Author´s note: Thanks for all the reviews and welcome back to HPROXMYSOX! I´m glad you found your way here again and hope you´ll catch up soon. If you ( anyone of you, really) have questions, I´d be happy to answer them.
37) He´s the earth and heaven to you
Christine didn´t stand up when Erik knocked at the door of Meg´s room. It was neither impoliteness nor anger that made her remain sitting – it was pain. By walking here without help she had clearly overexerted her ankle. She could feel a throbbing and also had the impression that it was swollen.
Yet the pain in her ankle was nothing compared to the pain in her heart. She had not only ruined their friendship, but also probably lost the best singing teacher she´d ever have. If she was lucky, Erik wouldn´t throw her out of the opera entirely. Maybe she could be given a place in the back row of dancers. After all, she still needed to earn a living.
The problem was that she didn´t want to give up the role of the ballerina. She had fallen in love with it head over heels, and although the idea of being on stage with Erik was terrifying, she had also been looking forward to it. For a little while she could have pretended that he really meant her with those words of love.
A second knock at the door, this time more urgent, made her jump a little. "May I come in, Christine?", Erik called. She noticed in relief that his voice no longer sounded hollow, just slightly anxious. Did he assume she´d be in here, doing something to herself? "It´s your house…", she said rather coldly. Erik regarded this as a ´yes´ and entered the room.
"You look terrible!", they both exclaimed the moment they set eyes upon each other. "I´ll get you a damp cloth to wrap around your ankle.", Erik told her, staring in shock at her injured leg. He went to the dressing table and poured water from a large porcelain jug onto a towel. Doing this he muttered: "Why did you have to leave? How is your ankle supposed to heal when you don´t give it enough rest?".
"Would you have preferred me to stay?", Christine wanted to know. "Would you have rather sat there, not speaking a word to me, till morning? It´s – Ah!" She groaned as he carefully removed the bandage and replaced it with the towel. "Thank you.", she whispered. "That´s much better." Seeing him open his mouth she quickly asked him: "You can say whatever you want, but can we do something about your hand first? It´s much more important than my foot. After all, you´re a composer and have to write things down all the time.".
Erik looked down at his hand in surprise. He had clumsily tied the handkerchief around it, so the girl shouldn´t be able to see the injury anymore. But now he noticed that there were dark stains on the formerly snow white cloth. "Oh yes. I also think that´s necessary.", he told her. "If only I knew where the – Where did you find them?", he asked as Christine triumphantly showed him a pair of tweezers. "In the bedside table. I stumbled over them while searching for something else.", she explained.
He took off the handkerchief, revealing that the piece of glass was still there. "Let me do it!", she said. All other cuts had stopped bleeding, so she´d probably be able to care for the wound without feeling sick. She thought that this could be her only chance to get close to him again.
For a minute she worked in silence, but never quite managed to get the little intruder. It always seemed to escape from her. Erik watched her patiently, suppressing groans or good advice. He was certain that even though his right hand wasn´t as skilled as the left one, he´d probably pulled out the piece of glass by now. Yet Christine was so determined to help him that he couldn´t bring himself to snatching his hand away from her.
Instead he asked her something that had been on his mind ever since the end of their conversation. "Will you still play the ballerina?" A moment later he gave a yelp of pain. The girl had been so surprised that she had slipped and pushed the pair of tweezers right into the flesh of his palm. Now the deepest cut was even longer.
"Do you really mean it?", she whispered, oblivious to the blood trickling onto her lap. "Well, I didn´t say it because I wanted you to elongate my life line.", Erik remarked, dabbing at the wound with the handkerchief. "Ah, there it is!" He pointed at the piece of glass, which had been under the skin Christine had just cut open. Finally she could remove it and wrap a fresh cloth around the hand.
With both of their injuries being tended they could focus on talking, she sitting on the bed and he on the chair next to her. "I really want you to play the ballerina.", Erik assured the girl. "You´re the best female singer, and I like your way of interpreting the role. Besides, whoever gets the part has to come down here and practice with me. Do you think any other girl would do that, even if I allowed it? I´ve heard Ariane; she seems convinced that I eat little children for dinner every day."
"It´s not as if I didn´t like the role…", she said, smiling about the praise and the joke. "But do you really want to spend so much time with me? Wouldn´t you be afraid that I might do something… irrational?" "You´ve been in love with me for months, and so far the most irrational thing you´ve done was hurting your leg.", he muttered, smiling as well. "The only difference is that now I know it. So why should I be afraid?"
Christine pretended to consider her options for a while, but she had already decided. "I´ll play the ballerina.", she told him. "But I… I don´t think I should see you all day long. Could you take me to the surface now, so that Raoul can take care for me till I´ll be able to walk properly again?" Erik nodded, trying not to let show that he was a little hurt that she thought the Vicomte to be a better companion than he. "That shouldn´t be a problem.", he said. "Will he allow me to come to his house to teach you?" "Of course.", Christine replied.
Erik grabbed the suitcase, which she hadn´t even unpacked, took the girl into his arms and carried her out of his home. The way was long, and by the time they had left the lake behind them Christine, feeling warm and comfortable, had fallen asleep. She only woke up when Erik placed her on the ground later. "I need my hands to open the mirror.", he explained.
As it opened and he stepped out into the room he cast a glance out of the window, noticing something that never was that clear to him in his world. "The Vicomte won´t mind that you come this late?", he wanted to know. She merely shrugged. "It won´t be the first time." As the little nap she had taken had made her even more tired she needed longer than usual to climb out. "You won´t be able to go to him.", Erik muttered, turning around to her. He held a letter in his hand and looked very serious. "Why not?" Christine had no idea why she suddenly felt so cold.