Disclaimer: Give credit where credit is due. This particular Erik belongs to the brilliant Susan Kay. The idea for this story was inspired by a Deviation by the (also brilliant) Marie Noire entitled "Abandon All Hope". Enjoy.
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"I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage in me the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one… I will indulge the other."
-Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
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There were white hands against my chest, and the air seemed thicker than ever. Christine stood before me, almost expectantly. Her white lace veil was drawn up over her dark brown curls and her ever darker eyes. Her smile was timid, though her eyes expressed relief, she was saved…
We had kissed. I remembered it as though I recalled a dream, as though I recalled another man with his hands uncertainly in Christine's hair. A worthier man than I. She had kissed me, she had kissed me…
My heart had flooded over with love for her. Her tearstained face and her glass eyes bestowed steady kisses upon mine as I had stroked her hair and thought… maybe…
Up until now, Christine had flitted teasingly above me like some magnificent butterfly, fluttering her wings just out of my reach. The spider watched her from his web with reverence and awe. But that was before he learned again to test his venom. I had lured her into my snare, and by all rights, she was mine now. I had crushed her wings to powder and she was mine, mine to destroy, or to nurse back to health. I thought in that moment as I had thought in countless moments before. She could be mine to love.
But she had betrayed me. A single flicker of her eyes and my remaining composure fell at my feet. One single glance to the window, opening on to the torture chamber where her knight in shining armor stood, panting and weeping great, shining tears of righteous love for Christine. Poor, poor Christine! Christine of endless, infernal innocence and purity, so captured and held by her cruel, hideous tormentor! Was it, could it possibly be…The Phantom of the Opera!
Oh no, no, no. Nothing quite so glamorous. For was the creature who held her ignorant mind captive some great protector or guardian angel? Was he the omnipotent, black-cloaked shadow of blood-chilling reputation and limitless, mysterious power who haunted the Opera Garnier? The masked man who was not truly a man, the center of so many horrifying rumors and deeds?
No.
This being was something lower than a man. The creature lurked beneath the Parisian Opera House. He haunted churchyards when, indeed, he ever ventured from his own makeshift darkness to the true darkness of midnight. The darkness he only wished he could possess. He lived amidst stone and black funeral tapers, with a face that was hard to look at. He provoked frightened women to faint into his predatory, skeletal arms, and frightened men to call for his destruction, his imprisonment! A cage!
Cages are all I have ever known. My first scrap of clothing was a mask. Cages that held my body still were nothing compared to the cages of my mind. Even when I was granted the release I screamed for, I simply retreated again, retreated to a cage I had been preparing, it seems, all my life.
The man who held captive this shrinking violet was, true as the stories say, no man at all. For he was not worthy to live among men. He was never meant for this world, for he is a spider unworthy of a mate. There is no Phantom of the Opera. There is only Erik.
Erik, the monster.
I let out a cry of rage for having been so blind. I was tired of grasping at straws, tired of the shred of decency that barred me from having her. She was no better than any of the others who let me down, and when she kissed me, I was not the one she kissed. She had deceived me, and I wanted her to pay.
And yet, somehow in that moment I wanted her more than I have ever wanted her. I wanted her to want me, but if I could not have her love, I would settle for her fear.
She jumped a little at my outcry, but grasped my jacket all the more tightly. I shoved her from me until she lost her balance and fell to the ground. She lay on the ground, the tears still shining on her face, her look of desperation replaced with a look of shock. She was terrified. I felt a stab of vindictive pleasure as I lowered myself to the floor and kneeled over her, trapping her shoulders between my arms and tracking her eyes like a lion watches its wounded prey.
"Erik-" she whispered, astonished, but I interrupt her.
"I congratulate you, my dear," I hissed, "I must hand it to you, I really must, you've a keener mind for strategy than I ever would have believed possible. A perfect finale to this fantasy opera, as we have been discussing throughout the course of the evening. Why, you nearly had me convinced only a moment ago! Oh, do forgive my clumsy tongue, my dear, the second-to-last scene. For every tragic opera that aspires to greatness must have an equally tragic heroine. She will nearly always spend the final act searching for what she has lost or sacrificed on her journey to become a woman. Surely you can understand that? And of course, the audience will not give a damn about a selfish shrinking violet unless there is a villain against whom they can be poised. (You would be surprised how much of opera is taken from real life. Take Don Juan, if you need an example.)
"Yes, I was saying. Generally the shadow-cast monster draws away the poor, unwitting girl, deprives her of her most prized and guarded treasure." I raised my voice, letting it carry into the room where I knew Monsieur de Chagny, if he was not so delirious with heat that he had passed out, would be pressing his ear to the white-hot wall. I only wished I could hear his cries of heartbreak and agony. "I do hope you are listening, Monsieurs. I admit I had not anticipated this part of the entertainment this evening, but no matter, no matter, your enjoyment of the ensuing pursuit will not be impaired by your lack of sight. You will hear quite well from where you are."
I turned back to Christine, who had been whimpering with panic during the last few minutes, writhing uselessly beneath me at the insane hunger I knew she saw in my eyes. "The tragedy, of course, usually resolves itself by the closing scene of the opera, with some heroic rescue or another and the slaying of the villain by the lady's lord. Terrible melodrama, absolutely terrible. It distracts from the music, my dear. We do want our opera to be unique, don't we? Perhaps, as Monsieur de Chagny will undoubtedly agree, on occasion it is better to have an opera laid to rest with no rescue. Clever girl, I see that you understand at last." I added, watching her vain struggles with great amusement.
Christine seemed to make up her mind about something. In any case, she stopped struggling and looked at me, as though she had only just begun to see me clearly.
Cold as death, but she'll soon warm me…
I was a greater man than Javert ever could have dreamed.
Christine kissed me again, but with none of the sincerity of before. It was dry and full of desperation. When she pulled away, I twisted her hair until I had extracted another cry of pain.
"Erik," she whispered again, breathless, "My love…"
"'My love', now, is it my dear? Not 'you monster' this time? No melodramatic pleas to pray? 'My love… my love', I shall have to remember that one…"
"I thought-"
"You thought, my dear? You thought what? Did you have some lingering belief in my human mercy? My empathy? Did you think my love for you would overpower this hatred? Did you believe for an instant that this is my true mask? This anger, the alliance with Hell itself? Well, look again, my love. For the first time in my life, I wear no mask, and with pride." In a moment I believed I would hit her, "Or perhaps," I leaned in even closer to her, slamming her wrists to the floor, "Perhaps you believed this taste you give me of yourself would sate me, that drinking you in would bring me to my knees, that I would burst into sobs at your feet and beg your forgiveness and your divine mercy? Think again, my love, for only my mercy matters now, when I take all that has been denied me for so long. It can be bloodless, even painless. It all depends on you. The best advice you will ever get from me, my dear, is that everything hurts more when you resist."
I did not bother with the fastenings of her lace and satin wedding dress, nor did I pause to consider the rarity and finery of what I was destroying, in the fabric or in the wild eyes of the girl beneath me, whose lover would reject her, whose entire world would come crashing down around her should my control fail to catch up to me. The fatal flaw in Christine's porcelain heart was opening wider and wider, as though waiting to welcome me in before it snapped her in two. Again she called me her love.
She fought until the last instant. I do not believe it was her Erik she fought against. Not her guardian of music. She fought Death's brand upon my heart. Death claimed hers only two days after that awful night. She ceased her struggling when she started to bleed. Her mouth closed tightly, her eyes stared at some point of the ceiling over my shoulder. I tried to kiss her more than once before I left her. She did not move, not to stop me. She did not get up even as I dressed. She only looked at me with unblinking eyes, blank of all feeling. There was no betrayal in her eyes. There was only an otherworldly kind of sight, as though she understood me perfectly.
I left the entrances to my quarters open and unobstructed. She could have left if she had wanted to. But she remained on the floor where I had left her.
Hours went by, and I went to Christine. I lifted her up and placed her gently on the cushions of a chair. I sat down at the organ and played Aida, an old favorite of hers. She turned onto her side; her hands folded over her breast, and watched me with those unblinking eyes. I had pried open her heart along the hairline fault, and it was though her spirit had flown loose of her body. She did not speak another word.
Sometime the following morning, I replaced my black mask.
She did not even wince when I opened the hidden door to the torture chamber, where I knew it must all be over. Nadir, lying on the floor on his side, stirred feebly with the light. He knew how the chamber worked from the prototype in Persia. He had thought to bring water when he entered. It had bought him time. Hours, it seemed. His eyes held mine for as long as he could hold up his head. We knew each other. In Nadir's eyes, incredulously, was forgiveness ready to be given, if I knew enough to ask for it.
I took his hand and I called him my friend in his native tongue. He called me his friend in mine. He touched his head back to the floor and breathed with more ease. I found the break in the vertebrae in his neck. He died with no pain. The same could not be said about his life. I hope he thought of Reza and Rookheya with his last breath. When I cut down Raoul's body, I doubt whether Christine even heard the noise.
By the following evening, she was gone. I put her body beside her lover's, like Juliet and her Romeo. Never a tale of more woe, the bard had said. I smiled ruefully in spite of myself. When I moved her small form, I returned to find a crumpled sheet of paper awaiting me. On it, she had written five words: Carry my soul to God.
From Heaven, Christine watched me weep. Bless her innocent heart. So she had forgiven me after all. I kissed the paper as I had never been able to kiss her. Christine had never been fooled by my many masks. Behind them all, she had always known me as an angel. Up until the very end, I was only Erik. Simply Erik.
Christine Daae's angel of music.