One heart's darkness
Disclaimer: ...
Erik: Malori? They are waiting for you to tell them that you don't own me!
Me: They know. But what the heck, ok, so I don't own Erik, he owns me, as we have previously established, and I don't own anything else related to POTO. You happy?
Erik: Yeah, that was ok.
Me: By the way, Nicole Gruebel says hi.
Erik: Oh, hi, Nicole! How are you?
THANKS to my reviewers, BUT... I need more! I'm addicted! I want to have 100 reviews by the time the tenth chapter comes along!
Also, I am surprised myself at the direction this fic is taking. It is writing itself, it's almost scary. Erik and Madeleine have been a little too soft so far, and Christine too whiny. But, I don't want to keep you from it any longer...
Chapter Six
The three adults settled into a comfortable conversation. Two girls' voices could be heard laughing from the nearby room and Erik and Christine shared a smile.
The comfort was destroyed rather quickly, though, as another alarm sounded, which made Erik jump worse than the first one.
"Someone is inside the torture chamber!" Nadir said, shocked.
Erik leapt to his feet and opened the wall panel to be able to look through the two-way mirror into the chamber. Christine gasped at the familiar sight of the man standing in the room, panting in the heat and patting the walls for an opening.
"Raoul!"
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Erik's swift fingers opened the torture chamber and the Vicomte de Chagny staggered into the study. He fell to the floor, panting, but neither Erik nor Christine made any move to help him, so Nadir pulled him up and then pushed him into a chair.
"What are you doing here?" Christine attacked him the minute he was seated.
He looked up at her, calmly, and replied, "Although you might have forgotten, Christine, Julie is my daughter as well, and I was worried. I know the death maze down here, and you think I was just going to wait for you to bring her home?" He stood up again. "I'm quite tired of you behaving like you are the only one in a difficult situation here, Christine!"
Erik was leaning against the mantelpiece, his graceful fingers twirling a long, unlit taper candle. "I have to say, to my displeasure," he said, "that I agree with the Vicomte. It is your decision, my dear, but it's not just your life that is going to be affected. You'll have to reach a conclusion, and soon, or one of us is going to go insane."
Christine turned away from them both. "You expect me to be so much stronger than I am. Just as you did eighteen years ago. What I want is to get both my daughters, leave Paris, leave France and most of all leave you two! Maybe then we'd all be at peace. How can I choose?"
Raoul sighed. "You have to let your heart decide."
The ensuing silence could have been cut with a butter knife. What did cut it was a bloodcurdling scream from Madeleine's room. The two fathers were first to reach it and when they burst through the door, they came upon a gruesome sight.
Julie stood pressed against the wall, where she had been shoved and was held by Madeleine, whose long and thin fingers were wrapped tightly around her throat.
The mask lay discarded on the floor and the older girl's already deformed features looked even more distorted in a grimace of hatred. Erik ran over to them and, as gently as he could, pried his daughter's fingers apart and away from the other girl's throat. Julie almost collapsed with relief, but was held up by her father.
"What happened here?" Raoul asked harshly, "What did she do to my child?"
Madeleine disentangled herself from her father's embrace and retreated to a corner of the room, where she curled up in foetal position.
"It wasn't her fault," Julie protested, to everyone's surprise, "I took her mask off, after she told me not to. I shouldn't have!"
Madeleine peered through her fingers. "Go away, all of you," she said weakly, "I want to be alone."
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Christine refused to accompany Raoul and Julie back to the mansion and Erik threw them all out of the house with a few very harsh words, so she wandered the corridors of the opera alone.
Memories assaulted her and she couldn't find peace, no matter how hard she tried to keep her mind off the past.
Raoul had been right, she realised, she was acting as if she was the only one concerned here. She had not been thinking about the two men, and, even worse, her two daughters.
It was incredibly unfair, but she couldn't find the heart to think of Madeleine as her beloved child, she was so much like Erik that all she could see in her was a competitor in the quest for Erik's love.
That was the one decision she had come to: she did love Erik, more than anything.
In an attempt to get as far away from the source of her problems, she climbed the many stairs to the roof of the opera house.
There she found that another had had the same idea.
She nodded briefly at Nadir, who returned her gaze darkly.
"So, you have done it again!" he remarked bitterly, "only this time, you're making everything worse. Bravo, Mademoiselle Daée," his voice was sarcastic as he used her maiden name.
"I didn't exactly plan this, Nadir," she retorted.
"No, maybe not. Still, I'm warning you this once, Madame la Vicomtess, should you hurt them again…"
"I have no choice but to!" she yelled, losing her composure. "What do you want me to do? You have no idea how I feel! You don't know what this situation is like for me! This girl is supposed to be my daughter and all I know about her is that she hates me. My husband stole my child from me and has been lying to my for the entire duration of our marriage. I want to know my older daughter, I want to be a mother to her, yet I feel threatened by her very presence! My younger daughter needs me yet I can't give her that because I would go mad if I couldn't be with Erik! So there you have it! I choose Erik, does that make you happy? I LOVE ERIK!"
Her words echoed in the chill air. Nadir managed a weak half-smile.
"I will be happy, madame, when I see you tell him that! And when I see Madeleine's reaction to it! I don't think you know…well, how could you know… but her, how can I say this, paranoia… has become worse than Erik's ever was."
"Paranoia…what a word for it!" Madeleine emerged from behind one of the statues, her gaze calm and the distorted features once again covered by the mask.
"I thought you wanted to be alone?" Nadir asked her and she nodded.
"Yes, I did. It seems we all came to the same place to seek solace in solitude. Now, Uncle, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to my mother alone."
The Persian shot her a worried glance, but left, shrugging his shoulders as he went.
"He has grown old," Christine observed.
"Well, the past years have been trying on him, too," Madeleine replied, "after all, it was he who got my father off his morphine addiction, and he helped him take care of me."
A light breeze blew over the roof and tossed her hair and her skirts. The white mask seemed to blend with her pale skin in the dim light. For a moment, she looked almost normal, until she turned her head again and her face was cast into shadow.
The skies were grey and heavy rain clouds were hanging over the city of Paris, like a blanket ominously threatening to suffocate all life if the actions taken that day were not the proper ones.
Christine cleared her throat.
"You wanted to speak to me?"
Madeleine nodded. "I heard what you said. And I have also reached a decision. I used to long for a mother, especially after seeing you with Julie. Now I think I should consider myself lucky. Since I don't want you as my mother anymore and you don't want me as your daughter, it's only my father we fight over. Madame la Vicomtess, consider this," she took a step closer, "a declaration of war. If you try to take my father from me, who is the only one I have left, I will make sure you suffer as I have suffered, everyday of my life! You wouldn't want to wake up finding that your only remaining daughter has had an accident, would you?"
"You wouldn't dare!"
The mask hid her expression, but Madeleine's mocking laughter made her mother shiver. "Don't think she would be the first to die at my hands. Or the first innocent. When the world hates and shuns you, it is easy to develop a contempt for its inhabitants. Papa, Nadir and Meg are the only people to look upon me without fear. I thought you would be one more, but you are no better than the rest of humanity."
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The massive wooden door shuddered under the relentless pounding of Christine's slender fists, and when Meg Giry opened, her expression was frowning, but quickly softened at the sight of her friend.
"Christine, you should have come sooner!" she said happily as she ushered her inside the small flat. "For the past two years we have only met at the opera. Mon Dieu, Christine, I understand my mother now! Being ballet mistress is hard work! Those little brats, they never…"
Christine stopped her babbling effectively by slapping her lightly on the mouth. She was so furious she stammered as she said, "You… you knew I had a… you knew about Madeleine! Why? Why did you know about my child when I didn't?"
Meg's face paled. "Oh…"
"Meg, how could you know? How could you not tell me?"
"He made me swear not to," Meg replied weakly, "besides, you were already married to the Vicomte, what right had I to meddle into your marriage?"
"I can't believe this," Christine said with a whimper, "is there anyone I can trust?"
Meg regarded her seriously. "So you met her, then? And it did not go well."
"She is insane, Meg. She will be a danger to everyone."
"And what do you want to do about that?"
"I don't know. But I will not allow her to harm Julie… and I will not let her keep me away from Erik!" She walked to the window that overlooked the street, which was deserted. The torrential rain that had started a few minutes ago had chased everyone back to their homes. Her eyes followed the street to the Opera Populaire.
"I had hoped this would end without anyone coming to harm, but… if it is war you want, my daughter, I cannot refuse you!"
A/N: So. Hmm. War. Well... Not what I expected at ALL! Who is writing this story, anyway? It's not me! I'm innocent... or maybe not. Hehe.
So, too few people have read my one-shot 'Ayesha'. I want some more reviews on that, or I might refuse to continue this story! Well, isn't that a threat?
If these demands are ignored, a disaster beyond your imagination will occur!
I remain your obedient servant
P.F.A.