7To be a Sinner
"Christine…" Raoul's sympathetic murmur laced through the air, "There is no Phantom,"
The brutal weight of his disbelief buried itself into her chest, tightening from the frozen air that crawled its way into her lungs. Yet, inside boiled like a furnace, bright sparks of outrage that threatened her vision with tears.
How could he! He saw what, no – who, had fallen from the rafters, no more than a discarded puppet, an instrument of torture, frightening the masses into a stampede. How could this little boy beg her to believe it fiction?
Christine had seen the painful reality collapsing onto the stage, shrieks of ballerinas scattering like a thousand petals in a torrent of wind. Petite Jammes' face of horror etched into her mind, retching into the corner, while Meg and the others flew to her mother's side. All of them chicks to their mother hen.
She was trying herself was struggling to resist the notion to curl into a ball and cry pitifully, hide from the terror that hid in the corners of her eyes when a hand laced its fingers with hers, tugging her back to reality.
Sniffing, her lips trembled as he looked at her. Concern furrowed his usually untroubled brows and clamminess clung to his neck.
"You don't need to fear an apparition that doesn't exist," he soothed. Christine ground her teeth.
He doesn't get it at all, does he?
"Raoul! I've been there, seen a world underneath where nothing exists, no people, no air, no light!" she pulled away, concentrating on the fog of memories that was just a haze in her mind, no doubt just another one of his tricks, "I – I – Oh, I don't how to describe it," her breath clouded in the air.
"It was just a dream, Christine; darling, it's nothing to dread," he followed her, the golden hair flickered in the corner of her vision. She flinched, arms clutching her sides.
All she could see were the shadows that hounded her every movement. What was friend and what was foe?
The sobs were rising, as if stopping allowed the fear to take over, the horror of it all returning.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, a man died. Died, he died! Dead. Dead. Dead on the floor. A dead man will walk no more.
A firm grasp on her shoulders shook her, "Christine, come back to me, Christine!"
Christine...
A gasp tore from her lips and she glanced wildly around, trying to place where the voice had emanated from.
Had it come from outside at all? Am I no longer in control of my faculties?
"Christine, look at me, you are quite fine! Why are you so skittish, you said yourself we are safe here, are we not?" cobalt eyes glistened with sincerity, even humour, the thinning line of his lips however, made something inside…shudder.
He thought her hysterical. He thought her hysterical. When he denied that there lived a madman, one haunting their very Opera House. He was the hysterical one!
She remembered that look, the one that had started to doubt her faery-tales, the birthplace of siren's, Näcken's, when she eagerly led him to a small pool of water outside a cave. Once he would grow wide-eyed and his lips would tilt into a fascinated grin, yet years later, when his hair had dulled to a sheen of brassy gold, those lips wouldn't move, a sceptical but permitting eyebrow raise as he'd listen to her tales with a tolerance of an elder brother.
But this, this where she told no tale of the Morrigan's, no light tease about an Angel, where fear threatened to swallow her whole – he saw a lie. A tease! A little girl trying to impress a childhood sweetheart, to faint and swoon like a feather-brained ninny!
"Leave me," she snapped coldly, twisting out of his pandering embrace. How he mocked her!
"But you need me," Raoul's rejection fractured the air, "You said –"
"I don't care! I can't stand here another minute where –" you deride my fears like a child, "I am nothing but a distraction to the death of a man!"
"But Christine, the managers said you'll sing -"
"As if the production will continue tonight! A murder and a toad took our stage and they expect me to be the next casualty?" she exhaled a tremulous laugh, "Oh, oh I don't think so. See if they want me tomorrow or drop me as soon as "La Carlotta" waltzes back onstage," she bit back the pain. No, he couldn't see her agony. Not when all he would do was bandage it with soft words and empty smiles. He'd soon as order fine horses to whisk them away from this nightmare!
As if losing her chance to be part of something beautiful again was just an inconsequential matter! As if a murder held no value, as if it wasn't a sin!
"Go back down, Raoul," she panted, "Go back to them, where you belong," her eyes rested on the buildings below. Somewhere, his grand mansion and lush gardens waited for their master to return.
"Christine -" his hand hovered above her shoulder and at her shudder he retracted instantly, with a wounded sniff, "Christine, I'll be waiting in the rotunda,"
Until you come to your senses. Was the unspoken end of that sentence, she knew.
Trudging steps took him to the door to the roof, two long seconds of silence, as if he was waiting for her to run to him, before she was left alone.
She sighed, shivering with the night's cruel air, and hugged herself as she finally allowed the tears to wet her eyelashes.
God, who was she? Had she shunned the only one who could protect her from that preying gaze?
She couldn't shake the sensation of eyes she felt upon her, but she had spent years with such a feeling that she no longer knew what was a fantasy and what was the truth.
He couldn't find her here! She'd only escaped up here with Meg, just the once, a summer or two ago. They had lain in the scorching heat, finding ample breeze on the roof of the Opera House, sharing bites of an orange they'd scavenged, a blanket that had once been a shawl of one of the costumes no-longer-needed, giggling like the petite rats that who took so well to the bonbons she saved for them.
Her heart ached at the memory, she could taste that bittersweet juice of the orange even now. The way the air had smelled so clean in their lungs. The comment of her Angel's when her cheeks had been burnt red for the entire week following.
"Wherever did you gain that frightful blush, dear?" He was far too polite to call it a burn.
And how she was thankful she hadn't confessed her venture to him now. She'd had wanted to miss a stern lecture on safety and forbidden places. Yet somehow, there had been a niggling feeling that her Angel had seen, even so. At that time, she had put it to the 'all-seeing' nature of an Angel, one who always knew when she had a bad rehearsal, when to treat her gently, when to select a song that she'd been humming…Especially if it had been one from her past.
Shaking her head, she pushed the intrusive thoughts away, her heart already ached with the night's horrors, much less the betrayal that clutched at her when she stopped to think. To re-learn all those treasured memories that were now tainted with a shadowed fingerprint.
Devastation of her childhood, the blossoming stage of youth where she transitioned from 'child' to 'my dear', from 'petite' to 'Mademoiselle'.
From ballet rat to Prima Donna.
The sudden urge to cry out, shake out all the anguish that swirled inside her, to kneel and pray to the Almighty for the courage to continue was encompassing. She had sent away the shoulder made for her tears and naivety, as if she had grown out of desiring comfort. No. She hadn't.
She wanted an Angel's voice, that had soothed her in blessed youth. His voice had dried the tear tracks more effectively than a handkerchief, the words had known how to coax a smile through glassy eyes, inspire with tenderness and compassion that had breathed life within her again.
Had dusted her petticoats and polished her hairbrush.
But the Angel was dead.
And left in the ruins was a sin.
Christine…
Her head jerked as his voice surrounded her, and she startled, backing away, blind from where the threat emanated from.
"Where are – where are you?" she challenged, searching each corner of the roof, the statues that loomed with menacing shadows, frantically locating each shape to look for some anomaly.
He had to be there, somewhere.
Death's fingertips stroked her spine, and she shuddered violently.
A murderer. I'm trapped on this roof with a murderer.
"Do you not know that where you go, I follow?" he darkly replied, voice dropping to a tender whisper, almost a song in itself, "Do you not know that your Angel adores from afar?"
Christine squeezed her eyes shut, the horrid twists of flesh seared into her mind's eye. A prickle of sympathy cut through – but it was shoved behind a wall of disgust at the snap of Joseph Buquet's body dropping to the floor.
"God forbid the sin you commit in my name," she hissed, glaring at the statues, "God forbid you step out of the shadows like a man!"
A grating rumble pierced the air before two boots hit the rooftop, flaring wings of a bat as his cloak snapped back to his side.
Two deep-set eyes stared back at her, guarded, as if he was preparing for war. He did not look as if he had just snuffed the light out of some poor soul. No, despite the distance, there was something that reminded her of a long-forgotten faery-tale, that had never been aired to the world.
"Come with me," he pleaded, shadows dancing as his footsteps approached, carefully, as if she were to leap backwards at any moment to fall to her death off the edge of the roof, "There is still time,"
"Time?" Christine echoed, scorched by the raw longing that flared in his eyes as he drew nearer.
"Yes, there is all the time in the world if you accept," he unfolded his arm gracefully, a finger curling in the same way it had that night. She could almost ignore the faintest tremor of his hand, the stiffening bottom lip as if controlling tears.
"I could give you the world, Christine, if you believe," his voice cradling her, like the faintest hands upon her shoulders, "My dear, you need only to take my hand,"
She shivered under the heady sensation of his voice, like the kisses of winter, the promise so clearly weighted. What – what – what had she been thinking? Her knees trembled. A frozen doe, too stunned to move, too frightened to flee, and part of her was soaring at his voice, the one that had returned to the Angel, who was there, here, to take her into his arms and serenade her with his song. This was wrong, and there was something odd about that look in his gaze, that triumphant look that she had seen reflected in glass – that night – she thought, she had seen herself, hadn't she?
"Come to me, my Angel," his voice was there, inside her mind, begging, commanding – each turn undecided, uncontrolled and her eyes were unfocused, only on the white beacon that dipped in and out of her vision. Was she walking? Movement – there was some, but no, it was a sheet of shadows blanketing her, a pressure at her throat, a teasing brush of a curl that was too purposeful to be mere wind.
Two curving vices were around her, the presence humming in satisfaction, an unearthly melody if weaving through her, twining them together. Air hushed, his crooning at once calming, coaxing the cries of protest under the pretty lies of comfort.
"Safe, dear one, you are safe. Safe in the grasp of your Angel,"
Her body purred in delight, embracing the sanctuary that coalesced around her soul, numbed by the warmth and the melody that she drank in greedily like wine. How many weeks had she endured without it? Without that enchanting voice? Without him?
Why had she strayed?
How had she strayed?
"Angel," she breathed and his answering sigh – as if filled with relief – broke the spell.
She froze, the sound so jarringly human. The hand laid upon her arm tightened, ever so slightly, as she stood face to face with him, at the doors of the rooftop.
Disgust and blazing shame brought her free hand up and she barely realised she'd hit him before she'd left a stinging mark against his bared cheek.
Her hand burned.
"How dare you!" she tore herself from his grip, fleeing into the theatre and away, betrayed and breathless and oh dear God, she'd just hurt someone, not just shunned him, cuffed him!
There was too much panic to think, and she'd long forgotten the lantern that had been on the inside of the door. She hadn't been up here in years, how was she supposed to find the stairs! Would he kill her now for such insubordination? For such a despicable action? For daring to raise a hand to her madman, had she condemned herself to but a grisly fate?
He all but proclaimed that he loved her, and yet filled her with so much fear!
Scrabbling to the stairs and grasping her skirts in one hand, she bolted down them– her heart shuddering at such a rate it was about to burst apart.
"Madame Giry! Raoul!"
Her cry for help was silenced as she skidded onto a different floor, cursing her own naivety in forgetting the lantern and unable to recognise where she was in this labyrinth. This wasn't the staircase she'd flown up earlier. No.
She glanced around, regaining breath, and spotted a mouldering ribbon – ah! This was near where the petite ballet rats rehearsed! They'd been put to bed, of course. She could find her way out now as the image appeared in her mind.
"You cannot run from me forever, Christine,"
Two luminescent eyes shone in the darkness, the breath of shadows just painting the outline of his mask.
Her gasp caught in her throat, unable to form words, the sheer terror of being caught igniting in her chest, and she could only splutter out, "Please,"
She didn't want to die. Not yet.
"Did I teach you nothing?" the voice snapped, and the two eyes slitted, "To think: I could harm you? Perish the thought,"
There was a squeak of leather as fists tightened.
"I will let you walk free tonight, but remember," at this the man slid closer, a coiled snake with hidden fangs, as he leant close enough that his breath brushed her bosom, "You belong to me," his eyes bored into her with the intensity of a starving man, adoring but with all-too real a threat.
His eyes dropped and hovered at her neck, - breath fluttering for a moment against her skin - and with a repressed shiver he stepped back, dipping in a low bow, a mocking imitation of how Raoul had once done, in the time he'd passed into her life and dressing room, claiming her with his intention for supper.
Christine shuddered, unable to bear the sight.
The figure turned, melting into the darkness, the sound of a click the only indication he'd slipped into the cracks of the Opera House.
She realised, as her hand came to wipe a tear away, that she was still swathed in his cloak.
Hello everyone! Small 'what if' scenario! When watching the 2004 movie, I always, always, get this moment where I see myself in her shoes and ask, "What if she realises that Raoul has flaws too and is so riled up by everything, decides to send him away?" therefore "What would the Phantom do if then given the chance to speak to Christine at this moment, in private and uninterrupted?" ...Well, it's a mockery of both the Wandering Child scene, and Christine's unwillingness to allow herself to be captivated when knowing he's just committed a murder and a sin. Later, in the Wandering Child scene, when she's had time to dwell and feel so isolated in the time before Don Juan, it's a perfect time for Erik to try his hand at this, because it's on a more receptive channel (than the night of Il Muto/All I ask of You)...He hasn't killed anyone for a while...At least, that's what I perceive, anyway!
Sorry for any implausibility. I mean, my aim was to make it a bit believable, had it happened canonically. So it could still fit, almost.
I think the main point, in this and in my other story Shades of Grey (not promotion, but just an ironic example lol), is that Erik sees that she can still fall for his voice – as shown in the Wandering Child scene in the musical and 2004 movie. He just utilises this skill and power earlier on. I think this is also a skill he further then uses in Point of No Return, (but it's debatable depending on which actress is playing Christine on whether she's in a slight hypnotic/ecstatic state when they sing PONR to either recognise their chemistry/connection, or to not quite remember what the danger is ect...). I like to believe it's a bit of both! XD
I wanted to work on this for a break, so I hope you enjoyed!
Lots of Easter wishes on this end,
Enigma
P.S who spotted the Leroux references? ;) if you did, give yourself a cookie :P