Chapter Two: Rose on the Grave
Christine's funeral was held two days later. The weather had made a turn for the worse. The ground was covered in a thick blanket of white. Still, more snow fell. It pelted against the windows of the chateau as the Chagny children huddled around the library fireplace.
"Angeline, why do you think Father hates me so much?" Victor asked, snapping his novel closed as the flames of the fire danced across the surface of his golden eyes.
"Hate you? Father doesn't hate you." Angeline assured her brother. "He loves both of us, he truly does. He just has a hard time showing it."
Victor turned his back to the fireplace. It's light outlined his tall frame in yellows, oranges and reds. "He's never had a problem showing his feelings for you or mother. It's just me he's cold towards. Just me. I don't know why and it drives me insane. Have I ever wronged him, Angeline?"
"Not that I can remember." Angeline, sighed. "Perhaps it's your personality. You're very…stubborn and pig headed when you choose to be."
"I am that way, because I grew tired of being the obedient little child that everyone forgot." Victor's eyes narrowed. He began to pace restlessly. "Father sent me away to boarding school when I was only seven. Seven! And when I was here, he acted like he was angry at me or he ignored me completely. He still acts that way." He stopped and shook his head sadly. "Father's never wanted me around."
"That isn't true!" Angeline protested. She leapt from her chair and took her brother's hand comfortingly.
Victor flinched away from her. "Did you know that he's never looked me in the eyes? Not once in twenty years! And mother…" His eyes grew sharp and cloudy with a strange darkness. "Mother never scolded him for it. She allowed it. She never even asked him why."
"Then perhaps you should be the one to confront him." Said Angeline, wrapping her arms around her slight frame to ward off the chill his eyes gave her. Sometimes, these fits would take hold of Victor and quite honestly they frightened her.
"I…I can't." Victor stumbled, his resolve faltering, anger fading.
"Why not? I see that it bothers you, more so than you let on. Tell him how you feel. He's the only parent we have now, you should try to get along with him."
"I'm afraid of what his answer might be." Said Victor sadly. "Besides, I haven't thought of him as a father in a very long time. I've lost the only parent that ever meant anything to me. As far as I'm concerned, I'm an orphan now."
"Victor." Angeline sighed.
Victor stalked over to the coat rack and retrieved his heavy winter coat. He threw it on as he hurried towards the door. "I 'm going to the cemetery. I need air, some time to clear my head."
"I'm going with you." Angeline told her brother. She slipped on her coat and gave him a determined look, her eyes narrowed and jaw set.
"Do as you like." Victor chuckled. And she called him stubborn.
Victor and Angeline traveled to the quiet graveyard where their mother had been laid to rest.
Angeline lingered behind her brother as they traveled across the cemetery grounds, her large eyes watching as his black coat billowed about him. He trudged through the snow, his back slightly bent, his head down. He looked like a man more than three times his age, haggard and beaten by time. Though their mother had adored both of her children, Angeline had always suspected that Victor was her favorite. Unlike herself, he had a voice that could rival their mother's. He shared her deep devotion to music and her unquenchable desire to steadily improve on his god given talents. Though their father had always been frigid towards him, their mother had always been there to ease the pain of rejection. Her warmth soothed away the ache in his heart. Now that she was gone, Victor had no one. No one would mourn Christine's death more than he.
Victor twisted his head around to look back at her. Golden eyes glinted through the heavy snowfall. "Don't dawdle." He said, stopping to allow her to catch up. She sped up her pace until they were striding side by side.
They stood together around their mother's grave. Angeline clasped her hands before her heart and prayed silently for her mother's soul. May she rest peacefully in heaven.
Victor knelt before the headstone and wiped snow away from Christine's name and portrait. He smiled sadly at the picture. He wished he could see her face again. He ran his fingers over it once more. "I bet you're putting the angels to shame with your song. Aren't you, mother?" He whispered beneath his breath. A barely there chuckle escaped his lips. He continued to wipe snow from the top of the headstone and from around it's base. Victor felt something buried in the snow and swiftly retrieved it. "Angeline, has father come to visit her, recently?" Victor asked, keeping his back to her.
"Not since the funeral. Why?" She asked.
Victor turned towards her and showed her the red rose he'd found in the snow. Around its stem was a black ribbon.
"How beautiful!" Angeline gushed, taking the frozen rose from him. She gently caressed its soft petals with her fingertips. "This is strange. Everyone else is waiting until after the storm passes to bring flowers out here. Who could have left this, I wonder."
"I don't know." Said Victor, his eyes locked on the black ribbon that was tied around the rose's stem. "But something about it does not sit well with me. Let's take it back to father. Perhaps he'll know where it came from. If it's nothing, then I'll bring it back out here on my way to Paris tomorrow."
"Very well." Said Angeline, a bit bewildered. What could be so wrong about a rose?
"Where did you get that!" Raoul demanded at the children's return. He stared at the rose in Victor's hand as if he were looking down the barrel of a gun.
I found it at Mother's grave." Victor explained. "Do you know who may have left it?" He asked.
Raoul snatched the rose out of his son's hand and hurled the offending flower into the fire place. He stood by the mantel and watched it burn. "It's a token from the devil, nothing more." He hissed, watching the flower shrivel and burst into flame.
"I don't understand." Angeline squeaked, frightened by her father's outburst. He was disheveled and wobbly on his feet. He'd obviously been drinking…a lot. "Who left the rose?"
"Didn't you hear me?" Raoul growled. "It was the Devil!" He screamed, his eyes filled with rage. He stumbled towards them and slung the nearly empty glass of wine he'd been nursing into the flames with the rose. It crashed against the tender and sparks flew into the air.
Angeline cried out in fear and Victor instinctively stepped in front of her to shield her from their father. "Enough!" Victor growled, daring to meet Raoul in the eyes. "You're frightening her. Get a hold of yourself. We only want to know who would have left the rose and why it is that you'd rather see it burned than let it lie on Mother's grave. Tell us the truth, Father. Please."
"I am not your damned father." Raoul sighed finally. His voice was that of a man that had given up. He shook his head as he turned away.
"What?" Victor asked, his voice very quiet, almost unheard.
Angeline grew still behind him.
"I meant it. I am not your father, Victor. Truly, I am not. I am not saying this to be cruel. It's the truth." He collapsed into a chair by the fireplace and watched the flames with a blank look on his face. "Those damned roses. They appear every so often. They are a gift from him…you're real father."
"Who is he?" Asked, Victor, feeling his legs grow weaker under the weight of the truth. This was why his father had been so cold to him growing up, why he didn't love him the way he loved his sister. He wasn't Raoul's son at all. He had always wanted to know why. Now he had his answer.
The older man did not look at him. He continued to stare without blinking, despite how the heat from the fire must have been burning his eyes. "He is the devil, as I said. He ruined me, nearly killed me, nearly stole your mother from me forever. He's the very reason why I don't want you to go to the Paris Opera. For as long as those roses appear, I know that he's still alive, down there in his pit beneath the opera's floors."
"The Opera Ghost?" Asked Victor. He laughed, despite himself. "You think the Phantom of the Opera is my real father?" He chuckled.
"Don't laugh." Raoul scolded.
Seeing his serious expression, Victor instantly quieted. "You mean it? You really believe that I was fathered by a ghost?"
"The Phantom of the Opera was no ghost. He was very much a living, breathing man. He was your mother's vocal teacher. It was thanks to him that she became a star, but he was mad. He killed people, threatened my life, all for the sake of keeping your mother for himself. Your mother admired him for his genius and pitied him for the deformities that he bore, both on his flesh and upon his soul. He took advantage of that weakness. And thus, we were left with you."
Victor felt his body begin to shake at the enormity of it all. He, the offspring of a monster such as the Opera Ghost? No, it couldn't be true! Could it? Was it from him that he got his eyes? His hair? And what of his talent? Was it only due to the fact that he was the phantom's child that he carried the gift? How much was he like his true father really?
"This can't be true!" Angeline cried. She ran to her father and sobbed into his shirt. She clung to him, desperate for comfort. "Victor is my brother!"
"Yes. He is." Raoul assured her as he rubbed her back to ease her sobbing. His blue eyes lifted up to Victor, who's knees had finally given way beneath him. "But only half."