A/N: I'm so busy right now... sorry for all the interrupted posting schedules, guys, I feel bad for making you wait for new chapters, but there are certain weeks when I'm really just too busy to spend time replying to comments and to post new chapters.
I'm still too busy right now to reply to anything, but I just wanted to say that I read each and every one of your comments, and I'm so, so glad that you guys are enjoying the story right now. It means a lot to me. I hope I'll be able to keep on writing until this story is completed.
To all new followers/favourites/readers, thank you so much for your support!
This is just a filler chapter, y'all... I hope it makes up for the long wait last week!
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Chapter 45: Six Months of Elyssian Peace
Paris, 1898
"Don Juan, daroga, Don Juan. Do you know who he is?" Erik stared down at the music score, scratching out old notes and scribbling new ones in. Before Nadir could respond, he answered his own question. "He was a fictional libertine, a seducer of women."
Nadir frowned, taking another sip of his tea. "And what of it, Erik? What of this Don Juan?"
"Once, my gypsy captors cruelly called me Don Juan," Erik remarked, as though he had not heard Nadir. "I remember it quite clearly. 'We should change your name to Don Juan instead of the living corpse, eh? A voice like that could seduce any woman… until they saw your face!' And he was right; performing ballads and love odes could bring many of the women in my audience to tears, until my true face was revealed. That was when they screamed."
Erik set down his pen, and moved to take a seat opposite Nadir at the coffee table. "My magnum opus, Nadir. Don Juan Triumphant."
"What is it about, Erik?" Nadir asked curiously.
"A foolish servant girl named Aminta, and the even more foolish Don Juan who falls in love with her. Imagine it, Nadir. Don Juan, the greatest libertine of all time, unable to bring this one peasant girl to his bed, simply because of his reputation. Angered by her refusal, Don Juan devises a plan with his faithful servant, Passarino. Under the guise of Passarino, Don Juan makes the acquaintance of the lovely maiden, and manages to invite her to his house, where he suggests to her to hide in the bedroom until his 'master' returns. Don Juan succeeds in seducing the girl, but when his mask was removed and his true face revealed, Aminta spurned him. She calls him a monster for fooling her, and leaves him despite his pleas. Don Juan dies of a broken heart. What do you think of that, Nadir?"
"I sincerely hope Don Juan Triumphant was not meant to be a reflection of your life, Erik, because I would hate to have you die on me when we've only just reunited."
Erik laughed a short, dry laugh. "Always the humorous one, Nadir. No, Don Juan is not about me. But I drew inspiration from my own experiences—all of us hide behind some sort of mask, some masks more serious than others. When our true face is revealed, we may not like the reaction we receive in return. People judge, Nadir. They make stereotypes, they create their own false impressions, they believe what they want to believe in, and nothing else."
"You do not love her, do you?" Nadir asked suspiciously. "The revealing of the true face, the monster, spurning Don Juan… everything sounds all too familiar, Erik."
"Love her? Who? Christine?" Erik stared at Nadir incredulously. "No, no, I do not. I will not die of a broken heart because of Christine Daae. I am merely… angered. I am angry that she did not trust me enough. I am angry because now, instead of having a willing participant to sing my music, I might have to force her to do it. I am angry, because my plan did not work out the way I wanted it to."
"You have somebody else in that cold heart of yours, do you not, Erik?" Nadir smiled.
"Ah, somebody else. Your perception amazes me, my friend." Erik reached over into a drawer and pulled out a scroll, unfurling it to reveal a quick sketch of Amélie, so similar in its likeness to her that Nadir had to run a finger over the drawing in wonder. "We met the day after Il Muto's debut, Nadir. She told me… she told me that she cared for me."
"Well, it took you long enough to realize." Nadir shrugged. "I hope you informed her of your reciprocal affections, for otherwise, you are a greater fool than I thought."
"I did… or at least I hope she understood me." Erik's face flushed. "Everything is alien to me, Nadir. Nobody has ever… nobody has ever looked at me with that same look of affection before. And it hurts, so badly, that each day passes where I cannot hold her, cannot give her the life that she deserves."
"But you are putting your life down on the line for her, and that is enough," Nadir patted Erik on the shoulder. "But Erik, you have a backup plan, do you not? With the way things are going—if Christine refuses to sing, or if she betrays you yet again, how will you continue with your plan?"
"Do not worry overly much, Nadir," said Erik firmly. "I have other plans in store. It is not time yet for the Opera Ghost to put himself to rest—he wants to see his work performed first. But if there is no other choice, I will disappear quietly into the dark of the night, with no one the wiser."
"And Amélie? What of her?"
"I would never leave her behind. I would return as soon as my other plans were set into motion."
"You're lucky to have her, Erik."
"I know," he whispered. "I know."
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"I wondered when you would come to see me again," she said dryly as he opened the doors to her wardrobe from the inside and stepped out into her rooms.
He opened his mouth, but she waved her hand dismissively, bustling around the room, dusting the walls while speaking briskly. "If this is about Buquet, you can save your energy. I do not think that you killed him, so you do not need to defend yourself to me. Of course I have questions, but I figure you will tell me about the incident someday if you ever choose to, but otherwise, I can live without that information too."
"Antoinette, I… thank you. Thank you." Despite his self-restraint, his voice trembled a little. She looked up at him in surprise.
"Is there something wrong, Erik? You never ever say 'thank you' like that."
"The plans I laid… they are about to change drastically."
She looked at him with an eagle eye. "And why would that be so?"
Erik ran a hand over his face wearily. "Christine… she reacted quite… negatively to the whole incident regarding Buquet's death. I'm afraid she may have revealed my identity to the patron, the Vicomte de Chagny."
Antoinette dropped the rag she had been using to wipe a surface, and turned to Erik, her face ashen. "What? She told… no, no, no! Erik, you must leave immediately—we will rent an apartment for you far away from Paris. You must go, before…"
She broke off, staring at him as though she had no idea what to say next. Erik had never seen Antoinette like that before. He walked over to her, and took her hand reassuringly.
"Antoinette, I will not be going anywhere." He said soothingly. "I will not let a young fop chase me away from my house of more than ten years."
"What if he alerts the gendarmes? If he already knows of your identity, why is he not here already demanding a search of the Palais Garnier?"
Erik smirked. "He cannot risk his beloved Christine being put under scrutiny. No, for as long as the name Christine is linked to the Opera Ghost, she will not be safe. Therefore, the vicomte will leave me alone for the moment. And I will have the time I need to complete my masterpiece."
She looked at him questioningly, and he nodded as he stepped back into the secret passage in the wardrobe. "Yes, Antoinette. The Opera Ghost is going on a hiatus."
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Erik was true to his word. All of a sudden, after the big fiasco of Buquet's death, the Opera Ghost disappeared. There were no more disrupted rehearsals, no missing items, and no ominously creaking backdrops. The members of the opera house found it strange—the Opera Ghost had always been a strange and mysterious presence in the background, hovering amongst them, above them, and now his lack of activity puzzled them. Some said that Buquet's death had finally sated the Ghost's thirst for revenge and blood, and that he was now at peace. Others said that the Opera Ghost had left for other opera houses. There were many hypotheses and questions, and simply no answers.
La Carlotta managed to recover from the dreadful incident on stage, and in time, the audience forgot her tremendous faux pas the night of Il Muto's debut, and she returned to her position centre-stage as the rightful prima donna of the Palais Garnier, in the leading role of the Countess. Christine Daae was relegated back to the silent role of the pageboy, her name doomed to fade into obscurity, and again more rumours were generated when no Opera Ghost appeared to threaten the managers for the role of the Countess to be given to Christine Daae. It was said that the young soprano had somehow managed to anger the resident spectre of the opera house.
Buquet's death was covered up as an accident—the managers refused to allow the gendarmes to conduct further investigations just yet. The bad publicity of a murder within the opera house would not bode well for the profits and the audience numbers, and it was in the managers' best intentions to release a statement that Buquet's death had been a mere accident, and nothing more. After all, the stagehand was drunk all the time; there was little doubt that an accident would be impossible while he was in an inebriated state of mind and stumbling along the catwalks.
The managers were happy that the ghost was no longer around, and the patron breathed a sigh of relief that the 'horrendous monster' was no longer around to bother his blushing fiancée. All in all, it was as though the tyrannical rule of the Opera Ghost had been overthrown, and peace had returned to reign once more.
Or so they thought.
Erik laughed humourlessly as he crossed out yet another word, pressed a few more chords on the organ, and rewrote the notes again. Stacks of paper sat around him, covered in his scribbling and annotations, and the staves on his manuscripts had been crossed out, rewritten, and struck out yet again numerous times. Don Juan Triumphant was coming along well enough.
At times, Erik felt weary.
He had friends—at least, he hoped that he could call them friends. As much as he liked to jibe at the daroga and make sarcastic remarks, Erik truly cherished the older man as a friend. The daroga had been there in Erik's time of need, and if not for him, Erik would never have made it to Paris again. And there was Antoinette, dear Antoinette, who had believed him to be innocent even though most of the opera house had believed the Opera Ghost to be responsible for Buquet's death. Antoinette, who had saved him from the hands of the gendarmes and given him a new life, despite her own fears.
Amélie. Beautiful, amazing, beloved Amélie, who had always believed in him, who had always been by his side, and on his mind even when he was in Persia. Who was the only light in his dull, dreary life.
Occasionally, when he ventured onto the surface of the opera house, he encountered Christine in the room where they had once met to practice. Every time, he would hear her begging for him to come back, apologizing for all that she had done, and pleading for his guidance once more. He ignored her all the time. He could not risk anybody suspecting that the Opera Ghost was still around, less he bring the wrath of the vicomte down upon his shoulders again. Besides that, Erik himself had no idea whether he had already forgiven Christine. His heart wavered whenever he heard her apologies, but he forced himself to remain stolid.
At times, Erik felt weary. He wanted to stop his charade as a ghost, and live life as a normal man, with a normal job, with friends and family and a house with a garden. Was that too much to ask for?
Erik stood and flexed his stiff muscles. If this final plan of his worked, he could have a chance at the normal life that he so desperately craved for. He crossed over to a drawer, and pulled out a stack of papers, an unbound and raw manuscript, the kind that would be sent to publishing houses to be properly printed onto thick paper, and bound in a leather cover.
Across the top, in Erik's spindly writing, were the words, "Musique. Composed by the Musician".
Erik ran a hand over the words, then replaced the stack of manuscripts into the drawer. It was perhaps time to pay a visit to certain people who were important players in his final game. He collected his cloak, swung it around his shoulders, and headed out into the dead of the night.
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