AN: A shorter chapter, but more information given on who Christine is, and how she affects Erik.
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Her hands were learning to see. It had been Mrs. Giry's idea to try her hand at cross-stitching on a prepped cloth over a stretched hoop. The different colored threads were differently textured to make it easier for Christine to pick out the ones she wanted, and the pattern on the cloth was marked with a combination of small pins and colored thread. Currently her right hand held what she prayed was a deep blue thread on a needle and her left hand held the cloth as a guide.
She'd never been particularly crafty, having once in fact hot-glued a science project to her carpet as a teen, but since the … since her accident, she was desperate for something to do. And so Mrs. Giry prepped the fabric and let her loose upon it. Currently she was working on the wing of a blue jay.
It was a mild enough day, she thought – she could feel some warmth from where she sat on her French sill. The window was open, and even though she couldn't feel much sunshine on her face, it didn't seem like there'd be rain. She could even hear the twitter of birds. As she worked, she could hear one growing bold and hopping to the closer branches. She paused her work and heard the little bird warble, and smiled as she let out a sweet little hum of her own.
It took all of her control not to laugh delightedly when she heard the bird reply shortly thereafter. She trilled back quietly and heard an inquisitive chirp back, and opened her voice to sing –
"Christine!" Mrs. Giry's surprised voice sent a stern message to the birds, and she quickly heard the dear little things scatter into the tree and sky beyond it. She heard Mrs. Giry rush in and promptly close and lock the window.
"My dear, that's dangerous," she admonished. "You're so close to the open window, you don't know how easy it would be for you to fall out."
Christine felt Mrs. Giry's arms on her shoulders, squeezing firmly, and she wanted to interrupt.
"Mrs. Giry, I was being careful-"
"You cannot see, Christine," she scolded with more bite. "What would your father say if I let you get injured in my own home?"
Her heart sank like lead and her eyes stung. "You're right, Mrs. Giry," she conceded. "I don't…didn't think it through is all."
Christine placed a hand on the older woman's and squeezed. "I didn't mean to worry you, I just wanted some fresh air."
Mrs. Giry squeezed her shoulders once more and let go, batting her own eyelids to fight back the tears in her own eyes. "I understand. I'll turn on the air conditioning and you'll have your fresh air, hmm?"
Mrs. Giry planted a kiss on her forehead and left the room, leaving Christine alone with her needlework. Soon enough she heard the hum of the central air and the blow of icy air on her arms and face.
Absently she touched the bird wing on her fabric.
"Green finch and linnet bird, nightingale, black bird – how is it you sing?" Her head tilted back to the window and the wild birds and sky beyond. "How can you jubilate, sitting in cages, never taking wing?"
She stood up and set down the needlework, touching her hands to the glass window. "Outside the sky waits, beckoning, beckoning, just beyond the bars. How can you remain, staring at the rain, maddened by the stars? How is it you sing? Anything? How is it you sing?"
Her hands trailed away from the window to the walls of her room. Beautifully kept, a shade of dark blue, she'd been told.
"My cage has many rooms, damask and dark, nothing here sings – not even my lark. Larks never will, you know, when they're captive…," Christine sang. And she was a trapped lark, feeling her very fine room close in on her.
She felt the knob of the door at last, and pressed her head against the frame.
"Teach me to be more adaptive," she murmured.
It was a painful six days. It should not have been a painful six days.
Erik had returned from the hospital to his home. It was a short drive to the outskirts of the city, past a modest preserve full of redwoods and moss until he finally turned on a dirt road without any sort of obvious street marker. If someone followed the dirt road all the way up they'd be right at the front door of his comfortable home abutting the preserve.
He liked the cabin, it was far enough from the hiking and riding trails that he had no visitors – and the area so remote from the city that it didn't appeal to many to live there. He parked his black car in front and headed in. The first sight that greeted him was his piano and the sheet music strewn all over it and his coffee table. Music had been how he'd passed the time after the news about Gus had reached him. He'd written darkness and grief for weeks on end, one after the other. He put his keys down and set himself down on the bench, ready to spend the next few days returning to that morose sound.
It didn't come.
He didn't understand it – his soul smoldered and raged, his grief was fresh and multiplying, and yet the pained sound would not come.
Instead he found himself putting her words to music.
'There's a light…'
He could hear her still, he played her melody and sang as she had, and he could not understand why. This compulsion, further, was a pale substitute to his desire to see her. He wanted to see her. It agonized him.
He spent that first day setting her words to music.
He spent the second day playing notes and recalling every thing he'd said.
The third and fourth days he sang her song, trying to recapture the purity of that moment. It was a fool's errand but that knowledge did not deter him.
On the fifth day he read her file over and over again, until he could quote from it. He did quote from it.
Daae, Christine Marie. 20 years old, blood type O-neg. 5'6", hair brown, eyes brown.
On the sixth day he argued with himself furiously and cursed Nadir. He told himself he would not go to the hospital the next day. He would not. He was done, goddamnit, and he did not owe anyone a thing. Not a damned thing!
And yet he'd circled Friday on his calendar all the same.
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Song used:
Green Finch, Linnet Bird from Sweeney Todd