A/N: I have returned from the dead, my unscheduled demise being the courtesy of the devils known as midterms. Also by the fact that this chapter was very difficult to write. I'm terribly sorry and shall try my best not to leave it so long between updates again, especially since I know a lot of you will think me an extremely evil person at the end of this chapter.

In regards to recent worries regarding inter-canonical romances…I shall say this: love triangles are so utterly cliched. That's why I've made a pentagon. 0-:-) Hem. Seriously though, I must say that the decision on this matter has been taken out of my hands. The characters have long since taken over this story and are taking this wherever they choose it to go. And surely you have faith in the characters?

That being said, consider yourself warned that there's some intense material towards the end of this chapter, definitely not for the squeamish.

Chapter 18

Beyond the Edge

Christine Daae awoke with a start as the remnants of the dream faded. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she could see her white mouth and her red-rimmed eyes in the mirror at the foot of her bed. Her fingers were clutching the sheets in a vise-like grip, her spine bone-rigid.

She jumped at the sharp rap upon her door. "Christine! Are you well?" She sank back into the sheets, her body wilting with relief. Raoul entered her bedroom, the flame from the candle he held illuminating his worried frown.

Slowly she nodded, too exhausted to wonder what he was doing in the cottage at such an hour of the night. "A nightmare," she muttered, before turning her face away in embarrassment.

Raoul chuckled as he sat down on the edge of the bed, his body sinking into the thick quilt comforter. He had kept the gardener's cottage on his family's estate in perfect condition since Christine's departure after the Masquerade ball, ordering the servants to dust and freshen the rooms every day. For what reason he could not say…perhaps for a certain ridiculous hope.

But then came the night a few weeks ago that she had knocked upon his door, trembling and despondent, and he had welcomed her with open arms and a giddy joy that he never felt up until that point. She may not be his fiancée, but she was with him once again. And that was enough.

He put the candle down on her bedside dresser and leaned against the foot of her bed, regarding her face in the flickering light. "I had a bad dream once," he said, a smile creeping across his handsome features. "I dreamed that a goblin stole Little Lotte's favorite pair of shoes. And to get them back, she and her faithful knight had to stuff their faces with chocolate until the creature was suitably distracted and they could snatch them back."

Christine giggled in the darkness. "That was a goat, you silly goose, not a goblin."

"Well, that was our excuse at the time."

"Indeed, I had never seen Father so furious. I thought he'd never forgive you. An entire box of sweets!"

Raoul looked mortified. "What, you blamed me? You were my ever-willing accomplice!" He paused, his grin growing wider. "As it was, it was easy to win back his good favor. I simply stood outside of your tent and dedicated a ballad to him with my appalling violin skills."

She laughed again behind her hand and stretched out the other in his direction, gesturing for him to come closer. He did so, moving to sit besides her, leaning his back alongside hers against the headboard. He put an arm about her shoulder. "Your faithful knight is still here. And always will be," he said softly.

Christine turned toward him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. She nodded and leaned into his embrace. "And Little Lotte is still here as well…and always has been." Her lip began to tremble.

"What did you dream?" Raoul said quickly, choosing not to think too much into her cryptic remark. His hand rubbed her shoulder in reassurance.

"I…" Christine's mind crept unwillingly back to those terrifying moments before waking. There had been music, more beautiful and terrible than anything she had ever heard. But that had not frightened her, it had been the other sound, the wretched animal sound of… "Someone…someone was in terrible pain."

Raoul stiffened and instinctively drew her closer. "It was nothing. It was just a dream."

Christine shivered. "I could feel it…like my very blood was on fire." Tears were streaming down her face now and she knew they had nothing to do with her dream.

Raoul noticed and wiped them away with his hand. "Christine…" he whispered. "Oh God, Christine, I'm so sorry to have brought this upon you. I'm sorry about…everything. About all this." He took a deep breath. "You don't…you don't have to continue these sessions with Dr. Fell if you don't want to. I just wanted what was best for you, and…" he sighed furiously. "Bloody hell, I'm making a mess of everything, aren't I?"

She didn't know whether she felt more stunned or relieved. "Raoul, you think that—" She stopped herself and sniffed. "No, it's alright. It's not—I'd like to continue them, if that sits well with you."

He hugged her tightly. "He's a good man. He'll help you put everything behind you. You'll see."

I can't… Christine closed her eyes to prevent further tears. So she felt before she saw his lips as they kissed hers lightly. Her eyes flew open and looked into his; they were nondescript in the darkness. As quickly as it had happened it was over, and his face was drawing away. It was about as chaste a kiss as could be imagined. It could even have been brotherly, but for the tingle that remained about her lips.

Her lips parted as his hand reached forward to caress her cheek. As his fingers touched her, she reached up and clasped his hand in one of her own.

She saw his mouth smile in the darkness, and then he was pulling her forward in a tender embrace, guiding her head to rest against his shoulder. He backed away before she had even begun to comprehend what had happened.

"Sleep well, Christine," Raoul said, retrieving the candle. "Tomorrow, I shall take you out to the gardens." He backed rather awkwardly out of the room and the door clicked shut behind him.

Christine stayed huddled against the headboard, her fingers knotted into the blankets. Her lips were cold and numb as she laid back down; a sudden crushing wave of loneliness swept over her. She felt around underneath her pillow and closed her hand around the dried rosebud blossom, her souvenir from Perros those many months ago. As her hand stroked the powdery white petals, she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

-------------

Hannibal Lecter lay fully stretched out upon the enormous couch in his study. A human-shaped form of darker darkness inside the dark room. He was fully clothed and had not even bothered removing his shoes. His eyes were closed as his chest rose and fell gently in sleep.

He slept in his study often though there were many other rooms on the first floor that had served his purposes for the past year when he desired a true bed. But this room…he was attuned to every single particle of its being: its particular creaking at night, the rustle of the curtains from miniscule air currents, the precise sound of the wind against the windowpanes.

But when the unexpected sound of the doorknob turning rang through the darkness followed by the swish of well-oiled hinges, his breathing remained smooth and undisturbed. The figure that entered scanned the room carefully, his eyes resting upon Dr. Lecter's figure…noting the way that his chest rose and fell rhythmically in sleep.

Without pausing to shut the door, the figure moved soundlessly across the carpet, a silent wraith dappled in faint moonlight. He moved automatically towards the large armoire behind the desk. Two seconds made quick work of the lock and the large doors swung open like a tomb. He stopped suddenly as Dr. Lecter's breathing caught. He remained frozen, a solid mass of night, for what seemed like forever, until the doctor made a soft sound in his throat and began breathing deeply once more.

The shadow's eyes could see perfectly in the darkness and they followed its fingers with exacting precision as he examined the shelves of bottles and vials within the armoire. Finally he closed his hand over one as his other hand removed something from his cloak. He finished his work quickly and carefully replaced the bottle upon its place on the shelf. He shut the door and relocked it.

The entire process had taken less than a minute. He looked once more towards the doctor's sleeping form, an unreadable expression in his eyes that gleamed pale in the moonlight. He exited as quietly as he had come.

On his comfortable couch, Dr. Lecter wrinkled his nose as he sniffed for the lingering smell of the intruder: an odor of smoke and mildew drifted across the air. And he smiled as he drifted into true slumber.

Soon…

The doctor turned upon a shadowy heel around the statue of Venus de Milo, her exquisite, incomplete body casting a craggy silhouette upon the parquet floor. His heels clicked and echoed in the halls of the memory palace and each step stirred the dust that cloaked the rooms in a loving embrace.

Click.

The feel of coldness in a chubby boy's hands, the rigid coldness of death as the child wailed over his mother's unseeing eyes.

Click.

The feel of warmth in his hands, of life flowing across his palms and dripping from his fingers.

Click.

A tender white throat beneath his hands and he brought his mouth towards it, teeth bared and then craned his neck to kiss the pulsing flesh.

Click.

The flesh broke beneath his touch and he reeled back as her arms floundered, reaching, flailing in red, finally wrapping themselves around another bleeding form. He screamed…

"Hannibal?"

Dr. Lecter looked down at the knife in his hands then looked up to see Clarice there. The blade glinted silver in his grasp.

With a control that schooled his entire body into submission, he coughed easily and brought the knife down through the finely broiled breast of chicken upon his plate. He tried his best to ignore Clarice's piercing, inquisitive stare.

The sliver of meat was juicy and tender and cooked to perfection, but he scarcely tasted it. The wine turned to vinegar in his mouth as he realized for the first time just how quiet it was in the dining room. Clarice had returned to her own plate and was parting her chicken from its bone with the sharp point of her knife.

Her head snapped around when he spoke. "Why do you continue to dine with me?" he inquired.

Her eyes narrowed at the sudden question, her gaze fraught with suspicion. "Force of habit," she said in a steely voice before bending to her meal again, toying half-heartedly with her chicken.

Hannibal opened his mouth to speak, and significant words may have been said, but they never came. He whirled with catlike reflexes at a sudden movement behind him, the knife settled perfectly in the crook of his hand.

Erik looked past him at nothing at all and did not flinch as the silver knifepoint hovered inches from his gut. Hannibal saw his own face in the dark pupils of the other man's yellow eyes and as he watched, the dark points grew and grew until they swallowed the color from the eyes. He heard the distant clatter as Clarice's knife fell to the floor.

The other man stood in the doorway of the dining room, leaning heavily upon a cabinet. He looked around slowly at surroundings he had never before seen. When he at last spoke, his voice rasped as if he had iron filings in his throat.

"A funny thing happened to me this morning, Hannibal. Can you imagine what it was? I suddenly felt as if—" His eyes floated over to Clarice and for an eternal second their eyes met—sudden fear flickered across his gaze—before his dark pupils rolled back into his head. He made a sound as if he was gargling on a razor blade, and his hand crept up to clutch his chest. He shot Hannibal a look of complete and utter hatred before staggering to a nearby bathroom where he vomited ingloriously into the basin.

"Should I even ask?" Clarice inquired in a trembling whisper.

Hannibal felt something quiver within him. And he opened his mouth to tell her. That something had gone wrong, something else beyond himself was now in control, but his mind made him close his mouth again. All his life he had controlled the lives of those around him, and his character would not allow him to apologize now. He bent back to his meal, concentrating upon slicing the bird into perfect quarters. He heard the scraping rasp of Clarice's fork against the china plate.

Hannibal was still slicing his chicken methodically when the bathroom door swung open and Erik stormed over to within two feet of him. A faint greenish tint remained about the visible portion of his face.

"Out with it, Hannibal. What the hell did you give me?"

Hannibal chewed his meal thoughtfully, maddeningly calm once more. "Morphine. I do believe that was what you asked for."

"What else?"

"A simple companion drug," he said, sipping from his wine glass, ignoring the black look in Clarice's eyes that tore away at his face. "It causes your body to reject any more morphine that you attempt to inject, as you just found out. But not to worry, the dose was rather small and should be out of your system in seven days."

Erik scoffed. "There is no such drug."

"Of course, there is, I made it myself."

Erik's mouth opened but no sound came out. He cleared his throat like a rasping motor. "A whole week? Surely you jest?" he said indignantly, a tendril of fear in his voice now.

Hannibal dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, seeming not to notice the way that the other man's hands were shaking and inching unconsciously in the direction of his throat. "Erik, you should know me better than that. I'm being completely serious."

"You—"

Clarice stood quickly from her seat. "I believe I have had quite…enough, gentlemen. Good night." Neither of them seemingly took the slightest notice of her and she left them still glaring at each other like two gladiators in the Colosseum.

Hannibal's eyes followed the sound of her footsteps as they traveled up the stairs until he heard the sound of the door slamming shut. "Is she not the most utterly impossible woman, Erik?" he said in an elegant drawl. "Sometimes I wonder how we've lived for so long—"

"Don't you change the subject!" Erik roared.

Clarice staggered uncertainly up the stairs, her hands groping for support from the banister. This was it, this was all… she saw Hannibal's cold, neutral expression as the world crashed down about him, could not get it out of her mind—it fueled her fury, and she managed to get the suitcase halfway out of the closet before a wave of self-loathing made her shove it back.

How dare she even think of running away like a sniveling brat? She collapsed to the bed. Tears threatened to spill onto her cheeks and she closed her eyes against them. There was more to think about than herself. Someone needed her…

One floor below, that someone emitted a scream of animal rage followed shortly by the sound of splintering glass. She whimpered as a stab of pain lanced through her brain.

"Erik…" she whispered. She buried her face into her pillows to block out the noise as she felt the world shake beneath her feet.

She would wonder how the next seven days ever came to pass. She remembered staring up at the ornate ceiling latticed with moonlight of her silent bedroom listening helplessly to the muffled sounds of agony that she could sometimes hear and hating, hating the way he made her feel, hating how she couldn't bring herself to confront him. Hating the stab of longing for the people she once knew.

And hating how she couldn't bring herself to enter the other room to sit by Erik's side.

He was unbelievably, impossibly cold. Pulling his cloak around himself tightly, he burrowed further into the thick blankets of the bed. In seconds the sheets were soaked through with sweat. He pulled the blankets over his head and cried into the suffocating blackness, the sobs dry and sticking to the back of his throat.

"I hate you, I hate you so much…"

The words, spoken to a figure he could not quite remember, tasted sour in his mouth.

He heard his music then, the terrible hateful music that had poured from his fingers in the bowels of the Opera House. The music had torn his life apart with every dissonant chord, with every twisted note coaxed from his innocent angel's unwilling throat. His hands throbbed and he ground his teeth into the center of the pain. He tasted blood in his mouth and realized that he had bitten his finger, the finger where he had once worn his ring.

"Christine?"

The young woman turned, a serene expression upon her face. "Yes?"

Clarice hesitated, taken aback. "So what…what did you talk about today?"

She shrugged. "I don't quite remember. It was very happy, rather sad too, but it still made me smile to remember it." She giggled, shaking her head. "That made no sense, did it? But it was something…beautiful!"

Clarice held the door open as the 20-year-old child danced her way outside into the cold afternoon. She crossed the hall and opened the door to the study to find Dr. Lecter sitting at the piano.

"What were you playing?"

He curled the fingers of his right hand into his palm, arcing his arm in a graceful motion over the keys. "A dance," he said, his voice musical and tailored to imitative perfection. Like a bolt of fate, his right hand struck home upon a chord that even Clarice would have recognized anywhere.

Erik screamed and the weak cry disintegrated into helpless sobbing. The threads that bound his broken mind together were unraveling, disintegrating and melting as they were torn away by the force of his cathartic agony. Unspeakable memories drowned with every injection thrown with determination into the depths of his Lethe…How could anyone have denied him the bliss of forgetfulness?

"No…no, please no, monsieur, I beg you…" He covered his ears to no avail. "I don't want to die! Please I don't want to die…" The words Buquet had never said he still heard in his mind as easily as if the victim had choked them out with his dying breaths—still forming the words under the misguided notion that they might save him.

The bulging eyes of the countless dead laughed at him as he writhed like the damned upon the bed.

"Tell me that I am doing wrong, Clarice. Tell me that it is wrong to free that man of the prison of his own making."

"And you would risk his life to do so?"

"Shall I risk an embarrassing failure by shying away from the edge? No Clarice, beyond the edge…everything is beautiful, everything is perfect, because you gave up everything to be there. I would risk…exactly what I risked for you."

Clarice's eyes told of murder and even Hannibal Lecter fought the urge to move farther down the length of the bench. She took a large step forward, closing the gap between them. "I wonder…if you would even notice if either of us chose to put ourselves out of our misery." Her voice was the low, scratching hiss of a black mamba about to strike. "You seem to care less…that that is exactly what you're driving both of us to do."

His face did not change. "What?" he asked, his voice wavering infinitesimally.

She took in the stricken look imprinted for the tiniest fraction of a second upon his eyes—stored it away as a priceless memory. Then she threw back her head and laughed. "Oh Hannibal, I jest. Surely you know me well enough by now to know that? I am merely playing a game with you, a harmless little game." She laughed and laughed and wiped away at the tears of mirth leaking from her eyes.

Erik laughed loudly into the darkness, his mind unbelievably clear. It was so simple, so obvious what the solution had been all along!

He had injected the doctor's perfidious serum into his blood. Surely it must still be there. All he had to do was get it out.

He placed a hand on the crook of his elbow and followed the pleasant drumbeat of flowing life down to his wrist. He stroked the clammy skin of his lower arm as tenderly as a lover would. Here was where it lay hidden.

He needed only to draw it out…

Hours after he had been left alone in his study, Hannibal Lecter turned the folded bit of paper in his hands, over and over. The oil in the lamp behind his head burned low, casting his hunched shadow over the scrap of white.

Whatever had been holding him back over these weeks was gone now, leaving him in a state of profound exhaustion. He uncrumpled the page without ceremony. The ink was streaked and smudged but the message, even as his heart caught within his throat, was clear.

The note slipped from his fingers. His empty hands remained hovering in the air. There was a strange prickling sensation behind his eyes and he couldn't conceive it, he couldn't accept it. His hands fell to the table to rest beside the scrap of paper, innocently white against dark mahogany.

Another shuddering breath surged through him and he knew just as quickly what he had to do. Moving faster than he himself though possible, he got to his feet and wrenched open the door to his study.

It must be here somewhere, somewhere, he was just not looking hard enough…

Erik dug his nails deeper into his arm, clawing and probing, as blood sprayed onto his white shirt and bedsheets and stained his fingers. His thumbnail scraped against something hard and unyielding within his flesh and his heart sank.

It was not there. He had failed. No, he would try the other arm. Perhaps he had not remembered correctly. He would not make a mistake this time. He was a careful craftsman, he never made the same mistake twice…

Erik…Erik…

His mind swung wildly, searching for the source of the voice. The voice was muffled and distorted, and he couldn't tell whether it was whispering or screaming. Then he felt smooth fingers grasping his bony, bleeding wrist and forcefully pushing his bloody nails away. He felt warmth upon his body.

Warmth… "Ayesha?" He was confused.

The fingers paused, then they were binding up his wrist, wrapping white cloths around and around his mangled limb with such tenderness that they could have been swaddling the baby Jesus. The hands lifted the mask away and the cold air hit his exposed flesh like a thousand tiny needles, and the hands were touching his face, his neck, his hands, leaving red trails of light in their path. He tried to reach out for his mask, but his hand was too heavy.

He looked up, feeling as if he were looking through a sky drenched in dark syrup. Through the muck he saw two bright points of light and they were blink blink blinking blue and he smiled at them as his eyes closed.

The blood was not flowing as quickly now, no longer spurting from the slashed artery like a weeping fountain. She had controlled the worst of the bleeding with the initial bandage, wrapping it around his wrist in a viselike tourniquet. The additional cloths were quickly soaking through and she was changing them often, but less often than she had dared to hope.

Her breathing was quick and harsh as she felt for his pulse; it fluttered weakly underneath her touch. She wiped angrily at the tears running down her face; it wouldn't do to have them infect the wound. Her arms were covered in blood up to her elbows, their clothes stained the color of rich wine.

With her shaking hands, she ripped at the seams of his ruined shirt, following the line of the sleeves, careful not to let the fabric touch the wound. She eased the tattered shirt off of his body and tossed it aside. And as she wiped the blood from his skin, her fingers touched the first scar.

They were white indentations in his flesh, crisscrossing and intersecting over his back and chest, the marks of years upon years of suffering branded upon hard-knotted muscles clinging to a wasted skeleton.

Her fingers trembled uncontrollably as she followed one: a deep, twisted indentation across the pressure point on his upper arm. And then her hand shook so much that she could no longer continue and her arms went around him, cradling him like a child. Nausea seized her insides as tears fell upon his cheek like rain.

Erik's head lolled upon an impossibly loose neck and she could see the serenity and faraway expression in his empty eyes. She held his unblinking gaze in hers for a moment before lowering her face to his.

Slowly, softly, she pressed her lips against his scarred forehead, her touch feather-light against his skin. His flesh was waxen and cold to her touch. Then she drew him closer with trembling arms, resting his head against her blood-soaked shoulder.

"Don't you die. Don't you dare die on me," she whispered into his hair. "I'll kill you if you do," she finished in a choked whisper. She closed her eyes as tears surged forth anew, remembering the first time she had spoken those words to the broken man she had found in the Opera cellars. She held him firmly, rocking back and forth where they had collapsed onto the floor.

That was how Hannibal Lecter found them hours later: pale and still as death, drowning in heart's blood. His strangled cry jerked Clarice from her trance and she awoke into a nightmare.