AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize. There have been plenty of reviews, also from the lurkers, but I could not update any earlier because I actually crashed my own computer and only today managed to fix my internet connection. Well, at least everything is fixed now, but having to format the hard drive did hurt, despite the copies of the most important things.
Beregond's Girl: Are you the mother of little Bergil, by any chance? No, forget it. Glad to hear it wasn't slashy (I'd hate it if it was), and that the vicomtesse entertained you. Oh, and your review was quite enough to please me, don't worry.
Pertie: Here's what you've been waiting for… at last.
jtbwriter: Another Fabienne de Chagny supporter, I see…
Morleigh: And here's a third. Well, I expected you to, with being a feminist and all. Yes, I take a few liberties, like moving the Commune uprising right into the time of siege for reasons of drama. But the battles mentioned (their dates and sites) are mostly authentic.
MlleOG: Ah, how well I remember… I do check who's got my stuff on their favourites list, you know. Pleased to meet you "in person". No, the bit about Chateaupers being called Gérard actually is not meant as a joke. There are plenty of insides jokes hidden in this and ist prequel, but I picked Gérard because it was a common name in France at that time, as far as I know.
The Musician of the Night: You all like cuddly Erik, I suspect. Sadly, I prefer dark Erik. (insert mad cackle here)
Bea: Yes, I've seen Gladiator twice, but I'm afraid I've forgotten most of it already. Well, to the vicomtesse the question of who crawls under which blankets certainly is a matter of great importance…
ChristinelovesPhantom: Yes, the background is certainly more complicated than it was in the prequel.
PhantomsGurl: Never mind, I know you've been busy.
Polly: You're pEtting the ferret, eh? Instead of pAtting? Well, that was to be expected of you… (snicker, snicker)
-.-.-
III. My first unfeeling Scrap of Clothing
First thing in the morning, Maurice had said. Very well, if Chateaupers insisted… The Phantom did not like going out in daylight, but this seemed to be important to Chateaupers, for whatever crazy reason, so he had agreed to come. It was better if the chief of police did not venture around the Opéra Populaire too much, or else those filthy Communards of Delannay's might start suspecting something, so it was better if the Phantom went to him instead; he had no problem with slipping past the eventual spies, however well they might be hidden.
And to be honest, he did not want his mother to come to his home. It would be too personal.
Due to his skill at feeling all living beings around him, they encountered nobody directly on their way to the chief of police's dwelling, he and Serge and Senta. Actually he had wanted to go alone, yet Gaston and Serge had pressed him to take at least one of them with him. Raoul had wanted to accompany him, too, curse the boy! There was no way he was going to let that silly little fop out of the cellars after what he had done upstairs; the higher levels had been swarming with Communards. Of course, he could slip out through that passage to the stables, but all the same, it was far too dangerous for the boy. Raoul was not setting a foot out today, and that was that.
And Gaston and Serge! He could have strangled them! Hadn't Delannay threatened to kill anyone who went below the first cellar level? And what did they do? He had told them not to, curse the pair of them and their loyalty! He had decidedly forbidden them to come down to the cellars unless it was absolutely necessary!
Well, Gaston had thought it was necessary, of course, and Satan alone knew how he had found out that the Phantom was going to meet Chateaupers. Maurice had told him, most likely. After all, Maurice knew who Gaston served with such ardour.
Anyway, he had not taken him with him. He had sent him to work somewhere utterly inconspicuous, and he had warned him to stay away from stage and auditorium. And as for Serge…
He had wanted to be alone. After all, he was going to see his mother again. He had told no one, not even Christine. Meg had woken again and asked him what Chateaupers wanted as he had at last crawled under his blankets late last night, still feeling blood-sullied even after an extensive cold shower in the unceasing rain outside, but he had only murmured something about some design of Chateaupers's before he had closed his eyes, too tired even for a little snuggle, hoping only that the nightmare would not come back this time – which had been a vain hope, as he should have known. He would talk to Christine after this meeting, he was sure, but he did not plan to let anyone know what Chateaupers had in store for him this time.
Serge, though… This quiet understanding in his silent servant's strangely green eyes… Maybe he was being sentimental, but he had found a slight comfort in him, and he had let Serge come with him. Serge would not talk about what he had seen later on, if he would see anything at all.
And since the dog needed a walk as often as possible, they had taken her along. Trudging by the Phantom's side faithfully, Senta occasionally nudged him with her nose to remind him that she wanted her head patted at regular intervals.
At least the rain had diminished, though not entirely ceased. Yet it might increase again, the Phantom suspected; the sky was dark grey as molten lead. Slippery with water, the cobblestones gleamed in the dim lights of the gas lamps lining the streets. These days, several of them were broken, but were left as they were, from the distance seeming like dark, broken-off fingers looming out of the fog. What an eerie sight, and then again, what strange, simple beauty…
They reached Chateaupers's dwelling without any incidents, and the man the Phantom knew as Millet opened the door for them. While Serge and the dog waited in the living room, the Phantom went on to Chateaupers's office.
Millet followed him, wanting to take his cloak, but the Phantom fended him off. If his mother was to see him again, then she was to see him as he was known and dreaded. Grimacing, he wiped his sleeve over his mask to clean off at least the worst of the moisture.
First thing in the morning, Maurice had said. Well, it was rather early still, shortly past eight o'clock, and still dark outside, though owing largely to the weather, but Chateaupers could hardly have wanted to see him any earlier, couldn't he?
Had they yet discovered what he had done, back at the Opera House? He wondered. When he came back, this was the first thing he was going to find out about.
Chateaupers met him on the corridor already; he must have heard how Millet had admitted them, for the Phantom had made no sound coming up here. "There you are," he said, smiling. The Phantom sensed an air of excitement about him which he found most annoying. Why did Chateaupers care who he was, what did it matter to him? It was none of his business, damn him! "And what a sense of timing you've got! She was only just brought here."
Right on cue, Maurice came out of his superior's study, for once without his dark coat and hat, greeting the Phantom with a lopsided grin, the ferret riding on his shoulder as usual. Another one who knew about this, then.
But what else should he have expected? Maurice had brought him the message already. Maurice knew about most things Chateaupers did.
At once the Phantom was tempted to tell Chateaupers about his newest crime just for distraction, or to say he needed to see the cook with a message from Raoul, or he needed to go to the lavatory, just anything that postponed this meeting, and if only for a little bit. He did not want to see his mother. That particular part of his life was over, and over for good!
But no, he could not retreat now without losing his face.
Oh, curse this all, and most of all his mother!
"Serge is down in the living room," he told Maurice to gain the time he needed to give his clothing a last-minute tug. "If you want someone to talk to, and if Madame Blanche wants to play with Senta…"
Maurice grinned. "Fine. I think she'll like that."
An then he was already being led to the study, only three steps left, only two, oh Hell, he did not want to, and yet it was of no use…
"Mademoiselle Renard, I present your son," Chateaupers said.
At once they stood facing each other, he on the threshold, she inside the room. She was a thin, frail-looking woman, pale and with beady eyes in a wrinkled face, her hair pulled back into a grey bun, someone utterly not noteworthy, someone he would easily pass by on the street without truly noticing her. So much smaller, so much more fragile-seeming than he remembered her! And never before had he realized that her clothing was so simple, just a plain brown linen dress that had definitely seen better days. And so much older she was. She was an old woman now, whereas he was still young, younger than he was supposed to be.
If she really was his mother, that was. He could not quite recall her face.
Gasping, she shied away from him, retreating backwards until the desk prevented her from going any further. "Oh my God…"
"What's the matter?" he asked roughly, remembering to enter so Chateaupers could come in as well and close the door behind him. Curse her, he was masked anyway, so what was she so scared about? Had she perhaps hoped that he would drop dead before he came here, and now her fervent praying had not come true? Did she fear that he would harm her? Yes, he indeed felt like harming her, like making her suffer for what she had done to him back then…
The woman's eyes flickered back and forth between him and Chateaupers, then remained on the chief of police, as if pleading with him to make that apparition that scared her so disappear. "The very image of his father…"
His father. The reason why he had come here at all. He wanted to find out who his father had been. It must have been his father who had passed on all those strange gifts to him, because his mother was just a common village woman, nothing more. There was nothing special about her. Whereas his father… at once he wished he could be meeting him instead of her. Maybe his father would smile at him when he saw him, and stroke his shoulder and call him my boy, just as Raoul's father did with his son, and he would sit on the carpet beside his father's armchair with his arms wrapped around his knees, just like Raoul, and gaze into the fire in the chimney and just be happy for a fleeting moment…
Maybe his father was still out there somewhere, waiting for his son to find him. The idea was too beautiful to be true.
His voice sounded harsh in his own ears as he asked, "Who was my father?"
Slowly the old woman's eyes returned to him, and at last they came to rest on his face, and they did not flicker away anymore. There was fear in her gaze, to some extent, but also a sense of wonder, even of admiration, perhaps at her son's elegance. "There was no father," she said simply.
What? Was she trying to fool him? "Talk sense," he snarled, and if not for Chateaupers standing beside him he would have grabbed her by her narrow shoulders and shaken her. "A moment ago you said I looked like him! I don't give a damn if it was just some affair of yours. Who in the name of Satan was he?"
From the corner of his eye he saw how Chateaupers raised a hand as if to place it on his arm to calm him, but he dropped it again before he touched him.
"Affair?" the woman repeated, indignantly. "I never had affairs!"
Had he still been a small child, she would have beaten him, no doubt. The thought made him even more furious. "No, and you just picked me out of the river or something," he sneered. Hell, he longed to tear her head off! "Or I was totally fatherless, the son of a virgin, your own private version of Jesus, eh? Only that it was not some halo-crowned pigeon that visited you, but the devil himself, right?"
Her eyes widened, no doubt with shock at his blasphemy, but he did not care. He was sick of all those lies, so sick!
"Calm down," Chateaupers muttered, but he ignored him. He would not be civil, not for that one person who had been worse than any animal mother, who had hated him so much that she had sold him to the gypsies.
"There was no father," the old woman repeated, after having gotten over her initial shock at his fury. "I can't explain. Suddenly you were just there, and I carried you and gave birth to you." And at once she shuddered slightly. "It frightened me so."
There was no father. No, it couldn't be true, it was impossible! But he sensed no lie in the woman opposite him. Hell devour him alive, how could anyone have no father? He would have to crack her mind open, to search for the answer he wanted… but he would give her another chance first, because Chateaupers was watching. "Yet you said I looked like him." It was hard not to roar at her.
"There was… a dream." The old woman lowered her head, and the Phantom caught a feeling of shame without even searching for it. She practically radiated it. "In dreams… he came." Once again she shuddered. "So beautiful, and yet so terrible… and there was fire in his eyes, flames of blue and green… Please, don't ask me any further."
There was an intake of breath from Chateaupers, almost inaudible, but loud enough for the Phantom to hear it. Yet he ignored it. There was a lump, a suffocating lump jammed in his throat. The Devil's Child they had called him. What if they had been right?
No. There was no devil, just as there was no god watching over mankind. There was just fate, a dark, cruel fate.
"But I must ask you to continue, mademoiselle," Chateaupers said softly. "I must ask you to explain."
Once again the old woman's gaze rested on him, as if clinging to him, so she did not have to behold her demon offspring. "You will not believe me."
"I'm quite ready to, I must say." His voice came to the Phantom like through a cloud of fog, as if he were entranced by Créon once again, confused and defenceless. "If you were any other man's mother, I might laugh at you, but it is different with your son. Speak, and I will listen."
Her eyes were still on the chief of police, almost too large for her narrow face, and so frightened, so desperate. "He's not human," she murmured.
Chateaupers nodded. "He's more."
How much the Phantom wished to return to his dark cellars, and not to see anyone for the rest of the day! He had wanted to know who he was, but he did not want to hear this. Not this. He could not believe it. He would not! He was a man like any other, if perhaps gifted with strange talents and abhorrent features, and he had a father like all others. He must have a father!
Why could he not be like anyone else? The lowliest beggar in the street had his place in the world; why not he?
"What is he?" his mother whispered. How many times had she asked herself that question, he suddenly wondered, so many years ago when she had first held the little wretch he had been in her arms?
"If you knew only half of it," Chateaupers replied quietly, "you would be proud."
"No, she would not!" It had burst out of the Phantom before he could stop himself. "She would hate me, like all others! And I'll tell you something: She's right! If you knew, if you had any idea what I did last night… You're a policeman, Gérard! You're not supposed to be on my side! You're supposed to pursue me, to hunt me down, to hate me for what I am! Why don't you?"
"Because it's not that easy," Chateaupers said gently. "If the world were as you see it, a pattern of black and white, then I would. But it's not. It's coloured in shades of grey. Hate you for what you are? But what are you? What are you really? Deep down inside, what are you? Not even you can tell me that."
"I'm a monster," the Phantom muttered. By now, it rolled easily off his tongue. Of course he knew what he was. He had always known.
"No. No indeed." Chateaupers shook his head, and at once he smiled. "Christine told me to make sure to let her know if you ever said that again, because she intends to have Madame Giry box your ears for it."
"Christine does not know what evil dwells in the heart of her Angel. And when I show her, she refuses to see." And how could she ever understand, the purest, the most innocent of beings? She had seen his hatred, his cruelty, his utter darkness, and still she would sometimes stroke his cheek and call him her Angel.
"Christine sees more than you do, my friend. And so do others. Your men love you. They would follow you to the end of the world if you asked them to. Because you were born to be a jewel among pebbles, a lord of mankind. Erik, you can deny it as much as you want, but you are more than just human. You're not an animal. Rather than that, you're a half-god."
"And you sound just like Créon," the Phantom said bitterly. "Lord Keeper of the Gates, yes. Leader of an army, conqueror of the Shadow before he became a traitor, decorated with many a trophy of past battles, all nicely lined up along a belt… Don't let that myth blind you."
"You're legend, Erik."
"Yes, and a dark one."
"Trophies?" the old woman repeated. She spoke very softly, but both the Phantom and Chateaupers fell silent at once. "Amulets, fangs, strands of hair or fur and such? Dangling from some kind of belt?"
The image came unasked for, and the Phantom clenched his teeth, willing it to go away, to go away and be forgotten, but it would not go. A cold hand gripped his heart, and once again he saw Créon before him, his bright eye and his black one boring into his awareness. No. This could not be true. It just could not.
"You've seen that before." Chateaupers's voice sounded strangely pressed, just like the Phantom had heard it before when he was excited. He should have been furious at the chief of police, being excited about something like that, something that was none of his business. But he felt nothing now. Nothing but cold, and emptiness.
"Him." This one single word made the walls the Phantom had erected around his world come tumbling down. His hopes, his dreams, his desire to be normal, just like everybody else – all buried under dust and stone.
And from far, far away, a lonely horn played the first few notes from his Requiem he was still working on, once again a Requiem for himself, for himself and all the things he had lost.
"Please, mademoiselle." If possible, Chateaupers's excitement had increased, but the Phantom barely sensed it now, like from very far away, a small, flickering sensation that was utterly unimportant, just like the rest of the world. "I know you won't like to recount it, but we need a closer description. This is extremely important."
Curse you, Créon. Curse you forever.
"It was a belt, or some kind of it, a belt-like leather thing, like a strap, hooked onto the actual belt…" His mother sought for words. "He was wearing a sword on a similar thing, only on the other side, like some kind of loop or something, hooked beneath the belt buckle and with the other end to some metal thing on his belt, about opposite the belt buckle probably…" Her description was helpless, but the Phantom knew exactly what she was describing, anyway. A sword strap worn on the right side, turned into a holder of a line of trophies dangling on leather cords. He had seen it with his own eyes, inside Créon's mind. He had seen himself wearing it.
A cold hand clenched around his heart, just like when the gaze of Créon's Eye of the Shadow had fallen on him for the first time. This could not be true. This just could not be true.
Please, don't let it be true…
But there was some chance Chateaupers did not realize what she was talking about. The chief of police did not really know about that accursed trophy belt, after all. The Phantom had never given him details. Urged by Christine and Raoul to be cooperative – and threatened by Claire Giry to get his ears boxed quite mightily if he annoyed the police and made them hunt him and lock him up – he had mentioned the visions he had had, but he had kept the account as short as possible. Because Chateaupers might actually believe Créon, damn him! Damn both of them! When they had first met, the chief of police had been such a reasonable man; why did he have to get so overexcited over a bunch of lies about a man who was simply different, cast out of society because he was a demon, a creature from Hell?
No, no, not that. Not really. Just an inferior creature, an animal, a monster. Nothing more.
He wanted to tell Chateaupers to stop this, or manipulate him to do so, but although his mind was reeling madly, he felt as if struck dumb, and the cold hand had caught his tongue as well.
"Please," Chateaupers said. "Continue. Who was it you saw?"
"I don't know. He did not say a word." The woman – his mother, curse her, she must be! – shuddered, squaring her narrow shoulders against the advance of an invisible foe. "He looked just like him… my son…" For a moment her eyes flickered over to the Phantom, then they quickly returned to Chateaupers. "He had long hair, too, down to his shoulders, and those eyes, those fiery eyes… I could not look him in the eyes. But his face… he wore no mask, he was perfect…"
Everything I'm not, was it? At once hot fury boiled up in the Phantom's chest, and the cold melted away, vaporized in one fiery breath of his wrath. "And so you took him to bed, eh? Because he had a perfect face? That's all you care about, isn't it, the outer façade, and if it's not perfect, then one does not stand a chance, not even your own son! How much did the gypsies give you when you sold me to them? Surely you asked less than you would have asked for an animal? Because to you I was worth less than an animal, wasn't I? Why didn't you just kill me straight away, right after I was born? You would have saved us both so much trouble!"
"Erik!" Chateaupers had taken his arm, and with the other he was gesturing in what probably was meant to be an assuaging way, but since Chateaupers rarely gestured, and then only very slightly, it looked oddly out of place. "Erik, don't!"
He shook his hand off. Who did he think he was, a dog? Would he tell him to sit and be quiet now, too?
As he stepped forward, his mother shrank away from him even more, her eyes wide with terror, her hands raised protectively, as if expecting a blow. It must have been the same when he had still been a small boy, it occurred to him, only with the roles reversed.
But he would not repay her by doing what she had done. He would not sink that low. "Afraid, are you?" he hissed. "You're lucky, I'm not you. I only want one thing: Look me in the eyes."
"Do it," Chateaupers interjected gently. "He's not going to hurt you." But he threw the Phantom a meaningful look as he said so. "He'll only read your mind."
"He'll –" Gasping, the woman covered her eyes.
If he hadn't been so angry, the Phantom would have laughed out loud. So ridiculous!
"Mademoiselle, he's not going to harm you."
"And I can read your mind through the back of your skull if I feel like it, so I don't care." He could sense her fear, and it made his blood race, but it did not fill him with triumph as much as he had imagined. Not that it mattered. He would have a look into her memories, would peek at that image, that one image he dreaded to see, but he needed to know, because there was still hope it was not true, and then he would withdraw, for the rest of her mind did not interest him in the slightest. And then she was free to go, and if it was to Hell, he did not care, for she would never be seeing him again.
"May the Lord have mercy on you," his mother murmured.
The Phantom snorted. "In your stead, because you did not when I needed you?" Hell, this all was so ridiculous! "Well, there's one more thing I need, but then it's good-bye. Don't give me trouble." But she would not manage to trouble him much, anyway. Even as he spoke, he already dived down through the outer layers of her mind, deep into her awareness… Her name was Marguerite Renard, apparently. He heard it for the first time. And for the last time, for sure. What did it matter to him? Heedless of the other things he could have found out, he sought his way to the tunnel into gentle shadow, the abyss lined with many small lights. Ignoring the upper ones, he allowed himself to float in the emptiness between them, down where they became dimmer. He had worked on navigating through memories since his first attempts, but never with an individual so old. His favourite object of study was Christine, and he taught her to read his own mind in return, though he still had not quite understood how it was she could enter his mind just like he could enter hers. Claire's explanation, that a little bit of his powers had seeped over into her, sounded just as plausible as it was unrealistic, especially since all Christine could was read what was in the Phantom's mind, but not control him, and she could read nobody else. All the same he was teaching her, and he had, though grudgingly, allowed her to try his memories a few times, but then she had just poked at some at random; never had he helped her seek out any specific ones. And her own life had been so short until now… She was just a girl. There was not much accumulated. And since he knew her well, finding his way through her recollections was easy. Yet in a stranger's head, he was a stranger himself.
He nudged one of the lights before him, and before his inner eye appeared a dim vision, faces he did not know, faces that were of no use to him. It was the same with another, and with the next one he tried. Maybe he should go further down still? Doing so, he touched another memory… and found something he recognized. A small boy dressed in rags, cowering in a corner, his face hidden in his arms.
Me.
Even as he thought so, the boy raised his head, and he wore no mask. What in the name of consuming Hellfire – is that really me? Can this be… the scars… so much sharper, so much rawer, like fresh burns… did they really… heal? For healed they had, if he had ever looked like this. Healed they had. They were still there, of course, but paler, less raw and rough…
Was there any hope they would fade completely?
Probably not, he thought bitterly. He was meant to be marked, meant to be scarred forever.
Turning away, he searched the tunnel's walls a little lower down, catching a few glimpses of himself as often as not, but never again unmasked, only with what looked like a piece cut out of a sack over his head. According to his mother, the first piece of clothing she had provided for him. Yet he did not linger. This period of his life was past, and he was glad it was. It would not come back, and he would not make it better by looking at it.
Lower down still, he found his mother's memories of a hateful pregnancy, but for once he understood. The shame it must have been, bearing an illegitimate child without even knowing who the father was…
And then, when it had been born, instead of being a pretty boy, it had turned out to be such a monster.
Would he have raised that infant, had he been in her place?
Of course, if he had a child of his own now, he would love and cherish it, no matter what its features were like. If that boy in his mother's memories were his son instead of himself, he would offer him all his mother had never given him.
But in her place, as a normal, respectable woman…
No, he did not want to think about it.
And there it was, the memory he was looking for. He knew those eyes, that pair of bluish-green eyes, and the dire look in them. For a moment he wondered whether he should truly enter that memory to experience it like his mother once had, but then decided against it. There were things about this moment he did not want to know any closer.
Nudging the memory in question a little harder, he forced it to unravel before him like a picture. Yes, that was him, just as Créon had shown him, Hell devour that son of a… whatever, there was no insult bad enough for Créon. Him, or whoever it was. The Keeper of the Gates, maybe, if that one was real at all and not just a fable. Wraith, Aeternus had said, Wraith they had called him…
Well, if this is me after all, then at least I can live with Wraith.
His own resignation even failed to surprise him. He should rage at what he had found. He should fight. He should refuse to believe it. But he just saw it, and that was all.
Maybe he was tired of all the raging and fighting.
All that emptiness inside him…
He might as well take a closer look, he told himself. Not that it really mattered. Imagining pulling the memory towards him, he slipped into it, dived –
The apparition was standing at the door, quite calmly unfastening the straps holding his leather breastplate in place. His shoulder-length dark hair was untidy, yet very roguishly charming in a strange way… as were his features. Pale and handsome. That stranger made his heart go faster, and the grace of his every movement was enchanting in a way the priest would certainly not approve of…
Now wait a minute. He was becoming immersed in this far more deeply than he had intended. After all, he only wanted to see what his mother remembered, not relive it. What did her exact experiences matter to him? They were only fit to embarrass him, nothing more.
Well, at least Créon had one use, he thought as he partially withdrew from the vision. He taught me quite a lot, though involuntarily…
Yes, much better. He still saw through his mother's eyes, but at least he did not get her silly thoughts and feelings now. At least he kept his own. Just watch calmly, not falling over himself with naughty glee as the strange guest resembling him dropped the breastplate to the ground was the least a sane man could do.
Sane? How sane was he really?
Watching how he advanced on himself, he pondered that question. Seeing himself – if that was him at all – did not unsettle him anymore, not since Créon had shown him such a vision through his eyes. He had been looking at himself then, too, so this was not a new experience. Moreover, he had been engaged in a fierce sword duel with the man representing himself in Créon's twisted mind.
Well, the thing this one might engage him in would certainly be much more disconcerting, come to think of it. Observing how his strange twin pulled his rough linen shirt over his head and threw it aside carelessly, he tried to imagine it and rather quickly decided to leave this memory before any things of a particularly odd nature happened to him. After all, he had a pretty good idea where this was leading. The look that one was wearing told him all he needed to know.
My father, eh?
If not for those mad stories of Créon's, he might even have found it funny.
No, probably not. Because he wanted to have a father, like everybody else.
But on the other hand, did he really want to? Did he really want to be the illegitimate son of some nameless hangdog his mother had happened to meet one evening?
Yes. Just anybody's son.
No. Absolutely.
Even if this meant having some vision of his mother's instead of a father? Some strange likeness of himself who just came into his mother's bedroom without saying a single word, smirking in an exceptionally smug manner – and Satan take him, how he smirked! – and discarded his clothes one by one?
Yes. Even then.
I'm different from the others. I'm special.
While that creature sprung from a dream kept coming, very slowly, sauntering as if he had all the time in the world, he briefly wondered how anyone could change his opinion so quickly – apart from women, of course. Not all of them, but some women.
Well, I've got a right to be complicated.
Are those leather trousers? Dark brown leather trousers? Not bad. Ah yes, and there's the trophy belt. Looks like some monstrous lizard's fang, that thing close to the belt buckle. Amulets, more fangs, hair, odd little metal ornaments… Interesting. And nice boots. Not to speak of the sword; an actual sword would be a brilliant thing to have. But that can't be quite me, he's still wearing his gloves. Right, now he's taking them off, but all the same, I would take off my gloves first, wouldn't I?
Or should I call them gauntlets, perhaps?
As the apparition unbuckled his belt, the Phantom was laughing inside. This is insane, part of his mind told him, this is completely and utterly insane, but he did not heed it. He was beyond heeding any rationality and reason today.
Look at that, he's even got my chest hair…
The whole world was one great joke, wasn't it? One great cynical joke by a cruel god. And to survive in this world, one must become that god's very likeness. One must laugh at it.
He felt himself – no, his mother – sit down on the bed heavily as the figure probably representing him stood directly before him, and he could only venture guesses at why this was so. Because his mother's knees had gone weak at the sight of him? Ridiculous woman.
And his eyes made her melt inside, probably. Right down to a sticky little puddle of goo.
Meg would like this idea.
Then he raised his hand, or rather, a hand that was not exactly his, because it was a lot smaller, and reached out towards the man before him –
He withdrew before his mind could become unsettled even more. Hell, this was sick, so absolutely sick! His mother was sick, and Créon was sick, and the whole world was sick! And he himself was sick, most of all.
Hell devour and destroy him, what reasons did he have to feel so light-headed at what he had seen?
The lights of the memories in the dark tunnel around him, normally reminding him of a star-strewn sky, suddenly looked like simple gas lights to him, so ridiculously boring, so disgustingly mundane.
As he left his mother's mind, the light of Chateaupers's study blinded him, even though he had never closed his eyes. He should not have looked, he should not have sought what lay hidden inside her mind. Now he knew that she had been telling the truth.
Which meant that Créon –
No. His mother perhaps, but not Créon. Créon had spent time enough searching his mind, after all, he might have somehow found out that the Phantom was some kind of demon-spawn or whatever, and he had tried to manipulate him with it by making up those stories…
Not logical, but at least some attempt of an explanation. Any reason wedged in between him and the possibility of believing Créon was a good one.
And he refused to think of his recurring nightmares now.
"Erik?" It was Chateaupers. "Erik, are you alright?"
"Never better," he growled. He still felt empty, but there was a spark of fury growing inside him, fury at himself and the rest of the world. Oh, he wanted to bang his head against the wall until he stopped thinking and fell into blissful oblivion!
And then he wanted to curl up very small and lie quite still, and to hold Christine's hand while he did so.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
He nodded briefly. What was that in his chest, feeling so incredibly tight?
For one single time, why can't I be like everyone else?
But then again… do I really want to?
Why were there so many questions he could not answer?
"What did you do?" It was his mother, whom he had practically banished from his thoughts, and her voice was nothing but a small, timid whisper. He should have liked that, but strangely, he did not care.
"Nothing you would ever understand," he growled. "You won't understand anything I do, anyway, so why do you still ask?"
But, to be honest, neither do I…
"Oh, there are some things she surely would understand," Chateaupers objected. "For example, mademoiselle, did you realize that your son is the Opéra Populaire's finest tenor?"
"Why don't you tell her I'm the Opera Ghost, too?" the Phantom put in scathingly. His Opera House was none of his mother's business!
"You –" The woman's jaw actually dropped a bit, then she fought for air for what must have been two full seconds. See there, the Phantom thought, feeling oddly unconcerned, like an outside watcher, now that's something she's heard of before. Rumour spreads fast, after all…
"He's quite exceptional," Chateaupers pressed on, and the Phantom was sure he threw him a stern look while saying this, but he made a point of not looking at the chief of police. "You really ought to see him. Critics say his origins are as mysterious as his name, but he has an angel's voice."
On the point of snarling, the Phantom remembered himself in time and pressed his lips together. Oh, if they all would just stop talking about angels! It stirred too many memories that better remained untouched…
A fallen Angel, and far from Heaven… beyond the hope of salvation…
Before his inner eye, the sky was on fire once more.
And as he looked at the woman who stood before him, the woman who had done nothing but give birth to a demon who had existed before, who was not related to her at the slightest, but very far from human, he suddenly wished she could truly be his mother.
Oh Christine, Christine… I'm afraid I did not even lie to you when I said I was an angel…
Chateaupers was still conversing with her, but the Phantom did not listen anymore. Moments ago he had been dead inside, but now it all was coming back to him, and it felt as if the weight of the entire world were resting upon his shoulders. And around him and inside him nothing but darkness…
Erik, Erik! Like the twinkle of a star in a sky hung with clouds, a voice called to him, a voice so dear to him his eyes almost filled with tears as he heard it. What's the matter with you? There was the softest of sensations, a very gentle, feathery touch to his cheek. It was not a physical sensation, but nonetheless it felt very real. There's no road so lonely you would have to walk it alone, remember?
Oh, Christine! He could have laughed and hugged her and messed with her dark curls and tickled her and simply held her hand all at once! Always there when he needed her, sharing his darkness as nobody else did. Have you been searching the notes on the organ again? After all, he had only inserted this line she had just quoted two nights ago.
What came back across their peculiar and so very unique mental connection was very much like an actual giggle. I'm sorry. I couldn't resist. The giggle was repeated, and the Phantom could vividly imagine the gleam in her gentle brown eyes. Raoul and Meg were actually trying it out just now, you know, the quartet, but they messed it up completely. Well, maybe this has something to do with the fact that Raoul took on the part of Helena and Meg that of Lysander.
Despite himself, the Phantom felt his lips form a small smile. Even if the whole world had conspired against him to make him miserable, he still had friends. Yes, and this actually included that silly Raoul – sometimes. Tell them to try Hermia and Lysander, that might be a little easier. Or Helena and Demetrius, if they're in mood for something a lot more difficult.
Fine. But you do have to admit everybody is singing against each other in the quartet.
No, absolutely not! Really, you disappoint me. To show her that this was not meant to be taken entirely seriously, he added a gentle little mental poke in the nose. Lysander and Hermia are together most of the time, Demetrius usually is very closely in harmony with them – but well, yes, he and Helena are in counterpoint to each other, as well as to the others part of the time. Yet he was quite sure she had seen this, anyway. She was a clever girl, after all, his Christine.
Erik… I found Oberon's aria, too. Don't be angry. It's so beautiful, and so sad.
Oberon's aria. Suddenly the Phantom experienced a strange feeling, one he might almost call embarrassment. He had written it last night, to get his mind away from the blood he had spilled, but instead of dispersing his inner darkness, it had merely led him to another one. His lost love. I only learn to love what I have lost… The same words he had put into the aria last night. Oh, Christine… She could have loved him, but the mask was between them, and it always would be.
The mask… the first thing his mother had ever given to him.
"Erik, are you listening?"
It was all he could do to keep himself from snarling. "What?"
"I asked what's on the program for tonight."
"What program?"
Usually Chateaupers did not let his feelings show, but the brief tightening of his lips told everyone who knew him better that he was growing impatient. "Which opera are you playing?"
"Hannibal. It's not as if we had much choice." Not in times like these. With a German army laying siege to the city, it would not be wise to play anything written by a German composer, so they had, though with regrets, dropped Wagner's Flying Dutchman out of the program, to be taken up again later on, once this was over – nobody knew when. In times like these, the managers had thought, something amusing was the best thing to play, and they had chosen Il Muto and a few other similar comedies belonging to the Opéra Populaire's repertoire, yet of course Delannay had had a saying in it, too, curse the swine, and he had demanded Chalumeau's Hannibal, since this would improve the population's defensive spirit, as he had put it. Not that Delannay had ever come to watch the performance, but they had to follow his orders. For now. "But I won't be seen on stage," he added as an afterthought.
And he would not if he could help it, not if there was a chance of his mother coming to get a look at him!
"Ah yes, of course." Chateaupers shook his head in irritation, probably at himself because he had not kept it in mind. "And I do hope you aren't going to any time soon," he added in a stern tone. "We wouldn't want to make it easy for Delannay's men to get their hands on you. And don't do anything reckless, mind you."
"Don't lecture me," the Phantom replied automatically, in the weary tone he always used when Chateaupers brought up this topic.
"Think of Christine."
The Phantom sighed. "All the time." From the corner of his eye, he saw how the old woman raised her eyebrows slightly in curiosity, but this was absolutely none of her business, and he certainly wasn't going to tell her, so she might as well cease that stupid look of curiosity.
"Moreover," Chateaupers said gravely, "you've now got a family member to support."
The Phantom needed a full second to understand what the chief of police had just suggested. But when he did, the blazing spark in him leapt up and turned into a hail of burning icicles. "Excuse me, but why do I have to support a family member who never supported me?"
"For five years of your life, she did," Chateaupers said sternly, ignoring the woman's dissuading gestures. "Besides, it's the law."
Inside him, the storm of fire roared. How those icicles stung! "Why should I bend to the law when I have no rights myself?"
"Erik –"
Oh, enough of this! Enough of this all! "I have to be back," he said abruptly. "I'm expected."
Chateaupers sighed softly. Normally the Phantom did not mind this much, but this time it made the flood of fire contained inside him eddy and hiss. "Alright, but I hope to see you again tomorrow. Stay out of trouble, get some rest and come to terms with what you've learned. And then we'll talk again. Agreed?"
No. Not again. And no rest. He would not sleep now, because he knew what he would see when he closed his eyes: Smoke, fire, death, the end of the world of old, no matter if it was true or not, no matter if he believed it or not. He would see it nonetheless. He would see the Pillars of Heaven burning once more, and his heart would break, no, be torn asunder anew.
"Oh, and as for what you've mentioned about what you've done last night…" Chateaupers spoke quite nonchalantly in a way, something not very typical of him, and the Phantom suspected that he had something on his mind. "I won't ask, and I won't blame you for anything, I'll even cover up for you whatever it is this time – but I need another word with you about this."
So it was that important to him, that business with his mother? Well, if he thought it was… The Phantom shrugged. "Fine. But don't expect me to be…" What exactly? "Overly cooperative," he finished a little lamely, cursing his own tiredness. He would need sleep, even if he did not want to.
"Of course not," Chateaupers answered almost absent-mindedly. "You're free to go, then. Mademoiselle Renard, I wonder whether I may have the audacity of offering you some tea?"
Turning on his heels, the Phantom gave him and the woman a curt nod, then strode out and pulled the heavy oak door shut behind him. He should have reprimanded the man for practically dismissing him like that, but he had other things to do now. More important things. Like seeing to his Opera House, for example, since surely someone would discover the bodies in no time now. And moreover, he knew the purpose of Chateaupers's invitation: The chief of police had been clever enough not to bother the Phantom with questions about what he had seen in his mother's mind. But he would bother his mother now.
Have fun, you two, the Phantom thought grimly. Not that he really cared. His mind was in turmoil, in the worst turmoil it had gone through in some time. His thoughts and feelings were racing each other, dancing through an ocean of fire…
Calm down, damn it! Calm down! Come to a conclusion!
He really needed rest, even if it was just a moment's, and maybe Christine to hold his hand…
Of course. This was what he needed. How could he have been so blind? If he could watch over Christine's dreams, maybe she could watch over his in turn. Maybe she could chase away that accursed nightmare and grant him some true rest at last.
And maybe she could make him forget about what he had just heard and seen. For a few blessed moments, at least.
Christine? I'm coming home now.
And this was what he did.