Book I: Pax

Chapter 6: Humaneity


Humming softly to herself the lilting melody of some near-forgotten aria, Christine crept through the deserted halls by candlelight, each step following noiselessly after the other. Her tiny bare feet devoured the steps of the winding staircase with sure ease, taking each with the ball of her foot so as to float over them with the poise of a gazelle in midnight, seeking fatal waters. It was with this eerie sort of finesse that one escapes fear by fooling it, seeming tranquil and fleeting and light-footed as if you were only part of a pleasant hallucination and paid no mind to anything that may hinder your present happiness. Her soft vesper offerings to Music established this peace and quietly waged a war to infantilize the gory remnants of memory slithering about her mind. These were merely bothersome quirks within idol weakness such as sleep and daydreaming, when her mind would turn distant, fatal things over and over in the subconscious and scratch at her healing scabs until they bled. That was all they were. The less she became aware of the subliminal thoughts the more swollen her hidden afflictions became. It was when those emotional wounds would bleed out that her eyes would begin to dilate, her pulse would quicken, and she would feel strange brushes, caresses and indiscernible bumps against her body. This was the way the visions would physically manifest themselves and these sorts of sensations would occur only when she let down her guard, allowing her collective conscious to wander through stored up memories and dreams as if inside a great, terrible museum...as if they were trying to lead her back to something dangerous. When fully susceptible Christine was powerless over what went through her mind.

But for now she was safe within her own free will.

The dark that overcame the edges of the candlelight was entrancing. It was the kind of dark that untames the eyes to search further than illumination, to seek out for what one cannot see but can only feel the presence of, only because one is ingrained with the need to know what is before and around them. An average human being instinctively reaches out for what can be felt because this is a necessary sensory response for survival, being a species not well suited to sensing their surroundings in the dark. Christine's involuntary perception of this need to grasp only what can be sensed had become distorted somewhere along the line. Something within that her better judgment did not necessarily agree with felt for something more intangible than physical reassurance. Whenever they had the chance, her eyes would reach against her command to dark corners and corridors where the candlelight could not smother the inky blackness only because her mind was prone to wander there, not because she was trying to find her way. It was a simple thrill to her system, while logic feared anything and everything that may be concealed within those shrouds. This was the deadly complex. Christine fought what her senses wanted, which wasn't surprisingly new to her.

Jean-Matthieu, the resident page, M. Badeau, the hired cook, and Romina, the giddy little Spanish housekeeper, were the only other occupants of the flat that night besides she, Raoul and Liam. The two younger servants took to bed early each night in their separate quarters downstairs, though it was all too often that Romina would sneak out unnoticed, even during the winter months, to join the nightly scene along the degenerate Rue de la Huchette of the Quartier Latin and return home drenched in the unmistakable fragrance of rotgut liquor. But on this frigid night the jingle of the vivacious Spaniard's gaudy jewelry did not ring out from the first floor's hallway. When Christine halted the tune in her throat for a moment, she could almost distinguish the night breathing around her. One thing she was certain never to forget was exactly how to savor it.

Judging by the stillness at this late hour all were supposedly asleep. Christine had kept herself about downstairs only as long as it took the old chef to retire from his dog-eared copy of Napoleon's Maxims of War—which he took to religiously studying in the company of the personable Alphonse and a Choquin pipe each night, according to Raoul—by the light of the whale oil lamp in the kitchen. And so she had waited for the lamp to dim from her cozy place in the armchair of the front drawing room. For nearly an hour the dynamic lines of every trinket, painting and furniture piece of the room had been subject to her critical gaze at least ten times over. This helped to relinquish her own dreaded qualms and turned her thoughts to the ships and oceans that were depicted around her rather than what demanded her attention. It was funny to think of those nautical scenes and antiques as blissful escapes instead of pains. Not long before then she had suggested that a lovely floral piece would have served well as the airy space's focal point when the drawing room's empty wall was addressed. Somehow or another, though, they had come out of the print shop with an enormous, tawdry-looking canvas painting of a sea-bound fleet at dusk.

"If I see one more ship around this house, God so help me, Raoul, you will be hard pressed to see the likes of me here," she recalled her own nagging words and smiled just the way he had.

When she finally reached the peak of the staircase, Christine looked about to make certain she had not been followed but for no particular reason at all. A light still burned from Liam's room. The door had been left gaping, though Christine had advised both Mrs. Boston and Romina to keep it shut for fear of the draft aggravating their guest's ailments. Her lips tightened with frustration as she went to off the lights and close his door, convinced that she would have her say over the poor accommodation in the morning.

Upon reaching the door to the room, the young beauty halted in her step to listen intently to the frail muttering inside. Within moments, the mutter became slow and rhythmic. A tune was soon conceived in a sustained whistle that rose and fell like the gentle slopes of soft green peaks and valleys from the battered throat that birthed it.

Christine steadied herself against the wall, elegant fingers turning white as they clutched the frame of the door for dear life. Her pulse beat as if she were being stabbed over and over again in the throat, though she was able to compose herself, helpless to listen. All the while, the urchin lifted his voice and began to wrap his lilting little melody with words:

An English lord came home one night,

Inquir-ring for his lady,

The servants said on every hand,

She's gone with the Gypsy Laddie.

Go saddle up my milk-white steed,

Go saddle me up my brownie

And I will ride both night and day,

Til I overtake my bonnie.

Oh, he rode East and he rode West,

And at last he found her,

She was lying on the green, green grass,

And the Gypsy's arms all around her.

Oh, how can you leave your house and land?

How can you leave our money,

How can your leave your rich young lord,

To be a gypsy's bonnie.

How can you leave your house and land,

How can you leave your baby,

How can you leave your rich young lord,

To be a gypsy's lady.

Oh, come go home with me, my dear,

Come home and be my lover,

I'll furnish you with a room so neat,

With a silken bed and covers.

I won't go home with you, kind sir,

Nor will I be your lover,

I care not for your rooms so neat,

Or your silken bed or your cover.

It's I can leave my house and land,

And I can leave my baby,

I'm a-goin' to roam this world around

And be a gypsy's la-...

The singing then ceased abruptly. The spell was broken. Once fully returned to her senses, Christine "awoke" to find her ear pressed painfully against the outer wall to feel the vibration of every haunting word that had floated through it. Then, as if by magnetism, she was drawn into the room without thinking. The candle had to be voluntarily forced to stay in her grasp as she stumbled inside and quickly picked up her catlike step of certain silence. Crackling from the fireplace was the only distinct sound that lifted in the lukewarm air, until Liam spoke.

"Bon'swar," his accent distorted with almost tangible warmth through a grin that flicked at the edges, faintly resembling the dance of the flames.

Christine snapped out of her state of anxiety as if someone had slammed a thick book together in her face. It couldn't be helped but to think him an irresistibly charming fellow, even when one's heart was pounding and head was spinning. Upon first noticing his possessing little features in the wavering radiance of the dimmed lights, she lost touch with the way that gentle, rollicking folk song had momentarily possessed her entire being—her very soul perhaps.

While any self-preserving young débutante of her newfound status would have scoffed at the very idea, she began to take curiously to the tiny lines that curled around this poor, beaten creature's smile and added sincere emotion to his forehead. Nothing about the lad was perfect, but everything about him was welcoming in its own funny way. Liam's face was round and somewhat squared off at the jaw like a child's with a plump dimpled chin despite his otherwise emaciated body. If close attention was paid to them, his eyes twinkled in whatever light available whenever he would speak, sea blue dancing with the shimmer that caught up in their rich, misty centers.

'What a darling husband he would make some shy little thing,' Christine thought gingerly to herself.

He seemed to keep up an odd sort of atmosphere about himself that was an extraordinary combination of pensive blithe. In every soul he encountered he could draw out the deepest of sympathy but at the same time the warmest of emotion. For these were the only two things Liam held within in his wind-worn heart: great pain and affection for anyone who would throw him even the faintest scrap of kindness.

Each time Christine met his gaze she felt as though she would break down into a crumbling sob at any moment, but in the same instant as though her heart would swell to bursting joy and begged to cry out with laughter. Sorrow could not overcome felicity, nor would elation overtake despair in this man's presence.

She nodded, swallowing down a massive knot in the back of her throat, "I hope you've been feeling a bit better Liam. You must excuse me, I've only come to turn off the lights. I don't mean to be a bother. Are you cold? Should I fetch another...?"

"Nay, Miss Daaé," Liam rested back, seeming content. "Everything is wonderful. Though I could use a spot of company."

It wasn't at all long before the fire roared in the hearth again after a vigorous stirring and that Christine lay in quite the unrefined posture on her stomach beside the chaise, ankles intertwined in the air behind her and chin resting raptly atop clasped hands. The ominous sensations brought about by his indelible strain of song settled to stagnation as she was drawn into a state of ignorant joviality just by being at his side.

"I couldn't even find the proper words to thank that kind gentleman of yours the way I would have liked. You'll let him know my gratitude, won't you?"

"Certainly," she sighed, wishing only to speak her mind, thoroughly curious as to the tune he had been singing to himself and not interested in much else—rather, anything but. "I'll make a point of it...in the morning...when I see him...at breakfast."

She was not exactly sure what it was she was trying to make clear to him. As the fibers of the rug beneath her began to irritate her skin where she had once found it to be so soft and comfortable, Christine wriggled into a new position on her side. It would not be long before she would have to move again.

Liam sunk himself back deeper into his pillow on the plush armrest of the chaise, looking her squarely in the eyes.

"If I've caused any trouble between the two of you I'm dreadfully sorry. If I only had my legs, Christ knows I would be out of your hair in an instant," his eyebrows furrowed with subtle distress.

"Oh, please don't worry yourself over Raoul and I. We've enough of that sort of thing on daily terms. He is as happy to have you as I am; it's only that he's...had quite a bit on his mind lately. He'll come around to being a bit more amiable when things settle again."

It impressed her that Liam never once skirted down her sprawled out figure with those clouded blue eyes. Not even a single brash glance, which was more than could be said for the majority of Raoul's blue-blood playfellows who would so often make themselves a nuisance around her at gatherings. Everything about Liam seemed to justify him as an old, familiar acquaintance. A friend, perhaps, in which one could confide.

He gave a nod of assimilation. Christine sat up with knees bent and tidy, prim feet out in front of her. Turned to lean with her back against the side of the chaise, she sensed his hand move so as not to muss the flawless golden locks which spilled out behind her.

"The song you were singing, it was very pretty. Is it Irish?" Christine ruffled the carpet apprehensively with her bare toes. She was finally unable to withstand the curiosity that stung within. Her thoughts worked desperately to recall the lyrics that had so fervently taken hold of her.

He seemed a bit startled by her unexpected mention of his private solo and flinched in his resting place, almost as if embarrassed that she heard him and had been disturbed from something because of it, "I don't believe so. That old tune is Scottish if I recall."

"It wasn't in your family then, like the lion," she squeezed the piece of brass in a death grip with the hand that was hidden from him beneath the chaise, thinking perhaps that the song had a connection to something as well. But this time, for some reason or another, she did not hope for any sort of connection.

"Ah, no. Picked it up from a handful of Londoners who'd fallen into bad fortune and ended up as cold and as homeless as I had. Formed a bit of a herd all together we did. For a while. Scrounging the streets within the protection of your brothers is a world less dangerous than surviving on your own. We looked after each other best we could, but goodness knows each man's trouble was his own. You see, there is no one to baby you out there, ma'amselle. They were always singing—the dear merry chaps they were—and I guess I just...picked it up. It was a kind of blanket, music was, that warmed us from the inside. My mother never sang to me as a child. It irritated Claude and I don't think she remembered many songs from her own childhood anyway. A mite sad, if I do say so. It's foolishness, I know, but I never felt I lived before the fellows taught me to raise my voice as we went along in the alleys. We'd sing of the shoals on the far coast, moors belly-full with grouse, lasses with hair the color of fire and spirits to match...things I'd never dreamed of. No doubt I wouldn't have made it through those six years of living in sludge and absolute ravaging poverty if I hadn't the old folk songs to console myself with. Gave me strength and still do."

"You love music," she said simplistically in an almost hushed awe, making quite certain he knew that she understood every inch of the emotion he was trying so hard to explain.

"Aye, s'pose I do. It was all I had for a while besides the clothes on my back. Even if I had only my voice to create them with there was something worth living for in those words. They kept me going, that's all. A man must always have motivation...sometimes he must have it in order to survive. God never leaves a soul with flat out nothing, darlin'. He gives us things in our despair that make us fulfilled even when there's nothing on your plate and nothing in your pocket. If you remember anything I've told you, remember that."

Liam closed his eyes and seemed to embrace a new level of peace, "But you're right. I do love music. Everyone's got to love something. Since I've never had a girl of my own...well, at least I've got the old ballads to keep me steady."

It hurt, hearing this poor lost soul finally confess his greatest sorrow, if only in his tone or vaguely in his words. Christine wanted more than anything to give him the solace he so rightfully deserved. The lion was becoming very hot in her hand. Suddenly she felt a pang of familiarity in the moment that chilled her to the bone, even in the great warmth that surrounded her. She blamed it on the draft. There was always something that anything could be blamed on or made an excuse for if one searched hard enough or was desperate enough, and if Christine could be described as anything, it was desperate.

She guided her gaze to the solemn floor, pink rose petal lips casting a reflective smile in the other direction, "There was a time, Liam, that all I had was music, too. I felt as though I could have lived and breathed it forever, just music alone...and then I found Raoul."

The way Christine's sweet, dripping voice fondled softly over her lover's name came close to bringing tears to Liam's eyes through the blackened bruises of their sockets. It was left only to his imagination what it would feel like to hear a woman utter his own name with such delicate, passionate ardor.

"You're in love with him," said Liam plainly through a fervent inhale. Christine watched him out of the corner of her eye.

Her expression became suddenly grim. "Yes, it would seem so. Though it isn't as if anyone else sees it that way. Being together but not together...people get the impression that I'm not as sincere as I make myself out to be. After an entire year... I don't want this for us anymore. But I do love him, I do."

The words from her mouth were jagged and disconnected and frayed around the edges. It was as if they were actually causing her physical pain to bear them out. She guided herself around them carefully, as one would favor a broken leg. The feeling of the warm bronze in her hand was the only thing that kept her from bursting into a blubbering mess right in front of Liam. Fresh logs jumbled about in the fireplace, sending out tiny glowing flakelets to rest on the stone of the hearth. They were as out of place as she was.

"And yet you are afraid to marry him..." Liam did not change his warm tone to match her subtle distress. His comforting voice was firm and steady even in her obvious despair, like a foundation of rock in a storm that kept her firmly grounded.

It was no coincidence that she was drawn to this man; he reminded her of someone. Her father.

"I am afraid...because it feels as though I'm committing a crime against humanity."

Christine cradled her forehead in one hand. She wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or laugh or kill herself. It sickened and bewildered her to such violent stirrings in so many directions through so many emotions all at once. It frustrated her to feel fine in the middle of a civil conversation one minute, only to have that peace and harmony torn away in a single sentence. Whatever it was she wanted, it was certain that she knew what she didn't want—to explain. Fate was merciful, though, that night. It bordered on slicing into her with its sharpened blade, but was somewhat merciful.

"Love is not a crime, my friend," said he, using his prophet's voice again...the voice that stuck within her as if its words were being carved into her flesh. "It is the blessing of humanity, not a crime against it."

Of course that was not at all what the girl had meant when she used the singular and curious word "humanity". Its two meanings, though conjoined within the same pattern of letters and syllabic sequence, were like day and night to her.

"On the contrary, Liam...love has almost nothing to do with humanity."

And then she paused, thought, breathed and uttered, "As a matter of reason, neither does humanity."

"I don't see," the young cripple cast her a puzzled glance.

Christine's voice suddenly became almost completely devoid of life as she spoke, "Hu-maneity has nothing to do with humanity."

"Now where on earth did you get such a notion, ma'amselle Daaé? That is the kind of talk I have grown so used to around the back-alley fires, where strangers huddle close to strangers only because they are brothers in pain and in cold. You speak as though the world has wronged you," and then he gave a well-intended chuckle. It did not offend her. It only reminded her of how little he knew.

Christine folded herself in tightly, arms wrapped around her legs with her chin tucked between her knees like a punished child shamed in a corner.

"I have my reasons," she uttered.

"To hate humanity?" queried Liam, almost jokingly.

Christine tilted her head to meet his stare, "That's a smidgen too strong of phraseology, Monsieur Beaucathrine."

"Then enlighten me, chéri. What is this you have against the world?"

A dreadful stillness constricted around them both. Christine's lush blue eyes caught up in the same path as his. They pressed her on to speak but did not intimidate the way Raoul's did. With great reluctance, she found the words to give him an answer.

"I have seen things, Liam... most dreadful things that the world has wrought upon a soul," her voice wavered when she spoke as if she were struggling to keep her balance on a tightrope five-thousand leagues above ground. The anguished beauty hadn't the courage to say more for fear of falling. Her words shook the rope, her lifeline, violently each time she opened her mouth.

"As have I, Miss Daaé. Beatings. Maulings. Starvation. Rape. Infanticide. Cannibalism. Execution of the innocent. All at the hands of mankind. I've had the privilege myself of being thrown aside and spit upon by the dandy of a society that surrounds us. 'Humanity' practically condemned me to die in a bloody pile lodged in the gutters of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. But by the grace of God, I opened my eyes and there you were, ma'amselle. I've seen things that haunt me still to this day, Christine, but my faith in humanity comes from what I see within kind souls like you and your Vicomte. Could very well have left me there on the street, not knowing what consequences there'd come with rescuing me. But even still, you redeemed this filthy wretch and allowed me into your home. It's by your hand that I'm even alive. For someone to have so much love in their heart for the less fortunate, to disregard the danger, the logic, the common sense and to instead see something worth saving in me. That, my friend, is the grace of mankind. Aye, people like you are few and far between. But there will always be exceptions to humanity's cruelty—the world has a place, somewhere, for every soul."

He sounded so sure. So terribly sure. Almost convincing.

"P-probably so..." Christine felt her heart wrench up into her throat and the centers of her eyes contract to what seemed like mere specks. Being stabbed in the back, she thought, couldn't feel any worse. Shame threatened to strangle her; there would be no release and no relief from its grip once it caught a firm enough hold. It would lacerate until nothing was left.

She wanted to tell him how lucky he was. How saintly he was compared to her of all people. That he was a beautiful human being with a soul ten times as splendid as what made up his outer appearance. Christine realized that Liam, as downtrodden as he was, could not even fathom his own good fortune. All of the horrors he had spoken of paled in comparison to the image she kept chained up in her mind. It was certain: one had to experience the absolute threshold of suffering to know what the absolute threshold of suffering was. She wanted to tell him that there was no grace, no salvation, no mercy for...some.

But she could not go on—she could not tell him even if she attempted to force herself. This man did not need her tears nor her angst nor her guts spilled out in a reeking pile before him. He needed sleep. He was sickly. So was she, but sleep would not come to her, for she was guilty—guilty as sin—and he was not.

More than eager to push back the memories along with the sobs that were thrashing like wild-eyed, hydrophobic beasts to be let out, Christine left him there upon tender insistence to take the rest his broken body needed, slipping the lion back into her dress before she rose up on trembling legs. In fact, every inch of her was in a perpetual, disquieted shudder, but Christine succeeded in masking the full extent of her internal agony until out of his sight. At least Liam could be at ease, unaware that he had shaken her entire existence to its very foundation. He wrapped himself snugly into the woolen blanket she had lain over him earlier and gave a long sigh of contented rapture as the warmth settled over him. Watching the grateful fellow turn to face the back of the chaise, she extinguished the gas lights with a rasping, dry whisper of a "goodnight".

No one was there to settle her own restless soul into a nightmare-less sleep. She was completely, inescapably alone.

In careful haste, Christine backed out of the doorway, eyes still fastened to the vague silhouette within the room's swallowing darkness, her shallow breath picking up fervor and anxiety by the millisecond. But in the place of the empty hallway she was expecting to meet, her back end ran squarely into another figure which let out a gasp of utter shock as blinded body rammed into blinded body.

Submerged in the inky blackness, both struggled to get a grip on each other. Her frightened shivering subdued just a bit when she sensed the sound of his voice before her.

"Christine!" Raoul wheezed from a soundly bruised diaphragm, as loud as could be classified as a whisper.

Before he had the chance to fight it or even to think, Raoul felt a pair of hands clutch the slackened collar of his nightshirt and thrust him into the nearest wall with a loud, emphatic thud. The impact knocked the very breath out of his lungs. Christine's steady hand cupped rapidly over his mouth, willing him not to speak, which he had to force off in order to.

"What the hell were you doing in there?!" he came close to shouting. By this point he had found the very brink of tolerance.

"Shh, don't speak," she urged breathily, keeping him locked firm against the wall. "Your room. Now."

Within moments they had dragged themselves in rigid tension, one grappling for a firm hold on the other in the pitch darkness, all the way down to the end of the upstairs corridor with only the wall to guide them. Christine's grip on him did not let up. He still could not speak beneath her hand. Raoul decided it best to play along for the time being.

One of the doors along the hall gave way at last. Raoul and Christine were thrown back into the room, stumbling to stay upright. The moonlight that cast in from the expansive bedroom's windows made their surroundings somewhat visible. Raoul was released from the exigent woman's grip only in time for her to whip around and shut the door quietly, nervously behind them. She then took up with him again, guiding him backwards with short, awkward steps until she felt him press against something. Every ounce of her remaining strength went into shoving him down onto the edge of the empty bed against his weakened will. Once he was sitting, dumbstruck, before her, Christine nearly fell apart. Her head spun and her pulse raced and she had no idea what she was doing anymore.

Raoul moved up from where he sat, still thoroughly confused and now determined to have more answers than the one he originally sought alone.

"Be still!" she demanded, forcing him back down onto the already disheveled mattress.

"Have you lost your mind?! I'm getting the light," his tired voice was already furious but slowed to make sure she understood, "Then you're going to tell me...what...is going on."

Christine's ragged breath passed over the layer of beaded sweat that had formed across the base of his neck and the exposed upper part of his chest. A shiver carried through both of them, awaking every physical sense along its path. All became still in the blink of an eye. The struggle was over.

"Leave them off. I don't think we'll need them..." Christine whispered, exhaustedly lowering herself into his lap and resting her forehead against his slick, heaving collarbone. Meanwhile her hands worked their way around his waist to his back, trembling as the cold sweat from the sleep-barren night he had been enduring seeped through the white fabric to the flesh of her palms and tips of her fingers.

"You'll tell me, then," Raoul suddenly took her by the shoulders and shook her, eye to eye... gently, pleadingly. "You'll tell me that you're ready to be married, ready to set a day for the wedding—to become my wife."

Christine just knew he was holding his breath...that he would not allow himself to take another until he was given something in return that would console his need for certainty. He would rather die than go another minute without it.

Still, she did not give him a final decision—she couldn't and didn't intend to in the first place. But Raoul would take what he did receive without resistance.


TQ- This is a re-edited chapter. That goes to say it does not have the mistakes that were present the first time it was published.

"The Gypsy Laddie" is a lovely little folk ballad, originally by John Renfro Davis(supposedly). If you're curious as to the tune it can be found here: (www.)contemplator(. com)/child/gypsylad.html

Salutes for the continued support. Remember: I /FLIP\\ for reviews...nothing brightens my day quite like 'em!

...Except maybe cookies... or Will Smith movies. Nyah, reviews are better 8D

(Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera or it's characters)