Between Mirrors and Roses (A Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction) ✓

19: Don Juan, Completed

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Erik

I paced in the parlor for ages after Christine turned in for the night.

Following our return from the daroga's, she joined me for a late lunch; then she departed to find Madame Giry, miraculously cured of her headache, in time to begin preparations for the evening's show. She sang like the angel she was and floated across the stage like she was meant to be there and nowhere else. Then she returned once again to my home.

Christine was always utterly poised and collected, though at times she didn't see it. There was something about her—something intangible and otherworldly—that inclined me to believe her story about appearing from the future, to the incredulity of my rational senses.

When I tried to dissect the fact that she was from a different era, my head spun even more than it already did every time I thought about her. Like now—by now, she would have wrapped herself in a robe, slid between the sheets, and settled her head on a pillow, her damp waves of hair spilling across the covers like a rippling shawl.

It was worst at night, when darkness stole in through the cracks in the doors and my defenses. I fought back the shadows with a wasteful quantity of candles, but their flickering flames, so powerful in the waking hours, seemed to dim with the erosion of my self-control. It was worst when I was alone with my thoughts, trapped in the prison of my mind—when Christine closed her door and slipped out of stiff dresses into airy night things, ethereal silk brushing her soft skin...

I stopped pacing and gripped the edge of a table, endeavoring in vain to dispel the image. I was a monster, and I knew it.

Christine had already given me her love and companionship; why did I need her body as well? Lust was the most hated of all my emotions, corrupting my thoughts like a poison. It dragged me in an inescapable downward spiral—a whirlpool of self-loathing. Lust was a weakness to be overcome, nothing more. I only had to work harder to control myself and rid myself of these desires. Nothing could ever come of them; it wasn't possible that Christine wanted me the way I wanted her.

When I could stand her nearness no longer, I threw my coat over my shoulders and went for a walk, hoping the chill night air would freeze my thoughts away. It did not; it only froze my toes and enhanced my agitation.

I stormed back down to my house. I wished it were our house. I wished I could knock the snow off my shoes and hang up my coat and return to Christine in our bed, holding her tight and feeling her warmth spread through me.

What would she think if I proposed? She might believe me mad, but the part of me that had gotten to know her these months made me second guess my pessimism—made me wonder if she might not laugh but take me seriously.

I laid down in my coffin, oddly comforted by the walls enclosing me on all sides. I used to lay here and wish I were dead, but nonetheless, every rotten day I emerged. Then, in Christine, I discovered the reason I'd been left alive. Christine made me feel that the dreary nights and endless days were worth bearing if I had some small gleam of joy to look forward to in her smile. She made me feel like more than a corpse with a semi-human face. She made me feel like a man: the real kind, with houses on snowy streets and wives in their beds.

...

Christine

For three and a half days, Erik worked nonstop on his opera like the ghost of Alexander Hamilton possessed him. He was nearly finished, and the house thrummed with his contagious excitement.

Often, he abandoned the organ to compose parts for other musical instruments: the sheer number and variety he knew astounded me. Sometimes he had me play overly-simple melodies on one instrument as he added elaborate accompaniment with another, but mostly I just listened to the furious strains of music, now familiar from days of hearing on repeat. I also fed him; Erik didn't cook a single meal those days, and I felt sure that if I hadn't been there, he would have skipped food altogether.