Author's note: If you've gotten this far, bless your heart.
Erik continues to be worshipful and manipulative by turns. Christine struggles to understand what it is she really wants.
Links to music below for insight about what Erik decides to sing.
The heart beneath her cheek quickened. One uncertain breath, two – and then everything slowed.
"Personne ne l'ecouterait... Nul autre que vous entendu comme le paria entend."
Soft as mink, the Phantom's voice wove around her. She knew immediately that the song was his own; the sorrowful beauty of it was unmistakable. While she still had room to think, she wondered if it was something he had written about her when he was alone in the dark, or if it flowed freely from him in that moment. Silkily it poured around her, gentle as a lullaby, setting her apart from all the world. Setting both of them apart. It shouldn't be that way, she thought. It was so awful that it should be that way. All the world should know this beauty... and no one should be alone. It was loneliness that made monsters out of men.
"…Personne, sauf vous … Christine."
The last notes flickered like a candle flame and then curled away like smoke. The sadness left Christine aching. With an impulsively whispered prayer against the cloth of his shirt, her hands moved to slide around his body beneath his cloak, holding him, shielding him from that horrible loneliness. His breath shuddered out of him in a long sigh of ecstasy, and his hands shook when he moved to embrace her in turn. But before they could tighten around her, he snatched them back again, like her body might burn him. All of his conflict played out for her in the percussion of his heart, but then once more it lengthened and slowed. Daring to reach for her again, his hands touched her hair, and that he seemed to deem permissible. Cherishingly, he stroked her hair, cupped her face, tipped it up towards him. She blinked her eyes open, as blind with them open as she was with them closed, and wondered if he had gained some power to see in the dark after all those long years in his underground lair. Was he looking at her at that moment? Did he see her? Her lips parted in shock at the realization that she wished she, too, could see, could look past the ugliness into his eyes the way his voice looked into her soul.
"Der Augen leuchtendes Paar, das oft ich lächelnd gekos't..."
Song enveloped her again, his voice pouring out rich and deep, dipping low into notes she didn't know he could reach. The words tripped over her mind, the guttural, unfamiliar sounds of the German passing over her almost entirely without comprehension, only the occasional common word breaking through the language barrier. But she didn't have to understand the words to understand the music. And the love in it swallowed her up so completely that she wasn't sure how she could breathe. On and on he sang, his voice unbearably beautiful, making her feel like they were both untethered from the earth and were floating high above it. And all the while the adoration in the music washed over her. Her eyes fell closed again, and her head fell back, giving its weight to his cradling hands. On he sang, until she felt his breath against her face, heard this voice almost in her ear, and for one breathless moment she thought he would kiss her.
His lips came to rest high above her own, with a tender press against first one eye and then the other. They were chaste, cherishing kisses that left the taste of salt on his mouth. When at last he pulled away, Christine discovered that her fingers were curling to clutch at his back.
"Christine," he said in a voice heavy with want, "let us say farewell."
"I won't leave you," she answered softly.
"You must."
"How can I?"
"You came to say goodbye," he reminded her.
"Yes... but that was when I thought you were dead."
Cradling her head in one hand, he stroked the fingertips of the other in a caress over her brow, cheek, jaw and down her throat.
"I can't follow you into the daylight, Christine," he murmured. The hint of a smile crept into his voice. "It wouldn't do to have me seen at your wedding. The bride's side would scatter in fright while the groom's side simply denied my existence. And you would be denied the attention that a bride is due."
Christine let the joke passed unacknowledged. "I'll speak for you."
"Impossible."
"I will help them understand," she insisted.
"That would be ruinous for us all," he said sharply, the smile in his voice vanishing. "The world has already passed its judgement on me, and recent events will not have made it kinder. You've seen enough to know what would happen. The sheep would become wolves and set on us both before they accepted me into their fold. You live in a different world. Stay up in that world, with your fiancé, and leave me to mine."
"You mustn't stay this way, alone, locked away from everything good in the world. It'll drive you mad."
He laughed, bright and clear and fiercely bitter. "Have you forgotten who you're speaking to?"
"It isn't a joke," she replied angrily.
"But it is. The whole idea of it. Only you seem to be missing the humor."
"So you prefer to hide forever?"
"I have no choice," he snapped.
"Then let me stay."
That stunned him into a moment of silence. Then he shifted to put an inch of space between them.
"You tread the line, Christine," he growled.
"Don't make me go."
"You will find the borders of my strength, and we'll both regret it."
"I know how strong you are."
"You know nothing!" the Phantom roared, the caressing hand at her throat tightening. "You are a child, who believed the creature gazing through the glass into your dressing room was an angel. But your angel is only a man, Christine. A starving man, and you'd sit him before a banquet and tell him to be strong. You don't know what this night might bring if you do not have mercy on me and leave."
"...You're right," Christine murmured, voice shaking under his fingers. "You're right, I don't know what this night will bring. But if it is only the night I can share with you, and this is the last night of all... then I wish to stay. To show you that you are not alone. To show you that I hear you, even if no one else ever has. To show you that I understand. And... to show you... that if you are not an angel... then I am not a child."
His back went rigid beneath her hands, his whole body held tight as an e-string. He rolled her words over in silence, peering at them from every angle to try and glean their true meaning.
"... And what," he said slowly, "of your Vicomte...?"
Christine's throat flexed beneath his hand as she swallowed. A chill trickled through her bones. Fright made her heart flutter like a trapped bird, but it wasn't at all the same kind of fright she'd felt before. It wasn't fear for her body or her life. It was the fear of discovering that stone castles could become sand. Everything she thought she was sure of – suddenly it was all a house of cards, quivering as the next was carefully placed. She loved Raoul. That was true, without a doubt. She loved Raoul. And she wanted to share each and every day with him. Him alone...
In a rush, the cards tumbled.
"I don't know," she whispered.
Author's note: This whole fic is an indulgence for me, and the musical selections I've picked for our Phantom are no less so. I have tried to make sure that they are at least... plausible. Though to suggest that Erik might have heard Wagner's Die Walküre does seem a bit of a stretch. Wagner's Ring Cycle would have been very new, and would not have been performed in Paris by this time, though it did tour Europe. Erik may have slipped away and seen it at some point, or managed to get a hold of some sheet music and performed it in his own head. Considering the avant-garde stuff Erik himself was writing, he could conceivably have been very interested in contemporary music, maybe even more so than the classics.
Considering Erik's famed intelligence and love of opera, I think its safe to assume that he knows several languages. Italian would be a given – Christine herself as an aspiring Soprano would have to know Italian, too. Even if no one else had seen the need to teach a Swedish chorus girl Italian, I'm sure Erik himself would have done so. It isn't beyond belief that Erik would also know German, though Christine probably wouldn't.
Perhaps the biggest liberty I am taking is with Erik's range... he's obviously a tenor. Wotan's role dangles on the lower end of baritone into baritone-bass. I don't know enough about singing to know if he could conceivably have this kind of range, though I have read about baritones being able to perform both bass and tenor parts... Erik is exceptional in so many ways... think he could pull off a baritone-bass aria? ;) Ben Lewis is technically a baritone, isn't he? Let me know what you think.
(To anyone who knows history or opera much better than I do – and I'm sure there are many of you – please accept my humblest apologies for my ignorant mucking about with these details! Feel free to correct my nonsense and educate me.)
(Also, French class was long ago, and I sadly rely on google translate. Would Erik use the formal 'vous' with Christine? Under normal circumstances, probably not, but with the dynamic of the moment, maybe...?)
More music and intimacy to come...
FFN doesn't let me post links properly, so please replace DOT with a .
No One Would Listen – deleted number from the 2004 POTO movie ( youtuDOTbe/dfZnIGETQPQ )
Die Walkurie – Wotan's Farewell, with english subtitles of the german libretto ( youtuDOTbe/7pTaH8USQH4 )