Lovers Lost
Chapter 1
Christine's only family was her son, husband, and the silent shadow of a man that was her most beloved friend. A man she called her angel and held in her heart as the true sire of her child. Since her father's death and the passing of her once guardian Madam Velerius, Christine had been left without any relation in the world. She'd come to the opera house as a small girl and a ward to Madame Giry, an old friend of her father's. In her grief Christine had lived life in a haze. Days blurred together and she gave only the basest amount of effort to existing, until the angel of music had come to her.
From then on time seemed to fly by in a whirlwind of music and singing. Before she'd realized what happened she'd become a young woman possessed of all the feminine charms nature could bestow. It had not gone unnoticed, either by the now young man who'd been her childhood sweetheart or the angel/phantom who'd become her unearthly mentor. Christine had earned both their love and admiration, but soon a war ensued to win her favor. She'd been so young, inexperienced and afraid. All her life she'd acquiesced to the demands of others, and as consequence she became the pawn of men vying for dominance over her life and her voice. She'd also been a victim of her own inner turmoil.
Raoul fulfilled the need in her to have a safe love that was comforting and familiar, but there was a desire and restless longing building within her that her handsome suitor could not satisfy. Its power and heat scared her immensely. It was entangled with the passion she felt while singing, and demanded all the control she could muster to keep from exploding within her. She was too innocent to have understood what it was, but her angel had known, because that same desire burned inside him as well. It was an inferno whose intensity both attracted and terrified Christine.
When it had been revealed that her angel was a murdering monster obsessed with possessing her, the shock had been enough to send her running into Raoul's arms. But the fire within her continued to call to and yearn for her angel, and in the darkness of a moonless night she'd been his.
Christine found him, hiding from the police who were hunting the phantom. He'd been her first and she'd been his only, but when morning came he was gone. Feeling she had no one else to turn too Christine returned to Raoul and married him, keeping forever the secret of her true heart. She thought she would be happy, that things had happened just as they were meant to, but from her wedding day it became clear life wasn't going to make it easy.
Then a child had been born. A remarkable child whose otherworldly qualities told Christine all she needed to know about the man who'd fathered him. Raoul hadn't suspected anything. Although it hadn't been the loving consummation both had expected, their wedding night had been normal. An anxious groom and nervous bride coming together in a tender embrace, and she had even managed to produce the expected bleeding by pricking her finger on a needle and spreading the blood onto the sheets. But she had not been a virgin bride. When a few weeks later it became apparent that she'd conceived the cold reality that the child in all likelihood was that of her angel meant that a ghost always stood between Christine and Raoul.
There was no way for her to prove it, and her husband never suspected it since the timing was so close. But as she watched her amazing son grow it was obvious to her his true parentage. Thankfully he took after his mother in coloring and the general form and features of his face, but his eyes were something wholly foreign. Raoul hadn't been in the phantoms presence long enough to recognize those eyes, but Christine had, and it bolstered her certainty that Raoul was not the father. As the years progressed Christine could see the shadow of the man he would become.
With every passing day as he matured he was becoming more the mirror of her angel, and all doubt who his father was vanished. She kept the secret hidden, knew that its revelation would mean the dissolution of her marriage and the little stability they had. Her real shame wasn't in having conceived a child out of wedlock; it was that having some piece of her angel to hold made her so happy. She loved the child all the more for being HIS child, and as time passed and he became more like that man, Christine came to understand more the depth of love she'd harbored for her lost angel.
Most nights her husband as absent, having withdrawn to his study to drink until he passed out; he hadn't yet started getting inebriated in public due to his position as Vicomte, but when they left Paris for the heights of Monte Carlo he ceased to be concerned with appearances. So at night, when her son slept Christine allowed herself to remember his voice, his scent and his touch that she'd only felt for one brief night. It would always start out sweetly enough, leaving out the harshest and most difficult of memories until she had to face that he'd left her alone. Anger and pain would swell and choke her. If he'd have stayed with her so much would have been different.
Rumor had reached her in the first year of her marriage that the phantom was dead after a skeleton had been found in the catacombs of the Opera house. Christine couldn't help but grieve, and Raoul had not been ignorant for whom she mourned. It had hurt him badly and it was then that he'd started drinking. Christine had tried to give penance and be the doting wife she thought he'd needed, but nothing she did ever seemed to be the right thing. Soon she didn't recognize the man she'd married in the one she lived with.
There were moments, sweet and joyous, where they would both pretend enough to almost make it seem like everything was alright, but they passed too quickly. Neither had the strength to put up that front for too long, but still he loved her and despite the conflict in her heart she loved him in a way. Raoul tried to be an attentive husband at first, but nothing could make up for the contrast of passion she'd felt with the other. In time frustration kept them apart, but the responsibility he felt due to his position meant he never strayed and Christine devoted herself to being a faithful wife. Her guilt at not being able to give herself fully to him was matched equally by his guilt for not being able to provide all that his wife needed.
Christine found an outlet in caring for and loving her son, whereas Raoul found it in drinking and gambling. The Vicomte De Chagny was wealthy since the death of his older brother and the marriage of his sisters freed him from the duty of their care, but that didn't mean money was limitless. After years of chipping away at the family fortune, a series of bad bets left the small family on the verge of poverty. Raoul was a man of leisure, and had no career on which to fall back on. Christine, as the wife of a Vicomte, had rarely graced the stage in 10 years at her husband's behest. It was considered beneath them and improper for a lady of title to entertain the masses for money. But some remembered her triumphs as prima donna of the Paris Opera Populaire.
When they received an invitation from the American impresario Oscar Hammerstein to perform in NY for an obscene fee, and given their financial hardships they could do little more than accept. Their debts were swelling daily and without the influx of money they would soon be homeless. They boarded a ship and in NYC in two weeks, but had they known what awaited them they might never had dared the journey. Christine had believed her angel dead, and when he came to her that first night in their hotel room she had fainted from the shock. All the pain she'd buried with his memory and all the anger she'd harbored from his abandonment made her bitter. Even though she would never regret the one night they'd spent together she could not fathom ever accepting him again.
It had become quickly apparent that he'd been the one to bait and lure her across the sea for the purpose of ensnaring her heart and bending her again to his will. Her rational mind urged her to run, to take her family and retreat back across the ocean. But the heart within her that had been deprived for so long beat so loudly she could not deny it.
In the end the choice she made wasn't just to the music, she chose to follow her heart for the man she'd craved over a decade. The decision, made out of love and need, had been the final of her fateful life. She'd paid the final and ultimate price for music. Meg had turned the gun on herself. Erik had tried to coax the gun from Meg, but they struggled and it went off. The bullet found Christine, and in the arms of her true love with her son bathing her skirts in tears she received one last kiss before slipping into darkness.