A/N: Thank you so much for the wonderful reviews - and welcome to my new readers! :) I think some of you will be happy with the direction this chapter takes (though you may hunt me down at the end of it...) ;-)
And now...
XXIII
The Phantom scowled at the roughhewn door that had warped with age and neglect. Despite its pathetic inadequacy as a shield to the outdoors, it still proved necessary to exert force and push the gnarled wood inward with a strong heave of his shoulder. Christine let out a nervous shriek when some small black creature flew out at them, a bird or a bat, he was uncertain. It happened too quickly.
He entered; she remained behind.
At her blatant reluctance to venture indoors, he sent her a reassuring glance. "No doubt, the interior is in a wretched state and has served as refuge to fowl and beast alike, but you have no need to fear. I am well versed in dealing with both, as you may recall from our experience with the nocturnal winged creatures of the caverns."
She visibly shivered at the reminder.
"Beast…?" she echoed uncertainly. "What kind of beast?"
He grinned. "The fanged and fur-clad kind."
She shot him a look that expressed she was not one bit amused by his flippant answer.
"Relax, ma damoiselle. I will protect you. Have I yet failed?"
He again pushed hard at the door, the bottom hanging lopsided and dragging the ground, digging a furrow in the dirt, but at last it stood almost all the way open. There were no windows, and he struck his steel and flint against the lantern Christine held, soon providing a modicum of light.
Pellets of animal droppings, feathers, and bits of fur littered the earthen floor as well as every horizontal surface of scant furniture. The musty odors of disuse permeated the air. In the far corner stood a contraption he had not remembered up until this moment, though he could not conceive how he could have forgotten the construction of misery and steel. Before she could notice its presence, with a swift flourish of his cloak he covered the large cage with the abundant swath of black wool then swiftly moved to the opposite side of the room and the bed there.
The blanket that covered the straw ticking was peppered with the leavings of animals, leaves and dirt, the straw moldered. He whisked the mess off the bed, replacing the moth-eaten cover with one of the luxurious thick pelts, spreading the corners end to end.
"This should suffice for one night," he said, at last turning to face her. She looked away from studying their meager surroundings and to his eyes. "I apologize once more for having so little to offer you."
"No, don't apologize. It's fine. We slept on a bed much more narrow than this at the inn."
At the reminder of their warm, intimate embrace, and her smooth, silken skin pressed against every part of his yearning flesh - a taste of heaven in those narrow confines - he turned abruptly away.
"The bed is for you alone. I will not be sleeping."
"Surely you're not serious?" Her voice was filled with confusion.
"I have spent many a night without slumber."
"But…why?" She looked around at the four stark walls, as if to seek an answer, and seemed to come to a decision. "I'm not that sleepy; I'll stay up with you."
"It would not be advisable. I have much reading to do." So saying, he opened the chest against the wall. Uncertain of which book to select, he chose all three.
"Reading?" she questioned in soft disbelief. "Reading of what…?"
He hesitated with what to share, leery of her response to what must transpire, his heart heavy with the fate he could not dismiss. He sought for words to appease.
"You have told me that you often ponder your presence here and how it came to be." He set the stack of large books on the table, somewhat surprised the rickety contraption remained standing.
She drew close to where he'd taken a seat on the solitary stool. It too, despite its weathered condition, proved adequate to support his tall lean build.
"Yes, at first. But we already discovered how it happened - through the stones."
"You have no wish to know the details?"
"I'm not sure it's really that important…" He heard the thread of suspicion in her voice. "It happened, I'm here, and now I'm with you. Does it matter how it came about?"
"I believe it does, yes."
He felt her watch him as he opened the first of the leather-bound grimoires, this, a thick volume he recalled the witch refer to often.
"I'm not certain I understand," Christine said, drawing closer then gasped. "Are those…spells?" He heard the incredulous disquiet in her tone. "Why are you looking up spells, when you said that all witchcraft is taboo? You don't actually know how to cast them – do you?"
Grimacing at her seemingly endless inquisitive nature, he turned one of the yellowed, crease-worn pages.
"I seek reference to those elements inscribed on the stone," he replied. "And the definition of those I could not translate."
"But – why? Why does it even matter? Please explain the nature of such a desire, Maestro."
Christine stared hard at the rigid set of his shoulders.
She had offered to forego sleep and stay up with him, thinking perhaps he was plagued with false memories of living in this hovel. Upon entering the sparse dwelling she did not miss sight of the cage and had hurriedly looked away before he could see the tears that glistened in her eyes. True, Erik had not been locked inside that particular iron monstrosity, but as a small boy he had also been cruelly locked inside a cage by evil gypsies and through no fault of his own.
The appearance of the witch's books and his keen interest in their existence and deliberate involvement in searching through their pages suggested a scenario she would not like. Too often in their past, when he was her teacher and she his student, as well as in the bittersweet hours of their latter days together at the Opera House, when he was her abductor and she his captive, she remained mute and submissive when she should have spoken out or acted.
Never would she make that mistake again.
Christine placed her hand on his shoulder.
"Tell me why you're doing this."
He inhaled a deep breath and held it, letting it out slowly.
"I am attempting to put matters to rights."
Attempting to put matters to…
Her fingers tightened against him.
"Tell me that you don't mean what I think you mean…"
Take her, go – forget me, forget all of this!
His previous command during those arduous final minutes inside his lair, in that fateful three-way battle among Erik, Raoul, and herself resounded inside her mind.
Her hand clenched into a fist against his tunic.
"Tell me you're not sending me away…"
"To your century," he finished what she could not speak and lifted somber eyes to look at her at last. "Is that not what you have wanted, what you have wished for, dreamed for since coming to this world? You said that you were 'ripped' from your time with no knowledge that such an act could occur. You spoke in great distress of those friends you left behind, Madame and Meg Giry. You have admitted to feeling adrift and frightened in this century -"
"Why is this always so easy for you?" she hissed, giving a little push with her fist against his shoulder, the tears again welling in her eyes.
"EASY?!" Her words ignited the fuse, and like a stick of dynamite, he exploded off the stool, which fell to the floor. He whirled around, grabbing her by the arms and giving her a shake. "You deem this to be easy for me? To find and lose the one half of my soul I never knew existed – you label that as easy?"
"Then why do it?" she cried softly.
"This world to which you have come is extremely perilous for you, a world about which you no nothing."
"So teach me!"
"In the fortnight you have been here, you have been attacked," he went on heatedly as if she'd not spoken, "your virtue was nearly seized, your life damn well nearly lost, and you are in constant danger of falling prey to the Vicomte's traps."
"You swore to give me protection – will you now deny it?"
"Always I will protect you!" he gritted between clenched teeth. "It is in this by which I must let you go. This world is more violent than to what you are accustomed. I saw the shock in your eyes when I cut down that fiend in the street, the horror. Clearly your world is not like mine."
"In that respect, my world is exactly like yours," she countered, thinking of the fire that destroyed the Opera House, the killings, the pain, not all of it wrought by his hand. "Do not think the passage of centuries put an end to all the sorrow and violence and bloodshed – it didn't. And though there are gendarmes in place absent in this medieval world – men who deal with those violators – it doesn't change the fact that every day I lived at the theater there were those who sought to harm the innocent and rape the weak …" She shuddered, thinking of the lewd Buquet and the rumors she'd heard whispered about him, the atrocities he might have done to her...
The Phantom's lips tightened into an angry line. "The next feast day is Lughnasadh, the first day of August. I will study the tomes, to find what we must know."
"You still mean to send me away?" she asked in horrified disbelief. "Do you even care about me one little bit? Were your vows of eternity all lies?"
"It is because I care for you that you must return," he insisted bitterly. "Do not forget that one slip of your reckless tongue with regard to your existence here, if heard by the wrong ears, can lead you to a stake of fire!
"And you think a future without you would scorch my heart any less?" A sudden thought gave her hope. "If I must go back, then you must come with me."
He shook his head in impatient sorrow.
"I do not belong to your time."
"But you do!" She clutched his arms, his hands still grasping her beneath the shoulders.
"I carry a sword and destroy those men who do me harm – all without repercussion. In your world, I would be considered one of the violators your gendarmes seek, and they would imprison me or worse. I cannot change what I am, Christine."
The tears rolled freely down her cheeks. In their century, he was a wanted man for his violent crimes against those at the Opera House, and their world was perilous for him, just as this world in which they now dwelt was perilous for her. She shook the disloyal thought from her mind.
"There must be a way for us to stay together," she insisted. "We could find somewhere safe to live."
"Fate did not intend this, Christine, no matter how we may wish otherwise. A mistake was made through the magic of the stones, one that must be rectified. You could never be happy in this life, and all I seek is your happiness and protection."
His words, though soft, shredded like a razor to her heart.
"Then stop always pushing me away! I cannot go back there without you, Erik – cannot live a life without you in it!"
She clutched him more fiercely in her desperation to make him understand, unheeding of her telling words.
His eyes chilled to an icy blue-grey, though his quiet tone did not falter and his hold did not tighten with the slip of her tongue.
"There is your proof. You try, but cannot forget him or your past and the life to which you belong. With Erik –"
"YOU are Erik!"
The admission erupted from her like a fount of molten lava, impossible to hold back any longer. His eyes narrowed but she couldn't seem to control her tongue, could no longer seem to care to shield the secret or recall why it was so important to keep the truth from him.
"You are part of that life – my life – and you always have been – you are my Angel of Music. Don't you yet see?" She shook her head in tearful frustration. "I have known you almost my entire life, our life, and I lost you. And I don't ever want to be without you again!"
"Control yourself, Christine. You have no idea what you're saying."
"I know exactly what I'm saying and who I'm with!"
She released her hands from his arms and wrenched from his hold, stepping back, at last realizing the scope of what she'd admitted. Though it failed to matter. It was clear he believed she spoke out of confused hysteria. Her laugh came cynical through her tears.
"You wouldn't believe me about the stones and now you do. I never once lied to you, only to myself, though yes, I did withhold secrets – to protect you, just as you seek to protect me." She took in a shaky breath for calm, though her heart continued to race with dread. "Can we not simply go back to those moments when you didn't believe me and thought me a little mad? Can we not forget all of today and just continue with the life we had planned?"
His eyes closed in pain. "It kills me, the idea of letting you go," he managed, his voice a rasp, his own emotions teetering on the brink. "To have found you, to know you so intimately, yet know you will be better off for letting you go. I will sacrifice all I must, my one opportunity at happiness, my very life – to keep you safe."
"If you send me back to my time alone, I will never know true happiness again – not without you beside me. Not knowing you are trapped four hundred years in the past!" She shook her head stubbornly and swiped at the wetness on her cheek with the back of one hand. "No, Erik – I won't go. You gave me a choice once and then immediately took it away. This time, I demand the favor to choose!"
"You're not making one bit of sense –"
"I am making perfect sense. You just cannot see! Oh, why won't you see…?" The last words she said in a mournful tone, barely above a whisper.
Christine took another small step back and another, then whirled around to the open door. She needed air to breathe, needed to be away from him a moment – the source of her greatest joy and her deepest pain – and she fled from the confined cottage.
Even in her distress, she knew better than to wander too far out into the darkness that had fallen, and found solace beneath the split tree, where twice in two lifetimes she had swooned from shock. Once, because she thought they were separated by death. More recently, at the frightful recollection of hearing that heartrending news. And now, once more, he planned to separate them in life.
Were they never meant to share their days and years together? Could fate be so unkind?
She pressed her palm to the knotted trunk and fell to her knees, her head bowed.
Even with her back turned to the door, she sensed him there watching, knew he would seek to ensure she was well, knew too that he could see her since the tree was in his direct line of vision.
"Do not stray from there, Christine," his low words came to her. "I vow I'll not trouble you."
She closed her eyes, the tears that again welled in them falling down her cheeks with the action.
Oh, Erik…you are not the trouble.
She did not say the words, could not yet face him or another volatile encounter where she always came out the loser. He was ready to throw what little happiness they'd found to the wind, or more aptly, to the stones, and she ached to the core with the realization. She would sacrifice everything she knew and no longer had to stay by his side for all of one lifetime – be it here in this antiquated civilization or in the refined elegance of the musical world they once both inhabited and loved.
Why did he not understand that?
She felt too drained to weep more tears and drew her legs up, clasping her shins while lowering her forehead to her knees. Drawing in a quivering breath, she forced herself to calm. He had said a month remained until Lughna-whatever he called it. The next feast day. Surely, in the four weeks remaining she could find a way to change his damnably stubborn mind.
In the silence of the night, she prayed, her plea quiet, fervent and imploring. Prayed as she once prayed in the chapel on the night of the Don Juan – this time, not for events to change their course but for all to remain as it should always have been. Raoul had then appeared with irksome words of how the Phantom would haunt them 'til they were dead.
Christine released a hollow chuckle, at last realizing the truth of that cautionary statement. Erik had taken permanent lodging inside her mind and her heart, also claiming her body. She would not be without him again, especially after knowing the depth of what it meant to be his.
The low chirrup of cicadas and other melodies of nature lulled her into a catatonic sort of slumber, half asleep, half awake, with her half-closed eyes trained on the open door and the glow of candlelight coming from inside the cottage. To Christine's relief and confusion, Erik never again made an appearance, never again attempted to approach her.
After some time passed, she felt able to look at him again without begging to stay or weeping at the knowledge that he wanted her gone. He was certain to be thumbing through the penned pages of those wretched books, but since the sun had long set, the night air held a distinct, unwelcome chill, and she no longer wished to be apart from him.
She struggled to stand and make her way back to the cottage. The door remained open…
But Erik was not there.
x
At some point in the night, exhaustion of the day's events won over the dedication to await her husband's return.
Christine woke with a start from the dream that had terrorized her, at first frightened to find herself in a dwelling she did not recognize. A soft muted glow brought her attention that way.
Erik again sat at the table, grumbling to himself while intensely scrutinizing the pages of a tome by the light of one candle.
Christine's sigh came wretched to see his tenacity and with relief to have him near. She leaned toward him.
"Maestro?"
He turned his head to look at her. "I did not mean to wake you."
"I had a nightmare." Pride be damned, and if he thought her childish, she failed to care. "Would you please hold me…? I would really like it if you would hold me."
At first it appeared he might refuse, but at last he rose from the stool and walked toward her. She scooted back and reclined on the narrow bed, making room for him. He hesitated momentarily before stretching out beside her on the pelt. She burrowed against him, grateful when his arms closed around her.
"It was only a dream," he soothed.
She shuddered. "I was running from something...something evil. Blood covered the front of my gown. I was running," she repeated. "I was so frightened, but I couldn't find you."
"Christine…"
"Please, don't say anything right now," she softly begged, holding him tighter. "Only stay with me."
Christine had no wish to hear more of his horrid plans to send her away from this brutal world, or perhaps his queries as to what she meant when she so foolishly revealed his identity in a burst of reckless frustration. She was uncertain if it was a curse or a blessing that he did not believe her revelation to be in earnest, attributing it to hysteria of the moment …
The Phantom surrendered to Christine's soft request and gathered her closer. Weariness soon overtook his gentle wife, and he held her a moment longer before, wide awake with the burden of all he carried, he returned to the grimoire he'd been perusing. However, his mind would not focus on the scrawled, nearly illegible words, his eyes oft straying to her slumbering form. Slowly he rose to stand beside the cot and watched her in repose, in sleep her angelic face tranquil and absent of the worries that daily beset them.
The very idea to let Christine go struck chords of anguished conflict deep within his battered heart, the strangest sensation flooding through those chambers that he had experienced such terrible loss before. She had called him by that cur's name again, in her barely restrained hysteria unable to make clear sense or understand whose company she shared.
That he greatly reminded her of him was patently obvious, but in her acute distress, he no longer found anger in that truth, only a resigned melancholy that tore slow rifts through the foundation of his being. It was clear that she loved this demon of an Angel - Erik - despite his great sins against her…
Perhaps she always would.
Was it not only right that he should send Christine back to her century to know true safety and return to the presence of the one who held her heart, no matter how much it pained him to reach that understanding? The thought of letting her go brought nothing but the darkest of misery. Le Masque, for that is all he was, a hollow man behind a mask, bereft of a pure soul, a criminal unfit for a bride so sweet, so untainted…
He was nothing to her beyond two weeks ago. A stranger. Her abductor. And though she claimed to love him, after explaining to him what that meant, he could not help but wonder if it was to the wretched Erik that she truly spoke.
Had he never known the chilling truth about the stones, he would of course keep Christine with him all the days of his life, giving her all that was within his power to give. Now that he better understood the secret of bending time to their whim – he must give Christine that which her heart truly desired…
To go home.
"For you," he whispered, reaching down to touch her face, "I would sacrifice everything, my one love, my only love…"
The words were no more than uttered, when outside the wind increased in volume with an eerie howl, tempestuous in its fury. The Phantom turned swiftly to look out the door at the same time a blade of pain sliced through his head. Dizzy, he groped the wall for balance.
God, not this! not now…
With no wish to disturb Christine's peaceful slumber, he swiftly left the cottage, closing the door fast behind him. If this siege on his mind followed the despicable pattern, the attack would be more brief than the one before it, though the pain would grow more intense. The dark memories of that foreign night of wildfire and red smoke would soon invade, and he hoped to find his way to the stream before the attack overpowered him.
But it wasn't that night that filled his mind, only strange memories unknown to him…
"Angel of Music, hide no longer, come to me, dear Angel…Will you teach me, Angel…? I wish only to sing…! Oh, I love the stories you tell…But did the god Hades love Per-sip-en-ee and did she love him...? Madame said she will allow me to dance in the opera this weekend - will you watch me, Angel…? Meg says you're not real – please don't be angry that I told her. She didn't believe me anyway…But I can't reach that note – no matter how hard I try…! Will you always be with me, Angel…?"
The questions and comments of a child revolved inside his mind bringing with them a haphazard carousel of misty images flashing behind his eyes and what looked like a small chapel inhabited by a little girl with long dark curls.
Another bolt of pain thundered through his skull. He clapped his hands over his ears, his legs pushing him blindly forward through the dark wood, until he was at a staggered run.
"Angel, why must you always hide from me…? I only wish to please you…Angel my soul was weak, forgive me, enter at last, master…Whose was that shape in the shadows, whose was the face in the mask…? In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came…Angel or Father, friend, or Phantom – who is it there staring…? Angel of Music, I denied you, turning from true beauty…Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known? God give me courage to show you, you are not alone...!"
The girl's bright wondering words had altered into a woman's poignant, slightly husky tones he had come to know well, evolving into a crystalline trickle of quiet melody. Images of the chapel persisted, whirling within his mind - a cave, a stage, a cemetery, a lady's chamber with a large rectangle of reflective glass that showed her image in detail and life-like, but as a transparent window when looking through to the opposite side …
The Phantom fell to his knees, dropping his masked face into his hands, clawing at his head with his fingers. Never had the agony been this intense. His skull felt as if it might literally explode into fragments, the unfamiliar images sharp yet misty in his mind, strange and diverse, exciting and terrifying…
The wind heightened in strength, blasting through the trees, a tempest throwing bits of moss and dirt swirling high in the air and stinging his exposed flesh. The dark heavens above shattered with thunder, lightning flashing madly all around. This time, he did not plummet into a dark sleep - but the crash of images and color, faces and rooms, intensified along with nature's wrath, each containing strangely dressed people in stranger candlelit chambers -
Phantom! Angel! Opera Ghost! Master!
"Christine!" he rasped hoarsely before the darkness overtook him.
xXx
Christine woke abruptly, shaken by a voice in the night.
The room where she lay was dim and unfamiliar. In the time it took her to recognize her surroundings, she realized also that her husband was again absent. She sat up slowly and blinked the sleep from her eyes. All was silent. The cry of her name must have been a dream, like last time.
A candle burned on the table, melted down nearly to a stub and sitting in a pool of molten wax.
"Erik?" she whispered, though at a glance she could see the cramped dwelling was empty.
Her first terrifying thought – that he had left – immediately dissipated in light of all he'd told her. He would not abandon her to her own devices, especially now that he believed the truth of the stones' power. Of that she was certain. Likely he had gone in search of food – and she could do with fresh water, both to wash with and to drink.
She recalled that during her stroll of the area with Raoul a stream ran nearby, and she wondered if it was connected to the brook she and Erik previously visited. With the manner in which myriad outlets of water seemed to twist and meander through this huge forest, she wouldn't be surprised.
She tied on her slippers and wrapped her cloak around herself then blew out the faltering candle. Once she wrestled with the ornery door and stepped out of the dark cottage, she could see by the muted swirls of scarlet and violet in the sky that dawn had recently broken, though she couldn't see the morning sun, hidden by the thick foliage of shadowed trees.
Nor could she see Erik.
She hesitated with what to do and if she should wander from the cottage, but he had proven adept in his forestry skills. Tracking was one of them and she recalled how he once found her swimming naked in the lake. Her cheeks burned with the memory, though now she could smile, the new intimacy of their relationship smoothing over any previous rough spots of embarrassment she once suffered.
Carefully she studied the area. Strange…she thought she'd heard rain and thunder at some point during the night, but the leaves and ground appeared dry…
Shrugging off what she told herself must have also been a dream, she walked past the witch's cottage along the route she recalled taking with Raoul. The undergrowth appeared different, denser. The trees, save for several not being as tall in her century were mostly familiar, allowing the same route to be taken through them.
Eventually Christine heard the sound of water trickling over rocks and congratulated herself on a successful venture. The stream was just that, a narrow channel of water rushing over smooth stones, nowhere near as wide as the brook they previously visited, the water here coming only to her ankles, but it was sufficient for what she needed.
She cupped the icy-cold water in her hands and splashed it on her face and neck, then took a refreshing drink. The air was brisk, the birdsong in the trees a cheerful greeting to the morn. Sitting idle and allowing the water to trickle through her fingers, her mind rippled with the previous day's events, her last thoughts of Erik holding her tenderly in his arms while she slept.
Four weeks was a long time; so much could happen in half that span - and had, for her. Journeying into another world. Meeting the leader of those bandits who captured her, reuniting with her lost love, marrying him and becoming his in every conceivable way while learning this new, somewhat frightening, and thoroughly adventuresome manner of medieval life…
Surely, in twice that time, she could convince him to forget his morbid fascination with discovering the secret of the stones and allow her to remain by his side.
Caught up in the beauty of the dawn, her outlook for the future again offered a glimmer of hope. She began to hum the aria of what she was surprised to note was no more than a month past, that long-ago day in the cemetery. Soon the familiar words shaped her lips...
"Wishing you were somehow here again, wishing you were somehow near, sometimes it seemed, if I just dreamed, somehow you would be here…"
Her voice was a wisp, hardly stage-worthy, but that seldom seemed to matter anymore.
"No more memories…"
She must forget.
"No more silent tears…"
She wiped their former presence from her cheeks.
"No more gazing across the wasted years…"
At the last stanza, her voice went soft and gentle…
But how could she forget all they were and had once been to each other? To bid an eternal farewell to that life felt like asking her to cut a vital piece of her flesh away. While such an agonizing feat might not prove fatal, the knowledge of its former presence would never disappear. Always it would leave a scar behind to remind her.
"Help me say goodbye...help me say goodbye!"
The day no longer seemed as bright, the cheer having drained from it. She shook her head in bitter frustration.
Somehow she must conquer these pesky feelings of sorrow and regret. Somehow she must accept the change and live on without looking back. In truth, she would gladly accept whatever morsel he offered, would accept him wholly as Le Masque and never think of his old nature again, or at least try, if only he would allow her to remain…
"Wandering child, so lost, so helpless, yearning for my guidance…"
Christine's breath froze in her lungs. Her hands trembled in her skirts.
Her Angel's song came softly, lacking in strength, a bare wisp as hers had been but with a mesmeric beauty that could never be forgotten.
Slowly, anxiously, she turned her head to look over one shoulder.
He stood a short distance away, his hand braced against a tree as if holding it for support. Behind the mask, an expression she could not define filled his shimmering eyes…
Confusion? Uncertainty? Bewilderment?
He moved his hand higher up the tree to brace himself, his cloak sliding away and revealing half his chest. To her horror, she noticed a dark, wet stain gleam on the black tunic near his ribs, beneath his heart.
"Christine…" he whispered, his hand reaching out to her, before his knees gave way and he collapsed to the ground.
xXx
A/N: Uh oh... (do I need to run?) Thanks again for the reviews! Lyrics, of course, belong to the creators of that movie we all love so well, and which I borrowed to better fit my story...