A/N:Written for an anonymous Tumblr prompt which requested "Raoul and Christine adjust to their quiet life, but neither can quite forget the last tragic night in the Opera house"
It has been three years, and still it drifts back to him. He will be sleeping, dreaming of his darling wife and their darling daughter, and then the heat will beat against his face and the water will constrict his chest and he will wake, gasping into the darkness and fumbling for the lamp.
Those glowing cat's eyes will gleam from the shadows, and again he will feel the revolver in his hand, the trigger cool beneath his finger. The lamp will flicker into life and he will be alone, alone with Christine tucked in beside him, her face peaceful in her own sleep, the eyes vanishing as swiftly as the ghost they belonged to. On nights such as that, in the knowledge that sleep will not come again voluntarily, he leaves their bed and hides in the parlour, wrapped in his robe and Victor Hugo novels. Anything to let him forget.
Some nights, it is not his own nightmares that wake him but Christine's. She will not wake from her dreams, will whimper softly, calling for him and clinging to his hand in the darkness. He kisses her, and holds her close, and thanks every star in the heavens that they are away from that cellar, away from that night, and she is safe now even if he cannot protect her from her own memories.
Those are the worst nights, worse than his own nightmares. It is not only him that she searches for, but Erik too. She's confessed as much to him, told him that she often dreams not of the night of the kidnapping and torture, but of the night they returned to bury him and found him barely alive. She held him, and sang to him and kissed his forehead ever so gently as he slipped from this life, and rocked his body with the tenderness of a mother until he was cold, and the tears that trickled down his cheeks at the sight of her dry.
(She did not look away, not even as Raoul shovelled the earth back into the grave, and covered him forever.)
He knows that she did not love Erik, not as she loves him, but he also knows that there is that part of her that wonders what might have happened if things had been different, if he had not kidnapped her and threatened Raoul, and pretended to be an Angel of Music.
Raoul cannot stop the tears that slip from his eyes as he holds her, simply holds her. If he could take away the memories he would in a flash, would spare her every ounce of pain and grief. She is an angel, though she does not realise it, would deny it if it were ever put to her in such a way. But though it cost them so very much to get to here, to now, he would not change it. Just to have her in his arms is enough.