"WHAT?"
"Your mask, Phantom. I want to speak with you face…to face."
He half-opened his mouth before realizing that any protest he might have given would have been laughable. His hands seemed to move of their own accord to untie the knot behind his head and peeled the pieces of cloth from his face. "As you wish."
He winced as the cold cellar air struck his skin. He didn't want to look into her eyes, didn't want to see her reaction.
"I can't see what the big fuss was about: Even the doctors were able to look upon my mug until about two weeks ago, and you're certainly prettier than I was then."
He nearly laughed aloud. Everything about the current conversation reeked of impossibility. "With all due respect, woman, your face is a terrible, tragic accident, not a supernatural curse from birth."
She scoffed. "Don't flatter yourself, Phantom. You're just ugly. We're both ugly. Even without these faces…we would both still be ugly."
"And what reason, pray tell, would you have for thinking yourself hideous before?"
"Society is not as blind as you may think, Phantom. They are quite able to look past exterior appearances, even a pretty face, when it pleases them to do so. They like to condemn, you see…they don't need to look past your face to condemn you, but they were happy to do so for me."
She closed her eyes and fell still, so still for a moment that an involuntary flash of panic gripped him. Then she opened her eyes, and when she spoke again, her tone of voice had changed.
"I was born in Ireland. My parents and I fled the country during a famine and managed to plead, beg, and steal our passage on a ship to the Continent. They died on the journey, and so, alone, I made my way to Paris. For years, I wandered and I learned the language. The Opera House happened almost by accident. They had auditions, and I needed money. You should have seen them stare as I entered the room. I was too thin, too tall, and much too pale, I looked like a ghost compared to them. Not to mention that I had a horrendous accent. But I was a pretty face, and I was told that I could sing. So I was offered a position in the chorus."
He was listening, truly listening, so intently that he almost forgot to ask when she had auditioned and to wonder why he had never seen her. He thought about it, but she had asked for his ear, not his words.
"The next few years were idyllic. I could never afford to love anything before then, so I felt that I was making up for lost time. Music became my entire existence. It was my true love; I lived it and I breathed it.
"Then a little later, he arrived and I had another love in my life. He was a nobleman. He had quite a reputation with the ladies, I was told, but I paid the gossipers no heed. After all, they never saw us together; they never saw how the two of us created a world all to our own. They never heard him promise to me how he would give up everything to marry me, that he would leave his life and his station behind, and we would begin again together. He promised me this every single day until the day he left."
She took a deep, rattling breath and continued. "It was a stupid, freakish accident. The carriage driver was drunk and he was walking along the wrong road at the wrong time. He was killed instantly, the papers said. So he was gone, and after the grief had torn me apart to its satisfaction, I realized that I would never know if he had been telling the truth. I would never know if he had meant everything he said, or if he meant to leave me after he was finished with his conquest, as everyone had said he would.
"The details certainly didn't matter to everyone else after my pregnancy became public. All they cared about was that the nobleman's slut was living in disgrace, disgrace that grew into condemnation when I gave birth to a stillborn. I was cursed, they agreed. What else could cause the mother's cord to wrap three times around the child's throat as he emerged from her life-giving womb, strangling him as neatly as if he had been hung from a tree?"
He dipped his head down until his chin met his chest, wanting nothing more than to burrow inside himself and disappear. He felt suddenly sick; the Punjab lasso within his cloak hung like a filthy, greasy thing.
He looked up to see her watching him wordlessly. It had been so simple. There had been no fireworks, no extravagant words…and she had managed to punch through my defenses like they were flimsy curtains of parchment. No wonder I never cared to be around other people. He clenched his jaw, determined to hear the rest of her story. He had promised, after all.
If she had noticed his inner struggle, she gave no indication. "My Opera career was over after that, of course. I was tainted, as neatly as if God had drawn the mark on my forehead himself. I couldn't stay away though, I loved it too much…I'm sure you understand." He glared at her and said nothing. "I returned as a maid. As long as I kept my head down and my hair in a bonnet, my former friends were none the wiser. So I faded into the background, a true ghost at last.
"And then came that night when you unraveled your little game onstage. I was backstage, a humble, anonymous figure, waiting until the show was finished so I could sweep in and pick up the pieces. I saw the entire performance, of course; I don't think there was ever such a captive audience in the Opera as there was that night. When the chandelier crashed down and the people screamed all around me, I almost forgot to move, and then, I felt as if my entire being had been split open. The doctors that they could spare stitched me up as well as they could. But when the stitches broke two weeks ago, they couldn't be bothered anymore. There were countless other injured…other more important people wounded. I finally redid the stitching myself— an abhorrently sloppy job, I'm sure, if the godawful pain is any indication. I almost lost my tongue in the process…something you would not have mourned, I'm sure." And here she threw him a bitter grin.
His own tongue wasn't quite working properly at the moment. His words stumbled as they flew out of his mouth, tripping over each other as they struggled from his lips with considerable effort. "I do not see how you could possibly think of yourself as hideous because of what happened to you. Nothing that happened was your fault."
She opened her mouth, and he knew that she was about to sneer at his attempt at pity. He stopped her. "You asked for my…honesty. And I have given it to you."
She pursed her lips. "Wasting away in the cellars like a ghost has certainly increased your sympathy towards others. Or maybe you are simply too afraid now to say anything that could possibly offend."
He sucked in a deep breath of air. "If I could apologize, Madame, I would. But there is nothing that I could say, is there? Nothing that can take back the fact that I was truly mad, yes; that I couldn't settle for less than destroying my world and that I laughed as I did so."
She leaned back upon the pillows, eyes sliding half-closed, almost comfortable. "Tell me about her."
He didn't know why the words tumbled out of him like water, or why he felt compelled to tell everything to this woman that even now he wasn't sure was quite real. "All that I wanted to do was possess her. She had everything, the voice that could make angels weep, and she was so innocent, so pure. Could you blame someone like me for wanting to own something so beautiful? I had spent my entire life searching for beauty and I had finally found the perfect specimen. And the most incredible thing was that she wanted it. Wanted to feel the helpless yearning, the involuntary bliss seeping into every pore of her being…wanted to be closer to the force that moved her, that brought her to true life. To be closer to me."
He lifted his head to face her, feeling rather like he had just leaped from a precipice. She was looking back at him almost bemusedly. "I see, Phantom. That was most enlightening. Maybe in your next monologue you will be able to find the courage to admit that you love her."
He felt his features shift into the much more comfortable and familiar expression of a glare.
"You speak such pretty words, Phantom. Don Juan was breathtakingly beautiful. If it had merely been an opera, it would have been a work of art, but I have a feeling that it was a cry for help."
Somewhere during his painful confession, he had lost all strength and desire to launch a sharp retort. At her next question, he felt himself shrink even further into himself.
"Did she love you as well? No—wait, I don't want to hear your response, I can predict it. You will say that she couldn't possibly have loved you. That it was merely pity or curiosity that motivated her to return even after she saw the ugliness within you. You will tell yourself this and a thousand more excuses to avoid the truth that you are afraid to know."
"Obviously you believe that you know my mind better than I do. Therefore I don't understand why you still require anything from me." He said this in the nastiest tone he could muster. He said anything to hide his fear from her.
"I never understood why…or if my nobleman ever loved me, and I never will. Sometimes I feel as if my mind will explode with all of the unanswered questions that I must bear, yet I wouldn't give up the memories for anything. But to actually admit that I've succumbed to such insipid weakness…well, it should not surprise you that only the thought of my impending demise is prompting such a confession from me. You will understand, I'm sure, when I say that it is much easier simply hiding away, cutting yourself off from any reminders, until you start to fool even yourself that the reality never existed."
"Woman, is this a confession or an interrogation?" he demanded.
"I made no accusations, Phantom. You have made the connections yourself."
Frustrated at last beyond belief, he flung the towel down into the bowl at her side. There was a clatter and the sound of water splashing against stone as the ensemble fell to the ground. She didn't move. "What is this, Madame? Some manner of sick game that you feel uninhibited to play, as I am unable to threaten you with death? You asked for my honesty, and yet you seem to want nothing more than to crawl inside my head like an insidious infection and tell me how I feel."
"Tell me truly then, Phantom. If I asked you of your feelings, would you be able to tell me?"
The bowl smashed against a wall, the remaining water dripping darkly down the stone like blood. "What do you want, woman? With all your meddlesome questions and maddening truths, what exactly is it that you want?!"
"What any dying person wants: Peace. Forgiveness might be nice, too, but God usually can't be bothered." She shuddered as her body convulsed around another hacking cough, but the sound was trapped in a painful gasp.
Before he could think of what he was doing, his hands were supporting her back and shoulders, straightening her body, clearing her airway. She swallowed a great gulp of air and then turned her head to stare into his eyes, what remained of her jaw strangely rigid. He gave a great start when he saw what was in her eyes.
Fear. Of course. With any other person, even with her, he would not have given it a second thought. He had come to expect it, after all. But the thought that this being, who did not fear death, would still fear him dug sharply into his chest. With a deftness borne of a lifetime of grace and stealth, he slipped his arms out from around her so quickly that they might have never been there at all.
"Take your peace, and be done with it, woman. I am doing nothing to dissuade. It is you who insists on carrying on this conversation."
Whatever anxiety that he had glimpsed in her eyes was gone, so quickly as to have never existed. "Oh Phantom, you truly believe yourself to be so irrevocably separate from your fellow creatures? There is no peace for a moment whilst you remain at my side. Your anguish practically screams from every pore of your being, and since I know now that you will not leave my side until I am gone, I seem to have no other choice than to continue this conversation."
"Why? Why is my personal well-being suddenly so bloody important to you?"
She coughed again: the sound was raw and loud this time, and her hand came away from her mouth stained crimson. Automatically, he moved forward to take her hand.
He was quite conscious of her eyes boring into his forehead. "Should it not be me asking you that question?"
He took a deep breath and forced himself to lift his head and once again look into her eyes. There was no fear this time, merely a humble sadness.
"I am concerned for you, Phantom, because you are in pain. I have seen too much of it in my lifetime. And as a human, I do not wish to see it burdening another, regardless of what they may have done to me in the past."
"Then, Madame, you are a better human than I."
"Am I?" She reached down and picked up a piece of newsprint from the floor. It was one of several dozen littering the ground. Every one of the pages was smeared with traces of wax for they had been used to wrap the candles.
This particular paper was worn and dusty and showed signs of being folded and refolded multiple times. In the center was a photo of a smiling Vicomte and Vicomtess de Chagny in front of a church.
"You let her go; only the very best of humans could have done such a thing. And you cared for me, even when I was nothing but an insignificant intruder. Monsieur, you have learned. Slowly but surely, you have learned."
She coughed again and crimson droplets dripped from between her trembling fingers.
A/N: Only one more chapter to go after this! Thanks to everyone who's stayed with this so far, it's been a fun journey. And of course, all shall be revealed in the final installment and not before, bwhaha.