Disclaimer:
This one sideswiped me from nowhere. If I was making any money I'd have better things to do with my time. PTO belongs to ALW, GL, SK, KH, YK and the RUG, as well as any other acronyms I've forgotten.
A/N: Not my fault. Melpomene strikes again. It's funny that I can write Halloween-ish fics months before the retailers even think of it, but when the day's on our doorstep I write mundane things. ::shakes her head:: Very well, if that is how it must be. Heave use of Leroux here. Enjoy, everyone!
Promises
By AngelCeleste85
Ch. 1 – Sweet Nightmares
Christine padded to the study door noiselessly in her fleece slippers, looking in. Her husband sat there, his back to her, intently studying the amber liquid that was swirling in the bottom of the glass between his fingertips. A newspaper lay spread before him. The pungent and not altogether pleasant smell of alcohol filled the air.
He was drinking again.
Silently Christine stepped away, anger and desperation warring in her heart. They stayed with her all the way into little Madeleine's room where she kissed her sleeping daughter goodnight. As if response to Christine' inner turmoil, Madeleine shifted and whimpered in her sleep, and Christine hastily exited, leaving the two-year-old to subside into pleasanter dreams.
Two years, Christine thought to herself, making her silent way back to the bedroom she shared with her husband. Two years since her birth. Two years since the Opera. Two years since I was forced to choose…
She could still remember Raoul's voice, bending slowly to madness inside the torture chamber.
She could still feel those burning tears against her ankles, his withered lips on her forehead. She could still hear his hoarse whisper, begging for one last promise – his funeral.
And she knew she would never forget the image of the man on the lake's shore, broken in genuine grief, watching her leave him as the glow of torches began to grow brighter in the dark cellars of the Opera.
Raoul had whisked her away from Paris in much the same fashion as Erik had stolen her from the Opera, though in much more mundane ways. They had run away together, with no particular destination in mind, content just to be with one another.
And yet, from the moment she had seen that simple declaration in L'Epoque, Erik's shade had pursued them everywhere.
They had been married legally for a year and a half when it became clear Christine was already heavy with the child they would name Madeleine. Yet it had been Erik, though he scorned the clergy, who had witnessed their first vows to one another, just as it had been Erik, standing both for her father and himself, who had given her away into the arms of the one man for whom he must have borne all the hatred in the world. And all he had asked, in the end, was one simple promise.
"Come back," he had asked. "Come back, and lay me in my grave."
It bothered her sometimes, to remember that last promise and know that she had never gone back to fulfill it. That was why the little gold ring was sewn into a little black pouch, buried in the chest that contained everything she had brought from her former life as the Opera's meteoric star.
It bothered her, when she let herself dwell on it, that the man, half demon, half angel but all-too-human, who had taught her so much had not been given even the decency of human burial.
It bothered her sometimes, to remember that the priest had repeated those time-honored words, and for a moment she had hesitated, seeing not Raoul de Chagny before her but the man who had once been her teacher, her idol – and her husband.
A moment only, and Raoul, caught up in his joy of the moment, had never noticed. But for that split second, Christine's breath had choked on the heart that rose in her throat with joy…
Christine shook her head as she changed for bed, hung her dressing gown up in its place in the closet. But under the covers of the empty bed, the memories would not cease their attack.
When she was truly being honest with herself, Christine knew, she could admit to herself that it had not been Raoul to whom she made the vow of marriage legal – but to Erik, with the former Vicomte standing proxy.
That memory chilled her with anger: the knowledge burned her with shame.
Downstairs, as if her inner rage had summoned it, she heard the door slam: the house trembled in response. It no longer brought Christine's head off the pillow even when he came home with the stench of strong spirits on his breath and his clothes drenched in the unpleasant smell of smoke – or worse, the all-too-common scent of cheap floral perfume. Raoul would not be back for hours yet, then.
Christine closed her eyes, unable to banish her thoughts back to their dark corner again.
As if it had been an omen, Erik's shade seemed not to be put to rest by their marriage as both had hoped, but to grow ever more powerful as their union slowly weakened. Slowly but steadily, what once she had dreamed had become a nightmare – what had been for her an easy way out was now a trap from which she could see no escape.
Raoul's mind had been badly unhinged by the hours spent in the torture chamber, and while neither of tem had known how deep the damage to his psyche was at the time, he had never been quite the same. The former singer wondered if he knew it, wondered if that was why he was sinking so heavily into alcohol now when he wasn't at sea on a fishing boat, or in the arms of one of the local whores.
That was one secret that she knew he thought he had kept from her. The drinking, as well, he thought hidden.
Christine smiled bitterly – those were nothing compared to the secrets that she kept from him.
When she was being honest with herself, she could admit – there as some question in her heart of whom she had really married.
When she was truly facing herself, she could say the words now – the words she had said daily to Raoul after their wedding day rendered meaningless now, the words Erik had begged her for and never heard.
When she was truly, brutally honest with herself, she could realize –
Little Madeleine bore only a passing resemblance to Raoul de Chagny.