A/N: Some bonding before the final chapter ;) Thanks for your comments and thanks to CayceL90 for favouriting and following.
Chapter 18:
Her thoughts formed a dark mass inside her head, one that continuously coiled around itself, allowing no space for anything else. The confusion was suffocating, spewing out words that she did not wish to hear. Where had the old simplicity gone, the one she had cursed at times? Now all she could see was loss; loss and the ambivalent feelings she harboured for Erik.
What did it say about her character to feel comfortable with a man of such violent temper? Perhaps it meant that she did not value her life as much as she had thought. Perhaps it meant that she was quite mad herself. Or perhaps it simply meant that she was lonely and able to appreciate the company of a man who never once inquired about Édouard.
What an awful thing to feel. Should she not have been relishing reminders of her life with her husband? Was she not the one who had told Erik about her regrets, regrets involving a lack of reminders of Édouard's love? What a dreadful fraud she was.
Fresh tears emerged, left salty stains on her cheeks and then dripped onto the floor beneath her. Darkness greeted her when she opened her eyes, yet it wasn't as frightening as the darkness inside her head. This room had truly become a torture chamber. She tried to breathe deeply, to let her whole chest expand as far as it could, but her body was shaking too badly.
Anger welled up when the violin began to sing again. It was a different tune yet she felt that he was mocking her, taunting her when she was vulnerable. But the anger disappeared as quickly as it had come. Perhaps there was no space for it either. She did not understand how he could play while he claimed to want silence. The drive to find some answers pushed her forward, gave her the strength to feel her way towards the door once more.
There was no torch to light the way, only the shadow that seemed to shift in the distance, the gleam of yellow eyes. Not for the first time she wondered, if Erik had grown so accustomed to the dark that he had only lit the torches for her benefit.
"Madame Doucet."
His voice was a low invitation, it was measured and cautious yet strangely welcoming.
"I don't understand…"
Hers came in a whisper, one that betrayed her desperation, that made audible the tears on her face, the lump in the throat.
"You will have to be more specific."
She sank down on the sofa, exhausted, her arms wrapped around her. "Stop mocking me."
It was not a plea, despite the quietness of her voice.
"You cannot bear to hear music because of Christine Daaé. You encounter her in every note, I can see that now."
She thought about Édouard, thought about how often he had helped guide her throughout this ordeal. She thought about her own reflection and how often she found him in it. Her cheek that he had used to caress, her hair that he had preferred loose and soft, her waistline that he had traced with all the expertise of a true Casanova. Perhaps Erik's ghost haunted him just as much.
"It's agonising, draining and at times you only want it to stop, perhaps even your own heartbeat to stop."
Erik remained silent, did not comment or respond, but his eyes were resting on her almost solemnly, as if he could not bring himself to look away.
"But surely," her desperation got the better of her, crashed over her lips uninvited, "surely you must find her, too, in the song of your violin. Why do you kill to silence the opera house, then fill it with your own music?"
His lids fluttered, fell closed for a brief second and when they opened again, she found herself staring into the abyss of his grief. Her hand found her heart, pressed against it and felt the soft pressure of the mask and the letters in return.
"Because music…" he sounded raw, struggled to find the right words. "I am music. Music can be anything you want it to be and it accepts you, it warms you, it pains you. It is the very cornerstone of our humanity, the soundtrack of life itself. Sometimes she beckons me and I must play, I cannot disobey. It is nothing but ugliness, it's like a punishment for everything I have done."
She listened closely, but nonetheless felt lost in the web of his words.
"It's a kind of physical pain," he continued, slowly lowering the violin and she remembered the gash in his palm, wondered if he had somehow harmed himself while playing, "one that soothes the emotional pain for a little while at least. But I can stop when I am fatigued, I can create, destroy and rest. Yet when the Opera itself sings there is no place to hide. There are only memories, dark and forbidden or hopeful and light, all utterly destructive in their power. I cannot make it stop, I cannot block it out. I am helpless and there is no relief, no matter how short-lived."
"You taught her to sing," Julianne stated evenly while her mind tried to unravel what he had presented her with. "You gave her her voice?"
Her eyes slid to where she knew the broken pipes of an organ to be.
"No," he sighed, "I simply helped her mould it. She possessed a great instrument, what she needed was guidance."
"But you loved her."
Perhaps she was being reckless, but she knew that some of the weight would only be lifted if she understood.
"How could I not? She was beauty itself and I am ugliness personified. How could one not be drawn to the other?"
He continued standing there, his violin in front of his chest like a shield, yet she felt that he had knelt down before her, a pleading, desperate man.
"It is not that simple, Erik," she sighed, "beauty fades with age, it withers. One can try to maintain it, of course, with make-up and powder and creams, yet in the end it is nothing more than a mask either. Beauty is not continuous, Erik, and neither is ugliness. There are shades to both of them. Giovanni taught you about the beauty in your own heart, that's what you told me, and by the same token, you despise Christine Daaé because she exposed her ugliness at times, just as I despise Édouard. Perhaps that's alright?"
She handed the question to him, could not bear to hold it herself, too guilty was her conscience for having admitted it.
"Anger, you mean?" he hummed and she drew up her shoulders.
"Sadness is static, it holds us frozen within one moment, paralyses us from progressing. Anger is energy, its motion, it creates action. Perhaps the right kind of anger can help us."
He nodded slowly and lowered the violin.
"I know that it does not make sense," he granted, "to be desperate for silence yet create sound oneself. But it helps to play, it gives the illusion of control even though I cannot disobey its call when it beckons me to play."
Julianne thought back to Robert le Diable and the countless other times when her grief had simply overwhelmed her. It was easy feeling powerless to it. Perhaps it was only natural that a man like Erik, driven to live underground, desperately fought for any shred of control he could have. And yet she couldn't shake the feeling that her understanding would one day spell her end.
"I did not mean to hurt you." The words were spoken softly and he had bowed his head in shame. "I have already twisted you quite enough, it is a miracle you haven't perished down here. Women need sunlight and normalcy…"
He seemed deep in thought, as if the notion he had just laid out was peculiar to him. She wanted to laugh, but she couldn't deny that his statement loosened something in her chest. It took away some of the fear she had carried with her since she'd been abducted. He would not kill her.
"No man belongs in darkness such as this, Erik," she offered and extended her hand to his.
The bow shook when flesh enveloped flesh.
"Christine pitied me, too."
All at once he appeared to have shrunk before her eyes, seemed to have grown small and uncertain.
"I do not think I pity you," she hummed, brushing over the back of his hand with her thumb, "you are not feeble or as helpless as you might feel. But I have compassion for you, as did Christine. I can only imagine what kind of horrors life has shown you."
She was not aware of the magnitude of the situation then, the fact that she was holding the torn-down ruins of a man in her hand. All she hoped to do was show him kindness, the kind that was unwavering and perhaps foolish in the face of hardship and violence, the kind that would grow and develop and enable him to change.
They remained like that for a long time until the threatening darkness softened around them. She wondered, fleetingly, if someone had ever held his hand, if he had ever experienced peace like this. She wasn't certain that she had, either.