Work Text:
Christine Daaé had been married for six months now. She supposed it could have been worse. Raoul was alive, though she wasn’t allowed to contact him, nor him her, but her vow to Erik had eased his temper and he’d sworn to her he would not harm the Viscount. He was not a terrible husband, all things considered, and she knew he was likely trying to be best he could, but he was not the kind of husband she had dreamed of one day having.
Still, she guessed she gave him credit for improving. He hadn’t murdered anyone since he had promised her not to, at least not that she was aware of. She was allowed her small freedoms to come and go as she pleased, though never for too long. She was allowed to continue performing at the opera. He was her jailor, but he was a kind one, if one could ignore the constant, unspoken threat that hung over the Vicomte’s life.
By six months, much of her hate towards her husband had faded, replaced by resignation and pity and, increasingly, annoyance. Life with Erik would not be quite so bad, she mused, if not for the damn party tricks. At every turn, it seemed, he was ready and waiting with a deck of cards and a wide grin, and this was somehow more unsettling than it should be.
In his quest to be like other men, he attempted to take her to a fancy restaurant one night. She obliged him in this quest, dressing up and pretending to not notice his false nose, trying to act the part of a good wife to him.
She grit her teeth and stared hard at her menu as he conversed with the waiter, carrying on far too long with a conversation about wine, completely oblivious — as he usually was — that the poor waiter was uncomfortable.
At last the poor young man escaped, and Erik turned those glimmering eyes to her. She felt her heart drop. For a brief moment, time seemed to stretch infinitely as he looked at her smiled that stretched, unhinged grin of his.
Despite knowing something was coming, she jumped when the wine glass next to her asked in a disturbing falsetto, ”Is Christine enjoying her evening out?”
She rolled her eyes at him, not giving him the satisfaction of looking at the wine glass.
“Don’t. Don’t start,” she warned.
“Don’t start what?” he asked, with all the innocence in the world.
She sipped from her water glass and looked around, trying to ignore his antics. It wasn’t often that they went out — it was less often that he remembered to bathe before doing so, too. He preferred staying in and working on his masterpieces, but tonight he had pulled out all the stops. She didn’t know why he had to ruin it with his buffoonery.
“It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?” he asked, swallowing hard and tapping his fingers rhythmically on the table.
“Yes,” she conceded.
He brightened slightly, as though he’d just won an argument.
She turned her gaze from the other gawking patrons to the surface of their own table, unable to take the stares in their direction that were currently multiplying. She supposed they did make quite a pair — she, a young woman dressed in finery with delicately coiffed curls, and Erik, who sat opposite her in equal finery, but with a very clearly fake nose tied to his face and from which hung a very clearly fake mustache. Perhaps the effect would have been less jarring had he either pained the nose to match his sallow skin tone or else put makeup of a normal, healthy color on his face, but he did neither and she never knew how to bring that up to him. His odd look was topped off — quite literally — by the handful of hair that sprouted from a singular spot on the top of his head and nowhere else. She had learned not to stare. Everyone else in the world, it seemed, had yet to learn this.
Didn’t it bother him? Didn’t he notice? But he only searched her face anxiously, as if she were the only person in the world — or at least the only person in the world who mattered. She felt a brief wave of pity, supplanted by a deep tiredness.
She wished she could be a better wife to him. She wished she had something to talk about, something to fill the awkward silence that pressed in around them, but the truth was that she already spent so much time around him that he already knew everything going on in her life, and he had already told her many times over what he was working on while she was upstairs and on stage.
“This evening isn’t half as lovely as Christine!” said the fork on the table.
Christine pointedly looked away, pressing her lips together.
A quick glance at Erik showed her that he was beginning to despair. Why did he so badly want to act like a clown, like a child at dinner? He was the one who had wanted to go out in the first place!
“You look, er, lovely yourself, Erik,” she managed, staring at the table, unable to say those words while looking him in the eye.
He choked like he was about to weep.
“Thank you, my dear,” his voice wavered.
The waiter approached, carrying two plates to the table. He was about to place Christine’s meal in front of her when suddenly the steak on her plate began to sing a little song.
The waiter screamed, dropping the plate. Christine screamed as her food splattered across the table and her dress. Everyone in the restaurant was staring now. Erik looked shocked, as though he never considered this might happen.
She began to apologize to the waiter immediately, trying to help him clean up the food. People at other tables were beginning to whisper to each other. The waiter, red-faced, apologized and cleared the table, promising to bring her a new dinner. Erik shrank down in his chair just slightly, especially when Christine turned her angry glare towards him.
“Why can’t you just behave?” she whispered harshly. “Everyone is staring, you are embarrassing us both! You ruined the evening with this nonsense!”
He fidgeted with his napkin, picking at the edges of it, twisting it around. He muttered something under his breath, and whether it was an apology or a threat, Christine couldn’t tell and didn’t care.
A new plate of non-talking food was brought to her, and they finished their dinner in stiff silence, remaining in that state on the cab ride home to the opera house, and even up until Christine bid him goodnight and went to her bedroom where she at last had a respite from him. At least, she told herself, he hadn’t tried to pull anymore voice throwing tricks the rest of the night.
It was her birthday a few weeks later, and to her delight Erik had received her request to spend the day with a few of her friends from the ballet with a good-natured approval.
She was practically beaming with joy when she returned. An entire day spent shopping and snacking on treats with Meg and Sorelli and Cecile. They’d talked and she’d laughed more than she had in ages. It had been a perfect day, really.
So it only made sense that now it would turn strange.
Erik greeted her happily as she returned, politely inquiring as to how her day had been. She recounted the highlights, and Erik, upon seeing how truly happy she was, mentioned that perhaps she would enjoy another such day in the near future, if the other girls wished it. Her face lit up.
“I would love that very much, Erik. Thank you.”
“Of course, of course! And now it is time for me to give you your present, my dear!” he told her gleefully, rubbing his hands together.
She smiled politely and nodded, following him to the sitting room where he placed her in a chair and made her wait, bringing her a slice of cake from the kitchen. He had, during the time she’d been out with the girls, baked her a lovely cake, and she appreciated the gesture.
It was the card tricks he suddenly wanted to show her that she appreciated less.
She smiled and acted surprised as he showed off the same tricks he’d shown her half a dozen times before, and politely picked any card as he requested, but soon enough her smile was beginning to hurt from having to force it. There was nothing quite as unsettling as her strange husband kneeling in front of her as she sat on the couch and he shuffled a deck of cards over and over with unnatural fervor. He told little jokes in between each trick, puns that made her want to roll her eyes, and she tried her best to not squirm under his gaze as he stared at her like she was a life preserver and he was lost on the open sea.
What was the matter with him? She was turning twenty-one, not twelve — she didn’t care about stupid card tricks — she knew the extra card was up his sleeve, for goodness’s sake! Why wouldn’t he just let her go to bed?
“These are wonderful, Erik,” she said with a tense smile. “But I would like to retire for the evening now.”
Erik’s face fell and his hands paused mid-trick.
“Oh,” he said. “Christine does not want to see just a few more?”
She glanced at the clock.
“How many more are there? I’ve been watching them for nearly forty minutes now!”
Erik shot a hurt look at the clock, as though it betrayed him.
“Erik can do all kinds of tricks! If Christine does not like cards, he do tricks with a coin!” he said eagerly, trying to scramble to his feet.
“No!” she cried, a little too loud. “No more tricks, Erik, please! I’m tired. I want to go bed.”
“But— but this is Erik’s gift to Christine on her birthday...”
“Well Christine doesn’t like it. She’d rather go to bed.”
She regretted the words as soon as she’d said them. For one thing, they seemed to affect him far more than she’d thought they would. He sat down on the floor, letting the cards drop from his hands and fall into a heap on the rug. He stared dejectedly at them. She also regretted her words because they might anger him — his temper was so unpredictable — and if he got mad at her, he might not let her see her friends anymore.
“Erik just wants Christine to be happy,” he said meekly, sounding like a schoolboy who had just been scolded.
“So I can go to bed?”
He waved a hand in the direction of her bedroom, not even looking up.
“Thank you, Erik,” she stood and began to make her way to her room.
Once in the doorway she hesitated. It felt rude to leave him sitting on the floor, especially when he looked like he was going to cry. Her pity turned cold for brief moment. It was also rude to force someone to marry you and then restrict their comings and goings. She tightened her grip on the doorframe, the two emotions warring inside her.
“The card tricks were lovely, Erik,” she said, trying to sound convincing. “Goodnight.”
Erik was reserved and dignified the next week, polite and distant. She breathed a sigh of relief at this, at the freedom from his strange amusements. But freedom could never last, it seemed.
She was trying to enjoy a bit of solitude in the evening hour by reading a book as she sat on the couch by the fire. Erik was blessedly absent, but eventually she saw him walk past the doorway. She thought nothing more of it, until a few moments later he walked by again.
The next time he walked by, she glanced up at him. He paused, and she realized her mistake — he was trying to get her attention. She quickly looked back down at her book.
But it was too late. He took her glance in his direction as an invitation to enter the room and up behind the couch she was sitting on.
“What are you reading, my dear?”
Her shoulders stiffened just slightly.
“A book,” she said peevishly, hoping he’d take the hint and leave.
“Which book?”
He leaned in closer and she could feel his breath tickling the back of her neck in a most unpleasant way. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine anything except the nose hole she knew his breath was coming out of.
She apparently needed too long to clear her mind, because his voice came again, this time close enough to her ear to make her want to cringe.
“Which book is it, Christine?”
She scooted away from him.
“Carmilla,” she grit out.
Erik’s eyes lit up.
“Ahh, so little Christine likes the scary stories! Well, you must be careful not to frighten yourself too much, my dear!” he chuckled, and Christine could hear something rustling as though he were digging in a pocket. “You never know, after all, what might be lurking around the corner! Why, even down here you might find—“ there was the sound of him putting something in his mouth “— a w’ampiah!”
Her eye twitched at his mispronunciation of vampire, and in her peripheral vision she could see that he had shoved two straws into his mouth to mimic the fangs of a vampire, and that both of his hands were held up by his face in imitation of ferocious claws.
“Thrithine!” he said around the straws as best he could. “You ant looking.”
Christine refused to look, furrowing her brow and staring hard at the page in front of her even though she’d lost place of where she was reading.
“Thrithtine pwease,” he begged, his hands drooping.
She sighed deeply and turned to level a blank stare at him for a moment. His face lit up and he lifted his hands once more. Her expression did not change, and she looked back down at her book.
Why did he have to act like this? Why couldn’t he just be normal? It was clear that he was lonely, but honestly — why couldn’t he just approach her as an equal, start up an actual conversation about the story she was reading, engage her intellectual mind? Instead he came to her with straws and funny voices, as though she were a child to be entertained and coddled. She hated it.
“Are you quite done yet?”
“Achsully I was jus gettin’ stahted—“
“Erik. Stop. I am twenty one, not twelve. I don’t know what you think you’re doing right now, but I’m trying to read!”
Erik leaned on the back of the couch and pulled the straws out of his mouth.
“I know how old you are, Christine,” he said sadly.
“Well why then are you treating me like a child?”
“I’m not—“ he protested.
“Yes you are! All of this silly, childish nonsense!”
“I am not trying to be childish, Christine, I’m—“
“Well then act like it!” she squeaked.
Erik let the straws fall out of his hand as he hung over the couch. A flash of worry swept over her for a second. He looked so utterly crushed, like his soul was broken. She felt a pang of regret. Had she done that?
“Would you like to sit with me?” she offered, trying to make it up to him.
He said nothing but dutifully cane around and sat on the far end of the couch, leaning his elbow against the backrest and propping his head against his hand. He was silent and looked miserable.
“Have you read it before?” she asked politely, gesturing to the book.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“What did you think of it?”
“It was about vampires,” he said with a small shrug, not meeting her eyes.
She pressed her lips together as she looked away. She didn’t mean to be cruel to him. She wanted them to have a normal relationship — as normal as one that they could have, all things considered. But he made it so difficult.
“Do you like vampires?” she pressed, and he shrugged again.
“I’m just to the part where Carmilla and Laura have become friends,” she tried again, gesturing to the open book. “It’s just getting exciting now, don’t you think?”
He said nothing, merely staring off to the corner of the room with a sad look on his face.
She opened her mouth, about to offer to read it aloud to him, but he suddenly asked-
“Christine, can I go now?”
Her heart sank. As though she were the one keeping him here!
“Of course,” she said, unhappy. “If you want.”
She couldn’t enjoy her book after that. Erik had threatened the lives of untold people and her dear Raoul, but still she found no pleasure in his unhappiness.
He avoided her for the rest of the night and the next day, and she supposed she should be grateful for the respite from his presence, but it hung over her like a dark cloud instead.
“Erik,” she approached him at last. “Remember you said I could see some friends today?”
“Hmm,” he looked off to the distance as though he were trying to remember.
“I asked you last week. You said I could,” she reminded him, slightly worried that he might change his mind yet again.
He sighed.
“Of course, my dear.”
He escorted her up in silence, and she dutifully thanked him before she stepped out into the light.
She spent the day with a small group of friends, and eventually the subject of conversation turned to their husbands. Christine tried to smile and she looked down, not joining in.
All the other women had cute stories of their husbands, of how loved they felt. Their husbands bought them gifts and took them to the zoo and they had nice dinners out. They went to dances and talked and laughed and were in love. It hurt her to think about, but she tried not to let it show. None of these other women had husbands who tried to murder their childhood friends or put straws in their mouths or bother them with card tricks at all hours.
The conversation moved on, but Christine’s thoughts did not. She thought about it the rest of the day, and during the silent trip with Erik back to his lair, and as she sat on the couch and stared glassy eyed at the blazing fireplace.
She thought she could hear the ugliness and the smell and the damp and the dark and everything that came with her current life of Erik just loved her. But she didn’t feel loved. She felt like a bird in a cage that had been forgotten by its owner. He’d claimed he loved her, he’d tried to kill for her, and now — now he barely showed her any scrap of affection. A tear rolled down her cheek.
“How was your outing, Christine?” Erik asked cheerily from the doorway.
She turned to look him, eyes rimmed with red and cheeks stained with tears.
“Why don’t you love me, Erik?”
His face fell.
“What?” he breathed.
She looked back at the fire.
“You don’t love me,” she accused, and he nearly ran to her side, kneeling down next to her.
“Christine!” he cried earnestly. “What would make you say that?”
“This,” she gestured around her and then at him. “All of this.”
He studied her intensely, his eyes wide, his face serious.
“I think Christine has spent too long in the sun,” he said at last, and she sighed.
“All of the other girls have husbands who love them,” she said petulantly. “They all have happy marriages. They all have nice lives.”
“Ah, but my Christine — do they have this?”
With those words, Erik reached up to face, to her ear, and then quickly pulled his hand back, a shiny coin in his fingers. It would almost seem he’d pulled it from her ear.
Her eyes widened.
“What is wrong with you?!” she squealed.
The sparkling grin that had grown on his face as he’d performed the trick now faded in confusion.
“I’m trying to have a real conversation here!” she fumed. “And all you have is tricks! Always tricks!”
“I didn’t—“
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, beginning to sob. “I’m practically begging you to show me love and you— you pull a coin out of my ear like that will distract me!”
“What do you mean I don’t show you love?” he pleaded with her.
She put her hands up to cover her face and hide her tears. How pathetic, she thought, that she wanted the love of her jailor, but she did.
“Oh, Erik,” she cried. “Isn’t it bad enough that you keep me down here like a prisoner, not free to come and go as I please? But even when I’m here, you make no attempt at connecting with me in any meaningful way. You don’t try to show that you care for me at all.”
He held the coin up, baffled and helpless.
“All you do are these silly magic tricks,” she sniffled. “That doesn't make me feel loved.”
“It doesn’t?” he echoed, surprised.
She lowered her hands to glare at him a little.
“Why on earth would it, Erik?”
He swallowed hard.
“And it makes me think, what was all that for? All that fighting and lying to try to win me, and now that you have me-? What now, Erik? It’s like you don’t even care about me at all.”
“Christine…”
Tears began to form in Erik’s eyes, and soon they were flowing freely.
“Christine- Chrisitne did not- not like Erik’s magic?” he asked through his sobs.
“No! I don’t like it at all!”
He put his terrible head in his hands and wept.
“Christine does not love Erik’s magic - Christine does not love Erik. Erik tries so hard to be a good husband. He does love Christine, he does! He gave her music, didn’t he?”
She sighed.
“There is more to love than music, Erik. There must be more to a relationship than music and card tricks!”
He was silent for a long moment, only the sounds of his tears and loud sniffling, and she became uncomfortable thinking about what, exactly, was sniffling and why. She was very grateful for his hands covering his face in that moment.
“But that is all Erik has,” she heard him whisper at last, and her brow furrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“Erik gives his Christine all he has to offer, and it is not enough, she says.”
“Erik-”
“Erik is good at magic. He is not good at very many other things. He cannot live like other husbands live, or give his wife all the nice things she deserves, but- but he can give her music, and entertain her with magic. But it is not enough!”
She pursed her lips.
“This is the very best of me, Christine, and if it's not- if it can’t-” his words were choked off with a sob.
It began to dawn on her.
“Erik, do you- do you show me card tricks because you love me?”
Some husbands showed their love by buying presents, some by holding hands and hugging, some by writing long poems and letters with words of love - and Erik, apparently, by showing her magic tricks.
“Why else would I do so many for you?” he whimpered.
She sucked in a breath. He was still weeping at her feet, his world absolutely crushed by his wife’s unknowing dismissal of his attempts to display affection towards her. Had he thought she knew? That she was being cruel to him on purpose? That thought ached. Poor Erik.
She reached her hands down to cover his and slowly lifted his tear stained face to look up at her, gently prying his hands off of his face. She rested her forehead on his, the most physical contact they’d had since she kissed him that terrible night she’d had to do so in order to save Raoul.
His breath stuttered.
“Oh, Erik,” she sighed.
More tears sprung from his eyes at their closeness. His trembling fingers entwined with hers on the sides of his face.
“What can I do?” he begged. “Please, tell me what to do.”
She hesitated.
“I want my freedom back,” she whispered.
“You have it,” he told her in a broken whisper. “You have it. You are free to go.”
“And Raoul?”
He winced.
“You- you may go to him, if you wish,” he said reluctantly.
She shook her head, still so close to his.
“No, I don’t want him. I just want him to be safe, please.”
He nodded, hesitatingly.
“I want to be treated like any other wife, please,” she continued. “I want to be free to walk in the sun and talk to my friends, and I don’t want to have to ask your leave to do so.”
“You’ll leave me,” he accused weakly.
“No,” she soothed. “No, I will come back. I promise.”
She smoothed his few sparse strands of hair out of his face.
“I promise,” she whispered again, and he gave a single nod. “Do you love me enough to trust me?”
His eyes slid away from hers, and he was quiet for a long moment.
“I do,” he breathed at last.
She smiled at him.
“Christine…”
“Yes?”
“Do you- do you love Erik too?”
Her smile faded, and looked away, letting her hands fall from his face.
She could not lie to him.
“I want to be a good wife to you, Erik,” she said honestly. “I don’t mean to hurt you. And I hope one day that I will grow to love you in return.”
He looked slightly disappointed, but he didn’t seem surprised.
“Come up and sit on the couch,” she said, patting the cushion next to her.
He did as she bid, feeling slightly awkward.
“Will you really let me come and go as I please?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Will you tell me when you are leaving, and when you will return?”
“Of course,” she said, placing a hand softly on his arm.
She had loved him, once, when he was a distant and intangible angel. He had shattered that with his own actions, but she hoped that one day the feeling might return. He was a deeply flawed man, but he was trying to show her love in the only ways he knew how. She would try harder to see it, in the future.
“Erik,” she asked, her voice soft and sweet. “Would you like to show me some coin tricks?”
His entire countenance lit up.
“You would like to see that?” he asked hopefully.
“I would.”
He dug the coin out of his pocket and made several flourishes with his hand.
“Ah, Christine - prepare to see this coin do things you’ve never seen before!” he said, his voice proud and assured.
Christine giggled, and he gave her a wobbly, uncertain smile.
They sat there on the couch, husband and wife, for nearly an hour, Erik showing her different tricks, the look in his eyes finally able to be deciphered by her. It was love, and it was hope. She, too, had the hope that one day they might be able to resemble a normal couple, if she could be more understanding, and he could be less controlling and stifling. She wanted that for them. Judging by how eagerly he showed her his magic tricks, she thought that maybe he did, too. Making their problems disappear certainly wouldn’t be as easy as his making a coin disappear, but with many conversations and hard work, a better relationship just might be possible. For the first time in a long time, she felt hope, and for the two of them there on that couch, as they smiled at each other, that was enough.