The hiss of the automatic doors announced Erik's arrival to the hospital. The sound was unpleasant, the sort that a predatory reptile makes in warning before a strike. He had walked through automatic doors plenty of times in the past, oblivious to their sound. Why did he only now make the comparison? It seemed an omen–but that was silly, of course. It was only a set of overused doors and he was just wound up from his recent soul collection. The lingering trauma of all the horrors revealed would sit with him for years. Such was his lot as an eater of souls, this collection of grotesque memento mori.
The waiting room was deathly quiet–empty, save for one very old man who sat by himself in a corner chair. His gnarled, arthritic hands clasped tightly before him and his eyes neatly shut in some silent form of prayer. For a moment, the man reminded Erik of another long-dead soul who had once offered kindnesses that Erik had been too broken and blind to recognize. Teodor was a Venetian mason who had given a deeply troubled adolescent a safe haven to rest while sharing what he knew about stone craft. Erik could still recall the heady sense of accomplishment he felt each night, with hands covered in marble dust and vibrating from his labors at the chisel, falling asleep to the echoing calls of gondoliers traveling through the canal outside his window.
He was at peace for nearly two years, until his mentor brought him to the site of the Ca' d' Oro, in the process of being renovated for the famous dancer, Maria Taglioni. The architect of the project seemed amused by Erik's suggestions for alterations for the facade, but his assistants grew increasingly jealous. They cornered him one day, insisting he show his face and ripped away his mask to the horror of the beautiful Maria who, upon stopping in to check on the progress of the work, had the great misfortune of walking through the door at the precise moment of the reveal. Her screams echoed through the empty room of his assault, and his assailants, too stunned at what they forced into the light, watched in mute disgust as he fled from the scene.
Humiliated and ashamed, he left Venice that very day with not so much as a farewell to his mentor who had shown him nothing but patience and companionship. Years later, Erik would come to that bright dawning realization that he had erred, but by then it was too late and Teodor had met his fate to fallen masonry.
But now was not the time to think back on his former life, not when he needed to get to Christine.
He swiftly moved past the empty gallery of chairs. If Christine was not here in this room, she may be with her father. The doors to the intensive care unit was only steps away, he–
"Darling, you're not going in there." Someone said to his right in a smooth, rich, feminine voice.
He turned to see a nurse he hadn't noticed before leaning against the receptionist counter. Her bright pink scrubs contrasted appealingly with her smooth, ebony skin. Not a hair on her head was out of place, but neatly arranged and coiled in a series of intricate braids. With a raised brow and a quick rapping of her pristinely manicured nails against the slick counter surface, she continued. "She doesn't need all your noise up in there."
"My noise?" he dumbly replied.
She huffed in mock frustration.
"You know what I'm talking about. She doesn't need all of your busy nonsense right now." She spoke with such confidence, as though he knew exactly what she was referring to.
"I think you're mistaken, madame," he replied. He fully intended to turn around, leave the hospital and enter the room of Christine's father through more supernatural methods.
Her brows raised in amusement.
"Oh, a charmer. Calling me madame and everything! Iris was right about you. You keep a sister on her toes."
Erik's fully formed plan to use a portal dissolved. Time slowed and stretched, growing taut as a guitar string as he considered the strange woman before him. She knew Iris, but she had no resonance to speak of.
And then it happened.
Like a single domino creating a chain reaction, the memories in his vault–handed from the Eater's before him– all toppled over then righted themselves to reveal the solution to an intricate puzzle.
"A living reaper," he mumbled in begrudging awe.
If the choices of his mortal life had led him to become an eater of souls, so too did the choices of this woman–but her choices were the polar opposites of his own. Only the most benevolent were given her role. A shepherdess for the confused souls who didn't know they had passed and needed an extra hand, else they get lost in the world. Ghosts were real; just souls too oblivious to their state or too thoroughly in denial. Dementia patients, for example, had often lived years in an altered state of consciousness, only to be restored after death–but in that restoration their circumstances were often difficult to accept.
With a murder victim, you could simply point at their body.
"There's a knife in your chest," you could say.
"Oh, yes, so there is," they may reply. "How very inconvenient and unfortunate. Well, I suppose that answers the question of whether or not I am dead."
But to show someone their body after they lost several years to an illness of the mind, and they may say "That's not me. I have never been that old. A mistake has been made. Please take me to your Supervisor."
Someone was required to plant seeds in the mind of that individual as they lived. Living Reapers often occupied positions that gave them easy access to those they were sent to collect. After death, someone with gentle perseverance, an infinite well of patience, and an already established rapport was required with the task of serving as a sort of negotiator to get them to cross over to…well, wherever it is that they go. If this woman was a living reaper, she certainly was not looking at Erik with any sort of gentleness, but rather an amused determination–facetious, even.
"I think you're mistaken," he said with wavering confidence.
She gave him an exaggerated, sweeping glance up and down, somehow more dramatic by the emphasis her blue medical face mask placed on her eyes.
"A well dressed Scarecrow Man who sounds like wind chimes. Sugar, I don't think I'm wrong. Matter of fact, I don't think there's any man in the world who looks like you."
"It's a statistical probability," he replied with deflated frustration. "Of what concern is my business to Iris or yourself?"
"Iris just spills the tea, she's got no real skin in this game. But I do," her eyes narrowed with subtle hostility. "Mr. Daae was one of my patients. Someone else was assigned to escort the fine gentleman at his passing, but I got to know him over the past few weeks. He's a good man who cares about his daughter and is scared to death that she's not going to be okay without him. And imagine my surprise when Iris comes in with some hot goss and tells me about the Soul Eater who's got some romantic feelings for his daughter. That's insane. You're basically a dead guy who probably has hundreds of years over her. Not to mention whatever it is you must have done to land you in your position. Iris may be cool with you, but I take issue with what's going on here."
Erik glanced behind him to the man who was still caught up in prayer, fully unaware of the conversation occurring between two mythological reapers only a dozen feet away. He drew himself up, rigid with indignation.
"I still fail to see how this concerns you," he asserted.
Her eyes softened with the melting relief that comes from a secret victory. She shrugged and moved to sit behind the counter.
"It doesn't truly," she admitted bluntly. "I just wanted to distract you for a few minutes while the grieving couple made their way out a back exit. We don't typically let folks do that, but after their loss it seemed unkind to make them walk all the way around the building to get to their car."
Erik, in all his claim to intelligence, had absolutely no idea what this woman was rambling about, but it gave him a sinking feeling in his putrid little guts. The woman only raised a single, painted brow with anticipation as the meaning slowly came to him like a sluggish dawn.
"She's left," he thought aloud. That didn't seem like such a problem, really. He could just wait back by her residence until she arrived–after she finished spending some time with that tragically perfect man. No. He would not think about Raoul and his unfair advantages just now. Not when it seemed there was more to this plot than he initially thought. The weight in his gut hadn't lifted.
He was just shaky from the residual horrors of his last collection, from the strange altercation with another Eater, and–of course–the vulnerability he felt under the ghastly glow of this waiting room's godforsaken fluorescent lighting. He would certainly feel much better once he saw Christine–with or without the boy. Perhaps he could subdue the young man, if only to steal a few moments to speak with Christine. There was the small matter of that kiss–rudely interrupted as it was–and her subsequent feelings. Did she enjoy it? Would she like to indulge in a bit more? Well, not if the young man was laying there on the ground temporarily subdued–though he would never do such a thing in front of Christine. He would have to find a way to separate them first and then–
"Sir, you look like your operating system ain't workin'. Are you okay?"
The sass in her tone could not be disguised by the caramel timbre of her voice. In response Erik drew himself up with as much nonchalance as he could muster and delivered a quaint, curt little nod.
"Quite, I'll be on my way, then." But he only managed a brisk few steps before her aggrieved sigh flew straight at him.
"Mr. Daae has passed," she quietly informed.
He nearly tripped over his own feet at the abrupt news as it landed upon him with all the mass of a chandelier's counterweight. Christine. She was alone now–well, notcurrently. But in the general sense. She has no family to speak of and a tiny handful of friends, many scattered around the country.
"She needs me," he quietly suggested, more to himself than to her. What was he still doing here talking to this infuriating woman who was trying to interfere, when Christine was somewhere in this city grieving?
This time the sigh she made wasn't one of frustration.
"Oh, sweet summer child." She shook her head in slow dismay. "She don't need you. She's got her man to care for her now. You know this. He's her best friend. And with the way he looks at her…Let's just say that– from my experience? –there ain't nothing quite like death to make a person look more closely at their own lives. Her father told me about the man who loves his daughter but needed the time to tell her. I would bet my whole life savings that this is it. You could see it in his eyes–he's not wasting any more time."
Erik clenched his fists and released a dry, mirthless chuckle.
"We'll see about that," he grumbled and left the tedious woman. With her pitying words trailing behind him.
"That poor, poor, clueless man…"
He returned to his pathetic squat of a home, although 'home' was hardly an apt title for the squalor he found himself in. When had he stopped caring? How many years had he been a wraith, moving from place to place this way? A violin, a pocket watch and a small satchel of papers were all he had now. Christine would require more than that. She needed the stable berth of a real home to heal. With time, he could give her that. He believed this fact.
For hours, he stood at his window and waited for her return. Even as the warm blush of dawn lit the sky and the city noises increased with the waking mass of its population. He continued this way, staring out the dingy, weather-speckled glass like a loyal dog awaiting its absent master. Each car that came and went felt like a nail in the lid of his proverbial coffin. He passed the time fiddling with an incomplete deck of cards that had been abandoned in the room prior to his occupation. Their usefulness only extended as far as a few simple card tricks which were sloppily executed as the cards stuck together too much for any efficient sleight of hand. They were quickly abandoned for the violin which lost its luster after an hour or two itself. The melodies were hiding from him, now, of all times, when he needed music most, they tucked themselves away like shy unicorns. Any books he had were not enticing enough to keep him tethered to the pages.
In the absence of distraction, he lost himself in thought.
Lucius came to mind. It had been weeks since he had the memory-laced dreams, soaked in bloody battle and beastly despair. He dreamt of Christine's experiences some nights now—but mostly, he dreamt of that boy's. What a mistake it had been to touch him. He would prefer the brutality and pain of an Ancient Roman warrior's life to the honey-sweet view of his rival's feelings towards the woman of his own heart. It was a feeling of such sublime tenderness that it left him waking up a black, jealous wretch.
Slumped against the window, he continued this way for an ungodly tedious stretch of hours, until evening once more upon the city.
And still. Christine did not return.
Nor did she return when night painted the city in its deepest hues of black and blue, assuaged only by the artificial lights of the cities.
He pulled out his treasured pocket watch and opened it. The Persian inscription was just as crisp now as it was the day it was given to him, despite how worn the watch's exterior had grown with age.
'A walk with a friend in the dark is better than a walk alone in the light.'
He had supposed that speaking his farewells to Nadir's final resting place would have given him a stalwart, permanent closure. The burden he carried was intended to die and stay in that Parisian graveyard. How was it that this little sentence, scratched expertly into a silver surface, could bring it rushing back upon him with such ferocity as though it had never left? The ghost of Nadir's memory persisted beside him.
Was he doomed to grieve until the end of all existence?
The hour had grown late. Confirmation with a timepiece was unnecessary. The hush that swamped the city was enough to attest to that. And still, she had not returned.
At length, and after a very heated debate with his own impulses, the weaker parts of himself defeated the reason, and he found himself standing in a room not his own. The couple in the bed were entwined in delicate slumber, oblivious to the paroxysm of agony the vision inflicted upon the intruder who observed them.
He did not need to interface with their souls to know what occurred here. Not with clothing strew around the bed like flower petals and the haze of carnal bliss still simmering in the air.
It finally happened. The boy crossed over that invisible threshold.
And Erik wanted to murder him.
His long-dormant violent imagination awakened with a hot vibrancy that nearly left him bereft of breath. It showed him a thousand various methods to extinguish the life of the young man–some quick, some long and exquisitely elaborate. The ripe temptation so called to him that he fled the apartment before he could act–before he did something that could never be undone. So great was his desire.
He took himself to a desert. Vast, empty, bright as pitch in the night, the temperatures frigid. There, his knees hit the parched, packed earth, and he screamed. Ripping the little daisy mask from his face, he screamed and he screamed until his throat grew raw and his voice shattered like brittle clay in the icy air.
Tears coursed down his corpse face. His hands grasped the sides of his head to claw at the horrible visage. He could rip the whole damn thing off right now and it would still heal. There was no escaping it–no escaping any of it–he was doomed to be in this body for eternity. He was stuck like this if for nothing but the grotesque follies of his life.
"Why?!" He bellowed angrily to the cosmos. "WHY?!"
He wasn't sure what he was asking, exactly, aside from an answer for all this existential anguish. It was a question that could never be answered.
A small voice came from the dark behind him.
"Erik?" It hesitantly asked.
An ugly laugh escaped him as he wiped snot that had begun to dribble from his face's obscene cavern. What a pitiable sight he must look, this shell of a human.
Truthfully, though, he didn't care.
When he turned to look at her, he was only relieved to see her standing there.