Disclaimer: It hasn't changed in the last 24 hours. Or, as my cousin said, "Own? You? Don't be silly."

Of Knights and Dragons

Chapter VI: In Fairy-Tales

"It is when we try to grapple with another man's infinite need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun."

(Joseph Conrad)

"What is this dream of yours, Christine?" Raoul said with all seriousness, taking her arms in his hands. "When did you have it?"

"Last night," she said, giving the simpler answer first, "though I have only just remembered. I… I always dream of Him, you know," she said, unable to erase the guilt that tinged her voice. When Raoul said nothing she hurried on. "Remember, how I called His name just before I woke? That, too, was part of the dream. There was a wall…"

…the wall stretched away, until it made infinity seem small, defying the imagination—enrapturing it and seducing it. Christine was an infinitesimally small speck pinned against it, an insect clinging to it, a howling wind pressing her flat against its ice-cold surface, unable to breathe. There was a voice on that wind, one she could almost recognize, cold and despairing.

The world tilted and the wall became the floor, chillingly cold. Darkness swooped down from the reaches of this world, hiding everything from sight, restricting her universe to a few paces in each direction, she saw as she lifted her head. The floor rocked gently beneath her—she was lying on the floor of a boat.

Then, without moving, she found herself seated, as it is in the peculiar way of dreams. Candles, walls, and memories drifted past in an arcane phantasmagoria, sliding past her stationary position as the world slowly spun under her. There, the windy day at the cottage by the sea… her father smiling as he played the violin… Meg prancing on the stage… the rose… the lair.

The last came into focus, and she realized she was drifting across the surface of the lake, as if the boat were guided by ghostly hands. Candles flared in the darkness, circling, not quite illuminating the Phantom's haunt, half-clothing it in darkness. Christine leaned forward, straining to see. The place seemed empty. Where was…

"Erik!" she screamed, seeing him at last, or at least she thought it was he, that dark shape sprawled across the ground, unmoving… Erik, Erik, Erik, the walls echoed mournfully, sighing the word back to each other, whispers trailing into silence.

The boat was gone and somehow she was on the shore, in the manner of dreams, racing with all her will towards him. She was running—running more slowly than a fly in amber, trapped, helpless, an insect crystallized into a perfect, glittering, useless diadem.

But from her new position she could see him perfectly. He was lying on his back on that petrifyingly cold stone floor, hands folded on his chest, divested of his black cloak but as impeccably dressed as ever, as if the outer shell could veil the horror of his figure. The mask reclined, as it always did, on the right half of his face—as she remembered it from a thousand minutes and dreams—but behind it the penetrating blue eyes were closed.

"Erik," Christine said, tried to say, but the amber held her close—sweet amber, that substance that is the lifeblood of dreams. She desired desperately to go to him. If he knew, if he heard, he did not move, made no sign. There was no heartbeat in his neck, to gentle rise and fall of his chest. The air was cold… so cold.

Then the hovering, watching shadows laughed at her; eyes gleamed, golden like cats' eyes, like Erik's eyes in darkness; but they stared out at her from a creature of nightmares. It was all in black, as if robed in the gossamer silks and velvets of night, flowing ethereal garments summoned from a netherworld beyond man's vilest thoughts. A vast cloak swept out from those shoulders to the corners of the Earth. In one hand was a sword, gleaming and cold; in the other was a rope. A black mask and scarf hid the entirety of the face except for those hateful, wretched, burning eyes, twin stars of liquidated gold. But the voice—it was His voice, for she would know it no matter what guise it came in, quoting in terrible phrase that line which Epicurus had made immortal: "Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not." The darkness laughed at her fear. The specter with the terrible voice towered over the fallen Erik, filling so completely the space the Phantom had previously dominated, as if it had slain him merely by removing all the air, suffocating his genius to an ember and the ember to ashes.

Great wings spread out from those powerful shoulders—wings pinioned and feathered so black they shone. The Angel of Death stood over its child, unmoving, and laughed, a hollow sound that echoed up from uncounted depths, telling a slow and solemn tale of emptiness. There was alienation in that laugh, a sense of eons of being alone, a bitter remonstration, an acceptance, that chilled Christine more than the clinging strands of death that had always lingered in the Phantom's lair. In that chill, Christine at last found her voice: "ERIK!"

…and woke, sun shining in her eyes.

Raoul looked down into her open, honest blue eyes, staring up at him with a mixture of fear and pleading. "Christine," Raoul began, searching for a kindly way to sat it. "It was only a dream, Christine, nothing more."

Despite the gentle words, something wild rose in her eyes. "But it isn't, Raoul," she insisted. "You know how my dreams of Him are. They are real. They happen. They're as much… as much true as anything I have known! He makes them so!"

"And if they are," Raoul said, "if…" he took a deep breath, turning his face away, hating himself for what he was about to say. "If it is true, it still wouldn't matter, Christine. We left him and his illusions behind. We fled from the terror and the intrigue and the fantasies…"

Something akin to horror lit in Christine's eyes. "You would just leave him to die, wouldn't' you?" she said in a quavering voice barely above a whisper.

"Christine," she remonstrated, then abandoned his gentle words at the fury in her eyes. "God, Christine, he tried to kill me!" the Vicomte yelled. "Do you understand that? He kills! Buquet, Piangi… have you forgotten them? By France, Christine, what kind of innocence do you claw around you? Do you realize what a monster that man was? I will never understand how we escaped so simply as we did. I could have—he would—God, Christine, I almost lost you! And even if you and I had survived, but without that love, I don't think I… I could have kept on living. Alone." He let go of her arms as if the contact hurt him, turned away, raising one hand to defiantly streak away the tears of anger that threatened to fall.

"Oh, Raoul…" and there was such love in Christine's voice that he wanted to hold her in his arms and forget all of this. But he couldn't.

He couldn't. "Christine, this is not a fairy-tale. There aren't any happily-ever-afters. There are no noble, shining knights to rescue pretty maids from evil dragons. There's no fairy tale love that lives forever. If it's seemed that way between us sometimes… it is because we are lucky, you and I. Ours is an untainted fire. I thought… Christine, when you chose me, I lived and died in that moment. I was happy—God, it seems so awkward to say that word, but it's true. I had thought… I had hoped… you could be… happy… with me."

He lifted trembling fingers to her cheek. "That is why I could never grudge you the dreams, you know. There was—is—a part of me that twists in torment every time you call his name in your sleep of innocence. But I can't change it. Maybe… maybe I've been blind. Maybe I was only deluding myself, and you really…" he closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. "…you really, in the end, just love…"

"you," Christine said, shushing him with a finger to his lips. "I love you, Raoul, no one else."

He looked down at her through a veil of tears he could neither banish not explain. "Then why?"

She leaned against him, her hand toying with a lock of her hair. "I don't know," she whispered. "But I cannot forget him. Each night, I sleep, and he comes—I don't call, but he comes, and I do not have the strength to send him away. I… I already betrayed him once. I can't do it again. I feel… I feel as if he survives on the mere memory of me, and without me, he will die. I shattered him once, Raoul, and I can't do it again. I can't be the reason he dies… I just can't…"

"I understand," Raoul said, stroking her hair, thinking that perhaps he actually did, or at least that he could come to, in time.

"Raoul, go to Paris for me." Christine murmured unexpectedly, resting her cheek against his chest. She felt his stroking hand slow. "Please?" she entreated. "Go to Paris and help Pierre and Raphael find Uriel. You don't have to look for Erik or… or anything… just go stop this Angel of Death. Raoul." She looked up. For me…? she mouthed, but did not say the words aloud.

Raoul managed a tremulous smile. "I suppose," he said at length, "I can play the part of the knight again… for one last fairy-tale."

Her smile was almost worth it.