He has written letters for Christine to have after, explaining things the best that he can. About her father and how they had been friends, because he wants her to know, he does, but every time he tries to say that to her, out loud, something catches and he can't, like a little slip of time. He thinks she understands things like that, the little slips of time that leave things unspoken. He thinks it is why she will never warn him about Jack's death or Darius leaving, or Sorelli's death, or anyone's death. The only one she could ever warn him of was his own, and he thinks, too, it is why she could never tell Sorelli that Philippe would be killed, the thing that led to their rift, and why they had that conversation he half-remembers from his fevered haze, of why she had not warned them that he was going to get so sick with his tuberculosis, that it would almost kill him too.
If he can hardly stand not being able to tell her about her father, what must it be like for her, all these things bound up within herself that she can never speak until it is too late? If it weighs on him, how much heavier must it be for her?
He tells her, in the letters, that he understands that too.
And he tells her, too, that he thinks now it is better that they could never speak these things.
Speaking them would never have been able to change them, would only have meant more knowledge to try to live with, would have coloured every moment in the worst way. And maybe if he had known Darius would die he would phoned him one last time, but would he really have been able to overcome almost sixty years of fear to cross the sea? And if he had known about Sorelli he would have been there, or tried to, but she would have worried about him knowing, worried that he would wear himself out. If he had known about Harry he would have let him drive down from Belfast that day instead of telling him to wait, but how can he know something else would not have happened instead? And if he had known about Jack—
If he had known about Jack—
If he had known about Jack, what could he have said, or done, that would have been any different?
No. Better not to know, he thinks. Better to live and act as if time is not always going around in a circle. Better, than to have every breath tainted by it.
(If he could take that burden from her, he would.)
Christine was waiting for him, when he got home from the funeral. Christine from the future, and she looked so much older than the Christine he had just seen, that he had shaken hands with not an hour and a half before.
She was sitting in the armchair that he was long accustomed to thinking of as hers, and she looked up from the newspaper she was reading, and took him in in his funeral clothes.
"What's happened?" she asked, frowning, and he braced himself against the ache in his chest.
"Your father."
Hardly had the words left his mouth than the colour drained from her face.
"I'm not drunk enough for this," she whispered, and was gone in an instant, snapped out of existence.
Anea came to see him, two days later. She looked as tired as he felt, and when he made her tea, she hardly touched it.
"She's in a terrible state," she whispered, and he swallowed.
"I expected as much. I wish…" Wish what? That Alex was alive? Of course he wished that. That there was some way to turn back time? What he wouldn't give. That he could go to her and tell her that she would see her father again and not have it sound like some trite sort of promise? God how he wished. That he could take her grief into himself and spare her from having to feel it? He would if he could, would without question, if there were any way.
He's lived through so much grief he knows it like an old friend. That she should be left to deal with it was a crime.
"I wish it didn't have to be this way," he whispered, and the tears were damp in his eyes.
("Can't you meet her? Tell her anything?" "I would if I—" his throat tight, "I think," and he was guessing, but it was an answer he could feel in his bones as if it was true, "I think she has to come to me, first.")
"This is how it will happen," Christine said, on a warm afternoon in June, as they sat back in chairs in his garden. She had a big hat pulled down low over her face, and they were both sipping orange squash with just a touch of vodka in it. He wished for a camera to capture the moment, but he wasn't sure where he could get film developed anymore with everything going digital.
A pity.
He sipped his drink, and pulled his own hat lower, and listened as she told him.
26 October 2008.
The day she would come to his door. The day they would meet, properly, in linear time. Her sixteen year old self, grief-stricken and anxious, not long back from Philippe's funeral (such a thing for her to have found herself at while in the middle of grieving her father), wondering if she was doing the right thing in coming to see him, wondering if he would even want to see her but unable to help herself, needing to see him, to feel grounded in time and space, so she came to him and didn't know what to expect but certainly had not expected him to open his door and invite her in for tea before she ever said a word.
He closed his eyes and tried to picture the scene, the kettle boiling and him opening the door to her. Maybe he was waiting by it, ready for her knock. And would his heart be pounding, or would he be calmer than he had ever known?
A little over four months to wait, to find out.
When she left after telling him, he marked the date on the calendar.
Anea rang him regularly, that summer, to tell him about Christine, just to talk to him. She dropped by several times to see how he was, taking up where Alex had left off, and she endeared herself to him forever when she said she had always been a fan of Sorelli's.
Anea Valerius, this woman in her fifties who had been married to Alex's uncle who had been a good fifteen years older than her. He had not expected her to become a dear friend, but he has always been glad that she did.
So he told her, when it was that he would meet Christine, when she would come to him, so she wouldn't worry when it happened, so she could worry less, that summer, about Christine hardly speaking, reading her way through every book she could lay hands on, not travelling, and dying her hair black.
He knew it would be twenty-five minutes past four when the knock came to his door, but when 26 October came he was up early, had shaved and combed back his hair and put on his best shirt. He could hardly sit still for the twisting in his stomach thinking that the day had finally arrived, thinking that finally, finally, after sixty-three years of friendship with her, he was going to meet Christine Daaé in her own time. That girl he had first seen at Philippe's funeral and had kissed on a New Year's night so long ago it was almost forgotten, when he still thought he could be interested in girls, who had hopped in and out of his life so long that it had stopped surprising him when she turned up. Who had sat with him and held him as he wept the night after Jack died and had typed his thesis for him when he was recovering from his ruptured appendix and sang a song that didn't exist when he was in hospital after his car crash. That ridiculous wonderful girl who was almost like a sister to him and who he had danced with more times than he could count before this very fire. And he was finally going to meet her in her own time. How could he ever sit still?
He was nervous too, of course, wondering what she would be like, if she would like him, wondering how much she knew of her future. Wondering what he could even say that wouldn't spoil anything for her, so he decided to tell her about the papers Sorelli had left, that she had designated for Christine to have at different times.
And he had the chocolate digestives in stock, because he didn't expect her taste for them to be any different.
And then the waiting started.
He was, as it happened, very close to the front door when she knocked. The kettle had just knocked off, and he had two mugs ready on the table.
He swallowed, and flexed his fingers for to ease the trembling from them, and opened the door.
His heart ached, at the first sight of her, to see how exhausted she was, how pale and small in that big coat with her violin case, and he wanted to bundle her into his arms and wrap her in blankets and keep her safe from the world, but he didn't want to come across too forward either, and he didn't want to worry her into thinking she had done something wrong by coming to see him, so he smiled for her to hide all his twisting inside.
"Miss Christine Daaé, impeccable timing as ever. The kettle is just boiled." And he opened the door for to let her in.
(A ridiculous pun, really, "impeccable timing", but he couldn't help himself, and it caused the first flicker of something that could become a smile at the edge of her mouth, so he could never regret it.)
He quickly realised he had struck her dumb by expecting her, so he went ahead and pushed the biscuits her way and made her tea the way she always liked it, and prattled on about Sorelli and documents, and he could see the grief in her eyes, so when the tea was stirred he pushed her mug into her hands and folded her fingers around it.
"Drink it," he said, softly, "and you'll feel better."
And she did.
He has told her so many times that she must think he has begun to crack, but she really has been the best of these last years of his life. There is not a thing that he would do to change the time that they have had, not a thing he would not say or do for her. He only wishes he had been able to say more, but the letters will have to do that for him.
He thinks he has made her happy, thinks he has grounded her the way she needed to be grounded. It strikes him as amusing, when he lets himself think about it, that he has been the fixed point in her life, has been there in her past and in her future and been there for her in linear time when there was no one else that could, and maybe this is why he always survived, why he outlived everyone. Maybe she was his answer to the lifetime of wondering.
She needed someone she could talk to of the past she found herself in, and time chose that someone to be him.
And he wouldn't change that, not for anything.