Manon slumped back into the water, feeling older than time itself. A light sheen of oil swirled sluggishly on the water's surface, seeming to sympathize. She was so tired. Tired of thinking, tired of feeling, tired of striving and of running and of getting dragged back to the same torments of memory, hissing at her that she'd really gotten nowhere at all.
Sinking even deeper into the water, Manon let her head be submerged up to her nose. The water ruffled with her breaths, and she allowed her breathing to slow and the ripples to become smooth.
She reluctantly reflected on the dream she had just slipped into.
Countless stolen hours she had spent with Charles, holed up in spare stale spaces, talking and giggling and making music that was beautiful and clear and free. Those lessons had been little golden hours of peace and the saving graces of life at home as a child. She had a feeling that they had been some of Charles' happiest moments too.
Poor Charles. How ironically fitting that she, Manon, was still living under the boot of the policiers even after their father was gone.
Edward Moreau, father and tormentor, had been many things, and none of them nice. He had been a policier captain fallen from grace, turned renegade and hooligan. He was sadistic, cowardly, and perpetually and delusionally self-important.
As a husband he'd been misogynistic in a sad, common way, and Manon's mother had been quiet and resigned long before she'd died during Manon's childhood years. As a father he'd been more creative; Charles, he had praised and bullied and attended, seeking to mold him as an heir of his own image.
Manon, on the other hand, had become his effigy for control. Where the Parisian masses could resist his influence and power, by God, Manon wouldn't. After the flimsy shield of her mother had gone, school, book learning, friends, and lovers were all forbidden to her. Did it offer a sphere of life beyond Edward's knowledge or control? Then it was dealt with - and harshly.
His little band of rogue policiers had been even worse…
Enough, Manon. She plunged her head underwater, submerging herself in its coldness to force the thoughts from her head.
Suddenly, she was aware of the fact that was indeed cold. And very wet. How long had she been there?
She stepped out of the tub and toweled off briskly, imagining with an embarrassed flush the Phantom having come to check on her to see her floating like a mindless cork.
She thrust the thought away and donned the first gown she saw, ignoring too the tenderness in her side.
Was he coming back for her, or was he expecting her to call for him?
In her diligent ignorance, she did not notice the scarlet flush now spreading from the Phantom's careful stitches, scarlet streaks spreading like claws.
The wound throbbed again.
Meanwhile, Manon hesitated. Had he simply left and returned to the grotto? Was he expecting her to call for him? She couldn't very well shout "Oi! Phantom! Come and collect me!" She suppressed a hysterical giggle, imagining his reaction.
The wound throbbed again.
Looking around awkwardly, Manon took a step into the corridor.
"…Erik?" she said after a moment, using his name for the first time. She was pleasantly startled at how smoothly and easily it slipped off her tongue. It was a sigh of a name, like wind through leaves.
Within a few moments, he was striding towards her without the aid of a lantern – having left it with her, she realized. Again Manon marveled at the ease with which he maneuvered this opera house. Questions about this Opera Ghost – irrelevant, impertinent, and downright nosy – leapt to her tongue, but she bit them back. It felt, she realized, increasingly natural to think of him as simply a man, no ghost…a very tall, broad man…who whether she liked it or not had saved her…who was also arrogant and threatening… whose humorless sneer nonetheless continued to cause her stomach to turn over…
…a man who was standing before her, expectantly.
"You rang, my dear?" he pronounced with delicate sarcasm, folding his arms across his chest.
Shit.
Suddenly playful, Manon decided to mirror his sarcasm.
"Ah yes, there you are. Go and carry my things, slave," she said airily, waving towards the chair on which her gowns sat.
Erik's eyebrows rose so high on his forehead that they were in danger of disappearing into his hairline. But after a moment's pause, he bowed with flair.
"Why certainly, mademoiselle."
Striding around her he scooping them into his arms.
Manon smirked.
"Excellent. I'm glad you've finally learned your place."
"Evidently."
"Do you wait hand and foot on all your lady friends like this?"
"Only the overly-defensive, tempestuous ones, I'm afraid."
"Ah. I see," she said sagely, "you'll have to let me know when she arrives."
There was a pause.
With a movement so quick she barely caught it, Erik swooped up to her. He towered over her, his mood completely changed.
He leaned down, his face so close to hers now.
"Will there be anything else…my lady?" he murmured at her temple.
Manon suddenly felt like she was 14 years old again. Off-guard, inexperienced, and completely unsure of what to do.
"I...um...no.." she mumbled, avoiding his very close gaze. She lowered her head slightly. God, there was that chest again. It was suddenly taking all of her willpower not to melt into a puddle and slither down the drain like melted butter.
Before her thoughts could run too far ahead of themselves, Erik brought them there himself. Manon felt his hand coolly grasp hers and raise it to his lips. She stopped breathing. He looked at her hand without expression, caressing it gently, before lowering his eyelashes and kissing it slowly, gently.
With no further pleasantries he swept back again, striding to the door and holding it open for her politely.
Lord, she smells good.
This was the first coherent thought that leapt into his mind the moment Erik stepped in front of Manon. He couldn't help but slow his walk down so that he could take in this new, clean version of her. He'd never seen her without some remnant of dried blood or mud or whatnot, he realized.
Now, however, was another story entirely. Her long hair was retracting into coils as it dried, and her skin still damp from the bath, was giving off some heady scent.
The force of his attraction was shocking to him, despite the weeks of teasing, despite the midnight imaginings. Erik was at something of a loss.
The game of gown-carrying was an unexpectedly welcome diversion, and he was rattled when suddenly she tried to pull them from his arms.
"Alright, I'm perfectly capable of…"
He held them out of her reach, his expression turning to one of waning patience as she winced with the movement. He snapped at her.
"Manon, you are being tedious. The task of walking appears to be burdensome enough at the moment."
He regretted it almost immediately.
"I only meant…" but she was already storming down the corridor.
Erik watched her stalk away.
Women, he thought exasperatedly.
He followed her out, face set, guided by the light of the lantern she stubbornly held. They walked in mulish silence for a while.
Erik, undeterred by what he saw as her foolish pride, broke the quiet by inquiring after her wound.
"Just fine, thank you," was her cold response.
Erik was becoming annoyed. He was trying to be a gentleman, for Christ's sake! He was carrying gowns! Damn her pride.
He stepped aside for Manon to pass through first as he pressed the mechanism, causing the mirror to slide open.
She stalked past him without so much as a glance in his direction.
"Forgive and forget", it appeared, were not on the agenda.
How could silence be so oppressive? It was nothingness, after all. But, oh, the somethingness which skulked in and stayed and took root between Erik and Manon.
He knew his words had been harsh. Still, he was not a patient man. Erik's attitude towards Manon's presence in his home was growing more and more damnably nuanced, and her resisting compliance to him was wearing him thin. She walked on silently without looking at him, limp worsening.
Serve her right. He was, if nothing, a being who lived and breathed control. Agency. Influence over his domain. As a youth, he had controlled nothing, powerless to change that one small yet insurmountable barrier between him and the rest of the world. The instinct to control whatever he could was now as instinctive as breathing.
He was also a man of rather remarkable genius. The inability to understand a thing felt like a personal affront, and he found this rare occurrence deeply unsettling.
This was one such occurrence.
This woman's continual wrong-footing of him, while intriguing, was all the more unacceptable for it. He had once been aware of every damn going-on in this opera house. Everything! From the decisions of those buffoon managers right down to the privileges of the lowliest stagehand. Everything under his sharp, watchful eye ran as he saw fit.
Everything, that is, except for the one thing that had mattered most …
Unsurprisingly, his mood worsened.
Unsurprisingly, he took it out on the nearest bystander. One with a stony expression, pique to spare, and who still smelled infuriatingly good.
"I suppose that you feel like you're proving something by refusing assistance, eh?" his words speared harshly into the darkness. "Hmph. Ironic, isn't it? You think that carrying around gowns will negate the fact that you, my dear, are staying in the home and under the protection of someone else? Facts are facts, Moreau. You're on your heels." He said all this with cold, desperate recklessness.
She stopped walking and gaped at him, but Manon didn't miss a beat.
"Oh, well I suppose that's all very well for you to say, Monsieur le Phantôme, holed up down here in you little cave. Excuse me for learning to manage without someone on hand to carry goddamn gowns –"
"Or extract goddamn bullets or murder goddamn gendarmes," Erik cut in mercilessly.
"– and without such a cozy hideaway and without mysterious assistance from a man who purports to have no agenda!"
They were yelling now (the clothing lay forgotten on the rock floor). Deep in the tunnels, the only light came from the lantern which Manon was brandishing angrily, casting violently slanted shadows all over the rough interior. Erik's form was illuminated intimidatingly above her, causing her hackles to instinctively raise in self-defense.
"Agenda?!" Erik laughed meanly, slamming his hand beside her head on the wall. "Don't flatter yourself. I lacked company and you now provide it. You are in my domain now, my dear. I suggest you get used to living on someone else's terms."
He scoffed, eyeing her coldly and removing his hand. "Look at you. You can barely walk."
Hurt welled up in her chest and burst forth as aggression, and she poked him in the chest, hard, and advanced upon him, "I told you that I would waltz right out of here if I'm such a burden."
In that moment Erik felt the tiniest twinge of guilt, but Manon was not done –
"It's not as though I wanted this! You think I wanted to tumble through a rotten door of a crumbling opera house and into your strange world? You think that I sought to be chased like an animal for all this time? Oh no, God forbid having to…and never…and then YOU…" she trailed off and ran her hands wildly through her hair, apparently incensed beyond words.
Erik too was beyond sense, and gave her no quarter.
"Oh ho, so now we're the expert on having it rough, is that it? It's never that complicated, let me guess: you don't like the foppish suitor your parents picked out for you, you ran away, and got in some spot of trouble or other," he bit out caustically, "how terribly dreadful for you. That's hardly –"
But he was cut off by Manon backhanding him across his maskless cheek, whipping his head to the side, leaving him thunderstruck and murderous.
Before he could pin her up against the wall by her pale throat, however, she swooped in, hissing venomously,
"How. Dare. You. How dare you! To assume that you have a monopoly on suffering!"
And she hurled the lantern against the wall, shattering it and spattering them both with hot oil. She barreled on heedless, with a mirthless shriek of laughter –
"Ha! You can take your sanctimony and march it straight into hell. I'll find my own goddamned way out".
With that, she shoved past him and limped determinedly back in the direction from which they had come.
For a moment, Erik felt frozen. Then he found his voice again:
"Do not try to fool yourself – you have no idea how to get back and will no doubt lose yourself in the catacombs…" but she marched on, certainly not about to take any of his advice, tossing her hand in dismissive insolence over her shoulder.
Fine. Let her. He leaned against the wall, drained, noting the direction she had gone. It wasn't all that off-mark. Pity. But let her steam all she wanted. He'd probably find her, spirit broken (but not for a few hours, he warranted) huddled in a corner once she realized how futile this ridiculous gesture of defiance was. He watched coldly as the pale outline of her figure bobbed further and further away, with the occasional flurry of colorful language thrown back in his direction.
Erik turned, fuming at her, disgusted with himself, and seething with tension as he stalked down the passages back to his lair.
Let her sulk. She would break. He'd come back to find her and she would submit. It was just a matter of hours…
Or so he thought.
Several hundred paces into the tunnels, Manon had run out of curse words.
She had also come to the nasty realization that she did not, in fact, have the faintest idea where she was going.
Damn him, she thought for the hundredth time. Damn him and his stupid, smirking, handsome face. Damn his arrogance. Damn his stupid cave. Damn…
Damn that he'd been right every time.
Damn that she couldn't just accept that she needed him.
Manon tripped over her feet at the thought.
She needed him?
Well…yes. She did.
She had needed him when he had hidden her from the gendarmes. When he had fed her. When he had tended to her wound. When he had reassured her that she could stay, was safe.
She was walking quickly again, though her wound was beginning to feel like a twisting knife. She ignored it, but it worsened - her anger at herself now pushed her forward. Tentatively, she touched her wound but gasped sharply as her fingertips made contact.
It was as if her side were on fire.
Stupid, stupid Manon she berated herself. Why couldn't she just admit that she was grateful to him? Was she so incapable of courtesy? Incapable of accepting kindness without lashing out at the hapless Samaritan? Her instincts stemmed from no foolish reasons...plus he was so arrogant, so aggravating…
These thoughts plagued her as she stumbled deeper and deeper. Her head was beginning to spin. Her wound was continuing to scream. But farther and farther she stumbled, desperate for a way out.
Self-righteous ass. He thought he knew everything, didn't he? Tend to her wound, sure. Make her tea, fine. But at the cost of such condescension? At the same control she had escaped? Surely she had been through too much for that.
Manon's hands groped blindly for the walls. Bravado aside, this darkness was pretty bloody dark, and she couldn't see a thing. Like Theseus and his Minotaur, though, she suspected that keeping her hand on the wall would eventually lead her back to Erik's cavern, even if she had to retrace her steps. Seeing the astonished look on his face would be worth it.
But the walls were now growing slimy. Shrugging off a shudder, Manon soldiered on.
She'd been walking a fair while now…how far did these tunnels go, anyway?
She cursed her lamentable sense of direction, though usually the repercussions weren't quite so morbid. She never had been any good at finding her way around. Charles always used to tease her about that…
She swallowed hard. This is no time to reminisce. Find your way out of here first, hm? Her psyche taunted her. She wished she could slap it. Instead, she tripped over what felt like a small rock, then heard something skitter away in fright.
Jesus! Rats too?! Manon swung her foot out angrily, trying to kick its rabies-infested arse into oblivion.
She missed, obviously, but did immediately feel a nauseating protest from her wound. She slumped against the wall, completely winded. She needed to become calm. Manon closed her eyes, unfurrowed her brow, and took a measured break, a practiced reaction to situations in which an average woman might resort to tears.
Hands trembling, she gingerly touched her side and was appalled to feel that it was wet and sticky.
It was bleeding again. Had it split its seams? She could feel that the flesh was swollen around Erik's careful stitches. A host of unpleasant thoughts assaulted her brain and she hauled herself up to stagger forward – a foolish decision, for her mind was beginning to fog.
What was she going to do now? Spontaneously become a surgeon?
"No, I am not a surgeon, but I am capable"
Erik's voice floated mockingly through her head.
She staggered forward.
How could she go back? After having behaved as she had? After him having behaved as he had? It occurred to her that giving him a solid punch in his handsome face – again – might be exactly what she needed to do to get this strange fire in her side and this strange fog in her head to lift. Just what the doctor ordered. Doctor Manon! Ha!
She took a few more swaying steps, the tremors in her body rising.
That was strange. The ground was damp. When had she wandered into a swamp? She would have sworn she'd been walking through a cave. Or had it been a palace? Funny sort of trade-off, this swamp. She wasn't sure she liked it.
Her feet began to slip on the rocks beneath her feet, uncertain and confused.
Where was Charles, anyway? He had promised to meet her here at the blacksmith's so that they could walk to the opera together.
"Charles?!...CHARLES!" She shrieked, her cries echoing strangely back to her.
Fire.
Where was Charles?
Whirling, she opened her mouth to cry out for him again – she was only nine years old, after all – but her foot caught on something and shot out from under her.
She caught herself on the wall – barely. Adrenaline coursed through her, temporarily eclipsing her rising fever and leaving her panting as she fought to stay above it. What had she expected? Those strong arms, that sturdy chest, that welcome smirk to hold her up again?
Manon swayed again, flailing her foot to catch her own fall, but was met only with cold, empty air.
Nobody's arms reached out to her as she fell slowly, her face in a belligerent and helpless frown, her dark eyes swallowed up by the nothingness surrounding her…
"ERIK!"
Blackness.