Standard don't-sue-me-I'm-broke-anyway disclaimer:
I don't own them. None of the primary characters...the odd maid or love interest, perhaps, but no one pivotal. Not yet, anyway. They've all been invented by Leroux, Kay or ALW. Any references to the play, books or anything else Phantom you may have seen is all part of the fic. I don't pretend to have invented any of them.
"Package for you, mademoiselle," Monique trilled, rapping on Christine's dressing room door. "And flowers from your fiancée."
Christine hurriedly ran her hands beneath her eyes. A look in the mirror assured her any evidence of her tears was gone. Forcing a smile, she opened the door.
"Thank you Monique," she said, accepting the dozen red roses and lightweight box.
"Another wedding gift?" she inquired.
"I imagine so," Christine said distractedly.
"And such beautiful flowers! The two of you must be on pins and needles waiting for the wedding!"
"It certainly is something," she answered, wondering if Monique would report her abject lack of enthusiasm to Raoul.
Monique was a chambermaid from the D'Chagney estate. Raoul had tried to convince Christine to occupy the guest's wing in his home until the wedding, but when she refused, had insisted on sending Monique to ensure she was "well cared for."
"Or chaperoned," Christine thought bitterly. The wedding was to be a small affair a scant five weeks after her last night at the opera. Raoul feared Erik might try to kidnap Christine, or possibly that she would try to return to the house below the lake, and at first hired a police officer to guard the house. But three weeks passed, with no sign of Erik, and eventually the security was loosened. Then came the paper.
Christine saw it first. "Erik is dead," it read, with a short follow-up on the "opera ghost," whose body was recovered on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. His neck was broken, and scavengers had made a mask and tattered opera cloak the only means of identification. But it was enough.
Christine remained quietly morose around Raoul, who believed she felt nothing for "that monster" other than sadness over the graphic depiction the newspaper had allowed. Alone, she wept bitterly and fed her meals to Sasha, the spaniel Raoul presented to her, "since you'll be home so much." Of course, she was to give up the opera.
"After all," Raoul said easily, patting Christine's hair, "Once the children arrive, you'll have to act respectable. My funny darling," he chuckled. "Madame D'Chagney, the chorus girl? Be reasonable!"
The chorus girl. "I was the star," she thought. "Or would have been if not for you!" Hurriedly, she pushed the thought out of her mind. Raoul loved her, and Erik was dead. Raoul had done so much for her, offered her a place to stay and security, faced much displeasure from his family all because of her…who was she to judge him? Her choice was made, like it or not. "At least I'll never be alone," she thought to herself.
After the news, Christine lost weight and seemed quieter, but Monique blamed the jitters. After all, in a short time, Christine would marry one of Paris's most eligible men. Who could eat?
Monique shut the door after instructing Christine to dress for dinner. "Your fiancé will be here within the hour."
Christine put the flowers in a vase, hardly sparing them a glance. Red roses used to make her cry, but no more. Erik was dead, the management wanted nothing to do with her, she was sure, and even if they did, Raoul would never let her perform. There were things far worse than red roses, like the death of her teacher. But Raoul had promised to protect her from all of life's problems. There was no need for tears.
"Funny, protection no longer seems so important," she mused, dressing carefully, selecting a dress only to put it back and choose another. "Raoul likes green. I shouldn't wear black. I am not in mourning!" Still, it haunted her. A broken neck most likely meant hanging. Christine was certain Erik would never allow himself to be hanged…unless it was of his own accord. She'd no idea how he'd wound up washing up on a beach, but it hardly mattered. Erik could do whatever he chose, probably down to choosing how the world should receive his death.
"Oh Erik," she sighed, twisting her engagement ring on her finger. "What did I do to you?" Tears came again as she pushed thoughts of love from her mind.
"He didn't love me! I didn't love him! It was manipulation, he wanted fame and was too twisted to seek it for himself!" The more she argued with herself, the harder it became to believe her own words. Raoul's words, really, but how powerful they were, especially in those first weeks when her sleep was tortured and her mind raced.
"Even Lucifer was an angel of light," Raoul remarked once, and she held it close, trying to believe it, that the man who'd treated her so gently and lifted her voice and spirits to new heights, was really an evil genius.
"What does it matter now?" she thought. "He's dead and there's nothing left to do."
A knock on the door announced Raoul's arrival. She forced a smile, endured a kiss, and left in a cab with the man she would marry.
Dinner went downhill quickly after Raoul announced his plan to move to England in May, within four weeks of the wedding.
"But darling, we don't know anyone in England," Christine protested, trying to mask her unexplained terror at the idea of leaving Paris.
"That may not be so bad," Raoul said after a moment's hesitation. "Darling, I know you don't get out much, but no one has forgotten that…incident. That damned article did nothing except refresh everyone's memory. I get odd looks everywhere I go, and you do, too. How are we expected to be successful in a town where simpleminded idiots determine who is socially acceptable? Ludicrous," he finished firmly.
"You are ashamed of me," she whispered.
"Nonsense! Christine, I love you, but really- how can you expect me to command respect like this? England will be good for us, and you'll learn to love it. You really will."
"But I don't speak any English at all! I know French, some Italian, and Latin." Christine thought back momentarily to her evenings in Erik's science lab. The man was really quite a genius, but so patient with Christine. He explained everything to her in a way that made her feel like she was intelligent in areas she had no experience with at all.
"Erik, I can't, I'm quite afraid I'll ruin something."
"My Christine, don't worry. Everything is quite safe, and anyway, it can all be replaced or repeated. That's the beauty of controlled experiments. I know how I did everything, and can do it again. Now, touch this wire- here."
"It lights! I made it light up! I've never seen electricity this close before!"
"Amazing, isn't it? Oh, there's so much I want to show you."
Christine was brought out of her reverie by Raoul's response.
"Relax. I will learn English and teach you. How else can you order your dresses- yes, as many as you want- and school our children?"
"School?"
"Until they're old enough for boarding school, of course. Well- there's something. Maybe we'll just hire a tutor until they're old enough. They need the advantage of good, strong instruction, you know."
Fuming, Christine smiled gamely and let Raoul ramble on until the carriage mercifully stopped in front of her flat.
When Monique had gone to bed, after a barrage of questions about her evening, Christine had the chance to be alone. Burying her head in a bed pillow, she screamed. The muffled quality of the sound infuriated her. She longed to yell at Raoul, rail at him for patronizing her and trying to cut her off from all she knew.
"He's insecure. He calls me frail and treats me like I'm stupid, but he's so jealous of a dead man- a dead man! – he can't wait to hide me away!" Her thoughts brought her to the brink of smashing something, but rather than wake Monique and face her questions, she calmed down enough to get ready for bed.
As she sat at her dressing table brushing her hair (Raoul hated it when she wore it down, and it took a long time to untangle it from its confined state) her fingers brushed the surface of the mirror. Instantly, her mind was back in the Opera House, begging her angel to show himself. What repercussions that had brought!
Alone in her room, Christine half expected the mirror to pivot or feel hot under her touch, but the surface remained unchanged. Instead, her eyes fell on the gift she had received earlier. Sighing, she placed it unopened among the other gifts- beautiful but pretentious baubles she could do without. Instantly, she picked the box up again in annoyance.
"If I don't open this," she thought, "and respond immediately, some rich old dowager will ask Raoul what happened to whatever she sent, and he'll probably move us to Siberia to avoid any 'odd looks'!"
The solid oak box unwrapped easily. Christine removed the wooden lid to find an ivory card on heavy paper resting on a bed of potpourri- rose petals, ivory white and red dried to almost black.
"With love on your wedding day," she read somberly. She saw no name and decided to check the wrapping later to determine whom she should be thanking. She tried to guess the contents. Brandy glasses? Too light a box. Another silk tablecloth? Not likely. Her fingertips sank into the petals and brushed against a cool, stiff surface. She moved the petals aside and gasped.
A white mask reposed in the box. She recognized it immediately as the one Erik had been wearing that last night they saw each other. Crying silently, she clutched it to her chest and rocked back and forth, like a child with a security blanket or favorite stuffed animal.
A note lay beneath where the mask had been.
"Please forgive my impudence. I have information for you.
Nadir"
Below the signature was an address.
