A/N: Thanks for your kind words and thanks to abi prez for hitting the favourite button. :) This was one of my favourite chapters to write and the quote is,of course, from Crime and Punishment. I hope you'll enjoy this, do let me know your thoughts, and I'm gonna go tackle the last chapter of Part One (chapter 19, to avoid confusion ;))
Chapter 15:
The floor was beginning to put a strain on her back. It was cold and even but hard enough to make for a great deal of discomfort. Julianne had been trying to fall sleep for several hours now, ever since the last torch had died down, making reading impossible. But her mind had been unable to find peace and, in turn, she'd only been capable of listening to all the aches in her body.
How much longer would he keep her here? How many more days before Alexandre or Babette would grow concerned?
Slowly, she pulled herself into a sitting position, staring towards the other end of the room. It was impossible to see the door now, the small gap that offered a way out of her cage. Everything was one and the same. She closed her eyes then, fleeing to the darkness within herself which seemed less frightening at that moment. The poem Erik had recited flitted through her brain once more. How telling that he had chosen a line about the grievances of love. How very sad to see one man so consumed by it.
Yet try as she might, she could not deny that the sentiment resonated with her, too. The only thing crueller than love was hope. Julianne had experienced different nuances of both of them. Love for Édouard and foolish hope that he, prominent and influential, would return the feelings of a simple woman, one past her prime who had been overlooked many times before. Love for Édouard and foolish hope that he would recover when the blackness of death had clearly permeated the house.
She exhaled deeply, a manifestation of the guilt she'd carried since her outburst the previous night. The anger had appeared out of nowhere, overwhelming her and turning her into someone she hardly recognised. How dreadfully disappointed Édouard would be.
She heard it then for the first time, a soft sound, nothing more than a whimper. It grazed the edges of her consciousness, coaxed her eyes into opening once again. What a strange sound it had been.
She frowned and strained her ears to hear more, but everything remained silent for a couple of beats. Then a different sound followed. A groan, deep and guttural and, no doubt, pained. It quickened her heartbeat, turned her stomach.
Using the wall for support, she clambered to her feet and tiptoed blindly to the end of the room. There, she paused and listened once again. The groans returned, louder this time, swelling, rising into screams that made her blood run cold. Torture, torture to her senses.
She scrambled through the remains of his sitting room, over the mountains of broken objects she had previously been working on, losing her footing, falling to her knees. Cursing, she pulled herself upright once again, ignoring the pain that told her she had hurt herself. One more time she paused in the doorway to his bedroom, feeling strange and tactless to be entering his domain. But then he screamed again and she pushed on, feeling her way forwards until she found a seat next to him on the bed. Now that she was close she could see him writhing, could feel the cold sweat that had collected on his skin.
"Monsieur? Monsieur, wake up!"
He groaned again, twisted out of her hold. "No…Sasha…it's my fault…"
"Monsieur!" Julianne tried once again, gripping him stronger this time, squeezing his bony arms that felt surprisingly muscular.
"Please don't…don't touch me…I don't want to be touched."
"Forgive me, I'm just trying to…" she sighed, shaking him again.
One last whimper, then a deep gulp of air as he startled upright. His amber eyes darted wildly across the room, scanning for the threat he had been faced with in his nightmare.
"It's only me, Monsieur," she offered, hoping it would soothe him.
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.
The more she observed Erik, diminished now to a frightened shell of his usual powerful self, the more she was inclined to agree with Raskolnikov. How much sadness did he have to bear in the past? How many terrible memories lay entrapped within those two phrases he had uttered?
Perhaps it was foolishness on her part or perhaps it was a testament to her humanity that had her reaching for his hand, trying to show him the compassion he had not shown her. He flinched away as if she had raised her hand to strike him, shifting his body as deep as he could into the other corner of the bed, while using one hand to press the mask tighter against his face.
"It's only me, Monsieur," she repeated the only sentence she had to offer.
Certain scars could not be healed by any warm sentiment, she knew, and she was not about to pretend she understood everything that he had been through. She, herself, had loathed those over-eager to offer empty words as if they were somehow powerful enough tools to build up the ruins surrounding her.
Julianne didn't move along with him or try to reach for his hand again. Instead she remained in the same position, her eyes averted, her knees stinging from the tumble she had taken moments ago. She listened to his heavy breathing that only slowly grew calmer, the only sound to fill the silence between them. She briefly thought of his need for utter quiet, wondered where moments like these fit in, realised with a sudden shock that she hadn't considered the fate of the opera house until now. And now that she had, she still could not allow her thoughts to linger because she was still helpless, still at his mercy.
"I'll make you some tea," she decided and left the room without awaiting an answer.
In order to remain understanding and kind, she needed to collect herself, making sure that the panic that had suddenly stolen into her heart would not overwhelm her. Thankfully, the curious silver urn posed enough of a conundrum to occupy her brain sufficiently, and the darkness that dominated the house did its own to complicate the matter. She opened parts of the urn that presented a handle or a knob, located water in one and the remnants of tea leaves in another, but still could not see how the bloody thing would be heated. Surely there had to be some way, since she had not seen Erik use a stove or any other appliance her domestic staff usually did.
"You need to light the coals first," he explained, his voice not more than a whisper.
She startled when he lit a torch nearby and she realised how close he had come without her noticing and, blushing, made room for him to demonstrate.
"You can fetch some tea leaves," he suggested next, pointing to the cabinet on which the cat had previously been sleeping. His yellow eyes avoided hers still.
Julianne nodded in acknowledgement and went to retrieve the leaves, discovering to her surprise that the little compartment was not only stacked full with tins of caviar but also with bread, cheese, ham, wine and brandy.
"Bring one of the spirits too," he instructed quietly and she obeyed, carrying both items back over to his side. Then, while he handled the samovar, she retrieved two teacups and saucers and placed them on the floor before the sofa.
"Perhaps a table would come in handy," she said conversationally and smiled to herself when her suggestion roused a chuckle from her worn-out captor.
After a moment or two of fresh silence he at last joined her, distributing the tea between the two cups and adding a generous amount of brandy to his.
"I always suspected that the French had no idea about the correct way of having one's tea," she teased gently, hoping to raise his spirits also.
"It's Russian, actually," he pointed out with the same subdued tone that moved her and saddened her, although she knew she should not have cared at all.
So she let silence fall once more, gave them the time to have their tea, hoping that the demons she could see dance in his eyes would disappear also. When he had finished, he set the cup down and reached for a strange package hidden between the folds of the sofa. He undid the string that was wrapped all around it and produced a box containing a syringe and something else she could not identify.
"Perhaps you would like to return to the torture chamber now," he suggested; an odd, frightening request if she'd ever heard one. Perplexed she remained where she was, her lack of movement forcing him to speak again. "Ironically, you will be safer there."
Growing impatient when she still did not follow his invitation, he pulled the half-unbuttoned shirt over his head, flexed his left arm once and then used the sleeves of the shirt as a tourniquet to make his veins protrude more clearly. Julianne was not well-versed in the underbelly of society, but she had heard enough to know that he was about to inject himself with one drug or another.
"Morphine…it helps me sleep," he explained apathetically, his voice a mundane sing-song of flat notes, "eventually. What comes before that even I cannot predict anymore."
His dark prophecy made her shiver and wrap her arms around her. She could not see how the room she had slept in could be used as a torture chamber, but she trusted his warning, had learned not to underestimate them. The more shocking it was then, of course, to consider a torture chamber less of a threat than the monster waiting outside, for she had no doubts that the drug would transform him into one.
Making her decision then and there, she rose to her feet and felt her way back into her room, knowing that he would be satisfied with her disappearance. Quickly – she knew she had mere seconds before he would inject the drug into his bloodstream – she retrieved the little book of poetry from the floor and returned to the sitting room.
"Do you have a death wish, you disrespectful little wench?" he bellowed.
She had braced herself for his anger and, upon drawing nearer, was more relieved to find that he hadn't had the time to inject himself yet.
"There are other means, Monsieur," she offered calmly, placing the book between them and using the samovar to pour him another cup of tea. She added a shot of brandy, just as she had seen him do before, then pressed the cup into his hands and thumbed through the poetry to find a piece she liked.
As she read she was aware of his intense gaze, the anger that burned within it, even though it was not powerful to manifest itself into words this time. She felt her breath hitch in her throat, the continued prickling of her knees, the racing of her heart. But despite all that, she kept reading, focusing her thoughts on every small letter she could make out in the light of that one torch.
She read until her voice turned hoarse and she had to reach for her own cup for a sip of tea. She read through her own exhaustion, even when her lids turned heavy and occasionally threatened to flutter close. She read until the air turned quite still, until breathing became easy once more. Only then did she dare to stop, chancing a glance at the man by her side.
The box of morphine lay discarded between them, as did his shirt. Erik had come to rest at an awkward angle on the sofa, his body curled up against the large, black cushions. His pale chest rose and fell steadily, his arms were wrapped around his body, but on the whole he looked at peace.
Sighing with relief, she set the book down and clumsily staggered to his bedroom to retrieve his blanket. She was terrified she might wake him as she settled it over his sleeping frame, but exhaustion had claimed him sufficiently not to rouse him. Reaching back to massage her shoulder, Julianne allowed the torch to keep burning and went back into the torture room where she curled up on the floor and allowed sleep to claim her also.