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Emptiness	By : Josephine1881 Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Slash Views: 8257 -:- 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.

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Author's Note: I am ever so sorry that I didn't update sooner. I moved to a different country and started a new job. As you can imagine, things were very hectic for a while. Thanks for your patience!

Chapter Forty

Unlike Erik, I didn’t have anything in particular to do that morning. After he had left, I stayed in bed for a little while, lost in daydreams about all the nice things that had happened that day and the day before. I came to the conclusion that in the end, it had all turned out rather well. Erik and I had not been discovered by anyone, and even though we were not together at the moment, I knew that we’d meet again soon.

It was my growling stomach that finally gave me the impulse to get up. Stretching and yawning, I dragged my reluctant body out of bed. A glance on the clock told me that it was past ten. Luckily, I could have breakfast whenever I pleased. The cook was used to my brother ordering his meals at whichever time the mood took him, so I was fairly certain she’d do the same for me, especially since I was rather friendlier and more polite than Philippe.

I put on fresh underwear and my dressing gown, combed my hair with my fingers and was almost at the door when I realised that I couldn’t leave the room like that. Some distant part of my mind had recalled just in time that somewhere in the house, there were Philippe and the two girls, Annabelle and Angelique. I didn’t want them to see me with so few clothes on. On the other hand, I was very hungry. The thought of going into the bathroom first made my stomach groan in protest.

I sat down at the edge of my bed, considering my options. Sometimes, Philippe didn’t bring the girls home with him once he had played with them. He had his way with them in the back room of an inn or even an alley and then left them there. I was so well-informed about my brother’s habits because, unlike me, he didn’t find them in the least despicable and told me about them freely.

So maybe Annabelle and Angelique weren’t in the house. It was a good thought, but it had one fundamental flaw: The girls were from the countryside. Philippe’s manners were anything but good when it came to dealing with women, but even he knew better than to leave two girls on their own in Paris at night. No, I was sure that he had brought them along to our home.

This left me with no alternative. Trying my best to appease my aching stomach by putting my hand over it, I opened the door and crept down the corridor to my bathroom. Philippe’s part of the house had its own bathroom, so the chances of meeting him or the girls were slim, but I didn’t want to risk it. Luckily, I didn’t meet anyone.

Once I was safely inside the bathroom, I washed quickly and put on the clean clothes that I had brought with me. It hadn’t been easy to make up my mind as to what to wear. On the one hand, I knew that my sisters expected me to be well-dressed. On the other hand, I didn’t want Philippe to think that I had made an effort in order to impress the girls. In the end, I had decided for a simple, yet elegant white shirt and black trousers.

All in all, it didn’t take more than a quarter of an hour, but it felt much longer. My stomach was anything but happy. I hadn’t known it could be so impatient. Spending the night with the man I loved and having serious discussions with him really seemed to make me hungry.

I left the bathroom and went along the corridor and down the stairs, walking more freely, now that I was fully dressed. I met no one but a maid, who greeted me cheerfully. I smiled to myself. I knew that all our servants liked me much better than my arrogant, often temperamental brother. Unlike him, I had never seen the point in shouting at people in order to demonstrate my power over them.

I continued my way to the dining room, growing more hopeful with every step. So far, I had neither seen Philippe nor the girls. Maybe they were still asleep or had already left the house. My brother’s ideas were as unpredictable as his temper. He could get up very early when the mood took him. Perhaps he had decided to show the girls a little more of Paris before he sent them back to their home.

My hopes were shattered the moment I entered the dining room. Philippe was sitting at head of the table with the morning paper. Hearing someone enter the room, he looked up at me.

“Ah, Raoul,” he greeted me. “Awake already, are we?”

“Apparently yes,” I muttered.

I briefly considered turning on my heel and leaving the house, eating at a café, but I knew it was pointless even to think about it. Now that I was here, there was no getting back. Every now and then, I had to talk to my brother.

With a barely audible sigh, I sat down at the table. Philippe rang a bell, and the cook appeared.

“Good morning, M. le Vicomte,” she greeted me.

I could feel her eyes linger on my face longer than they’d have usually done. With a start, I recalled that the last time she had seen me, I had almost been in tears, mourning the loss of Erik’s love. Surely she was eager to know if I felt better now. I gave her a wide smile in order to tell her without words that I was all right.

“Good morning,” I gave back. “I would like to have some breakfast. And coffee, please.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding as she left the room.

“You shouldn’t be so friendly to the servants,” Philippe remarked over the top of his newspaper. “They might get used to it, and then what will happen?”

“Yes, what will happen?” I echoed mutinously. “Perhaps they will feel a little better about themselves and their work. Would that be so horrible?”

“If I decide to make a servant – or should we say, a maid – feel better about herself, I will certainly not do so with words,” my brother said.

I couldn’t see his self-satisfied smile behind the newspaper, but I knew it was there. Involuntarily, my hands clenched into fists under the table. I hated the way Philippe spoke of the maids, as if they were lucky if they got the chance to end up in his bed.

I knew better. As far as the gossip I sometimes heard in the corridors was to be believed, there were some maids who actually enjoyed being chosen as the mistress of the Comte de Chagny. Philippe seemed to be an attentive and skilled lover, who was capable of giving pleasure as well as receiving it. But that was just the point: First and foremost, he thought of his own pleasure. If a girl didn’t do what he wanted, he was quick to throw her out or to treat her so cruelly that she left on her own accord. I knew that it had happened more than once before I had been old enough to do something about it.

“No need to be jealous, little brother,” Philippe said. Like always, he had misinterpreted my silence completely. “I’m sure that if you tried really hard, you could get yourself a nice little maid, too. Or would you rather I helped you? Which one would you like? You can have anyone but Viviana. I want her first.”

I could only gape at Philippe. I had never met another person who was so utterly incapable of accepting that not everyone in the world had the same opinion and feelings as they did.

“Stop it,” I finally managed to get out, and not a moment too soon.

The cook had re-entered the room, carrying a large tray. I threw her an anxious glance. Had she heard how Philippe had spoken of her daughter? Her face was perfectly smooth, free of any kind of emotion. I looked at my brother instead, but he seemed unperturbed. It was another reason why I couldn’t stand the way he treated our servants: To him, they were like pieces of furniture, incapable of an own opinion or emotions. Knowing him, he might even have momentarily forgotten that Viviana was the cook’s daughter, like he forgot so many things that didn’t concern him directly.

There was silence while the cook put a variety of plates in front of me and filled our cups with coffee. It was only when she had left that Philippe continued the conversation.

“So, which one do you want?” he asked, as if we had never been interrupted.

“None of them,” I replied tersely.

“All right, all right,” he agreed, giving me what he probably thought was an understanding smile. “None of the maids, then. I see. You are sorry that you missed your chance with the twins, aren’t you?”

A defiant ´No!´ was on the tip of my tongue, but I held myself back just in time. I knew that it was pointless. If I denied it, Philippe would only think that I didn’t want to admit it and annoy me more with his stupid encouragement. I decided that if I wanted to have breakfast anytime before Christmas, it was time for a little distraction.

“Where are they, anyway?” I asked, trying to sound interested, but not too eager.

“Still upstairs,” my brother answered. “After last night, they were a little sleepy, if you know what I mean.”

He winked at me. For the second time that day, I resisted the urge to punch him. Instead, I forced myself to ask,

“So, what have the three of you been up to last night?”

It was all the encouragement Philippe needed. He launched into the story with great enthusiasm, and I could finally start having breakfast. The food was excellent: crisp rolls, sweet jam and honey and an assortment of delicious pasties. The coffee was hot, strong and warmed my whole body from the inside.

The meal would have been even better without the background noise of Philippe’s story. I tried my best not to listen, but it was hard work. The food alone, no matter how good it was, didn’t manage to distract me completely. I didn’t hear every word of the story, but I got the gist of what had happened, and it disgusted me.

Before Erik and I had become lovers, I might have taken the disgust as a sign of jealousy. Yes, I had sometimes been jealous of Philippe, even though I would have rather swallowed my tongue than admit it to him. It had simply been the fact that he got to do so many things I did not.

These days, however, my disgust had rather different reasons. It wasn’t so much what Philippe and the girls had done, but the way he spoke of it. In vain, I searched for signs of love or at least affection or tenderness in the story – anything to indicate that Annabelle and Angelique had meant something to my brother, that he had not simply chosen them because they had been at the right place at the right time and looked pretty enough. The way Philippe talked, it might as well have been any other girls.

I watched my brother as he ate, watched him boast and brag. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes shone with excitement. Quite suddenly, I felt something I had never felt for him before: pity. Philippe had no idea that he was missing something. I wondered if he would ever realise. If he did, it might already be too late to find someone, that one special someone. It would be too late to find his Erik.

I smiled to myself, almost a little sadly. I knew it would have been a waste of breath to point out that gap in my brother’s life. He would have never understood it. He would have laughed at me, called me hopeless and a dreamer... or worse.

But my sisters would understand me. The sudden thought made me cheerful again. Sophie and Clarille had both found the love of their lives in their husbands. They may not understand about why it was that particular person who made me so happy, but they’d understand about love. I felt full of hope. Perhaps it had not been such a bad idea to invite Erik along after all.

“Raoul? Raoul!”

I looked up at Philippe and realised that in the end, I had managed to think of something else altogether after all. I also realised that I was scratching the plate with my fork, even though the food had long since disappeared in my mouth.

“Can’t you even appreciate a good story?” Philippe asked in exasperation. “I assume you didn’t hear my question either. I asked if you want to go upstairs and wake up the girls. Maybe you’d get a little love after all.”

He smirked.

I smiled at him pleasantly. A little love – he didn’t even know what the word truly meant.

“No, thank you,” I declined his offer. “I’m afraid I have an appointment that can’t wait, and I’m running late already. And in the afternoon, I’ll go and meet Sophie and Clarille. We will see each other later.”

I got up from the table. Before Philippe had as much as opened his mouth to speak, I had left the room.

Author’s Note: Shortly after I had finished this chapter, I was reminded of a “Monk” episode, “Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees”, in which Mr. Monk encourages Julie, his assistant’s daughter, to wait for her special someone. He calls it her “Trudy”, after his beloved dead wife. In the name of Mr. Monk and of Raoul, I feel the need to encourage you, too. I firmly believe that there is a special someone out there for all of us. Sometimes, it feels that we will never find them, but that’s not true. We will find them, sooner or later. I found him, just when I had given up hope, and I am more than happy about it. So don’t give up. Just my thought of the day. Yours sincerely, Jenny Wren
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Emptiness