A/N: Happy New Year! To my wonderful, fascinating reviewers, thank you again for sharing your thoughts and giving me the best present a writer could wish for: insight into how the words I write are understood and interpreted.
In response to those who asked about update frequency: guys, I'm doing my best. Every chapter takes a tremendous amount of work, and some scenes are much more difficult than others. I write at night, or in the fragments of time I can wrest from my daily life, from my job and two young kids. Please, hang in there. And while you're waiting, perhaps you could share your thoughts on what you have just read. ;-)
Chapter 37 — The Survivors
The Vicomte. Madame Giry felt a sickening dread, old as an injury that refused to heal. What had this man, this veiled stranger in the Phantom's clothing, done to his old enemy, that he now returned to seek out Christine? No more blood, she prayed uselessly. No more, I beg you. She could not understand this nighttime visitation, did not see what hideous role this was. He moved as she had never seen him move, haltingly, with neither the Phantom's predatory step nor the assured façade of the gentleman, as though deprived of his shell. It was, she thought suddenly, closer to the wary, darting movements of the freakshow child she had tried to protect. Yet he brought the stench of death to her door, again. Again! Had they not earned some peace? But Christine… It was already too late, Madame Giry thought. Christine was already gone, deep into the part he was creating for her, and would not be rescued. The image of the girl's palms hovering above his hands had stamped itself into her sight, so that even now, with Christine a decorous distance away, Madame Giry could still see it. And yet, she had to do something.
"Stop," she said, hand raised. It took every ounce of strength to conceal her desperation. "Nobody is going out there in the dark. Monsieur, explain yourself."
The dishevelled man who was neither ghost nor architect started at her voice and dropped the grey thing he had carried; it fell against the parquet floor with a small crack. Christine gave a cry and dived down to get it.
A poppyseed pod, Madame Giry realised, baffled. Christine retrieved it gently, cupped in her hands. Her face when she looked up was whiter than marble, even the lips bloodless.
"I have to go."
"No," Madame Giry said, "child, no."
"It's from Raoul." Christine held up the pod, as if that explained all. She twirled the straw between nervous finders, producing a soft susurration.
"Please," repeated the masked man behind her, the word foreign in his inflection. Madame Giry glanced up; she could not recall having ever heard him use it before. He bore her scrutiny with difficulty, again making her think of that boy retreating behind the safety of the burlap on his face. Defiant and terrified, ready to run at any moment.
"Erik," she asked, risking it all. The name seemed to fit now as it had not in years. It struck him like cold water, and she forced herself to go on. "What has become of the Vicomte?"
The full import of her accusation seemed to dawn on him gradually, so slowly that the beginnings of doubt came unbidden into Madame Giry's mind. Was it possible he was innocent? Was there even the slightest chance that he was here as a mere messenger of some greater disaster? The war, she thought. The battle in Sedan.
He took in a breath.
"There's hot water and soap," came Meg's voice from the doorway to the dining room. She looked in, a linen teatowel in her hands. "It's, uh, in the kitchen…"
The tension cracked apart; Erik shuddered, and Christine too seemed to shake herself.
"My thanks," Erik said, and with little more than a glance at Christine went the way Meg had indicated.
Madame Giry lowered herself slowly onto the divan. Her daughter and Christine looked at her like they expected a speech, some sort of guidance. Madame Giry could find nothing to say.
"I'll need to change," Christine said after a moment. "Something dark. So I am not easily seen."
Madame Giry nodded fractionally. "You may take my shawl. If you are gone over two hours, Christine - I shall be forced to go to the police, curfew or no."
"I'll come too," Meg offered.
"Out of the question." Madame Giry rose again to her feet. "Marguerite Giry, go and fetch a book. A long book. For the next two hours, you at least will remain right here, where I can see you."
Christine's lips quirked in a crooked smile. "Do not fear for me, Madame Giry. I will be back soon, I promise."
Madame Giry removed her shawl and placed it around Christine's narrow shoulders. Her heart was bleeding, and yet she knew she was only paying for her own old sins, for the poor excuse for protection she had offered Gustave's daughter. She adjusted the shawl minutely, then let go.
"Very well then. Kindly inform Monsieur Andersson he may look within the medicine chest; there should be sufficient linen for a clean bandage."
o o o
With his face clean and bandaged afresh, Erik seemed to have grown calmer, more resolute. When they first left the building, Christine had expected a cautious, shadowlike flight through the dark and deserted streets, but instead Erik's method seemed to be merely to stride quickly and silently towards wherever their destination was to be. She had to concede it was effective enough. With every step, her mind painted new images of Raoul captured, Raoul hurt, a hundred useless guesses that only deepened her anxiety. Taking her cue from Erik's ominous silence, Christine matched his steps and asked no questions. She wished he would say something.
They had been walking steadily for a quarter of an hour or so when she heard a sharp cry:
"Halt! You sir, and the lady."
Two Garde Nationale officers in kepis and cloaks over their uniforms stepped out in front of them, barring the way. The one who had called out was young and, Christine guessed, a little drunk; the other older and more officious in his bearing. Beside her, Erik stopped, apparently unperturbed.
"How may we be of service?" he inquired, with such deliberate politeness that Christine felt ill. She cut in before he could indict them both:
"Is there a problem, gentlemen?"
"There's a curfew, mademoiselle, surely you're aware?" The older guard addressed her pleasantly enough. He looked at her more closely, then suddenly beamed and raised his kepi in a much warmer greeting. "Why, aren't you from the ballet? I'm-"
"Monsieur Michaud!" Christine laughed in surprise and relief, recognising Monsieur Offenbach's secretary from the Variètès. It was beyond strange to see a familiar face from the theatre in the uniform of the guard. He looked as harassed as ever.
"My apologies, but I really must insist you return home at once, mademoiselle - and you, monsieur. I really am sorry to ruin your evening."
Christine was more than happy to assure him they were on their way home that very moment, and after exchanging the obligatory commiserations on the closure of the theatres, they went their separate ways. Christine risked a sideways glance at Erik; she wondered what his plan had been.
"It is here." He interrupted her thoughts, pointing directly in front of them. Christine peered into the darkness, unbroken by any streetlights. Trees, she saw, and then-
"Army tents?" The image made no sense, it looked like a deserted camp pitched among the pomegranate trees she now recognised as the gardens on Avenue l'Imperatrice. Then she remembered Madame Giry telling her and Meg of the new ambulance to be constructed here. Ambulance. The word brought back every fearful guess about Raoul.
"Erik…"
"The entrance is on the other side of the larger tent. I shall meet you back here. Do not linger, there are more medics here than patients, and there is no telling what these people may do if you are seen." He gave her a wary look, "They will not be from the theatre."
Christine bit her tongue. He had brought her this far, all she could do now was see for herself.
She wrapped the black shawl more closely about her and cautiously went around to where two flaps indicated the entrance to the round tent. Another canvas flap covered the doorway, with the emblem of the Red Cross sewn into it.
Christine lifted it and went inside.
It was warmer within than she had expected, and there was a peculiar faint odour, not unpleasant. Metal cots were arranged at intervals around the tent, separated by canvas screens; in one, she could just make out the darker shape of a man asleep, his face turned aside.
Seaweed, she identified the smell. Seaweed drying far beyond the tideline, turning the air briny. It was too much, this tangle of childhood memories and the man who could be Raoul in this dark foreign tent; she sobbed once, and saw him stirring.
"Raoul?" She breathed the sea, painfully. "Raoul, it's me…"
"Christine?"
Raoul's voice, and unmistakeable now, his form, as he propped himself up on one elbow with effort. Christine could not keep back her dismay: he looked terrible, his skin sallow and hair plastered to his head with perspiration, his forehead creased in pain.
"Are you here?" he murmured uncertainly, as though he was not sure he was awake.
Christine rushed forward, forgetting all caution, and wrapped him in her arms. He gasped, in surprise or pain, she could not tell, but she could not let go; she held him and buried her face against his cheek, and he embraced her as hard as ever, muttering something into her hair, words that did not matter to either of them but oh, it was good to hear him again.
"What happened?" she managed finally, holding his face in her hands, at arm's reach. She was wrong, he had not changed at all, he was just the same. Just the same.
"My, uhh… My leg, Christine, there."
Christine saw suddenly she had been leaning against his side; it must have hurt him. She jerked away and saw new beads of sweat on Raoul's forehead.
"Oh god, I hurt you, I'm sorry…"
He tried to smile up at her, almost succeeding. "It is only a small hole, ahh… It will… It will heal, they tell me. They say the fever has broken… Christine, come here. Come back."
He scooted aside awkwardly and Christine perched on the edge of his cot. The mattress crinkled under her weight, releasing a puff of the salty smell. She touched the sheet: "Seaweed?"
"The bed is stuffed with it." Raoul finally managed a real smile. "They say it keeps away infection. Only… it brings back memories - Little Lotte."
"It does." Christine looked away from at the blanket covering his wounded leg. "Raoul, how did this happen?"
"Just - just bad luck. It was chaos, you can't imagine it… A complete rout, just as my father believed. They are…" He paused for a long time, breathing. "Christine, they are stronger. The Germans. Much, much stronger, and not a bit fatigued by their victory. They will not stop."
Christine reached for his clammy hand, cold despite the comfortable warmth of the tent and the blankets. "Raoul," she begged, "It doesn't matter now."
He squeezed her hand, hard. "Please, Lotte. If you'd just let me… The house in Perros-"
Christine tensed and Raoul caught himself, realising how such an invitation must sound. "I do not mean to revive the past. I would just keep you safe."
She lifted his hand to her own lips and kissed his cold fingers. "I wish you were safe too. But you are in no shape to travel, not yet."
"Not until it is over," he said fiercely, "not until they are gone - or we are dead."
Shocked, Christine could only stare at him.
"I took an oath to do my duty… I'm an officer. Supposed to… to lead. Not to loll in bed, waiting for the next bowl of broth, the next poultice, the next thing to take the pain away. Waiting for someone to… To save me."
He fell back to the pillow, exhausted by this speech, and combed one unsteady hand through his hair.
Christine caught at the shawl, gripping the silk fringes. "He came back with you, didn't he. Erik."
"Brought me back," Raoul said, still with the same helpless anger. "And brought you to me. He saved my life, I own it, but - Christine! It is not your debt. You owe him nothing. If he tries to hold it against you…"
"Shh." Christine pressed a finger to his dry lips, silencing him. "Someone is coming."
Indeed, there were heavy footfalls outside, a night guard on duty headed towards them. Christine watched the tent entrance in dread, knowing it was too late to hide. Abruptly the footsteps stopped.
"I'll be damned!" came a cry, "Another one!"
o o o
"It was, frankly, the first time I have been thus greeted," Erik admitted, as he and Christine came at last to the conclusion of Madame Giry's interrogation. They were all seated around the dining table, with bread and wine, and for a while, it seemed as simple and quaint as any evening at the Egrots' house in Bazeilles. Between them, Madame Giry and Meg made a grateful audience. "The fool was about to enter the tent and your bandages, madame, made a convenient distraction. He ran off to get help, while their mysterious second patient," he flourished his arm, "made a most inelegant escape with Mademoiselle Daaé. Who, of course, was never there."
"Bravo," Madame Giry said, with a nod of wry appreciation. "Let us hope this escapade does not bring repercussions. Not least, for the Vicomte's recovery."
Erik saw Christine's fingers tighten on the stem of her glass, her wine untouched, and realised that for her, the fleeting excitement of their so-called escapade had long since cooled. She had that faraway look again, seeing a past beyond the stone walls of the chapel, a past where he could not follow.
"The Vicomte is a young man," he offered. "And most determined to live."
Christine nodded without raising her eyes from the glass, dark lashes shadowing her more perfectly than any mask.
"Yes," she said, and at last did look up at him, painfully honest. "Thank you."
Erik's throat constricted; he could not reply. Christine's gaze held him pinned in the golden light, exposed to the world, bare-faced. The pause stretched.
"It's past time we all had some rest." Madame Giry stood up. "Monsieur, this way if you please. Never mind those tonight," she said to Meg, who was about to collect the glasses, "morning will be soon enough."
Christine and Meg bid their polite goodnights and Erik found himself being ushered back into the little parlour, where a narrow bed had been made up on the divan. It took him a moment to understand this was intended for him.
"This is entirely unnecessary," he started, "I can certainly-"
"You certainly cannot. Here is the key for the door through to the dining room, take it; you will not be disturbed." Madame Giry placed a brass key in his hand, and Erik found himself accepting it, awkward with this unexpected trust. "Should you wish to air out this musty suit you have disinterred from God knows where, you are welcome to use the balcony. I trust you remember its location."
Erik could only nod, accepting the implied warning. The balcony she meant was the one he had once found in his misguided plan that - he now recalled with humiliating clarity - had involved standing upon the railing with a rope in his hands, toying with death. Playing at war. He had not been certain, until this moment, that she knew of it. Or of what had followed, Christine's hands on his face and his mask torn apart.
"Sleep." Madame Giry's voice was gentler than he had expected. She added gravely, "I owe you an apology, monsieur. What you did for the young Vicomte… These are not the actions of a madman."
Erik reached for his pocket where Christine's ring was, safe. He was still thinking of ropes, tightening around the necks of men whose misfortune was only to have been on the wrong side of battle. And yet men, even the Vicomte with his obstinate pride, thought little of all those uniformed deaths.
"I doubt my sanity is much improved," he said at last. "Perhaps it is only the world that has lowered its standards."
o o o
The nights had become darker since they stopped turning on the street lamps, and of late Christine no longer bothered to draw the drapes in her room. She did draw them tonight. The heavy fabric slid through her hand unseen, and the blackness became absolute. She felt her way back to bed, kicked off her shoes, and sat on the covers. Then she got up again. Sleep was not possible, not with the memory of the evening's flight and Raoul's ashen face in that tent and the smell of the sea... Not with Erik still so near.
In the darkness she could hear the small unaccustomed sounds that had never belonged to this apartment before, the sounds that meant he stayed. The faint squeak of springs in the old divan, the movement of a chair. She had thought he would leave, flee again to the heights of Montmartre or deep down into the grave of the Opéra, vanish back into the night like a ghost. Perhaps it was only the effect of seeing the Phantom's old clothes again. Perhaps all the years of make-believe were stronger than she was, and the habit of seeking mystery was not so easily broken.
She realised the sounds had ceased some time ago; he had gone to sleep. Or left. Christine wondered which it was, then gave up, shrugged back into her dressing-gown and padded out to get some water from the kitchen. Outside her pitch-black room, the apartment seemed to glow with a faint bluish phosphorescence, every corner and angle made soft, spectral by the moonlight trickling through the windows. She wondered how far off dawn was.
The dining room was before the kitchen; their glasses were still on the table. Christine picked up the wine she had not wanted earlier and wandered over to the window, taking a sip. It burned. In the morning she would go to see how Raoul was, talk to him if she could. His talk of debts and oaths worried her; she felt a vague guilt that his choices could have been different, that she had held that power and chosen his pain. She leaned back against the edge of the table and took another sip, feeling the wine burn her throat.
Something made her look up, and she saw the doors to the parlour open slowly.
Erik walked in.
Christine felt a sharp thrill in her chest, her heartbeat changing.
He was not looking at her, not expecting her there; Christine saw he was carrying his bundled suit and had wound a sheet about himself, over his shirt. She remained very still, watching. He went to cross the room towards the window, heading for the balcony door.
"Hello," she said softly, when he was near enough.
He froze. Christine knew a moment of pleasure, darker than the wine. She thought she understood how he could have enjoyed this, being a ghost.
Erik turned slowly towards her, gripping the black bundle in one hand, the edge of the sheet in the other, and said only, "Christine."
That was enough: his voice caught her, held her still. He looked at the wine in her hand, at her pose, the way she rested against the table edge. Christine saw herself suddenly as she must appear to him, too knowing, and did not like it.
"I couldn't sleep," she said, straightening. "I didn't know you were up. I'm sorry."
He accepted this but still watched her. She leaned forward and touched the balcony door, letting it open. Erik's eyes went to the replaced latch, just as she had known they would, and Christine felt that disturbing thrill again when he stepped up to it and swung the door open wide. It was dangerous, to think she could command him. She watched him throw the Phantom's old suit upon the railing, and thought of this same man throwing Don Juan's cloak on the parapet behind him, leaving it, discarded.
"Why did you go back there?" she said when he was done. The hurt in her own voice surprised her. She set the wine aside. "That suit came from the Opéra. I had not thought to see it again."
Erik crossed his arms on his chest over the sheet, fingers digging into his own shoulders, the bandage stark white against skin coarsened by his months outside and stubbled with the beginnings of a beard.
"I needed a change of clothing. Something that was not stained with blood."
"And you chose this?" She gaped in disbelief.
"You misunderstand. It isn't a metaphor; I could not abide it. The stink of butchery, the filth." Erik's forehead creased against the bandage, the whites of his eyes showing. "It was not… clean and distant, not like you may imagine. The guns - the noise is deafening, and the bayonets, they finish what the bullets start, and men walk upon men…" He was holding himself still in his crossed arms, each finger a sharpened talon, but he was quaking. "Sometimes the bayonets did not finish it. But I did. They had cartridges, bullets, you understand - ammunition we needed. In the space of a day and a night, more men died at my hand than I could name. I wore their blood and soil, brown and crusted, and I could not escape the foulness. I could not. I cannot."
Christine raised a hand but did not dare touch him; he was burning with a frightening, cold fury, his eyes wild.
"Here," she said, trying to bring him back to her, afraid of what wound she had opened. "Erik, look at me, I'm here. Erik."
She waited until at last he focused on her again, with terrible effort. "You saved a life. Raoul, he told me…"
"The Vicomte!" Erik sobbed the word, perhaps intending to laugh. "Why is it different, Christine? He is just one, same as any of the others with a gun in his hand, same as me - he said it himself, they're soldiers. Who cares about their fates?"
"I do."
Christine did touch him finally, gingerly, her hand raised to cover his on his shoulder. She felt the strength of his grip, fingers like iron, and knew she could not unfold them.
"Come with me," she whispered. "I need to show you something."
It seemed an age before his clawed hands released their grip and the wildness in his eyes subsided. Christine felt clammy all over; she had not noticed her own effort until then.
"What is it?" This time Erik's voice was closer to normal, but Christine only motioned for him to be quiet and went ahead to the parlour he had left unlocked, soundless in her stocking feet. He hesitated, then followed.
The bedding on the divan was a tangled heap of blankets with the pillow lumped in the middle; he had taken the sheet. If he had tried to sleep there, he had not succeeded. There was an extinguished candle by the bed, still warm with the faint scent of wax, and though he had hung his cravat and waistcoat over the arm of a chair, the smell of the rotting Opéra had been evicted with the suit.
Christine went around to the piano and pulled down the notebook from the shelf above. Behind her, she heard Erik's breathing quicken as she brought it down to the piano bench and knelt beside it. He stood tall over her, uncertain, then knelt as well, the sheet he wore bundling under him on the rug.
Christine ran her fingertips over the cover. The book was hardbound, heavy, an old gift to her father from some forgotten acquaintance, with a gold-embossed "Daaé" on the front. It had been pristine. Now pages stuck out from the edge at odd angles where she had hastily filed the scraps and phrases of stray ideas.
She reached for the ribbon that tied it.
"No."
The tension in Erik's voice made the word an order. Christine ignored it.
"This is mine," she said, and pulled the ties.
The old sheet of letter paper with his scribbled fragment was right there, in a pocket inside the front cover, covered with her own scribbles in a darker ink. The rest of the music was hers.
"Not this," Erik said, his hand closing above his letter, making a fist. "My God, Christine, this thing... I should never have sent it."
Christine caught his hand, his shirt sleeve falling away from bare wrist. "But you did. And it helped. Listen!"
She led him by touch along the stave, slowly, making his fingers trace each separate note, each bar. The hidden echo of the Moonlight Sonata intertwined and vanquished by phrases that were hers: starting dark and cold as the wintry sea, arpeggios crashing into salt and bitterness, receding finally to something calmer, simpler. A rest, expectant silence. Then stone walls and stained glass, the shadow of waves in many colours, a response. Only two notes, like teardrops: Chris-tine...
"Angel of Music," Erik's mouth shaped the words, almost inaudible, "why do you cry?"
Christine let go of his hand and he continued alone; she watched the harmony unfold for him, saw how he lingered over the same notes that had made her pause. It was a strange feeling, two mirrors reflecting each other, spiralling into infinity. Erik turned the page, then another. The tension left his body, he was alive beside her, absorbed.
He lingered on one bar, casting her a curious look, then returned to the previous page, tried again. Christine followed his progress. At the same spot, he broke away from the chord she had written and rose up through the stave instead, higher, and Christine felt herself being swept up with that sound, then down again, free. She put her own hand back on the stave and added the second vocal part to what he had started: only a deep burr at first, then rising to the challenge, crossing the first part, again and again.
"Repeat," he indented a line with the edge of a nail, but she shook her head impatiently and flipped a few pages forward, to the second movement.
"Here," she indicated the place, and felt him test it out, silently.
"Better," he agreed. "Much stronger."
She looked over at him, and felt herself smiling; the joy in his eyes was naked and vulnerable, mirroring her, and just then she could not remember how to be anything else.
She went over to get the ink and pens from the top of the piano, offered him one and sat down again. Erik reached over, dipped the pen, and waited while she turned to an unmarked page. Then they wrote.