In his mind, Erik knew the heart to be such a lean, insignificant muscle. It pumped blood, it regulated breath, and it ached. Ached so horribly, it existed as a necessary throb. A constant concern, a plague. He could not stop it as much as he yearned for all of his misery to end. But the beat of it kept him moving, and allowed him the belief that he was actually alive. For he knew nothing but his heartbeat, all his grounding had been lost with her absence.
He could not rid himself of her loss. Abandonment was all he had ever known. It was familiar, and it still scraped its painful shards against his ribcage, a mad, ragged effort to cut his heart open and shallow it out. Erik believed, at times, that the shallow carving of it would be less painful than surviving, merely existing, with a half-buried soul. He almost thought, with each labored breath, that he could sense and feel the future of his chilling loneliness approaching and consuming him, an icy spike lodging in his chest.
He drew his long, spidery fingers to the wound on his shoulder. The sight of his own blood shook him, captivated his mind, the crimson flow of it reminding him of his own wretched mortality. How he wished it would just stop. The blood, the memories, the ghost of a love made attainable. The softness of her hair as it tickled his exposed cheek as she kissed his bloated mouth. It was too much. He had only ever known how to be alone, but fate had brought him a salvation that he could not handle, a love that might very well redeem him.
Still, he knew not how to go about things. Christine was gone. He had left her for her own protection, unaware of her fate in the hands of the managers and the sniveling, self righteous Vicomte. Christine's absence clawed more deeply than any bullet ever would or had before. There had been a few he had cleaved from his damaged body. They'd left their marks upon his flesh, just as the scarring of the whip had crisscrossed his back in angry red lines.
Christine.
The silence of her loss was infinite and worthy of all the love he had harbored in his soul, the gutted, weathered thing that it was, swollen with all the tortured adoration it held. Erik existed as penitent to the kindness and love she now offered to him so freely.
He would not die tonight. Not now, not when he knew he was loved. Finally loved.
He must flee, find a place to tend his wound and staunch the grim flow of blood. He would survive for her, his Christine. Though he could not, would not seek her now, for to find her would only place her in further peril. Still, he knew his heart conquered his reason, for as soon as he was physically able, there would be no force which would stop him from going to her side, despite the danger to them both.
Again, he told himself, as his quivering palms pried away the layers of cloth at his wound, "I will not die tonight. I am loved. I will not die tonight. . .I will not leave her. . .Christine. Christine." The two syllables of her name rang as a reminder of his humanity in dulcet, haunting tones. A memento mori he did not yet wish to claim. The physical pain he felt as he moved his arm was the piercing of a thousand unseen needles cutting a path through every nerve ending and riding their way through his body. He coughed, his body contorting with the grip of it. He was ugly. He felt it. All the ugliness.
Erik and his pain were finally one and the same. Hideous. Horrible. Painful.
When he pulled his fingers away, Erik was shaken by the sight of the crimson fluid that had clotted and brutally pressed its claim on his pale flesh. His thoughts were marked with the clipped images of a zoetrope, a confusing kaleidoscope of memories flashing behind his mismatched, beautiful eyes.
The Vicomte. His Bullet. Christine's Kiss. A confession of love and acceptance. A promise of marriage.
Erik's mind was in shambles. What had occurred? In what order had these events transpired? What was real? What had been merely a dream, or a guilty hallucination? Had she touched her sacred lips to his wretched, hungering mouth?
His heart battled with reason and the violent pumping of blood loss that bathed his shivering body with the reminder of the necessity of what he must do to survive. Regardless of what existed as truth or of what lived as an illusion, he would survive. For, despite all his ugliness, he had been created strong, formidable, and unconquerable. And now, he had a reason to continue. The love of a woman. His woman. Fragile and delicate in her form and stature, but immeasurably resilient and compassionate, made as stubborn as he. Erik held little doubt that Christine would seek him out. But at what cost to her own safety?
He would not think of that now.
Wincing, he struggled to remove the long ebony cloak that had concealed his lean and imposing form upon the stage only a handful of minutes ago. His shoulder screamed as he attempted to rid himself of it, the wound in his arm igniting with a fresh pain at his awkward task at hand completed, Erik discarded the cloak to the ground and began to rip at its folds. He must stifle the wound, cease the flowing of his own blood. Through his pain, he tore at the fabric until he had made a tourniquet of sorts, using his undamaged arm and his teeth to cinch a covering over his shattered shoulder. He was beginning to feel faint, his vision becoming a hazy remembrance of a tortured past. He could almost hear the voice of his father and the distant sound of a piano, the crystalline laughter of a small child.
Why was it only in his darkest moments that he remembered the face of his father, and could hear that beloved voice as a ghost's comforting haunt within his ears? As his dear Christine had wished to hear her own father's kind tones in that of the Angel of Music's voice. As the delirium of his pain swept and guided him, Erik began to feel an immense remorse for what he had done to his beloved, for the false myth he had created for her. An effort of comfort, this Angel of Music. . ., but it had simply been an attempt to comfort her as the outcast that he had always been and meet her with the acceptance of the outcast that she was.
"Erik, remember I told you about Bach's inventions, to focus on that left hand keeping the meter. . . don't let it run away from you in your excitement!"
Erik's long, lean fingers, those of a grown man in their size, and not those of the six year old child that he was, grazed over the keys before him, once again settling into their key placement for the piece. Each moment he did not strike a note was an effort in self-control, for music was as essential as breathing to a child that had few other modes of communication acceptable to the world which surrounded him, as utterly hidden and singular as his world was. Maman accepted the music far more easily than she tolerated the haunting voice from his malformed lips. The voice of an angel and the visage of a corpse. Maman never hid her revulsion or unacceptance of him.
Still, the music was safe. Papa was safe.
"Erik, playing Bach's two-part inventions is, to me, the best way to learn a considerable amount of musical elements, composition and piano technique, touches, phrasing, and art while playing beautiful, well-constructed and inspiring short pieces of 's a base for understanding, son. Do you understand now why I have you work through these pieces?" His father leaned down and planted a kiss to the top of his tiny head, ruffling the sleek, soft ebony hair with his large hand.
The vision faded for a moment, as Erik clenched the fabric of the moist torn cloak around his shoulder, staunching the flow of his life's fluid. His other hand fell into the muscle memory of that Bach invention, the one in D minor, number four. The delirium had begun to settle in, his hands wishing to touch the keys, to grasp upon something that made sense, to relish a memory that held no sorrow.
"Your left hand guides the piece, Erik. Follow my hands." His father placed his palms on the tops of his son's hands and gently guided them from the keys to rest in his lap. "And listen." Erik admired his father's hands then, in awe of his gentle power and precision as they alighted to the piano. They were the strong, calloused fingers of an architect, a builder, and a musician. Young Erik viewed his father's hands as symbols of the life he wished to make for himself: the life of an artisan, a musician, and ultimately, a creator of beautiful things. For Erik knew there was little that was beautiful about himself, so he must make all things beautiful and amazing outside of his own body.
The boy watched the methodical touching of his father's fingers to the keys, memorizing their measured movements, the steady tick-tock of the metronome serving to guide him. His father struck each note perfectly on the beat. And the child who was watching, Erik, understood all too well in that moment, that music was the only language in which he would successfully navigate. The only emotions he would ever convey to the world in any manner in which they would accept him would be in this form. Music would be his connection to the world. In that moment, the small boy had a revelation of sorts. He understood where he fit in. It would not be in social circles or at huge galas celebrating his work. He would exist in the shadows, but his music would ring through worlds, each tone, every stunning phrase and note would captivate the listener. The music would be his voice.
"Please, son, now that you have heard, it's your turn." Struck from his reverie, Erik looked up to the imposing figure of his Papa. His father gently guided Erik's small, thin, long-fingered hands to the keyboard once more. The young boy struck the first note, and the invention took hold within his fingers, perfection wrought of a single observation.
"Yes, yes, exactly. And again." His father's dulcet voice prodded the child on to the end of the invention and the seamless sight-reading and practice of the next, until an entire afternoon had been spent in the glory of music shared.
But for the arrival of Maman. Maman with her beautiful chestnut locks pulled too tightly in combs about her face, as if the harshness of their styling mimicked the cold stark nature of her words. Her beauty lay obscured by the severity of her malice.
Maman.
"Are we playing too loudly, my dear? " His father stood and walked to his beautiful mother as she entered the room, her lean arms spread wide as they parted the large Oak doors leading into the music room. His Papa's kind smile was met with the silent anger and slim, closed lips of one who did not wish to be bothered.
"Really, Charles, I fail to understand why you insist on teaching this boy anything at all! He's to be kept away until he is old enough for us to be rid of him. You're wasting your time. Send the little ugly thing upstairs to his quarters. We have dinner guests coming. He must be out of sight." The woman, Erik's mother, beautiful as a Grecian goddess carved of unswept snowy marble, regarded Erik with disdain, her gaze a damning command which the trembling child understood without question: gather the manuscript paper and any other artifacts that might mark his existence and head to his chambers to hide.
Maman.
The timid boy glanced once more at his father as he exited the room. A silent nod of understanding. Of defeat. Erik would not argue, for he was accustomed to the piecemeal machinations of a love ashamed to show its presence. His father's unrelenting service to his stunning and soulless mother. . .
It was time to pretend he was not there. He only existed in the gleam of his father's eye . . .
Erik coughed, once more brought back to the reality of his situation. Stop the blood. Find Christine. Flee. Erik placed his blood-soaked hand to his battered, malformed lips. He could still taste her love on his fingers, despite the iron, coppery scent of his crimson bleeding. The pain in his shoulder shot through the entire length of his lean body, unrelenting, tingling, aftershock followed by another reverberation of a pain he had not felt since his time in the torture chambers of Persia. The bullet lodged in his shoulder brought forth an anguish new and unknown to one who had believed he'd felt the very depths of the abyss physical pain might bring. He was no longer himself. This tingling uncertainty of physical pain? Just another storm to weather on his path? Something more to endure? One final hurdle? To one prize. . . But he would never deem her a prize. She was the beacon of a life worth living.
To exist in Christine's loving gaze.
"Erik, please, listen. . ."
A familiar voice, an image appeared to him in the madness of his injury, as he struggled to find his feet, bracing his body against the cold, wet wall of the tunnel. He blinked, one, two, three, four times, to gather some clarity of sight. But still, a tall dark shape, shadowy but benevolent called to him. A specter of his past, a lighthouse in the fog of his mind. His father's ghost calming the ghost within himself.
"Erik, you must go to her. Go to her. Rise up and move."
As if the hallucination of his father's voice in his troubled brain had been a cattle prod upon his flesh, Erik stood up sharply, all scattered limbs, and began to stumble towards the direction of Christine's dressing room. He held no lantern, he barely retained the strength and sense of mind to make his own way through the intricate labyrinth of tunnels he had constructed so many years past. But his father's voice echoed as a resounding symphony in his eardrums, the only clarity he could contain in his delirium.
Yes, Erik would go to his angel, to his Christine.
As he meandered through the tunnels, struggling with each step, his hands finding purchase on the stone walls, he spoke to her, to himself, in a mad effort to call out to his beloved. Crazed by pain, he did not care who heard his plaintive cries.
He simply saw his love as a shining vision before his eyes as he staggered forward. Her eyes, an ocean of unshed tears, her skin soft porcelain, and arms reaching out to him through the ebony cloud that reached towards him endlessly. An eternal journey to his beloved.
"Christine, my Christine, you are such an exquisite little human. I dare not touch you for fear of breaking that which is divine and pure. . ." Erik's golden voice rang into the darkness as his pain overtook him, as his reality shards of his hurt shot through his shoulder and raked his whole body as if a vice had been crushed to its metal, and then tightened to release further sorrow. He could hear the cold rush of a phantom wind blowing through his eardrums, and the dull snap of a feminine voice calling his name, desperate and brutal in its longing. His eyes rolled back. And, as his body collapsed against the wall, he heard the voice again, one so familiar as to make his heart swell with equal amounts of hope and agony. It was clear, and it was real, a truth that sliced into his very soul. She was looking for him! His Christine! But he lacked the strength to run towards her, her voice still too distant in the darkness. Erik gasped in defeat and fell to his knees, his screams of pain clenched between his teeth.
His delirium consumed him as he crawled forward, his mind clouded by love, pain, and the guilt of his transgressions. But he'd done it all for the love of her, in the end, had he not? For, what was love and the gaining of it, but a process of waiting and agonizing patience? Sacrifice? A weighing of emotions, a checking of balances to see where one stood in the eyes of another? The endless competition of who held more affection for the other. Was that love? Or did love only flourish in the space where the scale finally leveled evenly and one no longer felt the war of feelings? It lived in the evenness of acceptance, of partnership, where the honesty of it did not need to be proven or spoken of. It simply existed in the unity made of two pilgrim souls that had never before found a home.
For love should be a collective breath. A joining of perfect voices. And, he could hear her voice now.
Or, that was as much as Erik believed in the scrambled and wounded palace he had once called his mind.
"Erik, Erik, where are you?!" Christine's desperate wail was the last sound he heard before his eyes closed and he slipped into the void. The inky blackness of the abyss in his head echoed her call to him. And her call was very real. Tangible.
"Christine. . ." He whispered raggedly, far too low a whisper for any to hear, before slumping into the sharp lines of his own wretched form and bowing his head in surrender. Erik fell into the chasm of unconsciousness then, Christine's perfect voice echoing through the vast cavern he inhabited. It lulled him into the uncertainty of eternity's warm embrace like the mellifluous song of a banshee. He swore, as he faded away, that he could almost hear the tender but panicked shuffles of her footfalls across the wet stone.