Chapter Summary: Erik extracts a strange promise from Andrew as they prepare to rescue Annalise. The rational parts of Michaud and Annalise meet for a brief moment. As Michaud completely loses hold his true self, four men fly through a dark night on a mission based on love and compassion.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Andrew awoke with a start. The room was brightly lit and he focused on the clock that ticked away on the mantle - one o'clock. Andrew placed an arm over his eyes, sighing and shaking his head. It was one in the afternoon. A thought slowly grew in his mind and Andrew snorted in disbelief - that arrogant bastard had slipped him something to make him sleep. What the hell was he thinking? As Andrew slowly sat up, running his hands over his face, wiping away the last of the sleep, the answer dawned on him - he had been made to sleep so that he would be rested and ready to go in but a few hours.
Somewhere deep inside, Andrew gave thanks for the gesture for it had been the quietest sleep he had experienced in nearly a week. There had been no nightmares. No replaying of the awful events that had brought him to this time and place. There had been no fears about leaving his sister alone in a strange country with only older cousins to watch out and care for her. He had not dreamt of gunshots and blood and screams. There had been no haunting vision of an empty future populated only by endless coffins. It had been a long night of being wrapped in the black warmth of undisturbed sleep. Now, though, as the day laid claim to him, Andrew found himself beginning to be lost - once again - in his fears.
He stood and walked over to the dresser where a pitcher of fresh water awaited him. Andrew splashed it on his face, keeping his hands covering his eyes, letting the water run over his face, down his arms, dampening the sleeves of the shirt he wore. Nightmares crept back into his consciousness, as he thought of Annalise, alone in the dark, unable to escape the storm that raged overhead. Andrew willed the thought to the back of his mind where it rested with all the other nightmares he had accumulated. Someone would be paying for what had been done to this girl he loved. It did not matter how they would pay or who would be collecting the payment but someone needed to answer for what had been done; Andrew knew exactly who would be doing the paying.
Andrew mentally shook himself and raised his head. He looked at himself in the aged mirror that hung on the wall and was shocked at his appearance. How many days had it been since he had shaved, had eaten more than a few bites, had more than a few hours of uninterrupted, drug-free sleep? Andrew felt stupid for asking those questions of himself, how much worse was it for Annalise? As he turned to go, Andrew noticed a shadow shape imprinted into the faded paint of the room and remembered what kind of a place this had once been.
He walked over to the shape, placing his hand over the shadowy cross, offering a prayer unto heaven. "God," Andrew whispered, "it matters little what happens to me but, please, let Annalise be alive and let us return her to those who love and wait for her." He gently patted the imprint of the cross before turning to get ready.
Twenty minutes later Andrew had dressed in the clothes left for him, finding them a bit large but serviceable. He had slipped on the riding boots he had been wearing when he had first arrived at this strange place and he was now anxious to get started. All he could think of as he walked through the dusty corridors of the old monastery was that by the next morning Annalise would be home safe with family; his fate mattering little in comparison. Andrew walked into the entry hall and heard voices coming from behind the closed door of what he had come to know as the study. He walked over and stood quietly, listening.
"Surely you do not mean to go to her?" Tomas was asking.
"I do not know what I mean to do beyond returning Annalise to her mother," Erik replied.
"She has a father, too," the soft answer came.
"As I am all too painfully aware."
Andrew could almost imagine the shake of Erik's head.
"I admit I do not know the person you were all those years ago," Tomas said, "but I know the person that you are now. Do not allow yourself to take advantage of the grief these people suffer in an attempt to reclaim the feelings that once existed between you and the Comtesse."
Andrew heard the sound of footsteps and quickly retreated to the other side of the entry hall. He watched as the door opened, Tomas standing there, still facing the room. "How would Mademoiselle feel towards you if such a thing were done?"
Andrew could not hear an answer from where he stood.
"I go now to prepare," Tomas said as he turned on his heel. He crossed the hall and walked out the front door, never seeing Andrew standing in the shadows.
Sighing deeply and taking his life into his hands, Andrew walked through the hall and into the study. He saw Erik bent over his desk, head in his hands. Andrew took a perverse pleasure in loudly closing the door. "Was it truly necessary to drug me?" he asked.
"Watch your tone of voice with me, boy," Erik warned softly.
"Or what?" Andrew wondered.
Erik deemed the response unworthy of answer.
"I know why you did it," Andrew said softly, "and now that I am done being angry at your actions, I wanted to thank you."
"Do not be so quick with your thanks," Erik replied. "My motives are never altruistic." He finally turned to look at Andrew. "I only wished to have a few hours of silence without your constant questions."
They stared silently at each other for a long moment.
"Why do you do that?" Andrew asked.
Erik raised an eyebrow at him. "I do not know what you could possibly mean."
"That!" Andrew nearly yelled. "Why is it the moment someone says or does something nice to you, your response is always sarcastic or rude. Why can you not just accept the fact that there are actually people in this world you can look past your face to see what lies inside?"
"There is nothing inside for anyone to see," Erik replied, his eyes beginning to glitter dangerously.
Andrew was not about to back down. "You have a heart and a conscience even if you will not admit that they exist. There is a good man who lives within you and one day he will get out and you will not be able to put him back in."
Erik glared at Andrew. He drew a deep breath and let it slowly, his fingers unclenching. "I am aware of my heart," he muttered darkly, "but do not make the mistake of giving me a conscience. One most possess a soul in order have a conscience and I have neither one nor the other."
"Perhaps not," Andrew reluctantly admitted. "I still thank you for allowing me to sleep but you could have asked instead of making the decision for me."
"I am not used to asking permission from anyone."
Andrew crossed the small room to look out the window. "So I am discovering."
"I am glad you understand the reason I did so," Erik had to admit. "You prove - yet again - that you are not an imbecile."
"Thank you." Andrew continued to look out the window, refusing to rise to the bait.
"Andrew," Erik addressed him, "I need you to look at me for there is something I must ask of you."
Andrew turned around and sat on the edge of the window seat.
"I am going to extract a promise from you and you must swear on whatever it is that you hold holy and dear that you will honor it."
"Without even knowing what it is?" Andrew asked.
"You must trust me on this," Erik replied, a smirk crossing his face. "You have a conscience so you will know if this is the correct thing to do."
Andrew thought for a moment and nodded.
"When we get to the place where Annalise is being held, your only job is to get her out of there and back to her family. You must promise me that you will not do anything to the man who has her."
Disbelief entered the room as a viable, tangible presence.
"I cannot make that promise!" Andrew said between clenched teeth. "You do not know what you are asking of me!"
"I beg to differ," Erik replied in an even tone of voice. "I do know what I am asking of you and I know how difficult it will be to restrain your emotions." He paused for a moment. "But you must do as I ask."
"Why?" Andrew demanded. "You tell me why!"
"The day you killed that man in your youth was the day you dipped your hands in blood but it is blood shed by a child who has not shed any since. You know your darkness and do not act upon it." Erik sighed. "I, on the other hand, have blood that literally drips from my fingers and I am intimately acquainted with my darkness. If you hope to ever start a life with Annalise, I would not have you go to her with that man's blood on your hands. I tell you this from my own experience; such a thing will surely destroy you from the inside. Annalise will see this dark thing within you and it could destroy her, as well. You need to go to her with an open and clean heart, no secrets and no shadows." Erik grew dark. "I have no such hopes for my life and will gladly destroy this man for what he has done."
"Have you thought this through?" Andrew shook his head. "What if something happens to you? What if something happens to me? He will not let Annalise go without a fight."
Erik placed two fingers on the bridge of his nose. "Andrew, listen to me and consider my words. If something happens to you, I will still be there to deal with this man and Tomas will ensure that Annalise is returned to her family. Should something happen to me you will still return Annalise to her family and Tomas will deal with that man. Either way you will not have his blood on your hands. Do you understand me? You cannot have his blood on your hands."
Andrew chewed on his bottom lip, thinking, indecision warring with reason. "Yes. All right," he finally replied. "I shall do my best to honor this promise you extract from me." He flashed a warning look in Erik's direction. "Do not expect more from me than that."
"It will do," Erik told him.
"This will not do," Michaud said to himself as he unlocked the door to the room where he kept Annalise and entered. "It just will not do."
"What will not do?" Annalise asked. She sat on the bed, legs straight out in front of her, empty eyes staring at the man standing in the doorway. "What did I do wrong?"
He was fighting a losing battle with the angry stranger who lived inside of him and Michaud needed to have Annalise awake so that he could talk with her before he would not be able to speak with her anymore. It broke his heart to see the emptiness in her face and to know that part of him was responsible for it being there. He knew the emptiness and feared it more than the anger. His own emptiness - the nothingness - brought the evil that did things even the anger could not do and those were the things that haunted his conscious moments. That was what frightened him - the length to which the nothingness would allow the evil to accomplish its ends. Michaud walked across the room to sit on the bed. He reached out for Annalise and fought down the anger when she did not react, in any way, to his touch.
"You did nothing wrong. You have never done anything wrong," he began. "I need to tell you something ..."
"If you want me to beg or to crawl, I can do that," Annalise said in a quiet monotone.
Michaud fought back the urge to shake the girl. "Listen to what I have to say first, please." He saw Annalise slowly nod her head. "I want you to know that I never meant any of this to happen. I never meant it to go this far but I could not stop; they would not let me stop. All I meant to do was to add you to my conquests. I knew it would hurt you but then I did not care. Then Andrew," Michaud closed his eyes and exhaled hard, keeping a tenuous hold on his true self for a bit longer. He opened his eyes again. "Then Andrew entered the picture and I found I could no longer control the anger. That was the point when I lost control and you were drawn into this nightmare." He reached out a gentle hand to Annalise's face. "I am so sorry. There are not words to tell you how truly sorry I am."
It was there for a brief moment, a tiny flash of human emotion in Annalise's blue eyes. "I forgive you," she whispered, leaning into the hand that touched her cheek. The humanity was gone in one breath leaving only a single tear to trace down her cheek.
The anger receded a bit further, screaming its protest. "I wish I could turn back time so that this would never have happened." Michaud took his hand back. "I wish I could find a way to return you to your family."
"I cannot go to a place that does not exist," Annalise told him as she shrugged her shoulders. She gave the man seated next to her a strange smile. "We should leave France and find a new place that we can call our own." Annalise drew her knees up and moved closer to Michaud and rested her head on his shoulder. "We can always go to the islands that you visited. No one will ever find us there." She ran a painfully thin finger up and down his arm.
"You do not understand!" Michaud exclaimed as he took Annalise by the shoulders, turning so that he could face her. "This cannot work! I never loved you!"
Annalise interrupted him by reaching up to place her hands on either side of his face. She drew his head down so that she could whisper in his ear, "I can make it work."
The warmth of her breath on his ear, the feel of her in his arms, the promise she was offering was all too much for the rational part of his mind to handle and Michaud surrendered control. "You want to make it work?" the angry stranger asked.
"Yes," Annalise answered in an empty voice as she drew back to look into dangerously glowing eyes.
"Then make it work," the anger whispered back as it grabbed her face, kissing her roughly. It drew back and stared into a nothingness that was all too familiar. "Make it work!" it growled.
"As you please," Annalise whispered, her gaze distant and unfocused, "as you please." She drew close, returning the kiss, wrapping thin arms around the anger's neck, drawing him close as she lowered them both to the bed. Annalise kept her arms around the anger as it raised its head to look at her.
The anger stared at the girl beneath it, unable to notice the fact that she was staring through it and at the world beyond. It reached in for another kiss. And another. It began to place kisses along the contours of her neck. It felt the arms about its neck fall away. The anger looked up and finally noticed the emptiness of the still girl lying with it. There was no movement, no emotion, no life - the girl had become a living, broken doll. At that moment of realization, the anger slipped away and Michaud regained control.
Michaud laid a gentle hand on Annalise's cheek. "I will find a way to fix this," he said quietly. "I promise."
There was no response.
Michaud stood up, leaving Annalise lying on the bed, staring blankly at the wall. He walked across the room and out the door, leaving it open for the first time in almost a week. He moved slowly through the hallway, each step measured and calculated as reason struggled with madness. Michaud walked down the stairs and stopped at the curve in the staircase. He looked at the niche cut into the wall, seeing the dust-covered wooden planks that rested there, the sight slowly beginning to turn red as the anger regained control.
In the room that he had left, Annalise heard the shouts and the dull thuds as wood pounded upon wood. The thuds began to echo her heartbeat, stirring a chord buried deep within. Annalise curled into a ball, placing her hands over her ears. "Maman," she prayed silently.
Please, please, please, please, the silent prayer echoed to the hoof beats of the horse that Andrew rode.
Andrew did not know how much time had passed for he dared not take his eyes off the road in front of him to check his watch. He did know it had to have been a least a few hours since they had left the monastery for the sky was slowly beginning to take on the lavender hues of summer twilight. He heard the sound of the chaise behind him, the snorting evidence of the two powerful horses' wish to have their heads and be set free. The thought passed his mind that Regine must be skilled, indeed, to control such incredibly strong animals. Tomas was with Regine and would take charge of the horse that Andrew rode when Annalise was once again in his arms.
"Enough of a trot," Andrew said as expert legs felt the muscle movement of the chest between them. He gave a quick glance to the rider beside him, cape flaring out behind.
Erik returned the glance with a nod of his head. "You are the horseman."
Both men tapped stirrups into their respective horse's flanks.
Please, please, please, please, the unspoken prayer matched the increased speed of the horses and carriage as they raced through the deepening night.