A/N: I read somewhere that finding a set of one word prompts and writing one (or a few) sentences for each one is a good writing excercise. I used one from livejournal but unfortunately I can't post the link. The prompts are the words in bold. Anyway, I hope any readers enjoy and please leave a review!
Buquet could never understand it – no matter how he searched after various accidents, that damned Phantom had yet to leave any evidence that he even existed.
Even when she folded her body desperately into Raoul's, Christine couldn't stop hearing the bewitching whisper of "I'm here" in the air, until she wanted to crack her ribcage open and extract the dark coil of the Angel's voice out her heart.
The memory of her father's funeral was one that never really left Christine – she could still recall the delicate pattern of ice webbed across the dark lid of his coffin, and the burn of tears freezing to her cheeks like they'd never ever leave.
When she'd been a little girl, she had felt an intense puppy love for Raoul, sighing over every brush of their hands and every surprise fleck of hazel in his blue eyes.
His hands, hidden by gloves of black leather, glided over her lace-covered stomach and ignited a path of fire.
Sometimes, watching Madame Giry write neat white music notes across the blackboard, the chorus girls who had to crowd in to look wished they had had an elegant, ink-on-parchment music education like that of Christine Daae.
The Phantom worshiped every rich note that spilled from his muse's girlishly pink lips.
Raoul never truly believed in magic, but when voices were stolen right from diva's mouths, men were hung by shadowy figures in the rafters, and an innocent girl was driven half-mad by the voice of a man in her head, he began to wonder.
He looked upon his Christine as she slumbered in the phoenix bed he'd prepared for her, and the beauty of her face reminded him of snow – clean, innocuous, like an enchanting virgin from the realm of children's stories, soon to be deflowered by death and encased in a translucent coffin.
When the Angel first began teaching her, she kept him as a wonderful secret close to her heart, and giggled inwardly every time Meg gasped at how her voice had improved.
Theater folk, Firmin thought, sniffing at the garishly painted people in his new business as they whispered heatedly about "the Opera Ghost". Them and their superstitions.
The rope that hung Buquet also hung Christine's naïve belief that her Angel was a heavenly fantasy come true.
As he pulled a sobbing Christine into his arms, Raoul was terrified that he would buckle under this test God had put before him.
Sometimes the Angel would tease her – taunt her, rather – during lessons to get her to work harder. After she performed to his satisfaction his voice always returned to its usual soft, coaxing tone, but she sort of liked the mocking. That may have been the first sign that she'd grow up to be the kind of girl who can't get enough of men who ruin her.
As he stalked sinuously towards her while they stood isolated on the stage, every rasp of his voice made her feel like a storm of fire was raging inside her, burning her from the inside out and sending throngs of firefly sparks through her bloodstream.
The Phantom watched as that contemptible boy kissed his Christine among the angels on the rooftop. The beauty of her, with lips which looked as if they were stained by strawberries and roses on her creamy cheeks , was driving him stark raving mad.
The Opera Ghost's weapon of choice was his punjab lasso – it was easier to savor the bulging eyes and the fear that thrashed in their depths as the brain behind them realized death was, in fact, inevitable.
When she'd been fourteen and Raoul had stood, sopping wet, on the beach with her red scarf clutched victoriously in his hand, she'd had no idea she would treasure the memory so much later.
She wondered if she'd get lost in his music, if the dark, splendid corridors of desire and beauty would pull her in and never let her go. Then she wondered how bad that could be.
His heart felt like it was plummeting off the edge of the earth as he realized she cried not for him, but for herself because of everything he'd done to her.
He looked at the rest of humanity with loathing and cynicism, and thus considered himself aloof and above their ridiculous, violent passions. But that was until a young Swedish soprano dropped into his world to sing him deeper into insanity.
The night Buquet was murdered, Christine lay awake and tried to think about the caress of Raoul's lips. Anything but the blood on the Phantom's hands, those hands that had touched her – she could practically smell the rust that had rubbed off onto her skin.
Raoul ordered a taxi and waited for Christine to get dressed and join him for dinner. But as the minutes dragged, his mind went back to the angel she'd spoken of, and with an inexplicable sense of foreboding in his heart, he returned to check on her.
He believed wholeheartedly that Christine Daae was the answer to his search for someone who could love him, but who was he to think angels could love demons?
Raoul remembered Christine as a lively, fair girl, and when he reunited with her by chance at the opera house, she'd seemed that way as first. But a strange fear entered her eyes as she spoke of the angel's strictness, and he got the faintest sense that she wasn't quite the same girl who'd been his childhood sweetheart.