"You took my husband because I haven't been seeing you enough."
"Correct," the Phantom said. He had come to visit Christine in her room as he often did, and was leaning casually against the wall as if they were simply discussing the nuances of a song, as if Raoul's disappearance hadn't already caused Christine hours of distress. He had disappeared during the morning rehearsal, as far as she could tell—he had brought her to the opera house that morning and had promised to eat lunch with her, but at lunch time had been gone—and their coach still in the stables. Yes, she'd known it had probably been the Phantom's doing. But that hadn't exactly been a comfort.
"Ever since you married that man," the Phantom said softly. "You've been coming to see me less and less. Not available night after night, even missing arranged appointments. Don't think your singing hasn't suffered."
"The audience hasn't seen a difference."
"Audiences are deaf and stupid. You and I know, my dear. That idiot Vicomte has been making your passion mellow—as I knew he would all along."
Christine resisted saying that Raoul if anything had added to her passions (had become something of a passion himself) and merely said, "You know the reasons I have been busy."
"Oh, your marital duties. You promised your singing would still come first. If I had known how you lied I wouldn't have allowed you to marry in the first place."
Christine shivered. The Phantom had threatened Raoul several times during his courtship, back when he still hadn't wanted Christine to even get engaged. She had persuaded him to allow the marriage, promising him she would remain the opera house's diva as always, only with a more stable patron and a better house. She'd hoped that would be the end of his malice towards Raoul, but it seemed she had been mistaken.
"There have been many things to do," she said weakly. "Many, many things to do…I am the mistress of a grand estate now, you know, and there are…"
The Phantom laughed. "Don't claim your play as work. I know what you do with that fop. It isn't managing his estate that sends you home early and brings you in late in the mornings. It isn't managing the estate that's been distracting you during rehearsals. It isn't managing the estate that's made you ignore my notes." He gestured at the dressing table, where in fact a couple of his notes did lie open, imploring her to free up some time to practice with him at the nearest opportunity.
Christine swallowed. Hastily she tucked the notes back into their envelopes. Whirling back around, she said, "I am sorry. I have been neglecting my duties."
"Yes," said the Phantom. "You have."
"Truly, I am sorry. I will do better," Christine said. "Tomorrow, I will come in early. I will make it a habit."
"You used to."
"I will do so again."
"And you will sing with me?" the Phantom said. His voice was dangerously flat. "Or does your husband think it too scandalous for you to come visit the man in the mask?"
The answer to the second, of course, was yes. Raoul had always discouraged her association with the Phantom. He didn't like the Phantom any more than the Phantom liked him. Many nights he had spoken to her about it: about how she no longer needed a tutor (true enough), about how the man was unstable (they were fairly certain he was behind the death of stage-hand Buquet), about how she always seemed a little frightened when she spoke of him. He would take her away from the Phantom, he told her. He would take her away from Paris. They could go to her childhood home in Sweden—or go abroad—or to a country house he had on the other side of France. Only she really needed to stop seeing this Phantom. He would hurt her. In some ways he had hurt her already.
"It does not matter to me what my husband thinks," she said. "It never has."
"Young women will always bow to their husbands."
"I will come sing with you," Christine said. She wet her lips and smiled as kindly as she knew how. "I have missed it very much lately, you know I have. We can sing together every day if you like."
The Phantom reached his hand forward as if to touch her. It hovered an inch from her cheek, unable to make contact. "You promise me?"
"I promise you. Only you must bring Raoul back. It is getting very late." Indeed, Christine had lingered long at the opera house in hopes that the Phantom would come to her. Now, it was already ten o'clock—later than she and Raoul ever left.
The Phantom snorted. "God knows I wouldn't want to keep him." He turned towards the mirror and worked the mechanism that Christine still hadn't figured out. It opened. "Come along then. I'd rather you fetch him—dragging him there in the first place was enough of a nuisance."
/…/…/
It had been a long time since Christine had gone with Erik down to his lair, possibly an entire month. Not a coincidence. It was true that Raoul had been keeping her very busy: both with the running of the estate and other, more pleasant matters. But more than that, Christine had her own reservations about the Phantom. She hadn't liked his behavior towards Raoul. She didn't like his possessive urges, the fact that he seemed to think teaching her music gave him ownerships of her. She was beginning to grow less tolerant of his activities in the opera house—entirely apart from the death of Buquet, which he may or may not have caused, he'd been sending increasingly hostile notes to the managers and Carlotta, and even on occasion to Piangi, a nice man who had never done the Phantom or Christine any harm. Accidents had also grown more frequent.
Christine couldn't condone any of this. She wanted to make excuses for the Phantom but what excuses were there to give? At the end of the day she was choosing to associate with a man who was proving himself a bully and a threat to the Opera Populaire, and more and more she thought it was not a good choice.
That was Raoul speaking in her, a part of her thought. But on the other hand, if it was Raoul's influence, could that be a bad thing? He was her husband, after all. And on occasion he did make a little sense.
So Christine had been less keen on seeing the Phantom of late. She had been trying to cut her visits back on purpose, hoping she could wean him from their lessons little by little until he forgot about them. And ignoring his increasingly angry notes, even when he had begun to make caustic remarks about Raoul. In retrospect, that had been foolish. The Phantom was not one who would grow tired of her that easily. And now she would have to find another way to get rid of him—if another way existed.
She couldn't risk Raoul again. The Phantom assured her, as they walked at a painfully slow stroll down the tunnels, that he had not injured Raoul in the slightest, but that was no assurance that he would not do so the next time. Buquet had done little more than make fun of the Phantom's reputation. Raoul had done far more to anger him.
"If you did not injure him, what did you do with him?" she asked.
The Phantom waved a hand in the air. "Threatened him with a gun, mostly. It seems he's misplaced his own." Judging by the Phantom's tone of voice, that was no accident. "And left him down here out of the way. Trust me, I had no desire to speak to him at length. But I would not hurt your husband." He said the word husband in a sarcastic drawl. "He's yours after all…besides, a man like that? It would be like stepping on a kitten."
Christine did not offer any defense. He wasn't wrong—Raoul seemed much like a child to her sometimes, or perhaps like a pet. And it would be better for the Phantom to think of him that way than the way he used to think of him, as a rival. Much better.
"Left him alone all day, then," she said. "It has been hours."
"I was observing the chaos caused by his absence. It was very interesting." The Phantom grinned, though she couldn't tell with the mask whether his eyes moved to match his mouth. "I liked the managers' reactions the best. Oh no, what shall we do without our rich patron? There isn't another man in Paris who would offer us so much money!"
Christine's lips twisted. Yes, she had been much angered at that. They cared more about their purses than about Raoul personally—though she knew, from them, she should have expected it.
"I thought your own reaction very touching," the Phantom said. But if anything, his voice had grown even more mocking. "Where, oh where, is my sweet darling husband? Please someone tell me. Has he wandered off and fallen off the roof? Has he locked himself into a closet? And it never even occurred to you that he could have simply gone out to a bar and…"
"Well, he hadn't, had he?" Christine said waspishly. "No, he'd gone and gotten himself kidnapped by you."
"Now that's cruel," the Phantom said. "The Vicomte didn't get himself kidnapped, my dear. You did. And you know that perfectly well."
Christine refused to feel guilty about what was clearly the Phantom's fault. "Where did you leave him?" She remembered he had told her once, almost casually, about having a torture chamber in his lair. Leaving Raoul chained to a wall probably wouldn't do him any harm but it would hardly do him any good either, especially not if he'd spent the entire time wondering if the Phantom was going to come back and torture him.
"Tied to the portcullis," the Phantom said. "I didn't exactly have time to set him up in style. There were things to observe."
Hm. Well, that could be worse. That would mean Raoul had been standing for the past ten hours or so but he was a strong man, and perhaps the water up to his waist would take some of the weight off. It would also mean she would be able to fetch him very quickly, as soon as they reached the lair, instead of following the Phantom around for longer than was necessary. And Christine very much wanted to go in, fetch Raoul, and leave. It would be better to get him away from the Phantom as quickly as possible.
She was silent through most of the ride on the gondola. The Phantom barely seemed to notice. For all his obsession with her voice, he seemed to prefer listening to his own—talking on and on about how annoying everyone at the opera house was lately, how much he missed her, and wasn't it good that she was going to be coming back more often now, things would be just as they had always been, perhaps better. Her husband would surely appreciate her improved singing. Surely she could persuade him that she needed time with the Phantom, that it was all for the best.
Christine let the words seep into her brain. But she knew them all already. The Phantom never said anything new.
And then they rounded the final corner and the portcullis came into view and with it, Raoul.
He was tied directly in the center of the portcullis, arms over his head. His body was sagging so that the bonds seemed to be carrying the majority of his weight. And his head was bowed, although as they approached, it lifted. He looked at them, but he did not say anything.
"Raoul," Christine called out. "Raoul, it's me. I've come to fetch you, love."
They had come closer, and she could make out the features on his face. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He slumped back down.
"Row faster," Christine said, turning to the Phantom.
The Phantom huffed but obeyed.
As soon as they arrived at the portcullis, Christine jumped out and into the water. It went a little above her waist, and the Phantom made a protesting noise, but Christine ignored him and ignored the water soaking her skirts. Her only regret was that in the process she splashed dirty water all over Raoul's face. But he barely reacted beyond a small shudder.
And his entire body was shaking already.
"Raoul?" she said. She put her arms around him, pushing him upright against the portcullis. "Raoul, it's me," she murmured in his ear. "Are you all right?"
"Christine," he muttered. His voice was slurred and slow. "You've come for me."
His body was cold, cold, cold.
"Cut him loose," she called to the Phantom. "I doubt he has any circulation in his arms, and we should get him out of here."
"Am I supposed to be concerned about the Vicomte's health?"
"Cut. Him. Loose."
"Well, if you say so."
The Phantom jumped off into the water as well, though he winced a little more when the dirty water splashed all over his suit. Probably it would be at least as difficult to launder as Christine's mostly white dress—not to mention the smears on the mask. Served him right. But he waded over to Raoul immediately and with a knife he procured from an inner pocket (she had guessed correctly that he was not unarmed), released Raoul from his bondage.
Without the ropes to hold his weight, Raoul collapsed into the water. Christine shouted and grabbed at his shoulders, but she was cut off by the Phantom, who hauled him up and out of the water much more easily by a grip around his waist, slinging him over his shoulder.
Raoul moaned slightly at the rough treatment but did not struggle.
"There. Free, and free to go," the Phantom said. "Shall we head out?" He turned towards the gondola.
Christine grabbed his arm. "Pull up the portcullis. We must head ashore."
"You and your Vicomte need to be getting home. Did you not just say so? In such a state I hardly think he should linger, no matter how much I would enjoy your company…"
"In such a state it's hard to say whether he'd even make it home," Christine said. "You left him in the water for ten hours. Cold water. I don't think he should be moved. But we have to get him out of the water. Lift the portcullis."
Erik pursed his lips but did as she said, wading over to one of the walls and working an odd mechanism to pull the portcullis up. As soon as it was at a reasonable height Christine grabbed Erik's arm and pulled him—Raoul still over his shoulder—to the bank.
Once there, Erik dumped Raoul on the ground. Christine pushed him aside and bent over Raoul. Supine, she would have thought he'd seem more comfortable, but the rock floor was not amazing for him either. His lips were barely parted, his eyes barely open. And his hair, from his brief fall in the water, was utterly drenched.
Usually she liked how Raoul looked wet after a shower. Often the look even led in good directions. Right now, though, he didn't even lift an arm to push a tendril of wet hair out of his eyes. She pushed it away for him and touched his cheek. "Raoul? Are you awake?"
He muttered something incomprehensible.
She put her hand on his forehead. Cold, very cold. No fever but perhaps it was worse. She turned to Erik. "We're going to have to use your bed."
"You are not putting the Vicomte in my bed. I sleep there."
"You should have considered that before giving him hypothermia." She began to unbutton Raoul's shirt. When the Phantom gawked at her, she said, "His clothes are soaked. They'll hardly be helping him this way. Lend me a hand."
"You expect me to…undress…"
"Either help or go away," Christine said. "You're being distracting."
In the end, he helped. Christine eased Raoul out of his shirt while the Phantom removed his boots and unbuttoned and tugged down his pants, pulling them over his feet while touching Raoul's skin as little as possible, pinching at folds of fabric in an attempt to avoid even grazing Raoul with his fingertips. A lot of squeamishness coming from the man who had hauled Raoul down here and tied him up mere hours ago. Christine could tell it was all show. She mostly ignored it.
And then Raoul was naked. Christine, who had seen him naked many times at this point, examined his body. Very wet, of course, and cold to the touch. The circulation in his hands and feet was not great. And he wasn't shivering—the body's natural defense mechanism to cold. It would have been better if he were shivering. And while his pulse wasn't weak, it did seem unnaturally fast.
"Bed now," Christine ordered. With the Phantom's help she heaved him over to the bed and gently laid him down, covering him up with crimson blankets the Phantom had once used in an attempt to impress and seduce her. They seemed pointlessly gaudy for this sort of occasion, but at least she knew from experience they were warm. They would keep him insulated.
She reached for the strings that kept her own dress fastened and began to untie them.
"Christine?" the Phantom asked.
Christine said, "He needs body heat. Do you have a better solution?" Careless of the Phantom's gaze she took off her first layer of clothing, the gown she was wearing, leaving her with a corset, shift, and petticoat—and of course her drawers. She began to unlace her corset. "You're still awake, Raoul?"
A groan from the bed.
"Good. Stay awake. It's very important." She pulled the corset off.
"Should I leave?" the Phantom asked uncertainly. "I would preserve your modesty…"
"If you want to avoid responsibility, by all means go ahead."
"I cannot help you further here," the Phantom said. "If you want me to provide you with warm water, I can do so. But he does not seem aware enough to drink."
"No, he's not." Christine was wearing nothing but her shift and drawers now. "What he needs is body heat. If you want to help, take your clothes off."
Saying this, she pulled the shift off over her head and wormed under the covers. Here she removed her drawers, where the Phantom could no longer see. She didn't give a damn about modesty in a situation like this but Raoul probably wouldn't be happy later if the Phantom saw her completely naked.
She pushed her body against Raoul's, cringing at the cold where their skin touched. Too cold—it was barely sexual. (Of course it never quite stopped being sexual, sharing a bed with your naked husband, but such things were easy enough to ignore.) She put her arms around him, gently. You had to be gentle with someone with hypothermia. She had learned this much as a child in Sweden. There had been several cases in her village, one practically every winter, and while she'd never dealt with a case personally before the stories always got passed around.
It was very possible to survive hypothermia. But it was dangerous. And you couldn't let the victim sleep.
"Are you awake, Raoul?"
"Christine," he muttered. Still slurring. "You're warm."
The Phantom was still standing over the bed, staring down at it. He'd taken off his jacket, but it was still in his hands. And of course his mask and wig were firmly fastened. "For me to join the two of you would be indecent."
"You can make your own choice. If Raoul dies, I will never sing again."
"He does not need my help."
"Maybe. But it would be better."
"What are you talking about, Christine?" Raoul asked. His eyes were staring up at the bed's canopy, glazed over. She touched his damp hair, and his mouth twitched as if to smile.
"Nothing, darling." She wanted to tell him to go to sleep, he was so obviously tired. She instead said, "Stay awake."
"I can't sleep," Raoul said obediently. "I won't."
There was the sound of fabric hitting the floor. Christine looked up.
The Phantom had taken his shirt off. His skin was pale—so pale that he looked sicker than Raoul. But his movements were steady if hesitant as he began to unbuckle his belt, and his chest, though pale, was lined with muscle, as were his arms. Wiry but firm. The way Christine might have imagined him. Everyone in the opera house knew of the opera ghost's strength.
The pants dropped too. The Phantom said, "I'm not taking off my drawers."
"Fine. Get in."
He lifted up the covers and climbed in, easing his way over to lie on Raoul's other side. Raoul cringed away from him slightly, curling closer to Christine.
"Lie still, Raoul," Christine said. Though it was unsurprising he wanted to avoid the man who had threatened and bound him earlier, he shouldn't be wearing himself out. He needed to relax.
"Not sleep," Raoul murmured.
"No. But lie still. You're safe with me."
"Keep you safe."
"Of course you will."
The Phantom snorted. He wrapped an arm around Raoul, suddenly not so timid about their skin touching. "Certainly you did marvelously against me earlier, Vicomte."
"Shut up," Christine said quietly but furiously. "He needs your body, not your scintillating wit."
"My, I feel objectified."
Christine huffed at that. But the Phantom had raised his eyebrow, and she couldn't help but be aware that with both their arms draped over Raoul, their arms were almost touching. And were Raoul not lying between them, they would have been the couple lying together as man and wife.
She pulled the blankets up more firmly.
/…/…/
Raoul had to stay awake, but Christine didn't. She fell asleep after a while and the Phantom woke her up after an hour or so. After that they took turns making sure Raoul stayed awake and breathing with a regular pulse, and that he was warming up.
Neither of them got out of bed until the early morning hours, when Raoul seemed to be gaining some lucidity.
As in, he looked at Christine and asked her, "Christine?"
"Yes, my love?" She was the one awake at this time.
"Are we in bed with the Phantom?"
"Yes, my love."
He moaned, tried to lift his head and then let it drop. "Tell me this isn't because I got drunk."
"No, it's because the Phantom decided to behave like an idiot and tie you for hours in cold water with no source of heat because he wanted to teach me a lesson and didn't think through the consequences."
"…What?"
"All is well. Only we should probably get some food into you." She lightly shook the Phantom to wake him up. "You said you could get some warm water. Could you get some broth?"
"I could, if you would allow me to leave."
"Go ahead. I think much of the danger has passed."
He crawled out of the bed and walked out of Christine's vision. Raoul had twisted his neck to watch him go and was gaping at the sight.
"Raoul, darling, you shouldn't stare."
"It is a very strange day."
"Mm. You need your rest."
The Phantom came back with broth soon, and Raoul drank it slowly and carefully. He seemed to have decided to ignore the mysterious nudity and his odd surroundings for the time being. Christine heaved a sigh of relief, until he spoke again.
"Christine."
"What?"
"This bed smells like a sewer."
"And whose fault would that be?" the Phantom said, clearly affronted. Another reason he probably didn't appreciate Raoul in his bed—the sheets would most likely never be the same.
Raoul scowled. "Yours. I remember now—you stole my gun! You…" He trailed off, staring into the distance. Christine shook him and he muttered, "I'm staying awake."
"Good."
One perhaps could not have hoped for Raoul to recover better or more quickly, hypothermia being as dangerous as it was. Still, the Phantom and Christine kept him in bed all day, and all the next day, though at least then they allowed him to sleep. The danger seemed to be over. He was feverish for an interval, and lethargic for more, and very barely aware of what was going on. At one point he challenged the Phantom to a duel and at another point, with a wide grin on his face, said that anyhow they would be good friends now that they had shared a bed. Christine mitigated the Phantom's reactions to both extremes. The first only put him in a mood for mockery, but the second put a dangerous look on his face, and she had to assert that of course Raoul did not know what he was saying. More awake he would never be so presumptuous as to claim the Phantom's friendship.
At last, with Raoul still weak and somewhat feverish, she deemed it safe to bring him home. Supporting his weight, she brought him to the gondola and then through the tunnels, with the Phantom close by to catch him if she let him drop. Which she did not. Her grip on him was firm and unbending. But the Phantom was still never more than a foot or so away, his arms ready to receive Raoul.
She had let the two lie in the same bed yet now, something about the way the Phantom stood, his arms ready to grasp at Raoul, made her shiver. She did not want him to touch Raoul, now that they were out of his lair and would soon be away from him. And so she kept her arms tight around Raoul and refused all offers of help.
"You'll come to sing with me soon," the Phantom said when he had dropped her off in her dressing room.
Christine smiled thinly. "It seems you have added to my domestic duties." She wanted to say she would not see him again, not after he had hurt Raoul so. But he had not expressed any regret at the injury (except at the inconvenience it caused), and who knew? Perhaps he had done it on purpose. Either way, he would not hesitate to do it again if she rejected him.
"You'll come when you can."
"When I can. Come, Raoul." She herded him towards the door, arm around his waist. The mirror quietly closed behind them.
"He's a nice man," Raoul said blearily. "He gave me broth. Can I have more broth?"
"When we get home," Christine said. And hopefully, she did not add, he would not be seeing the nice man again.