Flicker

By Kat Beat

Disclaimer

I own nothing. Sue me not. The song "How I Feel" belongs to Will Holt, lyrist. It is from the show "The Me Nobody Knows."

Claimer

I own plot and prose. Basically.

Author's Note

Bad title…silly, sentimental. Dinna know what I think of the phic. Takes place right before Christine's entrance, as Erik is dying. Kay based. I rather like it…

†

The former Opera Ghost lay awkwardly on the bed, sprawled there as if by some unseen hand. Nadir felt almost embarrassed, as if he was seeing Erik naked. He was seeing everything in sharp detail - the multiple shadows Erik's thin hands cast on the wall, like so many gray silent spiders, the miniscule wrinkles in the blanket that barely covered his tall body, the curving swoop of Erik's long mishappen neck. The details were everything. The world fell apart around him, a delicate shell.

Hard to tell you
How I feel
Everything is so unreal

Every breath was an effort, a Herculean labor. Erik absently wondered why Nadir didn't praise him each time he managed another expansion of his failing lungs. He looked at Nadir through eyes made vague by illness. A diminuitive dark man, with a tiny sharp face that seemed to poke itself everywhere it was somehow wanted without being wanted. Gray hair, gray early, and a face finely crossed with lines, like tributaries of some mysterious sea. Aged early, from five years in a jail on Erik's behalf…five years!

Simplified by his weakness, Erik felt an overpowering need to thank Nadir, to somehow compensate, however hopeless the situation might seem, to somehow fix all the wounds he'd delt the man…But he could not rise, all one hand could do was stir weakly on the coverlet.

Lord, but life is a hard thing to get to

Nadir sighed quietly, a mourning groan of simple distress. He saw, with frozen clarity, the way the candle wax flowed, in a lapping tide, down to the pewter holder, the way that it cast a flickering shadow onto Erik's mask. He watched the fluttering of Erik's eyelashes, black spiders over yellow eyes. He saw the way their shadows danced on the pure white mask.

Saw my shadow on the wall

There was something missing…no, more that something, someone…several someones. Who? Erik's clouded mind groped, discovered in the depths of him who he felt should be there with him, who should be here, in this moment. Nadir felt in his soul for who should be here, and found two. Why isn't she here? His mind demanded frantically. Why isn't he here?

Rookheya. Christine. Reza. Where were they?

Saw my love nowhere at all
Saw my life as a hard thing to get through

Erik coughed, and Nadir jumped harriedly. The cough turned into a soft melancholy laugh. "Daroga…" Silence, for a time. "Was it always like this, was it always dark, daroga, with only this one candle?"

The Persian did not answer. It would always be dark for Erik. No matter what light he touched, it would turn to shadow beneath his skeletal fingers, and he would never have anyone by him, no one to be with him. Alone…

Sheets rustled as Erik turned his head to look at the daroga. His yellow eyes gave off their own light, casting strange shadows on his mussed hair. His eyes seemed to speak, to communicate something. Nadir was not sure what this was, but he knew that in that moment he was totally aware of the differences between Erik and himself.

One a policeman, the daroga of Manderzan, the other the macabre shadow of a ghost, a mishappen demon with a nightingale locked in its throat. One a human, one a ghost…The pair locked eyes, betraying nothing but the infinite differences between them. Erik would have laughed bitterly, resignedly, if laughter had not seemed the equivalent of running around the world.

Nadir stared at his old friend, thinking…

When I was born they carried me
When I'm gone they'll bury me
You alone are on you own

"Do you hear that?" With a bizarre display of strenth, Erik forced himself upright. He breathed hard, the exertion nearly doing him in. Nadir suppressed a cry of alarm.

"Do I hear…"

"Someone's crying, daroga, there is someone crying out there…" Erik choked out the words.

A bitter sigh escaped Nadir. "Erik. There is no one crying. It is your delirium, Erik, there is no one out there…no one at all."

Hard to stand there all alone

"I tell you, Nadir, there is someone there…someone is crying…someone is there."

Who would be there, Erik? Nadir wondered. Who, in your delirous dreams, is crying for you? "No," he voiced, "Erik, there is no one there…"

And for the first time, Erik pleaded. "My dear daroga," he rasped, tears staining his voice shamefully, "my dear daroga, please, there is someone there…someone…someone…" And his speech left him, so that he could merely mouth.

For a moment Nadir stood in simple shock. It was as if the shah himself had gotten down on bended knee and begged a favor, as if Allah had bent his great face from the heavens to politely ask a task of Nadir Khan. The fallen down pieces of the world whirled about like a carousel.

"Erik…"

Someone's crying down the hall
Dying cries
They tell it all

"Erik…"

The door swung slowly shut, a thousand duplicates in shadow of it swinging behind it, a thousand doors, closing, closing, closing…Erik watched, transfixed, and then his body slid slowly back between the sheets, sinuous as water and as weak.

Lord, this life is a hard thing to live

Sasha…and Ayesha…someone must remember to feed them…

Who would take care of Don Juan Triumphant, his horrific triumph?

What of the diamond collar?

And what of Reza's fiddler that he still had, the fiddle player who only plays if we applaud, again, and again, frantically clapping to please a creature made of wood and stone…

The shadows of Erik's lashes danced and settled on his masked white cheeks.

And harder still to leave.