(An: I don't know if this is good or just weird or what… It wouldn't get out of my head. Subject to editing or additional story or what have you as the case may be. I didn't know where I was going with this and I get the feeling it might have been more than what I've written. Feedback is always appreciated. J Quotes stolen from Aida and Faust. Everybody will know the other one. I hope so, anyway. g)
I, You
The sound of her feet crunching through the thin layer of gritty snow on the alley floor followed her as she pushed her way into the darkness, the dim, cold, silence of it palpable in the late winter Paris air. It was such a lonely sound, to listen to herself walking and hear nothing else. No echoing step beside her, no mindless chatter of humanity all around… There was nothing and no one, just as if had been in every place she journied when she walked the streets in the wee hours of the morning. She dressed herself in the best clothes she could afford- every night at eleven o'clock she went out her door fully expecting for some fantastic happening to prevent her from ever returning.
She had spent the two years between her eighteenth and twentieth birthdays traveling from one big, dark, empty city to the next. Never feeling the sense of homecoming she so desperately longed for, never feeling that elusive presence she somehow knew she must find. Never making any friends. She had forgotten where she was from, some orphanage where she knew one other girl… wasting away her life listening to one sad story after another, new arrivals coming and going as she grew years older and not one hour closer to a real life.
Her emptiness consumed her. A lingering sense of unfufilment haunted everything she tried to do, every opportunity people tried to give her to make a life for herself never seemed like the right thing to do. It was always over the next horizon, passed the next year…. At some point she had realized what she was looking for would never come to her and could never be found where she was. So one day she left, searching for that place where she could dream- where things would start to have some meaning. She couldn't explain how she knew it was a place- or even if that was what it was- she just knew it would all begin with a place, a solitary square of real estate would bring everything that was missing.
She gathered her ratty coat tighter around her slender shoulders. It had been magnificent once, rich, opulent mink tailored for some elegant lady. Her one friend, the girl from the orphanage had given it to her, saying that she would never need it as much since she wouldn't go anyplace cold. She felt vaguely depraved when she wore it, but had never had money to spare to buy anything else and could never dream of throwing out the only gift she'd ever received in her life….
Paris… here she was beginning to think there was hope after all. The narrow streets and looming buildings constantly bustling with overcrowded life stirred some long dormant sense of belonging within her. Most people couldn't understand ever belonging to a place as jaded as Paris, especially not when you weren't even born in a city, but she looked around and saw the only family she would ever have. Saw beautiful, ancient buildings and skylines that blended centuries as if they had existed side by side, saw the chaos of the reformation and felt a curious rising of resentment- almost as if she had been there to see new Paris when it was still new.
The cold didn't bother her, though her passport claimed she came from a warm climate. Her chocolate brown curls spilled down her back just passed her waist line, but the unusual length of it never bothered her. Everything about her was strange, from her modest boots to her old fashioned hair combs, to the full ankle-length dresses and skirts she always wore. She seemed alien anywhere she went, but the city of lovers welcomed her home as a prodigal daughter, feasted her with a blanket of unseasonable snow and toasted her with a full moon and crisply clear stars.
She followed them as she walked, sparkling faces in the perfect blackness of the winter sky hanging above her- so clear she felt she could reach up and brush her fingers against their laughing magnificence. The curious pressure she had always felt eased from her chest with every step, a bewildering freedom from the constant state of melancholy in which she had lived her whole life that she had never experience before; no matter what she did. Her throat burned with a sudden desire, but she pressed her lips closed… Did she dare? Would anyone hear her? If they did- would anyone care?
It didn't matter, after years of holding this nature release up inside herself she could no longer stand to keep it prisoner. Music had been a solace and a destroyer all at once- beautiful perfect relief while it still flowed, but the horrible crushing anguish returned ten-fold once the silence engulfed her. The coming hurt would be greater than any before, she knew, but she couldn't keep her voice from thrumming to life, shattering the stillness with sharp beauty.
Oh! How strange!
A strange smile lit her quietly beautiful features as another, different song cut the first off, her voice keeping perfect pace with her imagined accompanyment as it flittered over the new notes.
Holy Angel in Heaven blessed my spirit long with thee to rest
Something else again and all of it so ghastly, wonderfully, terrifyingly familiar and strange all at once.
Far from every human gaze...
She wondered why she wasn't crying, the tears had burned her eyes every other moment she had allowed herself to sing above a whisper.
With its melody enwind me and all my heart subdue
God, is this all there is to my life? Music and pain and wondering when it will all mean something? Her heart constricted and she grasped at her chest in a fit of sadness, her voice turning mournful.
...In your arms I wished to die
Her steps clicked hollowly now, no crunch of snow beneath her boots and no cloud of breath billowing out from her mouth as she sang. She had thrown off the mink coat without realizing it… she didn't know how long she had been walking, but she looked up at the enormous, looming building in front of her and remembered what she had been looking for all her life. She remembered and couldn't believe she had forgotten. Her voice sank to a whisper.
" 'Anywhere you go, let me go too…Christine, that's all I ask of you…' " She had always remembered those words sounding strange in the mouth of a performer on a stage- always thought that the actors had gotten their parts horribly wrong, played them inadequately... Had always thought the story itself had been written incorrectly, but had never tried to discover why she would know any better.
She stared up at the wall of the imposing ediface and her expression grew thoughtful as she noticed the wear and tear of just over a hundred years slowly melt away. Crisp and new and as wonderful as if had ever been, even from the back alley in which she stood. Her feet took her a few steps closer and she rested a gloved hand against the still slightly age-rough stone, "My dearest friend, my guardian… have you been waiting so long?" Her voice lilted affectionately as she spoke to the silent stone.
She tugged off her glove and threw it to the cobblestones, laying her now bare palm against the smoothness that hadn't been there moments- seconds- before. This place… this was home. Only because of one thing, this building was her whole life, one….
"Not long at all." The Voice came from directly behind her and she collasped against the wall as its long-forgotten, unearthly beauty washed over her, tears streaming helplessly down her cheeks as her hand struggled for purchase from the opera house stones of the Rue Scribe.
Her feet had lead her here and some benevolent angel had lead her back to where she had always belonged, through forces of time and distance that had always seemed unbendable. "Will you always be such a gentleman, Erik," she whispered, turning her tear-stained face slightly so his tall, black shadow filled her vision, "That you mince words for a lady?"
He tilted his head, the sharp whiteness of the mask glinting in the distant light of a streetlamp. "Could I be otherwise?" He extended a gloved hand to help her to her feet, those impossibly long, graceful fingers made all the more perfect by the fame of darkness around them that hid the uncertainty in the eyes behind the mask.
"No... I don't believe you could." She took his hand firmly and was wrenched to her feet, meeting his mismatched gaze for the first time, the tears started anew.
He understood.
The whole situation was impossible, they both knew it, and yet... they both understood. Christine raised a small, tenetive hand to his masked cheek and tilted her head up to look at him even closer. The wide-brimmed hat cast deep shadows over his face, but she could never mistake that look that said more of forgiveness and understanding and love than any amount of words in any language ever could have.
"I lifted you up once..." she whispered, fingers tracing his lips.
"Hush." his covering hers and then she was following him, not caring where they went, just knowing that she was with him and wherever her went- she would belong.
AN: Hmmm. That got cornier with editing. I'll have to think upon it some more. g Ps. Does anyone but me really hate the Phantom movie with a burning passion?