Erik walked solemnly down the beach for what was left of the night. He moved with the slow gravity of a lone mourner leading a funeral procession of one. From a distance, all that could be observed of him was a dark, lean silhouette against the black sky and sea; that, and the porcelain sheen off his mask. As the night darkened, his figure became so obscure it was as if the mask were disembodied, floating in the sky above the waves like an errant crescent moon.
He heard Christine singing, her voice floating in from the waves and wind. Her voice lingered in his mind, in his heart. As it always would.
Yet louder, clearer, were images of Meg: humming to herself while sewing, tapping her foot impatiently backstage, yawning like a kitten in the morning.
"Meg is in love with you."
He shuddered.
Some twisted part of his heart recoiled: who could love him? What horrible flaw must such a person possess to see anything worth loving in him?
He'd yearned for love, killed for it, yet now that there was a slight but still very real chance it was within his grasp –
He winced away as if from a flame.
He tried to calm himself. Reasoned with himself.
Christine might have misled him, hoping to channel his adoration elsewhere. Or she'd guessed wrongly.
Yet the steady look in her eyes was confident, sure…once there was all doubt and wonder there, but no more. Now she knows what she says is true.
Meg.
All at once the dark figure walking the beach hunched over, his hand on his chest. He felt bile rise in his throat – not bile of disgust, but of something too enormous to take in, too fragile in its immensity, too unbelievable –
He panted.
Meg.
The breeze picked up. It battered against him, and he felt the cold lick of the tide lash at his foot.
What did he want?
Did he want her love?
He desired Meg, obsessively. This he now faced squarely. There was no use denying it, when he had – here he winced again – kissed her five years past. He'd hoped the feelings would fade over the years, particularly amidst the busy chaos of their new uprooted lives.
They had not, but slowly they had changed: the leap of passion was sweetened by a companionable fondness, an all-encompassing warmth reserved for those who know us truly.
Meg knew him truly. And Christine thought she loved him, all the same.
He….
He wanted her to love him.
To be loved by her…to love Meg….
Another great shudder and he turned his face sharply away, as if the sun and not the moon blazed down into his eyes.
There was still, coiled wickedly around his heart, the snake of who he once was. The mad ghost, the Phantom, who like a spoiled child wanted his original fantasy to still satisfy him: Christine Daae as his eternal underground siren. All these years later, it still stung that his muse had turned away from his labyrinth into the sunlight outside, into the life of a happy viscountess.
He's secretly taken pride in his steadfast devotion in the face of Christine's rejection. He wanted to maintain a purity that separated himself from the rest of humanity, so that it would not just be his face that did so. If he could not become a dashing Don Juan who enthralled his lady, he would instead become a sorrowing Werther, or a grief-mad Heathcliff: forever faithful to his love, even as that love turned him away.
How could the Phantom settle for anything less than a grand ending, whether happy or sad? He was no mere man. He could not live a normal life, so he must live a sweeping fantasy instead: his operas brought to life.
But Meg Giry skipped in and trampled all over those high-flung dreams with her delicate toe shoes.
Meg Giry, with the hated sunlight in her hair. Meg Giry, with the hard, inescapable truth in her dazzling, straightforward eyes. Meg Giry, with the high, thin voice of a sparrow, prattling away quickly about this, that, and everything under that hated, hated sun.
Meg Giry and her kindness. Hers was a devotion truer indeed than Erik's, because it sprang from a genuine font of love for those around her, not a desire to isolate herself in her goodness.
Meg Giry who looked at him as no one ever had. Unblinking, unafraid.
Could she truly love him?
The more time that passed from his interview with Christine, the more ridiculous the notion became. Bitterness was quickly displacing hope.
After all, what did Meg Giry know about love?
Love was unending, it conquered. Could Meg be conquered? By him?
No.
No, Meg could not be conquered.
Because behind the prattling, the dancing, the insatiable curiosity, the deep well of compassion, was a heart of steel. This steel shot out of her pale emerald eyes with inescapable brightness. A murderous opera ghost, arrest, espionage, exile – none of it tarnished that steel in her. She'd grown from these experiences, learned from them, but that brilliant steel would always keep her upright. Keep her true.
He knew now that regardless of his presence, Meg would have starred in the own play of her life. She did not need him for that. She had herself to guide her.
Her life was hers, and hers alone.
Could there be any place for him in the story of her life?
He remembered the envelope hidden in his desk in his room.
With an even stormier frame of mind than when he first started his long journey down the beach, he finally headed toward home.
He did not sleep.
He sat staring at the envelope with that name he'd almost succeeded in forgetting after all these years….
His fingers absently traced this name.
His head buzzed, his eyes stung, his heart burned.
He felt resigned, but to what, he did not know.
Eventually he felt the sun sneak in through the curtain. He was still officially a butler of sorts to the Giry women, at least as far the public was concerned – which viewed him more as a jack-of-all-trades secretary than anything else. And so he lived in a room smaller than the ladies, as befit a servant. When Meg and her mother protested, he waved them off indifferently. He who once slept in a coffin was not prone to care much about his sleeping place.
At last he heard the city outside start to rustle to life. Streetcar bells rang out, and he heard the clink of the milk man's bottles.
It was still early when he heard a knock on the front door. Erik frowned. He stood, but stopped as he heard the quick patter of feet outside. Meg.
He put his ear to the door and heard a muffled male voice say "Important letter from Comptesse de Chagny". A murmured thanks from Meg, then the door shut again.
A few moments passed. Then she squealed.
All at once a rapid knock on his own door. He answered and Meg flew in.
She was still in her mint green dressing gown, and her hair was half up in rags. "Erik…Erik!" Tears rimmed her eyes, but she wore an ecstatic smile. She held up a slip of paper. "Read it!" She was as beautiful as the sunrise.
Without a word, without anything in his face, Erik took it and read the hasty missive.
"I was going to wait until after the show to tell you, but I can't keep it in! Raoul just received word from his superiors: you all are allowed back in Paris! You see, Meg, Raoul learned from his chief that it was you who told the commissioner to give Raoul a chance in Sweden - and he learned that was because you were working for the police. Well, Raoul knew the least he could do is try to bring you home. He and a few of his detectives looked into the case, and found a loophole: since that man Hermes Verron has fled with all evidence against him and his associates, there's nothing left to accuse you with. All Raoul needed was permission from your fellow officers in the secret police, and they gave it! We're waiting for official word now, but you're coming home, Meg!
Yours so very happily,
Christine"
Meg shook Erik by the arms, laughing. "Can you believe it? Raoul is such a good man. I knew I made a right move telling Darius about him soon after we joined the force! Well, aren't you going to say anything? We're going home! We're going home!"
She peered hard at him. His half face – he was wearing the old mask again! – was empty of all emotion. "What's wrong? I…I know Paris doesn't hold all the good memories for you that it does for me, but it was your home all those years, just as it was mine! Aren't you the least bit excited?"
The way he treasured the pressure her warm, small hand gave his revealed to him, once and for all, the depths of his feeling for her.
He took a great, long sigh, and Meg followed it with every beat of her heart. "Erik?"
He laughed gently, gazing dreamily at the note. "It is a fine thing, Meg. I wish you much happiness. But when I return, it shall not be with you."
She froze. "…What?"
He presented her with a letter of his own. It was addressed to Baron Eric de Castelot-Barbezac. "I'll save you the trouble and tell you what's inside." He sat on his bed and stared ahead of him, his wrinkled suit that he hadn't changed out of incongruous to his serene, elegant posture.
"Stephen Marcus tracked down my origins, apparently. I grew up in Reims. My father was a wealthy baron, who died hurrying home during a thunder storm after a hunting trip. He was hurrying home because my mother was in labor with me. When she saw my face, then heard of my father's fate, she declared I was the devil's child, not hers. This attitude was shared in a more ferocious, violent vein by my older brother, Tristan. He…he was the reason I left at age eight. I never saw him or my mother again; I never thought to hear of them again, either. But then…."
He gestured to the letter in Meg's hand.
Meg read. In a quiet voice she said, "Tristan is dead, Marcus says. Drank himself to death. You're…you're the heir to your family title, now. And the estate."
Erik laughed again. "If you read further, you'll see that apparently my late mother spread the rumor I'd been abroad all this time, sequestered in a monastery to pay for my sins. However, as there's no proof anywhere that this is so, the property is still mine, per the will Father made when he was sure he'd have another strapping son." He raised his eyebrows. "At first, I thought I'd ignore all this, just as I ignored my family in life. After all, I didn't think I could ever go back to France." He looked at her pointedly.
Meg licked her lips. Her world was spinning a bit. "But now…now you can go back."
"Now I can." He stood slowly and turned his back to her, staring through his gauzy curtains to the early sun outside. "I can have a domain all my own again. Isolated. Protected. I can retire in peace."
Meg let the letter fall to the floor. "Retire?" Her nose wrinkled at the idea. Why…why would anyone want to retire? When there was still so much to experience, to achieve? Erik had a reputation in the theater now, he could take that to Paris and…and….
But what else was it hammering away in her chest, until the tears filling her eyes now were quite different from the happy ones she'd entered with?
"You can't retire, Erik! You can't isolate yourself again! You just can't!"
He whipped around, and there was a violent panther staring out of his eyes. "Can't I? Tell me, what else do you see me doing with the rest of my days, eh?"
"You can do anything! You can compose, teach" –
"Why? Why not simply retire and compose in private?" He shrugged with brutal callousness. "What difference does it make?"
She said nothing, just stared at him as if she'd been struck by lightning.
Life without Erik...
This was unfathomable to her now. She had her own life, her own goals and dreams, but...there would be an emptiness there, without him.
An emptiness that caused her pain just contemplating.
His eyes narrowed and he was somehow almost nose to nose with her. "Meg? Does it make a difference?" His voice was low, penetrating.
Meg tried speaking twice before actual sound came out. "It…it makes a difference, Erik."
"How?" His voice was sharp.
She closed her eyes and bowed her head. "It makes a difference to me."
The tears rolled freely down her cheeks.
A gentle hand lifted her chin. She braved opening her eyes.
The violence was gone, and in its place deep, overwhelming warmth. "Meg…."
His dear half face, the dear mismatched eyes, and that voice! – Soothing and rich and unlike any other mortal's on earth….
"I love you, Erik," she said.
The steel shone proudly out of her tear-filled eyes.
She hadn't intended on saying that. It rushed out in a burbling brook of panic. However, a great weight seemed to lift from her heart. She was glad she'd said it. She had known this was so, all this time, without knowing.
She loved him. She loved him, she loved him. And now he knew.
"There." She wiped away her tears with a childish gesture that tore at his heart. "That's why it makes a difference."
He was still, like a statue touched by fire. His eyes never left hers, and she couldn't read the storm there.
All at once she was pulled into his arms and his mouth was on hers again, after all these years. She yielded gladly. The warmth of his lips against hers, his arms squeezing her to him as though she were his only raft on a lonely sea, turned her tears glad again. She playfully pushed away his mask, so she could kiss him unobstructed. She ran her fingers into his scant hair. She loved that scant hair, and she loved the crevices she felt, then the smoothness of the unblemished side of his face.
At last they broke apart for air.
A solemnity as old as time itself poured out of his revering eyes. "And I love you, my little Meg."
She closed her eyes and smiled, and in a sleepy gesture rest her head against his chest. "You love me. You love me." She repeated this like a healing spell.
She, little Meg, was loved. By him.
His hand stroke her back as if she were a precious child entrusted in his care. "Can such a thing be true, my Meg? That we both love each other so much? I…I thought such a thing was available to me only in my dreams."
"Well, that's always been your problem, if you ask me," answered her sweet piquant voice. "You've always lived too much in your dreams, and missed what was right there in front of you."
He chuckled and kissed her wild hair. "I've never missed seeing you, Meg. It's impossible to miss a lone firefly at night."
He hugged her fiercely to his chest, and they stood there that way for the rest of the morning, rocking silently as the sun rose in the sky.
A/N: Holy crap, next chapter's the epilogue, then I'm done! I can't believe it! Love to you all.