Chapter 12- Piano Man

Nadir was giving Erik that look again. That one a person often saw when a child had disappointed his or her parent. Erik scowled back and Nadir flinched away. With some satisfaction Erik returned his concentration to his piano and continued to play, letting his fingers glide across the keys smoothly.

Still, he could feel the Persian's eyes on him and it made him distinctly uncomfortable. Without turning around he said; 'You're irritating me, Daroga,'

'I haven't said anything, Erik,' came the reply. 'It is your own conscience irritating you,'

Erik abruptly stopped playing and turned slowly on the bench, so that he was facing Nadir. The small man stared back at him this time, in a brave, yet somewhat foolish, stand of defiance.

'I have no conscience,' Erik said simply, feeling a slow burning in his stomach.

'Of course you do,' Nadir responded, keeping his distance. 'We all do,'

'You speak to me as if you and I are alike in someway,'

Nadir did not answer this and Erik saw a glimmer of fear in his eyes. Never one to waste an opportunity...

'What is it, exactly, that makes you think that I am like you?' he asked, staring hard at the Persian, making sure he understood the intensity, understood the position he was in. Erik controlled this room, this was Erik's domain.

'I am speaking of human nature in general,' he swallowed but stood his ground. A lesser man than Erik might have been angered by this but Erik found some respect for this stance.

Some.

Erik smiled. 'Which would suggest that I am human,'

'You are as human as I am,'

'I am no more human than a dog,' Erik growled.

'Of course you are,'

'I feel none of your strange guilt, Daroga,' Erik snapped.

'Everyone...'

'Will you come back at me with the same pathetic argument that I just shot down??' he stood, feeling an overwhelming sense of annoyance, of anger... 'Not everyone feels guilt, not everyone has a conscience, trust me!'

'Yet you feel love,'

'Not love,' Erik snarled. 'Lust,'

'For Christine?' Nadir asked, stepping back slightly. Giving Erik space. 'It is lust... the roses are a sign of lust...'

Erik stared at him, blind rage filling his body like a lake until he felt almost overcome with it. He was not accustomed to keeping his temper and if Nadir insisted on pushing him he would show Nadir just how it could run.

'Listen,' he growled, catching Nadir by the arm and flinging him backwards, but keeping hold oh him. 'I will do I want to, when I want to... I will not be dictated to by some lowly retired police officer...'

'Erik,' Nadir shouted, tugging his arm frantically out of Erik's grip. 'What are you doing?'

Erik pressed Nadir to the wall. 'Do not think you can tell me what I can do, don't think that because you are my friend I will not hurt you...'

Nadir winced. 'I know, I know... you're hurting me now,'

Erik blinked, back to reality, his temper returning to normal. He let go of Nadir's arm, which was now red and looked sore.

'I'm...'

'Sorry?' Nadir asked, rubbing the skin that Erik had pinched with his fingers.

Erik said nothing.

'Sorry suggests guilt,' the Persian said simply.

Erik blinked and then turned his back on the smaller man. He had not time for this, nothing should be keeping him away from Christine, nothing at all. So far today the Persian had taken up far too much of Erik's time and he was bored with it.

'I'm going,' He said simply.

It took time for Erik to get from the cellars of the opera house to the corridors behind the walls of Christine's room. When he reached the two way mirror he was reminded of why it was there in the first place. No one knew about it except for him, of course, but he had put it in many years ago for Antoinette Giry's protection.

All those years ago, when they were both much younger, Antoinette had managed to find herself a little stalker. Of course, she had been flattered by the attention given by her admirer but when she came back one day to discover him waiting in her room for her a decision had to be made. Erik made the mirror by hand, it took him a little over a month, but it was a bit of a masterpiece.

He had had to be careful to hang the mirror on a wall adjacent to the corridor backing up to her room. When she was out he would then carefully take the bricks from the wall until he could see through the mirror and into Antoinette's room. Now, when she was out, he monitored the room to ensure no one entered it without being invited. Back then he did not have the nerve to come here when she was in the room herself.

He had not spoken to Antoinette in what could have been just over four years. Since that day he had kept very little track of time but he was sure that he was probably twenty nine years old, making it over four years since his twenty fifth birthday... when he told her to leave and never return.

He wished he could say that it was the best thing he had ever done, but of course, he had missed her. Particularly the first few months where he noticed a hunger in him because she no longer brought him home baking. The loneliness, however, began to bother him less and less and suddenly he realised that darkness was a good friend of his.

Late at night he began to go out, dressed in black, cloak on his shoulders and a hat pulled down to shadow his face. He enjoyed his little jaunts out alone, occasionally putting the fear of God into some unsuspecting drinker. Though he did not think the general public found it very funny he was, at least, amused by it.

Erik did notice, though, that Nadir seemed to visit less and less, choosing his travelling over his friend. That began to matter less to him too, and before long he felt, for the first time in his life, self sufficient.

It was a problem, at first, having no visitors, as his food stash had begun to run a little low. Not that he needed to eat much but, as nature would suggest, he did get hungry. He knew as well as any reasoned man that food was a necessity to keep the body functioning. He had read that without food eventually your body would begin eat itself... of course, you could live longer without food than you could without water. At least this was one healthy thing that Erik did, he drank plenty of water.

After a while, feeling the pains of hunger in his stomach, he had started to steal morsels of food. This was not good for him, not at all. The food was not a patch on what Antoinette had served to him and there was no way he would settle for such mediocrity. So, he started to make his plans and then money began to pour in.

A sound in Christine's room made him stir from his thoughts and glance out through the mirror. She had just arrived back with her arm hooked through a basket full of fruit.

He watched her quietly for a moment, an unfamiliar dry sensation clogging his throat. Opening his mouth to speak he realised that he could not, that the words had died in his mouth as his eyes fixed on Christine's innocent beauty. She placed the basket on the chair in the corner of the room and walked to her dressing table, lifting the rose that he had given her. She ran it over her lips, and Erik watched as the red of the rose merged with the colour of her lips, for a moment they were one. She put the rose down on the table top and glanced at herself in the tall mirror. Slowly she walked over to it and looked at herself, staring at her face. Erik thought that she looked disappointed with what she saw there, her dark eyes were clouded with sadness. She reached up and touched the spot of the mirror where Erik imagined that the reflection of her face would be.

Erik, without thinking, reached out too and placed his fingertips on the glass so that they were touching hers.

He wished they were touching hers.

She stood there for a long moment, for a second he even wondered if she could see him. He let his hand fall down to his side, disheartened. How could she ever want him? He had been cursed with a monster's face and a monster's soul, there was no good in him that could match the goodness in her.

He did not deserve her... yet he wanted her.

Nadir had been right. This was not a simple case of lust for Erik, there was more there, more to it. He felt it in his heart the second he saw her face, or heard her voice, or watched her dance.

Shaking himself out of it, he stepped back away from the mirror to compose himself. He took a deep breath and chastised himself inwardly for being so weak. When he felt that he was calm, and ready, he stepped back towards the mirror.

Christine had moved away now and was lying on her bed.

'Christine,' he said, as gently as he could. He knew that she was probably waiting for him now but he still did not want to startle her.

She sat up and looked around her. Still trying to find him. He found that she had a curiosity like no one he had ever met before. He appreciated this, it reminded him a little of himself.

'Angel,' she said, not a question, a simple statement of fact. He wondered if it would be a word he could get used to, a name he could ever fit to himself.

Dark angel, possibly.

'Are you still there?'

He blinked, realising he had been silent for too long. 'I am here,' he said, watching her.

'Are you here for my lesson?' she asked.

'Yes,'

'Where should we start?'

He paused, unable to take his eyes off her. 'Just sing,' he said, finally. Trying not to sound like the pathetic excuse for a man he had recently become. 'I will listen, take notes,'

Of course, he wouldn't take notes, he didn't need to. Erik would simply listen to her voice, pick up on the tremors and faults and store them in his mind. He had never needed to write things down, his memory was too good for that.

'What should I sing?' she asked.

'Anything you feel comfortable singing,' he said simply.

She gave a nod, at what he did not know, but she closed her eyes. He waited, air catching in his throat as he gazed at her, for her to sing. When she opened her mouth he too closed his eyes, letting her voice lift him. He had never before heard such a brilliant, untrained voice, the rawness and thenatural talent were hard the believe and he took in a breath as he listened.

'Wishing you were somehow here again,' she sang, 'Wishing you were somehow near, sometimes it seems if I just dreamed, somehow you would be there...' (1)

It was a song Erik had never heard before and when he opened his Christine's hand was near her heart and she was singing without thinking. Then he realised that this would not be a song he would have ever heard of, because she had written it herself.

There were some notes that sounded off key and her voice quivered in places where she was obviously straining to reach the note. Otherwise there would be no difficulties in perfecting her voice.

'You can stop,' he said, cutting her off, keeping control. She had to know that he was in control.

She opened her eyes and gazed around her as if adjusting her eyes to the room for the first time.

'Was that...' she paused. 'How did I sound?'

'Good,' he said simply. 'It will take hard work to get you up to a leading lady status but I'm sure with a little persistence it can be achieved,'

She nodded.

'You must be willing though,' he said firmly.

'I am...'

'Willing to practice and perfect this... it won't be easy, Christine,' he said. 'I don't want you to have any misgivings about this,'

'I understand,' she said.

'And you still want to learn?'

She looked around her. 'Do you really think I can be good enough to lead in an opera?'

'Of course,' he said, a little irritated by the question. 'I wouldn't have said it if I didn't,'

'Than I will work as hard as necessary,'

'Early nights,' he said. 'Early mornings,'

She nodded at his commands.

'Lots of water...' he said. 'No tea... strictly no tea,'

Again, she gave a nod.

'You will be in this room promptly at seven in the evening for your lessons with me when you aren't performing, do you understand?'

'Yes,'

'No question, seven,'

'I understand,'

'This does not mean that you can afford to not practice on your own,' he said. 'When I am not here you will rehearse...'

'And the dancing?' she asked.

'Do exactly as Madame Giry tells you for the time being,' he said. 'But remember who can make you the person you want to be... dancing is not your passion, singing is, music is... I can tell by your voice...'

She nodded.

'Don't waste your talent,' he said and before she could answer, before he could get drawn into more than he wanted to, he decided there would be no lesson that day and he left.

A/N: (1) 'Wishing You Were Somehow Here' – Act Two, Phantom of the Opera.