Gift Five
"The Vow"
(Part VII)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S JOURNAL
(entry cont.)

The next things I must write in this entry baffle me in their simplicity.

There are many things that occurred after the wild, driverless carriage carried Raoul away into the central darkness of the forest that confuse me greatly – for the things which I know for a fact happened do not line up with the things Erik has told me about afterwards. So I will recount only what I recall, and leave the storytelling to Erik. I do not believe every word he has said to me but I cannot bring myself to doubt all of his words either. He has told me things I wish to be true and things I wish not to be; how am I to pick and choose? Thus I must cast his whole statement into a shadow of doubt – the whole thing - but not set it aside entirely lest I lose hope in living completely.

Thus I resume.

"Christine…"

Erik moaned my name in a breath so quiet that I hardly was sure I heard him, but it was enough to stir me back to the present.

He was still clutching me tightly against him, ensnaring my wrists in the shackles of his bony fingers. All the while Raoul was being carried away, I was struggling to break free of Erik's grasp – but my efforts were weak, my attention caught up in the horror of what I was watching. Finally, now that Raoul was gone, I mustered all the strength in my body and pushed myself away from Erik.

"How – dare – you…" I choked out, hate rising in my throat. "You evil, evil devil - !"

He made no reply – did not even dare to look at me. His fearful eyes were fixed forever on the direction the carriage had disappeared in.

"What was that for? I said I would marry you, Erik. I told you…" I fell against him, sobbing into his coat. "I was going to return to you…"

He tensed at that, and suddenly released my wrists and grabbed at my upper arms so tightly I could feel his nails through the fabric of my sleeves. He shoved his ruined face in mine. "You miserable little liar! You were going to marry me, you say? Well, what's stopping you now? Come, Christine, let's take ourselves to a priest and lie to the Lord together, then!"

"No!" I cried, despite all my earlier protestations. "Not like this – it's not right -"

"Not right, not right!" he sung as a foul cadence, and wrenched my arm as he started pulling us down the long stretch of lane. "Nothing's ever right with poor Erik! But he told you, Christine, he told you! You have no more choices anymore!"

And thus he pushed us, on and on, through the rain and the tears. He pulled forward as I pulled back, trying as best I could to halt our journey. I refused to let him have his way. He could not – he would not – be allowed to win! Not like this!

My reluctance, in the end, made no true difference.

Very shortly after we began our painful procession, a well-meaning cabriolet came along the lane from behind us and stopped on the side to see if we might be in need of any assistance. There was but one prim gentlemen clad with a banker's hat sitting in the belly of the carriage, and a cloaked driver out on the front. I was thankful it was just the two of them, and that they both looked fairly able-bodied, for Erik wrenched them both from the carriage and left them to figure things out on their own in the muddy ditch. As we rode away, I found myself well past horror… I was just relieved Erik had allowed the two of them to live.

The rest of the tale on my end is far less interesting, and I remember so little of it besides. Once Erik had hoisted me into the carriage, he had thrown a scarf about my neck. It was dry, which was a welcome feeling when I was soaked to the bone in the way that I was, so I reflexively wrapped it about my neck tighter – but only then did I realize his trap. The scarf reeked of something noxiously sweet, and I recognized the smell – he'd used it on me before, the first time he'd taken me down to his house in the Opera cellars.

But my realization came too late. My arms became far too heavy to unwrap their scarf from my neck, and my eyelids drifted closed. My drowsiness made me ebb in and out of consciousness, so that the journey which must have lasted at least several hours only ended up feeling like several minutes…

We must have turned around somewhere along the lane, for we returned to the train station and boarded. I recall some ticket-person calling out the hour as being six in the evening, which is strange because I last remembered it to be about two in the afternoon. Here I was still fighting not to let the drug take me, but was too tired to protest further than that - so I was able to walk on my two feet to the train but could not find the strength to cry out for help. Erik propped me against his shoulder as we boarded, and then laid me upon the bench once we reached our private cabin. He fixed my scarf into a more secure knot, gently brushing his sharp and yellowed nails against my throat as he did, and after that I truly did fall asleep.

I awoke at periodic intervals for the next several hours as we rode the train back to Paris. I do not recall switching trains, but we must have at least twice, as Raoul and I did on the way going to Chagny. We arrived in Paris under the cover of night, and returned to the Opera in a carriage. For all it mattered, it might have been the very same carriage we had taken out in the morning; and for everything that had occurred today, nothing had changed, and we were all right back to where we started.

To the best of my knowledge, that is what happened. I do not recall anything else. But the thing is – I awoke in the Louis-Philippe room with the scarf untied from my neck and draped disarmingly atop my vanity mirror. I nearly let myself think it all had been a bad dream until I crept closer to my desk, and found a piece of paper sitting on its surface:

A marriage certificate.

I ran to Erik immediately after finding that paper to demand an explanation. I found him reclining upon that ridiculously small chaise in the parlor, smoking his foul, stinking pipe, and he was quite nearly demure about the whole thing!

He told me, easily, that he had brought us to city hall and had secured an immediate appointment for us upon arrival. He had made me sign the certificate, though I could hardly keep my head from lolling backwards… he had grabbed my hand – LIKE SO, he said – and forced the pen to the paper.

As he recounted this, he laughed heartily, and then suddenly grew quiet and took another drag from his pipe.

I questioned him, asking how anyone could possibly have allowed that, and Erik said, with some amount of apology, that he's rather well skilled in making people do things they don't want to do.

Coercion, he's always talking about. Choice, compulsion, and constraint…

I asked him outright if he had consummated the marriage while I was asleep. He evaded the question for a long time, unfairly flinging fanciful insults about my virtue at me, but in the end… he denied it. Despite all his other misdeeds, I do not doubt his answer here. I do, however, believe he must have come very nearly close to doing so…

All the while we were talking, he was leisurely spreading himself out on the small chaise. His pipe smelled more peculiar than usual, and I wondered if I was not the only one he had drugged tonight. On the surface, he looked entirely relaxed – to the point that he was even slurring some of his words and speaking as if his mouth was unable to move at its normal speed – but I knew him better than that. In his eyes were all the razor-sharpness that I knew him for, just locked behind the perfume of the drug and unable to break through.

This is all to say: he retained his facilities even as he spoke with a honeyed tongue, and the words he spoke were all his own.

"I have not ruined you," he confessed to me mellowly… and nearly lewdly. "But I could, still. Would you like that, Christine? We are married on paper, but not yet through God. One night could remedy that… a true wedding night. Will you have me, Christine?"

I could only imagine if he had full control of his body at the moment. He would be standing over me, leering the way he always does… not sprawling out against the couch like this, practically inviting me to do unchaste, unholy things with him. To him.

The pipe came up to his thin, misshapen lips. Another breath of smoke. "Aren't you the one who wanted this? You stupid girl. You proposed to Erik, remember? You asked him to be your husband. Did you think he would say no? Erik has never refused a single gift you gave him before, though he hated every single one. So what were you thinking? Did you think you could run?"

No, I wanted to say. I hadn't planned on running. I really hadn't…

But I couldn't bring myself to say anything at all.

His hand fell down and rested the pipe against his chest, which rose and fell slowly in time with his tranquil breaths. A few ashes fell out against his shirt but he paid them no mind. He didn't have the capacity to care, apparently. His head lolled against the pillow. "The truth must be that Christine knew she would never be able to run from Erik. She knew he would follow her and bring her back. Erik is a very intelligent man, after all. He guessed where she would go, like she knew he would. And then he followed her on the train, like she knew he would. And then he brought her back to Paris… like she knew he would." His hand slowly skirted across his chest, left to right, as he spoke. "Silly thing, that Christine Daaé. Did she think Erik would ever agree to such a questionable plan if he thought there was even the slightest chance he would lose her? Christine… oh, Christine... you never had any choice here at all."

"What are you talking about?" I finally demanded.

He chuckled. "My ultimatums are quite amusing, aren't they?"

"Your ultimatums?"

"You did not choose between Erik and the boy today," he told me. "He was never a choice to be had. I would never allow him to have you."

I knew that now, but… "So why do all of this? Why agree if you never were going to allow me to leave, even if I wanted to? Why – why allow me to even pretend I had a say in any of this? Why allow me to bring Raoul into this and -"

"Don't you dare cry about that boy," he hissed, and it was then that I saw his true self showing through the languidity of the drug. He must have seen it too, because he suddenly picked up the pipe and took another breath with it. It calmed him immediately. "Do not shed a single tear for him. He is resting in peace, just like I promised."

"You are despicable," I spat.

He shrugged. "Think of me what you want, my dear. I truly don't care about your feelings anymore."

I was about to leave, but then he said, in a voice so soft I nearly forgot my anger: "You should have seen his mangled body, Christine. I was surprised he had any blood left in him at all. But I'm a good man, Christine, when I try to be, anyway – and I had promised that he'd rest in peace. So I searched the woods for him, and I found him impaled on the spoke of a wheel. The horses, I must say, have gone to the wild; I couldn't find them anywhere. But him, your boy… he, I found. I brought him with us and left him on the front steps of his family's estate, and that is where he rests still… unless one of his footmen found him and brought him inside. So do not cry, my dear, please do not. He only rests in peace."

I locked myself in my room after that and cried for hours. I cried, and slept, because that wicked drug was still controlling me, and the thought of that made me cry even harder when I was able to wrestle myself back to the land of the living. I was ill and unwell, and it was Erik who had done this to me. Erik, a man who I feared and loved, but perhaps not so very equally in these past grim hours…

Now I have told all. In the writing of this I have sapped out my raw anger for Erik, and have seen that the hatred I felt for him was only momentary. I do not hate him, despite what he did – to Raoul, to me, to both carriage drivers, to the unfortunate banker whose expensive suit is no doubt drenched and ruined, to the waiter whose heart breaks for the devil, to the poor city hall clerk who might lose his job in the morning for filing such a fraudulent certificate, to the pale horses who were frightened so wickedly – I only feel hatred for Erik's actions, as always, but not for him.

Well. I suppose, if Erik and I are to be actually married, we ought to speak to one another again at some point. Might I actually have some success this time around…