Raoul looked desperately for Christine around the house and when he found her the sight before his eyes disgusted him. Christine was peacefully sleeping in the demon's arms and the man... the thing beside her was maskless revealing the glory of his ugliness. How dared Christine lie down next to that beast? Had she gone crazy, or had he hypnotised her through his music? Once he got her free there would be no more music, no more singing. Christine would live the respectable life of a vicomtesse and he would be damned if there was any reminder of that beast to torment his beloved. Furious, Raoul grabbed Christine by her arm and forced her to get up.
"I'll take you away from this beast." Raoul whispered once Christine's eyes met his own. Christine rolled her eyes and prayed for patience. "Come with me."
"Well sir, you are thicker in the head than what I thought." Christine protested defiantly. "I'm not going anywhere with you, vicomte " Before she could even turn her back to him, she felt his had strike her down and fell to the ground. Like a lightning, Erik got up and pushed Raoul into the wall. Raoul gasped desperately for air as Erik's hands tightened around his neck making his sight darken. Any moment now he would parish by the monster's hands and Christine seemed to not care.
"Angel, don't." Christine asked gently touching Erik's arm. He looked at her confused and furious. Her heart was far too good for any of them. This man had offended her beneath her own roof and she was asking for his life to be spared…
Erik opened his hands and stepped away from Raoul, shaking with rage and anger burning in his veins and the boy fell to the floor as his lungs begged for pure sweet air and his hand rubbed his aching neck. He was terribly confused. What power was this that Christine seemed to hold over the beast? The man was ready to finish him, relentless to let go as long as his heart breathed life, yet with one word Christine had moved him from his intent.
"Are you alright, my love?" Erik asked carefully examining Christine's cheek.
"Just hold me." She asked her breathing heavy upon her chest. Without hesitation Erik protected her in his embrace and if looks could kill he would have been stroke to the ground by Raoul's glare.
"How dare you, you…"Raoul his throat ached so bad that he could barely speak even his blood boiled at the sight of Christine in Erik's harms.
"What are you going to call me? Monster, demon, beast…" Erik spat looking at the man still on his knees. "Oh! I do hope is something original."
"How dare you touch her? Isn't enough poisoning her mind, isn't enough that for years you pretended to be an angel?" Raoul almost screamed finding his strength to get up.
"Shut up before you hurt yourself speaking about things you know nothing about, boy." Erik protested letting go of Christine and pushing Raoul onto the wall. "Don't make me regret having saved your worthless life."
"Things I know nothing about?! You deceive, lie and kill. There nothing more I need to know about you, creature." Raoul grabbed Erik's fists and fought to free himself from his grip.
"I never lied about who I was, nor did I pretend to be a knight in shining armour ready to rescue some damsel in distress only to reveal myself as brutal villain." Erik spat letting go of Raoul. "You disgust me, you coward. What kind of gentleman strikes a woman?"
"I disgust you? I-dis-gust-you?" Raoul couldn't help but let go a hearty laugh filled with scorn. "Look yourself in the mirror, beast. There you I'll find something to be truly disgust about."
Before things got out of hand Christine placed herself between the two men's bodies and asked Raoul to leave immediately.
Roxanne and Meg had woken up with the sound of argument in the house, but the sound of the two male voices storming encouraged them to remain inside their rooms. Only when they heard the front door pound against its frame did they came out to see what the entire rumpus was about. When they got to the room, it was a mess. The vanity mirror was on the floor, unbroken, as was the dressing table and a shattered old vase that Roxanne had always hated.
"Is everything alright?" Roxanne asked entering the room.
"Erik and Raoul had a third degree encounter." Christine explained sitting next to Erik who was still shaking from inside out. "Don't listen to what he said. His mind is clouded by hate."
"Sometimes I ask myself how can you look at this" he pointed to the mangled side of his face, hatred an disgust plain in his voice and eyes "and smile. My face is the distorted image of a man and the things I've done mirror my face... How can you love me?"
"Because I know you. I knew your soul long before I knew your face and I knew it completed my own. She confessed caressing his unmasked cheek. "You looked upon a lost child and cared enough to fulfil a dying man wishes, in your own very original way. My father would kick me whole the way to China for being such an ungrateful bubblehead."
"Your father loved you far too much to do that." Roxanne recalled starting to put everything back on its place. "Meg, get me the broom before someone cuts themselves on the porcelain."
Meg got out of the room and went to the kitchen. It was just the second time she had ever seen Erik's deformity and the first had been in a somewhat dark cellar, so this was the first time she saw it in plain day light and the only think she could think was if it hurt having something like that God knows how any hours in a row beneath a mask. His skin looked so raw, so red certainly from the friction and the unbearable sadness in his eyes… Meg picked up the broom and returned to the room where everyone seemed to remain in an awkward silence.
"Did someone die?" She asked giving the broom to her mother.
"Don't be foolish Megan." Erik protested putting on his mask.
"Ah! Got you speaking." Meg said pointing to Erik with an amused look on her face. "You lose monsieur Le Phantom." Erik looked at her and couldn't help but laugh. Such youth, such a good and generous heart, she was far too precious to be ruined. As long as Christine had this dear friend at her side he could trust that she would be alright, she would be safe.
Christine looked at Meg and said a silent thank you, and Meg gave her a large confident smile as an answer.
After the women had left, Erik got himself ready to leave under the cover of dawn, just before the sun touched the city streets. Nadir would be furious when he looked for him in the morning and didn't find him, so the quicker he got to his apartment the surer he would be that he wouldn't have any headaches from Nadir lecturing about him leaving the house when he was the most wanted man in France… yes Jack The Ripper was still the most wanted man in Europe even after four years of his disappearance.
When Erik was ready to leave he went to the living room to retrieve his cane, hat and cloak. Just before he could get to his cane he saw Raoul's top hat and surely he would return for that. That should be the right time for Christine to give him a note detailing here he would be able to meet him and the conditions for that meeting.
Erik sat at and old righting desk on the corner of the room picked up a paper as well as a quill and started writing. As Christine came in she couldn't help but look over Erik's shoulder and examine closely each trace of ink carefully drawn onto the paper.
"25th March 1895
Vicomte
First and foremost I would like you to keep Christine and her family out of our fight, even if they have been helping me out of the goodness of their hearts. They're guiltless and if you want to blame this on anyone, blame on us. We are disputing Christine like two lions fight for a piece of meat. Let us solve this like grown-ups and let Christine chose."
"I've already made my choice." Christine cooed looping her arms around his neck and kissed his masked cheek. She heard him chuckle but in wasn't his hearty laugh that she had gotten used to. His normal laugh was filled with colour and it sounded like the nightingale's melody, never the same but always meaningful. To what she had just heard she would call a half laugh. If wasn't forced, nor was it truly given. He sounded exhausted like he had the weight of the world and laughed with resignation trying his best to make his burden not so heavy. He felt so terribly tense under her and his eyes looked so trouble…
Erik dipped the tip of the quill inside the inkstand and continued his note with as perfect handwriting as he had begun.
"If you wish to find me, go to the graveyard. I'll be waiting for you in front of Gustave Daae's tomb stone. Be there in three days at dawn and go alone for if you take guards with you I will know and any of your attempts in capturing me will reveal themselves rather frustrating."
"The name you are looking for is Erik." Christine whispered into his hear playfully. Once again he laughed and this time he seemed more like himself as he raised her hand to his lips to kiss it gently.
"I cannot." He answered in the same voice tone even if broken. He then reached for the blotter. "If he was ever to know my name I would never be able to use it in another country after we left. And I don't want to use the name Opera Ghost ever again." Erik felt despair rush over him. Something terribly wrong was to happen and he could feel it in his guts. The urge to burn his note was almost unbearable and he felt that the moment he signed or closed the note he would be signing his death sentence… Oh if only a lightening would strike him then and there, just after he knew the happiness he could feel inside Christine's embrace. Erik got on his feet and before he could start crying, before he could start dying in her arms letting her realise how broken and destroyed he really was, he escaped from her grasp.
"Erik, what's the matter? Are you alright? Do your wounds hurt?" Christine was truly worried about him. That was the first time in weeks that he run from her touch and she knew the effect her touch had on him, clouding his mind and his judgement, slowly driving him to surrender… At first Erik said nothing, his mind and uncertainties chocking and he almost told a lie Christine would quickly see through.
"I'll die if I lose you." Erik confessed in a whisper. His voice was so rough with unshed tears and he looked like he had no breath left in his lungs. "I should never have saved him. He will do everything to keep you from me."
"Nonsense. Everything is going to be fine. You'll see." Christine said smiling bravely, trying to give him the strength she didn't have even for herself. "In some days we'll be out of here, in a boat to America, to our future together."
Erik didn't know what to do or what to say to an all too optimistic Christine. She was beaming with hope, like a candle on a dark winter's night and he dared not to trash that hope, but he couldn't shake the eerie feeling that the world was about to fall on his head crushing with it all his hopes and dreams.
Erik's eyes went ice cold as he took a sit on the sofa. His mind was troubled beyond recognition and reasoning. This had to end but the vicomte was clearly cheating that sickening game that they were playing and what else was he expecting? For the vicomte Christine continued to be the grand prize and he was a noble and, as Christine had said, he could make and brake rules as he well pleased. They had no right to look Christine as if she was some object and Erik had to be the one to finish this lunacy and he needed to have all the cards on his hand but he seemed to only have three queens and a knave when Raoul seemed to pull aces at every turn of the game.
Christine had never seen him so troubled. She had learned to read his eyes even through their coldness and he was afraid, terribly afraid of what was to come. He was with his mask and yet she could guess the tightness of his jaw as was chewing, for lack of a better word, on the matter. It seemed to her that she was seeing an emotional mirror of herself on that terrible night beneath the Opera house. Too much was being put at risk and she knew it as well as he did.
"I'll go with you to the graveyard." She told him sitting right next to him. "You don't have to do this alone."
"I don't deserve you. None of us does mon ange." If she thought his silence had spoken volumes this wretched whisper spoke much more. "What kind of life can I give you? I can't ask you to live the life of a refugee…"
"It's me who doesn't deserve you and I swear on my father's soul that yet I dare not, I cannot, I will not chose a life without you" Erik looked at her in awe. It wasn't the first time she had told him of her decision and until then he had doubted her resolve to follow him, but her oath… on her father's soul no less… He dared not to doubt her anymore.
"Come here." He bid her raising his arm to allow her to snuggle against the side of his body and that was just what she did. He kissed her hair and held her hand. "You won't need to go to this meeting. It will be safer for you if you don't. For now let us believe that you are right. That everything will be fine."
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Later in the day a calmer Raoul, as Erik had predicted, returned for his hat and was received by a very much recomposed Christine who gave him what he had come and a note. He knew to whom that handwriting belonged and that drove him to look for Erik around the house getting quickly irritated with his failure. How had he escaped form the apartment? Wasn't the building completely surrounded by guards?
"Where is he?" Raoul asked grabbing Christine's arms.
"I know not." Christine answered glaring at the man before and escaping from his grasp.
"And if you did know?" He asked placing his hands behind his back.
"I would not tell you. I won't betray him Raoul." She could see the shadow of rage in his eyes. Christine was stepping on dangerous ground, but the time had come for her to put her foot down and she would be damned if she let him intimidate her.
"Come on, Christine. You've done it once. What is keeping you this time?" And there it was the same self-satisfied smile that always managed to drive her insane and highly irritable.
"I was used if I remember it well, by you and by him. The difference that he actually expressed regret when he let me go." She almost shouted with indignation. "I'm not the same fool I was Raoul."
"No my dear, you are a totally different tip of fool. The blind kind." Raoul commented swaying back and forth.
Roxanne and Meg where listening in so they could intervene at any moment. Meg was walking around the hall impatiently and the moment she heard Raoul's words, Roxanne was forced to hold her still to prevent her from some rash action but a dry noise made them both look over the door frame only to see Christine getting closer to Raoul and slapping him across his face.
"Is that any way to treat you fiancé?" Raoul asked stepping away and raising his hand to lessen the sting of her blow. Christine was red from furry and both Meg and Madame could see that this argument wouldn't end well.
"You? My fiancé? Ah! You are a very funny man Raoul." She said sarcastically. "You are nothing more than brutal, arrogant, self-centred, self-satisfied two legged pincushion. Now, if you please Vicomte, leave." Just like that Raoul's demeanour changed completely. From the defiant, outraged and proud Vicomte, he turned himself into the meek and hurt boy he had been once. 'Damn! He is a good actor.' Meg thought raising her hand to her mouth. 'Keep yourself strong Christine.'
"Christine I love you." His voice was but a whisper and his eyes were set on the ground. Christine took a deep breath as she tried to remain sensible and rational.
"You love me? Damn Raoul. You are a very good actor. It's a pity that your mask as fallen out soon." She took a sit on the sofa and continued with the same sarcastic bitter tone. "You treat me like an object, strike me whenever I stray from what you want to turn me into, insult me inside my own house and then you claim to love me."
"And I do. I don't know what else I can do to break the spell that monster as on you." Raoul tried to explain setting next to Christine.
"That monster, as you call him, has been nothing but kind and caring and if he has put me under some spell I'm glad to be under it." She protested getting up and walking to the door. "Now, if you please Vicomte, leave."
Raoul got up and as he walked passed Christine he looked at her only to see her flinch as he tried to caress her cheek. 'Does she really hate me that much?' Raoul asked himself. No, certainly not. This had to be some of the Phantom's trick to make him quit on his engagement with Christine and yet… yet that very same morning… a monster turned into a man… a fragile woman taming a beast… The way Christine had touched this disfigured man was far too real to be driven out of hypnotism, it wasn't mechanic, it was humane, it was heartfelt… it was too much for him to stand right now and so he got out from the apartment and down stairs to be faced with sleeping guards.
"You imbecilic morons! I'll take this up with your Capitan, whoever he is!"
One of the guards tried to protest, hopping the vicomte would understand an awkward situation with girls, wine and song, but the look in his eyes warned him to give up before things got worse.
"Do you and your men have any acceptable reason to this?" Raoul roared at the closest guard.
"None, sir." The guard answered never looking at the vicomte.
"Very well." Raoul said after calming himself. "Take the men and report to your station. Wait for sundown to return."
"Monsieur le Vicomte, are you certain?" the guard asked looking at Raoul, a little confused.
"Do as I say." Raoul ordered getting into his carriage and returning to the manor.
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With Raoul out of the house Christine run flustered to the room she shared with Meg and both Roxanne and Meg heard the door pound. She got into bed only to hide her tears of frustration and when Roxanne entered the room she put the covers over her head. Roxanne sat at her side, uncovered her head and caressed her adoptive daughter's wavy hair.
"That block head! Is she okay?" Meg asked entering the room.
"Your sister is having a bad day." Roxanne answered looking at Christine dearly. Christine just cried on and on, unable to stop herself, unable to answer or say anything.
Meg run to her friend's side. She had seen her bad but never that bad, not even during the rehearsals for Don Juan Triumphant, not even during Erik's fever. Christine set up right in her bed and Roxanne hugged her tight to her chest trying to appease her, and after a few moments her tears dried up but the pain didn't fade away.
"We can call Erik if you like." Roxanne looked into Christine's eyes. Her eyes widen at the question. Of course he and his efforts were the only things that made her smile lately, but calling him would be far too dangerous.
"No. That blockhead put guards everywhere near us. When will he learn to hear" Meg asked siting behind Christine and rubbing Christine's back trying to comfort her. Christine shrug her shoulders still unable to speak. Roxanne looked at the two girls lovingly but she was terribly worried about Christine.
Later Christine joined Roxanne in the kitchen and helped her cooking dinner still in a deathly silence that made the two other women shiver under their secure attitude. She had never been so silent.
"Chris, enough is enough." Meg protested whilst their mother was making tea for the three of them. "It's time for you to start talking. What is going on?"
"You still ask after what you saw this afternoon? Raoul, that foppish bastard, that brute, is ruining my life. Meg, to him I'm nothing more than an object." Christine answered almost crying again. "Why did I fall for that idiot?"
"I don't believe you really fell for Raoul. You only loved the possible live you could have at his side." Roxanne commented putting down the hot tea pot on the table.
"Then I was fooling myself and the two of them in the process." Christine concluded lowering her gaze. "Carlotta was right."
"Carlotta was jealous of your beautiful voice. Never say Carlotta was right about anything that has to do with you." Meg said looking her friend in the eyes.
"She was, Meg. She was. I was terribly naïve in believing I could have any kind of life with Raoul." Christine picked up her cup of tea and sipping it. "Erik's life is now at risk because of what I've done."
"Courage child, everything is going to be alright. Soon you'll be able to make plans to leave this place." Roxanne said holding Christine's hand and even if she was destroyed that gesture deserved a smile. "Keep your faith and God and your papa won't fail you."
"Thank you…mother." Christine said tasting for the first time that name referring to Roxanne and it felt good, but her mind was settled. She would continue a Daae until she got married.
"Go to bed girls. We all should get some rest." Roxanne told the younger women as she started to remove the table. "I'll finish this up and I shall do the same."
"Good night mama." Meg said getting up and kissed Roxanne's cheek.
"Good night mother and thank you for everything." Christine said kissing Roxanne's other cheek and kissing Roxanne's other cheek she left with Meg.
"Good night, my children." Roxanne smiled as she continued to remove the table and started to wash dishes and as her mind drifted way. After ten years of living together, of taking care of this girl she had become as a daughter to her, but never the word mother had passed this child's lips and it felt remarkably good to hear it just like when Meg had said it for the first time.
Once she was finished, Roxanne walked to her daughters' room and saw Meg already sleeping and Christine readying a good by candle light. The girl was destined to ruin her sight if she continued like this, but Roxanne knew as long as she was reading her mind would be away from fears and stared dreams.
Roxanne walked to her room and got herself ready to sleep and just before she went to bed she kneeled next to it with a rosary in her hands and crossed herself.
"Dear God, two men are caught between a quarrel over one of my children and I fear that things won't go as smoothly as intended. I don't ask for much but I ask you to keep Erik safe for Christine's sake." Roxanne asked looking to a crucifix on the wall opposite to her. "I know he is a criminal and that he should pay for his crimes but he's a good man and he loves this girl so much… please protect him and my children. Amen" Roxanne crossed herself once more and went to sleep. Maybe tomorrow the sun would burn bright.
