Le Duo d'Amour, or The Duet of Love

A/N:  Love, the greatest thing that will ever exist.  Christine and Erik celebrate it – just in time for Valentine's Day – in two first-person narrated song phics.  The Erik and Christine here are none in particular; they can be any of the various incarnations.  Please r&r!

Disclaimer:  Although I wish it were so, I do not own the Phantom of the Opera in any form (except that which exists purely in my imagination and in phan phics).  The song featured here in this first part is 'All Love Can Be', from the soundtrack of the film A Beautiful Mind, sung beautifully by Charlotte Church.

@{------- All Love Can Be --------}@

-- Christine -- 

I will watch you in the darkness…Show you love will see you through…  When the bad dreams wake you crying, I'll show you all love can do…  All love can do…

L'Ange de Musique.

What would I be without him?  Where would I have gone, when I had been left alone in a cold, adamantine world where hate, lies, falsities, and mocking ridicule reign almost supreme?  How could I live in a world where he didn't exist?

But I know that such a thing is not possible.

For no matter what, my Angel will always be with me.

He is an angel…and angel, and a man.  Somehow, I always knew it, even when all I had of him was his voice: his tender, vibrant, hypnotic golden voice that sang to me through a glassy mirror.  I knew that he was more real to me than the life to which I supposedly belonged.  So real…so close…

And yet so far off.

I have seen things in his eyes: his brilliant, knowing, piercing eyes of a mismatched sapphire blue and emerald green, in which are reflected sparks of golden light.  I have seen pain, from a past that he wishes to forget; I have seen anger – rage – towards a world that will never accept him for who he is; and I have seen a great, overwhelming, bitter, and deep sadness that taints his heart, like the blackest ink stains a glass of pure water.

Darkness has always surrounded him: the black shadows of velvet and power that he sweeps around himself, in much the same way as his billowing opera cloak.

The darkness of his own self.

And in the night, he would awaken – oh so many times – crying out with a nightmare, sobbing even… 

I will watch by the night, hold you in my arms – give you dreams where no one will be…

I was there in those darkest of hours, to show him that these wraiths of his mind paled in comparison to what I felt for him.  I was there then, to tell him of my heart's truths.

How is it that our dreams come true – even those that we haven't really even realized that we have yet?  How is it that the two of us, out of all of the people in the world, managed to find one another?  How is it that happy endings really are possible?

How could I live without him?

I will watch through the dark, till the morning comes, for the lights will take you through the night to see…all love, showing us all love can be…

Now we have forever: we have all eternity, my Angel and I.  Sometimes, when things seemed to be at their worst, I would wonder if we were truly meant to have any sort of happiness…any sort of dreams-come-true.  But the night passed; there was light again.

And with it, came love.


I will guard you with my bright wings – stay till your heart learns to see…  All love can be…

Love.  It is the greatest thing in the world – in any world, in any time, place, or person.  It was what led my Angel to me, and it was what made me into his Angel.  We are each other's hope, each other's salvation from the darkness, each other's angels: sheltered by our wings of love.

We've learned to see it now: just how many things love can show itself in…just how many things love can be.

All love can be.

Oh, Erik – I love you…