Disclaimer: I don't own either of them. Do you think I don't know that?
Willow Rose 3: Aww, I'm SO sorry! I mean, getting you all excited, and then fobbing you off with that itty bitty reference! But seriously, it was to get more people interested – though I don't people are very interested in this. I mean, five chapters and only eighteen reviews? No, wait a minute – guess people are quite interested! Not as much as I'd hoped, though. Well, this chapter is for you. Yes, Erik is definitely in this one – cross my heart and hope to die. Please forgive me?
Mominator 124: Yeah, I am evil, aren't I? I apologise. Thank you for not wanting to Punjab me, though, if only for your own selfish reasons. I know about Erik being nearly killed to stop him building other palaces – though in this story, he got killed for quite different reasons. Not because he's Jewish, though. I am not anti-Semitic in any way; it's just that Erik is not Jewish. Here is the next chapter. Forgive me?
I've been a bit of a stinker, really, getting up peoples' hopes and then bringing them crashing down. As an apology, here is a chapter entirely Erik! (And for SimplyElymas there is some Nadir as well.)
So, muse on the thoughts of our beloved Phantom – really a Phantom, in this case…
Eventually I began to desire more. What I found strange was how much I desired to know what I had not known on Earth. I wanted to be allowed to grow up.
"People grow up by living," I said to Franny. "I want to live."
"That's out," she said...
I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn't perfect. But I came to believe that if I watch closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth.
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold.
Beyond Life
Someone was reading the book…
Someone was walking through the corridors…
Someone was weeping in the Louis Philippe room…
Four were walking across the grounds…
He ran his fingers over the keys, pounding out old melodies and new tunes that had come to him in the years since his death. There were quite a lot of those; it had been a long time since he had died.
Died. Once upon a time he would not even have known the meaning of the word. When he was a boy, and growing up, he had thought he was immortal, as all boys did. When he was in his teens, he had had so much to think about that death never even crossed his mind, despite all his morbid thoughts. When he was a young man, it had crossed his mind, more than once – but he had never thought it would be his own. It just didn't seem possible that his life would suddenly end. But ended it had, in a way he would not have dreamed of, despite all his thoughts and hopes and dreams. Especially his dreams…
Dreams were mostly all that were left to him now; dreams and memories of his past life. After all, what else was there to do but dream of what had been? It wasn't as if he had anything else to live for – or rather exist for, since living wasn't really an option now. In dying, he had learnt the meaning of eternity; and the harsh lesson did not comfort him in the slightest. It only served to make him more desperately desiring some other way out.
Nadir was impressed that he had kept this resolve for so long. Apparently Nadir himself had been much of the same frame of mind when he had first died; but in the years since that had happened – even Nadir was not sure of how many, since time seemed to stretch on and forever in the Land of the Dead – he had grown accustomed to his new way of existence, and accepted his state of being. By the time he had come down there, Nadir had all but forgotten the Land of the Living.
But he had not. He could not. How could he, when he had died in such a way, in such mortification, as a result of such treachery? How could he when he had been murdered just when he thought life was becoming good to him? How could he forget, when he had all that to remember? And so he remembered. And he burned.
It was strange; in life he and Nadir probably could never have been comrades; but the circumstances they had been thrown together in had endeavoured to make them friends; since life couldn't. The older man had attempted to comfort the younger in the times when he had almost broken down with sorrow, futile though those attempts might be; the younger had been grateful to the older for his help, even if it was in the end futile. It was Nadir who had first given him the source of comfort.
"This is not all that there is, you know," he had said, gesturing around him.
"It isn't?" he had replied. Such a thought had never occurred to him.
"No. Heaven, as they say, is where you make it; and though this is not Heaven, we make it where we find it." Nadir had smiled, seeing him look for once at a loss. "Come with me."
And so he had taken him, and shown him what could be made; as a message that he could make his own way, even though he no longer had a life to make. Inspired, he had taken up the task, and surprised even himself by what he had created.
And yet now…
He looked around his surroundings, as he followed this train of thought, breaking off from his music; looked around that which he had created by the strength of his will and mind. Even Nadir had been impressed, and he himself had been astonished – at least at first. Such a creation he could hardly have dreamed of in life; a tribute to the scope of his genius, freed at last from the restraints of mortality. Yet now it was his; it was all his. No longer did he have to build for patrons or on orders. He was free now, to build for himself.
And yet now…
He turned back to the organ, discarding his creations with barely a glance. That which he had once desired now held no savour for him. How could he continue to delight in it, knowing that it would never leave him? And if he chose to build more, that would stay for him forever as well. For he now knew the meaning of eternity.
And he remembered what he had had, and how it had all been taken away from him.
Nadir was worried about him, he knew. As far as he knew, it was not like spirits to hold onto their memories like this; not like them to remember for so long. He had made well meaning attempts to help him let go; well meaning but futile, for they only served to remind him further.
"People have been betrayed and murdered before," his friend had said. "I myself, for one. Yet in time they have accepted what they have become, and the way in which they became it. Why can you not do that, Erik?"
"Perhaps because in being betrayed I was robbed of everything that might have been mine; and in being murdered I was robbed of everything that could yet have been mine." And to that of course Nadir had had no answer.
"What more do you want, Erik?" he had asked another time. "What do you desire that you cannot have; that you cannot find here?"
"To live again."
"That is not possible. You know it is not."
"I know that. That doesn't prevent me from wanting it, though."
Yet in truth that was not all that he wanted. He had all that his un-beating heart could desire; and yet that which he desired the most he could never have; to have his heart beat again in his chest, and to touch real flowers and feel the wind upon his face; and to hold another in his arms against him and feel her heart beat in time with his, and look into her eyes and see passion burning in them-
And for Philippe to be lying in his shallow grave in the woods, with his own sword thrust through him.
Though he knew the last could not be remedied – though he often wished it - he had done his best to find outlets for the other two, under Nadir's advice. He had designed and written and composed, crafted and built and structured, pouring out his genius to surround him, having form at last in more than his mind. Music he had written; music enough to fill ten lifetimes; songs, verses, ballads, sonatas, arias enough to be the basis of a thousand different operas. Pictures he had painted; relative masterpieces, echoing all that he had seen and known in the Land of the Living, holding on desperately to his memories of his time on Earth; he had designed houses, palaces, theatres, monuments enough to populate the world and make it so fair all would glory at the beauty and wonder that had been revealed.
And yet no matter what he made, it did nothing to ease the ache in his being; for he knew that such dreams would never be realized; that such creations would never go any further than the vast, sprawling Land of the Dead; trapped forever in a type of limbo that went on for all eternity.
And as for his other desire…he had realized, long before, that what he truly mourned was not so much the touch of a woman's flesh as the desire for his bride; the bride he had never seen and whose wedding he had never attended, and whose fate he did not know. How then to rectify this; to quell his desire for something he did not know, and could never now achieve – for the living could not marry the dead.
In the end he had decided, at least, to visualize what his disastrous wedding might have been like had he been there; and the bride was of course central to the wedding. So, he had designed and made the bridal gown which he would have liked his bride to wear, had it been his choice what she should have been dressed in – had not the wedding been arranged by Philippe.
Though he was not by any means proficient at such designs, preferring to devote his genius to such things as architecture and cunning devices, he had laboured with what love was left to him after his death, over the wedding trousseau of the bride he would now never have. White and grey silk and satin had gone into its making; lace for the many petticoats; a silk lined, boned corset for the slim waist of the woman who would never wear it; silken slippers for delicate feet; a train to trail behind the occupant of the beautiful creation as she walked up the aisle; and to crown it all a veil of finest, thinnest silk, so as to be almost see through; almost enough to see the bride's features, but not quite.
When Nadir had first seen the finished result, he had simply shaken his head, and embraced his friend without a word. That alone had told him just what he had made; and from that time on he had hidden the beautiful gown on its mannequin far out of sight, behind a curtain, so that he looked at it only when he wished.
Even now in his mind's eye he could see it; a fabulous vision of silk and satin and lace; not like any dress on Earth, but seemingly transcending it. Any mortal bride would be elated to wear such a beautiful thing, seemingly fashioned out of mist and fog more than anything else; the mannequin's milk white arms only emphasising the apparent transparency of the garment. It was almost as if the dress was unreal, and the mannequin the only thing of this world.
But beautiful though the dress was, he sometimes hated to look at it, as much as he desired to at other times. He hated to think of what lay under that strange, mysterious veil.
For the veil which hung over the mannequin's face, while giving the impression of being set upon the glossy curls of she who wore it, and hiding a face of rare, exquisite beauty, a face worthy of wearing so gorgeous a garment – instead lay upon the wax figure's bare head, and hid a face of nothing; no features, no eyes, no face at all – a blank head.
He had originally intended to give the figure which wore his labour of love a face worthy of an angel, and hair worthy of a goddess; but when he had finished sculpting the limbs and form of the mannequin, and set it on its pedestal, the blank, lifeless face had somehow so unnerved him – he who had known hardly any fear on Earth! – that he had barely dared to dress it, and place the veil on its head, without any further attention to its features – it seemed to him almost a representation of that which he would never have; a faceless, nameless bride, who did nothing but wait for her groom to come to her – forever…
So now the sometimes adored, sometimes loathed thing was hidden behind one of the many curtains in his cave, and gazed upon only when he felt the desire to do so. The thoughts of the wedding had collapsed around the successful, disastrous birthing of his 'bride' – the thought of which he now shuddered at and yet desired more than anything else.
Only let me know love…only let me not be alone…
The thing sometimes distracted him; at times when he composed his thoughts were disordered by she, waiting behind the curtain, silently calling to him to come and look at her. He rarely did; but his thoughts were often full of that bridal gown, that train, that veil, and what lay beyond it…
And the dead flowers that rested in its arms, and crowned its veil. Dead. For no living things grew in the Land of the Dead.
Why could I not have been allowed to live? Why could I not have been allowed to find love? Why could I not have found one who would have loved me despite my face…
At least now he had one less worry; no one cared about his face, however horrible it was. Though it was truly terrible, enough to make people shudder on Earth, here it had no consequence. There were far worse things here than hideous faces; than torn muscle, than twisted bone, than rotted, corrupted flesh.
There were far worse things that he had seen…and would continue to see…forever.
Forever is an awfully long time when you are alone.
His fingers traced over the keys, playing out a mournful tune; a wedding dirge, but manipulated into a requiem. And all the while, unconscious thoughts played out in his head; his last connections to that which he had known when he had been alive…
Eating croissants in a breakfast room…
Watching four figures walk across the grounds…
Going to the library…
The library…
All this he would never know again. Though the Land of the Dead had its compensations, it could not make up what he had lost…and would never have…
But that does not mean I will not forget. I never forgive. And I never forget.
His fingers slammed down upon the keys in a savage, harsh chord.
A Phantom does not know the meaning of those words.
A Phantom…
It was cold. There was snow. It was winter up above. The snow lay thick upon his grave.
A Phantom…
I have decided to make Erik look handsome in this - or at least, fairly handsome, apart from the right side of his face. Well, it's bad enough that the guy's dead without being completely ugly as well! Don't worry, he will have some defeciencies. What do I mean? Ah, you'll have to wait and see! But seriously, didn't you wonder why he always wears gloves?
Well, didn't you?
PLEASE! REVIEW! PLEASE!