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Chapter 4: Half-Cadence

Every night from then onwards, I would return to the place of Erik's confinement. Some part of my mind was astounded at my behavior; why didn't I free him in the night? I wondered. But the memory of that one glare as he was taken inside the house frightened me. If he should reject me, what would I do? Was not it better to perhaps – barbaric though the idea seemed – leave him and protect myself with the idea that he still loved me? As long as he could not speak to me, he could not refuse this idea. But even that solution was not protection, for as long as he was in Raoul's power, his pain was mine.

Raoul would not only taunt Erik, but would have him cruelly beaten and lashed. "Has your misguided love for my Christine dulled your senses?" he would taunt. "Come, fight back!"

The Angel would merely sigh.

At first, I waited in anticipation, but then I grew irritated. No, he was not fighting back. He knew I was here; if he still cared for me, why did he not produce one of his master plans and escape with me? Had his spirit been broken?

The very nature of the taunts upset me. The Erik with whom I had fallen in love was ruled by no man, but there this black shadow hung, on that blood-encrusted wall. I would watch, tormented by empathy, desire, and anxiety. Anxiety about what? - That he had given up. By the stars above, I thought, these months of being able to hit nothing resistant is driving me mad. I began to wonder if I would hate Erik if I discovered that he was as weak as everything else was.

Raoul did nothing to alleviate these burdens, either. Though he had never shown Erik to me since he came to the house, he kept up a steady stream of dark reflections upon the worst of the Phantom's crimes. My ears were filled with his criticism, and without Erik there to defend himself, my thoughts struggled violently against my mind. You've known him for almost your entire life! How can you be so quickly swayed? my heart would demand. He lied to me, the same as everyone else has done! would respond my mind. If all is not as he taught me, why should I trust him now? He is your husband, my heart would plead. If only out of loyalty to him, do not surrender to Raoul! Fight, even if he will not!

I began to hate myself, too. Into what sort of monster was Raoul turning me? That I refused to meet my husband, let alone help him, because I was afraid of being able to conquer him? My own feelings aside, where was the cry of my nature to help others in need?

Except: Erik had never been one of those who needed to be helped. He needed, and required, my affection and confidence in him, but that was not helping. It was just the way things should be.

Or, should they?... My memories of Erik, before, when he was hideous to gaze upon, could not have all been re-colored by time. I could not erase his whispered, "Christine, I love you…" nor could I kill the remembrance of his desperately hopeful eyes. At those moments, he needed me the way a drowning man needs air. He had been helpless without me – I knew this even as Raoul had steered us away on the boat. These were things I did not want to accept, and so I ran. I was a human monster.

What on earth had been – and was – happening to me?

One evening, Raoul informed me that he had business with his league of upcoming scientist-friends. I seized the opportunity, and gathering up my courage, I went down into the dungeons – for dungeons they were. I took the key to the grate, which was hanging upon the opposite wall (how Raoul could look at me with such tenderness while tormenting another man was a foul mystery), and unlocked the rusted iron.

The man in black was hung as though he was on a cross; his shoulders must have been shrieking in agony at the position. His body was no longer lithe: now, it was gaunt, like that of a skeleton. His shirt hung in tatters, and new scars and weeping welts crisscrossed the white expanse of his chest.

Erik looked up at me, and his eyes were expressionless. "Hello."

"How could he have done this to you?" I whispered, horrified into forgetting my whimsical thoughts.

"With your permission, I suppose."

"You truly think that?" I cried, and I began to shake. Even hanging upon the wall, his words cut like daggers.

"You've turned into his lapdog, as I've feared. He's probably filled your mind with lies and falsehoods, and you now share his opinion of me. Do not protest; I've seen your shadow from around the corner, and I've heard the whisper of that very dressing-gown as you leave just before your love-sick puppy returns to your world of plush luxury. Do you enjoy my pain, Christine?"

Dear Jesu, help me! His words, spoken in such a cool and disinterested tone, made my heart flutter and my knees weaken. He was the same! He despised me, he hadn't given up, he hadn't been absorbed by the light of my career and beauty. I could have bowed before him in thanks for insulting me, for giving me something against which to rail. I could have kissed his hand for breaking me out of Raoul's world. His derogatory words were love sonnets to me, the guilt worth a thousand kisses, his disdain for me –

He disdained me.

Oh.

"I love you," I protested. "I'm…sorry…I don't know why I haven't come to you before this. Honestly, I do not! Yes, you're right – this house, with its gloomy corners – Phantom, it frightens me! I can't remember my past after I left you in the lair, and it scares me! Something in this house is stalking me and turning my soul in the dark night –"

I stopped then, for a peculiar, ugly look had twisted the still-handsome features of his face. "'Phantom,' you called me," he echoed. "'Dark night.' I live in the dark, Christine. Would you prefer the glory of his sunshine, Little Lotte?"

Without thinking, I entered the cell and screamed at him. "Do not use that title! I was yours, I am yours, I swore myself to you! How could you think-"

"How many times has he visited your bed?" he asked me, now a spark of interest in his eyes. I could not tell if it was from the question or if he, like me, was aroused by the angry conversation.

Now my heart burned within me, and without thinking, my hand darted and slapped his cheek. The sound broke me from my rage, and I stood in shock, my face white. Erik slowly straitened from his slump, chains murmuring ominously, and his considerable height towered over me. Violently, he took me into his arms as much as the chains would allow. "You will regret that." His mouth crashed on mine. It was not a gentle kiss, nor even loving. I dominate you, it told me. Submit to me, for you are mine. I will punish you for betraying me. His hand gripped my soft curls, the ones the servants ceaselessly pampered, and used them to rip my head back onto his forearm. I was arched sideways against him, barely standing but for his blood-soaked body. His mouth ravaged my neck like a vampire, drawing tiny beads of blood from beneath my ear.

"Yes," I moaned in a helpless whisper. "Yes, I'm yours. Yes, punish me for all the times I've let Raoul hold me and have imagined it was you. Punish me for thinking you lost affection for me…"

He let me go; I dropped to the floor in dizzy surprise. "What?" I mumbled.

"Me? Lose affection for you? My dear Miss Prima Donna, how could I? You know that my heart has always been precariously held within the clutches of your fragile hands, however unwise such a safe is. You betray that love by even deliberating its death."

"But that look you gave me when you were led inside –"

"Having just been informed of your wedded bliss to the Vicomte? Naturally, I remain in disgust. Your admissions only reveal you have whored yourself. My dear, choose either one man or the other."

"It has only been you, only you!" I cried.

"Sometimes I wonder, with this dancing between us."

My head was now blazing. I dimly saw his eyes soften for a moment, then harden. "It appears that the shame of the truth hurts you, mon ange. Le pauvre." The expression of sympathy was derogatory.

"I hate you! Stop!" The words came from my mouth without quite realizing it happened. It was Raoul's face I saw, and Raoul's voice I heard – only worse, for now they were real and from my angel.

I did not see his face freeze, his wounded chest suck in a huge gasp of air. All I saw was his blood upon the front of my nightclothes, and wishing that it was my own, and that I could suffer so pure a cause as he thought he did. By God, his lies felt purer than my truth. "Then, go, Christine," he murmured. "Go, and I will not trouble you."

I threw him a glance of anguish and wordless wailing, willing my desperation and heartache to show through my gaze. Tears poured from my eyes, and it felt like a sword being sliced through the comfort of my heart. I deserved this guilt, this torture, and to receive it finally was a relief after running from it for so long.

Regret colored his blue eyes after a few moments, and his body slumped once more within the relentless pull of the chains. "I'm sorry."

"My husband," I whispered. He looked up, eyes wounded and vulnerable. This was the point at which I would have fooled myself into thinking he was helpless and therefore unwanted by me. But – this man, with his beautiful eyes and music thriving and dancing within him – was not helpless. At least, not helpless in adoration for me. He did not worship me. He was my master, but he was subject to a greater master: music. If music chose to hide in me, naturally, he would find me. Just as I would find him. The truth seemed right, now, not perverted by months of solitary, warped thought. He and I completed one another; it was fitting that he needed me, for my need matched his. "My husband, I have not betrayed you in the manner which you think I have."

"If you did, and you regretted it, it would not matter," he said, his eyes challenging me to listen to him. "But you have rejected me in your heart."

"I have not!" I said, but my mind was frantically shutting down all other thoughts. I began to back away from the words that were pushing me into a corner. I was in that mode into which philosophers say wounded animals enter when wounded: they fight, or they flee. My mind had already charted the course. The pain would be too great; my mind was fleeing.

"You used to be unafraid of the truth," he said, his voice quaking with hidden tears. "I coaxed that love within you, and I taught you to not be afraid of your place in the world." Hours of teaching – teaching that had hidden barbed lessons for life – of philosophy, and of truth, clamored to be remembered. I refused them place. "…You used to be brave enough to love me, Christine. Christine. Christine, pristine," he almost sang. "Christine, crystal. Shining through. Brilliantly cut, but O so easy to break. So white, so spotless. I made you more than a crystal figurine or a chandelier, but it appears you prefer to be on display."

He drew in a shuddering breath, and I noticed that his face was even whiter than normal. We were silent, each of us wallowing in our own thoughts. He did not act like my husband, I thought deliriously. He acted like he still had not courted me. I told him so. "You do not act as if I were yours."

"You are not," he said, and it was not an accusation; it was the water-filled summer leaves dragging across a fresh grave. "You…" he sighed. "You are yet a child."

"Children are not evil!"

"Children do not possess the maturity to bear the ills of the world and to fix them. Oh, a rare few do – I shall grant you that. But most will flee and cry, as do you. They cannot touch evil and keep their happiness."

"Neither can many adults."

"True. But the woman who would be my wife must bear such a burden."

My heart nearly stopped. "Are you divorcing me?"

"Are you acknowledging that we had a marriage?"

Before I could answer, a man's heavy footsteps resounded slowly off the stone steps. "It's Raoul!" Erik whispered, and for the first time that evening, a touch of anxiety touched his eyes. He still cared, I marveled. He still cared. His skin shivered, and I knew he was fortifying his mind with some inner song. It was he who had taught me to do that. I watched him in awe, and wondered what song was in his mind. "Go, go now!" I hesitated, holding the key in my hand. "Yes, lock me in – do it! Christine, whatever affection he has for you, if he finds you down here with me, his mind will pervert it into the delusion that you are helping me escape. He will kill you!"

I sobbed once, then rushed forwards to kiss his mouth. My tongue swept through the iron-flavored cavern as if to take into myself all of his burdens. I felt the quick, answering flick of his own tongue against mine, and I nearly melted. Then, he ripped his face from mine and turned it away. "Go, ma chérie. You have won."

I rushed to the doorway and pulled the grate down, locking it, and then practically threw the key into the ring. I stayed in the shadows nearby, to wait until Raoul had passed. I hugged my stomach, trembling with mingled passion and relief. "Erik," I whispered to myself. "My dear Erik, I will find a way for us to escape together." His insults had renewed my spirit, and the words of love forced from his lips invigorated me. I watched Raoul's shadow pass, and my sole fear was that he would impede our escape.

I was about to dart up the stairs when I heard Raoul's voice. It was shaking with excitement, a rarity in their nightly encounters. "My friend has sources, my dear Phantom. He told me you used to work in Persia as an assassin. Wonderful potions they have in Persia, do they not?"

Erik was no longer silent. "May the demons of the hellish underworld drag you down, and may they feast themselves on your deceitful corpse."

Raoul was delighted. "You speak!" he said. Erik responded with a sentence of such highly colored words that I simultaneously wanted to cover my ears and block my mind from the series of interesting ideas some presented. "Apparently, with fluency in four languages," the Vicomte de Chagny noted dryly. "Well, since you have broken your vow of silence – tell me why you let yourself be captured by my men."

"Have you yet told Christine why you took her from me?"

"Because you are an insane freak of nature!"

"No, the second time." Erik's drawl was such that a hysterical giggle welled in my throat.

"Well…no. I have not yet deemed her mind strong enough to bear the details. She is getting closer, though. Perhaps once I display your dead body to her, the last of your curse over her mind will die."

"If anything dies, it will be her mind itself."

"Explain yourself, villain."

I sank down against the wall, holding my knees to my chest. "Erik – do not tell me this without your arms," I moaned quietly to myself. Yet, I was excited. He was about to solve the puzzle for me.

"Wasn't it because of your taunts about my death to her that she ran to me in the first place?" His voice was raised, purposefully, to carry across to me.

A bright flash of memory flashed across my vision, and it was only in the background that I heard the force of Raoul punching Erik and shouting, "Liar!" Pain, pain from memories long sealed for their unpleasantness, rippled over the horizon. "Go away," I moaned to myself. "Do not make me remember…"

The woman who would be my wife must bear such a burden.

"Then show me, if you are determined to burn me in fire, and hide nothing!" I told my mind. It complied, and the memories of the most unpleasant year of my life – one without my Angel of Music – burst upon me in a barrage of wrongness.

"If her nightmares told me the truth, you were gloating about having this very grate put into the wall so that one day, such as today, you could torture me and rid her of my existence."

"Be silent! I do not need to be told my own plans."

Raoul, invading every place of my life, but one. Raoul preferring to kiss my cheek than my forehead. Raoul bringing me chocolates and flowers. Raoul taking me to visit everywhere. Raoul informing everyone he had rescued me from the Phantom, but that it was all right, I would never again have to sing on an Opera stage. I would live in comfort and luxury, I would not need to exploit myself. I had everything that I wanted. Music was absent from my life; I had realized that Raoul was stealing everything from my former world that might remind me of the Phantom.

"But she apparently cared for me and our music more than you realized," he continued. "And the thought of my maimed body sent her into delirium. To your credit, you were quite anxious. Perhaps a little too much, eh?" He screamed as Raoul punched his stomach-wound, but then went on with only a little less finesse in his voice. "Going all the way to Provence for a witch doctor gave her plenty of time to find me. Do you think me some sort of sorcerer, that you sought out the scum of the world? You would have done better to find a gypsy. Oh, I was so happy, Vicomte, when she looked upon me with that love in her eyes. She sought me out. I heard her, begging anyone for information about me. I was so angry when I heard her nightmares…yes, so angry." He grunted again from the force of another hit. "You almost killed her."

"You almost killed me!" Raoul yelled.

"Think of it as an attempted favor for God." There was a beat of silence, then the beatings began. But Erik was laughing through it all, almost crying, but laughing. "She cried out for me in her dreams. For me, the ugly demon from hell!

"The doctor told you that it would be best for you to leave her alone, did he not? That you could damage her mind if you forced her to remember?" His groan was almost animalistic from pain. "I can infer that he did. I likewise did not force her to remember anything which she did not want to recall. Curious thing, n'est-ce pas? When her mind sought a scenario with the least amount of pain, she sought one in which she lived happily with me. She did not want you in any part of her life; it was my name she cried out in her dreams, calling, 'Mon ange, my teacher, Erik!' I believe that was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard."

There was a clanking noise, then the sound of a body crashing limply to stone. I peeked around the corner. Raoul was re-chaining Erik's arms to the sides of the room so that he was eagle-spread upon the floor.

"Enough of this," my once-fiancé breathed, and he took from his pocket a bottle, a bottle the size and shape of a lady's perfume bottle. He looked so engrossed by the vial that I crept a little closer. Memories of my past were still whirling through my head, but they were now gently sifting in the background, filling holes that which would complete a picture that I would realize later. With each moment, the horror and revulsion I felt for Raoul increased. "You have cleverly side-tracked the conversation. Let me now tell you something of your own past. My friend told me you used to be an assassin, and that you are a brilliant chemist. You created this acid, did you not? It is no great wonder that you then preferred to work alone. A murderer can't trust any other murderer.

"But your partner betrayed you, when your Queen forced you to rely upon him. It was this very potion that he used to cause your disfigurement, was it not?" Erik was silent, but I heard the chains create a cacophony of protest. "No, you will not escape. Christine envisioned a future where you were together, did she? She was running from the truth, a truth that could never be. You were disfigured for your great sins. You have escaped them temporarily this past year, thanks to that antidote to scars you developed in all of your…spare time spent slinking in the bowels of the Opera house, but your soul will always bear the damnation of your evil. I will now return you to your proper place in Hell: a place where Christine's eyes fill in pity and horror when she looks upon you. There shall be no chemical redemption for you."

I whipped back to my place against the wall and clenched my eyes. There was silence for a moment, then my Phantom's screams filled the dungeon like I had never heard before. It made my own back arch with his pain. We must have been screaming together, for the acid leaked through both of our hopes. I writhed on the floor, clutching the blood on my nightdress as if to hold Erik to my heart. We could not breath: our screams were continuous and endless.

Finally came a pause, and we were gasping for breath. I forced myself to look around the corner, and saw Raoul standing, looking so impossibly innocent while standing over Erik's twitching hand. "Yes, pressure points do pain one the most when met with acid. You yourself discovered that, I hear, with numerous experimentations."

"I hated humanity then," Erik whispered, his breath still catching on every syllable. "I hated them for the evil I had endured while wandering the streets. For making a child do such foul work. I was only eight, Vicomte, when I fled that life and was overtaken by the gypsies."

The golden-haired man held the bottle close to him once more. "Keep talking."

I saw the fingers of the hand clench, but his voice came again, broken. "Christine was my salvation, for she trusted me, and fell in love with my appearance. Music, Christine – they were the same in my mind. Both so unattainable, both so malleable and magnificent. Loved by all, but mastered by none but me. Christine and I fit each other, creator and created, lover and loved."

"Enough! I wish to hear of your capture!"

The fingers relaxed. "Disappointment is a lovely companion for cruelty." Then, the fingers dug into the palms, and the screaming began anew. Blood trickled down from the points of the nails, and the wrist twisted back and forth. My nausea was rising: the smell of roasted flesh was saturating the dungeon.

"It would be justice," Raoul yelled when Erik's screams finally stopped, "if I poured this entire bottle over your face. But then you might twist your head and get it in your eyes, and I certainly wouldn't want you to miss Christine's face when she sees her monster. So I'll simply do this."

This scream was too much, and I buried my face in my knees, blocking my ears. Then, Raoul must have thrown the bottle on the floor, for it shattered. Then, he strode past me, laughing victoriously all the way. He turned at the top of the stairs, and shouted down: "Tomorrow is the premiere of Spain's production of Don Juan. I had intended to play the lead role myself, but perhaps I shall have you fulfill the role that you created. After all, Don Juan dies in the end, does he not?"

*Hissing*

*Whimpering*

*Hissing*

I'm torn. What do you think?

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