There was no practical use for the mask. Yet, its familiar leather press against his face was comforting in a way that nothing else could be, in a way that no one else could understand. Even the chafing, the constant rub against his skin (skin that used to be paper thin and cold as ice), still felt like pleasure. As the days progressed, he fell back into easy use of it, and it helped to feel how his breath blew back on him as he composed, as he breathed. He had often wondered if the sensation of the lack of breath would be the last thing he registered as he died.
The house on the lake was still standing, but except for the myriad defenses and traps, the majority of it was destroyed. He'd spent the better half of a day alternating between rage and dogged destructive determination. The former, he recognized; the latter... he forgot altogether and knew only of it when he came back to himself again. It helped. He thought it helped. It certainly fit his mood, and there was something to be said about that. Yes, there was something to be said about that, indeed.
His personal care had devolved into infrequent dips in his ice cold lake, haphazardly drying himself with whatever fabric he passed by, and then slicking his hair back before returning to whatever he could use to keep his hands busy. He'd have descended into a morphine haze by now, had a certain meddlesome doctor not removed all traces of it from every residence he held. To return to the over-bright world above, even for that milky respite, was a pressure too heavy for him to endure. He remained in his home, then, filling it to brimming with the echoing inside his chest - the sound of someone absent and the rage and longing and desire --
One of his defenses signalled - a high, insistent chiming that said someone was at his door. He left his bow on the table and, with violin still balanced on his collarbone, walked to the mantle where two ornate brass carvings waited for his decision. He could turn the grasshopper -- or the scorpion. Under the command of one, a trapdoor would open smoothly, dropping whoever knocked at his door into a series of mirrored rooms, designed to heat the occupant to delirium, madness, and finally death. The other... The other would simply open the door. He'd long ago disabled the mechanism that would flood the house completely. Those had been happier days.
But from somewhere inside his mind, he retrieved the knowledge that there were only two living people in the City who knew enough to come this far. One, he could easily destroy. The other.. Erik's hand paused over the grasshopper. Slowly, it slid through the air and finally turned the scorpion. Let the poison of the world course inside, then - the worse and better of the two options.
Erik wearily walked through the series of hidden doors and wall passages until he was - to the observer's eye - suddenly in the antechamber of his home - the same room to which the front door opened.
Erik's dull eyes showed little surprise when he beheld the doctor - but his blood raced and sent more than a little emotion through the side of his face that was visible when he saw what Hannibal dragged in behind him.
Words were stuck in the back of his throat, so heavy was his rage.