Say You'll Share With Me | Phantom Oneshots

since there's no help, come let us kiss and part

christine gets one more chance to speak to erik, to tell him everything she wished she had so long ago

the second of two kiss prompts from tumblr - 'a kiss out of adrenaline.'  the title comes from the Michael Drayton poem of the same name

~

The building was dark and dingy, the light streaming through one tiny window far down the hallway being the only thing to give her any idea of where she was stepping. She wondered why the guard behind her had decided against lighting a lantern, but then again, he was probably used to the darkness. To light a lantern, in his mind, might have been a waste of oil and nothing else.

A prison had never been somewhere she thought she would ever step foot in. Just the stories she had heard about the living conditions—if one could even call them suitable for "living"—and the treatment of the incarcerated was enough to put her off. Then again, she supposed those stories served a purpose in trying to deter people from acting foolishly enough to end up in prison certainly worked for her.

Papa had spent a night in a Parisian cell once; the right person had complained to the right officer about the peddler on the street corner and he had gotten arrested. "Christine, min älskling, be still," he had cooed to her as she cried and kicked at the officer, begging him to free her father. "All will be well by morning."

She had spent the night in the guardhouse that night refusing to leave her father and not wanting to take to the streets at night. That guard was nice, she recalled; he stayed with her, gave her bread and some warm milk.

A firm hand on her shoulder jolted her out of her thoughts, and she turned to look at the guard behind her, who had come to a stop. "This is the one, mademoiselle," he said with a nod toward a cell a few steps away. She had hardly even noticed it, too lost in her memories.

With a nod in return, she stepped closer to the iron bars. Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light by mow, which allowed her to see the pale figure sitting against the far wall, a chain locked around one ankle and another anchoring his wrist to the bricks behind him. If she hadn't known who it was that she was looking at, she might not have recognized him; the cotton shirt and trousers hanging loosely on his thin frame were the complete opposite of the finely-crafted tailored suits she was so used to seeing him in. he never would have let himself look so dishevelled back when he had the freedom to have such an opinion.

A warm orange glow illuminated the hallway then. The guard had finally lit his lamp and stepped forward to hang it on a hook in the wall, but Christine almost wished he hadn't. The prisoner—the angel, that precious friend of hers—shrunk away from the light, but not fast enough. She still saw him.

"You shouldn't be here," he said weakly. His voice was hoarse and he sounded so parched; when was the last time he had been given even the smallest sip of water? That thought, however, was quickly crowded out by more worrisome ones as she looked at him and took in more details, even in the dim light. The left side of his face was more gaunt than usual; the side he had always seen as the only attractive part of him, especially when it was done up with a manicured brow and shadow on the eyelid, was now almost as hard to look at as the deformed side.

On top of that, much to Christine's horror, there were injuries. His right eye was an awful purple colour and quite swollen and there was dried blood on his upper lip. Just the sight was enough to make a lump grow in her throat; he had only been here for a few days, what had he been subjected to?

"You really thought that I would be able to avoid coming to see you, knowing this would be my last chance?" she whispered, biting the inside of her cheek when she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.