A/N: I got one new reviewer, which makes me really happy, so I'm posting up a new chapter quickly! I will only be posting every Monday/Tuesday from now on though as I can't write fast enough to keep posting every few days! So be sure to come back every Monday/Tuesday to check out the new chapter. Any chapters posted earlier than that will be bonuses if I get lots of new reviews/readers.
I noticed from my traffic stats that Chapters 1 and 5 had the most views and the chapters in between had practically none, which makes me really sad, since people are probably reading the first chapter and deciding not to continue ): If any new readers are looking at this, please read beyond chapter 1! I promise the following chapters are better!
This new chapter has a lot of dialogue, so it looks as though it is in Erik's POV. I thought that might be a nice way to write this chapter.
Dana: Hehe cliffies ftw.
icanhearthedrums: Well, new chapter is up! I'm glad you found chapter 4 sad.
Spirit of the Opera: He's back! (:
Chapter 6: Giovanni & Luciana
Paris, 1892
The two of them stood, silently, staring at each other. Antoinette could feel her heart beating wildly in her chest. She blinked a few times, to assure herself that it was not an apparition, a figment of her imagination, but no, the figure remained there.
"Erik?" She breathed, her voice barely whisper. "Erik, is that you?"
The figure made a soft, strangled sound, and turned to leave so quickly that Antoinette would have lost him had she not been expecting him to flee. She strode after him.
"Erik, please! It's Antoinette!" She said urgently. "Erik, is that you?" In her haste, she almost tripped over her own feet, and let out a little gasp. The figure stopped, and turned. Antoinette looked into his green eyes again, and saw for a moment, concern, before it was quickly replaced by a cold feeling of distance.
"Erik. Please." She said softly. The figure stepped closer to her, and she saw, for the first time, the boy she had saved so many years ago from a gypsy camp. He was tall now, much taller than she was. He was still skinny, and his skin still pale. His hair was no longer the unkempt messiness it had been when he was a boy, but rather combed and smoothed back neatly upon his head. He looked so different now, a man, and yet, there was that familiar white leather mask placed over the right side of his face, and those deep green eyes, their depths flickering mysteriously in the candle light emanating from the lantern Antoinette held. It was Erik. There was no doubt about it.
When he opened his mouth to speak, Antoinette swallowed a lump in her throat. Had she been prone to hysterics like the ballet rats, she would most probably have fainted. She could not believe that after ten years of hoping, he was standing before her again. His voice was exactly the way she remembered it, musical, rich, but the deep voice of a man now instead of that of a young boy's.
"Hello, Antoinette." He bowed deeply. Then, he swept past her with a swish of a black cloak, making his way into the storeroom, before turning and beckoning for her to enter as well. Antoinette entered a little hesitantly.
Once inside, she hooked her lantern onto a hook in the wall, and turned to look at Erik expectantly. He looked back at her silently, reminding her of the numerous times she had met him as a young boy, attempting to coax some conversation out of him. Strangely, Antoinette felt a little burst of anger bubble up inside her.
"Where have you been, Erik? For the past ten years? You left, and you never wrote a note, and I had no idea if you were dead or alive! Have you any idea of the grief you made me experience over the last ten years? Where have you been?" Antoinette realized that her voice was growing steadily louder and shakier as she spoke. "Tell me, Erik. Tell me! What was so important that you had to leave me praying for you daily, every day, for ten years? Ten years! Ten!"
His lips thinned in the same manner as it had so many years ago, his way of showing his displeasure. "I told you I was leaving, Antoinette. I told you I was leaving. I was not a child any longer! You did not have to bother about me! If you knew, if you only knew what I have gone through these ten years, you would not blame me for not sending word to you!" He laughed bitterly. "Oh, if only I could have sent word while I was under the influence of drugs, killing men daily like I had a right to! You cannot blame me for not sending word to you, Antoinette! You cannot!"
His last words ended on a thunderous roar. Antoinette winced slightly.
"I cared for you, Erik! I worried about you." She said, a little more sharply than she had intended. Erik's words had hurt her slightly. Ten long years of worry and anxiety, and it seemed that Erik had reduced her to a silly girl who had spent too long worrying over somebody who had not wanted that concern in the first place.
Erik inhaled slowly. "I know, Antoinette. I know." His voice was soft, but undeniably tinged with guilt.
Antoinette closed her eyes briefly, willing her angry tears to dissipate. "Erik, will you tell me what you have been doing for the past ten years? I have a right to know. Please, Erik."
He looked at her, his eyes filled with sadness, but he gestured to her to take a seat, before lowering himself onto a crate as well. Where a little boy had once sat comfortably on the crate, a grown man now sat on it, dwarfing the crate with his tall height and long limbs. He looked almost out of place in this room. Antoinette noticed that he wore a black cloak over a well tailored black suit.
"Where would you like me to start, Antoinette? It has been a rather long ten years, hasn't it?" He said a little unwillingly. She sensed that he was not comfortable with revealing his past, much like he had not been when she had first saved him.
"Start wherever you would like, Erik." She said simply.
"Will you judge me for what I have done, Antoinette?" He raised an eyebrow nonchalantly, but Antoinette knew that despite his pretending not to care what she thought, deep down, one of his greatest fears had been, and would always be, being shunned by the people around him.
She shook her head gently.
"You know I would never judge you for what you've done, Erik. I just want the truth."
He nodded. He looked relieved.
"When I left, I travelled around France for a short while. I had no idea where I would go next, but my travels led me to Rome eventually, perhaps a year after I had left. It was a beautiful place, Antoinette. If only you had seen it. The great stone-hewn buildings, so tall and majestic… it was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen in my pitiful fourteen years of life. One morning, before anybody was about, I climbed up a half completed building. From my vantage point at the peak of the structure, I could see almost all of Rome, and it was just as beautiful as I had imagined. I could feel the cool morning air upon by face, and beneath my hands, I will never forget, the glorious touch of rough stone, chilled by the morning dew, cold, and yet solid warmth under my fingertips. It was perhaps, the most amazing thing I had ever touched.
I was discovered by a man as I stood there. He was the main stonemason in charge of the project, and he had awoken early to go to the site, only to discover a boy upon the top of his building. He shouted at me to get down as it was dangerous, and I climbed down, ready to bolt. He called out to me, and something in his voice made me turn. His voice was kind and warm and genuine, Antoinette. I had never had anybody else speak to me that way before, besides you.
I turned and he made his way over to me. He asked me who I was, and I told him, 'Erik', but nothing else. And Giovanni, that was his name, as he told me later, he offered me a place in his home, lessons under his tutelage, and a job at the construction site. For the first time in my life, Antoinette, I had a job. A real job, just like a real man. Can you imagine that, Antoinette?" He paused for a moment, and Antoinette could see him recalling the past, with a fond look in his eyes. He laughed bitterly for a moment, before continuing his story.
"I should have known though, that a person like me would not have deserved to have such happiness in his life. Oh yes, I was happy, for that short number of months when I lived with Giovanni. He treated me like the son that he had never had, and I was more than willing to live under that facade. It gave me a chance to live a life that I would never have had otherwise.
It all changed one summer when Giovanni's youngest daughter Luciana arrived back for the holidays from her convent school. Luciana was young, precocious, and she was used to having her own way. She was beautiful, Antoinette. I know not any other word to describe her. Her hair was as black as raven's wing, and her eyes a rich brown. She took a fancy to me somehow, and I was alarmed. She was but a child, yes, only a couple of years younger than I was, but still very much a child at heart indeed. I tried my best to stay away from her, to avoid her as much as I could, but she would find ways to enter my room, to try to attract my attention."
Antoinette eyed him warily. She doubted that this story would have a happy ending, from the way Erik's voice seemed to be growing more melancholy. "She… she loved you, then?"
He laughed. It was a cold, sharp laugh that was very unlike what she had heard from him when he had told Amélie stories so many years ago. Antoinette shivered despite it not being cold at all.
"Love, Antoinette? A man like me was not worthy of her love. No, she did not love me. She loved the idea of me, the idea of a strange, mysterious man in a mask. She fell in love with the picture she painted of me in her mind.
Her arrival set off a domino chain of effects, and one day, the one thing that I had feared finally happened. I was telling Giovanni that the stones on the balustrade would have to be re-mortared as the stone was old and damaged. I told him they had to be changed! I warned him, I told him it was dangerous!" Here, Erik's voice increased slightly in pitch, his carefully managed voice wavering slightly. Antoinette could see his hands clenched into fists upon his knees, clenched so tightly they were turning white.
"Luciana… she grew tired of me avoiding her. She asked, no, demanded, that I remove my mask. And Giovanni, that fool of a man… he too had grown weary of Luciana's constant obsession with me despite my attempts to avoid her, and he advised me to remove my mask. We had had a mutual silent agreement, he and I, that he would never ask me to remove my mask for as long as I stayed under his roof.
And just like that, Antoinette, my fairy tale was broken. I did not want to remove my mask, but what choice did I have? I removed it."
Erik closed his eyes, his expression etched with pain, and Antoinette was almost afraid to ask what had happened next.
"As I said, Luciana had fallen in love with the image of me that she had in her mind, that childish girl. She had expected the man behind the mask to look, at the very least, the same as the left side of his face. She had been expecting a handsome man! She was not expecting a grotesque demon to look her back in the eye. She screamed. I will never forget that scream, Antoinette. She screamed, and she backed away, and I tried, I tried to warn her! I tried to stop her, but when she saw me advancing, she screamed again, and backed away even faster, and she hit the balustrade. The balustrade that I had warned Giovanni to replace. She hit it, and the stone gave way, and she fell, Antoinette, she fell! Luciana died that night, and I left the next morning.
Giovanni did not say a word as he went about Luciana's funeral preparations. He claimed that he did not blame me for what had happened, but how was I to stay by a man's side when I had claimed the life of his daughter? That was the first innocent life I had taken, Antoinette. The first of many."
"It was not your fault, Erik." Antoinette looked at him sadly.
His response was sharp and curt. "Is that pity I see in your eyes, Antoinette? I will not have pity, no! Not from you of all people! I do not need pity!" He sneered.
"I do not pity you, Erik. I only mourn for your lost happiness." Ah yes, that damnable pride that stops him from accepting consolation or pity from others has not changed over the years.
"Yes, well." He said briskly, as though she had not said anything. "Despite it being 'not my fault', as you say, I had to leave anyway. I could not stay any longer in the place where a life had been taken because of me. So I left Giovanni, left the only man in my life who had been kind to me, offered me his knowledge, his home, and his affection. I repaid him with the death of his favourite daughter. After I left, I travelled further, bringing myself from place to place, but never staying long enough to attract too much attention, and never staying long enough to form any sort of tangible, lasting bonds with people. I had learned that it was not worth the heartache.
I performed at sideshows, on the street, anywhere, really. Magic tricks, ventriloquism, singing, art… I did them all, Antoinette. Those books that you bought for me back then came in extremely useful." A rare ghost of a smile wafted on his lips. "I have you to thank for my continued success as a performer, Antoinette.
Eventually, I earned enough to buy a horse. Previously, much of my travel was done by foot, or whenever I could manage to sneak onto a train unseen. I bought a tent and a horse with my earnings, and I managed to get by. I did this for four years, maybe. I did not keep track of time.
It constantly bothered me that I was not doing anything with my life. I was performing, setting my own show up within my tent, being poked fun of by some of the audience who sniggered behind their hands about my mask, but what kind of life was that, Antoinette? There was nothing, nothing of my dreams. Where was the music, the great opera pieces that I would write? Where were the buildings, the stone, the beauty that I wanted to create? I lived but a meaningless life.
Perhaps it was fate, then, that one day, when I had finished up my last show, a man entered my tent. I was in Russia then. His skin was brown, and his eyes were jade green. I had never seen him before, and he looked fatigued with travel, his clothes dusty from long rides on the roads. He looked as though he had travelled a long way to meet with me. Part of me was intrigued, surprised even, that anybody would go to such extents just to meet me. Me, of all people!
It seemed that the news about my performances had travelled far and beyond, to the exotic shore of Persia. I had tried to keep myself moving, to avoid detection, and to reduce any sort of attention I gained, but that man managed to track me down, and I was impressed. I was young, and foolish, perhaps. I was eager to carve out the life that I had dreamed of for myself. When he offered me a job in Persia, a job offered by the Shah of Persia himself to be his personal architect, I accepted it.
That man was Nadir Khan, the daroga, or police chief of Persia, and he would later become my conscience, and my savior."
A/N: Well, how was it? (: Please read, review, favourite, follow, whatever! Let me know you're reading and enjoying, it means a lot to me! (: