Chapter Ten

The ground felt solid beneath my feet as I ran. I hadn't realized that I possessed the energy or strength to run so fast or so far. I knew that I had my freedom, that no one would try to hunt me down now. I wasn't running away from anything. I wasn't even running to anything, much less to anyone. There was no one left to run to.

I tried to desperately cling to the numbness that had enveloped me before. It had been a merciful barrier between me and the rest of the world, now all veils had been ripped from my eyes and all protective barriers from my heart were removed, not that there was much left of it to be hurt.

Richard had been right about that fact. There was just one last way to twist the daggers a little deeper, to manipulate my brief absence of hurt into a betrayal.

His words still rang in my ear just a little too loudly, I couldn't shake them no matter how hard I tried. They swirled in my mind, crossing over each other and running together until they made sense only to me. I tripped over a low branch and fell to the ground, as a sob was torn from my breast. I screamed once, and then again and again until my ears were ringing. The scene replayed before my eyes like a moving picture playing on the inside of my eyelids.

The look in his eyes was the same look I had seen many a dying man's eyes. He had known the end was at hand. Everything he had come to care for had left him, and I was to be the last, jerked from his life too soon.

I asked again what he could possibly mean that he could hurt me more than I had already been hurt. He held me tightly against him for a moment. My body screamed to resist the comfort, but I sensed this was a goodbye. After all, he said himself that the war was over and as ruthless as a commander as he had been, Richard would not hold me against my will.

"Ely-Christine, there are things that I have done that I am far from being proud of. I have been commanded to do unspeakable acts, and been the one behind the command of other despicable things. But know now, before I go any further, that if I had known about you - about anything - I wouldn't have -"

"Richard, you're not making sense."

"There was a house, I was told it was filled with enemy spies. I was commanded to burn it to the ground without question. I thought if I could just interrogate one of them that I could find out more enemy hide-outs. I disobeyed the order and entered the shell that was once a house. There were no enemies. Just children and some women. They were all huddled in a corner, half starved and frightened beyond words." Here he stopped as his chest heaved slightly with the memory. I presumed it was from the idea of watching those woman and children die in the same fashion as his wife and children. "I couldn't do it," he continued slowly. "I couldn't kill them. When my superiors found out, I was removed from a position of glory and put in charge of protecting the ammunitions. I vowed that I would prove that I was a man worthy commanding an army.

"There was an enemy spy that kept stealing the ammunitions. At first I thought it was one of the soldiers, but once they started disappearing or turning up dead, I knew it was my chance for valor once more and went about my task of destroying this enemy with vehemence."

He looked at me carefully, but I was shaking my head, not wanting to hear it, but above all, not wanting to understand what he was saying.

"The ammunition was kept in an old opera house. I sent my very best assassins after this ghost that was haunting the opera. It took seven highly skilled and trained assassins to catch the phantom of the opera."

I was suddenly transported directly into my nightmares. Hard and uncaring hands had pulled me harshly from the bed. I had kept my head down, not looking into his eyes. His piercing hazel eyes. He had slapped my face when I tried to scream.

My knees buckled under me and when Richard automatically reached to hold me steady I struck him. He did not shirk away from me, but stayed perfectly still while I flailed at him. I hit him over and over until my hands were bruised. I scratched at his scarred face and he did not so much as put up a hand to stop me. My scream sounded unnatural, as though Cerebus was wailing at the loss of Hades.

I don't remember what I said to Patrice or Isabella or even to James. I just know that I hugged them extremely briefly and ran, leaving everything behind. No one tried to stop me. No soldier threatened to have me shot if I did not return. They were just spirits witnesses to my renewed anguish and did nothing to hold me back.

As I ran blindly through the snow, my mind was faltering back and forth between reality, memory and the hazy world where the truth blended into something else entirely. The cold should have been helping to clear my mind, but it seem to only be able to clear away the numbness.

I had no idea how far I had possibly run before I collapsed with exhaustion. It could have been a hundred miles or a hundred feet for all I knew. I forced myself to get back on my feet, my knees began to tremble from the coldness, my muscles screamed furiously at me at their sudden call to action after so long of idle inactivity. My stomach had even begun to growl angrily at me. All these registered in my mind, but only as an echo, like someone else had mentioned it. I pushed it to the side. What was a little more pain to me now? Nothing. I welcomed it because it gave me something to focus on.

I didn't run now, my legs gave out under me when I tried. I was forced to walk, my pace frustrating me. I chastised myself and my weak body, throwing all my concentration on berating every single part of my body individually. I was so entirely busy that I hadn't looked up to notice where the snow seemed to dip in the snow slightly, clearly over a path of sorts. I hadn't noticed the trees thinning slightly to reveal dark rectangular shapes against the obliterating whiteness with little trails of smoke wafting into the crisp air, joining the rest of the clouds.

The further I walked, the deeper the snow seemed to get. It was now halfway up to my knees, and I had nothing more than my tattered clothes to keep me warm.

The snow became slightly packed where my feet landed, forcing it to compact beneath my slight weight. The snow began to groan with each absent step I took instead of the customary crunch I was accustomed to. The more I walked, the louder it began to groan. I paused for a moment to consider this. I had throughly berated every inch of my body as it slowly let me down and was desperately searching for a new distraction before my thoughts strayed back to the tortured expression Richard wore.

I thought the groaning might be my stomach again, but it was wrong somehow, like it was coming from my feet rather than my wraith thin abdomen. I was distantly curious about this, but as it made no sense to me, I began to walk again. With the next step, the groan became even greater, protesting any more movement. The step after that brought a completely different sound. It wasn't a groan or a growl, it was a strange cracking sound and the ground seemed to shift under me ever so slightly.

For a long moment of horror I thought I had broken a bone. I waited for the pain to hit, but there was nothing, just the strange moaning. I thought how nice it was that I must have so frozen my feet and legs that I couldn't even feel something like a bone snapping under the pressure. A brief lapse of punishment from the world. A moment of relief. I wondered how far I could get with a broken foot.

Where could I possibly go to have a doctor look at it? Did I even want to have it looked at? Wasn't it just easier to sit down and let the cold settle into the break until I couldn't feel it again?

I sighed. I couldn't run away very far with a broken foot. If I ever found civilization again, I would search out a doctor, preferably one who would take some sort of servitude for payment, seeing as I had no money. Ironic that I had spent heaven knows how many months fixing wounded soldiers and setting broken bones but now that it was me, I had nothing to heal myself. I could have probably made myself a splint with some sturdy twigs and twine, but without knowing where the break was, it was pointless. So long as it didn't start hurting me to the point of incapacitation, I would keep going.

I began to doubt myself entirely with the next step I took. There was another horrific cracking sound and the snow even caved slightly around my legs. How was this possible? I looked around and for the first time realized there wasn't a single tree directly around me. They were all around me, but the closest one must have been thirty feet behind me. They seemed to form a circle of sorts around the little meadow that I was in.

The snow slowed to a light powder, letting me see fairly clearly. I could see dead brown shrubs covered with snow just inside the circle of trees, but they came no further. Perplexed, I began to look very closely at my surroundings. Inside the circle of dead plants it was completely solid white. Not a single rock or shrub stuck out from the ground.

Oh no.

A sound from the trees caught my attention. I thought I saw something move in the shadows but the image was fleeting, a small black animal perhaps, but it disappeared without a trace.

I would have explored it had I not had more pressing worries, mainly being the fact that the earth was still slightly shifting below me. There were a hundred tiny cracking sounds now, the spread out all around me. I closed my eyes as I saw what was going to happen just a half a second before it did.

The ground opened up under me, swallowing me whole. I saw the water surround me before I felt it. My instant reaction was to kick for the surface, but my legs wouldn't respond. I tried to grab for a hand hold of some kind in the ice, but my fingers couldn't close anymore. They were almost instantly frozen. My arm was still reaching upward, but found nothing but floating ice chunks. My heart began a strange stutter. Like it was chattering in the cold.

The temperature never fully hit me, but I knew I was freezing alive, I could feel it penetrate every fiber of my being, stilling my organs. I didn't fight it. It was bizarrely fascinating to me. The remaining air in my lungs burned to be released. I mused over the contrast of the fire in my chest and the pressing arctic cold. I wondered if I continued to hold my breath which one would win. The cold seemed far too vast to be over done, but the fire was burning hotter and hotter with every passing second.

Blackness began to creep in to my mind now, making it hard to think. I tried to focus, but I was being sucked into a murky unknowing. This frightened me until I realized that the cold offered the exact escape I had been looking for. All I had to do was accept it.

So I did.

One by one, my most painful memories were called to my mind. My father, laying on his death bed, telling him he would send me an angel once he was in heaven flitted across my mind and I let it be carried away from me, cast in the world of forgotten memories. Next was Raoul, I had hurt him so badly and in the process, hurt myself. That memory was soon swept away as well. I skipped the next obvious memory to be deleted and moved on. My mysterious soldier I let die ... Marie ... Patrice's and Isabella's grief over Riena ... Richard ... all gone, like a procession of the dead being buried and abandoned. I saved Erik for last. I wanted him to be the last image I saw before I allowed not just my memories, but myself be lost to the world forever.

I could see him so clearly now that all my other thoughts and memories were gone. His hideously scarred face seemed beautiful to me. I wanted to kiss it, to heal him, but when I opened my mouth to tell him I still loved him, there was a great bursting from my lungs as my breath was stolen away from me.