It was a firm decision. There was no going back.
I slinked out of the young woman's room, unable to stay another moment. I was going home.
I didn't take a carriage. It would be a fairly long walk, in the snow, but I felt very much alive and up to it. Outside the snow was falling freely, and the whole city was dark, and soft and silent. I drew my cloak up tightly around my body. It had to be past midnight.
I stopped to watch the flakes disappear into the dark waters of the Seine. I rested my hands on the ledge of the wall in front of me. After a few second's thought, I removed the mask, and tossed it into the river. The wind caught it for a moment, but soon it fluttered down into the shadowy depths and disappeared. I felt a sad wave of relief.
I didn't so much regret what I had done. I felt that it was necessary, in a way; now that I knew how it would be to be normal, I could be content in my strange lifestyle. In fact, I had come to the conclusion that under the circumstances, I preferred it.
When I was very young I still loved and firmly believed in God. I had been raised that way by my mother, and had been faithful for a few years before I gave up. I had once believed that perhaps God had a purpose when he gave me my horrible face. Father Mansart once told me that God reserved the hardest lives for the people He believed were the strongest. Although I was defiantly not a religious man, the feeling I had when walking down the Parisian streets that night was very similar to the ones I had had as a child. I wasn't afraid anymore.
I touched my face, feeling the strange shape that had become so familiar to me. Such a strange, simple thing it was, a face…how could such small simple things define a man's life? How could one feel so caged within themselves?
I imagined how life would have been, if I had been a healthy, beautiful baby boy when I came out of my mother's womb. I knew my mother well, even if we had never been close in a natural sense. She would have adored me, allowing me to take the place of my dead father. She would have spoiled me, made me conceited and dependant, naïve and shallow. I would have grown up proper and never would have spent hours locked away in my attic room, discovering on my own the wonder in an organ and the sounds it could release. I would have never known hardship; I would have never traveled the world, or discovered all my skills, or learned to understand a wide array of people. I never would have wanted to die, or abused drugs, or killed innocent people, either. I never would have met Christine. I never would know what it is to truly loved, beyond mortal comprehension. I never would have been an Angel to anyone. I never would have truly lived.
I cried, but not out of grief. After a few minutes, my tears froze on my cheek. It was truly very cold out. I needed to hasten my pace.
In an hour or so I had finally reached the house on the lake, and as I made my way up the path to the door, my fingers and toes ached with what I prayed wasn't frostbite. It was rather foolish not to take a carriage. I hadn't a key on me, so I pounded franticly on the door. To my surprise, Madame Giry answered almost immediately.
"Madame, I'm surprised you're up this early."
She grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled me in the door.
"I don't know where you've been all night Erik, but hurry up and change out of these frozen clothes and meet me in the far bedroom. Christine has gone into labor!"