A/N- For an explanation of some stuff in this chapter, you have to understand the background on Turandot, which, yes, was not performed until 1926 but what can I say? I'm taking a bit of creative license with timelines. Just assume Puccini's so awesome his music can time travel, m'kay? Anyway, here's a link explaining the significance of Liu's aria to anyone who doesn't know it. I always equate Christine and her love/hate relationship with her Angel of Music with Turandot and her love/hate relationship with Calaif, and where does that leave Meg? Well, Meg must be Liu, of course!

http: / /en(DOT)wikipedia(DOT)org / wiki / Tu_che_di_gel_sei_cinta


Chapter 1: Liu's Aria

It was a triumph, Christine thought, heart swelling as her strange angel came to her side. "Christine," he whispered, in that voice which had never failed to send shivers right through her, even in the days when she hated him. "Ah Christine, what a triumph you gave me tonight. All those dark silent years..."

"I know," she said, placing a hand on his chest to feel the comforting beat of his heart, in tempo with her own racing pulse as the pure enraptured joy of performing surrounded her again for the first time in so many years. "I know." It had been foolish, she supposed, to think that she could ever be free of him. From the moment he had first sung to her, they had been bound together. At times she had hated him. After she had kissed him that first time, when at last she had understood just how sad and lonely he was, she had loved him. Sometimes in the years between then and now, she had felt a strange mixture of both in her heart. He was a complex man, and what she felt for him was a complex thing, and still she hardly knew him beyond their music. The music, though... the music had always been perfect. Tonight had been a balm for both their souls.

But something wasn't quite right. Where was her son? "Gustave," she murmured.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Where's Gustave?" Panic filled her, because right now was too perfect and she had long ago learned that perfection couldn't last long. "He was meant to be here!"

At that very moment, the boy came pelting through the doors, face white and eyes huge. He crashed into his mother, clutching at her skirt. "Mother, something's wrong!" he cried.

"What is it, Gustave?" she asked, taking his hands in her own.

"It's Miss Giry, Mother. I found her in her dressing room... she's hurt!"

Christine felt her heart stop for a moment. Meg, the dear friend whom she had hardly given a thought to in the aftermath of the devastation of l'Opera Populaire, the woman who had been her sister in all but blood for so many years... She glanced up at the man beside her, and his face was suddenly unreadable. Before she even had a moment to try and decipher what his eyes were saying, he had whirled and was gone, sprinting down the hall. Christine picked up her skirts and followed as quickly as she was able in her elegant gown, with Gustave right beside her.

When Christine entered the dressing room, she let out a cry as she found a scene of destruction inside, but the greatest horror lay in the center of the room. Meg, still in her costume, lay in a pile of broken glass. Her skin, which usually glowed a pale shade of gold from the same palette as her hair, was bleached white and her vacant blue eyes stared at the ceiling. She was breathing, but barely, and her wrists were slashed wide open, spilling blood sluggishly across the floorboards.

The man she had known under a dozen different assumed titles had flown to Meg's side and ineffectually plucked the piece of glass which had done the deed from her limp fingers. "Meg... MEG!" he cried, a note of pure panic in his voice. Christine hurried to join him and, careful to avoid the puddle of Meg's blood, knelt down beside them both.

Those beautiful blue eyes blinked hazily as Meg, barely conscious, tried to focus on them. Drawing on her last reserves of strength, she opened her mouth, took a breath, and sang softly: "Tu che di gel sei cinta, vinta dal fuoco tale, si lo ami anche tu!" Her voice was weak, but still sweet even after so many years after performing just the dregs of the Angel of Music's creative talent. Her eyes closed and her breath, already shallow, nearly ceased altogether.

"Was that...?" Christine asked.

He nodded. His expression was closed and his jaw was clenched, as if he were trying very hard to keep control of himself. "Puccini," he confirmed.

Then, without another moment of hesitation, he lifted his star's tiny, broken body in his arms and raced from the room and past Miss Fleck, who had come to see what the clamor was about. "Go get help!" he shouted at her, voice cracking desperately on the last word. "Fetch a doctor!" When she didn't move immediately he let out an animal cry of equal parts fear and frustration. "For god's sake, Fleck, go!" Christine didn't think she'd ever seen him this agitated, and she had known him at what she thought must be some of the darkest periods in his sad history.

The moment, Fleck had moved to follow his instructions, he was gone, sprinting down the hall in the direction of the stairs that led to the upper floor, beyond the reach of the milling crowds and out of the way of the hundreds of workers who helped Mister Y's shows run smoothly. Christine stared after him.


Erik lay her gently on the divan in the reception room. He had several of these plush little rooms on the upper levels, on the off-chance that private business with some of his more wealthy patrons needed to be conducted within his concert hall, but now it served the purpose of being secluded and quiet and safe... She was hardly breathing. Her pulse, when he found the telltale place at her neck, was weak and fluttery... Oh god, Meg!

She was even paler than before, and he was so glad he'd had the foresight to try and elevate her injuries as much as he could to prevent any further blood loss, but god she was so still... He knelt on the floor beside the couch and rested his forehead against it, willing himself not to break down, not yet. It didn't occur to him to wonder why he was this panicked. It didn't occur to him to wonder why he felt that if she ceased breathing completely, then so must he. As always when caught in the throes of high emotion, he didn't stop to think about it, he simply sank into the depths of his mind and gave himself over. And in this moment, he was drowning in a sea of despair.

"What have you done, Meg?" he whispered. "Oh god, what have you done?"

There was no question that she had made the cuts herself. The bloody shard of broken mirror which now resided, deceptively harmless, in his pocket, had been clutched in her fingers when he entered her dressing room. What on earth could have provoked her to such an act? He had always known Meg to be such a bright, happy individual, a little ray of sunshine. Why would she attempt to take her own life? He was the one prone to fits of suicidal madness, not Meg. Not sweet, optimistic Meg...

Christine entered the room softly. "One of the stagehands pointed the way," she said softly, as if she were afraid to break the tense quiet she had walked into. "Gustave is with that Miss Fleck. She said the doctor was on his way."

He looked up at her from where he slumped at Meg's side and she looked down at him and there was an understanding passing between them, but neither quite knew what it was. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but at that moment, the doctor Fleck had sent for bustled efficiently into the room. He was a stout gentleman with a moustache and a pair of spectacles that sat squarely before myopic blue eyes, and he carried the tools of his trade in a little carpetbag.

"Oh dear dear dear," he murmured, upon seeing Meg's pallor and the drops of blood that still flowed freely from her wrists. He moved to her side and Erik rose and stepped back as much as the doctor required to reach his patient and no more.

The doctor made a few hasty examinations, checking her pulse and respiration. Once satisfied that his patient was, in fact, still alive, he set about binding her wrists with gauze, wrapped tightly around the wounds to prevent any further blood loss. Then he glanced up at Erik.

"Will she... I mean, is she...?" Erik did not seem able to articulate.

The doctor removed his spectacles grimly. "It's hard to say," he said. "The lady appears to have lost a great deal of blood, but it's possible that with a transfusion we may yet be able to save her. I've discovered in the course of my work that these things are usually most successful with a family member..." He trailed off pointedly.

Erik strode to the door and leaned his head into the hallway, catching the eye of the first passerby he saw, one of the spotlight boys. "Send for Madame immediately," he barked. "Run! Now! Bring her here as swiftly as you can!" Then he returned to Meg's side. "Her mother," he explained to the doctor. "Her mother will be here as quickly as she is able."

"That may not be swift enough, sir," the doctor informed him gravely. "You may just have found her in time but if we don't hurry..."

"Well then for god's sake use me, then!" Erik roared, which caused the little man to shrink in on himself in the face of the much taller man's near-hysteria.

Christine sank bonelessly onto a little chair in the corner and watched with equal parts terror and wonder as her teacher and her love allowed the doctor to draw several vials of his blood, which he then injected into Meg's veins. A tiny hint of color returned to the blonde's cheeks... but only just a hint. She no longer looked as though she was a corpse, but she still appeared only just this side of death's doorway.

"Well?" Erik asked impatiently.

The doctor shrugged. "There is nothing more I can do. Hopefully the transfusion will take, and if it does, she will live. If not... well, you'll know within the hour." He shook his head and would not meet their eyes. "I'll wait in the next room in case something changes," he said softly, and took his leave of them.

Erik felt a little queasy. He had never been fond of doctors, and the portion of his blood he had lost for Meg's sake was making him feel a touch lightheaded. Christine rose to her feet and glided to where he stood staring down at his little star, and guided him unwillingly to a chair a few feet further from the unconscious girl. Dear god, she was still so young. Just twenty-eight in two months' time... What would he do if she didn't survive?

"She sang Liu's aria," he mumbled, not sure if he was speaking to himself or Christine. "Why... what's the significance? I don't..." The tiny aria had a huge meaning behind it and Erik knew it. It was a song of love, of sacrificing oneself for a love so great it could not be borne, of honorable death for the sake of the beloved's happiness. But what on earth did all this mean to Meg? What the hell was she doing? Oh god, she couldn't die...

Christine placed a hand on his shoulder, and the other reached into the pocket of her gown. "I found this tucked into the corner of her mirror," she said, withdrawing a folded sheet of paper.