Title — In Dreams He Came
Description — If it was all supposed to be a dream, then how could she so clearly remember the sound of his voice? On the night four years after her father's death, Christine takes a visit to his grave, only to find she isn't the only one there. One Shot. E/C. ALW Musical.
Word Count — 2,316 Words
A Note From Yours Truly (aka Peach) — This is unedited. Please excuse any typos! Sometimes I'm a little lazy with reading over my work and don't feel it necessary to get a beta reader for such a small project! Also, who can catch the Wandering Child and Music of the Night references?
The voice followed her when she ate breakfast that morning. When she went to practice later. When she went for a walk with Madame Giry and some of the other ballet girls. When she brushed her hair for the night. It consumed her thoughts, raising above anything else important. What was the voice?
She had heard it four nights ago in the graveyard. It was December the twenty fifth, which many knew as the holiday Christmas, but she knew it as the day her father had passed away many years ago. All day she had been thinking of him and all the forgotten promises he had made. The promises he could never keep because he wasn't around anymore.
When you turn sixteen I shall take you to the Opera, just you and me. We shall listen to the great music performed by masters.
She had turned sixteen two years ago. And she had come to the opera house two years before that. Who would have guessed that her father's promise be fulfilled in a different way — in a way that she never wished it to be?
When I am in heaven, I shall send you the Angel of Music, Little Lotte.
There hadn't been any "Angel of Music". Her father had been in heaven for four, almost five years now and there still hadn't been any sign of an angel. Of anything. Year after year had passed after her father's death and she hadn't heard anything. Night after night she had shivered in the cold of her large room at the opera, wishing nothing more than to be visited by the angel her father promised to send. She began giving up hope.
Until Christmas. When she was sure she had heard him.
She tried to push away the thought of it. She was a good girl, one who didn't break the rules. In all four of her years here, she hadn't done a single thing wrong, hadn't even thought to. But now, there was an itch in her to do it.
Other girls did it all the time. The girl who was sleeping right next to her, Ana, had a rich lover — a vicomte that she had met after a performance that she would meet at all sorts of hours in the night. She would come back with a tear in her dress, lips swollen and pink from him. Little bruises up her neck and on her breasts from his greedy mouth. Madame Giry had caught her once when she had forgotten to cover one of the bruises and the consequences were not something she envied.
She tried to wrap the thin, scratchy blanket around her tighter as if it would keep her from going out. It didn't work. Even with the slight warmth it gave she still thought of it. Of going out.
Never once since her time here she had visited her father's grave. Madame Giry always seemed to busy when she needed to ask and rarely ever were the ballet girls allowed to leave the opera once they signed their contract. Only on one Saturday a month during warmer days were they allowed to go out and spend the little money that they made. Sadly that meant that she hadn't gotten to visit her father's grave. It was too far away and wasn't important — or so said Madame Giry when she asked once as a small, fourteen year old girl. She was sure the ballet instructor had a kind enough heart, but she was more focused on having Christine focused on work. Ballet. Dancing. Chorus.
The clock chimed twelve, marking the first hour of the day that her father died. Two hours from now would mark the minute exactly.
Without a second thought, she peeled back the covers around her and slipped her worn shoes on. She didn't have time to change, not when time was so precious. Instead, she slipped her father's old sweater on and the thickest coat she had over that. The weather during December in Paris wasn't in the least forgiving. She would be lucky to get back without catching a cold.
She made sure to be careful on the floorboard by the door which she knew had a tendency to creak loud enough to wake the dead, slowly opening the door and letting herself out. She walked quietly as she could through the hallway and to the back door. A large iron key was hanging next to it and she picked it up, unlocking the door. She returned the key to the nail it hung on, and shut the door behind her.
It didn't take long to find a cab, despite it being the middle of the night. She closed her eyes in the silence and tried to ignore that the back of the seat was poking into her back uncomfortably. Every time the cab bumped — which was more often than she would have liked — she painfully hit her back on it. As the cab came to a slow, she paid the driver and stepped out.
She was in the outskirts of Paris now, where everyone was asleep in the beds. She knew that if she walked down this road a little while longer it would lead to the church where her father was buried. She wrapped her coat up tighter as she went along, shivering.
As she was nearing the small building, a thought struck her. She hadn't brought anything for her father. It was so cold now that all of the flowers were long dead, and she couldn't just show up without anything. She searched the banks on the side of the road and her pockets without any luck.
She fought back tears at the thought of her father alone amongst the sculpted angels and cold stone. She remembered her father as such a warm and gentle man that the unfriendly marble hardly seemed the right companion. It was hardly right — it couldn't be right! It wasn't allowed to be right!
Too many years she had fought back tears. Why couldn't the hurt, the memories, the past — why couldn't it just all die? Why couldn't her papa just be back, holding her in his arms? Why couldn't she forgive her so called God for taking him away from her? Why?
She made her way through the stones to the furthest place in the back. The place where the graves were unmarked, the place where the poorest of the poor had lived. Her and her father hadn't ever had money. The little bit of money she did have from him when he died went straight to the cost of the plot, burial and the small headstone she had insisted on. She couldn't just let him not have a proper burial because money was tight, could she?
She had sometimes wondered if she had saved the money and not used it on him as he requested if things would be different. She wondered many times if she had done many things differently, what the outcome would be. Like if she hadn't refused Raoul's advances months ago. Would she have ended up like Ana? A wicked girl, yet wickedly happy?
The sight of her father's small headstone made her heart lurch. Not thinking of propriety, she rushed through the other stones to his own, knees giving out.
"Oh father," she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Why did you leave me? You were my only friend, my only companion in this world. Why did you have to leave?"
The snow began seeping through the thin layer of her coat and night dress as she lay there, one hand on the stone as if it would give her some connection back to the man she had loved so dearly. Why did he have to go? Why did—
She blinked back her tears a couple times as she saw something out of the corner of her eye and felt something soft beneath her cheek where it rested half in the snow. Pulling herself up slightly, she was surprised to see something bright red against the snow.
A rose.
She looked at the rose as if she hadn't ever seen one, and then picked it up, trying to see if it were fake or not. Feeling the softness, she knew instantly it wasn't fake. It was real. Where did one find a beautiful rose like this in the middle of winter? Why was it here?
Then it dawned on her.
Someone had put this here, for her father.
She looked around for tracks in the snow, but any traces of someone else being here were long gone. Only her own small footprints left marks in the snow. She tried to think of any people who might have known her father, but he was such a quiet man and they moved around so many times that he rarely ever had friends.
"Thank you," she whispered aloud, hoping whoever had left the precious gift could hear her. "Thank you…"
Her tears came fresh as she set the rose back down on the small plot. Whoever had done this surely didn't know how much it meant to her. To know that her father wasn't alone out here in this cold winter. She wanted to find them and personally thank them, to—
She froze.
She looked at the church, the only reasonable explanation, but the doors were bolted and there wasn't a light coming from any window. Even the small parsonage was closed up. Then where… then where could the sound be coming from?
She hardly had time to finish the thought before she felt it. She felt the presence of the soft melody, floating through the air. She felt it take her body and soul, intoxicating her. Where was the sound coming from?
She tried to think, tried to resist it, but she gave into it, the sound filling her. It consumed her. She felt it go through her veins, to her head and heart. She felt it pulse through her, feeling like a new feeling she had never felt was about to burst out of her. She had to close her eyes to remember it all. To relish in the sound. What was making the sound?
It was a voice. There were no words to the sound. Just a low, deep voice. A slow, seductive voice. A voice that sent shivers through her, that made her limbs ache. A voice that was like all of the good things in the world she couldn't have. A voice that was like peace.
A soft, sweet song.
A song that filled her with more peace than she had felt since before her father died.
Her song.
Christine awoke with a start.
She looked around her, shocked to see that all of the girls were gone from the dorm. They must have been breakfasting already — did she sleep late? Oh the Madame would kill her, she would—
Christine froze, the night before coming back to her.
The song, the song she had heard.
How did she get back here? She didn't remember leaving that night, she—
She remembered something. A gentle hand, a strong body. Leaning into the smell of fresh paper and cinnamon, warmth. Feeling the gentle hum of the music pulsing through him. He had been the one. He been the one that made the song. She remembered. She had reached her hand up and touched his throat, feeling the song. He had stopped singing for just a moment at her movement, but then sang even sweeter than before.
And then there was nothing.
She woke up here, late for practice. She was never late for practice. She never slept in, she was always the first up.
What had happened?
The door opened quietly, and Madame Giry stepped in. Christine's heart sank, knowing that she was going to be in trouble. She tried to stand out of the bed, but the blood rushed to her head and she felt the world spinning around her.
"Christine, sit back down in bed, now is hardly the time, you're only going to make your sickness worse if you try to rush thing." The Madame came rushing to her, lightly shoving her back into the bed and pulling the covers up around her.
"I'm… sick?" Christine croaked, now realizing that her throat was burning. She needed water. She needed water as soon as possible.
The Madame handed her a glass of cool water, as if reading her thoughts. "Don't worry dear, it is just a small cold. Nothing to worry about."
Nothing to worry about? She wanted to scream. Her father had died from "just a small cold"...
"What about the song — the voice?" she blurted instead.
Madame Giry froze, paling slightly. "W-what did you just say?"
"The voice?" Christine moaned the words out. Her throat felt like a desert.
"It was all a dream, you're feverish, Christine," Madame Giry said. "Now rest." She was about to leave when she turned back around. "Oh, this came for you." She handed Christine a letter.
Christine took it without looking at it. Her mind was stuck on the voice. Who was he?
It wasn't all a dream, she told herself. How could it all be a dream when she remembered the song so clearly?
No, it wasn't a dream, she decided for sure as she looked at the night stand.
There was the perfect red rose, a black ribbon tied around it. The thorns had been stripped away and it stood in a small clear glass, half filled with water. She thought for a moment she should take it back to her father who it should've belonged to but the thought lasted only a moment. It was hers.
She looked down at the letter finally.
A letter from Le Vicomte Raoul de Changy.
Endnotes — So that was it! I hope you enjoyed my first one shot ever and it wasn't too terrible. I finished it a midnight and read over it only once so the grammar… yeah. I'll fix it tomorrow!
Update 08/05/2017 - Some people have asked if I will continue this... At the moment, no, but in the future? Maybe. I've been thinking about it some lately because this is something that could easily be turned into a bigger project, but at the moment I'm working on so many big projects that I simply don't have the time!