Disclaimer; Erik, Christine and Raoul belong to Gaston Leroux. Nadir and Ayesha are Susan Kay's. Credit also to ALW.
The title is the result of a major overhaul of the story, which wasn't going at all the way I wanted it; it is, of course, the title of a beautiful Frank Wildhorn/Nan Knighton song from The Scarlet Pimpernel and just seemed to sum up the entire story as I wanted it to be.
A/N - This is set after the ALW musical. Not Susan Kay, though I have stolen a few characters from her; Nadir, of course, although I'm ashamed to admit that I've left out Ayesha this time. Sorry! Oh, and even though this looks R/C at the beginning ... Don't worry. I'm just being kind to Raoul :) As Christine Persephone said, I wouldn't dare write anything that wasn't E/C ;)
"Do you, Raoul de Chagny, take this woman, Christine Daaé, to be your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?"
Raoul looked at Christine, his face bright with youthful affection.
"I do," he replied.
He felt Christine squeeze his hand beneath the veil, and his face lit up with love and optimism, barely restraining himself from kissing her there and then.
"Do you, Christine Daaé, take this man, Raoul de Chagny, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
Christine smiled and blushed, dipping her head with shyness.
"I do," she whispered, meeting Raoul's eyes and warming inwardly at the depth of love she found there.
"You may now kiss the bride."
The cathedral was full, friends and acquaintances of Raoul's, all of Christine's friends from the Opera, and even a few who had come from Sweden for the occasion, funded by Raoul. Several of the women were weeping from sheer joy; Raoul was so good and noble, and Christine so beautiful ... it was so right that their union should have occurred.
Hidden in the shadows at the back of the magnificent cathedral, only one figure watched the proceedings without an outward show of emotion. Even had all eyes not been fixed upon the lovely couple at the front of the church, no one would have seen him. A black cloak and wide-brimmed fedora ensured that he was discernible from the shadows only by the slight motions of long, thin fingers unconsciously twisting in the cloak.
He closed his eyes briefly, tilting his head backwards as if to ease a headache and, for the first time in the lengthy Catholic service, taking his eyes from the lovely woman who stood shining in white at the front of the church, the gauzy mist of her veil creating a halo around her face as she leaned forward to meet the kiss of her new husband.
The lively sound of the organ struck up again, and the couple, radiant with happiness, made their way through the ranks of friends and family to the door into the sunshine. Such a perfect day for such a perfect couple ...
The uninvited spectator moved slowly to a small door at the back of the cathedral. Instinctively ducking into the shadows which protected him from the bright sunlight, he could see the carriage, trailing white ribbons, rounding a corner out of sight.
He drew his hat down a little further over his face, and sighed. For a moment, his perfect posture seemed to droop as he closed his eyes one last time, then he disappeared into the gloom of a backstreet, the darkness swallowing him up and leaving no trace that anyone unexpected had ever been at the Chagny wedding.
* * *
Erik ran his hands over the polished wood of his pipe organ, touching the keys with a gentle reverence, but for once, his long hands wrung no sound from the instrument. It was too late.
He sighed, and turned to survey the room. With the candles extinguished, it was in almost complete darkness, the rich furnishings and delicate wall-hangings barely distinguishable in the gloom.
He drew one last deep breath, and turned away from the place he had made his home for so long. Lifting the small valise at his feet, filled almost entirely with sheaves of music, he left the house, closing the door quietly behind him.
He would write to Nadir, and thank him ... perhaps give him a new address at which he could be contacted. Then again ... perhaps it might be better not to open himself once more to Nadir's well-meant interference.
His resolve to start afresh where no one had ever heard of the Paris Opera Ghost had been a painful one, but eminently necessary. These days, every dark-haired girl he saw was her for one brief euphoric moment; every woman whose voice filtered down from the Opera above sent a fleeting blow of hope to his heart. Even if she could never be his, just to be near her, to breathe the same air as her again ...
It was impossible. He had seen the light in her eyes that day; even the blindest of men could not have missed the undeniable joy in her face as she ascended the carriage step, on his arm ... she wasn't coming back. She would never return and there was nothing he could do to change that.
Erik sighed as he looked up at the dome of his Opera House, the facade partially obscured by a dark cloud drifting across the sky in the twilight. It would rain tonight.
He turned and disappeared down a sidestreet, melting into the darkness in a manner befitting a ghost ... a ghost who would never be heard of in Paris again.
* * *
Antoinette Giry stood on the steps of the Opera House, the breeze blowing around her with the electrical excitement of the knowledge that a storm was coming, exhilarated by the dark majesty of the threatening thunder clouds.
A movement caught her eye, over in the Rue Scribe ... a shadow, almost, standing quite still, staring up at the Opera House with something resembling longing. She sighed, closing her eyes against the picture, and the guilt it brought.
She had been at the wedding, of course ... Meg had wept all the way through with joy for her friend, and even she had been forced to admit, it had been a beautiful day. Nothing but the best for the Chagny family ...
When she opened her eyes, the shadow was gone.
~Two months later~
Meg flopped down into her armchair and tore open the envelope, dropping it on the floor as she drew her legs up underneath her and started to read.
Dear Meg,
We're in Italy! I still can't quite believe it, this whole new life still feels completely surreal! Raoul has some business contacts here, so he's gone to lunch with them, and gorgeous as these flats are - overlooking a river with gondolas, can you believe it! - I get a little bored.
We've been to the opera, the ballet, and taken a gondola ride in the moonlight - it's all so romantic and beautiful, it's like something out of a fairytale!
Meg scanned the rest of the letter; a page of news and detailing the romance and beauty of their honeymoon, and sighed, dropping it onto the floor and tucking her legs up under her chin. Christine sounded so happy ... Meg had a horrible feeling that one day she'd wake up and realise that life wasn't a fairytale after all.
"Just pray that Raoul is still her Prince Charming when it happens," Meg muttered, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the fireplace.
* * *
Erik sat back against the thick trunk of a tree, tilting his head slightly in a vain attempt to ease the inevitable headache.
For the first time since his arrival in England, he took out his musical notation book. A blank page stared back at him, mocking him. Music didn't work anymore ... he had begun to feel that there was something strangely depressing about writing music when he knew no one else would ever hear it. It had been different when Christine was here ...
He sighed and stirred one elegant hand over the book, brushing the corners with his fingers. Despite his increasingly frequent attempts to tell himself that he had long since ceased to care for her, she was still there in his head, in his heart ... less a buried memory at the back of his mind than an ever-present torment in his soul, his recollections rubbing salt into wounds that were already almost unbearably raw.
He missed her so much that it was like an ever-present ache in his chest; her smile, her voice, the light brush of her skin against his ...
Just for another hour with her! What a fool he had been to assume that a change of scenery would remove her from his mind ... just for another glimpse of her, even with Raoul ... he knew now with a sickening certainty that he would willingly spend the rest of his life in a cage simply for the chance to see her again.
Closing his eyes and resting his head back against the tree, he forced himself to think of something else.
It had been surprisingly easy to secure a place in an exclusive but private London hotel; having booked ahead of time, he had presented himself at the desk for just long enough to collect his key and leave instructions that the maid should not visit his room, before disappearing with customary ease. Perhaps living above ground would be easier than he had anticipated ... more than once he had adopted the guise of an eccentric Frenchman without even a basic grounding in English to avoid awkward situations on the street, and so far London had been good to him.
So far ...
A family, with two teenage boys and a small girl of perhaps five years, passed by, taking no notice of the shadowy figure seated beneath the towering oak.
Suddenly, the girl tripped, and the boys turned, their laughter abruptly silenced as they moved with concerned affection towards their little sister. Her wails split the air, quieted only when her mother, kneeling on the ground beside her, took her into her arms and began to sing a lullaby, very softly, her voice warm with love. Gradually, the child's tears turned to smiles and she permitted one of the two boys to catch her up into his arms and swing her around in circles, making her squeal with childish glee.
Erik closed his eyes and passed a hand across the mask, resting his head back against the tree as he fought the ever-present headache.
All of a sudden he rose, slipping the book back under the folds of his cloak and drawing his hat down further over his face. Glancing quickly around, he moved silently out of the park, melting into the darkness of a backstreet that led to his hotel.
Upon arrival, he went straight up to his room and went out onto the balcony, clenching his fists on the railings and gazing out into the rapidly darkening night sky, dotted here and there with stars. He sighed, his thoughts many miles away. She would be on her honeymoon now ... he had heard rumours that they were touring Europe. Spain, or Italy perhaps ... Venice ... she'd love the gondoliers.
He sighed again, the sound carried away on the wind and fading among the stars.
The sound of laughter and chatter drew his attention to the terrace directly below his balcony. Couples sat at rounded tables with a smooth fall of linen, a single rose, cut crystal champagne flutes, lit by chandeliers sparkling in an undulating dance of crystal and light.
He turned away and sat down heavily on the bed, closing his eyes and clenching his hands around the bedposts. He would forget her in time ...
* * *
Christine took a forkful of fish and put it into her mouth, glancing up at Raoul and smiling shyly as she caught his eyes on her. He smiled back and took her hand, stroking the back of her hand gently with one finger.
"Happy?" he asked softly.
She laughed and nodded. "Very," she assured him.
He touched her lightly on the cheek and rose, walking over to the window and opening it, allowing the moonlight to spill into their apartment. She stood up and walked over to him, laying her hands on his waist and looking over his shoulder to the view of the Venetian canal out the window, silver in the moonlight.
"This is all so beautiful, Raoul," she murmured into his ear.
"No ... you're beautiful," he said softly, turning to face her and almost shyly tipping her head back so that he could look into her eyes.
As he bent to kiss her, Christine closed her eyes and tried to block out the soft splash of a gondolier poling his boat along the canal and humming a soft romantic aria. It was all just a little too close to home ...
"So," murmured Raoul, tilting her head back again and stroking back her hair. "Where shall we go next?"
Christine smiled and shook her head. "You choose," she said.
"All right then ..." he said slowly. "Well, I know you've been longing to see the Opera again ... perhaps a different one this time? How about England?"
Christine squealed and flung her arms around him. "Oh, Raoul, yes!" She kissed him impetuously on the cheek, tightening her arms around him. He laughed, and lifted her into the air, spinning her around for a moment before settling her back down to the floor and pulling her close.
"I love you, Christine," he murmured into the thick brown mass of her hair. She smiled faintly and touched his cheek with gentle affection.
"I love you, too," she whispered, burying her face in his chest in an effort to hide her tears.
* * *
Christine looked around the harbour, clinging to Raoul's arm. Everything was so busy ... she felt a little dwarfed. She heard Raoul call a porter to attend to their bags, and giggled softly when the man in question ignored him utterly.
"Raoul, dear," she murmured. "We're in England. I shouldn't imagine the young gentleman speaks French."
Raoul looked down at her for a moment, then his face crinkled. "I'm hopeless," he said, beginning to laugh. "Quite hopeless. How many hours did I waste in my youth having English verbs drummed into me?!"
She giggled and slipped her arm around his waist. "How long will it take us to get to the hotel?"
Raoul was frowning at a map. "Not too long, I hope. Do they have cabs in this city?"
She looked up at him in disbelief. "Raoul, you are a quite unmitigated barbarian! Paris isn't the only civilised city in the world, you know!"
He laughed and pulled her closer to him. "You know that I only married you to educate me."
She giggled and slapped him on the arm. "You're hopeless."
His arms encircled her. "Utterly." A porter passed, and Raoul hastily withdrew from Christine, hurrying over to him. Christine could hear him talking hopefully in broken English, and she felt a rush of affection for him.
She stepped over to him cautiously. "Is everything all right?"
Raoul smiled and slipped his arm around her waist. "Yes ... this gentleman is going to fetch us a cab to find our hotel."
Christine smiled radiantly. "This is all so perfect ..."
Raoul beamed. "I know. Something simply must go wrong to preserve the Shakespearean element of our relationship."
They both laughed.
The clouds drifting across the sky began to darken, and Raoul and Christine reached the cab just before it began to rain.
* * *
Erik drew his hat down over his face and entered the lobby, shaking the rain from his cloak. Moving automatically to the shadows, he glanced around the marbled room and felt his heart catch as his eyes alighted on a dark-haired girl standing at the reception counter, next to a taller blonde man who was signing a sheet of paper. He allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy that perhaps it really was her for a moment, aware of the danger of doing so; aware that he was incapable of resisting.
And then she turned ...
And his heart stopped.
Flattening himself back against the wall, his heart suddenly hammering, he watched in disbelief as she turned back to Raoul, laughed, tossed her hair back, and followed him up the stairs, trailed by the dutiful hotel porter.
He remained motionless for another long moment, willing his heart to slow, forcing himself to breathe steadily, the cold marble of the wall a knife in his back.
"Excuse me, mademoiselle ..." Keeping his voice low and mysterious, at its most persuasive, he drifted out of the shadows and beckoned to the small stocky receptionist, "May I ask ... the lady who was just here ..."
"Oh, the lady with the dark hair? Oh, she is lovely, isn't she?" The girl, plain and dumpy, and evidently appreciating beauty wherever she might find it, sighed in envious adoration. "She's a viscountess, you know ... she and her husband are on their honeymoon, and he's such a lovely gentleman, and so very handsome ..."
Erik flinched behind the mask, but the gregarious little receptionist kept talking oblivious, evidently thrilled beyond words at the fairy-tale love story unfolding before her very own eyes.
"And he's such a gentleman, so very good and noble, and they're so very much in love, you can tell, it's wonderful ..."
Erik turned away, not trusting his voice to thank her for what had been somewhat more information than he had desired. Drawing his cloak closer around him, he ascended the stairs and locked himself into his room, trying to ignore the fact that his hands were still shaking.