The taxi from his manor to the City Opera House did little to smoother the reaction Christine had pulled from him. Erik valued control; and when he lost that control, his thinly-painted veneer of humanity suffered as well. The girl in his home was fortunate that she finally ran. A moment later, and he would have forgotten that she was a virgin. He would have forgotten that he was trying not to be the monster everyone saw in him since his birth.
The hour was so late to have turned early: 3:34 a.m., by the reckoning of the clock in his office. He locked himself in the office, then pressed a hidden latch in the wall. Moments later, he walked blackened corridors that led deep into the cellars under the opera house. He needed no light; his eyes had always been unnaturally strong in darkness, and he had walked these corridors far too often not to know the path by heart. Bypassing his traps, he arrived at the vast underground lake in the cellar where he'd built the last home he'd ever intended to keep.
At the edge of the lake, he carefully paced. The pattern of his steps summoned his boat from the other side, drawn to the far end of the lake by hidden automation he had created for his use. This place was a sanctuary for him, a home he'd meant as an escape from the rest of the world. This was, he realized as he stepped onto his boat, his mausoleum. It'd been his intent to live out the rest of his days here and die without another soul to know it. Only, The City had other ideas.
Enigma.
In his rush from Christine, he'd altogether forgotten that he'd allowed that wayward young woman free access to his sanctuary as well. He knew she needed one as well. Gritting his teeth, he turned the boar toward the far end of the house by the lake -- the side where he kept all his musical instruments as the compositions he'd been working on before The City found him. He would leave Enigma the rest of the house. But tonight, there was nothing for him but music, and it was music that he reached for now.
Minutes later, by the light of a sconce on the wall, Erik began pouring his anger and his lust out over the strings of his viola, the instrument that had simply been the closest to him when he walked in.