The next time Erik entered her room, it was for lunch. Her face stung and probably looked awful, but Christine opened her mouth anyway. The cottony gauze taped across her head obstructed her view somewhat, but she saw him tense as he carried the tray to the dresser, placing it carefully by the items she'd salvaged.
At first she struggled for words, but it occurred to her that a proper greeting might break the ice. "Good afternoon, Erik," she said, then winced. She still sounded like wire bristles on a washboard.
Erik blinked in surprised, and actually looked her in the eyes. "Good afternoon, Christine." Then he proceeded to fill her mouth with spoonfuls of soup in quick succession. She wondered if he were feeding her fast so she couldn't speak between swallows. At last, he came to the separate plate of blanched vegetables. Here he paused to slice the pieces into bite-sized chunks, so she seized the opportunity to speak.
"Thank you, Erik. I don't know why you've done this for me, but one day I hope I can repay you for everything- for saving my life." Her throat tightened with emotion at the last words. At least her voice functioned better after the healthy dose of soup. "And- and though it is unlikely, I…" She trailed off when she realized he held a forkful of turnip to her lips. The look he gave her left no room for argument. In retrospect, that golden glare always had some sway over her. Obediently, she averted her eyes and took the food in, chewed and swallowed. By the time she had done so, he already had another bite ready, hovering inches from her face.
This time she protested. "Erik, if I mean anything to you at all, let me apologize!"
He recoiled with a snarl. "Why? So you can feel better about your abject betrayal? So you can comfort yourself with the thought that you've said sorry to poor Erik? Is this your way of paying rent to your savior? Well, just lull your angel into security so you can up and leave once you're well enough!"
The words would have been beautiful if they hadn't been spit with venom in every syllable. Christine swallowed back a quiet sob, biting her still-raw bottom lip to keep it still. Tears did no good now, when there was nowhere to go aboveground or below. She tucked her chin to her chest as best she could, but guilt still tore at her throat.
Erik stopped, suddenly. His normal poise returned, eyes closed for a heartbeat while he breathed. When he opened them again, no trace of virulent anger remained. Christine glanced upwards. It is as if he wears two masks. I am unsure if it is worse to witness the material unmasking or the immaterial. Composure regained, he picked up the bit of food and again held it to her mouth.
She passed the next half hour swallowing down her tears with her food. Then he changed the sheets again and was gone. She sat and contemplated, and regretted, and pondered.
Three hours before what her internal clock deemed dinnertime, Christine flexed what muscles she could and resolved to stand. Despite having spent the past week in a drugged daze, she knew Erik bathed her and changed her bandages every day, applying ointment and something gritty and sweet-smelling as he went. This time I will walk to the washroom and bathe and dress myself!
Pain lanced through her legs as she shifted them over the piles of pillows and over the edge of the bed. She gritted her teeth as the remnants of her skin protested mightily, resisting the movement. I will stand. I will! For a whole week, Erik had waited on her literally hand and foot and everywhere else. The least she could do was show some initiative in her own recovery.
Now that she considered it, he really had waited on her for far longer. For those three weeks when he kept her in his lair (that was such a dramatic word; she preferred to call it a house), and even before then, he had always been her servant in some way or another. She had come to know him as both servile and possessive, affectionate and calculating. After that night he threw himself at her feet and kissed the hem of her garments, she fought down the initial revulsion his unmasked face caused. At times it frightened her how easy it was to recall that deathly visage, but that great sadness in his eyes grasped her own heart.
He had done everything for her. She owed him any successes she had in the past, and now she owed him a life-debt.
Sitting up was a challenge. The ointment kept her healing skin flexible enough that she could bend, but after lying prone for days on end, using any strength at all took conscious effort. She did her best not to think of her front, where the fire had done the most damage. At last, her feet touched the cool floor and slipped a bit. Had Erik spent time polishing his floors to perfect smoothness? In spite of herself, she smiled. The idea of Erik down on his hands and knees with wax and a rag was almost fitting, given his love of cleanliness.
The dresser served as a temporary crutch on the way to the door. Unfortunately, it left her to support herself a good five feet from the entrance. She reached for the doorknob, bandages taut. Every inch of her burned as she stretched against the straight rods of splints, prompting more tears. Just a bit further…
Her splinted fingers lost their grip on the corner of the bureau and she pitched forward, hitting the ground with a slap and a pained cry. Her few belongings tumbled down with her, the contents of the satchel spilling over.
…
Erik was in the kitchen, cooking again. While the smell of food tempted him, he reserved his own small portions for after Christine supped. He never had much of an appetite, but wasting food didn't appeal to him either. At any rate, constantly cooking forced him to eat regularly. Caring for an invalid has made me positively domestic. He snorted at the idea: the most famed assassin of the Turk empire, reduced to chopping vegetables and taste-testing consommé.
A cry and a thump sounded from the bedroom. Immediately, he dropped his knife and carrots and rushed to fling open the door. His heart wouldn't stop its infernal speeding pace and seemed to leap into his throat.
What he saw literally floored him. There was Christine, sprawled out with vaguely familiar papers littered about, crying on the black stone floor. In several places her bandages were stained red with fresh blood. In an instant, he was down with her, grasping her forearms to lift her up. "Christine!"
A mix of tears and blood dampened the gauze over her cheeks.
"Christine, what were you thinking?!" Alarm quickly turned anger. "You could have- you could have seriously injured yourself! What if you had fallen backwards instead of forward?" He forced himself to loosen his grip lest he hurt her further. Alarm returned when she only began to cry harder. Unsure how to handle the situation, he carried her back to the bed and set her down again. With trembling hands, he knelt again to pick up her spilled items- and froze.
Those papers his mind skipped over were suddenly very, very important.
A personalized score of his brainchild, Don Juan Triumphant, fluttered under his shaky fingers. All of Christine's parts, her entrances and exits, every word penned in his favorite red ink. She kept this? There were even notes he'd written in as he taught it to her, knowing intimately where she should breathe, how long a note she was able to hold, what choreography to use to optimize both drama and music.
Christine was still hiccuping softly when he set the music to rights and left it on the bureau. His throat tightened as he looked her over. In the back of his whirling thoughts, he noted that he'd have to remove his mask and wipe his face later. His cheeks were most uncomfortable when damp.
He turned to leave. He needed time, he needed space to think-
"Erik w-wait!" Like a puppet on a string, he stepped back. "Please… please-" she said. Is…is she actually begging? "Don't hate me. I'm sorry, I…" Here she began to sob anew. "I'm so sorry, Erik, don't- don't hate me…please…" She might as well have played a love song on his heartstrings, the way she tugged them. "I wanted to do something. I wanted to make it easier for you."
Oh, Christine, I could never hate you. The usually eloquent man found himself unable to speak. Instead he took his handkerchief from where it sat in his vest pocket, sat on the edge of the bed, and dabbed her bright blue eyes dry. His own hands were skeletal and discolored, but as she looked up at him, sniffling, he swore he'd never seen anything so beautiful as those bits of sky set in her otherwise ruined face.
His fingers lingered under her chin- almost a lover's caress. All she had do to was ask, and he was helpless before her. She asked forgiveness and had it in a moment.
A cotton-wrapped hand touched his. Unsure if her still clumsy digits wanted to hold or push him away, he withdrew. "Please excuse me," he muttered quietly. "I- I'll be back once the bath is ready."
He left the room. A few seconds later, Christine heard the bathroom tap running to fill the tub.
…
The warm water ran loud enough that the washroom echoed. Just as well- it hid the sound of Erik's own quiet swearing. He cursed fate, he cursed the apartment fire, he cursed the Persian for bothering to contact him, and he cursed himself for being so damnably vulnerable. One little pout and Christine had him on his knees, just like before.
Upon seeing her burns for the first time he'd expected his attraction to her to fade. Instead he was beginning to realize that her every hurt was his own.
He contemplated dosing her with another spoonful of ether just to get through bath time and a bandage change. However, it wasn't medically necessary and he did hate to risk getting Christine addicted to the narcotic. He just wasn't sure how much more weeping he could stand.
Just as before, he sunk three towels under the warm water to prop her head up. The idea of bathing a fully conscious Christine sounded less appealing the more he thought about it, but it had to be done if she was to heal properly. As a defensive measure, he steered his mind toward the scientific; she could apply the ointment, but she'd certainly require his assistance for more delicate matters. For instance, packing sugar into the deep burns all over her front and legs was painful.
I suppose I shall have to invest in some syringes and pipettes.
…
Having washed Christine and changed the linens, Erik ventured outside for a breath of fresh air- well, as fresh as Paris' armpit could get. As it happened, Paris' backstreets were riddled with vermin. The path to the hospital was a dirty one, since it went past the backs of restaurants and through the slums.
Upon reaching said slums, a dirty-faced boy scampered up, unshod feet slapping the cobblestones. He looked up at Erik with an unafraid gaze and held out his hand. Wordlessly, the shadowy man slipped a few large notes into the boy's palm, expecting him to scamper off again and split the money with the two others who heated his water. Instead, the child blinked, pouted, and reached into his one ragged trouser pocket.
Instinctively, her tensed. From the pocket emerged a small, wriggling, black thing. Behind the mask, he raised one brow. What did the urchin expect?
He soon found out. The boy help the pitiful creature out to him, and his other empty hand. Erik narrowed his eyes and tipped his head to the side. Did this boy actually expect more pay? Perhaps it was to feed the pet he now kept.
The boy waved his hand a little more insistently. Yes, he really did want money. I suppose it does no harm. He took out another bill and a few coins and plunked them into the child's palm. To his surprise, the little creature was thrust at him. Somewhat perplexed, Erik took hold of the squirmy thing- and by the time he'd discerned that it was an infant cat that he held, the boy was running away, back into the shadows.
Much to his discomfort, the kitten mewled.
He held it up to inspect it more closely and found it was a female, barely old enough to open her eyes.
Well. I suppose I do need some way to deal with the rodents that sneak in from the river. With little hesitation, he tucked the kitten down the front of his shirt, assured it would stay warm there. Perhaps Christine would appreciate companionship other than his own. After all, it couldn't be terribly exciting to stare at a stone ceiling all day.
With the little animal safely hidden away, he continued on his route to the hospital. It was washing day, and nice clean sheets would be set out to dry within easy reach. Then he could visit the supply closet for more cotton and gauze strips. He found himself requiring far more linens than normal now that Christine was there to bleed on them occasionally.
He proceeded towards the hospital, lost in thought. For the first time in his life, he had a woman waiting for him at home. It was turning out to be a less pleasant experience than he'd imagined, what with the serious burns and emotional distress.
Christine begged him not to hate her. Did she care what he thought? Of course she does, he snorted. Her wellbeing depends on it. And yet… Christine was not a manipulator. For as long as he'd known her, he knew she was as genuine as they came. That she begged him also implied she regretted her choice to leave him. Then there was the score she'd so carefully kept all those months- yes, the evidence in his favor was piled high. Still, he dared not hope for some sort of bond to develop, not after all they'd done to each other. They might be amicable housemates, at the most.
The salvaged pages of Don Juan Triumphant spoke volumes of what she thought. In her haste, she had taken only the items most precious to her, and his handwritten score was one of them. She saved a memento of a time he was close to her, her cherished instructor and her angel in human form. Unfortunately, he had dashed that image to pieces with his own hands. Then what did she think of him now?
He thumped a fist against the wall in frustration. All he discerned from his reflections was that she thought of him. Did she think of him in a positive light, or did she merely pity him? And why did he care? Of course, his feelings for the woman remained immutable, but if there was nothing between them, why bother pondering the issue?
When he reached the hospital's back doors he was met with yet another, even less convenient surprise than the kitten. "Khan," he acknowledged. "Don't you have anything better to do than following me about? Word on the street is you work for the Ottoman embassy now."
The man shuffled his feet uncomfortably, never having been the patriotic sort, especially with the decline of the empire. "A clerical job, to pay rent and the like. However, I didn't tail you all the way out here on a cold night to tell you about my career."
"Ah," Erik mocked concern, "I would ask you to tell, but your messenger boy has already told me quite enough. Christine is convalescing, is she not? I believe your work, Daroga, is done here." Nadir frowned.
"I have no doubt you will give her excellent care, Erik. At the moment, I'm more concerned about you."
He scoffed. "What, you're suddenly worried I'll catch a cold? I don't get colds. I'm a bit too dead to catch the diseases of the living."
"I wouldn't call Christine's close proximity to you a joking matter," his tentative friend prodded, "especially since you'll have to make intimate contact with her in order to tend to her wounds." Dead serious, the masked man glared.
"Despite what you may think, I am not mad. I have full control of my faculties and have resolved myself to leave off the idea that a bond between myself and her is possible."
The kitten down his shirtfront chose that moment to make itself known with a hungry mewl. Erik froze, feeling the little thing's claws hooked into the skin of his chest as she poked her head through the space between his dress shirt buttons. He growled as Nadir's face lit up, eyes ready to crinkle with mirth.
"Perhaps not, but it appears you've bonded with something else."
"That is incorrect. I was coerced into buying her, and will henceforth employ her for pest control," the almighty phantom huffed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have linens to steal."
The Persian rolled his eyes. "At least pay for them. And reimburse me for everything I sent you." He reached towards Erik's chest to pet the ebony-coated kitten, but halted when it hissed and swiped at his hand with needle-sharp claws. "Ouch!" He withdrew his fingers, now beaded with blood.
Erik nodded rather smugly. "I do like this cat; she already takes after me."