Author's Note:
This chapter is a bit shorter than the last, and basically is setting a few things up.
To Bleeding Rose: Don't worry, there isn't going to be any kind of romantic connection between Erik and Giselle. He's compassionate towards her because he sees a lot of himself in the life she's had to deal with and the way people treat her, but he's not romantically interested in her. This is NOT an E/OW story.
Enjoy, and please review!
-
Chapter 33: The Scars That Can't Be Healed
Christine had forgotten what it was like to cry herself to sleep.
She remembered in the morning when she awoke, her throat clogged with tears and her hair mussed, her eyes reddened and sore, her head aching. There were small half-moons where her nails had bitten into the palms of her hands, and though she could not remember any of what she had dreamt, she knew that they had been restless dreams, some of them nightmares.
She dressed in a simple gown, her hair left loose except for the flyaway bits, which were pinned back. She looked much as she had a year ago, when all this had begun, unless one looked into her eyes. There was no longer the idealistic, carefree look of a young girl in whose world all is well, but the careworn tiredness of a woman who has seen and felt far too much for her sixteen years.
She looked at the date and amended that.
Seventeen. In the agony of the past few days, she had missed her birthday entirely.
A knock sounded at the door, and Madame Giry entered, looking apologetic.
"Messieurs Andre and Firmin wish to see you in their office, Christine."
"Whatever about?"
"The new Season, Christine. They have not forgotten Erik's offer to let you continue at the Populaire, and with the refurbishing nearly finished, a new opera will begin casting soon. La Carlotta has not returned, which leaves you in the position of diva."
My lifelong dream, and just when I am to achieve it, there is nothing I desire less,she thought ironically. The last thing she wanted to do was perform again for an audience that would remember every bit of gossip that had circulated, sing again when her angel was gone.
Everything in her screamed that she should shake her head politely and send a message to the managers saying that they would need to advertise for a new diva.
"I'll be down in a moment, Madame."
-
Silence reigned in the lair when Giselle awoke.
She was loathe to move at first, so soft and inviting were the silk sheets and velvet comforter surrounding her.
When she did move, there was none of the discomfort of tight lacings and sharp stays that she had expected, and when she slid from beneath the sheets, she saw that she wore only the lightweight silk chemise that had been beneath her dress.
She was torn between surprise and gratitude that he had thought of her comfort, and shock at his audacity.
But then again, the chemise covered nearly as much as her dress did, and a good deal more than the gowns she had worn at the brothel had.
It was dreadfully cold in the lair, and gooseflesh immediately broke out on her arms and legs when she slid out of the bed.
Her foot brushed something soft, and she saw that he had left a thick robe near the bed.
Such thoughtfulness on the part of a man that Raoul had painted to be an unfeeling monster surprised her.
He was sitting at the organ when she stepped out of the small room, writing furiously on a piece of paper, and when he turned to look at her, she saw that he still wore the mask.
"You needn't wear that, you know. It must be dreadfully uncomfortable."
"If you saw me without it, you would not be thinking of my comfort any longer, mademoiselle."
"I already have."
His eyes widened in shock.
"You were not wearing it when you accosted me in the cemetery. I saw your face, all of it, and it was not your face that frightened me."
This haunted face holds no horror for me now. It's in your soul that the true distortion lies.
He ripped it suddenly from his face. "You would prefer me like this, mademoiselle?"
She took all of it in for a moment, the perfection on one side, the twisted flesh, pulsing veins, lopsided nose and sunken eye on the other, and there was no tremble in her voice or change in her expression when she replied: "Yes."
He said nothing, only stared at her with an almost comical expression of astonishment.
She took the mask from his hand and flung it into a corner. "It is better to wear your scars on your face than on your soul, monsieur Fantôme. The world sees the scars on your face and may try to reject you for them, but they are there, and as long as you insist that you are human, too, they must eventually accept you, scars and all. But when you wear your scars on your soul, then the world sees you, and they do not know, and they do not understand why you are the way you are, and so they reject you for things that they do not understand. But in the end, it is not their fault, because they cannot see. The world cannot be blamed for what they cannot see."
"Well spoken, mademoiselle. But what of a man who bears scars on both his face and on his soul?"
She looked him in the eye and spoke softly. "He finds someone who can see past the scars upon his face while healing the scars upon his soul."
-
Christine was in no mood for a grand tour of the rebuilt opera house. That was, however, precisely what Andre and Firmin had in mind. They showed her the new dressing rooms and the refurbished dormitories, the gilded staircase and the new tile in the foyer, the polished mahogany floor of the ballroom and the grand balcony.
They took her down each of the aisles of the theater, pointed out how well the stonecutters had salvaged the statues, and proudly examined the enlarged wings and backstage.
There was a new chandelier, too, grand and glittering above the aisles of red-velvet seats.
Finally, they returned to the office, where, in the presence of Madame Giry, they discussed with Christine her contract.
"You will be the leading soprano, and as such, you will receive all of the privileges and salary accorded to La Carlotta. Of course, we expect that, with you, our nerves will be somewhat less strained."
Christine smiled faintly at that.
"We are aware, of course, that you are, at present, estranged from your husband. You are given the option of appearing on the programmes as Daae or Couturier, whichever is your preference. Madame Giry wishes you to stay in an apartment close to hers, and we have acquiesced. The Viscomte de Chagny is, at present, still the patron of the Populaire, and we trust that meets with your approval?"
Although a touch miffed that her managers should know so much about her private affairs, Christine knew that it was necessary if she was to stay within the walls of the opera house. She had no desire to live alone. She nodded her assent, and, when the papers were pushed towards her, signed in the appropriate places.
Tomorrow the new choice for an opera would be made, and a poster with her face and name would be displayed. L'Epoche would have an article and an advertisement, and her life at the opera would begin again.
And still Erik did not know where she was.
None of it meant anything without him.
-
"How can you truly understand?" he whispered, his hand automatically coming up to feel the ravaged skin on the right side of his face. "Your face is perfect, Giselle."
The formality was gone again, swept away by his shock at the aplomb with which she accepted his deformity, but she did not notice.
"I would to God that I possessed your face, monsieur! Beauty is as much a curse as ugliness, it seems to me, when it is bestowed upon those who have no use for it. I am beautiful, monsieur, I know it, and what has it earned me in this life? Nothing but a pittance for a living, earned in a filthy room being visited by a dozen filthy, nameless men every night. It is not hard to see past your scars, monsieur, if you look with the right eyes. There is no one to heal the scars upon my soul."
She looked away. "I would rather be whole inside and bear a hundred stares because of a marred face than be as I am—beautiful, but so twisted of soul that I fear sometimes there is no healing for me."
"But what do you do," he mused, his voice so faraway all of a sudden that it seemed he was not speaking to Giselle at all "what do you do when there are scars upon your face that the world will not accept, and you are afraid to make them accept, and there are scars upon your soul infected so that they poison all of you, and the only one who was ever able to look upon your face and at the same time heal your soul is gone because, for a moment, you let that poison overtake you, and it destroyed everything?"
He was on the verge of weeping now, and Giselle felt her heart constrict as he dropped his head into his hands. "I poisoned her, too, Giselle. I infect everything I touch, destroy everything that I love, and I blamed it on my face, on the horror that God saw fit to bestow upon me, but then she came along, and she showed me that it was not my face at all, but my soul, that I had let my bitterness about the world's treatment of me poison what good was left. She was the only goodness I had, the only light, the only beauty, the only love, and I destroyed her, too!"
Giselle winced. "But she…she cannot be dead?"
He shook his head. "Not dead. But gone, and I do not know where, and even if I did, it would do me no good. She is afraid of me now, and I do not think she will ever return of her own free will. Perhaps she has found the boy by now, and gone away with him. He will make her happy. God knows I never could."
Giselle flinched, and he looked up, apology in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I had forgot that you loved him. Perhaps he will come for you."
"No," Giselle replied, and this time it was her turn to speak in a faraway voice. "No, I do not think so. He never saw Giselle, but Christine. If he has found Christine, he will think of me no more."
-
When Christine retired that night, it was to a different room, one adjoining Madame Giry's. She had not told the ballet mistress about Raoul's kiss, only that the night had gone well and she had received her answers.
From Raoul, perhaps.
For herself, the answers were as unclear as always.
She tried to put aside the darkness with thoughts of her new place at the Populaire, and of how happy Meg had been to hear that she was returning. Her childhood friend had been as bright and optimistic as always.
She had tried to question Christine on Erik, but Madame Giry had shushed her and sent her off to bed, and Christine was grateful for it. There was no way to explain violence, shouts and blood without painting him as a monster, and no matter what he had done, Christine could not see him as such.
All she saw was a broken man who still could not trust, and perhaps never could.
The pain of their separation after having been so close was almost too great to bear. She lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, missing his arms around her and his breath against her neck, his whispered words in her ear and the security in his embrace.
She had never thought that she would feel safe with him, but she had.
She feared that she might never feel safe again.
A wiser woman, she mused, would go with Raoul. A wiser woman would never have signed a contract that bound her to stay in Paris, where Erik no doubt still was, where he could be watching her from any of a hundred places, where her life might be in danger. A wiser woman would have listened to the urgings of her heart and gone away, as far away as she could get.
She wished her father were there to tell her what she should do.
She fell asleep to the promise of fitful dreams, and as she hovered in that no-man's-land between waking and sleeping, she thought she heard a soothing melody coming from somewhere in the opera house, as she used to hear when she had first come here.
But perhaps it was only her imagination.