An Accident
An Accident
A/N: This one-shot was actually written for a Morbidity Contest a long time ago. I appreciate feedback of all kinds.
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Christine layed contentedly on the four-poster bed. Her russet hair fell in tousled curls to her waist, while her eyes showed the first signs of sleepiness. Her eyes were also the only thing on her lovely body that appeared to show any sign of aging. They remained blue and winsome, but the faint lines surrounding them could look melancholy, as well as the sometimes-haunted glaze that would fill her irises if she forgot to try to hide it.
Her occasional melancholy only served to make her Swedish beauty more ethereal. Her pale, somber face framed by dark hair painted an exquisite portrait, if one could forget the pain that caused the sadness.
Yet now a smile rested on her mouth, counteracting any depression. Her happiness stemmed from the warm bundle in her arms. Her son was a precious child. The thin blue bonnet tied under his chin combined with his pink skin gave the baby an appearance like that of a sleeping fairy child.
A small laugh almost passed her lips; her son was only in his infancy now, he would have years to grow masculine features. She would settle for a beautiful man as easily as she would settle for a handsome one.
But her thoughts were only wishful daydreams. At the thought of his future, she once again grew despondent. Her son was beautiful, except for the one flaw that would repel anyone who was not in love with him. The scarred tissue stood out starkly on his right cheek. The texture felt like chafed leather. Christine had shuddered upon seeing it, until her maternal love to accept whatever came next took over. She loved the two-year old more than anything.
Raoul reposed beside her, his fair blond hair darkened to burnished copper against candlelight on the bedside table. His still-boyish features were set in casual concentration as he turned another page of the book in his hands.
He had been a good father. She had seen the look of dread on his face at the mark-the accident-but he accepted the child all the same. His kindness extended farther than most would ever know.
Christine’s gaze traveled back to the blanketed child, and she reached out to caress his unmarked cheek as she did so often. Though the doctors promised the mark would not cause him pain, she always hesitated to touch it.
A small sound at the door caused her to look up, expecting the muffled groan of a clumsy servant. Instead the door flew open. When she saw the figure, the terror returned, the old wounds of fright that had bled so long ago split open once more at the seams.
Even though he was a thin man, the cloak caused his figure to take up most of the doorway. His clothing was black on black-what other color could the demonic prince of the night wear?
What frightened her most was neither the cloak nor the dead servant in his sinewy hand, but the rage that radiated from his masked visage…and the resolution.
A phrase her father had often used when telling stories of kings and generals came to her, rising from broken memories.
Der wille zur macht. He had the true will to power. It glowered in his eyes, those mad, relucent, terrible eyes. He might have been a warlord advancing on a quaking city for the resolution that burned icily in his gaze.
Erik let the murdered servant slide to the floor, the man’s broken neck floundering. Kicking the door closed, he held out a skeletal arm, a slim finger pointing at the former opera singer.
“I have come for what is mine.” His tenor had deepened to a commanding dictum.
A shudder wracked through her. After so long, the Phantom had returned for her. Was this year of peace merely a sabbatical one? She lurched up in the bed; barely aware of the sleeping shift she wore that left nothing to imagination. She had worn more the last time, but that had hardly made a difference.
“She’s not yours!”
The cry came from the viscount as he leapt from the bed. Erik turned to regard the youth with a heavy stare.
“Not her.”
And suddenly Christine knew what he wanted. She clutched the child to her breast, as if she could somehow hide the babe inside her, as she had done before.
Raoul moved on instinct. Christine was in danger; his family was in danger. If the Grim Reaper wanted to reclaim its own, the viscount would not just let him walk in and take it. Did the Phantom know how long it had taken his wife to recover from her ordeal at the Opera House? Now he returned, tearing apart all the fragile binding that kept her wounds closed.
Never! His poor wife, who had gone through so much. When they had run from the opera house cellars, he had vowed to heal her and keep her safe. No one should have experienced what she had gone through. Never could he let her relive it. He was certain it would kill her if she did.
The vicomte yanked a polished revolver from the drawer of the end table.
Erik moved more quickly than smoke. In an instant, he slid up to the viscount and seized the gun from his grasp. The first sob came shuddered from Christine’s throat, the helpless sound of a trapped animal. Her nightmares warred before her.
“Not this time, boy,” Erik hissed.
The vicomte had managed to clip him once, on a night so long ago. A night he had been careless. Never again would he get the same chance. Erik lashed out with the revolver, smashing the metal barrel into the viscount’s temple.
A crack followed-not a crack like a snapping twig, but the crunching of fine china. Raoul collapsed, a low moan his only epitaph.
Erik raised his gaze to Christine, who was pressed against the headboard with the babe in her arms, choking sobs shaking through her slender body. The masked man stood there as if existing outside of the mental frenzy.
“No Erik! No, it was an accident! The kitch-I never meant to!” Her cries were strangling her speech so that even he could barely hear, if he even cared to.
Erik walked forward slowly, his resolution and natural apprehension dueling for dominance. The deformed child was his. Who were they to think that it would live in happiness up here in such a barbaric, vicious world? Noble or not, the babe’s future would forever be dark. He should have known it would inherit his flaws.
He had promised himself not to pursue her. Christine and her vicomte had just happened to be walking in the late evening through Paris, past the opera house, the child with them. He had seen then, the child with its head covered but its face still visible. And he had known.
They had just happened to walk near the opera house again one day. He had seen again then, and had begun to think-and plan.
His mind worked as he continued, the only way to keep him distracted from Christine’s tears and pleas. Perhaps when the child reached a traveling age, they could move far away. Never would he neglect his son like so many would if the child remained here.
At last, he reached her bedside, but hell if he was any sort of doctor. Erik reached for the babe.
“Erik don’t…the kitchen!…they’ll kill you, you know,” Christine babbled on now.
It might have hurt him to know she thought mere household staff could catch him. That was, if he could still feel pain. He tore the blanketed form from her grasp, earning himself more choked moans.
“It was only an accident, an accident only…” She whimpered to herself, anything else she might have said unintelligible.
For just a moment, his gaze thawed. When he spoke, his voice once more contained a trace of its true beauty, even if the words were not kind.
“Do not think I am acting out of mere vengeance. How could you think one so like me could ever find a place in your world?
Christine only wept, eyes closed though sticky with tears, and pressing her arms against her chest as if a ghost of the babe still remained. Erik tucked the child inside his cloak and turned to leave. A cry stopped him.
“No!”
Christine had somehow risen to her feet and staggered towards him, her maternal instincts obviously driving her past the point of reason. Her stride was ragged and unsteady. There was no chance she could have kept her feet when she tripped over the body of her dead husband. The woman went down on top of the vicomte, and did not try to get up.
Erik turned and left the room, a wraith once more.
Christine continued to sob as she lied sprawled on the floor, sobbing for her world that had been lost in the span of several minutes. Her child and husband. Erik would get away, she new that now. He would always escape. The darkness had befriended him, the only one to do so. The abyss did not throw its companions to the dogs.
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Erik walked through the streets. Once, the babe had begun to whimper. He had sung it an old Persian hymn, quieting the child.
A streetlamp came upon him, creating a circle of pale light. He found himself impatient. His son…he wanted to see his son. The child had been too swaddled in a blanket and bonnet for him to see anymore than his face. This part of Paris was deserted. The drunkards inhabited another area.
The babe made not a sound as Erik loosened the soft blanket. The child’s little body was further dressed in a miniature sleeping gown. Gently he unknotted the lacing of the bonnet, the thin little cloth. Once the covering was off, he could see his child more clearly. Erik looked down at his only flesh and blood.
A gasp instantly writhed through him. The bairn almost fell from his grasp. He stiffened, clutching the child desperately, trying to believe-trying to believe he was not seeing correctly. His memory balked, trying to make sense of this night and only producing ragged thoughts. His child! His only son! No! His breath was a tattered thing.
He did not need the streetlight to see the babe. The lamp however, served only to further illuminate the child’s head of feathery, blond hair, burnished copper in the lamplight