A/N: Sorry it is taking me so long to update. I will make an attempt to get another chapter up before I go out tonight but it's unlikely. Please forgive and stay with me… I'm looking for full time work now that university is over and it is taking a lot of my time.
Amber: Ahh, Philippe… we'll see about Philippe. Thank you for the compliments again. I found the hair cutting chapter tough to write but I think it turned out ok and I think it is necessary.
Modesty: Thank you for your reviews, as usual, they made me smile. I will try to update more regularly if you do!
Phantomandvampire: Thank you for the review, I appreciate it… I hope you stick with it and like how it progresses.
AngelofMusic: Of course, Erik needs to be happy again! But when that will be, if that will be, who knows.
Chapter 16- Memories.
The sun glowed red- orange on the horizon and Antoinette sat on the park bench in front of her house watching it set slowly, taking the light with it. The moon was slowly appearing behind her and she marvelled at its shape, it was crescent and glowing perfectly in the clear sky. Soon, it would be the only light available to some. She thought about Erik and Christine and it made her stomach churn. Christine had accused her of jealousy but it was hardly the case, what she could not deny was protectiveness over her friend, but jealousy it was not.
She had seen Erik safely from the dark catacombs of the Opera House that fateful night over two months ago. The mob descended on him rapidly as they followed Raoul's steps along the dusty corridors. They were lucky that Erik's anger had been him foolish, he had smashed many of the mirrors lining the walls, giving the crowd an easy path to follow. Erik had destroyed his own security in breaking those mirrors, the ones he had put up to fool any intruders. The mirrors had succeeded on more than one occasion.
She had seen the final confrontation from the corner of the room, hidden behind a stack of Erik's books. Raoul's throat trust up in a lasso, almost hanging from the ceiling. Erik's magnificence fooling the Vicomte, lulling him into a ridiculous sense of security. There had been no security. The boys sword had been no match for Erik's wit, his swiftness and before Raoul could even draw his weapon from his side the rope was around his neck.
Christine had looked utterly horrified, her face already streaked with dirty tears and splodges of misplaced make up from her performance. She had stepped forward and Erik's hand had risen and she had stepped back pleading with him to release her intended. The phantom, as he were, had found it amusing but she remembered the look on his face when his sense of humour diminished and in its place stood pure anger. Pure and total anger.
The argument ensued, the whole bitter row, the torrid words crumbling the atmosphere into a pit of eggshells, broken by clumsy feet. Erik had growled, low in his throat, as he threw his insults at the Vicomte, at Christine. They bounced off Raoul's shoulders as he retaliated with abuse of his own but Christine had been different. Antoinette remembered how the shadow covered her eyes and how Christine's face had fallen at Erik's onslaught. The event was ultimately childish in it's build up but nothing was childlike about the emotions, about the feelings inside all of them. Including her.
Christine had been angry at first, argued with him, berated him and then she had tried to reason with him as the realisation that Raoul could soon be dead bit at her throat like a vampire. As they stood there in the lake, knee high on Erik and washing around Christine's thighs, the building above them burned as if enforcing the rage which bubbled in its cellar.
You've past the point of no return.
His eyes set firmly up on her.
You deceived me, I gave my mind blindly…
Raoul or Erik?
Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you know, God give me courage to show you, you are not alone…
And then, Antoinette witnessed the single most spectacular thing she thought she would ever see. No, it wasn't Christine reaching out and holding Erik's dark and disfigured face between her palms. It wasn't the fact that she kissed him softly and stopped, and then kissed him again with more passion, more meaning. It wasn't that Raoul did not avert his gaze, that his eyes were welded to the scene before him.
No.
What was spectacular was that when Christine pulled away from him some moments later, Erik's face was full of an emotion she had never witnessed in him before, an emotion she didn't recognise from him. His eyes shone with the stars of a thousand nights, the tears streaked his cheeks, catching on his lip and dripped from his face.
And more spectacular still was that somewhere is his darkness he found the strength to let her go.