Standard disclaimers apply.
The sky is dark and cloudy overhead, not a single beam of moonlight breaking through the mist to light the path before her as she gallops through the night. At least, that's why she tells herself she can't see — she'll never admit it's because of the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.
She knows she has no right to be upset. She should be back in bed right now, between the silk sheets with a rare, illuminated book in one hand, the other working to undo the night's elaborate hairstyle from the party just dying down in the ballroom. And even if she is upset, she should deal with it in a way that won't affect others. She owes Raoul her life, and even now he gives so much every day so she can be happy. Worse still, he'll worry if he finds her gone. She needs to go back — surely he deserves that much.
So she allows herself a few more miles to clear her head, promising to turn around once her breathing becomes even once more.
Her life has become a blur since the destruction of the opera house. From the moment Raoul swept her off her feet in the dungeon and brought her back to his chateau in the country, she's barely had time to catch her breath amid the pomp and circumstance that apparently colors the life of a vicomte. His parents stand by, always polite in conversation but critical in expression, disapproval at the chorus girl their son has gone and made his fiancée radiating off of them in waves.
It was only a matter of time before she snapped, she reasons. She was never made for this life. Surely she deserves a few stolen hours in the night where she can be herself once again.
She needs one last night to be herself before the wedding seals her fate for good.
She doesn't remember stealing away to the stables and saddling the horse she's come to view as her own these past few weeks, dressed in a pair of Raoul's old breeches she sneaked from the laundry when no one was looking (all of her old pants, accumulated from costumes throughout the years of performances, had surely been lost in the fire). Nor does she remember setting out with a specific destination in mind when she made it past the light spilling off the terrace without getting caught. But now, despite the gloom, it's obvious where she's unconsciously headed: Paris.
She passes the road leading to the cemetery where her father is buried and briefly considers finding solace there, but she's slowly losing feeling in her fingers, freezing without her usual layers of petticoats. For once, the dim lights of the city look more welcoming than the cold marble statues of the graveyard, if only because she can get something warm to drink there. She continues though the gates and down the cobblestone street, hood pulled low over her face to hide her features and spare her any attention due to the impropriety of a lady wearing trousers.
Or maybe she just doesn't want to be recognized. Actress or not, she craves anonymity tonight. She doesn't want to talk to anyone, whether they know her from the stage, the fire, or her subsequent engagement to the vicomte. She doesn't think she could bear it if someone mentioned him.
Warm air and rich smells drift out the windows of the few bars still open at this hour, but they're flocked with loud late-night customers and she'd rather be cold and left on her own to think than surrounded by the babble of Paris's less refined residents. So she passes on.
But before she has time to prepare herself, or to change her mind, her horse has slowed to a halt before the crumbling wreckage of the opera house.
If she was confused before, it was nothing compared to her emotions here. She'd spent much of her childhood in this building, made a life for herself with Meg and the other dancers. They'd taught her to smile again after her father's death, listened to her stories about her travels with him. They'd made believe that they were princesses, pirates, anything in the world they could imagine, and when they'd grown old enough, they'd been allowed to step into those roles on the stage.
She wonders where they are now.
It was here that she sang her first notes on a stage, received her first lesson from the angel. From him. He'd lured her into the dark, pulled invisible strings as though she was a puppet, set her up for success just so he could hold it above her head like a prize. Like a guillotine. She'd kissed him here—
To save Raoul. Raoul had kissed her here, too. Raoul had saved her. And now she and Raoul are to be wed, and they'll be happy. She'll never have to see that monster again.
Still, she can't shake the feeling of melancholy hovering around her in the air that still smells vaguely of smoke and ash.
She dismounts slowly and begins to circle the building on foot. The damage isn't as much as she'd been led to believe, as much as it had seemed when they emerged, soaked and coughing, hours after the last member of the audience had fled. It is evident where the fire had raged inside, between the shattered windows and smears of ash on the white marble. In a few places, the bricks beneath the elegant facades on the walls are exposed, the exterior crumbled away.
But the structure is still mostly standing, and after a moment of deliberation, she slips inside.
The hallways are, if possible, even darker than outside, but still she maneuvers expertly. She could walk these halls blindfolded. A few times she nearly trips over a fallen sand bag or backdrop close to the stage, a set piece or costume further in, but catches herself before she hits the floor and continues on. Before long she finds herself in her dressing room, almost untouched since that last day she was here.
The door to her wardrobe is ajar, her dressing gown still hanging on its hook, her cape crumpled in a ball on the floor. She picks it up and throws it over her shoulders, wrapping it around her. The thin material doesn't do much to keep out the chill, but at least it's blocking the wind whistling in from somewhere behind her — the walls must have been weakened in the fire.
A vase sits on her dresser, a single rose inside. It hasn't even started to wilt. She tells herself it was preserved in the cold, not left there more recently.
She takes a step back anyway, and freezes when she hears the crunch of glass beneath her feet. Somehow the mirror is shattered, even though it had been in one piece on the night of the last opera.
Now a shiver runs down her spine, leaving her even colder than she was before. Her breath hovers in the air in front of her. But she shakes her head. There's no way he could be here. His lair was surely destroyed, if not in the fire, than in the mob that followed. There's nothing down there but ruins, and surely nothing alive.
If she could just see the place, she tells herself, one last time. Prove to herself that it was the home of a madman, but just that — a man. A man who is gone, probably dead if the papers are to be believed — a man she will never have to see again.
If she could see the place where he'd fallen from angel to mere mortal in her mind, she'd be able to sleep easier at night. She's sure of it.
So she steps through the frame of the mirror and descends the stairs.
It's strange being in this passage on her own, neither entranced nor terrified but simply observant. If she squints she can make out the curve of the arches over her head, the warped metal of the rusting torch frames she once thought were filled with radiant candles. She can't shake the feeling that she's doing something wrong by wandering here, but she pushes it from her mind. He will never know, and she likes it that way.
The boat is exactly where she and Raoul left it, tethered out of sight behind a rough, half-finished statue. With some effort she manages to shove it all the way into the lake and climb inside, stumbling over the edge and kicking up a spray of water behind her. It burns her skin like ice. The journey to the open cave where he'd made his home has never felt so long, or so short. She thinks she'll freeze before she even gets there. She knows she isn't ready to see it when she does.
But it looks little like she remembers now. It must be situated under the auditorium of the theater, because it, like the space hundreds of feet above it, is in ruins. Even through the dark, she can make out the debris that must have crashed down from above, creating a maze through the lake that makes it impossible for the boat to maneuver through. She takes a deep breath and steps over the side, nothing preparing her for the chill that shoots through her as the water laps at her body. Ducking under an enormous piece of wood suspended between the ground and a point on the wall high above her head, she slowly wades her way across to the island, teeth chattering.
The candles are knocked aside, debris from above scattering the wax and bending the golden holders beyond repair. The piano is buried by more wood and stone, and the space where the bed was has completely caved in, crushed by a sizable chunk of the stage. A thought strikes her: What if he never got out? What if his body lies down here, crushed by the ruins? What if she's to see him again down here in the dark after all, pale and sunken and empty.
Whatever confusion she may feel, deep in this place once again, she is certain she does not want that.
The shadows look more menacing now, seeming to move in the dark. She whips around, trying to locate the source of a flash of motion she thinks she sees out of the corner of her eye, and accidentally kicks aside a wooden stake balanced precariously beneath some of the debris.
There's a whistling above her head, but she doesn't have time to move before a pile of wood crashes into her, knocking her off her feet and coming to a rest on her lower body. She wiggles a little, but can't get free. She's stuck.
"God damn it!" she shouts at the sky, letting her eyes fall closed and trying to take a deep breath as pain shoots through her leg, probably later than it should have due to the cold. Raoul's parents would blush at her language. He probably would, too. He's always been a sheltered little thing.
She doesn't give a damn.
"Damn it, damn it, damn it," she mutters, glaring into the dark. She's about to summon some of her even stronger vocabulary — and probably start trying to pry the debris off her leg, too — when she hears it.
A soft breath of laughter.
"You're not here," she says, her voice shaking. Her fingers scramble to find purchase on the wood, straining to push it away even as it tears the fabric beneath her knee and cuts into her flesh. "You're a figment of my imagination. God damn it!"
"Such language, Christine," he murmurs, his voice everywhere and nowhere in the dark. Her blood turns to ice and she stops breathing. "What would your vicomte say?"
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