[FIC] A Cry To Heaven (Phantom of the Opera, PG, gen/het)

[winter]

This is a sequel to Singing Songs In Your Head. You are very much advised to read that story first, then this one. There'll be one more story in this cycle and one optional side-story, because I owed fyrie lots :P

*goes back to writing Elisabeth-fic*

Fandom: Phantom of the Opera
Characters: Erik, Raoul
Summary: As they battle with grief, Erik and Raoul revisit the place where the tragedy's first act took place.


A CRY TO HEAVEN


A CRY TO HEAVEN



The last spring frost came on the heels of a day's worth of rain, covering the stone tiles with a thin glaze of ice. A single misstep would send a man falling into the street below, one more body added to the death toll of the Opera Populaire.

Erik shed his hooded cloak. The cold air numbed his skin, then his blood, and hopefully his thoughts at last. He was not alone on the roof, but in the days that had passed, he had learned not to mind this company.

The opera house was still closed for renovations, but the word of its patron carried far, and when one guard had been reluctant, Erik knew the right words that opened the doors. He had watched these people for a long time after all.

He did not know why they were there. At times it felt as if he had no will of his own, a mere marionette with its limbs still twitching even after the curtain had fallen on the last matinee. Was he a ghost now that he had laid aside that very name? Men did not seem to notice him, none but one.

Raoul had fire enough for both of them.

"Erik?" The other man's voice still trembled, but it felt more like bemused laughter than the tears that had been scattered over the streets during the past hours as they wandered from the morgue to this mausoleum of music. "Did you know this was where I first asked her to love me?"

"Yes. I was here." He traced the wing of the stone angel, as ice-covered as the tiles under his feet. Just as slippery. When had he told the man his name?

"So that's why-"

"Yes."

There was still a line of soot along the doors to the roof. The wooden staircase had caught fire first, from the curtains that went up in flame when the chandelier fell. Now frost glittered darkly in the reflected light of the city.

"I didn't know," Raoul whispered.

There was a secret to walking on ice. The balance had to be carefully arranged, each foot coming down from directly above. Any deviation from the pattern could spell disaster.

A chill wind picked up, tearing at his hair as he walked across the roof.

"I heard everything," he heard himself say. "I swore vengeance on her."

"Not on me?"

"How could I blame you for falling in love with her? No man could help it. She - she-"

Warm hands held his shoulders, wrists resting on his shoulder blades. "When we left, what did you do?"

He remained silent.

"What did you do, Erik?" The voice was low, insistent, too close to his ear. "What did you do?"

He did not know if he wanted to scream, let me go, or, none of your business, but the words ran together into an inarticulate snarl. He twisted, struggled, his hands flying back to push and claw and attack.

They slipped on the ice, landing heavily at the feet of a stone angel. Raoul's hair fell over his eyes.

The younger man reached out, tracing his fingers a breath's width from Erik's scars, his eyes pleading. "What did you do?"

The memory tore at him. "I screamed."

The stones were slippery, but somehow, propping up one another, they struggled to their feet, then across the roof again, to the angel that rose over the plaza below. Erik's hands shook and skidded on the stone wings, but Raoul helped him climb. Finally he rested his hands on top of the wings, his breath misting in the air.

"You'll have to do it," Raoul whispered from behind him. "I don't have the voice."

"You have the words," Erik breathed. Then he breathed in, the icy air a series of shards in his lungs, until he thought his chest would burst.

And he sang.

He sang for the opera house, cursed and abandoned by philistines who feared what they did not know. He sang for his sadness and inertia, the mask he abandoned and the scars he carried. He sang for Raoul's first victory and first loss. He sang for the others - Miranda Giry and little Meg, the corpse de ballet, the chorus girls, Firmin, André, even Carlotta, who had given all to the dream of music that had shattered. And he sang for her.

Christine, Christine, Christine, his voice rising to heights that almost rivalled hers. His light, his nemesis, his angel. The little girl, the woman grown, the body they had left in the morgue, grey and blackened, seen out of the corner of one eye as he followed Raoul's fleeing footsteps.

This, this was the place to remember her. They would bury her tomorrow by her father's tomb, but here he sang her requiem.

With the last note, the last gasp of air from his lungs, he crumpled over the wings of the stone angel. He would have fallen if Raoul hadn't caught his legs, pulled him down until he lay on the ice again.

"Thank you," Raoul said as he stepped away to retrieve Erik's cloak. "For doing what I couldn't."

"We did it together," Erik muttered. He could feel the cold in his bones now, the shivers setting in. "It's always the work of many. Just like opera."

Raoul smiled as he sat down beside him. "It is, isn't it? I used to think it was just the singers, but there are hundreds of people backstage every night."

"There were." Around them, the night was silent. "Will they reopen it?"

"They want to. She - she was rehearsing for a new role, Lady Macbeth, for when we returned from our honeymoon."

Erik bowed his head. "She would have wanted it."

"Yes."

Raoul rose to his feet, then reached out to Erik and pulled him up. Together, they walked into the door that led back into the Opera.

-FINIS?-