2. Eyes that Could Not Lie
The summer moonlight spilled its silver strands through the ancient grate and poured them out over the vast underground lake that filled the lower levels of the Opera Populaire. The silver beams made their wavering way, stealing quietly across its surface until they reached its opposite bank. Stealthily, the iridescent beams climbed up the bank until they at last touched the shoulder of the dark, brooding man who sat there with his back turned to the night. As Erik felt the whisper of moonlight on his skin, beckoning him, he turned his face to look upward through the rusted grate into the warm, starlit night above. There was something about this night, he thought to himself, something that stirred his blood and filled him with ill content. This night seemed like a living thing, calling him, enticing him, daring him to come and be part of its song. He listened intently, expecting to hear something, but heard nothing. Erik sighed and rose nimbly, pacing restlessly along the shore of the lake. His dark form in its relentless pacing coupled with the uncommon grace that always characterized his movement made him seem as some dark, exotic, jungle cat stalking the confines of its cage.
His steps slowed as he thought over the events of the past few months. For days after he had returned to his broken kingdom beneath the Opera Populaire, he had neither eaten nor slept, but had simply sat staring out across the lake, as if his eyes still followed the boat his soul had left him on. Then, gradually, he had begun to pick up the pieces of his once again shattered life and move on. After all, he thought bitterly, it was not the first time he had been rejected by someone whom he loved, and as always he had survived. He had decided long ago that it was by some cruel curse that he was bound to live on through every torturous ordeal that life handed him, surviving most without a scratch, only to face the next cruel blow and wretched suffering that the Fates would lay upon him. There were days when he cursed the heavens and begged to be removed from this world of pain and rejection. And then there were days like today, when the most perilous emotions of all clouded his haunted mind - hope and love.
He knelt before the water and just for a moment, allowed himself the dangerous luxury to think of her - her delicate frame; her auburn curls cascading down her back; her innocent brown eyes searching, pleading, begging, confused...those eyes that could not lie. His mind drifted back to the fateful night of Don Juan Triumphant. He remembered those eyes as they had sung to each other in front of all of Paris. There had been so many jumbled emotions in those eyes that night - fear, anger, hurt, not least of all...and yet there had been others playing there as well. Those few minutes were etched into his memory forever and as he replayed them in his mind he remembered what else he had seen there in her eyes that night - passion, longing, ...love? She might have begun that song with the intention of betraying him, but in the end, the honesty of her eyes had betrayed the most guarded secret of her own heart instead.
He straightened now as his mind began to race. Not only her eyes had betrayed her, he realized, but her voice as well - filled with a passion he had never heard from her in all the months under his tutelage, and her body - quivering and yet thrilling in his touch, rising to meet his harsh, demanding fingers. And then later, her kiss. Erik closed his eyes and tears shone on his dark lashes. That kiss that had been seared into his very soul. That wondrous kiss where anger and pity had somehow melted into absolute oneness as two broken souls touched and fused into one whole, complete being, for one fleeting moment.
And then she was gone.
Erik sighed. It didn't make any sense. She had to have felt in that kiss what he had felt. Deceive himself as he might have in the past, he had felt the wave of emotion that had passed over them, threatening to drown them both. In those moments, something irrevocable and utterly powerful had transpired between them. And when he remembered her eyes as she stepped away from him, he thought of the words she had sung of him on the rooftop months before:
"Yet in those eyes, all the sadness of the world...
Those pleading eyes that both threaten and adore..."
Erik moved thoughtfully to the exact spot where he had stood as he had watched her sail away. As he stood there once again, lost in thought, he touched the ring he always wore on his little finger. The ring Christine had returned to him before she had left. And yet, he mused, it was not his ring. It had been, at one time, Raoul's engagement ring to Christine. He thought again as he twisted the ring absently round his knuckle. She had never worn this ring on her finger for Raoul, only around her neck. He remembered vividly when he had viciously removed it at the ball that night. He remembered the harsh, possessive words he had spoken, "Your chains belong to me!" So what did it mean, he asked himself, when he had released her of those chains, only to have them returned to him in the form of this ring? His mind swam along this dangerous new line of thought. And in the boat that night, even as she lay with her head on the young viscount's shoulder and sang her song of love, she had looked back - just once, and it had seemed for a moment, as if she were singing just for him once more.
Again he sighed, bending down by the water with his head in his hands. Or was he simply deceiving himself, as he had so many times before, into believing what he wanted so badly to be true? And yet, those eyes...While his own mind might deceive him, he knew Christine could not. After the years he had spent worshipping her from afar, memorizing her every word, every expression, he knew her to be incapable of deception. Anger yes, confusion yes, but never deception.
He straightened abruptly and paced once again, his brilliant mind racing in echo with his heart. For once logic and his love for Christine, unclouded by pride and anger, had led him to the conclusion he had so hoped he would come to - Christine did care for him. In his selfish arrogance, he had never dreamed that she would come to love him out of the goodness of her own sweet heart. Instead of trusting in Christine's goodness and in her willingness to offer her love freely, he had relied upon threats, seduction, and violence in a vain attempt to extract it by force. Now like a lightning bolt from the heavens he realized it had been there all along despite his deplorable behavior - pure and constant, but fragile and frightened. How must she have felt, loving a man who murdered and threatened, stamping about in fits of self-pity and rage, and then suddenly proclaiming his love for her? What choice did she have for her own sanity, but to choose the safety and innocence of the viscount's loving and selfless devotion. She had shown her love all along. Aside from his childish and manipulative pleas, he had yet to truly reveal to her his love.
Lord in heaven! He had not even revealed to her his name! He had asked, indeed demanded that this angel see and love the man beneath the monster, when she knew not even that man's name. He had shown her only the monster, and yet she loved the man. He dropped to his knees, his heart rent asunder with humility and thankfulness at the unbelievable and utterly undeserved gift she had given to him. He vowed then and there, to a God he had for so long believed was deaf to him, that he would spend every day for the rest of his life earning that which he had by some unimaginable grace been given. Maybe it was not too late to claim that gift. Erik's heart thumped like it would explode from his chest now, but he felt a lightness and a hope like never before.
As he rose slowly, his eyes were drawn upward once more to the beckoning night sky beyond the ancient grate. Tonight, on this warm, expectant summer evening, pregnant with promise, when the moonlight had called him out into the world, he would find her. He would tell her of his love with no threats and no manipulations. He would stand before her as a man, not as an angel or a demon, finally daring to be himself, unmasked before her and trusting her to accept him that way. He would even give her his name.
He took great care as he dressed that evening in his usual impeccable fashion. As he turned to leave, he paused before one of the few unbroken mirrors left in his residence, and hesitantly pulled aside its cover. He closed his eyes as the golden cover fell to the floor and then took a deep breath and opened them warily to survey his appearance. His eyes traveled uncertainly across the unfamiliar reflection in the glass. The man that stared hesitantly back at him, did not seem the monster he had dreaded he would see there for so long. Deep blue-gray eyes framed by long lashes; taught smooth skin stretched over a strong jaw; broad, square shoulders, narrow hips and long, lean legs. He gently replaced the mirror's cover in surprise. Aside from the right half of his face, he might even have been called a handsome man. Funny, he mused, he had always imagined that somehow his deformity had spread like a disease over his entire body, making him the hideous creature he saw in his head. Because he had never dared to look in a mirror, he had never known otherwise. Somehow the idea that someone might be able to truly love him, demons and all, had given him the courage to see himself for the first time.
Erik gently picked up a rose from his dressing table. He shook his head slightly, as a hint of a smile played on his face. She would make a man of the Phantom yet. And with that, he melted easily into the waiting night.