Dear Patient and Long-Suffering Readers:
On behalf of myself and my muse, I extend my humble apologies for leaving this story in such a weird place for such a long period of time. Things have been insane here, and I really didn't have much clue as to what to do next, however, I'm bored and lonely so, who better to write about than le Fantôme?
Rowena
XXX
She had spent the entirety of her first day in the house in her room. She was thirsty and starving, as she hadn't eaten the day before. The laudanum had helped with that, keeping her unaware to her surroundings and she had scarcely felt the hunger cramps.
Unsurprisingly, Erik did not seek her out.
Night had fallen, and the effects of the laudanum had worn off. After having waken from the long trance that the 'black drop' had held her in, Roxanne had found her hunger had returned with a vengeance.
Initially, she had tried to ignore it, tossing and turning in the bed; but she was so thirsty she was beginning to feel nauseated. She heard the grandfather clock in the hall strike midnight, then one o'clock...then two...
Sighing, Roxanne threw the quilt off of her and crept to the door, which she found locked. How dare he! Fury bubbled up within her, but she quickly repressed it and knelt down to the door. Would a hairpin work? Feeling around in her thick mass of hair, she plucked a pin out of her hair and, with practiced expertise, inserted it into the lock, fiddling around for the moment, muttering something about the tumblers, she felt the click and stood.
Carefully pushing the door open, taking pains to make sure it did not creak, she slid down the hall towards the kitchen.
Moonlight and shadow danced along the wall-papered wall of the kitchen, something sparkled along the floor, but Roxanne did not notice it.
"Oh, god!" She hissed, stepping back quickly, sharp pain bloomed in her foot. Feeling along the bottom of her foot, she felt a sharp piece of glass shoved into her foot, dark liquid glistened in the half-light.
Hopping around the glass, she grabbed a towel that had been tossed carelessly on the counter and hopped up on the counter, quietly cursing.
"What'd you do in here?" She muttered to no one in particular as she grabbed a pitcher half-full of brandy that had been sitting there for God-knows-how-long and dipped the hand-towel in it. Biting the inside of her mouth, Roxanne took the hand-towel and using it as a protective glove, slowly pulled the long shard out of her foot. She tossed the glass into the sink beside her, and gingerly began to dab at her foot.
"Bloody...kill...ugh..." Roxanne muttered indistinctly, she looked up to grab the pitcher but to her shock found a pair of gold circles just a few inches from her face.
"May I enquire as to what you are doing in my kitchen at such an hour?" the Phantom leaned against the counter, arms crossed.
"May I enquire as to why the fuck would you leave broken glass in the middle of your floor?" Roxanne growled, her voice high and tight from pain, her skirt and hands were now covered in blood.
The Phantom sighed, she could almost hear him rolling his eyes in the darkness, "Stupid girl, come here." Grabbing the towel, he picked her up--much to her protests--and with something less than suaveness carried her out of the kitchen.
Roxanne was wiser than to protest, she had no desire to limp to her room in this state, throwing blood everywhere and then try and find a bandage. "Where are you going?" Roxanne demanded.
"Silence, your voice is like gravel to my ears," the Phantom instructed tersely.
Roxanne would have slapped him, had she not been in such pain. "God...it's deep."
"You should have looked where you were going. Or, rather, you should have stayed in your room instead of picking the lock," the Phantom looked down at her with wry amusement.
"This...isn't funny," Roxanne breathed, "I..."
"Hush," the Phantom commanded impatiently, "When you speak, your blood pressure goes up, which makes the bleeding worse."
He took her into a darkened, windowless room and sat her in a shallow box-like thing, a little longer than the length of a man, the lining was silky. She propped the curve of her ankle on the side of the box so the blood would go onto the floor instead of the silky material.
"How bad is the pain?" The Phantom enquired, she heard shuffling around and the moving of papers, something wooden opening and closing.
"Painful," Roxanne giggled manically, she was beginning to feel a little light-headed, "The world is beginning to spin. Ooh, my, I'd normally have to pay a pretty penny to feel this queer."
"So, no morphine," he said flatly.
She continued to laugh, "Ahh, bastard."
XXX
Erik sighed, the damn thick-headed girl, the cut was deep. He had encountered worse, but on her foot, it would be hell to keep it from getting infected and gangrenous. Though he did derive some small pleasure from the idea of cutting the girl's foot off...
Erik grabbed a handful of bandages and went to the coffin.
The girl was incredibly pale, her face was locked in a grimace of pain. "Hurry up, damn it!" Her voice was thick, as if she were fighting back tears.
Muttering indistinctly, Erik knelt at the foot of the coffin, his hand ghosted across her ankle but he quickly pulled it back as if it were white-hot. The impropriety of the situation was not lost upon him, despite his lack of normal social interaction. "This will hurt," He explained to her, "But if you kick me, I will make it hurt worse. Understood?" He could not help but feel a combination of guilty pleasure and discomfort at this position. He had not even seen Chrinstine's ankles before.
"Get it over with," Roxanne growled tersely.
Taking the bottle of hydrogen peroxide beside him, he poured the clear liquid over the wound, it hissed and bubbled merrily as it went to work disinfecting.
"Oi, you'll ruin the floor if you keep on doing that," Using her free foot, the girl bumped his shoulder reproachfully.
He looked up at her quizically, of all the things to be worried about at a moment like this, she was worried about the floor? Perhaps women were more incomprehensible than he had originally presumed.
"Ooh, that stuff ticles...ow! It's starting to burn! What is that stuff?" She yelped.
"Hush," Erik pitched his voice to its hypnotic level and she complied instantaneously. Softly, he began to sing; an old Persian love song. The women of the Shah's harem sang it frequently, he would hear them sometimes as he was working.
This seemed to calm her; he could hear her breathing become more even and rhythmic, he felt the pounding of her blood where his fingertips were begin to calm.
Continuing to sing, he tied a strip of cloth around her ankle to cut of the circulation and help ease the bleeding. He cleaned up the blood to a manageable level with a few cloths and some water, using the last of a salve Nadir had given him some years ago to fight any infection, he concluded with wrapping the foot tightly with gauze.
"Be more careful in the future...Mademoiselle de Winter?" He looked up.
Her face was tucked into the curve of her arm, her body lax; he was able to tell she was still very pale, but she looked slightly better.
He sighed in annoyance, he should have kept her tied up. The girl was cleverer than she looked, and in all the most inconvenient ways.
He stood, dusted himself off, he looked down at the girl, studying her features.
She turned in her sleep, showing her face once more, even in sleep she frowned. "Andrew..." The word was barely loud enough to be heard; her face contorted into a mask of pain.
For a moment, Erik was taken aback, the plaintiveness in her voice was rather surprising. He would not have originally thought she had enough depth or experience to know such sorrow as her voice suggested.
Turning, Erik reluctantly left his bedroom and the curious girl sleeping in it.
As he was walking, he hummed a few bars of nothing in particular. The cold winter sun was just beginning to break over the hills, in the distance he saw a few horses pawing at the frozen ground, which was covered in a thin layer of snow.
"Why does my heart cry..." He sang softly as he walked along; suddenly he stopped in his tracks. A faint whisper of an idea ran through him. After several months of being creatively dry, it was as welcome as water to a desert.
Decisively, he turned and walked back into his bedroom, where his organ waited like an old lover.
XXX
"No! No! This is all wrong!"
Roxanne's eyes fluttered open, she moaned, her foot felt like it had had a nail driven into it. Why was that? Oh...right. Kitchen. Glass. Monsieur le Fantôme. Ugh.
Her dreams had been very strange, filled with music. The most beautiful and haunting organ pieces, the sensation had been similar to the first night when Monsieur le Fantôme had brought her in and played the music. She was unsure as to whether or not it was a good dream or a nightmare. It had been filled with spinning images, some of things she had never seen, some of Andrew, of her parents, various places in the English countryside, of the Opera Garnier in flames.
She stretched felinely and looked around her, with a strange detached sense of horror she realized she was in a coffin. Carefully avoiding the bits of sheet music, empty bottles and various debris strewn across the floor, she stepped out of the coffin, hopping around on one foot.
"I'm most impressed you stayed asleep for so long," The Phantom commented without looking up from his music, he was seated at a beautiful pipe organ in the corner of the room, he was unshaven and looked as if he had not slept for some time.
Roxanne stared at him warily, "I'm a heavy sleeper by training."
"How is your foot?" He enquired absently, scratching away at a piece of parchment.
"Hurts like a bitch, but I'll live," Roxanne replied unsurely.
"Good. Can you walk on it?"
"Yeah, with some effort."
"Lovely. Then after you eat and wash-up or whatever you women do in the mornings, there's work to be done," He looked over his shoulder, "It will be a long day."
Hands on her hips, Roxanne made a noise of indignation, "Allow me to clarify, due to your carelessness in leaving dangerous objects about, I injure myself, and your response is to put me to work cleaning up your mess?"
"No. Due to your defiance at my orders to stay in your room, and your carelessness you were injured. My response to this was to clean and dress your injury, and then continue on as normal. Normal being the agreement that if you prove yourself to me as a trustworthy individual, I will release you," He said all of this in a tired tone, as if talking to a rather slow child.
Throwing her hands up in the air, she made a noise of frustration and hobbled out of the room.
As soon as she had left the room, she heard his awful, mocking laughter.
"You want a maid? Ha, fine, then, I'll be your maid. You may regret it, though," Roxanne smirked, yes, she would comply, but not in the way he expected.
XXX