A/N: I'm so sorry about the wait, life is complicated at the moment, and time to research and write is very difficult to come by. Please take a minute to review if you're still reading, it really does mean a great deal to me, particularly at pivotal moments like this.
Chapter 50 — Liberation
Click.
The lock tumbled into place, trapping them in the small half-dark room. Christine pulled out the key, and the tarnished brass cover swung down over the keyhole. Safe. Nobody could touch them here: not the war, not the people, not their own ghosts. Erik's promise sounded in her ears and despite herself, she thought of their old chapel, and all the golden-edged memories their duet had woken. There had been beauty in the darkness too, long before the fear.
She put down her music book on a chair but kept hold of the key, rolling it back and forth between nervous fingers, and turned her back on the door. Outside, the world went on, oblivious.
"Erik…"
He stood in the middle of the floor, between piles of wooden placards and an ageing divan, in this dimly lit, cluttered room — his bare cheek coarse with beard, his eyes tired, dried mud streaking his coat and shoes — and he was sublime, brighter than any dazzling angel could have ever been. The mirror behind him reflected the top of the door, like the start of another passageway.
"Let me look at you," Christine whispered, voiceless now the danger was past. She had come too near to losing him, and all that lay between them. "Please, just let me look at you for a minute. I want to remember."
Erik bore her inspection with difficulty, growing more uncertain with each passing second, expecting a verdict. At last his gaze skittered aside from her and he grimaced at what he imagined she saw.
"Hardly an improvement on the usual."
Christine discovered a smile at that, and it melted in her voice. "You're wrong, Monsieur Andersson. I find I like you like this."
"Filthy and reeking of a night in a cell?"
"Beautiful."
At this his head shot up and he looked bewildered, and it made her want to hold him so much that her chest ached. She came closer, the key clenched in her fist, something to hold on to. Behind him, their twin shapes swung in the heavy-framed mirror. Christine did not want to look into it, not now, but it was too late and there they were — two dark figures blending to a single indistinguishable form: Erik's coat and her courtroom dress, blue-black and buttoned high to the collar. It was wrong here, this dress. She did not want mourning.
Erik glanced over his shoulder, catching her gaze in the glass.
"Oh," Christine said softly, as her mind echoed, Angel...
No, she pleaded with it, digging her heels in, refusing to follow, but the mirror threw back their twin faces at her and there was nothing she could do: the duet they had sung in the hall seeped again through layers of memory, washing over her with loss such as only children know; loss and betrayal.
Angel of Music, I would see your face.
"Christine," Erik said, and the mirror made it a sigh, "Christine…"
She shut her eyes but the mirror did not let go. There again was the chapel, teasing her with images of angels made flesh, with faces ablaze with glory, and beautiful, long-fingered hands, hands she dreamed she could hold… And always the voice in her dreams, dark with such longing that she could not help but wonder about the mouth that could shape those notes, and the face of the voice.
Come to me, Angel of Music.
The key slid from her grasp and clanked to the floor.
Christine's eyes flew open and she met her own face again, and Erik's masked one behind it.
"Come away from it," he pleaded, coaxing her towards him. "Come back."
His touch under her chin bade her look at him, and she followed gratefully, sliding free of the past, retreating until her legs backed against the scrolled armrest of the couch. Erik released her, leaving her skin warmer, both of them out of breath though they had scarcely moved.
"How did you stand it? A whole night in this room?"
Erik shrugged with careful indifference, his back to the frame. "It is only a glass. I checked."
Christine choked on a small laugh, and then knew he was right after all: it was only a glass, with no power but to reflect what it saw; and what it saw was up to her and Erik to decree.
"I used to miss it," she admitted. "The Angel's voice… Remember?" She hummed a few bars of one of their old songs, from the chapel.
Erik did not pick it up, but only took her hand and stroked her palm with his thumb, refusing to meet her eyes. "It's your voice I remember. You calling to me night after night from the candlelight, that song pulling me out of my shadows. It was beautiful, at first. Then it hurt."
"Hurt? Erik, no…"
"Others could hug you, stroke your cheek, hold your hand. I hated it; I was jealous of the entire world." Erik released her hand abruptly. "I wanted to touch you."
"So did I."
He caught his breath as Christine scraped her fingertips over his rough cheek and jaw, down to his mouth. One finger slid between his lips, parting them slightly. Erik admitted it just long enough, then clasped her wrist and pressed quick kisses to that finger and every other in turn, then the palm of her hand, until she was trembling.
"Erik?"
"Yes…" He cradled her hand against his bare cheek and Christine touched his temple, gently.
"It was worth losing the Angel, to see the Phantom gone. That duet was the most beautiful sound we ever made. Every person in that hall heard the truth of it, and they believed you, as I do."
He could not disagree, but his eyes were troubled, and he moved back from her touch. It must have taken him all night to wrestle the demons to submission, to learn to harness the Phantom's voice without losing himself to the role. Christine wondered if she would have been strong enough to spend a night in this chamber of mirrors and emerge as he did, alive and unchanged.
"You miss it still." Erik made it half a question, and Christine realised what had disturbed him so: his betrayal, the fairytale he had shattered in opening that fateful mirror. She shook her head impatiently.
"Not anymore. It was a dream, and sooner or later all dreams end. This is real."
For a long moment, Erik held her gaze. Then he grabbed hold of her shoulders, pulled her close and kissed her.
Real, this was real. Not like the cellars in the Opéra, the rats and the damp, or like the misery of the siege, but real like water and air, the sweetest harmony of Erik's voice and hers making the same small sounds of human need. Life, only life. Erik reached around to unpin her chignon, and Christine felt it give way as a tide of long curls unravelled to flow past her shoulders. It felt extraordinary, like freedom.
"Let me look at you." Erik did not quite break the kiss but drove her own words back into her mouth, between breaths, his hands buried in her hair. "I need to see you now. Please."
He asked for so little, and Christine longed to grant it, but that please was too sweet on her tongue to let him go. She tugged his coat open and slid her palms under his cravat, clumsy with her own need to touch him — there, at last, the velvet warmth of his skin. A button popped to the floor, from his shirt.
"Christine, please…"
She mumbled a broken apology, kissing him still, not truly sorry at all because the breach let her press both hands to his chest, flat against his heartbeat. It was familiar, this rhythm; she remembered it from their one mad night in his room, and her own pulse answered in turn. His skin dampened under her palms, unseen; she wanted more, pushed her hands deeper...
"I need to see you." Erik captured her hands and moved his kiss to her neck, to the spot just under her ear where he knew it would shoot new bolts of heat to her belly. The prickle of his beard scratched her skin but his tongue healed it at once, and Christine welcomed it all, flesh and blood.
He broke away, caught her face cupped between his hands and held her at arm's length, heaving short breaths, his eyes wide behind the scrap of stained bandage. He held her not as something fragile but as a wild thing, that might any moment take flight.
"Let me see you like this, just for a moment."
Christine's body thrummed with protest at the separation, but she fought it to be able to give him this proof he so craved, the sight of her here with him, in this room where she had brought them, open and holding nothing back. She wished he could see himself through her gaze right now, and believe her, truly believe what she saw: his soul shone naked in his eyes, and it was intoxicating.
"Look," she told him, and he did, watching as she started to unbutton the front of her own dress, her fingers fumbling on what was the simplest of daily tasks. It was terrifying, and it was exactly what she wanted. The dark silk cocoon of the dress slipped down, taking the world with it, and she stepped from it gladly, wearing only the white things underneath. Stockings, shift, corset, that was all.
Erik was utterly silent, all his life force intent upon her. Christine took his unresisting hands and set them warm on her hips, to where the adjusting laces were already loosened for her singing breath.
"There. Like that." She showed him what was needed and he removed the corset with barely a stumble of his fingers, reverent in this new learning. It felt good to be free of it, light and alive. They had done this only once and too hastily to find the knots and buttons that held each garment in its place, but now Erik took each one like a rosary bead, recalling and memorising the pattern.
"This?" He fingered the thin linen of her chemise, and willingly Christine drew it up, shuddering as the air raised goosebumps on her skin. It took a burst of courage to be rid of the fabric altogether, and it fell with barely a sound. Under Erik's gaze her neck grew hot, then her exposed breasts, her belly; but it was the sweetest magic, this new memory they were creating. Erik touched her waist and together they pushed down the last shreds of fabric. She relished his awed, unguarded look and the desperate tremor in his touch as he sank to his knees, trailing his hands down her thighs to roll down her stockings. She fought to keep still, but it was difficult when everything in her demanded to move, when the very lightness of his touch made her thirst for more. He unlaced her shoes.
A step, then another, and there was nothing left. Christine raised her arms across her chest, then thought better of it and let go. She wore nothing but her skin and it made her feel weightless, as though she was rising into the air, singing with him.
"Christine," Erik whispered, kneeling, looking up at her with gold firelight in his eyes.
"Sing," she begged him, needing it suddenly even more than his hands on her skin, "Let me see it in your mouth."
She brought him up to his feet and Erik shed his own coat and waistcoat, cravat, shirt, mask; Christine urging him on, kissing skin newly freed, trailing her lips from his neck to his shoulders, tasting salt and smoke, exploring all the curves and valleys of his body that she had scarcely glimpsed before. The blisters on his scars were still healing, violet on red; she did not dare touch but only brushed her lips over his eyelid there, in promise.
Erik tried to kiss her but she shied away to remind him: "Sing with me…"
"No." He met her eyes, unmasked and very human. "No music, not now."
Christine drew breath to speak, but exhaled instead; Erik nudged her legs apart with one hand and pressed her back against the armrest, and there was no longer any music in the world to describe what she wanted. She forgot words and speech, forgot herself and Erik; there was no longer a barrier of skin between them because the same blood flowed in their veins, the same heat and release. She dug her hands into his shoulders as they fell back, laughing breathlessly at the creaking springs and their own awkward angles, knees and elbows, until, frustrated, Erik swept her hands out of the way and they were joined again.
It was as strange as she remembered, feeling him become a part of her, watching the intensity of it flash in his face above her.
"I wanted this..." he said, or she did, or perhaps they only breathed it together.
Erik slid to the edge of the couch afterwards, keeping her close, stroking her shoulder, her back, kissing her cheek and hair. Christine rolled a little to arch her back, and he took the invitation, trailing the whisper of a touch around her breast, between her ribs and lower, learning, pleased by the murmurs he managed to elicit. It was a small peace, but all the more precious for it, and Christine moved gladly to help his unhurried exploration. The thought of getting dressed, resuming her life, seemed madness, and the world was very far away.
She did not know how long they lay like that, hidden from the mirror, languid and wordless and safe, sometimes barely touching, then all at once greedy again, afraid that if they let go it would all end. Erik seemed intent on making her shudder all over again, finding new ways to discomfit her, then putting them together like phrases of music, until she felt wanton enough to simply press him beneath her and take her own pleasure from his hands. It was nothing she had ever imagined and yet it was natural as breathing, simple and beautiful and good.
She stayed atop him, watching his eyes for signs of the shadows returning. The fears and bitterness were a part of him, and Christine knew even this was not enough to melt them away for good — but there was only joy in his eyes. No angel, no ghost: a man in her bed. It frightened her how easily she could get used to it.
Erik shifted to sit up under her, letting her down. Christine moved reluctantly, and her stomach emitted a noisy growl.
"You're hungry," Erik said, with a definite glint of smugness in his eyes. Evidently he considered it a personal triumph to have made her ravenous.
"I haven't eaten since breakfast," Christine protested, but could not help returning the smile. "It must be dinnertime by now."
She wriggled out of the mound of crumpled fabric beneath her and pulled out something at random: her petticoat. Erik made a harsh sound when he saw its scrunched and damp state, but Christine only caught his mouth in a hard kiss. "I liked it."
"Mmm," Erik murmured apologetically and drew her waist closer, "I'll buy you another…"
Christine laughed, startling him. "I don't mean this thing! I mean," her ears were burning; ridiculous, in the circumstances, "I mean I liked… what we did." Her fingers floated down from his throat to his chest and belly, exploring the soft hair there. The muscles beneath his skin gathered to her touch.
Erik grabbed her wrist, and all at once his eyes darkened; Christine saw the flood of fear burst its banks, flushing the marred half of his face an angry blistered scarlet.
"No, Christine. Not like that."
She frowned and tried to pull her hand back. "Like what? Erik, let me go!"
He crushed her wrist harder, hurting her in his panic. "It's all happening again, don't you see? Don't you see? I thought to court you honourably this time, without illusions, without mirror tricks! I wanted to come to you as a man. But the siege, I feared we had no time — and the music, the music — they would never have caught us but for that! A decent man would not have done this, any of it..." His free hand went to his scars, fingers splayed and digging into flesh, trying to hide. "I had no right."
Christine hit him. It was clumsy, but it was enough; her hand left a red imprint on his good cheek, glowing under the stubble. Erik gasped for air like a man pulled from a river, and let her go. Tears blurred the edges of Christine's vision, unbearable and beyond her power to stop; she snatched her hand back and clasped her fingers to hold herself together.
"It is not your right," she managed, "it's mine. Mine! Don't imagine I'm some kind of prize, that will sit in its box and wait to be awarded. I have a right to this."
Erik stared at her, rubbing his cheek absently, and Christine felt the anger relinquish its hold on her heart. Painfully, she scooted closer to wrap her bare arms around him, and kissed his shoulder, turning his skin slick with tears. At last he let go of his own face and brought his arms around her in turn, burying his head in her shoulder, clutching her to him. He smelled salty and musky and warm; a familiar closeness that made her ache for herself as much as for him.
"I'm not strong enough," Erik said helplessly, stroking her hair. "I wanted to do things right, to treat you as you deserve, to let you be free." He nuzzled into her, unwilling to let go now despite all he said, his scars hot and slick against her cheek. "I wish I could be your suitor, an architect… Someone with a life to offer you."
She pulled back. "Then be my suitor. Take me to dinner."
"Dinner."
"Yes. There must still be a restaurant open somewhere in Paris." She picked up her undergarments and began to pull them on, haphazardly. "This is what I want, Erik. To sing with you and go to dinner and kiss you and not spend my life waiting for a miracle or keep planning for some future that may never come. And to stop crying like this, God damn it!"
She tossed an armful of clothing at him; at least some of it had to be his. "Come, let's get dressed."
Erik sat naked on the divan and did not move when the bundle landed in his lap. She could not read his expression, but he picked up a garment and held it out to her. "All right. But I shall need your assistance with the laces."
Christine snatched the corset from his hand, more amused than mortified. "You haven't the figure for it, monsieur. Here, these are yours. Let's go outside."
o o o
"Mademoiselle Giry! Meg! Wait, wait a moment, over here!"
Meg turned and found Victorine, Monsieur de Gas' servant, rushing headlong in her direction, her shawl streaming around her and her coat open, as though she did not feel the cold. The crowd was almost as thick on the boulevard as it had been in the streets of Montmartre, and she and her mother had a dozen times lost each other in the confusion.
"Maman, wait!" Meg called over her shoulder, and just managed to hold on to Madame Giry's coat sleeve before they could again be separated. "I know that woman, she works for Monsieur de Gas."
"What woman?" Madame Giry squinted against the sun into the mass of people as the two of them were jostled here and there.
Victorine had disappeared in a cluster of what were probably students or artists, by the look of their artfully dishevelled clothing and fever-bright eyes. They were holding rolled-up newspapers and shouting to one another wildly over the others' heads.
"She was just there," Meg said, and then spotted the shawl again, "There she is. One moment, maman, please."
Victorine elbowed her way towards them, and wiped her forehead on a sleeve. "Oh, thank goodness. I hardly thought I'd catch up with you."
"What's happened?" Meg planted her feet wide and tried to remain where she was without falling into her mother or Victorine as the crowd flowed around them. "Is it Monsieur de Gas, is he going to the ramparts?"
"Oh no, not that I know; it's the regulars fighting up in Le Bourget as I hear it. But listen, you must know Monsieur de Gas has been beside himself on your account."
"On my account? What do you mean?"
Victorine took out a letter from an inside pocket and pushed it into Meg's hands. "He gets these notions you see, sometimes, and now nothing will please him but that I find you and tell you he has some newspaper man waiting, and he's bent on seeing you at once. The newspaper man, that is. Well, both of them, I suppose."
"A newspaper man? Why?"
"I really couldn't say, but do come, please!"
"But I can't!" Meg clung to her mother, anxious lest she lose sight of her in this stampede. "My mother, Victorine — look at this place, we need to go home."
Victorine seemed only then to notice Madame Giry; she made some apologetic noises but Madame Giry brushed this away.
"Go," she said to Meg. "Go and see what it is. I will meet you at home."
Meg raised her arms helplessly. "All right, but come with me then…"
Madame Giry smiled slightly and gave her a quick peck on the temple. "Don't worry about me, my dear, I have seen worse. Paris is what it is; that was always so. I will be fine. We will hear some news of the battle soon enough, and then this will calm down."
Victorine had already hooked her arm through Meg's to direct her and a moment later they were gone from Madame Giry's sight, vanished in the mayhem. Meg's pale hair flashed white among all the hats and scarves, and was gone.
Madame Giry sighed and turned her own steps back, finding the riptide in the crowd that jostled her along in vaguely the right direction. It was harder than she wanted to admit, to let them all go: Christine and her suitor, acquitted and heartbreakingly eager to rebuild, and now even Meg swept up in her own young life and carried away — but the day had been long coming. Paris was what it had always been, a whirlwind: one breath of news and the entire populace took to the streets just as they had done two decades earlier, in the days of her own hectic youth. She had danced through it all back then, the shootings and politicking and the death of the last Republic, the crowning of yet another Napoleon, the blood and gold and drama. She might have tried to keep Meg away from it, and Christine also — but it was theatre, then and now. They were all born to it.
The crowd thinned marginally by the time she reached the cemetery, when her eye was drawn to the sight of a gathering outside a grocery store, a tighter group of people that was more crowd than queue. She crossed the street and peered into their midst: and sure enough, there was the stack of cans, baskets of produce and even eggs that had certainly not been there that morning, with price labels a good third below what she herself had paid only the previous day.
The group was buzzing with indignation, and their irate voices attracted more and more passersby. A woman and man in well-tailored coats and thin gloves were conversing in strained tones with the owner, an oily-looking man who stood on the doorstep and blocked his door anxiously, smelling trouble.
"Hoarders!" spat a portly servant woman next the Madame Giry, "Daylight robbery! Now the siege is ending they're scrambling to sell, but yesterday they swore up and down they had next to nothing left."
"Ladies and gentlemen, do form an orderly queue now, please! We shall try to accommodate all of you as best we can."
The grumbling did not cease but some semblance of a queue did start forming. Madame Giry joined it; hoarders or not, if they had food to sell, she as the others around were not mad enough to turn it down. Madame Giry saw the satisfied way the shopkeeper twirled his moustaches and knew he would make his profit tonight. And if the siege ended tomorrow, well, at least there would be dinner on the table.
A group of youths pushed through the queue, singing a cacophony of the Marseillaise, and laughing uproariously; the queue doggedly reassembled behind them. Madame Giry watched them disappear down rue Rachel, towards the cemetery. One turned and called, "They're holding Le Bourget! Haven't you heard? Kicked the Prussian Guard right out! Forget your onions and potatoes, come and drink!"
There was something to be said for being young enough to live off hope and wine, Madame Giry reflected. She bought a few eggs, once so common and now a delicacy, and a little of this and that, as much as her aching back would permit her to carry. Time was short and she thought it best to get home, but the stream of people heading for rue Rachel seemed to be growing out of all proportion. They could not all be heading to the cemetery and there was nothing else to be found there, except a couple of little restaurants and a drinking dive.
She turned into the street and paused, startled. The crowd had indeed surrounded one of the restaurants, where it seemed yet more hoarding had exploded in an array of dishes one hardly expected to find in the midst of queues and rations. The steamed-up windows were lit up like Christmas baubles in the gathering blue dusk, and within were tables with every seat taken, and food heaped upon every plate.
Yet it was not the food they were all looking at. Two of the diners, seen clearly through the plate glass, were a gentleman with a bandage across his head, and a young woman who sipped her wine with a tiny secretive smile, both of them as intent on each other as though they were alone. Madame Giry held her breath for a moment, then let it out in a rush. An old instinct made her step back into the cover of the crowd. She felt an intruder somehow, as if she had seen a thing not meant for her eyes, though reason told her it was all public, street and restaurant both.
"It's them," people were muttering, "the franc-tireur from Sedan and that girl, the singers! Look, look, there they are!"
Madame Giry glanced around in amazement: it was certainly so, these people were gathering to see them. News travelled fast around these parts, and it seemed Erik's hearing had somehow become entwined with the news of the sortie at Le Bourget.
A youngish man in a faded velvet suit exclaimed something unintelligible, stubbed out a cigarette dramatically against the step of the restaurant and flung open the front door.