I am posting this and another story at the same time, 'The Phantom of Devil's Island' My current story, 'The Prison Of My Mind 'is not quite done and will still get priority. Once it is, this story and the other new one will fight it out for which gets written first or at all. As Darwin would say, ' the survival of the fittest'. If both stories are supported they will get equal attention, although at times one might get more. If neither story is supported then they will both die and I will know that it is time to move out of fanfiction and to a different venue with new characters. I will gauge support by number of reviews, favorites, follows and the quantity and quality of reviews and of course 's own stats.
Chapter 1.
Paris, France February 15, 1881
Christine Daae's Point of view:
For as long as I live, I will never forget the sensation of swirling snow that blew into our already wet and sweaty faces as Raoul and I emerged from the omnipresent darkness of Phantom's lair into the blinding light of a snowy Parisian day. As we found our way out of the labyrinth, and on to the street, I had been surprised to find that there was daylight. The last time that I had noticed the time it had been early evening. That was when the Phantom kidnapped me right off of the stage, thereby precipitating a very emotionally strenuous chain of events. I had lost all track of time after that. I emerged still wearing the wedding dress that the Phantom had forced me to wear, in his last desperate effort to possess me. It was now torn, dirty and wet. It did not do justice to the exquisite garment that it was when I first was forced to don it hours before. I will admit that it was a marvelous creation; the most beautiful dress that I had ever seen. But it was made for a wedding that was never going to take place. How could I marry a hideous murderer? He was a creature who had been rightfully hated and despised by the world; a man more hideous than anyone that I had ever seen.
Yet, in my eyes he had once meant something more to me. He had once been my beloved angel, my teacher, my muse, and my friend and confidant. But that was before; everything was gone now, my career, home, trust in others and most of all my innocence, burned away in the fiery passions exchanged between all of us on the previous night. The swirling white snow was mingled with black sooty ashes, and felt exactly like my shattered mind. I was swirling with emotions, both dark and light, and feeling both hot with emotions and a numbing cold. One moment I was content that my choice had been firmly made, yet a moment later I felt torn, very torn. I had been forced by the Phantom to make a choice, but did I make the right one in choosing Raoul? One would think that there was no question as to what my decision should have been. Yet, what had once seemed right, and an easy decision, now seemed terribly wrong. Not because I believed that I loved the Phantom, but because I felt a sense of loss, the loss of my girlhood, the destruction of my dreams and my very soul.
My girlish fantasies had been set aside and replaced by the very adult emotions of uncertainty, indecision and regret. I could not help but to wonder whether or not my recent decisions had been based on a lie, a terrible lie that I had used to deceive everyone, even myself. Beneath my veneer of relief at our escape, I felt a strong sense of doom and a terrible loss that I could not explain, even to myself, and certainly not to Raoul. He would never understand and how could he? He had risked his life for me, had suffered through the ordeal of watching a man, that he deemed a monster, humiliate him by placing his life in my womanly hands. In his chivalrous world, it was not a woman's role to protect a man but the other way around. Yet in the end it was my actions that had saved him, not his. Until a few hours before I had thought, without a doubt, that I was in love with my childhood friend, Raoul de Chagny, but was I? My mind swirled with these questions and with feelings of doubt. Everything had changed and yet I was expected to behave as if nothing had changed at all. Yet I was not the girl that I had been even when I was kidnapped only hours before. I had been transformed.
If it were true that I had loved Raoul, then why did I enjoy another man's kiss so much? Why did my lips still yearn for the luscious feel of the Phantom's swollen lips upon my own? Why did the heat of his kisses sear themselves upon my lips, in the way that that they did, branding me forever as his own? Why did I feel as if something had been taken from me, when the Phantom released me from his arms, almost pushing me away as if he didn't want me any longer? Why did he let us go without a fight? What had been his feelings? Was he just playing a new game with us or did he truly let us go? Was I sad that he let me go? It was true that I was pleased that he had released Raoul but had he really released me? Did I want him to? Those kisses haunted me. Yet if I cared nothing for him then why did they do so? I was so confused!
Before we kissed I was sure that his hideously bloated lips would be disgusting, his stench foul; but I had been desperate. Raoul's life had hung in the balance. He was about to become another one of the Phantom's victims and I felt helpless to stop him. Yet I knew that I had to try, even if it meant eventually caving in to the Phantom and taking my place as his bride, allowing him to seal me into his subterranean prison of a home forever. It would have become my tomb, if I had become his bride. My place where I would have been forced to serve my life sentence; condemned to be buried alive with a hideous madman. In my mind I had accepted my fate. But first, before I gave in, I thought that I would change the poisoned atmosphere that was draining all of us, particularly me. The Phantom had placed me in a situation where I could not win. He had told me as much by cruelly taunting that 'either way that I chose I could not win'. I was desperate to find a different way by reaching towards my tormentor's heart and appealing to it. To do so, I had to do something drastic, and unforeseen by his swift mind. I swallowed my fear and I took a chance. I closed my eyes and clasped my arms around his skeletal frame and kissed him directly on his lips.
My ploy worked. He looked back at me in shock. I was in shock at my own actions. He was a man who killed without a thought, or a sense of guilt at ending lives or manipulating people as he had done to me, as he had done to everyone. How could he expect me to love him when he was so terrible in so many different ways? Love was something intangible that came from the heart, yet he wanted to force it out of me; so how could I love him? I had thought to kiss the 'hideous monster' as a desperate ploy to save Raoul. I wanted to show our tormentor what love truly was, certainly not the obsessive emotion that he, the Phantom, felt for me.
I could not name that sick and distorted obsession that he held towards me to be love. I would not define it as such no matter how hard he tried to take control of me, particularly my mind and voice. That was it, the true reason that I had run from him before and had fought so hard against him; to regain control over my mind. Love was not a chain to wrap around another person's soul imprisoning them. Love should not be forced. It should not be forced, or given, solely to quench another's own needs or to aid in another's search for contentment. That could never be called love nor defined as such. Yet that was exactly what the Phantom had demanded of me, complete surrender to him like a slave to a master. But I could not be compelled to give that to him. I would not be compelled to give that to him. I was very young, yet I knew better than that. I would never bestow my love upon another simply because they demanded that I do. I refused to bestow it upon him.
Perhaps the Phantom did not know any better, but I did. Before their untimely deaths, my parents had taught me that love between a man and a woman should be freely felt and given equally between them. One person should never feel consumed by another person's love. My parents had loved one another in equal measure and had done so until each of their dying days. Even after my mother's death my father would look at her portrait and smile. His face viewed her with a special adoring gaze directed only at her. I knew that he was remembering his love for her, feeling his heart stir and beat only for her once again. My parents had achieved what I thought to be love and taught me to understand what true love was.
Thus, by their high standards, I did not love the Phantom; nor he me. I told myself that I did feel a momentary sense of compassion towards his plight, which had inspired me to kiss him. I was sure that he had never been kissed or gently touched by anyone, not even by his cruel mother who had given him nothing but a mask; but pity and compassion are not built on love; but on human decency alone. One person may bemoan another person's state but that did not mean that they were in love with them. It meant only that they had some sympathy for the recipient of those emotions; which is why the Phantom reviled such things. He was not seeking out sympathy, but wanted only to be loved and was even ready to kill for it. That was not the sort of love that I wanted to engender.
Still I knew that the Phantom had some good inside of him; after all he had been my teacher, my idol, a light in a dark world for many years. He was not merely the sinister figure that had haunted the opera house. He had been my friend, and protector. He had taught me so much, and had demanded nothing in return. I used to believe that he was the Angel of Music that my father had told me would someday appear to inspire me. In hindsight, I don't think that he meant that I was expected to interpret that phrase to mean someone real; I believe that he meant that in time I would find my own guide inside of me; my very own muse to inspire my voice. Yet out of nowhere such a guide did appear, and inspired me in so many ways. He had spoken to me in the dark of the night, singing the most beautiful songs in my head. I could feel him in my mind and believed him to be real. Eventually I discovered he was real. A voice to me in the dark: a caring father to an orphaned child. I had shared many confidences with him, over the years. He had selflessly given me the answers to my troubles. He had brought out the best in me.
Thus, I hoped that, by appealing to my angel and friend, I could get him to see the futility of where he had brought us all. The dead-end that we had all come to would only serve to kill us all, if not in body then in spirit. There had to be a path away from the abyss that we all found ourselves trapped inside of; a safe way out. Surely not everything that we had done together had been a lie. The Phantom had to have some real good inside of him. I could not have been completely wrong about him. I would not accept that I was. I prayed to God that I could find the courage to bring out the good that was hidden somewhere inside of him. I knew that he lurked inside of the Phantom somewhere behind the mask of pain and bitterness that he wore upon his shattered soul. I simply knew that it was there. Behind the monstrous exterior had to be some sort of heart. He had given me glances into his soul before and I had given him insight into mine, and we had felt a kinship of spirit. That was why he had meant so much to me because he knew me better than I knew myself, and brought out the best in me, perhaps I could do the same for him. Everything depended upon it.
The monster could not be the patient teacher and guardian who had watched over me so carefully and guided me. I wanted my angel of music before me. I needed to appeal to him and him alone, not the hideous creature who stood before me and threatened Raoul and I. I tentatively bridged the gap that had stood between us, even as he taunted me to make my choice. My mind plotted against doing such a dangerous thing. It screamed that I must flee, and I shook in fear; but my heart knew exactly what to do and so I set out to do so.
I needed to show the Phantom that there was a better way out. I had wanted to make him feel loved for most likely the first and only time in his life; even if it was only a convenient lie, just like his deceptions with me. He was not, and had never been, an angel of music. He was just a man, a very hideous man. In my mind at the time he was far too ugly to think of as a suitor. But still he had often helped me to make the right decisions, so in return I would do the same. I came up to him and kissed him intending to do so only one time and then quickly run away. As I implemented my plan, my lips found his and locked them into a kiss. As I kissed him my arms instinctively wrapped around his slender body. During that kiss he recoiled in fear and shock, as if he were afraid that I would physically harm him, but then he relaxed as he felt my arms close around him. In doing so I felt a shock of both pleasure and an odd sort of recognition as if I were meant to do what I had just done.
I felt a strange compulsion to kiss him again as if I did not believe the reaction that the first kiss had engendered. I had to find out if I had been wrong; if I my rapid heart beat had done so out of fear and not with the excitement and great pleasure that I had thought that I had momentarily felt. I had to know the truth. I needed to be sure of what my feelings were, so I reached for him again, as if I were a drowning woman clinging to a man for safety. This was the man that I had feared; yet I wrapped my arms around him once again, as if it were natural. I put my lips back right back on his and they stayed there as if they fit. I felt as if his lips were meant to become one with mine, that they were made just for such. His arms too felt as if they were made to contain me as he encircled me with his own. This time he returned my passion equally. His own fear and hesitation fled. That second kiss had melted away almost all of the pain and acrimony that had arisen between us which had destroyed our mutual trust and affection. It was as if the recent months had fallen away and we had come full circle to a time before I had learned to fear him.
My impulsive kisses opened up my closed mind to other unexpected possibilities. I could no longer see the Phantom as a monster at all, but a desirable man. His kiss was as powerful as the fearsome opera ghost, yet as insecure as he was as well. I could feel his salty tears mingle with my own and feel the anguish that he felt, the dark despair that overwhelmed him. That darkness had encircled his soul and choked out the light. But I also felt the longing that he entertained; the overwhelming need that he had to find someone to assuage his extreme loneliness. I could sense the quiet desperation of a man discarded by a cruel world, a society that could not see the man behind the monster nor grant him a place in it. It was clear that he wanted something else; something that he felt that only I could grant to him, a sort of absolution. His lips joined mine as if they belonged exactly there they remained there of their own free will as my soul felt a fervor that it had never felt before. At that moment I longed to remain with him forever and give him that peace and love that he had craved to the point of obsession. I could see the pain and the longing in his eyes, and behind that I could see the hopelessness that drove him to madness. I finally understood the real man behind the mask. It was not the white demi-mask that had truly hidden his true self that gave him away; it was his eyes, which were a mirror of his tormented soul and they watched me in anguish, waiting for me to crush him once again.
I practically forgot about Raoul and my real purpose in kissing the Phantom. Raoul had kissed me many times and I had thought that I enjoyed them, but in hindsight I didn't, not in the least bit. They were the kisses of a boy; the Phantom's kisses were those of a man, a deeply passionate man. I had once thought that the Phantom's hands reeked of death, and perhaps they did, but his mouth tasted of life itself; soft, sweet and delicate; yet firm like the roses that he so cherished and often bestowed upon me as a gift whenever I pleased him. It had been bliss to be encircled by his strong arms, I felt safe and loved, where I should have felt only fear. Why?
Looking back, I had never seen the Phantom as a man. First he was my beloved Angel of Music, who had guided me from a lonely orphan child into an acclaimed diva. I had not realized that my 'Angel' was actually the feared Phantom of the Opera. In truth I might have guessed that he was and perhaps on some level I knew that he was. After all, both the Phantom and my Angel were disembodied voices that spoke to people through the dark. But in my naivety, back then; I could not think that such a loathsome creature could ever make me believe that he was truly an angel of music. His voice was so divine, so pure and welcoming that it could not have come from anything but heaven, or so I thought.
