A/N – Et voila, the final lair … thanks are due to Stephanie for having helped me with it and all the lovely reviewers who brighten up my day. :)
And Julie – here's my chapter; now where's yours?
It had been Piangi. Meg felt sickness spread through her as she and Raoul plunged downwards, through the dark passages towards Erik's home. She had seen the twisted face, horribly discoloured in death; the noose lying beside him looking almost innocuous. The thought that Erik could kill – so easily, with so little provocation, for what had poor Piangi ever done to him? – she dared not dwell on, for fear that the ghastly impossibility of it all would overwhelm her.
The sound of Carlotta's sobs was the most terrible thing she had ever heard.
Meg stumbled, and Raoul caught her, righting her on her feet, but not allowing her to slow.
"Be careful." His voice was not unkind, but there was a steel in him tonight that she had never seen before: beneath his customary aristocratic amiability lay strength that could, perhaps, only be tapped into when someone so cherished as Christine was threatened.
Meg hastily put down the disloyal thought that Christine might be luckier to marry Raoul than Erik, and realised with sick dread that they had reached the beach. Erik had lowered the portcullis – a defence against intruders that Meg had once teased him about – but past the bars of the portcullis, the door to the house was open. Christine stood outside, her face turned away from them. Meg could hear her speaking tearfully, and it was only by the single movement that caused light to reflect across his mask that gave her to realise Erik was standing just behind her, concealed in the shadows.
Meg threw herself forward, grasping at the gate.
"Erik, let me in – please!"
Raoul was beside her, banging his fists on the portcullis gate with such force that Meg winced empathetically, anticipating the bruise he would have tomorrow. He did not even seem to notice.
"Let me in!"
Christine rushed to him, and he caught her hands through the gate, kissing her fiercely. She was weeping, and he touched her face tenderly with one hand.
"Hush, my love. It will be all right; I'll protect you."
Astonishingly, Meg thought, Christine appeared to be comforted by this.
Raoul transferred his attentions to Erik, who was standing very still, half in shadow, with his arms folded. Meg could not see his face through the kindness of his selective darkness, and his figure, tall and menacing in the gloom, was imposing and threatening as never before.
"Let me in!" Raoul hammered his fist against the gate again, producing a dull thudding sound against the heavy metal. The futility of the exercise evidently infuriated him; he looked around in frustration and grabbed hold of the gate, shaking it hard.
"For God's sake, I love her!"
Erik stepped out of the shadows. He was nodding slowly, one finger stroking contemplatively across his jaw.
"Touching. Unimaginative, yes, but doubtless heartfelt; very moving, I'm sure."
His face hardened.
"But inadequate. You'll have to come up with something considerably more affecting than that if you really want to join this little soirée."
Raoul paused, evidently rather taken aback. "You can't keep her here against her will!" he protested.
Erik shook his head again, gesturing patronisingly in the air with one hand. His voice was that of a schoolteacher explaining something for the umpteenth time to a dull student. "Again, inadequate; you see, that simply isn't true. I can."
In acute frustration, Raoul brought his hand down on the gate with a crash.
"Damn you! Can't you see that you can't make her love you by locking her up five storeys underground!"
At this, Erik moved, and his voice, when it smoked from somewhere out of the darkness, was like ice.
"Better, Monsieur le Vicomte. Deserving of ingress, I think."
The portcullis gate lifted slightly, and Raoul threw himself under it and rushed to Christine. He gathered her, sobbing hysterically, into his arms.
Meg scrambled under the portcullis gate and heard it clang shut behind her. She turned; and met Erik's eyes. For a moment, his face was unconcealed by shadows, and again she reeled at the enormity of what he had always hidden from her. She saw him flinch at her instinctive reaction to his face, and at once felt ashamed; but it took only a moment for him to resume the cold façade of indifference and, affecting mocking courtesy, he gestured for her to sit.
"Do take a seat, my dear." His voice was a hiss. "You can collect your thirty pieces of silver later, I'm sure."
Meg felt as if all the breath had been snatched from her lungs. The savage bitterness in Erik's voice told her more clearly than his stinging words could ever do that he would never forgive her for her part in the night's events.
He turned to Raoul and Christine, and his voice became level again, dangerously calm.
"As I was saying, Monsieur le Vicomte …" Raoul turned from Christine and started with alarm as he saw the closed portcullis. He drew Christine protectively closer to him, but Erik was still speaking.
"A more effective appeal to the monster's better nature this time …"
And suddenly, so fast that Meg was never quite sure how it happened, he sprang at Raoul. Christine screamed; and Erik's noose appeared around the Vicomte's neck, his hands closed with savage, inhuman strength on Raoul's shoulders.
"But cruel," he hissed in the younger man's ear. "And what on earth makes you think that I would relinquish her to one who is such an expert in hurting other people so acutely?" He laughed viciously. "She already has me for that." He pushed Raoul roughly away from him, and the younger man staggered, the noose tightening around his neck as he lost his balance. He choked and managed to regain his footing; Erik laughed contemptuously and turned his back on the three younger people.
Christine rushed forward to Raoul, tugging ineffectually at the lasso around his neck. With a snarl, Erik turned back to her and seized her arm; Meg heard Christine choke out a gasp, and rushed forward, catching at Erik's sleeve.
"Erik, no!"
He moved like lightning and threw her away from him with one violent motion of his arm. She stumbled and fell heavily, catching her head on a protruding lever on the organ. Dazed, she raised one hand to her head, feeling sticky blood on her fingers, Christine's sobs sounding suddenly a very long way away. She closed her eyes against the pain.
She must have fainted then, she later realised: the next time she opened her eyes, Erik was seated above her at the organ, his fingers spread over the keys in a grotesque parody of the experience that she and Christine must have shared of curling at his feet while he ensnared the senses and enthralled the soul with the exquisite talent that was so uniquely his.
Meg barely had time to feel the rush of pain that Erik had not only, for the first time in their entire relationship, raised his hand to her in anger, but that he apparently cared so little that he could just leave her unconscious on the floor without the faintest pang: as she moved her head to accommodate the swimming behind her eyes and the piercing pain throbbing at the back of her skull, her eyes lighted on Christine crumpled on the floor on the other side of the room. Only the shaking of her shoulders that indicated tears gave Meg to know that she was still alive.
Her first instinct was to go to her friend; but one glance at the stone mask blazing with the flame of fury that was Erik's face was enough to shrivel her courage and make her shrink back against the floor, praying desperately for rescue.
The monstrous tableau – two girls in opera dress prone on the floor, one man choking for breath in the cruelty of the strangling noose of a master murderer, and the puppet-master himself motionless above them all – was still for what seemed like an age, the silence broken only by Christine's sobs and the occasional choking gasp from Raoul as his strength faded.
The first to speak, perhaps surprisingly, was Raoul. His voice hoarse, he breathed Christine's name and extended one hand to her.
"Christine …"
Sobbing, unsteady on her feet, Christine stumbled up and ran across to him, burying her face in his shoulder. Raoul wrapped his free arm around her, kissing her hair.
"My love …" he whispered. "Don't be a fool …"
Christine looked up into his face, tears streaming down her cheeks. She kissed him desperately, stroking her fingers over his face, clinging to him as though she would never let him go.
Terrified, Meg glanced up at Erik, petrified at the thought of what he might do; how he might react to such a display of the love he had fought so hard to kill. But as her eyes lit on his face, her heart flooded with compassion: the only recognisable emotion visible in the twisted mass of scars that formed his face was abject despair. Her fear dying under this recognition of the Erik she knew, she reached out to him.
"Erik …"
He started violently at her touch, and his face hastily hardened against her examination. He stared at Raoul and Christine, and the stone of his face blazed into ice-flaming rage. He threw Meg's hand from him and stood, towering and ominous over his captive audience.
"So be it!" he snarled, his eyes snapping once again with ire. He took a towering, menacing step towards Raoul that swallowed up the ground between them. Meg fell back, terrified: he had never seemed so tall before; never had his elegant posture held so much of intimidation.
"No!"
Christine moved to stand in front of Raoul, spreading her arms across him in a futile gesture of protection.
"Please … please don't hurt him."
There was a tense silence, which was at last broken by Erik. He gave a barking laugh that did not sound quite true to Meg's ears. Was there almost a break in his voice; a sound edging on the side of grief?
"Very romantic, my dear. Very touching. A truly noble gesture. I fear, however, that caught up in your moment of heroism, you may have forgotten the consequences of such nobility."
Christine shook her head tightly. "No …" Her eyes closed in momentary grief. "I haven't forgotten. I will stay with you …"
"No!"
The violence of Raoul's reaction took all three of the other members of the tableau by surprise. His hand clamped down on Christine's wrist, dragging her away from her protective stance in front of him and forcing her away from him.
"No, do you hear me? I won't let you do this!" Forcing Christine behind him with one strong arm, he addressed Erik savagely. "She won't bow to your heinous threats a moment longer! She's going home. My life may be yours – but she is not." He threw back his head in preparation for the violence of Erik's reaction, and Meg cowered back against the organ, paralysed with horror.
There was a moment of horrified silence, in which the world seemed to be holding its breath; and then Erik let out a snarl of rage and rushed at Raoul. Meg sobbed and staggered impotently to her feet; and Christine freed herself from Raoul's restraining arm and rushed forward.
What happened next Meg was never quite sure. When she thought about it later, she thought that it was probably the shock of the unexpected touch of Christine's hand that had slowed Erik's arm enough to prevent him from breaking Raoul's neck on the spot; but she was never quite sure.
All she knew was that after Christine caught hold of Erik's arm, they stared at each other for a long moment in silent communication, and the resurfacing of the light of love in Erik's eyes almost convinced Meg that he had come to his senses.
Erik raised one hand to touch Christine's cheek, and this time Meg was sure that it was regret she saw in his eyes: self-castigation for having forced her into so cruel a decision.
But Raoul – brave and ill-advised in every situation – strained against the rope, and the chain of light that had been forming in the air between Erik and Christine was abruptly severed.
Erik took a curt step away from Christine and turned his back on her.
"Enough time, my dear," he said coldly, and Meg shivered at the ice in his voice. "Even a four-hour opera cannot allow for so great a delay between acts while the heroine makes up her mind."
Meg, seeing that Raoul was preparing to speak, ran to him and silenced him with a touch and a fervent plea into his ear. Erik saw her move and laughed bitterly.
"The two most beautiful women in this Opera House petitioning for your life, de Chagny; you have the devil's own luck." Raoul was silent; Meg reeled at the appellation; and Erik transferred his attention to Christine. "Time waits for no man, my dear."
The very dust mites golden in the candlelight seemed to hang in the air as Christine slowly turned to look at Erik. Meg clasped Raoul's arm as Christine took a slow step towards Erik, her eyes never leaving his face.
She raised one hand to touch the long scar running from Erik's forehead to where it disappeared beneath his hair at his jawline, the only scar on his face inflicted by another force than Mother Nature; and suddenly she drew back her hand and slapped him as hard as she could across the face.
Erik reeled from the blow; but before he could react, Christine had seized his shoulders and pulled his face down to hers. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed her lips to his and drew him close up against her, kissing him as though her heart was breaking.
Raoul and Meg stood stunned, and Meg found tears forming unbidden in her eyes. The shocked disbelief dissolving into overwhelming love on Erik's face told her more plainly than any words could ever have done that though she wait a hundred years, his heart could never belong to her: it would forever be the possession of the frail little girl standing before her in a too-long opera dress who suddenly seemed stronger than a thousand emperors as she tightened her arms around Erik and pressed her face into his shoulder.
As Raoul and Meg watched, aghast and agonised respectively, she lifted her face to him, and, looking deeply into his eyes, brought her lips to his again.
Meg watched Erik's eyes close, saw the tears slide out from beneath the misshapen eyelids, and realised that even now, he could not bring himself to touch her. One hand almost stroked her hair; the other hovered at her waist, hesitant, fearful.
It was Erik who broke the contact and moved away from her.
Christine remained standing, one hand touching her lips, tears beginning to stream down her face again. All at once she swayed and her legs crumpled beneath her; she sank to the floor in a cloud of silk and lace.
Meg rushed to her side. She did not, could not bear to look at Erik: a single glimpse of his face had shown her the terrible anguish darkening his eyes; and as she knelt beside her best friend and drew her into her arms, neither girl saw Erik burn through the rope that would free Raoul from its rough stranglehold.
Raoul was on the floor beside the girls in a moment, pulling Christine, limp and unresisting, into his arms.
"Please …" For the first time that night, there was no fight in his voice. "Please … don't make her do this. Take my life; anything … but not this …"
Meg felt, rather than saw, Erik's shadow bearing down upon them, and closed her eyes, unable to bear the grief imprinting itself on her friend's face. He seized Raoul's shoulder roughly and the Vicomte turned, shielding Christine with his body against the living shadow above him.
"Go."
"I won't leave her!" Raoul pulled Christine closer to him. "I won't let you do this!"
"Get out!" Erik's voice crescendoed on a peal of grief. "Take her and go; leave me …" His voice broke. "Get out!"
Raoul scrambled to his feet, pulling Christine up with him. Erik had turned his back on them and had sunk to the ground beside the organ, grasping the highly-carved body of the instrument for support, leaning his head against the cool metal.
His voice rose again, anguished torment made sound.
"Take her … take the boat … go!"
Raoul grasped Meg's hand and pulled her urgently to her feet.
"Come on."
He dragged the two women out of the room. Carried along by his frantic energy, it was not until they had reached the shore and Raoul released them to fumble desperately with the mooring of the boat that Christine looked back towards the lair.
Meg saw her hesitate, and then, as Raoul looked up from the moorings to usher the girls into the boat, she took a step back.
Raoul's eyes darkened. "Oh no. Christine, don't think it. Come on." He reached for her, holding the boat steady with one foot, but she shook her head and took a step back from him.
She slipped the ring that Erik had given to her off her finger and held it out.
"I have to give it back to him." Her voice was small but unwavering.
Raoul caught hold of her arm as she turned to re-enter the lair.
"Christine, are you insane?"
She looked up into his eyes. "Probably," she whispered. Tears filled her eyes, and before Raoul could stop her, she had pressed a desperate kiss to his cheek, and disappeared back into the labyrinth.
Raoul made to go after her; but Meg caught his arm.
"Not you."
Raoul looked ready to explode. "You're as insane as she is! Not me …"
"He'll kill you if he sees you in there again tonight. I'll go."
Without waiting for a reply, she hurried back into the darkness of the passage. Raoul stood perfectly still for a long time, dumbfounded. He wanted desperately to go back into that hell of death and drag Christine home with him, where she could be safe … but something about Meg's eyes when she had warned against it haunted him.
Almost the same expression Christine had worn when she had told him about the Angel of Music …
Raoul sat down slowly on the edge of the boat, feeling it tip under him slightly.
Who was this shade who possessed so many different personas? Angel of Music, Phantom of the Opera, composer, artiste … his own self-mocking moniker Angel of Death … was he any or all of them?
And how could one man be so gifted at disguising who – or what – he truly was?
Erik had not moved; he curled crumpled on the floor beside the organ, his fingers closed around the ornately carved supports, his eyes closed.
Meg saw Christine go forward to him in a rush, and at the unexpected sensation of her touch, Erik's eyes snapped open and his head came up.
Meg was not clear whether helpless joy or intense love registered first in Erik's eyes; he reached for her hand and a smile truer than any he had offered this past year lit his face.
"Christine …" Hoarse love sounded in his voice. "I didn't …" Christine withdrew her hand in confusion, and Meg saw doubt enter Erik's eyes.
"Christine, what …"
She held out his ring.
Meg saw Erik shrink before her eyes. He recoiled from Christine's touch, bringing one hand up to cover his face; and without quite being able to see through the half-hanging gloom, Meg was sure that he was crying. This quiet despair was somehow far worse than his violent fury of so short a time ago, and Christine appeared to feel it; silent tears were running down her face.
She held out his ring again, the innocent gold band catching the light of the candles in her hand. He reached out slowly, and took it from her. She stood, and turned as if to go; and he caught at her hand.
He rose slowly, unsteadily to his feet, suddenly seeming much less tall.
"Christine …" He reached out and almost touched her. "Oh, Christine, I …" He stopped abruptly, and the silence grew between them.
It was Christine who finally broke the silence. "Yes?"
At last he shook his head and looked away from her.
"It's nothing."
"No!" She reached out and caught at his hand, and Meg saw his head go back with pain at the unexpected contact. "Say it!"
He looked helplessly at her.
"I love you."
Christine bent her head, tousled curls falling around and obscuring her face. There was a long silence before she finally looked up and met his eyes. Her words, when she spoke, were agitated.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier? I …" She shook her head angrily. "You never told me! How was I to know?"
Erik made a small sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "I had thought it was obvious."
Christine looked at him, and gave a sob. "Oh, Erik …" She pressed forward into his arms, and in the half-light, Meg saw Erik's eyes close in pain as he pressed a kiss to her hair.
They stood that way, a single statue in the comfortable darkness of the lair, for a long time. Then Erik gently extracted himself from her arms and carefully pushed her from him.
"Go on," he whispered. "He's waiting."
Christine hesitated, but Erik nodded and she fled with a single backwards look.
Erik remained standing exactly where she had left him for what seemed like a very long time. It was not until Raoul's voice filtered through the candles and sea mist and Christine made some reply, both inaudible, that he swayed and sank to the ground, his fingers grasping at something that was not there.
He gave a gasping sob, and at last the tears came; he curled in on himself, rocking with grief, his beautiful fingers twisting into fists. Inarticulate sobs escaped him; and Meg winced at this display that was so far removed from the Erik she knew.
She crept out from behind the organ and knelt beside him. He did not notice her; and even when she reached out to touch his arm, he was so exhausted by the evening's events that his reaction was not the violence it would once have been.
He shied away from her touch, raising one arm as a defence against her.
Hurt rushed through Meg, and his subsequent words proceeded to reduce her to a state of grief only slightly less extreme than his own.
"Go … leave me alone."
Meg closed her eyes on tears. "Oh, Erik, you are never alone … I'm always here for you."
"You?" He laughed shortly and, for the first time, he looked up at her. "How can you have the gall to look me in the eye and tell me that? You brought him here … you showed him the way …"
Meg gasped at the unfairness of it. "Erik, that isn't fair! I had no choice … you could have hurt her."
Something in Erik's eyes changed, and before Meg even had time to feel afraid, he was suddenly on top of her and his hands were closed viciously on her neck.
"Hurt her?" He twisted one hand brutally into her hair, forcing her to look at him. "Hurt her? By God …"
Words apparently failed him. Meg whimpered, paralysed with fear.
"Do you know how easy it would be for me to snap your neck like a twig right now?" he asked, his voice low, savage with menace. His fingers splayed out across her throat, the yielding pliancy of her skin giving under his fingers. Meg could feel her breath coming fast, terror sweeping cold through her. In spite of the stories the girls told of him; in spite of the fact that she knew he had murdered a man, and more in a past about which he would never talk; in spite of the way Christine had grown pale and thin under the shadow of his watchful eye, she had never feared him: never once seen him as dangerous.
But suddenly now, with his body looming above her own like a great black cat out of the darkness, with his beautiful, tender fingers that were always so full of music and magic pressing down hard on the soft flesh of her throat, she realised quite how dangerous was this man she loved.
And she began to weep.
Slowly, she felt Erik's grip loosen, and then, with a horrified movement of revulsion, his hand was gone altogether, and he was no longer looming above her, but cowering away from her into the dark, a wounded animal going to ground. And she heard him sob; and suddenly she knew what terrible damage had been done in the desolate emptiness of the labyrinth tonight.
"Erik," she whispered, trying to put down the fear he now lit in her mind, and heard the rustle of his cloak as he scrambled desperately backwards away from her, all grace and stature gone in his terrifying despair. She reached out, and he drew his cloak up around his head, hiding himself, cowering away from her.
"Don't touch me." That voice was not his: rough with pain, torn with desolation, it could never have belonged to the man who had once been called the Angel of Music.
"Oh, Erik." She drew closer and knelt before him, a black shape barely distinguishable from the rock behind him, muffled as he was in his thick black cloak, and she realised he was shaking from head to foot. He recoiled from her touch, shrinking back against the rock.
"Please …" For the first time in all the years she had known him, a note of terrified entreaty entered his voice. "Please …" The rest of his words faded away and, under the shroud of the cloak, she saw him lower his head to rest against the rock, and felt a sob shake his body.
She reached out and attempted to embrace him, desperate to comfort him, to soothe his anguish; but he started away from her touch like a half-broken colt. He staggered to his feet and backed away when she rose to join him; and as she raised her voice in entreaty – "Erik, please" – he was suddenly gone, swallowed up by the dark of the passage.
Meg was left alone with only the dripping of water down the cavern walls for company.
A/N – No, this is not the end … I'm now taking bets on who – if anyone – will end happily. Any takers?