Thank you so much for the great response for the last chapter! Sometimes you guys just blow me away. I feel so honored to have people truly enjoying this.

Thanks as usual to TouchingTrusting, who helps keep me sane and has great ideas.

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Chapter Twenty: Interludes I: July

She began asking what day it was.

Christine didn't know why but she suddenly had the desperate desire to get her bearings, to secure herself back on solid ground. The days floated by her, unchanging and without sun, and the only way that she knew time had passed was the slight growth of her now shaggy blonde hair and the continuing feeling of normalcy that the past months had instilled in her. It was a good inner clock: every time they spoke there was less fear, less anger; every day her brain slowly assimilated to the strangeness of her situation, making it normal. Christine found that she could barely fathom life outside after being secluded for so long; she had a routine inside that house, she had a life, and since she couldn't escape her mind began to blur and accept it. It was exhausting to fight at all, and impossible to fight forever.

So every day when she woke she asked him the date and time, and he told her. It became almost a game, something both amusing and heartbreaking.

After she asked the question she would eat and talk with him, though he never ate in front of her. Then she would find something to read or sometimes sketch on paper found in the dresser in her room. About once a week they would go outside to some secluded area, always away from people, always when it was dark. Sometimes they would talk with a certain relaxed, close air that the outside inspired, but mostly he just stood back and let her enjoy her small freedoms.

Often during the day she would take a nap; she felt fragile and weakened without the sun, the small blue veins that ran web-like under her eyes startlingly blue and visible beneath the skin. She so often cried herself to sleep that she felt like her eyes were permanently bloodshot and tired. He was kind to her and her days were pleasant, but at night alone with her thoughts the claustrophobia and regret would come, and she cried and cried.

Several times a day they would sing. Voice lessons took up much of their time; he seemed happiest when she sang, and he was somehow more real to her when he was happy. She could touch him on the shoulder or sit by him on the piano without fear, and she never again saw what was under the mask.

On July twelfth Christine started a journal, writing secretly in a notebook found in one of her drawers. She didn't know why she wrote clandestinely, why she didn't want him to know that she was penning down scribbled thoughts in the quiet of her room. She had just felt lately like the walls were closing in on her, like the air was unbreatheable, and if she didn't have a place to push her thoughts out of her head she would truly go mad.

'I don't know how to live with this much weight on my shoulders,' she wrote furiously, her hand cramping. 'How can you interact with someone on a normal, rational level while knowing that you are their whole world, their whole chance for happiness? It's drumming inside of my head every time I talk to him, that the only reason I'm here is because he believes that he can't live without me. Me! What on earth does he see? I want to blurt that out every time I see him. Why me? Why me?

'I don't know what to think of him anymore. I can't say that I hate him, I can't, not after that night, not after seeing his face. It makes things better, in a way…it makes things more understandable, his actions more sane. I don't know what to think! I can't forgive him for what he's done, but I know now that he would never hurt me, that he is human underneath it all. He speaks with me like I am not a captive and sometimes I start to forget my anger, forget to fight. How am I supposed to fight a battle I can't win? I can't give up, and I can't win…I'm at a stalemate. And he…

'He fascinates me, I have to admit it, if only on paper. He has a strange beauty within everything he does; the fluidity of his movements, his music, his voice, everything. I don't know what to do sometimes. I just don't know what to do.

'I want to go home. I feel like I'm dying here.

'I want to go home. I want to go home.'

Sighing, Christine signed her name and wrote the date in small, even letters at the bottom of the page. July twelfth. Time was passing.

On July fifteenth Christine stared at her neat signature and realized with a start that she did not know Erik's last name. She had never even thought about it. In her mind he had always been Just Erik. He was so singular he did not seem to need the petty distinction of a last name.

After storing her notebook safely behind a heavy coat in the back of the wardrobe she made her way out of her room and, after wandering for a few minutes, found him hunched over the piano, composing.

"Erik?"

His back stiffened slightly as she called his name, and his masked face turned slightly toward her though his body didn't move. "Yes, Christine?"

The only time that he didn't sound obliging to her was when he was composing; he seemed so wrapped up in his own world that any interruption, even to eat or sleep, was considered a nuisance.

His hands tensed over the paper he was surveying as she stood there silently for a few moments. "What do you want?" He asked, his lovely voice irritated. "Could you just…"

"What is your last name?" Christine burst out suddenly, and he froze. "I mean, I was just thinking and I realized that I don't even know your full name and…I would like to know…I think I have a right to know…don't I?"

He was quiet for a moment. "Laroque," he finally murmured.

Christine raised her eyebrows, surprised that he had even answered. "You're French?" She asked. He sighed and straightened up, stretching his arms above his head in a tired fashion.

"My father was," he said. "But really, if you don't mind, I need to finish this."

"And your middle name?"

He sighed irritably, but not without indulgence. "William," he finally said. "After my mother's father. Now may I finish my work?"

"I'll see you in a few hours," she said, turning to leave the room.

Instead of returning to the silence of her room Christine stretched out on the couch and stared at the dark ceiling, her mind a blur.

'How can he know everything about me and I know nothing about him?' she wondered, biting her lip. 'Is this why captives start to relate to their captors, because they get to know them? How can you live with someone and not relate to them? Is knowledge a dangerous thing? How can I stop from wanting to know about the person who has taken away my life?'

A knot of some strange emotion, a mixture of worry and sadness and frustration, curled in the pit of her stomach. 'Erik William Laroque…who are you?'

Days droned smoothly by.

He told her when she asked that it was July twentieth, a Wednesday, but after so long in the dark it didn't seem to matter anymore, though she still asked.

The clock on the wall read six o'clock (night or day, night or day?) and Christine was curled up in her chair struggling through "The Tempest." She knew that Erik had a special fondness for Shakespeare, and accepted the book when he offered it, but she had never been able to grasp the meaning behind the words.

"Are you not enjoying it?"

Christine started at the sound of his voice and realized that she had been staring at the same spot on the page for several minutes. She shrugged at him, feeling rather tired. "He's always been a bit of a blind spot with me. I don't find his writing…enjoyable. It's difficult."

"I thought you were a great reader." With deft fingers he plucked the book out of her grasp before she even realized what he was doing.

"I love to read, just not….Shakespeare. I know, how uncouth of me."

He smiled gently at her as he sat on the couch and opened the book to the first page. "You use words like 'uncouth' in everyday speech," he said, his eyes gentle. "You are rare, Christine, even if you don't like Shakespeare."

She stared at him in surprise for a moment, until his eyes flickered back to the book. "I have always thought that Shakespeare was an auditory experience more than reading small letters on a page," he commented, his voice soft. "May I attempt to change your mind about him?"

Still rather dumbstruck at his quiet civility, Christine nodded and wrapped her arms around her legs to sink comfortably into the chair.

Erik lifted the book higher with one hand, long fingers splayed across the cover, while he gestured grandly with the other as he began to read. His unearthly voice floated across the air like song, flowing lyrically with the iambic pentameter. Christine closed her eyes in appreciation of the beauty. How could small cold words seem so alive?

Christine lived for those little moments of peace, when she could almost believe that her life was normal. She lived for the nights where it became habit for him to read to her from the faded volumes in his library: Shakespeare, The Canterbury Tales, Victor Hugo, Milton, ancient poetry, modern short stories. She would always sit curled in her chair with her eyes closed as he read, his voice like music, painting effervescent pictures in her mind.

Days passed and blurred like purgatory, like winter. Everything was so vague, so unchanging, with only Erik for company, only Erik for life. Was this his plan? Was he human, really, on the inside?

July twenty seventh, he had told her earlier, hours and hours before. A Monday. Christine rolled on her side and looked at the small clock next to her head. The hands pointed at 4:25. She could usually guess at the turning of the earth but sometimes it was impossible. Night or day?

Sighing, she pulled herself out of the entangled covers and padded into the bathroom to wash her face. Though she was perpetually exhausted she had not been able to sleep lately, and her skin had begun to take on a thin, parchment colored quality. Slowly she wiped her face with a washcloth, feeling the cool water wipe away the sweat of another restless nightmare, the kind that came when she finally feel into a half sleep.

Wrapping a robe around herself and knotting her tangled hair at the back of her head, Christine found herself drawn from the stangnance of her room, her legs twitchy and her feet restless. She wanted to walk the house at night, if it was night, and explore its nooks by a different light.

Quietly she cracked open her door and was immediately greeted by soft, inarticulate singing. Christine paused, momentarily taken aback, and had to stifle the bizarre urge to smile.

Erik was hunched on the couch, his white dress shirt wrinkled and rolled up the elbows, breathing a soft song under his breath as he carefully restrung the well worn violin in his hands. His head was bent so that she could not see his masked face, and her eyes were drawn to his long hands that moved with calm, intense dexterity over the instrument, his every movement precise and smooth. He seemed so human, his white forearms so thin in the half light, his work so careful and reverent, his muttered song soothing. Christine had only ever seen him focused on her, that intensity turned towards her, and it was a brief relief to see him when his gaze was turned elsewhere.

'Gentle,' she thought, surprising herself. 'He looks gentle. Almost…normal.'

She must have inadvertently made some small movement because Erik glanced up at her, his yellow eyes widening in surprise. His hands tightened almost imperceptibly around the violin and his shoulders visibly tensed. Christine realized with a strange revelation that she made him nervous.

"You are awake early," he said, carefully laying the violin on the small polished table.

"So it is early," Christine murmured. "I wasn't sure."

He rose, that strange tenseness still visible in his posture. "Would you like some tea?" He asked, heading to the kitchen.

"Yes please." She followed him to the small room and watched as he put a kettle on the stove. "I couldn't sleep."

"Neither could I," he said, still not looking at her as he turned the stove on. "I sleep so rarely, though."

"I've noticed." Christine watched as he slowly rolled his sleeves back down the length of his emaciated forearms and fastened the cuffs, tugging almost fastidiously at the wrinkles. She realized that he didn't like her seeing him so unguarded, without the stiff formality of a suit or a situation where he knew just what to say.

"The tea is ready," he said, removing mugs from the cupboard and finally turning to her. "Would you like to take it to your room?"

Christine stared at those bizarre, unsettling eyes. "I'd like to sit with you for a while, if you don't mind," she said. "I'm not really tired."

He seemed to smile and his postured relaxed. "Neither am I," he agreed, handing her the tea. "I believe the quiet hours are such an artistic time."

She smiled wistfully and made her way back to the couch. "Could you show me what you were doing with the violin?" She asked, and watched as he lifted the instrument into his hands, his eyes alight with enthusiasm as he held the polished wood and showed her the worn strings.

'An artistic time,' she thought, looking at him as he worried over the violin, displaying it with pride and strange love.

Somehow, in a world where she so desperately needed a sense of normalcy, early morning insomnia tea became a ritual.

July passed and ended as quietly as it had come.