The Angel of Music

by aeipathy.

Notes: Thank you to everyone who has left me such pleasant reviews! I'm sorry for the delay in updating this chapter; I've been giving a lot of thought to the things that I intend to make happen in the future of the story, so I did some rewriting and such to make certain that I wasn't mixing myself up. Who knows, I may still be lost in my own confusion, but oh well, I'll try my best.

Part Four

His voice was filled with petulant anger, but rather than sounding like a protesting child his indignant fury, his confusion at her repeated reaction to his request, made him almost fearful. As he crouched, perched on a protrusion of fallen rocks and cement bricks that had toppled from the wall of the catacombs, his eyes seemed to glow animalistically in the darkness; only the thin flow of water between them, like a tiny stream separating her bank from his, reflected the light cast from the torch that had been installed in the wall — like so many others throughout the basement chambers of the Opera Populaire — near the cobbled ceiling.

"Let me go."

Giry felt the blood and color fleeing her knuckles as she tightened her fingers around the fabric of her skirts, then winced; that hand, her right, was covered with a small number of painful cuts and scrapes. While creeping through the catacombs the night before, descending to bring Erik another stolen mask from the costume chambers (none of them were to his liking, it seemed, and none would ever be), she had slipped on the slimy surface of a rock and had thrust her hand before her for support — however, she had only succeeded on landing upon it, crushing it beneath her on a number of shattered rocks.

The cuts were barely anything, of course; they were only painful, only an irritation, but she resented her own clumsiness, and in some ways, Erik, for requiring her constant presence whenever she could get away. It had not been his fault that she had fallen — but somehow it was unfortunately easy to feel a tiny niggling of contempt for him nonetheless, particularly his lack of sympathy to see her hand covered in small bits of bandages. He had suffered so many injuries in his life, many of them far worse than her cut hand, that he was unintentionally insensitive to her apparent pain.

"Only for a day or so. Only to breathe the air again. I can assure you I won't run away."

"Must I tell you again, Erik?" Her voice was quiet but inadvertently chilly. "There is no place for you there. You know what will happen if anyone should see your face — they still talk of your escape from the gypsies, and as well of—" She stopped abruptly, noting how he bristled at her mention of his crime, and moved on.

"And even if they do not remember — even if someday they should forget — please keep in mind your face." She softened, as she always did, when she was forced to discuss the topic of his deformity. It was not something either of them enjoyed discussing. "All of the evil and hatred in men is brought out by your face. If you should ever leave these chambers, I would fear terribly for your safety. I do not think myself presumptuous to predict that you would be killed."

Erik was silent. He was no longer seething, but he seemed helplessly frustrated still, unable to make his point properly, lost in the confines of his own impairments — it would take him some time, Giry guessed, to catch up to her as far as human communication and conversation went. Often he could not find the words, or he would stumble over them — he would become embarrassed of what he had to say and so cut himself off, or unable to remain face to face with her for an extended period of time (mask or no mask), he would cover his face, bow his head completely, or turn round and look the other way.

"I feel stifled down here," he said, and his voice echoed softly and desperately off the dripping walls. "How long has it been?"

"Only a month, Erik."

"At least when I was with the gypsies I was made to travel — I could be in the sun from time to time." There was a small scuffling sound from the other bank, and his fingers, resting lightly on the boulders and bricks, seemed to be pulling at pebbles and scratching about absently. "I would be caged but at least I would feel the sunlight."

Giry's breath flowed through her lips stiltedly, and she felt a pain in her chest: pity for him, as always; the urge to stand over his bent form and envelop him in her arms; and also gnawing guilt. This feeling was a new birth — it had appeared suddenly and without warning after perhaps a week into her position as Erik's caretaker, and at times like these it would return strongly, almost strongly enough to break her. She would attempt to rationalize her culpability — she had no choice but to guard him, to protect him, to do whatever was necessary, for it was only in his best interests — it was for his sake. He had begun often to protest, to demand that she sneak him upstairs from time to time — sneak him out through the way they had come, perhaps, out into the night, when no one was around, when no one would see — but while his overly romantic idealism had flourished unknown in his mind during his imprisonment by the gypsies, Giry was often forced to confront him with the unbending hardness of the truth.

"I'm sorry, Erik," she murmured, bowing her head. Her voice was weary, but not unkind. "Why is it so difficult to cherish your home? Why must you want more?"

Erik seemed not to be listening. "I feel as though I might die here," he muttered, turning his head slightly to the side. "I've known darkness before, but never for so long — never like this. Here, I wake up every morning in a darkness as black as what I always imagined hell must be like."

"You call this hell?" She leaned back against the slick surface of the wall, taking her weight off her tired feet. "This place, which is your refuge? The only place on earth you might be able to live in peace, Erik?"

His eyes flicked up and once again seemed to gleam in the light, beacons through the carved holes of the thin, rough wooden mask he was wearing — temporarily, he had told her shortly when she had brought it; it was not enough, not what he wanted.

"Peace," he breathed. "I am not so sure if this is peace." Her lips seemed to tighten and he continued without looking at her, wincing as though he would not be able to bear hearing her words — it was plain that her unending efforts to aid him, and her constant failure to do so sufficiently, caused him as much guilt as his pain and his pleading caused her. "Please, Mademoiselle Giry, do not think me ungrateful. I am grateful — I will always be grateful to you for what you have done. I owe you my life." The sound of his tongue sweeping out over his lips was scratchy.

"But while these cellars are vast I feel trapped inside them. I know I will never be able to leave and I am plagued constantly, terrified, by the thought of it. I fear sleep because I know my rest will be black with nightmares — always the same nightmares, mademoiselle, and I do not dream of my past — I do not dream of the gypsies. I dream of my future, of a future spent and wasted in the bowels of this Opera. I dream of walls and doors and rock and water, never windows, never the sky, because these things are lost to me and I am beginning to forget the way sunlight feels on skin. The silence is enough to choke me with its numbness. I do not fear death, mademoiselle, I have not for the longest time, but I fear this silence, a silence that swallows up my sighs and my calls — I fear this darkness, that is not destroyed by candles and torches."

Giry's shoulders slumped, her brow creased. His words weighed upon her heavily, like the boulders upon which he was perched. Internally she felt twisted like barbed wire. Why could it not be easy? She had been so convinced that giving him the expansive, unknown cellar chambers as his home was the best thing she could have done; the safest, and really the only, option. How was it fair, that he was now subject to more pain? She felt weak with shame — she had not done enough, and he was still forced to feel grief.

"I have failed," she said, her voice hushed nearly to the point of a sigh. She caught her breath, though she had barely moved since they had stopped in the middle of the flooded corridor. "I have not saved you after all."

Slowly lifting her eyes, she saw he had covered his face, the mask, with his hands. "You did save me," he whispered, and said once more, "I owe you my life."

He paused, as though to continue, but then murmured, "Forgive me, Mademoiselle Giry; I should not have tried at this again."

She merely shook her head, unable to agree or disagree with him.

"If I may, I think I will go practice my letters," he said hesitantly, looking down at his hands, which he turned from palm to back and to palm again. "They still do not live up to yours."

The following week, Giry brought two presents to give to Erik. The first puzzled him quite a bit, as it was unfinished and, according to her, would require his patience and participation for its completion — in addition to some supplies, she had brought a peculiar bucket of what appeared to be white plaster.

"This is papier mache," she had explained. "With this I should be able to make you a mask, one that is yours and yours alone. It will be your face, Erik."

The second present was composed of a number of smaller gifts: a sheaf of papers, upon which were penned several short bunches of blank parallel lines; more ink and quills; old, dusty books full of already completed lines of music; and finally, a battered case which upon its opening revealed a bow and an ancient, barely-functional violin, recently restrung. They would not notice its absence in the music rooms, she assured him; it was quite old and she had been forced to pull it from a closet and restring it herself. She confessed that she had played a bit of violin in her childhood and could still remember the essentials of the craft; using all these things, she would give to Erik her knowledge of notes, of sharps and flats; she would teach him music...

"...to conquer the silence," she finished softly.

To be continued.

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