"He's busy?" she asks through the last of her tears.

She's relieved beyond belief that he is all right, but stung that he refuses to see her after she had poured her heart out to him.

"Busy with what?"

Giry hesitates.

"Composing, I think. He was playing the organ when I got there."

"So he is too busy to see me." she does not sound convinced.

"You know how geniuses are, dear." Giry tries to cheer her. "Maybe he will play his new composition for us when he's finished."

Christine smiles weakly. "Maybe so."

Composing. Ha.

Their tea times now consist only of herself and Giry, and it seems that this will be the case for the foreseeable future.

She is embarrassed to admit that she spends an entire week doing not much else but working and thinking wistfully of him - small sighs while she files paperwork, sad daydreams as she sells tickets, pining for his company as she prepares for bed, tears in the corner of her eyes at inopportune moments. She no longer finds her books of any interest, she skips her walks in the park, she hasn't touched her music homework since that night, and she even turns down the offer of cookies during tea. It's as though her life is suddenly on hold, frozen in that moment with thoughts only of him. She shakes herself when she realizes this. The role of the wilting flower does not suit her - Christine Daae is surely made of stronger stuff than that.

If he wishes to hide, that is his prerogative. Madame Giry had explained his hesitation during a deep heart to heart talk with her about her feelings. For the longest time Christine does not know how to ease those worries, how to convince him otherwise.

Then suddenly, she does.

He is composing? Very well. So is she.

Snapped out of her tear stained sulking, she writes and writes and writes. She channels every emotion, every thought, into her writing. It pours from her hand across paper after paper. Giry catches her writing notes while she should be working, and she can only shake her head and sigh.

Finally, on the last of the year, it is finished. She is not entirely satisfied with it - it is not a full length opera, for one, it is much too short. There are transitions she is unsure of, and variations she can't decide between. But she is certain of the story, of the heart of her little opera that she has given life. She has done all she could.

So she wraps it up with a ribbon and leaves it on the seat of a chair in box 5.

Her task finally finished for the moment, she takes a long bath that night and picks up a book once again. Perhaps she will visit the park on her next day off. Eyes tired from reading, she pulls the blanket up to her chin and drifts off to sleep with the melodies she's written playing in her mind.

She awakes early in the new year to find an envelope has been slipped under her door while she slept. She eagerly breaks open the red skull shaped wax seal and her eyes scan over the simple scrawl that she would recognize anywhere.

A request for her to look in her old dressing room.

Propriety and morals be damned - she races from her bedroom in naught but her nightdress and dressing gown, not caring who might catch a glimpse.

Halfway to her destination, she regrets not putting anything on her feet, but the sting of cold marble on her soles does little to slow her down.

Once inside her former dressing room, she spies another envelope on top of a rose in front of the mirror. This letter informs her to be in Giry's office at a quarter to midnight if her answer is yes.

She furrows her brow as she reads the simple letter again, not understanding. Her answer to what?

It's then that she glances at the rose and notices what's tied to the black ribbon.