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11h

Trial By Coffee

Hey guys! Life is hard, and I'm just taking it day by day. Sometimes, that's all we can do.

This is an AU for In Silence I've been sitting on for MONTHS and I finally had a minute and some motivation to write, so here it is. I'm writing it in parts because I'm eager to get something In Silence-related out!

During an afternoon in Paris, (Y/N) meets Madame Christine de Chagny—unaware that Erik is watching from only a few tables away.

Part 1 (You are here!)

Part 2 (coming soon!)

Nadir brought late-summer peaches underground with him.

Early August clung to his shirt and dampened the silver at his temples. When he entered the drawing room, the outside world seemed to enter with him: sun-warmed leaves, hot stone, and the faint dust of the streets. Even the peaches he set upon the table seemed indecently alive in that changeless house—gold and crimson beneath their velvet bloom, their skins holding all the warmth of an afternoon that had passed without her.

(Y/N) touched one with the tips of her fingers.

“Is it very hot?”

“Intolerably,” Nadir said.

She smiled. “How lovely. I miss it.”

At the drafting table, Erik’s pen went still.

The house beneath the Opera knew neither summer nor winter. Its stones kept their chill; its lake remained black; its lamps burned with the same unwavering pallor whether Paris lay muffled in snow or blazed beneath an August sun. Erik brought her flowers and fruit, bolts of bright fabric—every beautiful thing that could be carried below and offered in the living world’s stead. But summer itself could not be brought underground. It lived in heat against the skin, in dust gathered upon one’s hem, in the green shade beneath trees and the long, luminous evenings.

She had missed nearly all of it.

Nadir watched her turn the peach slowly in her hand. His face softened, though the line between his brows remained.

“There is a quiet café not far from here azizam,” he said. “I had thought that perhaps you might accompany me above. We could walk a little. Visit one or two shops, if you wished.”

“Oh!”

The little cry escaped before caution could catch it. She looked toward Erik at once, though delight had already brightened her face.

“No.” he said simply.

He had neither raised his voice nor turned to look at them. He merely dismissed the notion then bent over his work once more, as though Nadir had proposed an airing upon the moon.

Nadir settled more deeply into his chair. “For two or three hours—”

“I was unaware that the meaning of no had altered at all. No.”

“You have not heard the arrangements, rafigh.”

“‘I will not leave her side. I will remain near the Opera. I will avoid crowds. I will return before evening.’” Erik recited the promises with bitter precision before Nadir could offer them. “Yes, yes—I know precisely what you intend to promise, Daroga. The answer remains no.”

(Y/N) set the peach carefully upon the table.

“Erik?”

At her gentle tone, the line of his shoulders sharpened beneath his black coat. For a moment, he would not look at her.

She had once believed his refusals immovable because he pronounced them like judgments from God. Marriage had taught her otherwise. Erik’s certainty was often only terror that had put on wrath.

“I should like to go, my love,” she said.

That brought his head around.

The mask and veil concealed much, but not the swift, childlike hurt in his eyes. His gaze moved from her to Nadir, and she watched fear choose someone safer to punish.

“You brought this proposition into Erik’s house without first speaking to him.”

“I did,” Nadir admitted.

“You wished to excite her hopes before Erik could object.”

“I wished you to see her face before you said no.”

Erik rose so abruptly that his chair overturned and struck the floor behind him.

“Then you have succeeded! She is dissatisfied, and you may congratulate yourself upon having reminded her.”

“He has reminded me of nothing, darling,” (Y/N) said.

Erik turned upon her. “You could scarcely contain your delight.”

“No. I could not. I love you”

The answer checked him. Fury flashed through his eyes—bright, wounded, unreasonable—and she saw the effort with which he mastered the first cruel thing it offered him.

“You are very eager to leave your poor husband.” He said instead.

“For one afternoon,” she said. “For a walk and a coffee.”

“The first hour is always only an hour. The first step is only a step. Then there is another, and another—”

“And at the end of them, I shall come home.”

His mouth moved beneath the mask. No sound followed.

She went to him. A year ago, she would have hurried, anxious to soothe him before his fear could become something larger than them both. Now she crossed the room without haste and rested her hands lightly against his chest.

“I miss the sun,” she told him. “I miss trees. I miss sitting among other people and hearing conversations that have nothing whatever to do with anything important. None of that makes me wish to be any less your wife.”

“You cannot know what you will feel once you are there.”

“I can know what I shall do.”

His gold eyes searched hers with terrible attentiveness.

She had learned not to heap promises upon him. A single promise, plainly made, could become a fact between them. Repeated too often or enlarged too grandly, it began to resemble persuasion—and to Erik, persuasion was only falsehood waiting to be discovered.

“I shall come home at the hour we agree upon,” she said. “You know that I do what I say I shall.”

The anger in him faltered.

“You have never broken your word to Erik,” he said at last.

“No.”

“That does not mean you never will.”

“-Nor does your fear mean that I must.”

Nadir, meanwhile, had become deeply interested in one of the peaches.

Erik stared at her. Then, with a sweep of his coat, he turned away and righted the fallen chair as though it had personally offended him.

“Five o’clock,” he said after a moment.

Nadir glanced toward the mantel clock. “Half past five would be reasonable.”

“Five.”

“Erik—”

“Five. You will remain no farther than one street from the Opera. You will not leave her alone—not for one moment. If the café is crowded, you will go elsewhere. If anyone behaves improperly, you will return at once. If there is any alteration in your plans—any alteration—you will bring her straight home.”

“I had not intended to lose her,” Nadir said.

“Your intentions have never impressed me, Daroga.”

Nevertheless, it was consent.

A half-hour later, when (Y/N) returned in a pale summer dress that had hung unworn all season, Erik was waiting beside the lake with her gloves, her reticule, more money than she could possibly spend in a single afternoon at a cafe, and the grim air of a man equipping his wife for exile.

He fastened the clasp of her reticule himself. He examined the ribbons of her hat, adjusted one beneath her chin, and reminded Nadir of the hour twice. He had drawn breath for a third warning when he caught sight of her smile.

His fingers went still upon the ribbon.

“You look very happy.”

There he was again—that small, resentful boy within the terrible man, looking upon her happiness as though it were not delight at the promise of a single afternoon, but the first light of a future from which he had already been shut out.

“I am happy,” she said.

His fingers closed around her wrist.

She lifted the hand that held her and kissed his knuckles.

“I shall not pretend unhappiness merely to comfort you. I am happy to go into the city.” She turned his hand and pressed another kiss into his palm. “And I shall be happy to come home to my husband.”

His grasp tightened once.

Then, with enormous effort, his fingers opened and let her go.

“Five o’clock,” he whispered.

“Five o’clock, my love.”

She kissed the sliver of cheek left bare at the edge of his mask. Whatever final command had been gathering died unspoken. He stood motionless as she took Nadir’s arm, his eyes wide and stricken—the man rendered helpless by so small a tenderness.

The heat reached her before the daylight did.

It came breathing down the last narrow stair and touched her face with air unlike anything beneath the Opera—heavy, living air, laden with dust and horses, sun-warmed stone, damp earth, and the overripe sweetness of fruit from a seller’s barrow. Through the concealed door came the muffled iron thunder of carriage wheels and the distant, swelling cries of the street.

Nadir paused with his hand upon the latch.

“Are you ready?”

“No,” she said, nearly laughing. “Open it!”

He did.

August struck her.

The glare was so fierce that she recoiled. One hand flew before her eyes; the other caught at Nadir’s sleeve as the sun burned white through her closed lids. Heat shimmered above the pavement and blazed against the walls of the Opera. It rose from the stones beneath her shoes and pressed against every inch of her—the thin kid of her gloves, the bare hollow of her throat. Nothing underground had prepared her for the sheer physical force of an ordinary afternoon.

Nadir steadied her with a hand beneath her elbow.

“Slowly.”

She could not answer. Her eyes started to water.

At first, the world returned to her too loud and too bright: the rattling sweep of a carriage crossing the blaze; a green awning; yellow flowers trembling in a woman’s basket; the pale dress of a child chasing a hoop along the pavement. Then the glare yielded up its blinding light, and Paris appeared all at once.

Peaches lay heaped gold and scarlet beneath their velvet bloom. Buckets brimmed with roses and late-summer lilies. Dust rose in the wake of a cab and remained suspended in the air, incandescent. Above the street, leaves stirred in the hot wind, turning their glossy faces toward the sun, then away, then toward it again.

People went nowhere of consequence.

They crossed streets, quarreled over the price of fruit, lingered before shop windows, complained of the heat. A gentleman stood beneath the shade of a tree consulting his watch. Two women passed arm in arm, bent close over some confidence which seemed to require a great deal of laughter. No one hurried toward catastrophe. Nothing happened, and the afternoon did not know itself miraculous.

A tear escaped before she could prevent it. She brushed it away and discovered another already following.

“Does the light hurt you?” Nadir asked.

“Y-yes.” She laughed unsteadily. The answer was true, though not nearly true enough. “Don't you dare take me back just yet.”

“I had no such intention, azizam.”

He offered his handkerchief. She accepted it, but could not bring herself to wipe her eyes. Instead, she tilted her face toward the sky. The sun caressed it.

She had remembered its warmth, but she had forgotten its real weight—the gentle, lavish breath of it across her forehead and cheeks, as though the whole bright sky had bent down to welcome her back.

Beneath the earth, Erik had given her every beauty he could carry there: silk and flowers, music and jewels, fruit ripened beneath distant skies. He could lay moonlight upon his black lake and make stone walls disappear into painted gardens. Every wonder that hands could carry or genius fashion, he had laid at her feet.

But even Erik could not bring her this: the real, eternal, burning sun, pouring itself with careless abundance over leaves and flowers, dusty stones and passing strangers—and now, at last, over her.

The wonder upon her face drew a smile from Nadir. Then the smile faded.

He had meant to give her pleasure. He had not expected the sight of that pleasure to hurt.

No woman should receive an ordinary afternoon as though it were an impossible freedom. No woman should stand teary-eyed merely because the open sky moved above her head. It was one thing to understand what she had surrendered. It was another to watch the world return it to her, sensation by sensation.

She lowered her face at last and found him regarding her with such grave tenderness that she smiled.

“Don’t look so sad for me, Nadir. You will make me think Erik was right to distrust the entire enterprise.”

“Oh, God forbid,” Nadir murmured.

She slipped her hand through his arm, and they began to walk.

He allowed her to set the pace, though it could scarcely be called a pace at all. Every few yards, something detained her: a shop window filled with summer hats; a dog asleep in the narrow shade beneath a café chair; the silver fan of water a shopkeeper flung across the pavement to lay the dust. Nadir stopped each time without comment.

Beneath a row of trees, sunlight broke through the leaves and swam over her pale gown in wavering pieces. She passed one gloved hand through the shifting light like a child reaching after goldfish in a pond.

Neither of them saw the stooped gentleman detach himself from the shadow of the Opera and enter the street behind them.

His coat was dun-colored and far too heavy for August. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed the greater part of his face; dark spectacles concealed his eyes. A folded newspaper rested beneath one arm, while his other hand leaned lightly upon a dark cane. He walked with the patient stiffness of great age, placing the cane before him at intervals so exact that the artifice disappeared.

Nadir let her wander in silence for nearly the length of the street before he asked,

“How has he been with you?”

(Y/N) glanced at him.

He had spoken mildly, his attention apparently fixed upon the crossing ahead, but she had known the question was coming. Nadir never asked merely after Erik’s sleep, appetite, or nerves. He listened beneath every answer for fear disguised as loyalty, misery made respectable by patience, some plea she could not safely speak otherwise.

She did not resent him for it.

“Erik has been...himself.”

“That phrase has never offered me much comfort.”

She laughed. “No. I suppose it would not.”

The branches thickened overhead, and the wavering sunlight gave way to shade. The change was slight, but a blessing.

“He is needy,” she admitted, smiling despite herself. “Clinging. He would prefer me within reach whenever we share a room and in the same room whenever we do not. If something wounds him, he may remain silent for hours and expect me to discover both the injury and its cause. If I leave him alone, I have abandoned him. If I comfort him before he has decided to ask, I have insulted him.”

“A simple arrangement.”

“Perfectly.”

One corner of Nadir’s mouth moved.

“He is determined to involve me in every thought he has. Some mornings I have not yet opened my eyes before he begins explaining why an idea conceived at three o’clock will alter the future of architecture.”

“Do you understand these explanations?”

“Not remotely.”

Nadir laughed quietly, but his gaze soon returned to her face.

“And his...temper?”

She did not pretend to misunderstand.

“Sudden storms. Some pass quickly. Others occupy the whole house.”

“Does he frighten you?”

She gave the question the seriousness it deserved.

“Sometimes,” she said. “His rages can frighten me. His suspicion can wound me. There are still many days when he believes his terror more readily than he believes me.”

Nadir’s expression grew grave.

“He has never raised a hand against me,” she continued. “Even when he has forgotten how to be careful with anything else, he is careful of me. But I no longer soothe him by yielding to whatever his fear demands.”

“No?”

“If he is unjust, I tell him so. If he wounds me, I do not let his remorse become the only pain in the room. I let him bear having been wrong.”

“And does he?”

“With appalling amounts of tears and pleading.”

Nadir laughed again.

“But he bears it,” she said more softly. “...Eventually.”

A carriage rattled between them and the opposite sidewalk. Beyond it, the stooped man paused and lifted his head sharply. He could see the gravity in Nadir’s face and the solemn turn of (Y/N)'s mouth, but the street swallowed every word she spoke.

How unhappy was she, truly?

“He is trying,” (Y/N) continued. “Not always gracefully. Not always successfully. But truly. He comes back after we quarrel now instead of disappearing into the passages to punish us both. He is learning that I may be angry with him without ceasing to love him. That no is not abandonment. That one unhappy hour cannot make make my promise untrue.”

“Learning?” Nadir repeated.

“I did not say he had mastered any of it.”

“No. That might have alarmed me more.”

She smiled, but it soon softened.

“He is gentle with me, Nadir. Doting beyond reason, generous beyond our needs. He can be furious with the world and still care deeply that I am cold. He wants to know whether I have eaten, whether I have slept, whether I am pleased. More than anything, he wishes to be good to me.”

She looked down at the shifting pattern of leaves and light beneath their feet.

“Sometimes he has no idea what goodness requires. But he attempts it with everything in him.”

Her hand tightened slightly upon Nadir’s arm.

“And I love him with everything in me. That does not make the difficult parts less true. It only means they are not the whole truth.”

At an open window above a milliner’s, a white curtain breathed in the warm air. A woman leaned out to draw a pot of geraniums from the direct sun. Somewhere within the room, a man asked her a question, and she answered without turning—the little exchange softened by long familiarity.

(Y/N) watched until the window slipped from view.

“May I speak to you about something?”

“Of course.”

“Something I cannot yet say to Erik.”

Nadir’s arm grew still beneath her hand, though his voice remained calm.

“Are you afraid of what he would do?”

“No. Of what he would hear.” She lowered her voice. “He would hear a farewell where none was intended.”

“Is there one?”

“Absolutely not.”

The answer came with such force that he looked at her.

“Then I shall not hear one either,” he said. “Tell me.”

She drew a slow breath.

“I miss the life I thought I would have.”

Nadir said nothing. He merely turned them aside for two women approaching beneath their parasols and waited.

“I thought I should live in a house with open windows and perhaps a little garden,” she continued. “I thought morning would enter my bedroom whether I wished it to or not. That I should visit friends without first agreeing upon a route and an hour of return. That I might go walking simply because the day was lovely, or to the market because I had forgotten something.”

Her smile was small and sorrowful.

“I imagined a husband who left for work in the morning and returned in the evening tired, but happy to be home. I imagined ordinary quarrels—money, dinners, visits neither of us wished to make. Small, foolish troubles.”

The husband in those old dreams had never possessed a face. Now, when she tried to imagine him, he had Erik’s voice and Erik’s long, beautiful hands.

“I do not desire another man,” she said softly. “But, I mourn the life into which I wish I might have brought Erik.”

Her smile disappeared.

“Instead, an afternoon walk must be negotiated like a treaty. I live in a cellar beneath the Palais Garnier with a husband the world believes dead.”

“It is a home,” she corrected quickly. “A beautiful one. Erik has filled it with more wonders than any house I ever imagined possessing. He has tried, with all his genius, to build the world for me beneath the earth.”

Her voice trembled.

Nadir’s face tightened, though he did not interrupt.

“Sometimes I think of other women,” she confessed. “Not because I imagine their husbands are all kinder or their marriages happier. I am not so foolish. But they belong to the world so easily.”

Her fingers shifted uneasily against his sleeve.

“They complain of the heat without knowing what a blessing it is to stand beneath the sun. They are disappointed when rain spoils a walk. They do not understand the extravagance of being able to take that walk the next day. And the next.”

She looked toward the houses lining the street—the open windows, the flower boxes, the ordinary lives passing behind curtains.

“I mourn that life sometimes. The ease of it. The woman I expected to become. Sometimes I mourn her as though she had lived long enough to be lost.”

Her eyes began to shine again.

“And then I feel disloyal, because Erik has given me everything he could possibly give.”

“You are not disloyal.”

“I know that in my mind.” She touched one hand lightly to her breast. “It is more difficult to persuade the rest of me.”

They passed out of the deeper shade. Sunlight returned in scattered pieces, slipping over her hat and shoulders.

“That is the misery of it,” she said. “I do not want another husband. I want Erik and a house full of open windows. Erik and a garden. Erik and friends who may come to visit us both. Erik and an afternoon beneath the sun which need not be earned.”

Her voice faltered.

“I want a life large enough to contain both him and the world.”

She bowed her head as her hand tightened on Nadir's arm.

“...But our life is only large enough for Erik.”

Nadir was quiet for a moment.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Sometimes it is.”

The simple agreement struck more deeply than reassurance would have done. Her eyes filled again.

Across the street, the stooped gentleman paused before a shop window and appeared to study an engraving through his dark spectacles. Erik saw her bowed head, her wet eyes; saw Nadir turn toward her.

The newspaper creased beneath his hand.

“I would not trade the life I have with him,” she said. “Not for all of Paris or the world. If every door in the city stood open to me, I would still turn back for Erik.”

“Even knowing the cost?”

“Every time.” Her answer was fierce. “Leaving him would feel like cutting away half of myself and pretending what remained was whole. A life without him might be easier, but it would not be mine.”

She looked up at Nadir helplessly.

“That is what I cannot make sound sensible. I grieve for an ordinary life, yet I would refuse it if the price were Erik.”

“It is perfectly sensible. You do not mourn your choice. You mourn its cost.”

Something in her face loosened.

“And loving what you chose does not require you to lie about what it has cost you.”

Nadir covered her hand with his where it rested upon his arm.

“I have known Erik for many years. I have seen him feared, obeyed, flattered, pitied. I have loved him myself, though he has often seemed determined to punish me for it.”

A breath of laughter escaped her.

“But I have never seen anyone love him as you do. You do not mistake his fear for tenderness when it becomes control, nor his remorse for change before he has changed. Yet neither do you reduce him to the worst thing he has done. You love him with your eyes open.”

“It would be difficult not to. Erik takes up the entire view.”

Nadir laughed.

“Your devotion is gentle, but it is not weak.”

His hand closed more warmly over hers.

“I admire you, azizam. More than I can express.”

She turned her face away, overcome.

“I do not feel admirable.”

“No,” he said. “You feel tired.”

She laughed through her tears.

“And perhaps,” Nadir continued, “I admire Erik as well. Not for what his fear has cost you. But for what he does against it. He returns after quarrels. He bears having been wrong. Today, when every terror in him wished to close his hand around you, he opened it and let you go.”

Her mouth trembled.

“Those would be small victories in any other man,” Nadir said. “In Erik, they are enormous acts of courage.”

“He is trying so hard.”

“I know. Once, I did not believe he could.” Nadir’s expression softened. “I am glad to have been wrong.”

For a moment, they stood beneath the moving leaves while Paris flowed around them.

“Still,” he said, “if anything changes—”

“I know.”

“If you become afraid, or if you should ever wish to leave—”

“I would tell you. I promise.”

He studied her before inclining his head.

A clock began to strike somewhere beyond the trees.

(Y/N) counted the notes. By the time the last had faded, she was staring toward the distant tower in dismay.

“Can it truly be so late?”

“Time has not altered merely because you have come aboveground.”

She looked along the sunlit street, torn between the afternoon and the husband who would already be counting its remaining minutes.

“Do you think we still have time for coffee?”

“The café was included in the original treaty.”

“Yes, but I have squandered half our freedom just looking at everything”

“I believe we may risk one cup.”

Her face brightened.

“I should like to sit for a little while,” she said. “Among people, I mean. We need not speak to anyone. I only want to watch them going about their lives before we return.”

Nadir offered his arm with renewed ceremony.

“Then we must not keep the coffee waiting.”

They turned toward the broad-striped awning at the next corner.

Beneath it, little iron tables stood along the pavement behind boxes overflowing with red geraniums. Beyond them, Paris streamed past in magnificent indifference—carriage wheels flashing in the sun, parasols drifting above the crowd, sellers calling beneath the trees.

Nadir chose a table well within the shade, but near enough to the pavement that she might watch the whole city pass.

The waiter set down two cups upon white saucers painted with blue cornflowers. The porcelain was not nearly so fine as the china Erik kept below. That was part of the charm.

(Y/N) touched the delicate handle.

“What would you like with it?” Nadir asked.

“Everything.”

He glanced at the waiter. “You see the difficulty.”

She leaned sideways to inspect the glass case upon the counter, where pastries rested in precise, glistening rows.

“That one.”

“The apricot tart?”

“Yes!”

It arrived upon another flowered plate, the apricots shining beneath their glaze like little captive suns. She broke the glazed crust with the edge of her fork and heard it crack softly beneath the silver.

Butter, bright fruit, the smoky bitterness of coffee—each taste seemed sharpened by the warm air, the clatter of cups, the scrape of chairs, and the simple fact that no one had carried any of it across a black lake especially to please her.

It had merely been waiting in the world.

For a little while, she did nothing but sit.

That was perhaps the greatest luxury of all. She had nowhere she must go. No task awaited her hands. No anxious silence required interpretation.

She watched a flower seller rearrange her wilting roses. Beneath the next table, a child attempted to coax a stubborn little dog back into the street.

None of it concerned her.

She smiled into her coffee.

Nadir watched her over the rim of his cup.

“Is it satisfactory?”

“It is extraordinary.”

The wonder in her voice banished his amusement. She caught the change in his expression and tapped her fork lightly against his saucer.

“You are doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Looking at me as though I were a tragedy.”

Before Nadir could defend himself, a young woman stepped beneath the awning.

She closed her parasol as she entered the shade and turned to speak to the waiter. While he answered, she glanced aside as a stooped old gentleman took a nearby table and unfolded the newspaper tucked beneath his arm. His dark spectacles caught the light as he bent over the page.

Her gaze moved on. It wandered idly across the other tables, passed over (Y/N), reached Nadir—

And stopped.

Her face brightened with recognition.

Nadir had been reaching for the sugar. The tongs remained suspended above the bowl.

For one brief and profoundly irreligious moment, he suspected Providence of having acquired Erik’s taste for melodrama.

Of all the women in Paris. Of all the cafés. Of all the days.

It had sent him Christine de Chagny.