A/N:
Here is the answer to the cliffie, and yet another one, I'm afraid.
Please read, enjoy, and REVIEW!
Chapter 27: …Let No Man Put Asunder
-
Christine was spared one moment.
And in that moment, the calm before the storm, the moment between the ember and the blaze, Christine saw Erik's face twist into a horrible caricature of pure, unadulterated rage—far worse than his deformity had ever been—and she knew with terrible certainty that with one simple word, the hallucination of a distant memory, her idyllic world was to topple to irrevocable ruin.
Those eyes that burn…
There was fire in Erik's eyes now, a conflagration of fury, and Christine felt fear in his presence as she had not felt since the night of Don Juan. Yet even then, she had known that he would never harm her.
Tonight, however, the anger in his face was so terrible that she felt an insane urge to begin the prayer for the dying.
And then, she looked into his eyes, and behind the rage, she saw the glimmer of a tear, a sudden hopeless resignation, and she knew then that all was lost.
In that moment, her life mattered to her not a whit.
Her soul was already dying.
-
"Christine!"
Giselle went numb. Her mind, on fire with passion and filled with hope that should have been slaughtered long ago with her innocence, ground to a halt.
If Raoul sensed the sudden change in her, the switch from willing to simply compliant, he was too caught up in the moment to care.
Giselle's eyes slid shut against an onslaught of tears, and she prayed silently for the night to be over soon.
He had called Christine's name.
What had she expected?
What should she have expected?
Nothing more.
-
With a suddenness that stole Christine's breath, the storm broke.
Without warning, Erik lifted her halfway off of the bed and threw her forcefully onto her back, his hands gripping her wrists painfully and pressing her down into the bed.
"Say that name again, Christine." The dangerous calm in his voice, belied by the pain of his fingers digging into her arms, dared her to obey him.
Speechless with shock and fear, Christine could only shake her head.
"Damn you, Christine!" he screamed, and pain raged as fiercely as the anger in his voice. "You lying Delilah! Jezebel! Whore!"
Christine shut her eyes tightly against the accusation in his words, tears escaping from beneath the lids. She shook her head from side to side. "No, Erik, no!" she cried. "You don't understand!"
"I understand!" he roared. "You thought you escaped me! You thought Erik Couturier was a different man, even if he wore the mask! You thought by giving me a name and dragging me into the light of day, you could change what I am! I am a demon, Christine! A devil with an angel's voice, fallen straight into the pits of Hell!" His voice broke for a moment. "I thought I had found Heaven. I thought an angel had come to save me." The rage returned. "But you masquerade under a mask too! You are a demon too, Christine, and what I thought was Heaven is only a more terrible Hell!"
Christine tried to raise her hands to cover her ears, tried to form words of rebuttal, but her arms were still pinioned to the bed and her voice would not work, it was broken, and Erik was still raging.
"I am still Erik le Fantôme, Christine! And you will never escape. I'll always be there, inside your mind. But that's what you want, isn't it, Christine? I gave you a chance to leave and you wouldn't take it. You knew where you belonged, who and what you belonged to." He pressed his mouth forcefully down on hers, bruising her lips. "You are mine, Christine. Mine!"
Christine whimpered with pain. "Erik, let me go, please." she pleaded.
"Let you go?" He growled low in his throat. "You can leave me, Christine, any time that you wish. But I will never let you go. You belong to me. You belong to the night." He laughed insanely. "Did you think that I stole your soul, Christine? I stole nothing. You sold your soul to me." He released her wrists and Christine sobbed with pain, the sudden flow of blood to her numb hands more painful than Erik's death grip had been.
He ran his hands down her sides, and laughed when her eyes fluttered shut. "Yes, Christine. You belong to me."
"Erik…" she sobbed, knowing there was no chance of escape, knowing that if she tried to run he would kill her, that he might kill her anyway, and he would not listen, knowing that, even if he let her go now, she would never want to leave. She belonged to him. She had not betrayed him as he believed, but in that much he was right. She had always belonged to him.
He did not listen. Her thin, pleading voice flew past him like a whisper, and he laughed again when he pinioned her hands above her head and kissed her roughly, and her nails dug into his hands.
"You want me even now. You writhe and cry out for me to free you, but you would never escape, even if I would free you. You would remain a prisoner all your life, Christine, and you would be a willing prisoner, all the while crying out what a monster I am, but you would keep me inside your mind, and if I ever left, you would beg me on your knees to return!"
"Erik, please listen to me!"
"Listen to me, Christine! I am your teacher, I am your master, and you will be silent! Look over the final threshold, the bridge that you have burned, and know that there is no going back now! You have passed the point of no return, Christine, and you cannot hide any longer! Become a woman, Christine, you cannot be a child any longer! Learn to face up to what you have done! See me and know you are killing the only chance you will ever have for love! I am dying, Christine! You think you want your Viscomte, you think you want sunshine and laughter and picnics by a lake. That is a child's dream, Christine! You are no child, you are a woman, a woman of flesh and blood who sings like and looks as an angel, and that is not what you want and not what you love! You love the seduction in the darkness and the music we make. You love the dark shadows winding about you and the scarlet flames of passion. You love me, Christine! You proved it when you stayed behind for me! I once thought that perhaps, perhaps all was lost and it was not me that you wanted, not me that you loved, but then you stood on the stage and we sang together and I knew! I knew, Christine! And you must know, too! For God's sake, Christine, you must know!" His voice was ragged with screaming and pain and pleading, his face was twisted beyond compare, and he loomed over her now, staring into her wide and frightened eyes, his voice penetrating her reeling mind, and every fiber of him begged her to understand even as every fiber of him prepared to throw her from him.
"See what you are, Christine! See what your voice betrayed to me when first I heard you sing! You are passion, Christine, and passion is part and parcel of the music of the night!"
He laughed again, a slow laugh that both mocked and pitied her.
"Did you think you would ever escape me unscathed, Christine? Did you think that you could hear my music and not see what you were meant for in this world? Did you think that you would walk from the darkness and never hear the music of the night again?"
He bent over her, and the gentleness of his kiss was yet another moment, the eye of the hurricane and the momentary lull. The caress of his voice when he whispered in her ear chilled Christine to the marrow of her bones, and she knew with utter certainty that Raoul had been right. He would haunt her until she was dead.
"You sold your soul to the darkness, Christine. Did you think that you would not have to pay the price?"
-
Father Clare walked down the aisle of the church, his prayers for the evening finished.
As he walked past the back pews, a glint in the dim light caught his eye, and he bent.
On the floor lay a leather-backed prayer book, fallen open and lying as though dropped in some great hurry. Next to the book lay a beautifully carved set of ebony rosary beads, a turquoise and silver crucifix hanging from them.
Surprised that the boys who cleaned nightly had missed it, he lifted the book and rosary from the floor.
He recalled the young lady that had looked so much like Christine. She had carried these beads. He picked up the prayer book, hoping it might contain some clue as to who she was.
He opened it to the first page.
A name was written there.
Comtess Elise de Chagny
-
The lull lasted only a minute.
Erik threw Christine roughly away from him. He stood and walked to the window, his fists clenched at his sides.
"Get out."
"What?" Christine cried, incapable of believing him.
"Leave!" he shouted, still facing away from her.
"But, Erik, please, listen to me, you don't understand…"
"I understand!" He whirled to face her, and Christine shrank away from him.
Pain flared into his eyes at the knowledge that she feared him. "I understand more than you know, Christine. I understand that you fear me now. I understand that I love you, Christine, so much that it is killing me. And I understand that if you do not leave now, I will kill you for speaking that boy's name in my house!"
Christine flew from the bed, her heart in her throat. She pulled a chemise and a simple gown on, her fingers shaking as she did the buttons.
Erik turned to face her. "Christine."
She looked at him, and it was his turn to see, mirrored in her eyes, all the sadness of the world.
His voice was mocking as he held out his left hand to her, the hand on which was his wedding ring. "What God has joined together…"
A nameless fear rose within her. "Erik…"
Let no man put asunder…His voice rose to a painful crescendo. "I now put asunder!" He tore the ring from his finger and threw it at her, whirling to face the window again.
Without a word, she bent, picked up the ring, andturned to leave the room. Erik's voice called after her.
"When you lie in his arms at night, it will always be my face that you see in the darkness. It will be my voice inside your dreams. The darkness will haunt you until you are dead, Christine. Pray that it is God's hand and not mine that strikes you down."
She opened the door, tears still streaking down her face. "I love you, Erik." she choked out, hating herself for crying, for showing such weakness.
Erik only laughed coldly in reply, and managed one final jab before she shut the door.
"Give my regards to the Viscomte."
-
Giselle did not sleep that night.
Her hand lay in the empty space beside her, as she stared blankly at the ceiling and reflected on her folly.
"Christine!"
She longed to hear the sound of his steady breathing in the darkness next to her, longed to feel his arm wrap around her and pull her close to him in sleep. She longed to feel his breath on her neck and to wake in the morning to his face, to press a kiss to his lips and whisper "Good morning."
She would never be granted any of those longings.
The space beside her was empty, he had lain there for a few moments, caught his breath, gave her a lingering kiss and left for the comforts of his own chambers and his own bed.
A tear slipped down her cheek. What a fool she had been to think that a few weeks of comfort and tenderness might have granted her more than her lot in life. What a fool to think that the Viscomte could love her.
She had tried, in the past few days, to show him that she loved him. A gentle touch on the arm, a light kiss on the cheek, a flush of the cheek when he walked past.
And then, she had tried to show him this night. Her body meant nothing, she knew. But she had let her heart fill her eyes, and tried to show him without saying those simple words that she loved him.
She had given him everything she possibly could—her body, her heart…
Tears slipped down her cheeks and she whispered brokenly to the darkness:
"Tonight, I gave you my soul."
-
Christine stumbled from the house, her cloak wrapped tightly around her shoulders, tears still streaming down her face.
Fog hung thickly over the Paris streets, the glow of the streetlamps muted by the heavy mist. Christine could hardly see as she made her way onto the street.
Where could she go? Her first thought was to Madame Giry, but the ballet mistress's voice rang out suddenly in her head.
"Erik has found light for the first time in nearly forty years of a miserable existence. God help me, I will kill anyone who takes it from him."
No, she could not go to Madame Giry. The ballet mistress, knowing Erik and knowing Christine, had known that this day would come. Madame Giry had betrayed Erik in an attempt to circumvent it, had done everything in her power to see that Raoul took Christine from the dangerous, obsessive love that Erik bore Christine. She had told Christine, and Christine had not listened. She had believed that she could harbor her childish dreams while abandoning herself to a woman's passions.
"He loves you, Christine, and that will be either his salvation, or his damnation."
Madame Giry loved Erik. Whether she loved him as a mother or as a woman, Christine was not sure. But Christine knew that tonight, she would not find refuge with Antoinette Giry. She would see Erik's damnation in Christine's tear-filled eyes.
The spires of the cathedral loomed in the distance, and Christine saw there her refuge. The house of God had been her sanctuary after her father's death. Why could she not find consolation there now?
-
Giselle rose from the bed, and walked to the washstand. Numbly, she washed her face of the tears that had streaked it, and turned to where a skirt and blouse lay on the chair next to it.
Without assistance, she dressed, and silently slipped from her room.
A servant answered her summons, and, for the first time, she used her small amount of influence as Raoul's mistress.
She pressed a gold coin into the servant's hand.
"I need a carriage. No one else is to know."
The servant nodded.
"Where to, my lady?"
"The cemetery."
-
The rain began to fall.
At the steps of the cathedral, Christine slipped and fell. She lay prostrate on the cobblestones, her fingers digging into the cracks between the rocks as she sobbed.
In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came…"Why?" she cried, looking up towards the threatening gray skies. "Why must you take from me everything that I ever loved? You took my father and sent me an angel, and now you take from me my angel! Where does it end? When does it end?"
She rose to her knees, the rain falling harder now, streaming down her face and mingling with her tears.
"Do you see me, father? Do you see your angel? Do you see how far I've fallen? You promised me the Angel of Music! You never said that I would fall in love with him! You never said that you were sending me an angel in a demon's guise, an angel trapped in Hell! You never told me that I would become possessed by his song, that I would have to save him, and in so doing would become trapped in Hell myself!"
That voice which calls to me, and speaks my name…"Why, God? If there is any mercy in you at all, then tell me, God, why!"
She lifted her eyes to the tormented skies and screamed, "Why? WHY?"
-
And, in the small room where she had slept every night since coming to work at the Opera Populaire, Madame Giry woke and sat bolt upright.
"Only a nightmare." she whispered.