"Madamoiselle!"

Christine shifted uncomfortably in her sleep, the voice reaching into her mind from what seemed to be an eternity in the past.

"Madamoiselle, please!"

The flames were hot against her face, even from a distance. An inferno worthy of Dante himself rose into the cold night sky, decimating Paris' winter chill with its molten core. Intricately designed leaded glass windows melted into slag, and thick stone walls blackened with soot as the fire that had started from a single, childish act rampaged through the inner workings of that fantastic realm she had once called home.

…and so had He.

"Madamoiselle! I will not ask again! You must step back, it is too dangerous here." The gendarme was coming dangerously close to laying his hands upon her, noting that his demands were not being heeded by the soiled vision in white that stood with her sweetheart before him. The young man that stood with her waved him off with a look of authority and annoyance that gave the officer pause.

"Christine… sweetheart. It's over." Raoul's hand, still stained with the dirt and lichen that they had stumbled through in their mad flight from the house on the lake, rested on her shoulder in reassurance, but his touch sent a cold shiver through her body. "You're safe, now. It's done."

It was done, after all, wasn't it? There was no going back – that bridge had been burned the moment she unmasked him before hundreds of Parisian nobility. She saw it in his eyes the moment she deftly slipped his disguise over his head – the fires of Hell awakening deep within his smoldering, furious vision. No turning back, no forgiveness, and certainly no second chances – not now. Her hand fluttered to her full red lips as her eyes began to water, the touch of her fingers cruelly mimicking the memory of the feel of His lips no more than an hour earlier. Her breath caught in her throat and the soot and grime that decorated her cheeks fell away beneath the tears that silently rolled down her face.

No, she thought, it cannot end like this. I made a mistake – but I can make it right again. I know I can!

"Angel…" she whispered, her slippered foot stepping forward into the puddles of melting snow that lay between her and the door that would lead to the Underground, that would lead past the traps, into the grotto, over the lake, to the house and, finally, to her weeping angel. She could do this. She had to.

Christine had bounded a mere five steps towards that door and the inferno that towered above before she was caught around the waist by her lover. It took every ounce of restraint that he and the gendarme could manage to drag the shrieking girl back from the mouth of Hell that lay before them, and it wasn't until the laudanum was forced down her throat that her sobs and struggles finally ceased.

"Madamoiselle Daae!"

She was being shaken awake, now – a welcome relief from this recurring vision that she wished she could dismiss as a mere dream. But, no – the memory lay as fresh after five years of absence from the Palais Garnier as it was the day she awoke at the de Chagny country estate under the careful watch of the de Chagny's personal physician. It took another three days of forced laudanum dosing to keep the girl compliant with the de Chagny's wishes – essentially, to stay put and stop trying to escape back to Paris. Christine groaned, and her body groaned with her as forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. A single tallow candle dimly illuminated the room and she looked at the girl who had awakened her. Staring back at her was a slight figure with skin twisted into a horrifying grimace on her right side, hair long lost on that side of her head, and her right eye nearly sealed shut with scarring. On the child's left side, long blonde hair was pulled back behind one shoulder and a single bright blue eye looked at Christine in worry.

Christine's hand reached out and touched the girl's heavily scarred, nearly skeletal, cheek in reassurance and felt the girl relax under her gentle caress. "What is it, Dinah? It's not even dawn yet."

Dinah, a mere thirteen years old but possessing a strength that Christine wasn't used to seeing except in the rare adult, picked up the candleholder and beckoned the older woman to the door. "It's Samuel, Madamoiselle. He's…" She cast her eyes down in sorrow momentarily before straightening back up and meeting Christine's gaze. "He's failing, Mistress."

Christine threw her summer robe on quickly, her lips set in a thin line as she nodded at the young woman who bore the news. There weren't any questions to ask, not now. Dinah led the way, favoring her right leg but moving masterfully down the hall, leading Christine to the end of the building. They were moving far away from the general barracks where the others slept in peace, a place Christine took those who would run the risk of waking the others with their stifled moans, their screams of pain, and their persistent, restless sobs. They were lucky this evening – the private ward was empty except for Samuel. Christine tried to push away the memories of the last denizen of this quiet room as she pushed through the door to see the small boy lying in his overstuffed cot. The visage of the squalling infant that she had nursed until it had ceased moving nearly two months prior was more than she could bear at the moment. She would remember the child later in the morning, after breakfast had been prepared and served and after the morning's medications had been distributed. She would light a taper in the small Chapel on site and remember those she had spent her time caring for, and those whom she had loved and lost.

For now, however, there was the matter of the writhing, pale boy that whimpered in agony as she approached. The past few days he had made his throat raw with screaming between the times that the laudanum had knocked him back into unconsciousness. Christine knelt next to the cot, her dingy white shift pooling around her knees as she tenderly stroked the boy's forehead and murmured soft reassurances. His skin was hot to the touch, and she sighed. Dinah was right to have summoned here. Experience told Christine he had no more than a few hours to live, and would likely not see the next rays of the sun enter the room.

Christine turned back to the girl who looked on with one wide and compassionate eye and shook her head. "Go sleep, Dinah." When she opened her mouth to protest, Christine held up one hand and closed her eyes. "Please go back to bed. I may be up all night, and I will need you ready to prepare breakfast if I am still occupied here." Dinah had been caring for Samuel for as long as Christine had, since he'd arrived at the Angel Care Center two weeks prior – beaten, burned and nearly killed by a drunken stepfather who saw the nine year old lad as competition for his wife's attentions. It was not the first time since she'd left her life of relative privilege that Christine had seen this level of cruelty passed from adult to child, and she doubted it would be the last. However, Dinah was still young and despite the hard life she'd experienced, Christine still did her best to shelter the girl from the realities of death and dying. "I will tell him that you were looking after him, Dinah, I promise. He won't pass without knowing that you care."

Dinah's lower lip quivered in response, and her one bright eye sparkled with newly forming tears before she finally nodded and offered a small bow in response, not trusting herself to speak. Christine reached out to the girl and pulled her close, pressing her head to the girl's hip as she wrapped one strong arm around her in reassurance. "You've done well. Thank you."

With a hiccupped, hidden sob, the girl nodded once again and broke free, leaving more quickly than necessary. Christine heard the telltale sounds of a girl's heart breaking as she moved with a hitched gait down the hallway, and she sighed. She recognized the sound – God knows she'd made the same plaintive, instinctive music in the months (years?) after her father's death.

Christine turned back towards the boy who laid before her, his breath coming in rapid spurts and eyes clenched in agony. Picking up the nearby washbasin filled with clean, cool, water, she set to work. Pulling the white linens away from the boy's body, she pulled off the previous washcloths that had been placed over his burned torso and arm and set them aside. Blinking her tears away, she dipped fresh cloths in the cool water and laid them gently over the boy's skin, noticing him flinch in response before his breathing slowed once again. Dipping another cloth into the water, she used it to stroke the child's forehead and cheeks, wiping away the perspiration there as she quietly sang to the boy who had been left in her tender care.

"Moonlight slumbers in your heart, a gentle summer moonlight –
And to escape the cares of life, I shall drown myself in your light.
I will forget past sorrows, my sweet, when you cradle
My sad heart and my thoughts in the loving calm of your arms.
You will rest my poor head, ah! Sometimes on your lap,
And recite to it a ballad that will see to speak of us;
And from your eyes full of sorrow, from your eyes I shall drink
So many kisses and so much love that perhaps I shall be healed."

"You sing beautifully, Madamoiselle."

Christine whirled around, clutching her shawl to her in scant protection against the darkness that surrounded her on the roof of the opera house. The vision of her father that she had held so close to her heart as she sang the folk tune he'd taught her vanished in a fearful instant. There was no one to be seen. She was alone.

"Announce yourself, Monsieur!" she called out with what she thought would sound like bravery, although she suspected she sounded just as afraid as she felt. "It is hardly appropriate to surprise an unaccompanied woman in such a way." At sixteen years old, she had hesitated to refer to herself as such, but the level of vulnerability she was experiencing prompted her to aggrandize her own status just a bit. Her rich brown eyes darted across the roof of the building, looking for telltale shadows or even steps in the newly fallen snow besides her own, and found that there were none to be seen. She swallowed nervously.

"Ah yes, what was I thinking?" the rich tenor responded with obvious amusement. "A thousand pardons, my lady." The voice played with the word, caressing it simply but pointedly, demonstrating to her that he was willing to play the game as well as she. "I simply could not pass by without remarking on such a sweet and angelic sound. Tell me, where did you learn this tune? It's not often a woman of your age grasps such texts so beautifully."

Christine's eyes narrowed in annoyance. "My father taught it to me," she retorted, "and he taught me well."

"That he did," the voice agreed with no hint of amusement. "May I ask if he still tutors you in the art of Music, then?"

She opened her mouth to speak, her annoyance blown away with the wind and the fresh wound of her father's loss just months before, when she was thrust into this alien city in a towering and intimidating complex and her mother's lessons in ballet called forth by a demanding and strict instructor – dance, and dance well, or find yourself abandoned as an orphan. The response stuck in her throat and the tears came as a surprise to her, as did the sobs that almost immediately followed. Christine wrapped one hand around herself in comfort as the other clamped over her face, hiding her twisted visage from the mysterious stranger whose queries had prompted this rare outburst of the pain she'd fought so valiantly to keep contained.

"Mon ange…" the voice came from behind her now, close enough that she could nearly feel the heat of its source at her back, but she didn't bother to turn around. Surrendering to her grief, she could not bear to have the voice see her in this state and the part of her that remained aware of her surroundings was happy to know he was situated behind her. "…I did not mean to upset you, child. Please forgive me."

She shook her head, more violently than she'd intended to, and was grateful when the presence gave her plenty of time to recover. Taking a shuddering breath, she sighed, releasing the pain into Paris' night sky. "My father is gone," she whispered. "I am alone. The ballet mistress was a friend of my mother's and has given me one season to prove myself worthy of the Opera Populaire. I…" she hung her head in defeat, eyes closed and stinging with tears that threatened to fall once again. "I am alone… and I am frightened, and so I sing to my father, because it's all I know to do."

The sound came from behind her at first – a dark and rich tenor note vibrating from a heavenly organ, moving around her to envelop the entire roof of the opera house, and Christine gasped as her eyes flew open. The melody of the thrumming voice, wordlessly caressing her with an old Swedish hymn that she hadn't heard since before her mother died, before her father left their homeland with the pain of a man who had lost his true love and needed to forget everything about his past. The voice soared like an eagle on the wing – majestic and proud – but the timbre of the sound surrounded her in warmth and comfort. It moved effortlessly through the melody of the song, the hummed line in a legato dance through the air reminiscent of her father on his violin. This was not just music – this was genius, a gift of God, something that reached into her soul and filled not only the void that her father left, but a void that she didn't even know was there. New tears glistened in her eyes, unaccompanied by sorrow, as the pure joy of Music grasped her soul and pulled it into a waltz worthy of Heaven.

Christine's breath came in great, shuddering waves as the song ended and she looked about her with new eyes, her red-rimmed eyes taking in the night in amazement. The voice finally commented, "You enjoy that."

It wasn't a question. There could be no question, and what answer do you give to such a question? To say that she enjoyed that would be to say that a fish enjoys water, that a plant enjoys the sun. That sound, once experienced, was something she didn't think she could ever live without. Mutely, she nodded in response.

"I know you, Christine Daae. Your father, Gustave, left you far too soon, but he left behind a promise to send an Angel to your side to guide you into your future."

Christine swallowed heavily in shock, unsure of how the voice could possibly have known her name or her father's promise to her on his death bed. Once again, she nodded in response to the voice that had reached into her mind and soul, unable to formulate a proper response in her young mind.

"I would like to be that Angel for you, Christine. Would you accept me as your Angel of Music?"

Finally, Christine could find her voice. There was no answer other than what spilled out from her mouth. There were no other options. "Yes, Monsieur. You are mon ange de musique."

At 4:30 on a warm Parisian summer morning, a boy named Samuel succumbed to the injuries of the fire that had consumed his flesh after his drunken stepfather threw a glass of bourbon onto the boy's clothes, and then set him aflame. His last lucid thoughts were of an Angel kneeling near his head, looking at him with unconditional tenderness and love, singing him softly into the arms of eternity – his Angel of Death.