Thanks for all the lovely reviews! Here's a longer chapter as a reward :)
Standard disclaimers apply.
He returns home from an errand to find her staring at the torture chamber, eyes flickering back and forth across the glass as if in a daze. He remembers the rope still secured to the tree just within the boundaries of the mirrors and wonders if she thinks of it too. He'll have to remember to take it down. He can't have his little vicomtesse trying to do herself in again, even if it's not in response to his own presence this time.
He never wants to lose her again, even if he's decided he can't truly reclaim her as his own, either.
"Humans don't die quickly, do they?" she murmurs, almost to herself. He's not even sure she's realized he's there. "So much breath . . . So many heartbeats . . ."
And suddenly it's not her life he's concerned for.
She'd said she listened as Raoul was killed. Perhaps she refers to the horror of witnessing the act. Perhaps she laments her helplessness and replays his final breaths in her mind, recalling the amount of suffering, the panic, the desperation.
But deep down, he knows better. He knows exactly what she meant. How often have the same thoughts crossed his mind?
"Christine." He is in front of her now, stooping down to reach for her where she sits curled upon the floor. She lets him pull her upright, barely blinking at his tight grip. "Christine, I must ask you something."
He has to know.
"Anything," she says dully, shrugging a little. It seems her resistance had vanished along with her appetite. "Ask what you wish."
And before he can think better of it, before he can convince himself that he can live in happy ignorance just as long as she's there with him, he does.
"Were you entirely truthful about that night?"
All of a sudden she twists away, arms wrapped around her middle so to not touch him. There is devastating horror etched in every line of her thin face. But this time, he thinks, it's not he who's unworthy of the contact.
It's her.
This is so very wrong, twisted in an unbearable trick of fate. Christine was supposed to be the angel to his demon, the heaven to his hell. She instilled humanity in his warped and damaged soul and reminded him why he lives, why he should want to.
He was never supposed to drag her down into this infernal madness alongside him.
"It was you," he says. His voice is dark and angry; he's angrier than he's been in weeks. He's not even sure why he's angry. Because she fell? Or because he showed her how?
She doesn't even deny it. Her face smooths as she regains her unfeeling facade, and she turns from him, though he circles around her until they're face to face once more.
"He would have guessed, Erik." Remarkable, really, how she can act so unaffected now. There are no tears in her eyes. Her voice doesn't break. "He would have known I hadn't been faithful and I couldn't put him through that."
"So you killed him instead? Oh, Christine–" Can he protest, really? He's ended more lives than he can count. But not that boy's. Not in front of her.
"I meant it to be quick!" Now a note of panic enters her voice. Frustration. "I didn't know how slowly a person suffocates . . . how tightly one must squeeze . . . it was meant to be an escape!" She shakes her head, spins away. "He was supposed to just slip away!"
Stupid child — of course it doesn't work like that. There's an art to it, a dedication beyond simply deciding to offer a release. But just as quickly as the rage had flooded his body does it slip away again. She cannot possibly have known. Really, all of this is due to things she didn't know.
So he does the only thing he can. He pulls her close and consoles her in his embrace.
Several people guessed this was coming, but hopefully it wasn't too obvious. Well, let me know what you think! Reviews are confidence boosters ...
Much love,
KnightNight