A/N: Oh, I am idea-filled. I am brimming with them. I'm nearly going mad with the urge to write them all down!
There is a certain conundrum in particular coming up within the next few chapters that I have unraveled to my utmost satisfaction.
On a different note, one particular challenge I encountered in this chapter that caused its posting to be delayed was the fact that we're now smack-dab in the beginning of the Leroux novel, and of course I didn't want to just blandly re-state or plagiaristically copy the whole affair as told by the author. Hopefully I succeeded fairly well in depicting some of the same events from slightly different perspectives. Admittedly, some things are very similar, and a few character lines are either the same or nearly so, but I tried as best I could to style them differently and add a bit more flourish and detail.
She sang to bring the rooftops down.
The training, he was gratified to see but was not surprised to know, had not been in vain.
Oh, she was good, but he began to perfectionistically berate himself, for in his fevered mind, she could have been much, much better.
There was no doubt in his thoughts now that he simply must go through with this masterful plan to carry her off, to sweep her from her feet and challenge everything she had ever known, and perhaps, in the process, achieve a woman's love—an idea so foreign and elusive that he had often wondered if it was in fact a reality for normal, ordinary men with wives...did their wives love them? Oh, he knew they must, and Christine would love him too, once he had taught her not to fear him, once he had broken away her barriers of human prejudice.
He must do it. Only this way would he be able to cause this sorrowful seed of genius that he had cultivated, brought to a timid bud, and then finally, a cautiously opening flower, to burst fully into splenderous bloom.
It must be one-on-one. No more ethereal voices behind the dressing-room mirror. The deception would be shattered...broken. Like glass. The mirror itself was a wonderful metaphor.
He opened the trap-door beneath his hollow hiding-place in the pillar and swept downward, grinning and trembling all at the same time, so nervous his hands shook uncontrollably, and so exultant that his expression was rather terrible to behold.
Christine fainted dead away with the overwhelming shock of her altogether exhausting new debut, straight into the arms of Rosalinde and Cosette, two of the singers who were in the nearest vicinity.
Cosette struggled to hold her upright. "Help me, Lise!" she demanded in a loud whisper, which was rather unnecessary as the entire house was on their feet in thunderous cheering and applause.
Lise couldn't hear a word (not only because Cosette was whispering, but because she suspected the audience had caused her to go temporarily deaf), but she picked up the meaning well enough. The three of them, joined by the others (including a laughing Carolus Fonta, who found the whole thing tragically amusing), dragged the near-senseless Christine from the stage amidst the Biblically-proportioned din and deposited her in her dressing-room.
"Smelling salts!" demanded Lise, snapping her fingers at the nearest girl. "Over there, on the table!"
The girl grabbed them immediately and shrieked when she was jostled by the gathering crowd of ardent admirers coming to see how their new idol was faring.
"Clear out!" yelled Lise. "Clear out!" It did no good. They only laughed, and wanted to know what was the matter with young Daaé, who was still lying prostrate on the couch.
"Oh, thank God," said Cosette, fanning the unconscious girl and trying not to laugh and cry at the same time—Daaé had astounded them all. "Here comes the doctor."
"Coming through, let me through, please," snapped the doctor, adjusting his spectacles and pushing through the annoyingly eager crowd, who would not cease their clamoring for Daaé.
Lise handed him the smelling-salts wordlessly, but was suddenly joined by a fair-haired young man whom everybody recognized as the Comte de Chagny's younger brother.
"How does she fare?" he asked anxiously, his bluebird's-egg eyes rapt with concern.
"Fine, fine," the doctor said impatiently, holding up her hand and checking her pulse. "She's just had a faint, that's all..."
Christine woke up with a start when the smelling-salts assaulted her olfactory senses. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh...oh..."
"Don't you think," said the Vicomte calmly, though his hands were shaking, "that these people should vacate the room, Doctor?"
"Yes, yes," the doctor said, scowling and standing up.
"Everyone out!" he said forcefully. "Come now, give the poor girl room to breathe..."
Murmuring in discontent, the group of admirers slowly trickled out of the dressing-room.
A few noticed the Comte de Chagny chuckling and muttering to himself as he went with them, something about a "rogue", but they paid him little mind, preferring instead to discuss the extraordinary events of the evening among themselves. What, they wondered, had happened to make Carlotta ill? And why had this glorious young songbird been concealed from them so splendidly until this very night?
Going to La Sorelli's dressing-room, the Comte found himself surrounded by the ballet corps, whom Sorelli had in tow.
"Ah!" he said. "There are you are. I was just going to you...oh, Sorelli, you cannot imagine what has happened this evening!"
"We already know," said little Meg. "The poor man!"
Philippe gave a start. "What man?" he queried. "I was speaking of a woman...or very nearly so! Christine Daaé...her great triumph! It was astonishing, I daresay!"
The ballet girls giggled. "Christine?" Meg laughed, . "Ha! Ha! She...she sings like..."
"Like a carrion crow!" supplied one of the girls.
"A crock!" laughed another.
"She sings as though she had no soul," one of the others said in a mock whisper. "Oooooo..."
Philippe was becoming quite out of sorts. "I tell you, she..."
"What's all this?" barked the acting-manager, passing by and stopping to stare at the commotion.
"We were just going to inquire after..." began Meg.
"Joseph Buquet!" blurted Sophie, her voice both delighted and horrified. Before anyone could ask or explain, she shrieked, "Jammes' maman told us that he was hung! Hung by the neck in the third cellar!"
"The Ghost did it!" yelled the girls. "The Ghost! The Ghost!"
"Quiet," snapped the acting-manager. "Quiet! So you've heard already, have you? Well, don't say another word about it. You know full well that M. Debienne and M. Poligny are retiring tonight...it would only upset them to hear that Buquet is dead...and that nonsense about the Ghost on top of it! Don't say any more about it, do you hear?"
The girls murmured in bored consent, and continued on to the foyer, chattering like birds.
Twenty minutes previously...
Erik's hands were shaking, but not from nervousness. He wiped them to get rid of the saliva that had dripped upon them from the slack, freshly dead mouth when he had unloosed the rope that held the unfortunate victim of the torture-chamber.
He gritted his teeth, eyes flaming with rage.
The stupid, stupid pig! Oh, he had been lenient when he'd been caught on the stairs that one fateful evening, and then when the man had spread the truthful rumors about the Opera Ghost's deathly appearance, but this was really the last straw!
Of course, the man was dead of his own accord--had been for at least an hour--so there really wasn't anything that Erik could do about it now, was there?
Well, they would find him hanging behind the set piece of the Roi de Lahore in the third cellar--a perfect setting for a suicide, and woe to any of them that dared to come and look for the Opera Ghost!
Now he had a perfectly wonderful idea...gone now was the foolish impulse to reveal himself to Christine so soon. Of a surety, it could wait but a little while more.
In the meantime, the managers had always been most accomodating of his "little fads". He might as well see them off in subtle O.G. style.
But before that...he must dispose of this. And then...he would attend to the matter of his beloved.
He dragged the stinking dead body behind him by its shirt collar, grimacing, attempting to whistle the trio of Christine's triumph, but naught came out but a strangled sound, quiet and forced.
Shutting his eyes while he continued laboriously, he imagined what he would do when he got to the third cellar...hang the body, dust his hands off in satisfaction, and walk briskly to where his beautiful ingenue almost certainly waited patiently for his return. Surely he would be able to put this permanently out of his mind...
Twenty minutes after
Christine sat in her dressing-room, quite alone now, breathing heavily.
To think...Raoul...he really did...remember her!
"Mademoiselle," he had said, and how romantically he had bent down upon one knee...and kissed her hand, like a knight out of a fairy tale! "I am the little boy who went into the sea to rescue your scarf."
And she had laughed at him, laughed cruelly, afraid that other eyes were watching, that other ears might take offense were she to respond in kind. Even as the people had been crowding around her, she had felt His presence somewhere near, like an omniscient and slightly stern miasma.
She put a hand to her stomach, wanting to retch. Oh, it had been a terrible, wonderful evening!
The air seemed to thicken, swirl, and her eyes glazed just enough so that she felt slightly trancelike.
"Christine."
Immediately her eyes lost their glazed look and lit up beautifully, but it was mixed with fear, and longing. "Ah, you!" she said heavily. "I am afraid I...I am not...myself...tonight..."
"Do you not feel elated, my sweet?" asked the voice, bearing a mixture of pride and a dark undertone of something she couldn't quite identify. "We have triumphed, you and I. But..."
"Oh, Angel," she said, nearly in tears. "Don't you understand what it did to me, singing like that in front of all those people! It nearly killed me! I could have withered away from the fear of my own voice..."
"But you recovered," the voice said coolly, and she was almost sure that there was something ominous in its tone, "when the Vicomte de Chagny introduced himself, did you not?"
Christine went pale. "I...I..."
"Why, Christine," the voice said silkily, "did you pretend not to recognize him? After the glowing reports you gave me, no less!"
Christine shivered, the blood leaving her lips. "I..."
"Unless," hissed the voice, softer and softer, "he is more to you than simply an old friend. Perhaps," the voice mused, so malevolently that Christine was entirely taken aback, "you would like to have him for your lover!"
Christine's mouth gaped open. "Angel!" she gasped. "How could you think..."
"If you felt nothing for him," the voice said, "you would not pretend you did not know him! Such actions may only come from one source: fear or shyness! Why would you be shy with him, unless you were afraid of making your feelings known? Why would you..."
"Enough!" Christine snapped, nearly in tears. "I shall tell you what, Angel. I'm going to Perros tomorrow...I am going to pray at my father's grave. And just to prove that I'm neither shy nor frightened, I shall ask the Vicomte to go with me!"
The voice was silent for a moment.
"Very well," it whispered. "If you are bound to go to Perros, then I shall be there as well."
Christine looked toward heaven nervously.
"I am wherever you are, Christine," the voice continued coolly, "and if you have not lied, if you are still worthy of my presence, then shall I play for you The Resurrection of Lazarus at the very stroke of midnight, while you are at your father's tomb."
She shivered. "Oh..."
"Yes," the voice whispered. "Perhaps you will—"
It broke off abruptly.
There was silence for a moment, and then the voice spoke again, awkwardly, softly.
There was embarrassment in the voice, and hope.
"Do you...love me, Christine?"
It was conversational, but it had the tone of a child probing to find if he could go any further, to test his limits, his bounds.
She sat upright, her eyes widening. "What?"
"Christine," the voice said, more desperately, as if begging, "you must love me!"
"Oh, how can you talk like that," she snapped, nearly bursting into tears on the spot, "when I sing only for you! Only for you!"
There was a noise at the door, a nearly inaudible scrape or scuffle. The voice paused, and Christine froze, listening.
The voice cleared its throat.
"Are you very tired?"
She sighed. "As if you couldn't see," she said. "Oh, tonight I gave you my soul and I am dead!"
The voice sighed langorously, contentedly. "Your soul is a beautiful thing, child," he said softly. "I'm not quite sure how thank you enough for it. No gift was ever given to any man, beast, or angel which was more wondrous than that."
Christine sighed, her cheek twitching. "Oh, Ange..."
"The angels, the seraphic legions," he added, sounding as though he were smiling, "wept tonight."
Christine buried her face in her hands. "Leave me," she murmured. "Please. I...I need to be alone..."
"Very well," the voice said quietly. "Do not forget what you have told me, Christine, about your...rich friend."
"I shan't," she said, shaking her head furiously and collapsing into a chair, staring into the mirror at her tear-streaked face and bloodshot eyes. "And you...you meant what you said about...about Perros?"
"Of course," the voice said. "I never lie, Christine. You should know that."
"Yes, yes," she whispered, blowing her nose into a handkerchief. "No one knows that better than I..."
She felt him come up behind her, as she leaned upon the rail, and the heat from his body could be felt unmistakably when he paused just a few inches away, just barely keeping from touching.
His breath mingled with her hair, and she shivered, closing her eyes.
It was entirely too sultry an evening for May. The air was hot, and close, and even the wind from the sea was warm and sweating.
"Tora..." he whispered, and suddenly his shaking hands had grasped her shoulders, and his lips desperately buried themselves in her curls, breathing in the scent.
It was in that precise moment, before she performed any sort of action, that she realized her boy had never quite been a boy in all the time she had known him, and the man in him was quickly losing its reserve.
And frighteningly enough, in the same moment, as time froze along with muscles and wit, she realized that the woman in her had begun to emotionally...and physically...respond.