Conquest is Assured
Raoul's eyes were like the facets of a sapphire, chips of hard stone burnished to a shine. They shone now with tears, every hard line of him quivering with suppressed pain. The three of them, Raoul, Philippe, and their mother Elise, formed the points of a triangle around the massive bed. Christine pressed against the wall, trying not to be seen standing awkwardly where Raoul bid her. Such naked grief deserved a modicum of privacy.
The wasted body in the bed looked very much like an older version of Philippe beneath the ravages of disease and pain. The old Comte would have thought it unmanly to weep at his deathbed and his sons honored his wish, but the Comtesse would not be denied her tears and sobbed into a handkerchief. Her nimbus of golden hair was piled in an elegant coiffure, the dress a black brocade. Ever conscious of her position, the Comtesse was ready to receive visitors offering their condolences.
Raoul bent and kissed his father's forehead. Christine remembered with startling clarity her father's own deathbed. Madame Giry had had to pry her out of her father's last embrace. Raoul approached her, cradling his hurt arm. Christine felt a guilty pang at the sight of it, all the while hoping passionately that Erik's injuries had been tended. The thought of him in the dripping cold of his home, hunched over in pain struck her very soul.
"I'm so sorry," she murmured.
Raoul's chin quivered, but not a tear fell. Instead, he embraced her, an exhaled sigh sounding suspiciously like a sob. Christine held him, stroking his back soothingly. He smelled strongly of laudanum and sweat. Poor Raoul, dragged from his sickbed to his father's deathbed.
"Thank you for coming," he murmured into her hair.
"Yes, thank you, dearie. That was very kind," the Comtesse offered her own embrace as Raoul pulled away.
Christine received this with as much grace as she could muster. Elise de Chagny had made her opinion on her son marrying an opera singer abundantly clear within scant minutes of meeting her, so Christine was taken aback by this show of favor.
"O—Of course."
"Raoul, darling, why don't you escort Christine to the sun room for some tea? Philippe and I will settle your father's last details." Beneath the tone of expansive generosity, Christine heard the dismissal. Raoul heard it too, and stiffened beside her.
"Raoul has as much say as I in matters of estate, Mother. Perhaps you and Christine would like some time to grow better acquainted." Philippe cut in smoothly.
A stab of irritation broke the tranquil Comtesse's facade, but it disappeared quickly. Christine herself would have preferred a moment alone with Raoul, to relinquish the ring along with her promise of engagement. She could not remain bound to him while her heart wavered. Of all the damnable timing! There was no time to waste, though. Christine could not wait one second more. She couldn't bear the weight of this indecision!
"No, Philippe. It's all right. Christine and I have matters to discuss," Raoul said, folding Christine's hand in the crook of his good arm.
Christine offered a tremulous smile and followed his lead through the clean, halls of the Château. They found a quiet corner near the fireplace. Raoul eased into the deep wingback chair, his handsome face creased with pain. Christine clenched her nervous hands on the table, her mind blank of the right words to say to break his heart—or any words at all. Her wrists looked so slender and frail, she thought abstractedly. The bones as delicate as a bird's. Raoul broke the awkward silence.
"I should apologize for what happened in the cemetery. It was my fault as much as . . . as his. I was angry. I shouldn't have shot at him. That wasn't honorable." Christine blinked at him. Of all things she expected him to say, that wasn't one of them. Oh Raoul.
"I'm sorry too, Raoul. About so many things. I never wanted it to come to this, you have to believe that." Raoul frowned, leaning across the table to grab her wrist with his good hand. So small in his grip, his fingers overlapped.
"What are you saying? Come to what?" The grief naked in his face nearly broke Christine's courage.
"I—I can't marry you, Raoul. I'm so sorry," she blurted in a rush. Shock rippled over Raoul's finely cut features.
"What? Why? Did . . . Did Erik threaten you? Is that it? I don't understand." Sweat pearled on his skin, matting the golden hair at his temples. Christine bit her lip.
"Oh Raoul, I'm sorry! I do love you, I do."
"But?" Raoul prompted, his grip tightening. The bones ground together painfully.
Oh God, how could she tease apart which she loved more, or how she loved them?
"But I love Erik too. I couldn't bear to marry you knowing that I might not be able give you all you deserve!" She crossed the perilous distance and laid a hand on his wrist.
His entire manner changed subtly. The expression on his handsome, mobile features was the same, a curious mixture of confusion, surprise and pain, but it looked frozen there. The thick wrist beneath her fingertips, exuding a male's pungent heat and stiff with wiry blond hairs, went rigid as his fist clenched.
"You . . . you love him?" the word swung up at the end and Christine was horrified to see tears in his eyes. Oh, why couldn't love be simple and clean? Why this wretched pain ensnaring all of them? Why hadn't Raoul met a sweet girl who deserved him? And Erik. He deserved a lioness, not a shrinking violet.
"Yes," Christine whispered, "I do. He understands me in some profound way that I cannot even name. He holds my soul." There was catharsis in releasing those words that had been bottled in her throat for so long.
"And I, Christine? What do I hold as your fiancé? Is this ring a chain to you?" he snapped, wrenching his mother's ring from her finger. Christine uttered a soft cry of pain, snatching her hand away.
"That hurt, Raoul. I told I was sorry-" Raoul leapt to his feet, bristling with fury.
"Yes, you're sorry," His voice took on a nasty mocking tone.
"Is that supposed to take the pain away? My arm slashed and broken and you're sorry? I fought for you. I protected you. I was there for you when he ran away. Me!" he pounded an emphatic hand on his chest. Christine watched from far away as Raoul used good arm to yank her chair away from the table. He caged her with his braced arms, glaring down at her. Next to Erik's dark, pulsating rage, Raoul's temper was mild in comparison.
"I won't let you go back to him, Christine. I can't. Whatever hold he has over you, we can break it together, if we try!" Tears stung her eyes. Oh Raoul! Her sweet knight, trying so fiercely to protect her!
"I'm not under some . . . spell, Raoul! He does not hold me captive! I follow him willingly," she said. Passion bound her to Erik, for music and each other. And companionship—a genuine pleasure in each other's company and delight in their shared labors. And what was that, if not love? Raoul was shaking his head, chin jutting in stubborn defiance.
"No. I refuse to believe that you are in love with a murdering villain, Christine!" Christine flinched, cold fear prickling her skin. For who or what, she wasn't sure.
"Murder? How do you know about Buquet?" Raoul stepped back, his eyes narrowed to flashing slits of blue.
"Buquet? The scene-shifter? Your Erik had something to do with that, did he? I'll bet he used that damn rope of his. Well, the gendarmes will have something to say about that!" Christine leapt to her feet, clutching his arm.
"Please don't, Raoul! It's not what you think! Erik, he was trying to-"
"I don't care what his motives were! Now he's killed a young girl and a drunken old man and God knows how many others in between!" Christine's fingernails bit deep into her palm.
"What do you mean a young girl? Where? When?" her voice emerged in a high whisper, almost inaudible. Raoul grasped her shoulder with his good hand, drawing her close to him. The compassion in his gaze unnerved her.
"Philippe told me yesterday. Some twenty years ago, in Rome. Erik killed a young woman for refusing to share his bed. The girl was fifteen years old. The daughter of a mason my father knew. A man named Giovanni." God help her, she entertained the notion for a handful of seconds. A man of Erik's passion and rages, if this girl denied him, then maybe . . .
"No! No. No. Erik wouldn't do that. He couldn't." Christine hated how her voice quavered. She hated that tiny seedling of doubt. A girl, even younger than she.
"You're not safe at the Populaire, Christine. Come and stay here with me. Forget about the wedding. We can wait as long as you want." He loved her with every particle of his gallant heart and Christine's heart broke to hurt him.
"I can't leave. The Opera is my home, Raoul. The new production begins soon and-"
"The new production? Are you truly going to perform in that madman's opera?"
"Yes."
How could she explain? She must prove herself faithful to someone, to something. Erik had labored for over a decade on this opera. She must see it through! A muscle fired in Raoul's jaw. Betrayal emanated from him like a bleeding wound. He stood there, cradling his wounded arm, studying her for what seemed like forever. Christine groped desperately for words to say. She found none.
"So be it. If you insist on throwing your life away, I cannot stop you." With that, he pulled something from his pocket. He slammed it hard onto the table and stalked off.
"Raoul. Raoul, wait!" she called after him. His pace didn't slow. Christine sank into the chair and glanced at the table. Stuck deep in the wood was Erik's dagger. At the sight of it, she fell quietly to pieces.
XXX
Pain greeted him like an old friend when he broke the surface into consciousness. It was a soft pain, a healing pain, and he welcomed it. Amber patterns moved idly across his eyes. His entire body ached. Memory eked out slowly. Christine? Where was she? He saw again the snowy cemetery, the golden boy and his sword. Felt the hot bite of it. Gone! She was gone! Christine. The boy. The Daroga. Nadir.
"Awake now, my friend?" came a familiar voice. Erik turned his head and found Nadir sitting in a pool of sunlight, sipping coffee. The light glinted in his black and silver hair, his black eyes.
"Yes." His voice was rattling bones in the wind.
"Thirsty?"
The Daroga had a mug ready, full of the rich bounty of buttermilk. It sang on Erik's tongue, washing away the dregs of pain and sleep. He drained it gratefully.
"Thank you, Nadir." Warm air from the furnace caressed his face and Erik stiffened. Even fully clothed, he felt naked without his mask. The Daroga saw his need and offered a mask of black silk.
"Bought it from a costumer's shop for a franc." Erik tied it, reaching for his dignity.
"I imagine the sight of my face scared off your housekeeper." The Daroga heard his oblique apology and accepted it with a smile.
"Madame Bijou is an excitable creature. I shall find a replacement made of sterner stuff." Erik's mouth tipped in a faint smile.
He began to sit up when pain stopped him cold. He looked down through the loose tails of one of Nadir's old shirts and found bandages wrapped thickly around his middle, adorned with a thin red stripe. Erik uttered a string of curses in Persian that would make the meanest of beggars blush. Nadir grunted in amusement.
"That shouldn't trouble you too badly. The wound is already scabbing over when I changed the bandage last. You were lucky." It was Erik's turn to snort.
"Lucky. Not the first word I would have thought of." He sighed.
"How long was I asleep?" Erik asked, attempting to order his tousled hair. Tailored suits and impeccable grooming was another sort of armor, and Erik felt absurdly vulnerable without it. Nadir consulted his pocket watch.
"Sixteen hours, at least." Erik studied his hands, long-fingered and pale, smeared with blood with dirt rimmed underneath his nails.
"Thank you, Daroga. Once again, I am in your debt." Nadir offered an eloquent Oriental gesture.
"It's nothing. After all these years, I find myself growing quite accustomed to any manner of interruption. Your masked friend appears on Death's door in a blizzard? Keep bandages and brandy on hand." Erik chuckled, ignoring the pain in his belly. Erik watched the laugh light die in Nadir's eyes and girded himself for scolding words. He was caught off guard when Nadir only said: "What will you do now?"
Erik leaned back against the comfortable nest of pillows and realized with a jolt that he had usurped Nadir's own bed. He recognized the bedspread as one from his home in Persia. His beloved wife had sewn it herself. A hot knot rose in his throat and he swallowed several times before there was room to speak. The words scarcely registered, he was so caught up in his sudden rush of emotion.
"Breakfast sounds excellent," he quipped. Nadir had lost the trick of inscrutability in the intervening years since Persia. Erik clearly saw surprise, amusement, and consternation dance there.
"Breakfast later. What I meant was: what will you do about Christine?" Erik clenched his jaw. The wound on his belly did not come close to the one on his heart.
"What is there to do, Daroga? She chose the boy," he snapped. Nadir arched a brow.
"She stopped you from killing him. Perhaps you left out a few details. I fail to see how that constitutes a choice in the Vicomte's favor." Erik exhaled a breath through his nostrils. Why did he insist on torturing Erik with the shadow of hope?
"What more do you need? An invitation to the bloody wedding?"
"Normally, I wouldn't dare to voice an opinion on the little Daae, but all this foolishness has begun to involve me, so I will speak."
Erik grunted. The Daroga loved sticking his curious Persian nose anywhere it would fit. Erik's affairs were always a favorite topic of debate, no matter what he said.
"Did you know that you sometimes talk in your sleep, Erik?" He went rigid. God, what did he say? Nothing too embarrassing, he hoped.
"No," he whispered. Nadir's weathered face held his usual mien of watchful kindness. A hint of a smile touched his lips.
"It might have been pain and brandy talking—Allah knows you drank enough to fell a large horse—but you kept repeating the phrase, 'You made me love you.' Did Christine say that?"
"Yes," Erik said, frowning. Hope was a greater tool of torture than any he had produced in Persia. Nadir eased back in his chair, sighing in an irritatingly superior way.
"There you have it. Her choice isn't as sure as you think. Allah, you aren't making it any easier on the child, Erik. She's terribly young, and through accident or design, now has two men vying for her affections. If you hadn't left in a huff a couple months ago, this new relationship wouldn't have had time to blossom."
"So you're saying it's my fault?" Erik said sharply, his temper beginning to rise.
"Yes. She was drugged. She could have said anything. You certainly do, whenever you're taken with whatever god-awful substance you've pumped into your body," Nadir said with infuriating logic, "But your pride and your stubborn belief that the only goal of anyone alive is to hurt you pushed you away from her. Say what you like about him, but the Vicomte was there when she needed him."
Erik slammed a fist on the bedside table, making the ewer jump.
"My stubborn belief? It is reality! And the Vicomte? Where was he when Christine would have died of starvation if not for Madame Giry's kindness? Where was he all those years when she was my student? No, the boy is opportunistic and arrogant."
The Daroga folded his hands over his belly and waited as Erik's tirade spent itself.
"What will you do?" he said at last. Erik clenched his jaw. His life without Christine stretched before him, a barren road with no end. Cast adrift, rudderless.
"I don't know." He hated the bleak emptiness in his tone. Weakness, even in front of Nadir, was unbearable. The Daroga was relentless.
"
What will you do?" he repeated.
"I don't know!" Erik shouted, making the laborious, effort of standing. Pain radiated from his protesting stomach, and a faint trickle of warmth said he had broken his scabs.
"You have to fight for her." Erik snorted, gesturing eloquently toward his bandaged middle.
"How do you think I earned this, Daroga? Needlepoint?" Nadir stood and glared at Erik. The Daroga was one of the few people tall enough to look him eye to eye.
"Try again. And again, if necessary. I know you, Erik. You love this girl, and I know you will never find peace until the matter is decided. Now as your conscience, I order you to make this right." The barest edge of humor lightened the last words and Erik smiled, pouring himself a tot of brandy and throwing it back.
"An order, is it? We shall see."
XXX
Minette's eyes wandered over the stage arrayed for Erik's opera and marveled at the architecture of his thoughts and desires articulated there in bold strokes. Crimson, black and gold slashed across the stage, as beautiful as a rose and as terrible as hate. Ten years of Erik's unadulterated genius channeled into this one work.
Don Juan Triumphant.
She was perhaps the only person who knew the meaning of that particular title. Early in their acquaintance, Erik had told her tonelessly that his Gypsy master had taunted him with the name Don Juan. It was so like Erik to twist what the world told him was a flaw into a strength, into another sort of allure. Don Juan was alluring. A potent sexuality filled every phrase and gesture, every provocative color and costume. Floating pristine above the carnality of the work was the heroine Aminta who was so startlingly, blindingly a caricature of Christine. The purity of his love for her was distorted only by the bleeding pain he wrote so eloquently in the third act where Aminta betrays Don Juan to her lover, Argento.
Minette rapped her cane on the stage, marking the time as she shouted instructions for improvement to her petit filles. Meg floated through the steps with ease, though she glanced to the other side of the stage where the chorus and principle actors practiced every couple seconds. Piangi's voice warbled dangerously through the powerful baritone pieces. Then Christine's voice filled the theater like a rush of clean air, like the shine of the sun on clean snow.
No thoughts within her head but thoughts of joy
No dreams within her heart but dreams of love
"Brava," Minette whispered breathlessly.
Her heart ached at the sight of Christine's slender form, bearing the hard stares and whispered taunts of the others. La Carlotta fluttered about the wings with her entourage, stewing at the thought of playing second fiddle to the Swedish slut. Even Reyer and the managers despised her. Only the very real threat of the loss of Erik's pen and the stream of wealth that followed it kept this production going. Had anyone cared to look and see that her finger was bare? Minette breathed a small sigh of relief. That piece of the puzzle could be set down for now. Another, thornier problem waited on the other side.
Erik.
Not that Minette had seen hide or hair of him since the masquerade. His home was as dark and foreboding as a tomb when she visited the night of his and the Vicomte's little duel. Thank God for Nadir. He had sent a note this morning saying Erik was safe and tucked tidily in his bed beneath the Opera. Between the two of them, maybe their charges would find their way to each other. God, what could she do to guide them together when both insisted on being stubborn and blind and foolish?
"Once again from the top, if you please," Reyer ordered, glaring sourly at the group from behind his spectacles. His dry voice jolted Minette from her reverie and she returned to work. Don Juan's triumph was to begin tomorrow.
XXX
Christine scrutinized her dripping form in the Giry's full length mirror. She was alone; both the Giry women were occupied with last minute preparations for the production tomorrow night. Her own preparations were few: the maddening notes of Erik's music sank into her blood and bones.
Dangerous, he had said. Dangerous they were. Passion bloomed in her blood as she sang the scorching, sensual arias. But then, they also articulated his pain most acutely, stripped her bare and forced her to watch him bleed. She could not forget them even if she tried. Her costumes were made and fitted, dress rehearsals complete. Through the mire of confusion that she struggled through, one thing was absolutely clear.
She had to see Erik.
Christine's skin glowed pink with the blush of heat and scrubbing, soaked tendrils of hair dripping fat, cold drops onto her shoulders and breasts. She scrutinized her body, seeing only a pale, skinny young woman with too much hair. Violet smudges cupped her eyes from little sleep. Would he still think her beautiful? Fear hollowed out the pit of her stomach at the thought of Erik's black temper. She had to see him, to prove Raoul wrong, to quiet the gnawing doubt. Erik could never kill a girl. It was lie! She had to see . . . to see if he still loved her. The last time she had spoken to him, she was shouting and shoving at him, wild with grief and love.
Christine took particular care in creams and lotions for her skin, the long whispering strokes of the comb through her hair. She dressed in white nightclothes and stockings, like a virgin bride. A shudder ran through her at the thought. An instant's doubt freezing her blood.
Christine buried her face in her hands. Shame and fear warred with a very real hunger deep within herself. She loved Raoul, and she loved Erik. That thought had haunted her waking and sleeping hours for days. Raoul, her protector, her knight, her friend. Erik . . . oh, what she felt for him defied description! But how many times had he pushed her away?
Was she really contemplating this? Going to him, begging for his forgiveness, offering him her virginity? It was desperate and wretched and . . . and sinful as well. There it was, staring her in the face, as clear in the mirror as the hints of red glinting in her ringlets. She wanted him. Erik held her in a deep, powerful way. The maddening notes of Don Juan swirled around her head, rousing her body. Christine swayed, at edge of precipice, grasping for the courage for that fateful plunge . . .
For the trek to Erik's kingdom, she armed herself with solid shoes, a cloak and a gas lamp.
She was ready.
xxxxxx
A/N: Whew. That was a hard chappie to write. Very complicated scenes in which both of our heroes are trying to sort through their emotions and find the truth. I hope it rang true. Thanks to everyone who penned a review! They are my bread and butter! Much love to everyone who's stuck w/ me and welcome to all the newcomers!
Much love,
FieryPen37