Christine DeChagny (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lethermindwander) wrote2019-01-23 05:06 pm
lethermindwander) wrote2019-01-23 05:06 pm
Entry tags:
danger will follow me, everywhere i go
“I need to do this on my own, Hancock,” Christine sighs, packing more ammo in her bag. Shoving an extra gun in another pocket. Strapping another knife to her thigh.
“Ya kinda don’t. You’re pushin’ people away again, Chris,” he warns her, deeply concerned.
“I’m not, though. You just don’t want to admit that you’ll miss me,” she teases.
“Oh, I can admit that no problem,” he grins. She kisses his cheek, then his lips.
“What is it, then?” She asks.
“It’ll be boring around here without ya, that’s all. Liz and Booker are finally resolving all that goddamn sexual tension, tall, dark and silent is still fucking silent, even though he supposedly got his voice back and goin’ to the bar just won’t be the same,” Hancock explains.
“What about my ghoul-faced counterpart? She’s the sorceress. I’m sure the two of you could get into all sorts of entertaining trouble while I’m gone,” she tilts her head and pins him with a look. He laughs.
“Fair point,” Hancock concedes, “Just be careful out there, alright?” he leans forward and kisses her forehead.
“I’ll be fine, I won’t be gone forever.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Christine slings her bag over her shoulder and is out the door.
She tries to also say goodbye to Elizabeth and Booker. They’re too distracted by each other’s bodies to notice much. When she knocked on their door, Elizabeth had answered, her hair a mess, makeup smeared and holding a blanket over her chest.
“Don’t mess with Brimstone this time,” Elizabeth warns after releasing her friend from a tight hug.
“Come on, I’m not so stupid that I can’t learn from past mistakes,” she shrugs.
“Chris,” Liz frowns.
“I owe her, the other me for all she’s done for us the past few months. For helping us find Erik’s voice, for helping us put it back in him...the least I can do is find her lover for her since she’s trapped in this city. Should be fairly easy. I have far more information on this man than I ever had on my Erik,” Christine says. “But I won’t go after Brimstone, I promise.
“Good,” Liz smiles.
“Have fun with your…” Christine purses her lips and makes a gesture towards Liz’s state of undress. Her friend laughs as Booker appears behind her to pull her back to bed.
“Oh, we will,” Liz closes the door with a smirk.
Lastly, Christine pays her Erik a visit. She doesn’t expect it to go well, yet the guilt would eat at her if she didn’t give him a personalized goodbye. Deep down, she bitterly hopes that he’ll speak again if he knows this will be his last chance to say something to her for a few months.
She knocks on his door. He doesn’t answer.
“It’s me,” she growls from the outside, then knocks again. A few seconds later, Erik opens the door. He looks down at her, mismatched eyes full of fire.
“I just wanted you to know I’ll be gone for a while,” she explains. He stands there, silent.
“If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll assume you’ve finally gone home,” Christine tries to suppress a jealous sneer. It doesn’t work too well. She has Hancock, now. She shouldn’t care so much if Erik goes back to Lacie.
He exhales slowly, reigning in his anger. His eyes grow glossy and Christine swears she sees him start to cry before she turns away. She runs off into the darkness she’s learned to call home.
Christine finds herself boarding the Acheron for what feels like the millionth time.
In her seat, she pours over all the information she has on this other Erik. Legal name, Charles Delacroix. Birthday, August 22, 1831. Lived in Paris. Was the artistic director at the Palais Garnier. Had close ties to the Chagny family. Had been deeply disturbed by and deeply close to his mother. She has a long list of people that he knew or frequently associated with in life.
She even has photographs. Tattered and worn, but there nonetheless. Christine stares at them, obsesses over them. Memorizes every feature of his perfect face. His eyes are clearly that same piercing blue color, though his aren’t full of spider webs and splotches of brown. They’re normal eyes. His features are chiseled, sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw. An actual nose in the middle of his face is the most jarring feature. He looks so normal, though extraordinarily handsome.
He looks like her son. Shares a name with her son. It’s a rather interesting coincidence. Constants and variables.
The other Christine has informed her that he prefers to not be called Charles, though. He’s just an Erik in another lifetime. The cosmic trade for him to have a normal life and a normal face was that Christine would not.
And they still found each other and fell in love. Christine hopes that once they are reunited in death, their story won’t have such a sour ending as her own did. As she watches Hell’s scenery whiz past her, she can’t imagine that it will. The other Christine was so full of energy and life. Quite the contradiction, given how she looked like ghostly death from head to toe. She almost envies her corpse-faced counterpart. To have lived a life so full of freedom from the beginning...it almost seems worth losing one’s nose.
---
It only ends up taking a few weeks of digging to find him. In a city as large as Phylegas, there had been plenty of leads to chase. Plenty of dirty angels willing to take a message back up to Heaven for a price.
That, and she has so much more power and pull, now.
She arranges to meet this angelic Erik at a bar that she remembers as a hangout for Heaven transfers. Christine sits in the back, sipping at a glass of whisky with her feet propped up on the table.
She wears a black mask to hide her face. She doesn’t want to risk spooking the poor man with her face that matches his mother’s.
When he walks in, Christine can’t help but laugh. He’s quite literally glowing. He wound up with the whole angel package. Large, pure white wings and that unmistakable angelic glow...oh it’s so incredibly ironic.
He looks so out of place. So out of his element. He’d be such easy pickings for any demon that wanted to utterly destroy him...If anyone can relate to that, it’s Christine. It’s been a long time since she’s been an angel now, even longer since she was the one sticking out like a glowing sore thumb...but she knows what it’s like. She won’t let anything happen to him.
As he dodges demons and hidden angels that give him nothing but scowls, Christine studies him. The way he walks. The nervous way his fingers twitch. How he tenses his shoulders, yet stands tall and towers over people, attempting to intimidate them...He’s Erik, alright. Which both relieves her and makes her sad. Christine’s heart seizes and she doesn’t fully understand why.
But now is not the time to figure it out.
“You must be The Valkyrie,” he states, approaching Christine’s table. She looks up at him, golden eyes burning.
“And what if I am?” She questions, swirling her drink in the glass.
“If you are, fantastic, if you are not, you’re wasting my precious time,” he replies. His voice is still like velvet. Melodic and beautiful...but different. It lacks that magical timbre. That strange, ethereal quality is missing.
“Mmm, but wasting an angel’s time is so much fun,” she snorts. He scoffs and rolls his eyes as he turns away from her. “If you leave though, you won’t ever find me again. I can promise you that.”
He stops in his tracks. She’s toying with him. Like a cat plays with a mouse.
“Are you The Valkyrie or not?” He asks again.
“Where are your manners, Monsieur Delacroix?” Christine tips her glass to her lips and finishes off the drink.
“I do not appreciate being played with.”
“You’re an angel in Hell now, my dear. Get used to it.”
“It’s really quite simple, I wish to find someone. Can you help me or not?”
“No. It’s really not. You’re going to get chewed up and spit out if you try to find her all on your own, you stubborn ass,” Christine laughs.
“Her. How do you know I’m looking for a her?” He slams his fists on the table. Christine withdraws her feet and puts them back on the floor. She draws one of her blades and drives it into the table with a sharp thud. She barely misses stabbing through his hand.
“You’re not in any position to make demands. I could quite easily cut you down where you stand and tear you into so many tiny pieces that you’ll never be put back together. Your soul could be lost for eternity and no one in this town would ever care to look for you,” Christine tells him calmly.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’m an angel that fell from grace, right into demonhood. Much like Lucifer himself...there’s precious little I wouldn’t do.” She shrugs. Finally, the angel sinks down into a chair and rubs his temples in frustration.
“Please help me find my Christine, I need to know where she is, if she is well or--” His voice cracks.
“You are Erik Delacroix, yes?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then not only do I know where she is, but I’m here to take you to her. Make sure an angel like you stays out of trouble. As long as you cooperate, in any case.”
“Who are you?” He asks again.
“As far as you’re concerned, a friend.”
And that’s how Christine found herself travelling with the angelic incarnation of her former lover from a different reality. Things were so needlessly complicated in the afterlife.
She teaches him how to survive down here. How to use potions and charms to hide his wings and glow. Where to find the merchants and magicians that would sell the things and not sell you out to the seedy demons after angel feathers.
It takes three days before he tries to steal her mask. He reached for it from behind her. Christine’s hand shot out like a bullet and twisted his hand away until the pain from the pressure point was enough to drop him to his knees.
“If you even try to take my mask again, I will cut your hand off, put your fingers on a string and wear it like a necklace,” she says with such calm seriousness that Erik can’t help but take her at her word and back down. He’s seen her do far worse to her enemies, even only traveling with her for a few days.
“I want to know who you are,” he says, “Why you’re so willing to help me.”
“You’ll find out once we reach our destination,” she explains, “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a hint and if you can figure it out before we get to Mnemosyne, I’ll take off the mask. Deal?”
“Am I making deals with the devil, now?”
“Close enough.”
“Fine.”
“When I was alive, I sang at the Palais Garnier. The Angel of Music taught me how.”
“Will you tell me the year? The year you sang at the Garnier?”
“1881.”
His brows knit together and he falls into silence. If she is telling the truth, then he should know her. Shouldn’t he?
---
“Since you were too arrogant to drink the damn wing potion, fly away you idiot!” Christine growls, shooting at another one of their assailants. A gang of massive, mutated demons that wish to kidnap the angel and sell him for parts.
“And leave you here on your own?” Erik asks, brushing her off. He tries so valiantly to be helpful in a demon fight. He’s virtually useless. More of a burden than anything. One of the mutants grabs his wing and crushes the bones in its fist. Erik yells from the pain and Christine has had enough of this ridiculousness.
“I’ve traveled Hell on my own for years. Years, Delacroix. You’re just getting in my way!” With her patience expired, Christine holds her hand out to him, her fingers curled in like claws. Black feathers sprout from her hand and soon, there’s a cloud of crows heading towards the obnoxious angel. They don’t exactly attack him, they simply push him out of the carnage and conceal his exact location.
And then her true fury is unleashed. The reason she has become known as “The Valkyrie” is put on full display. She is a goddess of death, choosing who is to be slain and who is to be shown mercy.
Today, there are no survivors. She tears them all apart in a flurry of birds and bullets and blades...They never stood a chance, in all honesty.
When the dust and carnage settle, she stands in the middle of all the bloodshed, the seven or so demons scattered around her in pieces. From head to toe, she’s covered in blood and it’s impossible to tell if it’s her own or from their attackers.
Nursing his injured wing, the angel sits on the ground. He looks up at her, blinded by all the red. When the smell fully reaches him, he wretches. He has seen her fight off enemies. He’s never seen her take down so many so ruthlessly, so quickly.
For a moment, he is honestly afraid of her. What could happen to an angel that would turn her into such a creature…? Certainly she must have known the path she had fallen towards? Bile rises in his throat as he realizes why someone would go to such drastic, violent lengths to protect someone.
She falls to her knees and her identity finally dawns on him.
He rushes to her side and picks her up out of the sea of blood.
A few hours later, her demon body has healed enough for her to regain consciousness. With a pained groan, Christine sits up and panics, she immediately feels to see if the mask is still in place. With her face still covered, some of her anxiety dissipates. Then she takes stock of her new surroundings. A shady hotel room, by the look, and she’s alone in it.
Alone in it.
Her panic begins anew when she cannot immediately find her angel companion. She stumbles out of bed, every muscle and bone aching in the aftermath of that little altercation. This was all his fault, stupid angel Erik. If only he had reigned in his arrogance for five minutes and done what she had told him to, this entire ordeal could have been avoided.
Christine storms towards the door, her aim to find him as quickly as possible, but she finds a note pinned there.
”Do not worry yourself on my behalf. I am safely in the room next to yours. I imagined you’d prefer privacy while you recovered. When you are ready, I have a bottle of whisky as a token of gratitude for your actions today.”
His handwriting is exactly the same. Christine laughs, holding the paper between her fingers. His words are tad less formal, another one of those small quirks that set him apart from her own Erik.
She whips the mask off her face and starts to cry. Silent, ugly tears stream down her face, mixing with the blood and dirt caked to her skin. This was a mistake, coming out here to fetch him. No matter how much she owes the other Christine, this suddenly too much for her to handle.
Christine drags herself into the shower. It doesn’t matter how disgusting the tap water is here, it’s still better than being covered in blood. The sound and the feel of the water hitting her skin is a comfort. For as long as she can stand it, she just lets the water flow over her. She cries and cries and pounds a fist against the tile wall until it cracks. The shards dig into her skin and she hardly cares until her flesh is worn down to the bone.
She wants to go home. Wherever that is.
It takes quite a bit of time before she manages to pull herself together enough to face him. If it weren’t for the promise of whisky, she probably would have just crawled back into bed and waited until morning before confronting him. She doesn’t know what to say to him. Christine wants to yell and scream at him for being such an idiot, not that it would do much good. He’s so full of himself, she doubts he’d ever understand the point. He’s too set in his ways. Too stubborn to ever admit to any wrongdoing. But ultimately, she decides that what he has to say won’t matter. With whisky to dull the pain and smooth the edges, nothing really matters.
She knocks on his door. He answers it.
“Good evening,” he greets her, stepping aside to allow her to enter, “Please do come in.”
His heavenly glow is notably absent.
So are his wings.
He listened.
He listened.
She is thankful for the mask. Without it, she fears she’d lose her already fragile composure.
“I wanted to apologize for today. If I had trusted your word from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had to put yourself in such a dangerous position,” Erik explains, stiffly pouring a glass of whisky. He offers her the glass. Christine brushes it away and grabs the bottle in his other hand instead. Those fiercely blue eyes of his widen in a slight bit of shock but he otherwise does not protest. If she wants nearly the entire bottle, he’ll allow it. Christine tips the bottle to her lips and drinks it like water.
“I’ve been through worse,” she assures him. He frowns. He’s still so naive to the ways of Hell. Truly, this was but the tip of the iceberg of hellish human suffering.
“I don’t doubt that. No one learns how to destroy in such a manner unless it is a necessity,” he says softly. Christine looks up at him, golden eyes burning and curious. This Erik has never had to fight for his life. This Erik has never been ostracized from society for his appearance...And yet his eyes still hold the same sadness. She wonders how that can be. How his life had been so different and yet so exactly the same.
“I hope you never have to learn such a thing,” Christine trails off, seeking comfort in her whisky.
“Is that why you came to travel with me?”
“I didn’t see the sense in allowing another angel to lose their wings when I could so easily prevent it.”
“If our deal still stands, I would like to make a guess as to your identity, Valkyrie,” Erik states, sipping at his own glass.
“I don’t renege on my deals,” Christine assures him. He forces a smile and sits down on the edge of the bed. He exhales, finding the courage to speak aloud his theory.
“Did you really think you could hide from me, Christine? That I wouldn’t recognize you?” he asks. She whips around to face him, eyes wide and shocked behind her mask.
“I’m not your Christine,” she clarifies.
“Oh, I am well aware of that,” He scoffs, “But you are Christine. Swedish girl with the voice of an angel, yes?”
“Everything seems to converge in the afterlife, even alternate souls,” she explains. Erik runs a hand through his soft, perfect hair. He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, deep in thought.
“Why do you wear the mask?” He asks, “My Christine walks around in broad daylight, proudly showing off her skeleton-like visage.”
“I didn’t want to scare you off,” she replies, “I’m afraid you might find what is behind my mask far more terrible than a face made of death.” She reaches behind her head to untie the mask but she pauses, waiting for his consent.
He tilts his head and nods, granting permission. Christine takes off the mask and Erik gasps. He looks at her with horror, though he desperately tries to smother the expression on his face.
Her face is complete, yes. Perfectly formed, aside from the scars along her cheek and neck. He had been expecting another deformity, not the face of his mother staring back at him.
He starts to speak, breathless, “You look like my--”
“Mother? I know,” she forces a smile.
“How strange, indeed,” he wants to look at anything and everything in the room except for at her.
“I didn’t think you’d trust me if you saw this face at the start,” Christine explains. A short, bitter laugh escapes him.
“You’re probably right. Had I seen your face, I likely would have turned around and gone back to Heaven without another word.”
“But you trust me now, don’t you?”
“Without question,” he answers. Then he asks a question of his own, “Do you have your own Erik, then?”
“I do.”
“What is he like?”
“Much the same as you, honestly. Aside from the whole lack of nose bit,” Christine looks away and towards the floor.
“I’ve often looked at my own Christine and wondered how I would respond if I were dealt the hand she’s been given. I’ve always wondered if I could handle her situation with half as much grace and dignity as she has managed...and I doubt that I could. I’m not nearly as brave as she is. Or you, by extension I suppose.”
Her gaze slowly lifts to meet his again. Those blue eyes will be her undoing, she swears.
“I’m not brave, I just can’t seem to stop running.”
“Perhaps it’s time to stop, then.”
“I’m not sure I know how anymore.”
“What are you running from?” He asks, brows knitting together as he stares her down. Christine tries to reply. Her lips part over and over as she looks for the answer. Everything is so complicated, she doesn’t know what to say. She blinks and realizes she has started to cry again. When she doesn’t answer that question, Erik asks another one.
“Do you love him?”
The question she’s been asking herself over and over these past months. Can she even forgive him for what he’s done this time? Let alone love him? All the lies and betrayal and heartbreak…
It all feels so far away.
“More than anything.”
“Ya kinda don’t. You’re pushin’ people away again, Chris,” he warns her, deeply concerned.
“I’m not, though. You just don’t want to admit that you’ll miss me,” she teases.
“Oh, I can admit that no problem,” he grins. She kisses his cheek, then his lips.
“What is it, then?” She asks.
“It’ll be boring around here without ya, that’s all. Liz and Booker are finally resolving all that goddamn sexual tension, tall, dark and silent is still fucking silent, even though he supposedly got his voice back and goin’ to the bar just won’t be the same,” Hancock explains.
“What about my ghoul-faced counterpart? She’s the sorceress. I’m sure the two of you could get into all sorts of entertaining trouble while I’m gone,” she tilts her head and pins him with a look. He laughs.
“Fair point,” Hancock concedes, “Just be careful out there, alright?” he leans forward and kisses her forehead.
“I’ll be fine, I won’t be gone forever.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Christine slings her bag over her shoulder and is out the door.
She tries to also say goodbye to Elizabeth and Booker. They’re too distracted by each other’s bodies to notice much. When she knocked on their door, Elizabeth had answered, her hair a mess, makeup smeared and holding a blanket over her chest.
“Don’t mess with Brimstone this time,” Elizabeth warns after releasing her friend from a tight hug.
“Come on, I’m not so stupid that I can’t learn from past mistakes,” she shrugs.
“Chris,” Liz frowns.
“I owe her, the other me for all she’s done for us the past few months. For helping us find Erik’s voice, for helping us put it back in him...the least I can do is find her lover for her since she’s trapped in this city. Should be fairly easy. I have far more information on this man than I ever had on my Erik,” Christine says. “But I won’t go after Brimstone, I promise.
“Good,” Liz smiles.
“Have fun with your…” Christine purses her lips and makes a gesture towards Liz’s state of undress. Her friend laughs as Booker appears behind her to pull her back to bed.
“Oh, we will,” Liz closes the door with a smirk.
Lastly, Christine pays her Erik a visit. She doesn’t expect it to go well, yet the guilt would eat at her if she didn’t give him a personalized goodbye. Deep down, she bitterly hopes that he’ll speak again if he knows this will be his last chance to say something to her for a few months.
She knocks on his door. He doesn’t answer.
“It’s me,” she growls from the outside, then knocks again. A few seconds later, Erik opens the door. He looks down at her, mismatched eyes full of fire.
“I just wanted you to know I’ll be gone for a while,” she explains. He stands there, silent.
“If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll assume you’ve finally gone home,” Christine tries to suppress a jealous sneer. It doesn’t work too well. She has Hancock, now. She shouldn’t care so much if Erik goes back to Lacie.
He exhales slowly, reigning in his anger. His eyes grow glossy and Christine swears she sees him start to cry before she turns away. She runs off into the darkness she’s learned to call home.
Christine finds herself boarding the Acheron for what feels like the millionth time.
In her seat, she pours over all the information she has on this other Erik. Legal name, Charles Delacroix. Birthday, August 22, 1831. Lived in Paris. Was the artistic director at the Palais Garnier. Had close ties to the Chagny family. Had been deeply disturbed by and deeply close to his mother. She has a long list of people that he knew or frequently associated with in life.
She even has photographs. Tattered and worn, but there nonetheless. Christine stares at them, obsesses over them. Memorizes every feature of his perfect face. His eyes are clearly that same piercing blue color, though his aren’t full of spider webs and splotches of brown. They’re normal eyes. His features are chiseled, sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw. An actual nose in the middle of his face is the most jarring feature. He looks so normal, though extraordinarily handsome.
He looks like her son. Shares a name with her son. It’s a rather interesting coincidence. Constants and variables.
The other Christine has informed her that he prefers to not be called Charles, though. He’s just an Erik in another lifetime. The cosmic trade for him to have a normal life and a normal face was that Christine would not.
And they still found each other and fell in love. Christine hopes that once they are reunited in death, their story won’t have such a sour ending as her own did. As she watches Hell’s scenery whiz past her, she can’t imagine that it will. The other Christine was so full of energy and life. Quite the contradiction, given how she looked like ghostly death from head to toe. She almost envies her corpse-faced counterpart. To have lived a life so full of freedom from the beginning...it almost seems worth losing one’s nose.
---
It only ends up taking a few weeks of digging to find him. In a city as large as Phylegas, there had been plenty of leads to chase. Plenty of dirty angels willing to take a message back up to Heaven for a price.
That, and she has so much more power and pull, now.
She arranges to meet this angelic Erik at a bar that she remembers as a hangout for Heaven transfers. Christine sits in the back, sipping at a glass of whisky with her feet propped up on the table.
She wears a black mask to hide her face. She doesn’t want to risk spooking the poor man with her face that matches his mother’s.
When he walks in, Christine can’t help but laugh. He’s quite literally glowing. He wound up with the whole angel package. Large, pure white wings and that unmistakable angelic glow...oh it’s so incredibly ironic.
He looks so out of place. So out of his element. He’d be such easy pickings for any demon that wanted to utterly destroy him...If anyone can relate to that, it’s Christine. It’s been a long time since she’s been an angel now, even longer since she was the one sticking out like a glowing sore thumb...but she knows what it’s like. She won’t let anything happen to him.
As he dodges demons and hidden angels that give him nothing but scowls, Christine studies him. The way he walks. The nervous way his fingers twitch. How he tenses his shoulders, yet stands tall and towers over people, attempting to intimidate them...He’s Erik, alright. Which both relieves her and makes her sad. Christine’s heart seizes and she doesn’t fully understand why.
But now is not the time to figure it out.
“You must be The Valkyrie,” he states, approaching Christine’s table. She looks up at him, golden eyes burning.
“And what if I am?” She questions, swirling her drink in the glass.
“If you are, fantastic, if you are not, you’re wasting my precious time,” he replies. His voice is still like velvet. Melodic and beautiful...but different. It lacks that magical timbre. That strange, ethereal quality is missing.
“Mmm, but wasting an angel’s time is so much fun,” she snorts. He scoffs and rolls his eyes as he turns away from her. “If you leave though, you won’t ever find me again. I can promise you that.”
He stops in his tracks. She’s toying with him. Like a cat plays with a mouse.
“Are you The Valkyrie or not?” He asks again.
“Where are your manners, Monsieur Delacroix?” Christine tips her glass to her lips and finishes off the drink.
“I do not appreciate being played with.”
“You’re an angel in Hell now, my dear. Get used to it.”
“It’s really quite simple, I wish to find someone. Can you help me or not?”
“No. It’s really not. You’re going to get chewed up and spit out if you try to find her all on your own, you stubborn ass,” Christine laughs.
“Her. How do you know I’m looking for a her?” He slams his fists on the table. Christine withdraws her feet and puts them back on the floor. She draws one of her blades and drives it into the table with a sharp thud. She barely misses stabbing through his hand.
“You’re not in any position to make demands. I could quite easily cut you down where you stand and tear you into so many tiny pieces that you’ll never be put back together. Your soul could be lost for eternity and no one in this town would ever care to look for you,” Christine tells him calmly.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’m an angel that fell from grace, right into demonhood. Much like Lucifer himself...there’s precious little I wouldn’t do.” She shrugs. Finally, the angel sinks down into a chair and rubs his temples in frustration.
“Please help me find my Christine, I need to know where she is, if she is well or--” His voice cracks.
“You are Erik Delacroix, yes?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then not only do I know where she is, but I’m here to take you to her. Make sure an angel like you stays out of trouble. As long as you cooperate, in any case.”
“Who are you?” He asks again.
“As far as you’re concerned, a friend.”
And that’s how Christine found herself travelling with the angelic incarnation of her former lover from a different reality. Things were so needlessly complicated in the afterlife.
She teaches him how to survive down here. How to use potions and charms to hide his wings and glow. Where to find the merchants and magicians that would sell the things and not sell you out to the seedy demons after angel feathers.
It takes three days before he tries to steal her mask. He reached for it from behind her. Christine’s hand shot out like a bullet and twisted his hand away until the pain from the pressure point was enough to drop him to his knees.
“If you even try to take my mask again, I will cut your hand off, put your fingers on a string and wear it like a necklace,” she says with such calm seriousness that Erik can’t help but take her at her word and back down. He’s seen her do far worse to her enemies, even only traveling with her for a few days.
“I want to know who you are,” he says, “Why you’re so willing to help me.”
“You’ll find out once we reach our destination,” she explains, “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a hint and if you can figure it out before we get to Mnemosyne, I’ll take off the mask. Deal?”
“Am I making deals with the devil, now?”
“Close enough.”
“Fine.”
“When I was alive, I sang at the Palais Garnier. The Angel of Music taught me how.”
“Will you tell me the year? The year you sang at the Garnier?”
“1881.”
His brows knit together and he falls into silence. If she is telling the truth, then he should know her. Shouldn’t he?
---
“Since you were too arrogant to drink the damn wing potion, fly away you idiot!” Christine growls, shooting at another one of their assailants. A gang of massive, mutated demons that wish to kidnap the angel and sell him for parts.
“And leave you here on your own?” Erik asks, brushing her off. He tries so valiantly to be helpful in a demon fight. He’s virtually useless. More of a burden than anything. One of the mutants grabs his wing and crushes the bones in its fist. Erik yells from the pain and Christine has had enough of this ridiculousness.
“I’ve traveled Hell on my own for years. Years, Delacroix. You’re just getting in my way!” With her patience expired, Christine holds her hand out to him, her fingers curled in like claws. Black feathers sprout from her hand and soon, there’s a cloud of crows heading towards the obnoxious angel. They don’t exactly attack him, they simply push him out of the carnage and conceal his exact location.
And then her true fury is unleashed. The reason she has become known as “The Valkyrie” is put on full display. She is a goddess of death, choosing who is to be slain and who is to be shown mercy.
Today, there are no survivors. She tears them all apart in a flurry of birds and bullets and blades...They never stood a chance, in all honesty.
When the dust and carnage settle, she stands in the middle of all the bloodshed, the seven or so demons scattered around her in pieces. From head to toe, she’s covered in blood and it’s impossible to tell if it’s her own or from their attackers.
Nursing his injured wing, the angel sits on the ground. He looks up at her, blinded by all the red. When the smell fully reaches him, he wretches. He has seen her fight off enemies. He’s never seen her take down so many so ruthlessly, so quickly.
For a moment, he is honestly afraid of her. What could happen to an angel that would turn her into such a creature…? Certainly she must have known the path she had fallen towards? Bile rises in his throat as he realizes why someone would go to such drastic, violent lengths to protect someone.
She falls to her knees and her identity finally dawns on him.
He rushes to her side and picks her up out of the sea of blood.
A few hours later, her demon body has healed enough for her to regain consciousness. With a pained groan, Christine sits up and panics, she immediately feels to see if the mask is still in place. With her face still covered, some of her anxiety dissipates. Then she takes stock of her new surroundings. A shady hotel room, by the look, and she’s alone in it.
Alone in it.
Her panic begins anew when she cannot immediately find her angel companion. She stumbles out of bed, every muscle and bone aching in the aftermath of that little altercation. This was all his fault, stupid angel Erik. If only he had reigned in his arrogance for five minutes and done what she had told him to, this entire ordeal could have been avoided.
Christine storms towards the door, her aim to find him as quickly as possible, but she finds a note pinned there.
”Do not worry yourself on my behalf. I am safely in the room next to yours. I imagined you’d prefer privacy while you recovered. When you are ready, I have a bottle of whisky as a token of gratitude for your actions today.”
His handwriting is exactly the same. Christine laughs, holding the paper between her fingers. His words are tad less formal, another one of those small quirks that set him apart from her own Erik.
She whips the mask off her face and starts to cry. Silent, ugly tears stream down her face, mixing with the blood and dirt caked to her skin. This was a mistake, coming out here to fetch him. No matter how much she owes the other Christine, this suddenly too much for her to handle.
Christine drags herself into the shower. It doesn’t matter how disgusting the tap water is here, it’s still better than being covered in blood. The sound and the feel of the water hitting her skin is a comfort. For as long as she can stand it, she just lets the water flow over her. She cries and cries and pounds a fist against the tile wall until it cracks. The shards dig into her skin and she hardly cares until her flesh is worn down to the bone.
She wants to go home. Wherever that is.
It takes quite a bit of time before she manages to pull herself together enough to face him. If it weren’t for the promise of whisky, she probably would have just crawled back into bed and waited until morning before confronting him. She doesn’t know what to say to him. Christine wants to yell and scream at him for being such an idiot, not that it would do much good. He’s so full of himself, she doubts he’d ever understand the point. He’s too set in his ways. Too stubborn to ever admit to any wrongdoing. But ultimately, she decides that what he has to say won’t matter. With whisky to dull the pain and smooth the edges, nothing really matters.
She knocks on his door. He answers it.
“Good evening,” he greets her, stepping aside to allow her to enter, “Please do come in.”
His heavenly glow is notably absent.
So are his wings.
He listened.
He listened.
She is thankful for the mask. Without it, she fears she’d lose her already fragile composure.
“I wanted to apologize for today. If I had trusted your word from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had to put yourself in such a dangerous position,” Erik explains, stiffly pouring a glass of whisky. He offers her the glass. Christine brushes it away and grabs the bottle in his other hand instead. Those fiercely blue eyes of his widen in a slight bit of shock but he otherwise does not protest. If she wants nearly the entire bottle, he’ll allow it. Christine tips the bottle to her lips and drinks it like water.
“I’ve been through worse,” she assures him. He frowns. He’s still so naive to the ways of Hell. Truly, this was but the tip of the iceberg of hellish human suffering.
“I don’t doubt that. No one learns how to destroy in such a manner unless it is a necessity,” he says softly. Christine looks up at him, golden eyes burning and curious. This Erik has never had to fight for his life. This Erik has never been ostracized from society for his appearance...And yet his eyes still hold the same sadness. She wonders how that can be. How his life had been so different and yet so exactly the same.
“I hope you never have to learn such a thing,” Christine trails off, seeking comfort in her whisky.
“Is that why you came to travel with me?”
“I didn’t see the sense in allowing another angel to lose their wings when I could so easily prevent it.”
“If our deal still stands, I would like to make a guess as to your identity, Valkyrie,” Erik states, sipping at his own glass.
“I don’t renege on my deals,” Christine assures him. He forces a smile and sits down on the edge of the bed. He exhales, finding the courage to speak aloud his theory.
“Did you really think you could hide from me, Christine? That I wouldn’t recognize you?” he asks. She whips around to face him, eyes wide and shocked behind her mask.
“I’m not your Christine,” she clarifies.
“Oh, I am well aware of that,” He scoffs, “But you are Christine. Swedish girl with the voice of an angel, yes?”
“Everything seems to converge in the afterlife, even alternate souls,” she explains. Erik runs a hand through his soft, perfect hair. He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, deep in thought.
“Why do you wear the mask?” He asks, “My Christine walks around in broad daylight, proudly showing off her skeleton-like visage.”
“I didn’t want to scare you off,” she replies, “I’m afraid you might find what is behind my mask far more terrible than a face made of death.” She reaches behind her head to untie the mask but she pauses, waiting for his consent.
He tilts his head and nods, granting permission. Christine takes off the mask and Erik gasps. He looks at her with horror, though he desperately tries to smother the expression on his face.
Her face is complete, yes. Perfectly formed, aside from the scars along her cheek and neck. He had been expecting another deformity, not the face of his mother staring back at him.
He starts to speak, breathless, “You look like my--”
“Mother? I know,” she forces a smile.
“How strange, indeed,” he wants to look at anything and everything in the room except for at her.
“I didn’t think you’d trust me if you saw this face at the start,” Christine explains. A short, bitter laugh escapes him.
“You’re probably right. Had I seen your face, I likely would have turned around and gone back to Heaven without another word.”
“But you trust me now, don’t you?”
“Without question,” he answers. Then he asks a question of his own, “Do you have your own Erik, then?”
“I do.”
“What is he like?”
“Much the same as you, honestly. Aside from the whole lack of nose bit,” Christine looks away and towards the floor.
“I’ve often looked at my own Christine and wondered how I would respond if I were dealt the hand she’s been given. I’ve always wondered if I could handle her situation with half as much grace and dignity as she has managed...and I doubt that I could. I’m not nearly as brave as she is. Or you, by extension I suppose.”
Her gaze slowly lifts to meet his again. Those blue eyes will be her undoing, she swears.
“I’m not brave, I just can’t seem to stop running.”
“Perhaps it’s time to stop, then.”
“I’m not sure I know how anymore.”
“What are you running from?” He asks, brows knitting together as he stares her down. Christine tries to reply. Her lips part over and over as she looks for the answer. Everything is so complicated, she doesn’t know what to say. She blinks and realizes she has started to cry again. When she doesn’t answer that question, Erik asks another one.
“Do you love him?”
The question she’s been asking herself over and over these past months. Can she even forgive him for what he’s done this time? Let alone love him? All the lies and betrayal and heartbreak…
It all feels so far away.
“More than anything.”