Once again, read the first book to understand this. Thank you.
What you do and don't believe,
doesn't mean a thing to me.
Who we "are," to some degree,
are the promises we choose to keep.
-Sunday's Best, "In Beats Like Trains"
Act 3, Scene 2: Half an hour
She couldn't say "Erik!" for if it was Raoul, then he would be angry.
And she couldn't say "Raoul!" for if it was Erik, then he would be angry.
So Christine just stared at the mask in front of her, into the eyes, drowning in the darkness.
"Christine," The voice rumbled from behind the veil of leather. Christine couldn't help but let her features sag. It was Raoul, in full glory; he wore high trousers, a crisp purple shirt, completed with opaque cufflinks. Her eyes didn't see any of this, though; they were too busy gawking at the mask.
No words were exchanged for a small period of time. Just enough time, coincidently, for the clock to stop moaning its final ticks and tocks. Raoul cleared his throat. "I mean it… that I hope I'm good enough for you…please let me explain."
She did not interrupt him.
"I took you here for a reason. We traveled across the countryside in one night for a reason. At first it was too get what was then believed to be 'my fair share'. Now I only wish to treat you like the lady you are. How long have you been deprived of a real gentleman? One who does not seduce with sights and sounds, but one who does card tricks in the evenings and takes you out for Sunday drives?"
"All my life…"
"Let me become that gentleman. With the face of the monster you love we have no social boundaries to get past, but with my-"
"Raoul," Christine interrupted him now. A lifetime of encouraging her curiosity wouldn't be put to waste just by orders. "I'm afraid I don't understand you. What do you mean, social boundaries?"
Raoul grimaced, the mask upon his face shifting as his face did. "Come, let us sit. I wouldn't want your knees to lock up because I made you stand in a cold hallway."
They went to the blue room, the delicate stillness between them smiling at the change in atmosphere. There, among plush armchairs and rockers, comfort could be found even between strangers. Christine opted for a petite wooden rocker. Raoul went for the Patriarch's throne near the corner of a Persian rug.
It took Raoul a moment to get back on track. He spoke distantly now, eyes on the darkness outside instead of the girl in front of him. "What I meant before was that I'm… I'm… I am glad that what happened to me happened to me. If I were with you otherwise, then there would be pressure between us. A man and a woman, both handsome in their own likes. But if one is ugly and the other not, then there is no hope for anything to occur."
Christine remembered what the daroga had told her lifetimes ago of The Birds and The Bees: Men and women, love, babies, that whole business. Raoul, surely, wasn't implying something like that! For the first time in a long while, she laughed.
Raoul's eyes left the window to flicker back to Christine. She forced herself to do nothing but giggle, but still the very sound seemed to strike Raoul across the head; his eyes were prisms trying to let out nothing but actually omitting every emotion in the rainbow. Why are you laughing at me? His eyes asked.
"It's just that, and this is going to sound silly…"
Go on, his eyes urged.
"It's just that, mask or not, you're still awkward. You're still Raoul. We could've been friends, you know. We still can be. Just promise me you won't become some dark creature because that's what you think I'll like," Christine said, a sad smile on her face. Now she saw beyond the mask—which really was just a play at being Christine's Angel—and saw a scared young man who just wanted Christine to like him.
"That's all I ask of you."
Raoul stood, suddenly. The candles in the room danced, almost going out. Shadows poured across his face, down his chest in rivulets, covering him. "Ask of me? How dare you ask anything of me! I give you a home away from the manipulative fingers of a madman, and you tell me to stop it, Raoul, mon minet, don't protect me! Well, then I won't!"
He raised a shaking finger to point it in her face. She could see, easily now, that he also wore black gloves like Erik had. "And do… not… tell… me… to… not… be… DARK!" The last word he screamed.
"What happened to you being the gentleman I needed?" Christine asked. Inside she was nothing but a puddle of panic (It was the first time she had heard Raoul raise his voice), but outside she tried to use all of the wit Erik had taught her. "Raoul, please, I only ask you to not change! I want the gentleman! I need the gentleman! I would love him!"
The silence was palpable and tasted bittersweet. His eyes, once so charming when they shone in the light, were volcanoes, shooting acid from their pores.
"All my feelings now grow still… we never have and we never will… Next time you see tien ange, make a song out of my sorrow. I hear he's quite talented on the pipes." Raoul reached into the shadows and drew out one and then fastened it to his neck. He adjusted the cloak, and went on, "This morning my mind and my heart were warring. At first my mind won and I was to have you on a platter. However, when I saw you by the clock, my heart told me to follow it. 'Be kind to her', it said! 'You love her, don't you?' it said! But now! My mind is clamoring for control again.
"Ask of me anything more and I will show you the darkness that is inside of me. Ask of me anything more and I will not reply until you see the darkness, which is there because my life was taken from me, not because I want to be the one taking lives! Ask of me anything more and I will force you to become mine; and once you are that there is no crossing back. A meeting of the minds, I dare say!"
They stared at each other. Christine felt like someone had poured water over her and frozen her to the rocking chair. Confusion filled her mind. Raoul trembled with his own rage, inner turmoil spilling over.
"Raoul." It wasn't a question, but a statement, one that reminded them that between them now was a deadly pressure, not a tiny crack that could be filled with cocking eventually. So they had been balancing on a knife before, with all three of them: Erik, Christine, and Raoul. Take away but one and you get a constant gunpoint situation.
He left her. She turned left and escaped the room.
Once safe in her room, Christine wept. She grabbed at her skirt and used it as a rag to scrape away her tears. Her breath was coming out much to fast, and her shoulders shook, sending tremors down into the hardwood floor. The dizzyingly orange walls closed in on her. Crawling, she pulled herself to her bed, sobbing into her blankets once they were close enough.
Raoul, who had always seemed so docile, had turned into something horrible because of her. If Christine didn't exist, then Raoul would still be a happy man. He would probably be engaged to Meg by now! She could see their happy life fold out in front of her: They would have many petite, blonde children with charming manners, a habit for gossip, and heart-shaped faces.
Oh, Raoul's face, Raoul's beautiful face… gone because of Christine.
Dangerous thoughts crept into her head. She indulged in the sinister wonderings. The lake… cool, crystal… everything comes back to the lake.
Before she could act on a single one, she fell asleep, tear-littered cheeks pressed into her pillow. When she woke up she was strangely warm. It was too early in her life for hot flashes, but yet her skin wore red splotches, and her cheeks were flushed. She stared at herself in the small sliver of mirror glass that she had saved from Raoul's attacks and barely recognized the girl looking back.
Dreams drifted through her head like a disconnected train. None of them tickled her recollection completely. As she tried to recall at least one of them, Christine put her small mirror on her vanity. Then, with tiny steps, she went to the white kitchen.
The day passed slowly, like all of them did in the mansion. Christine made Raoul and her breakfast, for the kitchen, even though it looked like no one had occupied the house for years, was completely stocked with fresh goods. She left his plate by the green door. She hardly saw him during the day.
To put meaning into her life, Christine took to reading books. They seemed to occupy the house as much as her; shelves of the creatures lined the walls in almost every room, no matter its color. The first book she read in her new home was a tiny gilded book by Charlotte Dacre, titled 'Hours of Solitude.' Pun intended. Christine picked it for its title.
Words had long ago been carved onto her flesh (Erik's, Erik's, Erik's)—now words were being carved into her heart. Every romantic poem made her smile, cry, and anger all at once. Never before had she chanced to read a poetry book, what with their loaded language and general sappiness. This volume had opened the door to a world unseen before, and Christine was forever in debt to Charlotte Dacre.
Folly found in the pages is as much comfort as madness in the heart of angels. Well, not exactly. When the poems spoke of love, she thought of but one mask: the Original. If Charlotte wrote of kisses Christine thought of future kisses and not of the one she had already had. "A kiss of love refin'd," She murmured to herself, quoting the book. "And blends the bliss with mind."
Timidly,she thought of Erik. A certain thrill went through her from thinking of Erik in such a way. It was certainly something new. Her lips had only touched his cold mask before, never upon his lips. It would be nice to kiss him, Christine decided. She remembered with a smile that Erik's lips were actually very in tact… God's gift to her! Her heart raced from the sudden unsought of emotions. Was this the type of love that Erik incorporated into his music?
Her eyes burned into the paper, turning the grain to dust and evaporating the ink right off the page. Over and over she read that poem. When she read it for the twentieth time, something clicked in her brain.
"And blends the bliss with mind…"
"A meeting of the minds, I dare say!"
A chill ran down her spine and she snapped her book shut. Raoul could not have known that she would pick this book off of all of the shelves in the mansion! There was no possible way anyone could've guessed at that! It was just a coincidence that her favorite poem held the same meaning as the one behind Raoul's words.
Timidly, she thought of Raoul. So their minds might meet. If they did, would that stop him from becoming a phantom? If that were true, then Christine would march into a lifetime of Raoul's kisses. She would do anything to help reverse Raoul's fate.
With a quill pinched between determined fingers, she wrote Raoul a letter. When the last sentence was written, Christine took it and slid it beneath his door, where it would wait for him to read it.
These are the words that Christine carved into Raoul's heart:
Darkest Raoul,
I cannot write in riddles like you. As always, my words and feelings appear easily. So I shall be brief and blunt:
I long for a connection between us. I want my mind to know yours like it knows the well-written words of British romantics. I will not ask you to meet me at the clock at eight, tonight. I simply will not.
But I will be waiting there.
Yours if you so wish that to be,
Lightest Christine
