A/N Don't own any of it… if anyone can think of a decent title please let me know, I'm terrible at titles.
Chapter 1- An Unexpected Encounter
The harshness of the English wintertime crashed into the buildings of London with the darkness of the clouds overcoming any possible glimpse of the sunlight its inhabitants seemed to so desperately need. People were huddled together or under their shawls and thick clothing, if they could afford such luxuries. If they could not they tried to close their bodies to the lashings of wind and rain hammering their backs as they wandering along the cobblestones running their everyday busy errands for their everyday existence.
Their miserable little lives seemed entwined with the gothic tendencies of the weather and as the wind and rain slowed and stopped, there was the realisation that if you wait an hour in England the weather will at some point be to your liking. Still, even without the cool rain the afternoon remained cold and thoughtless.
Until…
It had been so long since he had watched the street light, any light, slide down her dark, silk hair. And it had been so long since he had caught a glimpse of her lips so blood red and consuming. It had been so long…
And yet there he stood studying her face from the distance of the clock, she looked so tiny in the middle of that road with all the bustle of the Englishmen and women around her. She did not seem to notice their impatience nor did she feel the same urgency as they. But she stood still, in the middle of what seemed a river of people gushing in torrents around her, a rock yet not with the stature she had once held on the stage. He frowned and looked harder at her, there was something not quite right. He waited, stared then shook his head as he realized that yes, her face had changed. What was that on it altering its undeniable beauty? Could it be that she had aged in the seven years it had been? Not her surely, he thought, she was always a breath of youth and freshness in the dullness of his life.
It had been so long…
She was there alone which he at once thought unusual, this was the last thing he had expected when he had arrived in London only a few days earlier, to see her at all, let alone to see her by herself. He had had no intention of seeing her, not even from this distance. He was vividly aware that they had moved to London from Paris, an old friend had told him recently but London was a rather large place, what were the odds that he would find himself standing less than sixty feet from her? Perhaps fate had played its hand and what an evil little game fate could play.
She looked up slowly and then turned her head so it was as if she were looking straight at him but he didn't flinch, he did not move a muscle. It was not fear of her seeing him that froze him firmly to the spot. It was not love nor hate nor even disbelief and he shuddered as he realised that it was pure indifference which rooted him still. She stared for a moment longer before looking around her and as she did he slid his back to the wall so that when she looked up again, as she inevitably did, he was not there.
Christine's hand flew to her heart and for a moment she genuinely believed that she had seen something up in the clocks tower. Then her hand raised to her mouth to suppress the escaping giggle at her own insanity as a pigeon flew out from the height of the clock. After a further glance up she decided that her mind had most certainly deceived her and she continued to walk with her basket. She shook her head almost the entire way back to the house she now shared with Raoul because there was no way she could possibly have seen that. It was simply a pigeon in the clock tower and not, as she had feared, a white mask.
But part of her had wondered, and even hoped, if it were him because that part of her would always care for him and after all, it really had been so long…