You thought me gone forever. Well, here I am, beating the horse… I did promise it would be finished. And here it is… fear not, it shall not be abandoned again. The rest has already been written.

Now, to close. And thank you to my reviewers, who have prodded me on into finishing this, even though I'm in college and should be working…!

Of Knights and Dragons

Chapter XXII: the Trial of Socrates

"Hence the result of the discussion, as far as I'm concerned, is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy…"

(Plato: the Republic, Book I)

It was a hall as suited to Kings and Queens. It sprung high in all its stone Gothic glory, intricate workings on every pillar and cornice, mosaics of saints and angels in silent benefice. Dim candlelight flickered from the altar before which she knelt in silent, despairing prayer.

The demon Raphael stood at her back, his arms folded over his chest, a feral grin playing across his features as he witnessed her silent distress. Night crept towards dawn, and with dawn came death in this holy place. Her death. His grin widened, and she shivered as his hand clamped on her arm and pulled her to her feet, shoving her back against the cold stone of the altar.

His eyes drifted down over her figure in a suggestive way as he pressed up closer to her. She could smell his breath, hot and fetid, and turned her face away, sickened. He leaned forward and said, in a low voice but with a hissing edge that carried all throughout the nave: "So it is you and I, is it little angel of Raoul's?" His laugh seized her muscles in fear and disgust simultaneously, in a way she hadn't felt since she saw Erik's face. The memory made the queasiness in her stomach grow.

Raphael continued his taunting. "Ah, well, dearest, you have until dawn. We have until dawn." And he smirked as she caught his meaning. He would not dare… "But wouldn't I," he said, his eyes gleaming with eagerness and despise. "Right here, on the altar… how ironic… why, I would remember it even when I am in—"

"Hell?" Suggested a second voice, this one not whispered, but said loud enough to ring up and down the broad reaches of the church. There was an edge to it even despite the idle tone, and the pure musicality of that single note made her think that the owner of the voice could have surely sang the note as spoken it—perhaps he had; where had she heard such song in a voice before as this…?

Raphael spun away from her slightly, his gaze lancing down the nave. Halfway down the church, in the center of the aisle, between the rows of dark and wooden pews, he stood. Christine imagined, for one wild fleeting moment, that an Angel stood there, an Angel with black wings so vast they smothered the rest of her sight—but no, that was only the shadows cast by the flicker of the candles flanking the altar. But his eyes were right, the same gold behind the black of the leather mask that she remembered from her dreams, and the whisper escaped her lips unbidden.

"Uriel…?"

The man took another step forward, his grace so perfect it was painful for her to watch, but paused when Raphael raised a hand, an eyebrow lifted quizzically. Christine could barely see the dark Angel's jaw move as she spoke, so vast was the shadow enshrouding his perfect, sanguine form. "I think Lucifer would be highly amused by that encounter, monsieur, don't you?" Uriel went on, the malicious gleam of gold in his eyes. "I wonder what would amuse the Master of Torments more. Your exquisite pain when he let me have command of your punishment for such a deed as you contemplate, or my own internal disintegration, agonized and dissatisfied that I could not make you suffer enough, not if I mastered all his arts?" The Angel smirked, and the white flash of his teeth was visible, startling amidst all that darkness.

Then the golden eyes met hers, and she trembled from head to toe with anticipation and fear in one. "I fear you mistake me, madame," and his tone scorched her blood with acid fire. "I do not know of this 'Uriel' of whom you speak, except as a Biblical reference. The fourth Archangel, the Angel of Death. I suppose he and I shall make acquaintance soon enough, as will the rest of this world. Forgive me if I remind you of him, but my name is Erik." The angelic voice assaulted her ears, captivated her senses, rendered her helpless in its musical throes; her breath caught, refusing to come steadily, and she barely even heard the words.

Reason forced its way through her senses. Uriel had exposed himself too soon. He was wearing a sword, she saw, and something of rope was wrapped around the sheath—a lasso, perhaps?—but he was a good twenty feet away or more. He had given away his position before he was close enough to do his work, and it would all be for nothing—Raphael had men everywhere, and now she was going to be the death of him also—oh God, it looked as if she would be joining the two of them in Hell.

Then the Angel moved, one simple eloquent gesture that tore all her reasoning to shreds that fluttered from her fingers. The figure raised one arm, his right arm, straight out and at the level of his eyes. Candlelight gleamed on the intricate silver-worked steel of the pistol, gleamed on the crest emblazoned with the fanciful workings of the letters R de C.

Raoul…

"Step away, good sir," came the deadly silken voice, and the arm never wavered. There was the gleam of gold, a twin set of catlike eyes, casting back the light like no man's eyes ever could. Angel's eyes, and Angels could not die. Christine repeated the words over and over in her mind, a mantra to protect her from the evils of the world that closed in as demons, claws gladly extended to tear her fragile soul to shreds.

Somehow it had never occurred to her that the recluse haunting the opera house would ever take up such a weapon.

Raphael, though, just raised his hand; and from the shadows of the columns lining the nave to either side the remainder of the Parisian Knights appeared, their own pistols to hand, their focus on the dark figure in the center aisle. His aim, though, never wavered.

"You have what you want," Uriel hissed. "Let her go." Raphael laughed, knowing that the man would never fire, not if it endangered Christine; and if the man shot him, then the Knights would kill her. He read that knowledge in Uriel's eyes.

He read it in Uriel's, but he did not know Erik, and so was totally unprepared for the man's next motion. His arm retracted fast as lightning, and then he was pressing the barrel of the gun to his own temple in the most iconic suicidal gesture ever to grace the motions of men. His golden gaze burned across the intervening distance. "As I said, monsieur," the Angel pronounced in his intoxicating voice. "I know what you want. Let her go."

Christine was abruptly propelled away from the altar. Stumbling, she caught her balance, and started walking, in a daze, as quickly as she could… she wanted nothing more to get out of this Hell in Heaven, and find Raoul, and be safe again… her steps slowed as she got closer to Uriel, and dimly realized that he was only a man, but exactly as she had remembered him in her dreams, down from the immaculate turn of his collar to the unblemished white leather of the mask… she slowed, wanted to stop, wanted him to look at her, anything… but his eyes remained fixed on Raphael, and he did not so much as turn in her direction.

She bowed her head and left the church unaccosted, unable to reconcile the hot tears dripping down her face. To thee to we cry, poor banished children of Eve… to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears…

She turned to look back, once, and though the image blurred through her tears she remembered it forever. The clatter of the de Chagny pistol as Erik tossed it aside; the dark shapes closing in, first with weapons trained on him, then lowering in contempt when he made no effort to resist; the way hatred echoed in their movements, their laughter as they took pride in the way their physical blows destroyed the angelic idol of a man who had willingly surrendered himself into their midst for her sake; the way Raphael looked up, just once, and met her eyes with a triumphant gaze.

His voice rose one last time from the circle of men that surrounded him, in a heavenly and forceful cry, as Socrates did to his accusers. His first words were lost as they pressed in on him, bent on punishing his physical form with their physical blows… but then his voice rose high enough to fill the church with an Angel's cry, and Christine ran, the sound of it ringing in her ears.

"And as I must abide by my award, let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated—and I think that they are well."