Chapter 4

He reached aimlessly for another sheet of newsprint and crumpled it, holding it under her chin to catch the flow of blood. A crimson stain spread across the headline: The Irish Times. She grimaced as his hand approached her throat.

"I'm not going to hurt you!" he snapped. Is my touch truly so death-like, so menacing?

She rolled her gaze in his direction, a dull sheen across her green eyes. "I'm not afraid of you, Phantom, you just seem so afraid of me."

"Don't be ridiculous," he hissed. His hands trembled as they wiped her mottled chin clean.

"It is only death, monsieur, just a little death. But there's no need for fear. You won't die down here. You don't want to die down here."

"And how could you possibly know that?" he said, filled with dread.

"It's not your style. You who crashed the masquerade ball and disappeared in a flash of smoke, you who declared your love onstage before the full audience, you who gleefully caused so much death with a chandelier crashing down in flames…you would not die alone in the scary basement. It's not dramatic enough."

"Theresa…Theresa…I beg your forgiveness, please…"

"Why do you ask it of Theresa? You already know; you must know by now, that I am not all that I seem."

He laid a hand on her ravaged cheek for the first time, trying to ignore how it trembled beneath his touch. Misshapen though it was, the skin was dry and still warm. "This is real…this body, this woman is real. This suffering is real."

He moved his hand in a gentle caress, feeling the shape of a bowed cheekbone beneath his fingers, sensing how the trembling eventually slowed and stopped. Then the face convulsed and the lips jerked open, desperately sucking air into a collapsing windpipe.

"Erik…go, you don't belong here. Not with this. Not with me," she gasped, sweating from the effort of her words. "Go."

Her eyes widened then and froze in her head as her throat seized, her ribcage expanding and contracting around useless lungs.

Erik gave a great cry. "No!"

He bent over her and was pushing against her chest with punishing force as her silent eyes gazed back at him in befuddlement. Live, damn you! I will not let you die…

His efforts were useless; her lungs had completely collapsed. Do I dare? Can these death-like lips truly grant another the breath of life? He bent over, bringing his awful face close to hers…

Sharp stinging pain brought tears to his eyes as his lips and what remained of his nose crashed against something rigid and unyielding.

Cursing, he waited for his blurry vision to clear. It did. He froze. His disbelieving eyes took in the sight of the snug metal brace that wired the woman's mouth securely shut. The metalwork was lattice-like and bore a disturbing resemblance to a muzzle. A crimson stain glistened on a section of the metal. He drew a hand to his mouth and felt his cut lip.

Erik barely managed to grasp the edge of his abandoned chair as his legs seemed to collapse underneath him. He blinked, but the vision did not disappear. Rather, it began thrashing and flailing its arms, the stitches of her wound tearing her cheek. Erik came back to himself enough to see the blue tinge creeping into her ravaged skin.

He took a large gulp of air as if he were drowning and then reached forward. One hand cupped her chin almost tenderly as the other crushed the metal brace and lifted it like crumpled paper away from her face.

The chin in his hand went slack. Her jaw dropped open against useless tendons, and a sickening smell filled his nostrils. There was no tongue in her mouth.

The world seemed to twist before his eyes, and he turned his head away, feeling a terrifying wave of nausea rush through his body. His heart rose in his throat, leaving the sour taste of bile on his tongue.

It was only a face…only an ugly face. A curse upon the most visible portion of our bodies that neither of us could have prevented. It so easily reduced both of us to less than human. How, how have we been condemned to ruin so easily?

He didn't know, and he hoped that for the rest of what remained of his life that he never would know, for he was sure that the answer would destroy him. The only thing that he did know was that he was not about to sit back and let it happen to another.

Erik bent over her and pressed his mouth to hers. He filled her with a breath of life and almost immediately felt her thrashing slacken. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the scent of death and decay, but he could see her lungs filling and he could see the awful blue color of her skin fading as he repeatedly moved from her mouth to her chest.

And in the deep recesses of his brain, in the same place where the smell of death and decay still lingered, he could feel the Angel of Death beating its wings futilely against a newly erected wall.

He didn't know how long he hovered by her side, breathing for her and pumping blood through her veins. It could have been hours; it could have been seconds. Time had no meaning as he nursed the scrap of life remaining in his hands.

However, Erik did feel when her hand crept forward to grasp his, staying him from beating away once again at her chest. The hand could barely remain closed around his, but it held him as fast as a chain. He looked down at her and he understood.

He looked into her eyes and read what she could not say, what she had never, in fact, said or had the capacity to say in his presence. It is only a little death…

And then she smiled at him. She smiled at him! Her eyes appeared no longer to be green but reflected darkly of an unknown shade in the candlelight.

He held her as he imagined one might hold a shuddering lover: whispering comforting nothings into her ear, feeling her pulse tingling within the flesh of his hand, feeling her body twist then slacken in his grasp. Then she trembled soundlessly once more and was still.

The world blurred before his eyes, and for a moment he feared that he might discover that this had been another cruel vision. Then he looked down at the moisture that had fallen upon her rigid face and realized that he was weeping.

He reached forward and closed her eyes with his hand. She did not stir; she would never again draw away from him. Good Lord, what must this mysterious woman have thought as he had ranted at her for things that he was hearing only in his mind! He remembered the many instances when she seemed strangely silent, when her fear seemed to appear and disappear like magic…

Erik blinked and then looked again at her more intently. The body was real. As was the disease that had ravaged her face. Her voice…her words…he had only to look down at the crumpled mass of metal at his feet to realize that they could never have been real. And the locket?

He reached forward hesitantly, believing it wrong somehow now to touch her, as she had never been capable of granting him permission. He passed his hand over her still throat. Nothing. No locket, no picture, no name.

Erik began to laugh: It was a horrific, despairing noise, and he wiped at it through the tears that were falling more rapidly, as if he could wipe the sounds away along with the unfamiliar moisture from his eyes.

The infection…the infection had been in his mind the entire time.

What possible reason could he have had to put words into her pitiful, wired mouth? Why would he choose to imagine her saying…saying the things that he had needed to hear for so long now?

Why…for the same reason that he had deluded himself into thinking that he had cut himself off from the world. When in fact he collected his wax-smeared pieces of newspaper from the storerooms where they had been cast aside by the people above, and he treated them with as much reverence as if they had been sacred texts.

But no more. He could feel her hand rapidly cooling within his. Then he realized that her fingers were still rigidly interlocked with his. He looked down. Yes, this was genuine.

She had reached for him and held on to him for comfort as she had slipped into Death's embrace. It didn't matter that he had been able to do nothing except to offer comfort. It didn't matter that he had probably scared her terribly by shouting at her for reasons that only he could know.

He had been the last remaining bit of life that this nameless woman could see, and she had reached for him without hesitation. He gently extricated his hand from her rigid grasp and then lifted both hands to his own face, feeling the veins pulsing with life beneath his scarred skin.

I thought that everything within me had died when she left.

Then he heard her voice inside his head…at least what he had imagined her voice to be. And he realized now that her voice had been beautiful.

You have learned. Slowly but surely, you have learned…

The Angel of Death shook a furious fist from a deep recess of his mind. Erik told it plainly to go to hell.

What the hell are you doing here?

Erik felt something stirring within him, crawling uncomfortably underneath his skin like goose bumps threatening to break out. His eyes moved slowly about his lair. He had never realized just how dark it was. Before the mob destroyed his home, he'd had enough candles and stolen gas lamps to make the cavern burn as bright as day. Now he looked down and realized that it was difficult simply trying to make out the outline of his feet upon the floor.

He watched as glistening drops of wax dripped from the heads of candles, collecting and solidifying once again at their bases. He felt strangely hollow as he looked across the space that had been home for so long: the shattered mirrors, the twisted remains of the organ, ragged pieces of sheet music and newsprint, scraps of cloth and satin. It took him less time than he had predicted but by then, he realized that he had seen enough.

Erik bent over her body and kissed her forehead. He felt a chill as the ravaged skin sucked warmth from his touch. Then he stood and detached the cloak from his shoulders and spread it over her body. The garment enfolded her gently in its midnight embrace.

He stood upright again, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and not only in the literal sense. The Punjab lasso had been in the cloak, and he found that he could not summon up any desire to care.

"Theresa…" his voice was soft, smooth, with a musical quality that had not been there for four weeks. "Theresa…I realize that is not your name and that I shall never know your name. But that is who you are to me. That is what you have meant to me. You are my theros…my summer, after my lifelong winter. I only wish that…that it had not required your death to save me. But if you can hear me, and forgive me…thank you. Do you know what I shall do now? I shall take you out of here with me; nothing remains here that befits even a corpse. I shall give you a Viking funeral…high above the rooftops of Paris. And if I hurry, you shall see the dawn, and you shall burn brighter than even the rising sun. After all…did you not want a properly dramatic death?"

Then he smiled for the first time that he could remember in so long. And although there was sadness in his smile, Erik felt something inside of him stir and come to life.

FIN

A/N: First of all, a big and HUGE thank you to Le Chat Noir, my beta extraordinaire. Not only does she catch all my silly grammar mistakes, but without her, the ending would have been quite different.

Next, my eternal gratitude to all of you who had read, squee-d, reviewed, and even those of you who lurked and didn't review. I love you guys too. (But reviewing never hurt anyone :-P)

A few points about the story that may interest some of you:

The origin of the name "Theresa" is uncertain but the most popular theories both stem from Greek words. First, there is "theros" meaning "summer". Second, there is "therizo" meaning "to harvest". Obviously, I have chosen to use the former.

Technically gangrene is not contagious even after the person carrying it is dead, but that was not common medical knowledge in 19th century France.

Erik and "Theresa" have the same eye color.

The Phantom is never referred to as Erik until after "Theresa" calls his name. It is always "he" or "him". And the woman is never referred to as "Theresa" except when Erik calls her by that name. CTRL+F it, if you're curious.

Some of the more obscure clues and hints scattered about the story:

1) "Theresa" can speak, laugh, and shout. If gangrene was truly in its final stages, she would have had trouble simply breathing.

2) Erik could "tell" that her eyes were green from the photograph in the locket. But color photography was not invented until the 1940s.