Ah well, such is life – Bushranger Ned Kelly's final words before being hung.
"I brought you a present," Erik called, tossing a small wooden box across the room. Adriana jumped over and caught it in a netball grab. Curiously she opened the box to find a small glass bottle, she unscrewed the lid and sniffed at the liquid. Her face lit up, "Eucalyptus oil!" she exclaimed, "Erik! How the?"
"A ship came in with a load of cargo from Australia," he replied, "I got this from a deckhand as I was passing by."
Adriana took another sniff and her eyes rolled back in delight, she recapped the bottle and set it down on the table. Erik recognised the look in her eyes and shifted just in time to catch her round the waist as she flung herself at him,
"Do I get a thankyou?" he asked offhandedly, lifting her into his lap as he settled on the divan. Adriana's wicked grin matched his own, as she removed his mask,
"You bet," she barely had time to whisper before he caught her lips with his own and she melted under his merciless onslaught.
We will now pause for a sensible intermission in which the masques are delivered resulting in much feminine giddiness and a lot of being invited into rich houses to drink tea and receive commissions for more balls in the coming social season. It's a cold day in Paris and sa happens when I am forced outside for long periods of cold time and to a place where there is sn rather than cows sleet and roaring redgum fires, I get sick. And as we are working on a limited time frame, this scene was not written. Sorry kiddies but tough bickies.
Back in Erik's Underground cavern of Doom! (oo-ooh)
Adriana groaned deep in her throat that ended with a rasping cough, "Guhhh…oh god please no,"
"Please no what?" Erik asked, his eyes glowing with concern, Adriana yanked open a kitchen drawer and removed a silvery knife, she tilted it upwards to catch the light and peered down her own throat, Erik stared at her in puzzlement as her eyes widened then she scowled. She slammed the knife down on the kitchen bench and stormed out, "Shit!" she muttered, Erik followed her out to the main room where she kicked at an unoffending bolster and gathered up her notes.
"What is wrong with you?"
"Tonsillitis," was the rough-voiced reply, "Again!"
"What?" the baffled Phantom raised his eyebrows, Adriana snatched up a few sheets of parchment, "In short, I am sick. I can no longer sing, speak or do anything remotely resembling normality until I'm all drugged up and have lain in bed for a week." She glared miserably around her for a moment, then deciding she had everything, stalked into her room and slammed the door shut.
While rarely ill, it was in Adriana's nature to manage to catch tonsillitis at about once a year. And when she got sick, she really got sick.
The first two days of her miserable illness were spent sleeping, croaking, and swallowing down several concoctions of Erik's. One of which resulted in a fantastic bout of throwing up in a basin and swearing hoarsely at a partly amused partly concerned Erik to get out of the room and leave her to die in peace. And though Erik was the only one to obey the commands, he was still to learn the hard way that his Wraith, tonsillitis and liquid medicine did not mix well together.
"Adriana," he said, holding out a cup of spicy red liquid, as he entered the sitting room, "This will make you feel better,"
Adriana glared at the cup distrustfully and shook her head, Erik's gaze remained impassive. "Drink it."
She shot him a you've-got-to-be-kidding-me look and went back to her sulky contemplation of the floor.
Erik sighed exasperatedly, "You have my solemn promise you will not be sick, it is made specifically to quell nausea,"
Adriana looked up and mouthed the words "I don't give a damn," finishing with a joyous little cough that made her wince.
Erik growled and tried to control his temper, "What would you have me do?" he asked, forcing a pleasant tone into his voice, "Give you the dry ingredients to swallow?"
That got a better reaction, Adriana looked up and smiled at him hopefully, Erik stared. "You cant be serious,"
An eager nod contradicted him.
"After all the trouble I went through to grind everything up and mix it with the last of the honey so you could in fact swallow it?
A pair of desperate grey eyes pleaded with him in a pale face, accompanied by the mimed actions spelling out the words "I don't swallow liquid,"
Erik raised an eyebrow, "Really?" he said slowly, "Then pray tell, what-"
He stopped at the look on her face.
"Very well," he sighed, walking back into the kitchen. He returned just in time to see Adriana go into a violent coughing fit and scrunch in on herself, hugging her arms to her chest as two bright spots of colour burned in her cheeks.
"You sound worse than a certain toad's singing," he remarked conversationally, making his way across the room, carrying three small compact balls of herbs and god knew what, each the size of a couple of peas, and a goblet of water.
"Coak," Adriana replied miserably.
"A little more prolonged," the Phantom advised, "In order to gain that shock value,"
Adriana blinked and made an extremely rude gesture at Erik's ugly face. He seemed amused. "Just for that, you don't get this," he held up the goblet, water sloshing in its cup. Adriana made another silent remark and curled up further. Erik rolled his eyes and set the water and herbs down on the table beside her. With a relieved smile, Adriana took the tablets one by one and tossed them back with a mouthful of water. Erik dusted off his hands and shook his head. "Trust you to make things more complicated," he muttered, Adriana looked indignant, she grabbed a notepad and pen from beside her and scribbled a short note.
"For what? Not needing sixty servants to mollycoddle me and spoon feed me chicken soup? I've been swallowing adult tablets since I was four Erik now bugger off and let me sleep,"
Erik looked at the note in his hand, then back at the Wraith, "Impossible," he sighed, throwing his hands in the air in a gesture of defeat. Adriana managed a tired smirk.
Dropping the note Erik looked around for his cloak, a suspiciously familiar black shadow was covering Adriana's shoulders under a mound of blankets on the couch.
"Give that back," he sighed, Adriana pouted, then wriggled around like a bug on a slinky and finally extracted a flowing piece of black cashmere.
"Thankyou," Erik clasped the silver chain on his collar shut and glanced at his Wraith, "I'm going above, is there anything you need?" he asked the miserable eighteen year old, she looked up at him and mouthed "Lemon?" hopefully, Erik chuckled.
"And honey?" he asked not unkindly. She nodded jerkily and buried herself in blankets again, rubbing her sore throat.
While Erik roamed above or composed, Adriana spent her time either sleeping, trying (and failing) to write, or perfecting numerous odd and mostly useless talents.
She had mastered the Jack Sparrow art of rolling a coin over her fingers as well as inking tiny tattoos onto her fingernails, and had gone through nearly a full sheaf of paper making little chatterboxes which Erik was forced to sweep aside whenever it seemed he needed anything and which Ayesha had a fine time chasing around the lair, her tail twitching intently as she watched the folded bits of paper.
By the time Erik returned from a late walk some days after the liquid solid medicine argument, Adriana was perched at one end of the couch, wrapped in her cloak, which she had taken to wearing like a security blanket, a stack of paper planes beside her and was knocking Erik's hand carved marble chess pieces onto the deep Persian rug with her mad cardboard aerodynamics skills. Somehow acting out the battle of Helms Deep with the marble figures wasn't nearly so much fun without Lathril around.
"What are you doing?" he demanded, watching in horror as an ornately detailed black knight was sent spinning off the edge of the couch to thump onto the floor. Adriana looked at him with a smile and offered him her last paper plane. Erik stared at her for a moment, then accepted the plane slowly, looking it over. Then he resolutely turned his back and walked out of the room. Adriana gaped after him, then a look of silent consternation crossed her face, she rapped impatiently on the wooden headboard with her knuckles. Erik turned, and raised an eyebrow, "Oh very well," he sighed, he considered the plane and frowned slightly, he added a slight flick to the tip of each wing and weighed the plane in his hand curiously. Then he took aim at the two kings standing beside one another on the couch arm and threw the plane.
It was a perfect shot, clipping each king to send them tumbling perfectly in time onto the rug and the plane zipped onwards to hit Adriana squarely on the forehead.