A/N: Up with the newest instalment of the story! We are still in the midst of the telling of Erik's life in the past 10 years, so bear with me. I hope you're not finding this too boring! It has a teeny bit of Antoinette/Erik fluff, because I love the idea of them being good friends. Amélie/Erik fluff will come in the next chapter, so stay tuned for that!
To new followers: AssassinaAquila & Winter Elvish Rose (such a pretty name) thank you so much! Please do leave a review behind if you like the story, I really enjoy reading reviews.
icanhearthedrums: I'm not sure if he will be making an appearance very soon, but I think I will put in the daroga sometime into the story (:
Dunedan Ranger: I try my best to make sure the grammar is alright! I'll keep that in mind, thank you!
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To all new/old readers, please leave me a review/favourite/follow! It makes me happy! One thing really puzzles me; it's that chapters 2-4 have much lower views than all the other chapters o_o It comes across as rather strange to me as chapters 3-4 are my favourite chapters...
Chapter 7: The Rosy Hours of Mazenderan
Paris, 1892
In the dim lamplight, it was hard to discern Erik's expressions. And if it had been any other person, that person would have observed that Erik sat, perfectly still, calm and composed. But Antoinette knew all too well the telltale signs of Erik's real discomfort at telling his story—his fists were clenching and unclenching upon his knees, the corners of his mouth were tight, and his body was tight with tension.
"What was Persia like, Erik?" Antoinette asked gently. "Was it as exotic and vibrant as the books we had read described it to be? The palaces, the harems, the Shahs… jeweled buildings, bazaars…"
Erik shuddered visibly. "It was… a beautiful place, Antoinette… and yet, the ugliest place I had ever been to. It was exotic and cruel at the same time. I longed to stay, and yet every part of me was clawing to escape the place." He closed his eyes, thinking of the painful memories. "I don't think I will ever forget the screams of those who died by my own hands."
His voice was barely a whisper.
"Those who died… by your hands?"
"Yes, Antoinette. I was not joking when I said that I had killed. It was the first time I killed not for self-defense, but for the perverse pleasure of the Sultana." He stared at his hands, as though they were gruesome objects, and not the finely-boned elegant hands that they were. "Do you know the feeling, Antoinette? No, I don't suppose you do. The first time… as I felt the bone crack beneath my hands… as the body went limp, and all the life drained out of it..." His voice was hoarse and cracked.
Antoinette closed her eyes, partly in horror, and partly in regret. The pained voice and expression should not have belonged to a young man who was probably barely twenty-four. Erik sounded far older than his actual age.
"You should fear me, Antoinette. You should fear what I've become! I am a murderer. Yes, you close your eyes in horror! I could kill you right here now in this room, and nobody would ever know! I have murdered in cold blood!" Erik snapped, his green eyes flashing, a sudden mood swing for the worse. He stood, and stalked around the room once before sitting back down again, clenching his fists. "I thought perhaps there would be a place in this world for me, but no! No! I am nothing but a cold-hearted murderer, a monster! Fear me now, Antoinette! Yes, run! Run for your life!"
"Will you keep quiet for a moment, Erik? Listen to yourself! You sound like a five year old child throwing a tantrum!" Antoinette shouted at him. "I have not said one word about judging you or fearing you, and I will thank you not to throw such accusations into my face!"
Erik looked at her in surprise, before his expression closed up again. Antoinette walked over to him and sat next to him slowly, drawing him close in an awkward hug. He said nothing, but allowed her to hug him.
"Oh, Erik." She said softly. "You will always, always, be that boy I saved from the gypsies twelve years ago. You will always be that boy I saw, who fought for a chance to live a life of his own, who finally stood up for himself. I may not approve of what you have done these past ten years, but you will always be my brother, Erik."
She could feel Erik's thin body shuddering slightly, and the wetness of tears on her shoulders. When he pulled back a second later, he swiped a hand over his eyes quickly, to hide his tears.
"I suppose you will be wanting to know all about Persia, too." He said dully. And despite herself, Antoinette laughed.
"Yes, Erik. Tell me the stories about Persia, just like how you used to tell me the stories from the books you'd read. You do remember, don't you?" As she said that, his eyes softened a little, but the corners of his mouth remained tense.
"I do not want to go into details, Antoinette, because it was a part of my life that I regret, a part that I do not want to dwell on any longer. When the daroga proposed to me to leave Russia and travel to Mazenderan, my heart leapt for joy. I thought that I was being given an opportunity at last to show the world what I could do. I blame my own childish dreams and aspirations for having given me that false hope. I declined him politely, knowing that he would still be back the next morning to beg me to go. He looked desperate enough to do that. I do not know why I rejected him at first; perhaps I wanted him to come back to plead for me to go. It was a novel experience, Antoinette. No one has ever wanted me to go anywhere with them.
The next morning, he was indeed back, and this time I agreed. I'd never seen a man look so relieved before, and perhaps that was an indication of what was yet to come for me. I was too foolish then to have recognized that look of relief for what it was.
I travelled to Mazenderan, and received a welcome like no other. Imagine it, Antoinette. A gleaming palace, made of gold and encrusted with precious stones. I stepped through the gates of the royal gardens, and there were lush topiaries depicting all sorts of animals, their vivid green leaves fresh with morning dew and gleaming in the sunlight. The large ripping ponds teeming with fish that seemed to be made of silver and gold; their scales sparkled so in the morning light. The ornate metal benches scattered throughout the gardens, their thin metal curlicues covered with semi precious gems. The rooms were carpeted thickly with handmade Persian rugs, soft and yielding to the touch. Diaphanous silk hangings covered doorways, with golden rope to hold them back, hanging with elaborate gold-embroidered tassels in a spectrum of colour. The walls, covered in numerous tapestries, or painted with intricate, twisting patterns that were bedazzling to the eye. It was all very gaudy, very ostentatious, very showy. It was ugly, Antoinette, but it was fascinating at the same time.
And for once in my life, I was excited.
I should have known, that what lay in store for me would have been nothing less than horror and torture. I will not mince my words, Antoinette. I was to be the Shah's personal architect, magician, but despite the grand facade I was accorded, the richly decorated rooms and the so-called position of honour I held in the Shah's court, I was but a slave. A slave to the Shah's whim, or more accurately, to his mother's whim.
The Shah, Majid Sanjar, was scarcely older than I was, and his mother, the Sultana, had him in her grasp like the strings of a marionette in a puppet master's clever hands. He lived to please her, to adore his mother and to give her all that she asked him for. After all, how could he refuse? She was his only mother, the one who had given him life, and as the Shah, he was in the position to grant her all her heart desired.
They nicknamed me the 'Angel of Death'. How apt it is, Antoinette, that I should be an angel, but bring only death. The name is not so different from what the gypsies called me, isn't it?"
"They… they saw you, then? Without the mask?"
"It was not by my own choice. The Shah had commanded me remove it, but I gave him an ultimatum—the mask would stay, or I would leave. One night as I was preparing for bed, the Sultana arrived in my chambers unannounced, and her guards grabbed hold of me. I struggled, naturally, but she reached out quickly and removed my mask. I shouted at her, but she only smiled. Her guards themselves were wincing, and turning their faces away from me even as they fought to hold onto my struggling body. She approached me and ran one hennaed hand down my face, her red talons glinting. When she spoke, her voice was excited. She told me, 'Ah yes, you will be my personal servant, my precious Angel of Death.'"
"And what was your role?" Even though she asked that question, Antoinette could guess the horrors that Erik had had to go through.
"I was but another puppet to join her marionette collection. I had to obey her every whim, or face death. The Sultana thirsted for death. She wanted to feel the adrenaline of a kill, the triumph of a death, but she did not want to dirty her hands doing the job by herself. She wanted me to do it. I built everything for her, Antoinette, her torture devices, chambers meant to confuse and drive a person to madness, weapons… By day, I was the Shah's honoured architect, and by night, I was the Sultana's personal assassin. To the people in the palace, I was the foreigner, the evil one, the bringer of death. I was feared."
He pulled out a length of catgut from a pocket, and wound it around his fingers almost tenderly. "The Punjab lasso, Antoinette."
"The…Punjab lasso?"
"Yes. Keep your hand at the level of your eyes, Antoinette, for if you ever feel the sting of the rope around your neck, know that you will not live to see the next sunrise again."
"Well then, I shall pray fervently that I will never experience that sensation." She said dryly.
He laughed hollowly. "I owe you too much, Antoinette."
"You owe me nothing, you silly boy. If anything, you owe me a good explanation for why you never contacted me in the past ten years, so you'd better get a start on that explanation now." She told him firmly.
"Ah, Antoinette. You haven't changed." He pocketed the length of catgut again. "Very well. I shall continue. The Punjab lasso was my favourite weapon, Antoinette. There is no blood, no gore, nothing. The first time the Sultana forced me to kill somebody with a knife, I scrubbed my hands raw for hours afterward, wanting to rid myself of the stain of blood. The blood was long gone, but it left a mark on my hands forever. From then on, I would only use the Punjab. The firm crack of bone, and nothing more.
I wanted to get away. I couldn't. By day, I oversaw the construction of one of the finest palaces that Persia had ever seen. The Shah wanted it to be gaudy, loud, expensive. It was ugly, but even so, I did not mind, because I was in charge of constructing it. I had the chance to touch the rough stone, the smooth marble, to hold the blueprints in my hands. By night, I was forced by the Sultana to perform her bloodthirsty deeds for her. She was never satisfied. With every creation of a new weapon, a new gimmick for her pleasure, there came yet more demands for novel things to keep her attention. I worked tirelessly upon a maze of mirrors for her, the most ingenious torture chamber the world had ever seen. Nobody would survive it.
I hated it, Antoinette. I hated the screams, the shouts, the fear that followed me everywhere. The stench of the blood that lingered long after. The truth that I had taken life after life, snuffing out the breath in so many people that I did not even know. What right did I have to end their lives? It was a cruel, never-ending experience. It was hell on earth."
"Why didn't you stop? Why didn't you just leave?"
"Ah, Antoinette. Such naive thoughts. The truth was that I couldn't leave, even if I wanted to. The Sultana kept me drugged on hashish, and I was so deluded, so enraptured in my own delirium most of the time that I barely questioned what she asked me to do. I simply did it. I fought against the haze of the drug, but a mortal body can only do so much, Antoinette. In my mind, I was clawing to be free of the cage that the drugs had formed around me, but in reality, I could not even stop myself. I hated myself for it. I wanted so desperately to end my pathetic life.
In those moments of sanity, the daroga was my only form of conscience. He felt that he perhaps owed me that much. The daroga had a young son, not older than ten, who was suffering from a deadly disease. He slowly wasted away in the time that I was in Persia, and my heart broke for the child, so weak, yet so full of life. Yet in the end, I killed him. I ended his suffering, Antoinette, for the child was suffering and it broke my heart. Just like that, I took the life of another innocent child. The daroga knew that it had to be done, even thanked me for helping his son, claiming that he owed me a debt forever, but a part of me wonders if he will always view me as his son's murderer.
In any case, he was my only— and it may be pushing it to even term him as that— friend. We played chess; I always won. We talked about my dreams for the future, about what I had hoped to have achieved in my life. Music, architecture, art. The things that had been so cruelly denied to me the moment I stepped foot into Persia. It was a pity that those moments of sanity were so rare."
"How did you leave, then? How did you get back to France again?"
"The breaking point came when the Shah's palace was completed. He thought he would order my eyes put out, that I would never be able to make another palace as glorious as the one I had made for him, for another king. But he reasoned that I could easily do so even without my eyes, and that was when he gave the order to terminate my life forever.
If it were not for Nadir, the daroga, I would not be here talking to you, Antoinette. He smuggled me out of the palace, onto a ship heading for France, and there I hid in my cabin, until the ship docked in France. The journey was torturous and painful. I suffered the effects of not having the drugs in my system any longer, and there was many a night when I wished that I would be put out of my misery by a quick death. When the ship docked, I stole away to the opera house, and entered through one of the secret entrances I discovered when you first brought me here."
He stood up and walked away from her. "And there you have it, Antoinette. Now you know. I sold my soul for an opportunity to construct a palace for a man and his mother, whom I wish were dead and cold in their graves." His words were cold, and flat. "You can run now."
"Oh, Erik." Antoinette did not have any words to say. She knew she would not be able to comfort him, and her words would be empty and insincere anyway. She walked over to him and placed a hand onto his shoulder, using the gesture to show him that she would not run. He shuddered. "What will you do now?"
"I intend to make the opera house my home, Antoinette." Erik said simply.
"How will you make that happen?"
"I'll find a way. You know I will. That girl up there that I scared gave me some ideas…"
"Will you be alright here by yourself? I have to get back up before anyone notices me missing."
"You don't have to fuss over me like I'm a child any longer, Antoinette. I'm no longer a boy."
Antoinette nodded her head, and made a move to leave. She had to get back before anybody realized that she had been gone for quite some time. She did not want anybody searching for her, for fear that they would chance upon Erik and reveal his location.
"Antoinette?"
She turned. "What is it, Erik?"
"I know I never said this properly to you… but thank you."
And for the first time in ten years, Antoinette saw a real, genuine smile on Erik's face, even though it was fast, fleeting, and only very slight. She nodded in return, and left the room.
A/N: Next chapter will contain fluff. Please read/review/favourite/follow/let me know whether you like it! xx