I'm gonna note real quick that this is almost over, I promise. It's gone on for a while, but that was all in a desperate attempt to make plausible slash. Sometimes you have to walk a mile to... yeah, I'm not good at metaphors. Thanks, again, for all your encouraging and constructive reviews!


36

Raoul thinks that Erik cannot possibly show affection past a certain degree, especially during what he assumes to be the long hours of the day. It is highly unlikely to Raoul that Erik was given any love as a child, and therefore is almost incapable of producing that which he never received. It is simply against his nature to give the kind of affection that Raoul is used to, but that does not mean Erik is not affectionate. These days he carries the same dark grace about him, and Raoul imagines he will never see a smile on Erik's face that is not laced with wry bitterness.

He speaks to Raoul now, not as a captor to his captive, or a hunter to a young pup, but as a man to another man. This, of course, does not mean his words go without mockery, as Erik shall always hold contempt for every man until the end of his days.

Raoul is still very sore, keeping a ginger walk, and so Erik has not made any advances. For that he is grateful. In mid night he will wake up to the feel of Erik's weight in the bed, and the same comfort of a possessive arm still encircles his waist. Erik's nose buried in his hair, a toned body behind his, rising in gentle rhythms with the breaths he takes in. These things Raoul has come to find solace in, and on nights when Erik does not come, or is late, he cannot sleep. He knows that nothing will ever compare to what they felt on that first night. Years may pass before he sees it again.

Erik has made no mention of leaving. It is almost as if the cruel words he spit out two weeks earlier were never spoken. He might stay, Raoul thinks, and at last things may finally come to change.

What the boy cannot know is Erik's condition in actuality. He does not realize that his words have not breached what the Phantom can only ever believe, and in the long hours of the day Erik has seemingly forgotten of his plans to depart. He does nothing, save sit in one of the back chambers, hidden away from the world and Raoul. It is a sparsely furnished room, with only a great master armchair in one corner, and his largest mirror at the opposite wall. It takes up almost the entirety of that wall, so that his reflection stares back at him from every position in the room. He cannot hide from it, because he built it that way.

Erik sits across from it and hates. Erik hates with every fiber of his being, and can hate as no other can hate. He broods for hours, in the chair, legs crossed, and mask discarded by the mirror. He hates because of this new blood he has tasted, not the thrill of murder, not the age old procession of unrequited love, but happiness. With the boy, dark in the nights, there is someone for him and it is like nothing else he has ever felt. Memories, distant, buried inside, of when he knew what it was to be happy: the days of his early childhood, when innocence still lingered and not even he truly knew what he was.

This is not meant to last and he knows it, not here, not in this private hell. When Raoul comes to see that he will never see the sun again he will become sick with an ever growing hatred. He will turn on Erik, and find a way to escape, do anything to escape.

Even if Raoul were to want to stay they could never go into a world with light, and live as other men do. They could never just be. The world will always find them, and even Raoul knows it to be true.

And Erik knows there is no other reason but the one that stares back at him. Erik stands, mouth set, eyes hard and clouded with an unspeakable rancor. He approaches the mirror and regards in silence the makings of his face. He will do this for hours at times, but now he only touches the textured rise of flesh beneath his right eye, and down the cheek. Such a twisted shape, tormented with uneven skin, and lashed with discolored streaks and patches. His cheek bone is taught as if he had suffered horrible burns as a child, and the skin pulls downward to expose the white of his eye.

It is hideous, the face of a monster. Such a monster.

"Look at you," he whispers to his reflection. "This is you," Erik is hollowed out, his voice skeletal, faint and repulsed. "It is all you will ever be, to him, to anyone." If Raoul is to be released, Erik will never change. If Erik stays, Raoul will never find freedom. He is not like Erik. Erik has learned to live without the sun. He will be destroyed. One of them must be.

He lays his palm against the entire half of his face, and curls his fingertips into the flesh, a bruising grip. His teeth grit, there is pain, but he can ignore it. He always has.

"Why can you not change," he asks, a growl, a sorrow, an echo that has never died away from the first time his mother asked the same of him. His reflection cannot reply, and Erik does not wait for it. He reaches to the side, and draws the long curtain across the mirror. Before it is shut off from the room, he uncovers his face, and studies it a moment more, as if he could ever forget it. "You," he breathes. "I hate above all else."