Chapter 2: The Aftermath of Alcohol

Nadir came around to the smell of candle smoke and the musk of stagnant water. He woke not knowing where he was or how he came to be there. All he knew was that he was not in the bedroom of his flat. Instead, he was laid on tender silk. Even with his eyes still closed, he could feel the material under his bare skin.

Bare skin? Was he…why was he naked? There was warmth pressed against his torso, and Nadir realized he was holding another person in his arms.

Startled, he blinked his eyes open and held back a gasp. He must…he must have been dreaming. The soft silks were cushions on Erika's gondola. He was floating on the lip of dark misty waters. The person in his arms might have been mistaken for a still-warm cadaver by any other man in his position, but Nadir recognized his dear old friend. Erika lay beside him, just as bare as he and peacefully asleep against his chest. The sight didn't last long. Nadir had jolted in shock when he saw her there, and his sudden movement roused Erika from her sleep.

Erika groaned when she woke up. The first thing that filled her senses was a blinding headache. She stretched and felt someone's legs entangling her own. Someone's arms were draped around her shoulders. With a gasp, she opened her eyes and pulled away from the intruding stranger...only to realize with horror that this wasn't a stranger. Nadir was there with her, bewildered and completely undressed…just as she was! Erika grabbed a cushion and covered herself with it, though it didn't help the matter much.

"Nadir!" she cried, her voice echoing over the lake. "What in the hell are you doing?!"

"What in the hell are we doing is a better question, Erika," Nadir mumbled, scratching his head and unsure where to put his gaze. Nothing about her body repulsed him, it was just…decency, for heaven's sake! She sat completely bare beside him while his mind swirled and raced in frantic flashes, unable to recall what led to this uncomfortable situation.

Erika shielded her eyes from him until he turned his back on her. As she felt the cushions around her, wondering where her hairpins were, she spotted a pile of their clothes a few yards away, on the makeshift dock.

Erika turned to Nadir, and that's when she spotted the bright scratch marks all along his shoulders, arms, and back. She traced one with her fingertip, realizing they were slightly raised welts on his toffee colored skin.

"Where…did you get these?"

Nadir rubbed his temples with a sigh, mind twisting and straining to remember what happened. His head throbbed as well. There must have been alcohol. Few times had he been drunk, but each time he drank in excess he felt exactly like this. The Persian's skin felt on fire, and only when Erika pointed out the marks did he glance to his arms and noticed swollen claw marks. Dear Allah…it meant they truly…

"I believe, Erika," his voice was quiet, "according to all the signs…you left them."

Erika's eyes enlarged, and she looked down at her fingernails. Beneath them, she could see compacted traces of skin, grey beneath the whites of her nails. That...that didn't prove anything. None of this proved anything!

"Are…are you implying we…we…?"

Slowly, Nadir nodded. There was no other explanation. The specialized muscles in his lower waist, after years of staying without cause, now felt a little sore. It could mean only one thing: what he had desired for over five years, finally occurred in the spur of alcohol-soaked passion.

"I am, Erika. Only that explanation makes sense," he said.

"I…I…" Erika stuttered. Flashes of dream-like images passed through her mind, phantom sensations of lips on her neck and fingers on….

"Oh God." Erika, still holding the pillow to her chest, stood and climbed onto the dock to retrieve her clothes. Her hips and thighs were sore, which only further cemented the dream in her head as reality. She paused for a moment, her head swimming.

"Do you remember anything?!"

She hoped he didn't. It was humiliating enough to remember it for herself.

Nadir rubbed his temples yet again, groaning. In his mind was a swirl of bony pale, midnight black and candlelight golden, teasing him with mischievous thrills in his veins. Faint memories, as mind could forget but not body. Slowly, the flashes brightened, at times becoming rather clear and very deviously appetizing images.

"Erika," he glanced away, his cheekbones rosy, "I believe I do remember." Catching her dark gaze once again, he sighed and straightened his spine. His voice became firmer, more convinced of his confidence as he said: "And I do not regret it in the slightest."

She held his gaze, just for a moment, before narrowing her eyes into burning slits. Erika wadded up the clothes she knew belonged to him and threw them into the boat – aiming at his face for good measure.

"You will," she hissed as she slipped some articles of clothing back on. "If you so much as breathe a word of this again, you will."

Erika stumbled woozily off the dock, leaving Nadir to himself. God Almighty, she felt so ill. "Get dressed and get the hell away from my home." She glared at him over her shoulder before throwing closed the privacy curtain that surrounded her bed.

Nadir sat alone in the gently rocking boat for a minute more, watching the closed curtains around her bed sway in the underground drafts. A cutting disappointment struck his core, although he knew he had no right to feel such a way. After all, what else could have he expected? Rejoice? Confessions of undying love? The Mirage's heart beating against his bare chest for every night to come?

No. It was a fool's illusion, and he was no fool.

He stepped onto the dock and redressed himself in silence. He paused to glance in her direction once more. Nothing stirred from behind the bed curtains. Nadir pressed a kiss to his fingertips and held his hand out towards her. A parting gesture she would never see.

With that, he exited her lair via the staircase that led to the forgotten hallways above.

Perhaps one day she would accept him and embrace him as her own. Yet a long, long time would have to pass. The Persian had waited for half a decade, and he would gladly wait a thousand more. No matter what distresses he may encounter – what horrors she may put him through as punishment for this encounter – they would not drive him away. If either heaven's gates or hell's jaws awaited, he couldn't care less. If it meant remaining by her side, he couldn't care less.

Nadir gave Erika her space after that night of living dreams. He made the decision to stay clear of her territory until enough time had passed.

The Opera Populaire breathed relief for two months. Not a shade of the frightful Mirage had been witnessed by the crew. No cruel mischief fell upon the performers. Management received no notes, nor any mysterious complaints of their inadequacy. Their fear, of course, still lingered.

Was it another sinister trick? The silence before a hurricane? Despite their uncertainty, the poor personnel didn't abandon their unspoken hope. Had the infamous specter left them in peace for blissful good? Such hope grew with each passing day of tranquility. Only one heart grew heavy, darkening with concern: the mysterious Persian.

He continued to hang about the opera's halls, waiting for signs that Erika had returned to her antics. No one spoke to him, yet he never expected them too. He was the stranger in their building, as well as the stranger in their country. Fear kept them from coming too close. Nadir had once overheard the young dancers whispering how his 'evil eye' could curse them with misfortune. That seemed to explain why they averted their eyes when they passed by him.

After five years living in this strange nation, Nadir could say he and his Erika had at least one thing in common: they both knew what it was to be an outcast.

The weeks bled into months, and still there was no sign of the entity that haunted the opera house. What had happened? The rationalizations of her absence gnawed away at the Persian's mind day after day. Among them was the frightful thought that she'd been devoting each waking moment to the young tenor.

That worry was nullified as the Daaé boy continued turning up for rehearsals, always accounted for and always taking a cab home at the end of the night. He would keep a watchful eye on the young man in the evenings, and confirmed he was no longer traveling five stories underground to visit his tutor. This relieved the jealousy Nadir couldn't help but harbor for the boy, due to Erika's obsession with him. Yet, it did nothing to relieve his concern.

One day, Nadir could bear it no longer. That terrible feeling of emptiness was too much to bear without answers. Once again, he wandered down through eerie shadows into the Mirage's secret lair. He descended the damp stone staircase to the door of what was once cellar five, now a flooded limestone cavern furnished to resemble a proper home. The rusted iron knob was heavy to turn, but it gave way in the fashion it usually did, with a loud groan of its hinges. What Nadir saw beyond the door left him feeling crushed.

His fears had been warranted. Erika was unwell.

She was sprawled on her lounge, a weak cup of peppermint tea beside her and a sanitation bucket beside that.

"Nadir," she groaned upon seeing him, "leave. I am anything but in the mood for this."

"You should know it's meaningless to try and get rid of me when you are in peril, Erika," Nadir said, happy she was at least well enough to be angry at him.

She glared daggers into him before taking a tiny drink of her tea. Peppermint was the only scent that didn't churn her insides as badly as everything else. It was as if her senses had become heightened and she noticed scents that had never bothered her before: pungent lake water, the dust on her bedsheets, the smell of her own clothes. The home she couldn't leave was an inescapable prison of nauseating scents.

"I'm not in peril," she said, almost tempted to throw the teacup at his head. "I told you to leave, you ignorant fool! You are the last person on the face of this planet I want to see again!"

She sat up a bit too quickly and tasted bile rising in her throat. Erika had to close her eyes to get the storm in her intestines to settle, but it didn't help.

Her rage only made Nadir sigh. Beyond used to these violent outbursts, he had grown a thick skin. He felt neither shocked nor hurt. He only found himself feeling more worried after noticing her twitching with sickness. Something was most definitely not right.

"You're ill. Thus, you are in peril," he stated. "And your insults ceased to affect me long a-."

In the middle of Nadir's sentence, Erika found herself retching up her tea and what little she had eaten into the bucket. Her gaping nasal cavity was another passage for sour acids to escape through. It made her eyes water.

The hangover had returned three weeks after, though Erika had avoided alcohol like the plague since then. For four weeks she found herself lightheaded and nauseous with no end to it in sight. She confined herself to the cellars, mailing Christian a letter that his lessons were cancelled until further notice. She feared she may have contracted a disease when day after day the miserable cloud of sickness didn't clear up. Down there, hidden underground, even the smallest ailment could be fatal without a way to get medicine.

Nadir frowned, wondering what could have caused this illness to the strongest person he had ever known. She had never fallen so frail and nauseous before. Wait...nauseous?

After the moment passed, Erika growled and wiped her mouth with a cloth. "Your being here does nothing except make me worse," she groaned. She ran a weary hand through her hair, arm shaking with weakness. "Leave me be, and if you know what's good for you, you will not come back again." She pinched the place between her eyes. If he left forever, she would be alone in the world. At that moment, she couldn't have cared less about that. All of this was his fault, anyway.

Nadir ignored her callous threats and rebukes. Deep in his gut, he understood. Somehow, he just…sensed. "Erika…" he asked in deathly seriousness, "are you…are you with child?" But what answer did he look for? As if she would ever admit to it, let alone now, with her stomach still slender.

"Always the interrogator," Erika sighed, her face in her hands. Why wouldn't he just let her alone and be done with it all? She sat, silent and still, for a long while.

She had noticed her breasts becoming tender after her illness began. A common sign her monthly flow was due to start, so it wasn't a matter of importance. That is, until her monthly flow didn't come that month. Or the next.

Not met with an answer, Nadir sighed and shook his head. It seemed this one time his intuition had been wrong. Had she anything to hide, Erika would have bristled and hissed like a cornered rat, or so he expected.

Finally, Erika lifted her head with a deep breath of air. Was there any point in dodging the reason behind her anger towards him? Being the detective he was, he had seen through her defensive barrier. He wasn't scared off by her threats – however genuine they were. Nadir was clearly not going to leave her be until she gave him an answer…a truthful answer.

Erika shakily stood to her feet and glared up at Nadir, this time hoping to look more intimidating in a last-stand effort to scare him. She seized his collar with a skeletal hand, pulling him to her level so she could whisper:

"Yes, you bastard, I am."

She punctuated her confession with a vicious slap across her once dear friend's cheek.