A/N: WARNING! Scenario of a graphic nature ahead!
Erik looked around slowly, brow furrowed as his hand slipped from the coat he'd just finished hanging on it's accustomed hook.
Something is different… he thought; taking in his parlor. What is different?
Starting at the front door, he cautiously started forward. He was determined to make as little noise as possible, so as not to alert anyone that might have caused the as yet unnamed changes to his home. It was unlikely an intruder would have already come and gone. Casual callers weren't so common here, and none would have risked angering him by coming in unannounced or without permission.
He was almost halfway to the great fireplace when he realized that almost everything was different – if only subtly in most cases. It wasn't merely a case of something missing or having been moved. Nothing had been disturbed. It was something altogether different, and he continued forward as he noticed these things without any desire to. It was almost as though he had no control over his body, even if he'd have chosen to do exactly the same things it was doing anyway.
The surfaces that could gleam and shine under the right light seemed polished to a disorienting gleam. The top of his piano, for instance, gleamed so brightly in the firelight that it created a dull glare. Gold-toned lamp bases and candelabras shot of sparks of reflecting light. The clear glass of a hurricane lamp caught the firelight so fiercely that it sent a rainbow reflection only a few inches large up into the ceilingthat seemed tangible enough to grasp.
Colors were bold and brilliant in his vision. Everything seemed ultra-defined that his fingers itched. It was as though they could almost already feel whatever he saw.
But I can't feel the fire… he thought slowly, glancing up to his oversized hearth. There's no warmth…
Dazed, he stepped up to his piano and brushed his fingertips in a caress across the ivory keys. They should have been cool to the touch, and smooth. He should have felt the sharp crease between each key… but he felt nothing… Slowly he lifted his eyes to stare across the room once again; but something new caught his attention.
A violin was on the piano. Had it been there when he came into the room? He could have sworn the surface had been entirely uncluttered. With the strength of the glare coming off the wood surfaces, though, could he have merely missed it until now? That didn't seem likely.
Bella… he thought at once, recognizing the violin as the one she'd given him when they were no more than friends. He hadn't seen it since her death. It had been one of the many things he'd had to leave behind out of expediancy. Knowing it would likely burn after he left had nearly killed him... but he'd taken the rough wooden flute.
"No!"
He whirled, eyes going wide as he reacted to her voice. It was as though thinking about her had summoned her; but there was no one behind him. As a matter of fact, the hysterical scream seemed almost disembodied. It was as though she was in the catacombs beneath Paris, and he stood hearing it's distorted echo up on the roof of the Opera. It was that warped. Still... it hadn't actually been that soft. Arabella was nearby, somewhere.
"Bella?" he called – his voice ridiculously soft considering how distant she seemed. He took a single step towards his mockery of a bedroom – where her voice seemed to be coming from. "Is that you?"
"Don't touch me! Don't you touch me!"
These were words he'd heard years ago… decades ago. She'd been struggling with another gypsy – someone that had wanted to hurt her. But she'd been angry as well as scared back then. This time, she just sounded pleading. Erik felt his heart jump into his throat, and he tried to run towards his room and that ever-distant voice. But the air seemed to be made out of shoulder-deep water. It was impossible to move fast.
It's a dream! He realized suddenly. It's a dream! Wake up! There's no danger! Not to Arabella! You got rid of all the eople who would cause her harm ages ago!
He expected this realization to flood him with relief. Instead, the dread in his heart grew as his body continued to struggle towards his bedroom. Realizing that Arabella was probably sitting alone in his house - maybe even next to his sleeping body - wasn't a comfort at all. His need to find the source of her panic and tear it limb from limb was still paramount.
It was the strongest emotion he'd felt for her since they'd discussed the reason behind her return. The simple remaining affection was nothing. Relief that her presence was a wonderful distraction was nothing. The dread her cry caused in his dream, though? That was simply... all-consuming.
"Bella!" he called again. "It's all right! I'm coming!"
The effect of fighting through thin air continued until his hand closed on the handle of his door. At that point, he was suddenly able to move freely. This suddenness caused him to nearly sprawl into his room as the door gave weigh beneath the momentum of his forward rush. His eyes were frantic as they swept from one wall to the opposite one, taking in a perfectly in-tact room with black coffin, candles, candelabra, organ, bench, and sofa. There was also a desk where he sometimes sat to do his composing when the piano simply wasn't comfortable. The curtain behind his coffin bed was in place, hiding the torture chamber beyond.
But there was no Arabella! He panted, trying to understand… noticing – if only barely – the barest movement of the curtain. That was something he could easily explain as movement caused by his sudden entrance; causing a slight gust in the room that shifted the material. It was nothing worth noticing. Nothing in this room seemed to be.
"Bella?" he called again, the dream so surreal in its heightened sense of focus that he thought if he looked up the ceiling would prove miles overhead. Everything seemed to feel so high…
He was just moving swiftly towards his coffin bed – thinking perhaps she was inside – when there was the tiniest creak of sound behind him. He knew that noise very well… the door had made the exact same sound upon his own entrance.
Wait! What? He thought dazedly. That makes no sense! How could he know a sound perfectly well that didn't actually exist in the waking world?
"Erik?"
He had started to turn at the sound of the creak, so the woman standing in the doorway was already in his peripheral vision when the sound of her voice slammed into him like a battering ram.
Even though it was only a dream, he could feel his heart and lungs constrict painfully. It was the first physical thing he'd felt in this dream at all so far. In spite of the shock, the dread in him stilled; turning into something unnamable but utterly ice-cold. Maybe it was only the shock… but it didn't feel like shock. It was as though the dread had merely shifted form and was hiding beneath the shock.
"Christine…" he breathed, the pain of his constricting chest made even worse by the sound of her name on his own lips. He finished turning; and saw her slowly stepping into his room.
She wore a very lovely dress of the most exquisite silk; it's rich robins'-egg blue color perfectly setting off her much darker blue eyes, peaches-n-cream complexion, and sun-golden hair. It was her hair that was startling, for never once had he seen it so unbound before. Not even on that last night. It fell over her shoulders and down her back in soft curls that simply begged to be touched, shining like an angelic halo.
"What are you looking for?" Christine asked curiously as she came towards him, her face open and warm with greeting. There was no trepidation at all in her gaze. She didn't hold herself uncertainly or show any signs of the revulsion that had always been there.
"I…"
He was so astonished by her presence that it nearly overwhelmed his reason for being in this room. But the question managed to bring him back to what had caused his dread. It seemed to take forever, though, as though he were drugged with something that slowed every single once of his faculties.
He couldn't find the right words to explain his long-lost wife to this girl. Not even in a dream. His mouth went dry as she drew closer, and he found himself not quite able to look away in the confusion he still felt over Arabella's inexplicable absence and Christine's sudden presence. He stared at his sweet and innocent angel of music... the one he'd sullied just by wanting her so much.
"Aren't we going to celebrate?" Christine interrupted his circling thoughts and stepped even closer to him; boggling his brain into further disarray. She reached up so that her hand was between them, her palm out. He watched her reach up and lightly brush the palm of her hand from the bottom of his chest up to over where his heartbeat thundered behind his ribs. He could see her hand on him... but he almost couldn't feel it. It was so feather-light.
Why can't I feel anything else? he wondered distractedly. I couldn't feel the fire heat. I couldn't feel the keys. I still can't feel the floor. Why?...
"C-Celebrate?" he whispered hoarsely; forcing himself to pay attention to Christine. Well... force was probably too strong a word. Whenever she was in the room, it was all he could ever focus on.
"Well… I'm not wearing this for nothing."
She took half a step back, her hand still on his chest, and Erik saw that in the blink of an eye her dress had changed. It wasn't the robins'-egg blue silk anymore. Now it was the white satin of the dress he'd last seen her wearing… and - although unbound - her curls were now beneath the veil which was already pulled back from her face.
"Don't we have a reason to celebrate?" she asked, her lips turning up into an alluring smile he'd never once seen on her face in reality. The flirtation and devilishness in her eyes was completely unlike the girl he'd known… although no doubt Raoul would see it plenty in their future together.
Even knowing this was a dream… even acknowledging the horrible truth of reality… the pain he normally felt thinking about Christine and Raoul's future together was absent from him. There was only the ache of wanting it to be him that she loved and took into her future.
This is how I've always wanted her to look at me.
"Christine…" he rasped.
"No! Get off me! Erik!"
His head jerked around; but Arabella's returning voice seemed to be coming from nowhere at all.
"What is it?" Christine pressed, her brow furrowing in concern.
"Did't you hear that?" he demanded.
"Hear what?" she asked. "I hear nothing, Erik. Is that why you tore away from me? Did you think you'd heard something?"
"Torn away…?" His eyes were inexorably drawn back to Christine, and now noticed that she'd changed yet again. It was subtler this time… Now, her hair was in disarray, her lips looked swollen from kissing, and her dress was somewhat rumpled. The laces and buttons had been partially undone in places.
It made his body lurch in sudden and unforgivable need. Not his dream body, either. He could almost feel his physical body when it responded to his dream. His imagination was apparently more than good enough for there to be a translation from brain to body. Although his dream body barely moved, he almost felt himself gritting his teeth in the effort to suppress the unnexpected sensation.
"I thought this was what you wanted." Christine didn't whine, exactly… but she looked a little wounded by his obvious confusion. "You've been telling me all you wanted was a wife. How can I be your wife in all ways until we've celebrated?"
Arabella had once demanded something simillar of him. He could recall his exact reaction to the sullen curiosity, too. But Christine didn't look like she had a physical condition that could cause him to control his desire. He swallowed thickly - a ticking happening deep in his throat at the effort. His mouth was still dry.
"My wife-" he began, the word feeling all wrong!
"Pig!"
"I don't understand!" Erik plead with nothing and no one; afraid of where this dream was going now. It took every ounce of strength in his body, but he turned to face his coffin and push the lid open. He wasn't sure why his dream body had been given permission to move the way he wanted it to; but he knew it wouldn't last long. But this was the only place he could guess that last word had come from.
There was nothing inside…
Arabella! Where are you?
"Erik…" Christine's voice was inviting now, and he was startled when her arms encircled him from behind and her palms smoothed over his stomache. "You don't have to wait anymore. I made my choice. I know what I want."
So do I… he thought miserably. You want him.
As she pressed closer to him, and he could now sense her breath on the nape of his neck, his shoulders slumped and his head fell back in the beginnings of surrender. He had wanted this… for far too long. How could he refuse it now – even in a dream? He'd never been given such a gift before – not in life or in sleep. And Arabella's voice was nothing but a distraction... nothing that meant anything. It was memories, perhaps... memories of one of the worst states he'd ever seen her in. He probably couldn't bear - even subconciously - to think of the later times that had led directly to her death.
She isn't here. There's nowhere left to look. Let yourself have what you've wanted for so long. There's nowhere left -
Suddenly his drifting eyes opened wide and he stared in mute horror at the curtain on the opposite side of his coffin. It wasn't moving now. There was no reason for his eyes to be drawn to it. But they were… He couldn't help but look at the damned thing.
Bella… his mind whispered fearfully. Are you in there?
Christine had begun toying with the buttons of his shirt, and it was absolute agony to push her hands down in order to round the dais his coffin sat on. He reached out to try and pull the curtain aside with a jerk; but his dream wife hadn't let him get very far from her. She'd followed right at his heels, and reached up to snatch his hand away from the curtain before he could touch it. He caught a glimpse of the ring Christine had returned to him before leaving with Raoul on her wedding finger.
"Why are you thinking about that terrible placenow?" she asked. "It's ridiculous and morbid. Erik... It's our wedding night! Don't spoil it with something so macabre!"
"But-"
"-Please…"
Christine pulled him inexorably away from the curtain toward the door. Erik resisted, but the pull he felt to her was stronger with every single step away from the torture chamber. The dream was reasserting its power over his will. Christine was taking over control of his will... or - more accurately - his wil to be in control.
"I heard something." He persisted.
"Oh, all right!"
Sighing, Christine switched directions and virtually swung Erik towards the sofa. It was such an unexpected decision – or perhaps he simply didn't have the ability to control his reaction – that he spun and fell into it. Christine was already moving back toward the torture chamber; and Erik watched in bewilderment and horror as she pressed the button he had on that last night he'd truly seen her. The curtain parted mechanically; all too slowly, and Erik's eyes were riveted as the light within came on – not as hot or brilliant as he knew it should have been, but it didn't need to be at full force to do damage.
"You see?" Christine asked, staring into the torture chamber with him as she slid back towards him. "There's nothing there, my love."
But there is!
Now he understood this dream a little better - and his horror was bottomless. The moment he'd thought his wife might be in the torture chamber, his conscious brain had asserted reality – reminding his subconscious that the chamber was soundproof. That was what had halted the voice from reaching his ears. But Christine wasn't seeing...
Arabella was in there. She seemed to be alone… but she was in terrible shape. In the center of the torture chamber, she was at the absolute mercy of the light and heat of his invention. It also looked as though it hadn't been the only thing she was at the mercy of. As in life before he'd fallen asleep, she was wearing a worn off-white blouse and even older skirt… but the blouse had been ripped badly. Her hair was a wreck, as though she'd been rolling around in a pile of hay for hours on end. But it seemed something violent had happened to her hair rough enough to cause several streams of blood to drip from the hairline.
Whatever had caused her this harm wasn't visible in that moment. She simple slumped in the center of the chamber. One leg was buckled under her, and the other was splayed out as though she'd been thrown into that position.
Her face wasn't the only place she'd injured. As Arabella looked up and around the chamber frantically, Erik took in that her lip, one cheek, her chin, and her nose were all bloody from recently open injuries. There was a terrible bruise under her jaw at the top of her throat, as well as fingermarks on her arms and wrists. Beneath the clinging remnants of her torn blouse were more marks – some of them looked like they'd been made by human teeth. Someone had marked her - deliberately and mrcilessly.
In spite of the abuse in her youth, Erik had never seen Arabella so badly injured. Yes, the wound to her stomach had been terrible - particlarly in the end. But it had been a very isolated wound. Nothing had ever compared to this. Had all he'd wittnessed in the world decided to color his dream? The horrors of his life hadn't stopped after Arabella's death, after all. Was that what this is?
It didn't feel like it. It felt like this was truly Arabella... that she was truly badly injured... and that it was all his fault.
"Now…" Christine pressed as she walked back towards him with a flirtatious glint in her eyes. Erik sat gaping, still unable to quite believe what he was seeing - in this room and the next. "Have I put your fears to rest?"
"No!" he finally managed to say. "No – God – Bella's hurt! Why can't you see that?"
This time, Christine didn't seem to hear him at all. She was still smiling; completely undisturbed by his outburst as he forced his body to his feet.
He started back toward the torture chamber, but Christine was already in his way, placing her surprisingly bold hands on his chest as she had his stomche earlier. This time, there was no doubt what her hands intended as they moved straight to the buttons of his shirt.
"I guess you don't want to take me back to the bedroom." She whispered almost huskily. "Is that why we're here? Yu want me here?"
So many things happened to Erik in that second. As the first button was undone, and the cool air touched an inch or two of usually covered flesh, he thought he could feel his body go rigid from neck to calf. It was such an intimate second… so strangely intimate for what very little it was. His breath caught in his throat, and he found himself freezing as Christine pressed close enough to feel that he was…
It wasn't just a distant reality of knowing his body might be reacting to his dream. His body in the dream was reacting; and he felt it!
Why is this all I can feel? he demanded again, unable to speak the words aloud.
It was the ghost of a touch… the hint of further intimacies. It was nothing but the brushing of her dress up against the cloth of his trousers. It was nothing more than that as her hands worked at his second, third, and fourth shirt buttons. But it was more than he'd ever had from anyone…
Although he could see Arabella was slowly struggling to her feet in the chamber, his eyes still began to close in helpless reaction to Christine's feather-light manipulations.
You and your pathetic need! His mind screamed at him. Something's wrong! Who did that to Bella? How can even your dream-self be so heartless?
His eyes snapped open in surprise once most of his shirt had been undone. He could feel Christine parting the fabric as she simultaneously pressed her lips against his collar bone. There was no hesitation on her part, in spite of how this was the very first time she could have ever seen how tortured the rest of his body was. His torso held most of the physical scars of his life – beyond his general all-over deformity. His chin dropped and he stared down at Christine as she moved her lips from his collar bone to the very center of his chest over his heart. Her eyes were open, and she was staring up at him with wide and sultry eyes …
No! His mind continued to scream. God damn you, Erik! Get Arabella out of that place before you begin entertaining your base-
He finally forced his eyes back up, and his entire body jolted. It wasn't just the lust coursing through him at Christine's ever-bolder touch this time - even as one of her hand brushed genty over his trousers.
Just as Christine's dress had changed randomly; the scene in the chamber had changed. Arabella was still inside… but now she wasn't alone. Now there was a man standing with her, his hands digging into her hair roughly – at least partially explaining how her hair and bloody injuries might have occurred to begin with. He was holding her head down to his very bare and dark-skinned chest – a macabre reflection of what was happening to Erik. He was squeezing one of Arabella's wrists in a white-knuckled grasp and trying to force her to touch-
That son-of-a-bitch! He thought furiously; instantly recognizing the gypsy he'd personally murdered. He'd murdered him for exactly this kind of offense! He'd protected her from that sick bastard! Even in dreams he's hurting-
-Damn it, Erik! It's a dream!
This voice was just as hard; but sounded far more patronizingly reasonable. He understood it was nothing but a different aspect of himself; but he still cringed away from it. After so many months of listening to that coldly rational and animalistic voice... he wanted nothing to do with it. It had led to all the tragedy above in the Opera House. It had led to hid madness.
You know where Arabella actually is. You know she isn't being harmed. Why not give in? Stop torturing yourself!
As though the tableaux weren't horrific enough, Erik watched as Christine rose to a straighter position and Adnah – his murder victim – pulled Arabella into a similar pose. The only difference in what happened next was that Christine undid her own dress and began to slowly peel it from her shoulders. In the torture chamber, however, Arabella was having hers torn from her - torn so hard that Adnah's fingernails were tearing furrows into her flesh. He watched as Arabella's mouth fell open in a scream of pain, and Christine's lower lip dropped just enough to make her seem unbearably wanton only inches from his gaping eyes.
What's the harm? The reasonable voice in his mind demanded.
"Erik…" Christine whispered, reaching up to take his face in her hands as he had so many days before in reality. "Kiss me…"
Christine…
As she brought her mouth up to his in a searing kiss, her entire body made full contact with his. Although Arabella was being forced to kiss Adnah in the next room – being held roughly in place by imprisoning arms and punishing hands – Erik's arms tremblingly brought Christine closer as well. He could see both at once, even though he was trapped in the wanton body making love to Christine. It broke him that Arabella did nothing to fight Adnah away. Her struggles were pathetic in Adnah's arms. She didn't even try to bite him - and he distinctly remembered the real Adnah's hand having teeth marks in it that day.
It is a dream… he acknowledged reluctantly. But I can't see her hurt… Not even in a dream. I failed her enough before... I don't want to...
Apparently, he wasn't being given a choice. Every single second that went by, Arabella was being forced to endure the most brutal rendition of what he and Christine were doing together. He had absolutely no control over his body anymore. What he did to Christine, Arabella endured in the most unwilling of ways.
Eventually he was shirtless… Christine was in nothing but her last layer of underclothes, and he had spun her around to hold her from behind. It gave his hands access to all the flesh he wanted while his lips devoured the column of her throat and the soft curve of her shoulder.
Shame filled him as what Christine did to his dream body began to distract him from his rage as Arabella's blouse was torn completely away and Adnah began to hike her skirt up higher and higher. The bastard was truly enjoying this slow taking of what he'd never recieved in life.
How could he find bliss while his little gypsy princess was being put through such torture?
His eyes never quite left Arabella while his body moved with Christine's. He could see as Adnah spun her around, echoing what he'd done to Christine while bruising her and biting her… while he shoved her face-first into the mirror that looked out into his room. Arabella's blood from a broken nose smeared over the glass. Her hands came up to try and push the glass away, but she had no strength. Adnah was ready for anything she attempted, and punished her in one way or another before she could even work up the strength to think of something new.
Suddenly, stuck as she was against the glass, her eyes focused beyond her own reflection and seemed to meet his.
No! His mind screamed in denial.
His dream body wasn't anywhere near as upset. It was enjoying the softness of Christine's skin... the dampness of... the taste... He was softly moaning in pleasure and anticipation.
She can't see me through the glass! It's one way glass!
He knew he was wrong. Arabella had found him through the glass. He knew the second her entire face had gone slack in shock… For a moment, as his pleasure and her torment continued, they could nly stare at one another. Erik felt so sick that he didn't understand how he could continue - even in dream - to be giving into his intense need of Christine.
Then her face fell forward into the glass. Her eyes close and her face collapsed. Although everything Erik and Christine continued to do was still being echoed in the most sadistic of ways by Adnah and Arabella… there was no more fight left in her…
And he could only watch as the few tears of pain glistening in her eyelashes until that point turned into twin waterfalls that spilled down her ruined cheeks. It was almost as though she'd lost all life; except that her knees hadn't buckled. All she did now was try to keep her face from being brutally smashed into the glass repeatedly as Adnah went at her. She avoided that pain instinctively... but absolutely nothing more.
Before him, Christine was in what only could have been described as ecstasy. Even Erik, in his state, thought her responses to what was happeing in this dream were a little extreme... but what did he know? He'd never been with a woman before. All he knew for sure was that the part of him that could felt only Christine, and saw only Christine, was in something akin to bliss. It was beyond sweet, even through the by then tiny part of his brain that realized he couldn't actually feel anything.
This can't be happening. he thought, eyes relentlessly locked on the nearly lifeless creature being held captive in the trap he'd made with his own hands.
Erik's dream eyes squeezed shut, and he cried out... but...
Was it in horror or pleasure?