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Rossignol	By : Savaial Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Het Views: 5240 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Rossignol
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Ch 4
- 5-Ch 5
- 6-Ch 6
- 7-7
- 8-Ch 8
- 9-Ch 9
- 10-Ch 10
- 11-Ch 11
- 12-Ch 12
- 13-Ch 13
- 14-Ch 14
- 15-Ch 15
- 16-Ch 16
- 17-Ch 17
- 18-Ch 18
- 19-Ch 19
- 20-Ch 20
- 21-Ch 21
- 22-Ch 22
- 23-Ch 23
- 24-Ch 24
- 25-Ch 25
- 26-Ch 26
- 27-Ch 27
- 28-Ch 28
- 29-Ch 29
- 30-30- Epilogue
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“Mama Valarius is ill,” Christine announced. I looked up from my newspaper, noting she and her husband were standing very close together. “Raoul and I are going to visit her,” she continued in a trembling voice. “This may be the last time we see her, and if she is dying I intend to stay with her until the end.”

“Would Lescot know of her or where she lives?” I tossed my reading material down and got up.

“No Erik, he does not,” Raoul answered. “Mama Valarius is a friend of Christine’s, but I knew her also. However, Celeste has never met her. There is no way she could have told Lescot of her.”

“Where may we reach you?” I decided to trust the boy on this. He had shown me considerable improvement to his spine and his senses.

Christine pressed a paper with an address written upon it into my hand and patted my arm. “If anything should happen, contact us there. We will wait for word from you in case it is not safe to return.”

“Very well Christine,” I acquiesced. She and her boy had thought of their departure quite well. It would be a relief not to have to stumble over them or entertain them while I planned Lescot’s execution. All I had to do was complete my plans and amuse Celeste in the meantime. Each task appealed to me.

When they were finally gone I breathed a sigh of relief. Celeste came out of her room not too long afterward, a perplexed expression on her lovely face. “Is something the matter my dear?” I asked softly. She shook her head with a slight smile and dropped gracefully down beside me into the couch.

“I was just wondering why Raoul didn’t treat me to more of his high-handed warnings and such before he left,” she replied. Her hand traveled to the angel necklace at her throat and she toyed with the chain as was her habit. The silver flashed in the firelight…

“Your brother has grown tired of his dire warnings I imagine,” I offered by way of explanation, hoping to steer her away from the line of thought. I would not tell her Raoul had been the one to suggest marrying her, I would ask her myself.

Yes, I would ask Celeste to marry me. I was tired of being alone and even more tired of running from my face. If she refused me after I took off the mask I would accept my fate as a loveless monster, but I had to try. I would be every bit the fool Raoul DeChagny said I was if I did not at least try for happiness. I had nothing to lose here, nothing. But I would wait for the proper time to ask her.

“Raoul never gets tired of his own voice,” Celeste scoffed gently. “How do you think my lack of one escaped his notice for so long?”

A helpless laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “You are a clever little thing, aren’t you?” I leaned forward and picked up an empty cup from the tea serving. “Would you like a little refreshment? It is orange Pekoe and cut black tea this evening, not the Russian.”

“Yes please Erik, thank you.” Celeste accepted the cup. I poured from the pot and watched her eyes light up at the fragrance. She was almost child-like in her enjoyment of ordinary things. I knew her life had been bereft of ordinary pleasures for a very long time and it saddened me, but at least I could make her happy.

“When all this is over I want to go shopping,” Celeste announced abruptly. “I want fresh flowers and chocolates, a few new gowns and some books.” She glanced around the room, her eyes lighting upon a table full of paraphernalia in the corner. “And I want to try opium and absinthe and other things that are not good for me. I want to ride a horse down the center of Paris with you holding the reins, going at break-neck speed under a full moon like the devil is behind us.”

I smiled behind my mask. “You seem to know exactly what you want,” I ventured. “Is that all?”

“Not by far.” Celeste took a sip of tea and smiled at me coyly. “I want to learn this underground kingdom of yours. I want to walk that wire and swim in that lake and take your gondola in any direction that strikes me.”

“All of these things can easily be arranged.” I leaned back, putting my arms over the top of the sofa. “Really my dear, you ask for mere pittances in light of the fact that your benefactor is a genius and a magician.”

“Well Erik, it doesn’t take much to please me,” Celeste answered with a small laugh. She set her cup down and leaned her back against my chest. My arms seemed to go around her of their own accord.

I closed my eyes as I inhaled her scent. Her head rested against my breastbone, her hair draped over my body like a curtain. I felt her hand go over one of mine; the delicate touch of a butterfly had more weight. Slowly, she traced the veins and bones that made me with wonder and attention. “Your hands are perfect,” she whispered. “You can touch me to bring fire into my body or life into any instrument; you create and destroy like nothing I have ever seen.”

“I am only a man,” I answered, a lump rising in my throat. As much as her presence enflamed me, Celeste also stirred within me the most tender mercies. My feelings grew more and more intense for her. Just when I thought I had reached the height of my adoration she inspired new highs, spiraling me upward into the bluest heaven of forgiveness my tainted soul could imagine. I had done nothing to earn this sort of regard from a woman, nothing, and yet I was determined to take it.

“Maybe you are just a man Erik,” Celeste said, turning her head so that her lips brushed the underside of my jaw. “But you are an extraordinary man, every bit the genius you so immodestly claim. And I do love you.”

My heart lurched to a halt. Words left me as that fickle muscle in my chest slammed into a sudden staccato, beating a hot rhythm into my blood.

She loved me.

“And Erik, I know you cannot tell me the same right now, no matter how much you may feel in unity with me,” Celeste went on, stroking my throat with her hand and lips. “I am still married and you still have a code to follow. I am not beholden to it, I am just the embodiment of Eve and I must reflect all the wantonness of my sex. But when I am no longer married, when I am a widow, I hope that you will also say that you love me.”

I gripped her tight, feeling tears sliding past my mask. She had given me time and pledged herself to me all in one. My perfect, beautiful, savage little Celeste who was named for the heavens I never thought I could touch.

“Tell me you love me with your music Erik,” Celeste murmured. “Caress me with the notes as you want to caress me with your hands.”

I put my arms underneath her and stood. She trusted me to be noble and by God I would be noble if it killed me, but I would give her a taste of what she wanted.

I carried her into the music room. The harp that had begun our dance of seduction stood in its place of honor and I put her before it. Undoing her sling, I carefully felt along her arm. Her bone had mended. It was a soft mend, but she could go without the brace now. I undid all the wrapping and stood behind her. “You want me to touch you with my music?” I asked gently. “What if I cannot limit myself to that?”

Celeste leaned back until her rounded bottom touched my thighs and groin. Her hands coasted down the sides of my waist and down my legs. “I never said you couldn’t touch me,” she murmured lowly. “I said I wanted you to caress me with your music as you want to caress me with your hands.”

Thoughts of nobility tangled with the siren call of her soul. I wanted her. I wanted her over me, around me, inside me, in any way I could have her. Shuddering, I took her hands and placed them on the strings of the harp. “Let me take you out of this place and into the darkest, warmest nirvana,” I whispered, feeling her small body rock with my words. “If I touch you the way I truly want I’ll make an adulteress out of you.”

Before she could protest, I began to play the song with her hands. On the second refrain I began to sing.

Celeste, you are beauty of the storm
You are the boundless, open skies
You are the clay from which I form
And create a wondrous guise

Swim my dark waters, drown in my depths
Love me eternal, love me til death

Celeste, you are the fire in the forge
You are the anvil of my heart
You are the vast and burning gorge
And in you I fall apart

Swim my dark waters, drown in my depths
Love me eternal, love me til death

She was upon me before I could finish. Twisting, her arms went around me, pulled me down to her lips. “Take it off Erik,” she panted, “Take that thing off and kiss me!”

I had never wanted to obey anyone like I wanted to obey her. I choked upon the conflict, spasmed with the urge to do exactly what she wanted, but I could not do it. I could not take off my mask. Backing away from her, I hunched against the piano and fought the urge to scream my agony to the universe. “I cannot,” I moaned, “Celeste, forgive me, I cannot.”

Silence descended upon the room. I fell to my knees at her feet. This was all so familiar. My mask was still upon my face, but I had wallowed at a woman’s feet before. Any moment now she would begin to cry and my old, miserable heart would break anew. I could not bear to make Celeste cry. I would kill myself if I made her cry!

Her hand twined into my hair, softly, gently felt the locks that should have been trimmed months ago.

“It’s alright Erik, you don’t have to take it off,” Celeste said quietly. “Please don’t- I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Suddenly she was in my vision, kneeling in the floor right in front of me. “You don’t ever have to remove it for me,” she whispered.

“How can you say that?” I took her hands and placed them on my mask. “I will not stop you if you want to do it yourself, but I can’t do it on my own.”

Celeste lowered her eyes. “Erik, I will never, ever unmask you. It is your right to show me what you desire me to see. As long as I have your heart I do not have to have your face.” She crawled into my shaking arms and we fell to the floor in a heap of tangled limbs. “You can give me your love in a darkened room, or blindfold me, or put out my eyes if you wish, but I want it. I want you in whatever way you can give yourself, and I promise I will be happy with whatever limits you set.”

“Oh Celeste,” I sighed. “You already have my love. I wish that I was brave enough to give you all of me.”

We stayed on the Persian carpet until the fire completely died.

*************************************************************************************

In my ignorance, in my rank stupidity, I had believed all I would ever have to be happy was a woman’s love. It had been such a far task, such an impossible thing that I’d never had to think about it. Now, that woman was here and she loved me. Now I knew her love wasn’t enough.

Celeste tread carefully around me all the morning, her silent and comforting presence hovering on the outskirts of my mania. She knew what was wrong with me, I dared believe. Well, it was only my dreams crashing down around me. Dreams were silent affairs when forced into the real world. That silence begged to be rent with cries and sobs and declarations of love, but instead I let the silence coast on my madness.

I could not tell her what evil force had me in its grip. I could not tell her I wasn’t worthy of her love until I knew how to love myself.

That was the crux of my problem. I would never have the power to take off the mask for her until I learned not to hate myself. Even I was not so powerful as to learn to look in a mirror and not cringe away. My self loathing had spawned violence, murder, insanity, devils of every vice except delight. Until the day I knew how to accept my face I would never have enough to give her.

How could I profess to love Celeste if I could not battle this demon that wore my face? She deserved everything. She deserved a man who could give her his body and soul without holding anything back.

And so I carefully withdrew. I began avoiding her. It was better she learn to hate me than to end up with half a man for a husband. But it hurt her. I could see in her eyes that she had some idea of what I was doing and that gave her patience as well as pain. Her fortitude raised my level of self-hatred to a height previously unmatched. Any other woman would have abandoned me for the way I treated her.

I made meals and then vanished. I locked myself in my room. I went for long walks in the outer dungeon of the opera and did not return for hours at a time, telling myself I was preparing for Lescot and knowing all the while I was merely a coward. No, I did not deserve Celeste.

A week passed in this fashion. I lost weight and felt the shadow of true mania begin to settle on my shoulders like a leaden millstone. Still, Celeste did not push, did not interfere with my self imposed exile. She greeted me when I passed and even reached out to give me fleeting brushes against my hand with her own. I flinched every time. How could she stand to touch me? I would taint her. I prayed her brother would return soon and carry her off, get her away from my poison.

My music languished. I looked at the staff papers and instruments and saw them for what they were. They were meaningless. Music did not solve any of my problems and it never had. It had been one of my best illusions, a trick played upon myself. All music did was remind me I could never be an ordinary man. I had to steal people in order to be heard. I had to force my music into the ears of innocents to validate my genius.

In desperation I turned to drugs, but they too were stale and repugnant. They could not make me whole. I was so broken nothing would fix me. I threw my pipes and paraphernalia into a box and set them adrift on the lake. As they made their way to some unknown destination I did allow myself one smile. Surely some Stygian wanderer would be happy with my offering.

It wasn’t until Erik became a shadow that I truly appreciated his title of Opera Ghost. He was magnificent in his avoidance of me. I never knew where he was or how long he had been somewhere when I finally managed to stumble upon him. In this silent place he was as quiet a smoke and every bit as elusive. I couldn’t even track him by scent; he’d stopped wearing any sort of cologne and his new soap was as sterile as his manner toward me.

At first I did not understand. I cried to myself at night and wrapped in a big blanket to ward off the chill in my soul. His absence was a hole that made a vortex in my mind and body. What was he doing? I didn’t grasp what horror could have pulled him out of my life. This living death between us was real and hateful. His eyes glowed with pain and would not meet mine.

A week passed in this hell before I had my epiphany. He hated himself because he could not remove his mask for me. He was still trying to protect me, trying to be that guardian angel. He thought he did not deserve me.

I wept the night I came to understand the futility of my problem. There was no way I could reach out to him. I could protest that I didn’t care about the mask but it would do nothing to shake his resolve. His mind was made up. If he was so far gone as to abandon his music I was powerless to move him.

I took to singing in my room when he would go out to the lake. When he used the door to the lake I knew it by the vacuum of air. I put a feather just inside my bedroom door. When it suddenly disappeared I knew he’d returned. When it suddenly blew farther inside the room I knew he’d gone out. I sang using the old notes he’d made when he taught Christine. His terrible handwriting made my eyes hurt but I was determined not to give up. I needed something to do and this brought me closer to him.

Another week went by. I had had quite enough. I was sick of watching Erik dwindle to nothing over his ideas of worthlessness. It was ridiculous. He was a man of great merit! He was a man of passion and learning and he was rotting away right before me. I had to do something, but what?

Pacing in my room, I saw the feather blow toward my shoes. He was back. I had seconds to cross his path, maybe less. With my heart in my throat I marched out into the hallway. The sound of his bedroom door closing was like a herald of failure. Storming the castle seemed to be his line of work; I had only been the damsel in distress until this moment. The copper tang of blood burst in my mouth as my teeth came down on my tongue. He could do nothing but refuse me entrance.

I went to his door and knocked. “Erik, I need to talk to you,” I said firmly.

“I’m not up to talking,” Erik’s voice answered. He sounded about as solid as mist.

“I’m not going away,” I answered back. “You open this door or I’ll- I’ll break it!”

The faintest chuckle was his only reply.

All right then.

I went into his workshop and looked for a suitable battering ram. This damsel was sick and tired of her black knight’s reticence. A large mallet rested on his table beside a piece of half-beaten steel. God only knew what project this was. I hefted the thing and staggered at the heaviness of it. It had to be at least a quarter of my weight. I dragged it back down the hallway, hearing splinters forming on the wooden portions of the floor.

“Erik, are you going to let me in?” I managed to get the mallet on my shoulder.

“No Celeste, please do go find other entertainment,” Erik answered.

“I’ll break this door Erik!”

“Be my guest,” he replied, sounding amused.

I looked for an obvious weak spot in the door. As far as I could tell I would have to hit the doorknob and lockset, the hinges were unexposed. My arms trembled as I lifted the enormous hammer. “I am your guest Erik,” I shouted. “And I’m sick of you hiding from me!” As I spoke I dropped the hammer down on the shiny metal in front of me. The smashing sound almost deafened me in the stone-walled corridor. The knob snapped off.
With a shout of triumph I horse-kicked his door and it fell through.

Erik stood in the center of the room. His eyes took me in as I let the mallet fall to the floor. Even with a mask coving his face I could see I’d shocked him. His golden eyes were as wide as saucers.

“You-you ruined my door,” he said softly. “What in hell are you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking!” I snapped. “I was feeling! How dare you go off and sulk away from me?”

“I wasn’t sulking!” Erik marched over to me and picked up the hammer as if it weighed nothing. “What- why?” He brandished the instrument before my eyes. “You could have gotten hurt swinging this thing around!”

“Quit dodging the issue,” I retorted, pushing the hammer out of his hand. When it hit the floor I almost thought it was going to go through, but it merely cracked the slate. “You’ve been avoiding me for weeks now. I want to know why you think that’s a good thing.”

“I can’t explain myself,” Erik murmured, stepping away. “It is for your benefit.”

“Living without you is to my benefit?” I was incredulous. “You giving up on life is to my benefit? That is utterly insane.” I swept a hand down the front of his chest, digging into his ribs. “You’ve lost weight Erik, and you’re acting strange.”

“Perhaps this is who I am,” Erik said grimly, retreating from my touch. “Perhaps I’m not who you think I am.”

“Perhaps I’m not who you think either,” I said, bristling. “If you think I’m going to stand passively by while you kill yourself you’ve sorely misjudged me.”

Erik’s eyes flared hot. He took a step toward me. “Go back to your room Celeste,” he said lowly. “I promise you my death isn’t going to be quick. I’ve tried many times to kill myself and it never works. But you can’t help me and it is dangerous for you to be with me.”

“You would never hurt me,” I vowed, not making a move to obey him. “Never in a thousand years would you hurt me Erik. You can’t bully me into leaving.”

Erik grabbed his hair and made a noise of frustrated pain. “For the love of Christ, please go back to your room! You don’t know what I can do. You don’t know what happens to me when I’m pushed!”

The ringing of a high bell echoed through the room. Erik lowered his hands. In the stillness I heard him sigh. “It’s almost over,” he whispered. His hands fumbled at his top coat and I stepped forward to help him remove it. We reverted back to an instinctive ease with each other in mere seconds. Before I could assimilate it, Erik moved away from me. “Your husband comes a-calling,” he said in a terrible voice. “He’s late. I do so hate late guests.”

Erik swept a bottle full of clear liquid off his bedside table, stuffing a pristine handkerchief over it in his pants pocket. “Be a dear and get some sleep Celeste,” he said in an emotionless tone. “I’ll go great our company properly.”

“Erik.” I looked at him. “Please be careful.” I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to him. “Whatever happens, promise me you’ll come back safe.”

Erik took off his shoes. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew he was smiling. “I will come back safely Celeste, don’t worry. But I may be gone quite some time. It could take me a few days to come back. You’ll be able to manage, won’t you?”

“I-yes,” I said quickly. I wanted to ask him why it would take him so long, but I knew he wouldn’t answer me. The best thing I could do was assure him I was alright by myself. “We have quite a bit of food here and I have a lot of sleep to catch up on,” I said.

“Good, you get some rest,” Erik answered. He reached out and touched my cheek gently. “You’ll be free soon.”

“Oh Erik, you’ve already freed me,” I said, feeling tears come to my eyes. “Your love set me free.”

His eyes closed. “You beautiful woman,” he murmured. “Erik is about to ensure your freedom is never questioned again.” With that he walked past me and was gone. I felt the draft that signaled the door had opened and I knew I was alone.
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Rossignol