For a few moments, the seething emotion clawing around the composer simmered lower. Arie. He cared about her; he cared about what happened to her, and not just because his former employee had been the cause of her current state. He cared because he saw her fire, he saw her loss, and he knew what it was to be a child on the knife's edge. His situation was admittedly somewhat different, but his heart still responded to her as if they were kindred spirits. As if they shared something - even if she would not have acknowledged or agreed to the same.
Hannibal was right; it wasn't like him to leave someone like that behind. But as the boy blithely stepped foot into Erik's sanctuary, then violated it altogether by bringing in this stranger, Erik finally found his voice. It was a ravaged, metallic shred of the warm, hypnotic baritone that Erik usually employed, but it would still do to spit out words -- or to hiss them out, as it happened:
"I left her and the manor to your tender ministrations, Doctor Lecter," Erik said. "You have often proven your skill exceeds my own in the area of medicine. Have you failed her and me so soon that you come barking blame at me?"
The barely-contained rage was back, for a multitude of reasons that Erik had not named. His flaming eyes swiveled toward the intruder, and his muscles tightened to the point of pain. There were 17 different methods of killing them both in this room alone. Erik knew his orchestra like his own breath. Angela Artenelli, the 3rd flute. The hard truth was that Erik hadn't been upstairs to tend to the production at all since he discovered his wife.... his wife....
There were more holes in his production than just a lowly flautist. The soprano... Well, it would be the understudy now, wouldn't it? The understudy. The understudy! He hadn't realized he'd been shouting, and he certainly had no idea what words he'd been using. His throat hurt from it, and that strange rawness was what called him back. It was unequivocally wrong for him to strain such an instrument as his voice - and somewhere in the back of his mind, he still knew that.