A/N Finally! This was a mammoth task...let's face it he had ALOT of stuff to get through. I hope it's enough and true to both of them.
Chapter 16
Erik did as he was bid, slowly climbing the stairs to his room as if in a trance. How different his two worlds were. Where once he descended into the pit of despair that had been his existence for as long as he cared to remember, now he scaled the steps up into the room which had become a haven in this new place where hope grew. He fervently hoped that he had not snuffed out the tiny flame that burned for him in this life with the revelations he had imparted. Meg could extinguish it in a heartbeat if she so desired and he would not blame her for it.
That feared chest which had been tightly shut now lay open to the elements and he imagined he felt the wind whirling through it, sweeping the memories and nightmares into a funnel of hurt. Like dried autumn leaves they tossed on the breeze as one by one they were caught by the air and whisked clean away. Maybe telling Meg, speaking it aloud was making this happen? Was it too much to hope he would be able to let the worst of it go? He feared telling her the rest above all, about Buquet and the fire. He had destroyed her home and her livelihood – she would have been a prima ballerina, of that he had no doubt – and she had every right to hate him for it. Instead she had helped him and not for the first time he thought about how he could get her to go home, to follow her dream without him holding her back. But then he would be alone again.
Meg busied herself with squeezing oranges and spooning conserve into a little glass pot, actions that were natural and instinctive, requiring little effort and no thought. There was no room for any save thoughts of Erik and his eye-opening confession. It was all so terribly heartrending...losers on both sides and no winners to speak of unless she counted the Viscomte, although he was going to be hit financially where it hurt in the weeks and months to come. Erik would not see that of course, only that two men had fought and only one had walked away with the prize. So far it was a classic love triangle except that she was not so sure that he had truly loved Christine – wanted yes, needed perhaps but loved? They barely knew each other.
He believed it of course but he had nothing to compare it to. But then what did she know of love? Only what she felt from her mother and for her friends but that was vastly different from what was possible with a soul mate. She had no experience with the opposite sex, nothing that would endear her to them anyway if she discounted Erik. He was the only man who she really knew and who really knew her; almost as well as anyone else did including her mother. The rest of the men she had encountered at the Populaire were either young pups looking for a quick grope in the props room or drunken sots who could barely stand. No, she knew not of love and so really who was she to judge?
Pulled from her contemplation by the reappearance of her tragic friend, she pulled out his chair and motioned for him to sit. "Would you like me to do the bandages now or after?" In all that had happened he was still at this late hour in the morning walking around with his entire face bare and that was tantamount to being stark naked in Erik's book...although not quite in hers. But she supposed he felt exposed and that she could understand.
"Now if you don't mind." He had almost forgotten to cover his face with his hand when Federico appeared unexpectedly. He had rather startlingly felt liberated without them this morning. Something that had always been there to protect him (or so he thought) had, by its very absence made him feel a little more human. He knew he did not look any different to before but because Meg did not seem to notice, it had allowed him to forget. He could not remember the last time he forgot about the fact of his face and he longed to wake in the morning and not have to think about it just like she would. For now he would enjoy the calm before the storm he knew was coming and closed his eyes under Meg's gentle hands. She would probably much rather scratch them out but he would not know it from the way she touched him, working as always with deftness and care. If it was the last thing to happen him before his pitiful life came crashing about his ears he knew he would die with the precious knowledge that somewhere inside of her Meg cared a tiny bit and let him feel it each time she did this.
They ate in silence; an eerie calm descending in advance of what both knew would be a difficult conversation. Meg's previous anger had simmered to a throbbing sadness for the pain and confusion he had inflicted on himself and Christine and she knew it was about to get worse. She folded her napkin and laid it on the table, smoothing out a stubborn crease on the cloth as she did so.
"Erik, are you ready to continue?" She knew what was coming...a man had been killed and though no one had actually seen it happen, everyone assumed it was Opera Ghost. He had threatened as much. The new managers and patron had been treading on very dangerous ground when they repeatedly ignored his "advice" and they suffered for it. She supposed in Erik's mind he had given them fair warning; in fact her mother had also tried. She knew just as Meg did that nothing bad ever happened when his instructions were followed. OG was appeased, the box office flourished and everyone was happy. Not anymore.
"I will never be ready but it has to be done." Erik knew that anything he told her from here on had the power to completely alienate Meg but he had to hope that she had the clarity of mind to make sense of it all. He couldn't remember ever speaking at such length to anyone and struggled to form the right words to match the sea of images he called forth in his head.
"While Christine slept I had written to the managers, to the Viscomte, to Carlotta and to your mother with my instructions regarding Il Muto and also a reminder that my salary was overdue. Carlotta was to be the page – she should have been grateful to have any part in it. That woman positively ruined every good note that was ever put in her mouth. Christine was to sing the Countess. The Viscomte was to stay AWAY from her. All of it was ignored. I warned them but they would not listen." They would not listen. If they had just listened...no one would listen.
"I remember...Christine had just arrived back and they were all in the foyer panicking. Carlotta was accusing the patron of writing to her, the managers the same. Maman tried to warn them all when they refused to listen, she knew what they did not." How hard it must have been for her poor mother walking the tightrope between her loyalty to her employers and being Erik's go-between, keeping his secret.
"Such simple requests...a child could have followed them. Carlotta was abysmal as usual so she had to be stopped, it was Christine's turn. I had not developed that voice for it to be kept silent. The patron had again ingratiated himself in my box in direct opposition to my orders. I told them as much. That woman called Christine a toad...uncharacteristically accommodating of her to play into my hands like that I thought, considering her next words. Fimin and André were apoplectic of course with a full house and the production in chaos but they were learning to think on their feet and I have to commend them for their swift recovery, lacking in finesse though it was."
"How did you do it...it was you who made her croak? And you sounded so loud from up there but yet you did not shout." Before things had gotten decidedly morbid it had actually been quite funny, like OG of old up to his usual mischief. Meg was fascinated by how he altered Carlotta's voice and how he himself could sound so ominous and powerful so far from the stage. It was almost as if his voice filled every crack, every pore and she had felt it right inside her ribcage.
"It was merely chemistry. I switched her throat spray with something that temporarily anaesthetised her vocal chords. No lasting harm done but sufficient for my purpose. As for my voice...that is all down to architectural acoustics and quite a brilliant tool. Santa Maria della Salute has a dome that should produce the same effect; I will show you sometime."
"And Buquet...?" There was no escaping the fact that the man sitting across from her was in fact a murderer despite how hard she tried to reconcile it with the Erik she had come to know.
Erik inhaled deeply and clenched his teeth trying to draw some strength from within. For the first time he felt shame for that particular act, sitting in front of this gentle thing who had never hurt anyone. There were no words that would explain it away or make it any more palatable to her. He had killed and there had been little emotion or conscious thought involved. "When I left the dome I was crossing the catwalk above the stage. Buquet followed me, thinking to bag himself the monster he was so fond of publicising. I could not let that happen. He was used to being up there and quick enough on the ropes but he was a drunk and I was quicker. He had been a thorn in my side and a danger to the rest of the company for quite some time; in fact I had written to Levevre in the past about getting the problem dealt with but it was allowed to continue. The opportunity to rectify it presented itself and when it came down to it I could either kill him or be captured. I could not let that happen. I strangled him." His face settled into a grim frown, bowing his head as he waited for the backlash. He could not tell it any way other than how it happened. Meg would expect nothing less than the cold hard truth.
"What gave you the RIGHT Erik? Oh I know that man was a menace, God alone knows he was a letch of the worst kind but you had NO right to take his life!" Meg was angry now and she suspected it would only get worse. What of Piangi? Not to mention Christine's account of his forcing her to marry him? None of it made any sense. She had to remember the man she now considered a friend was capable of anything. It was not the behaviour of a man in any sort of control...and she supposed that was the key. He was out of control, a brilliant mind lost to an obsession to possess the mind, body and soul of her naive young friend.
Erik had never thought about whether he should have done it, about whether he had the right to do it. In his entire life no one had ever questioned his motives. Until now. "No. No...You are quite correct. I suppose I did not have the right; it was not a factor in the decision. One of us had to go and I was not about to let it be me."
"I had left a rose for Christine in her dressing room, a red rose with a black silk ribbon. She took it with her when she left with the patron after...after Bouquet. I followed them to the roof. Nothing could have prepared me..."
Meg saw Erik's previously cold and clinical demeanour evaporate before her to reveal an anguish and sorrow that in the time she had known him had never seemed so acute. Something horribly painful had transpired up on that roof, something that had hurt him deeply. Her head was spinning with warring versions of the man before her and the emotions he pulled from her; anger at his assumption of entitlement to be judge, jury and executioner and grief for the heart and soul of a man who tortured himself mercilessly, needlessly. Meg reached across the table and laid her hand across his knuckles which were white with tension. "Go on...nothing could have prepared you...?"
"I was hidden behind the huge angel statue – appropriate don't you think? I heard everything. She said my face was...that it was hardly a face at all. She told him she loved him, he told her he loved her too. They kissed as lovers do. He proposed to her and she...she accepted." Erik's face fell into his hands, no longer able to contain the pain that he had locked inside for so long. Huge salty tears completely at odds with the proud, powerful man he had been chased down his left cheek and soaked into the fabric covering his right. "Meg she was mine, MINE! She told him about me...about my face. They agreed she would sing the lead and then they would leave together. She betrayed me. She understood nothing...NOTHING. I had to make her understand, make them ALL understand."
Oh Erik! How awful, how twisted it all was. What must it have felt like to be the unseen third corner of the triangle...the one left out in the cold? She could not imagine. Meg had never seen such hurt in her short life but already her broken friend had endured enough for ten lifetimes. Why did he continue to pursue it, pursue Christine when he could see she loved another? Perhaps he couldn't see...just as her young friend never saw who her angel really was. It was self mutilation.
"We did not see or hear from you again until the New Year's Eve Masquerade. Where were you?"
"Making plans. I was writing Don Juan and making plans. Every minute of every hour of every day was spent putting everything within me onto paper, into notes and lyrics; all of it for her. It was all I had to give her and it was everything I am...was. I came to the masquerade with one purpose and one alone – to deliver the manuscript and my instructions. Christine was...she looked so beautiful but something was wrong...she wore a ring around her neck. HIS ring! She belonged to me!" Erik almost spat the words just as he had that night, furious with her for waving her engagement in his face.
"You know the rest - the Viscomte followed me with his sword although I still cannot fathom what he thought to do with it. Your mother saved his life that night...she is good at that. Shortly after Christine slipped out one night to visit her father's grave; I drove her. She never knew it was me. She was lost, confused and missing her father. I sang to her as I had so many times before...as her Angel of Music. She believed it was the spirit of her father and I...I did not...I let her believe it."
"How could you? Erik she knew from when you took her down below that there was no angel, she was so confused. How could you continue to manipulate her mind that way? She is not strong like others, she has always believed whatever she is told no matter how farfetched. She was blind and you used her. Why? WHY?" He had definitely crossed the line. She could understand how it had all begun and how it had spiralled beyond his control but this? This was ridiculous and unbelievably disturbing! He was grasping at wisps of nothing...she loved Raoul and he knew that. He had heard it with his own ears, seen the evidence. Was he so blind to everything but his own desires, everyone's but his own needs that he did not see?
"She was MINE! She was mine long before he showed up perfectly coiffed with his title, his crest and his regular aristocratic features. MINE! I just needed her to see it. I needed to make her understand. Of course he arrived like a knight on his big white horse and spoiled everything. He told her the voice she heard was not her father...the time had come to end it. I jumped down from my position high up on her father's mausoleum and drew my sword."
Megs hand flew to her mouth in horror. She had no idea it had come to this...that they had crossed swords out in the graveyard. Christine had never spoken of it, Raoul becoming her confidante or swearing her to secrecy.
"You fought him? What happened? Did anyone get hurt?"
"I sliced his shoulder, drawing some of that fine blue blood. It turns out he bleeds the same colour as all the rest of us." His tears of before had given way to a positively evil smirk and icy cold eyes as he remembered the elation at feeling the resistance and subsequent tearing of warm enemy flesh at the point of his sword.
"What about you...did he...were you hurt?" For some reason she imagined him invincible even thought she knew he was not. He was just a man but she couldn't bear to think of the two men killing each other over a woman who loved only one. She could understand it if she could not decide but then Erik believed he still had a chance. Men were so ridiculous with their posturing and one-upmanship. It invariably ended in tears and this was proving to be no exception.
"No, he did not land a blow although...and it galls me to say it...he managed to knock my sword away and I landed awkwardly. He was ready to drop his blade through my heart but Christine stopped him. She could have let me die; let her beloved waste my life but she spared it. I had to believe it was because she cared." He hated the fact that his nemesis had bested him in any way but it was a fact. He could have killed him.
"The premier of Don Juan was the next time I saw her. At some point between there must have been a plan to involve the police, a grand scheme to catch the beast. My orders were followed to the letter...Christine came on as Aminta. I should have known something was not right but I did not care. This was the end. I knew it would end that night one way or another. I had planned everything so carefully. The chandelier was rigged to drop if I needed a distraction...it was never meant to bring down the Populaire. It was supposed to come down on the stage; I had calculated every possible permutation but it fell short. I saw that the day I followed you back up before we left Paris. I waited backstage until Piangi was due to go on and I overpowered him. He dropped to the floor but I did not tighten the rope enough to kill him. I needed him to be unconscious...I had no reason to kill him...you must believe that Meg. I walked on in his place and sang the words I had written to the woman they were meant for."
"I heard you...I was changing for the next act but I heard you. I knew it could not have been Piangi so I came to the stage as soon as I was ready. Maman was there and so were the police. You had made your way up the steps by then so I never saw you but Erik... your voice was, is beautiful." Not long after that everything had gone crazy. Erik had sung words that were not in the score...heartbreaking words begging Christine to stay with him, pledging his love to her and then it happened; the one thing that made her question every drop of sympathy she felt for her childhood friend.
"You know what happened next then." Erik bowed his head once more, fingers pressed into his eyes as if to pulverise the horrific scenes within.
"I walked up those steps with more hope than I had ever dared to dream for. Christine had given herself to me with her words and every encouraging glance she imparted on that stage. I could barely believe that she was finally mine; that she had decided. I had nothing left to lose so I told her. I told her I loved her with the very words her precious Viscomte had used so she could not misunderstand. My reason for living came down to that moment. I never realised until then what an excellent actress she really is; the sultry looks, the come hither eyes, the enticing smiles...all LIES. She had always been such a timid, quiet little thing that I was momentarily stunned by the viciousness of her actions. She fed me to the lions...Delilah with her scissors and Pandora with her infernal curiosity. Oh how they screamed when she lifted the lid on that box! There was NO WAY she was escaping now. She would be mine at any price! I cut the rope holding the chandelier and kicked the lever for the trapdoor under the stage. We dropped several floors below and I dragged her down to the lake."
Erik's heart was racing to the point of a coronary and his hands were shaking with remembered anger, pain and disbelief. He felt small hands clasp his; soft, warm hands that trembled but were steadier than his own. Meg. He lifted his head to meet her eyes which he noted were glossy with tears, many having already spilt down her cheeks.
"Why did you not just leave her Erik? She had just betrayed you in the most horrific way imaginable...I cannot even begin to...oh it's too awful. Why would you want her still, after what she had done? You could have just disappeared and left it be." Meg could not understand why or how he could continue to torture himself the way he had. If she had been in his shoes she could not comprehend wanting to breathe the same air as the person who had done that. What the hell was Christine doing? They were not the actions of the sweet girl she befriended as a child. Oh she knew she was confused – Erik had made sure of that – but it still did not excuse what she had done to him. She had exposed and betrayed him in what she knew would be the most hurtful and damaging way and Meg could not condone it no matter what Erik had done.
"She had to pay for what she did. She would pay and so would her fop of a fiancé. I had seconds to contemplate and my only thoughts were that she belonged to me. I told her to put on the dress I had made for her; so many hours put into every little detail and she..." Erik was stopped in his tracks by Meg holding her hand up in front of him.
"Wait, stop. What dress?" He could sew? Was there no end to his abilities?
"The wedding dress...I kept it on the mannequin and..."
"Wait, was it by any chance on that thing when you brought her down before; when she fainted?"
"Well yes of course it was. I made it months ago, why?"
"Erik can you hear yourself? You brought a 16 year old girl (who up to that point believed you to be a spirit sent to protect her by her dead father, by the way) down to your underground home, mesmerised her with doubtless beautiful words and then showed her a mirror image of herself wearing a wedding dress. Of course she fainted; most people would have. She was probably terrified!"
"Would you have fainted?"
"No I most certainly would not have; I would have told you to stop being so damned creepy. But then I am NOT Christine as you are so fond of pointing out and so I would not have been down there in the first place. That's not even the point. The point is you scared the sense out of her. What happened when she put on the dress?" She would never have been in that position because he had never nor would ever have noticed her.
"She told me that she pitied me...that it was my distorted soul and not my face which horrified her then. My distorted soul? She, who ripped my heart out in front of a packed theatre and threw it to the salivating masses! I was sick of listening to her, sick of seeing the pity in her face. I told her she would have an eternity to look at my face, contemplating her dark fate. Then her heroic young suitor showed up, having miraculously escaped my water trap. It was sickening to hear his pathetic pleas for mercy and compassion when none were ever shown to me. It turned my stomach to hear the declarations of love that passed between them; it was like the roof all over again. I lifted the portcullis and in he came oblivious to the lasso heading for his scrawny privileged neck. Christine had a choice to make. Choose me and I would let him live. Choose him and he would die. Simple."
Simple. Christine had been telling the truth in her letter. He had forced her to choose between staying with him or death for her love. He had turned into a maniac! He had completely lost all sense of reality and what was right and she could not figure out when that had happened. She was sure he had not always been that unstable...all his previous years as OG he had played mischievous pranks, not the actions of a madman but rather the tricks of a bored, attention hungry child. He was blatantly a genius with enormous talent for anything it seemed he tried his hand at including dressmaking of all things! She could barely manage to tack the ribbons on her toe shoes. When had his mind cracked? What was the turning point? Only he knew.
"Go on." Meg begged silently for an end to it...she couldn't take much more.
"She made the only choice she could. She came to me across the lake with that beautiful dress swirling around her, put the ring on her finger and then she..." Erik closed his eyes and swallowed remembering his first kiss. A first touch of lips that should have been filled with sweetness and pleasure not tainted with pity and sacrifice.
"Then she...oh God she kissed me. Twice. It was too much. She did not love me and I knew it then; her acting skills failed her when it really counted. I couldn't let her stay, could not bear to see and feel that kind of pity again. It was worse than losing her. I let them go, told them to take the boat and forget it all, forget me. I opened the portcullis and went back up the steps to the bed. I was sitting staring at the music box when she came back. She gave me the ring...the ring the Viscomte had given her and then I watched them leave, together. I smashed the mirror that covered the hidden passage and well...you know the rest."
Meg nodded slowly and released the breath she had been holding as Erik came to the end of his story. It was, she conceded, quite unbelievable but she must believe it for it had all happened and she did not doubt his account for a second; it was too terrifying to make up. He had visibly shrunk; the effort of purging his sins too much for even OG to keep up the facade. The tall, powerful man that had first appeared to her in her mother's bedroom was now a broken, beaten, defeated and heartsick figure of hopelessness. He had lost everything. Erik had wagered everything and lost. He believed he had nothing left.
Meg stood slowly from her chair and moved to stand beside the complex man she had helped and whose darker side she now knew. His shoulders shook from the sobs he failed to hide and his head was hidden, cradled in his hands. He had let it all out, the poison that had been sucking the life out of him and now he could begin to heal.
"Erik..." She put a hand on his back just between his shoulder blades and felt him tense, the powerful muscles flexing beneath her palm.
He lifted his head and turned to look up into the tear stained face of his confessor and where he expected revulsion and loathing saw only acceptance and compassion. She took his left hand from his face and pulled him towards her, clutching his head to her so he could hear her heart beating. Erik gave himself up to the feeling of being warm and safe and decided once and for all to give up trying to figure this woman out. She would forever surprise him. He turned fully in his chair and wrapped both his arms around her tiny waist, holding on as if his life depended on it and let the tears come. He would ruin her dress but he would buy her a new one.
"Why Meg?" He didn't deserve any of this.
"It's over now Erik, you are not alone anymore. We will fix this somehow...we will find a way." Meg continued to rub small circles on his back, holding the ruined side of his face in her hand and prayed to whoever listened that they could.