His life can be measured in days, now.

Days, down from months, and years, and decades.

He wonders, idly one morning, if this is what it is like for people going to be executed. This waiting, the knowledge of it heavy in his chest. That every hour is taking him closer to his appointed fate.

He wonders, but he doesn't think so. He is not like someone bound for execution. Yes, he knows the hour of his death, but he knows, too, that it will be his own body failing him. It will not be a noose or an injection or a bullet. It will be quiet.

There is a peace, in knowing that.

He just hopes it isn't going to be painful.

He has just a slight touch of a cold coming on. He can feel it in the back of his throat, sitting there, an irritation that he cannot shake.

There will be no shaking of it. It is the first touch of death, and its grip on him.

He is more tired than he can ever remember being in his life.

Christine comes to see him daily, now, and every time she does, he wonders if he should tell her what's coming. Should tell her so that she can be ready, and it will not be too much of a shock. Heaven knows she's had enough shocks to last her a lifetime and it would not do for him to inflict one more on her, so he resolves to try to tell her, that she can be somewhat prepared for it, but when he tries, on the evening of 16 March, the words catch in his throat, right there alongside that irritation, and refuse to come.

He gives her a thin smile, so she won't worry, and sips the hot tea she's made him, and wonders what it is about time that limits what he can and cannot tell her, and why it needs to be so cruel.

He knows Alex said he hadn't wanted knowledge of his coming death hanging over Christine and that was why he never told her, but Raoul wonders, now, if maybe it might be that he wanted to, that he tried, and that unnameable thing stayed his tongue, and forced him to be silent.

He tells her instead about Philippe. Tells her about his little ways, how he scrapbooked the yacht racing results and was so particular in how he dressed and never come downstairs in the morning without first having shaved and combed his hair. How he never discussed politics with him, because he said Raoul would have to make up his own mind, when he was old enough to vote. How his smile transformed his face, and his eyes shone bright. How he liked slim cigars and despised cigarettes and always wore his signet ring.

(Raoul has never been able to bear wearing that ring.)

Told her all about him, and she never interrupted, just held his hand, and listened.

There have been future Christines in and out the last few days, coming to see him from all sorts of times, most of them very far in the future.

(2050 the most recent one had come from, most recent in time, not his most recent visitor.)

When she comes to him that evening from 2053, she insists he not exert himself to make her tea, and he sits in his armchair and listens to her potter in the kitchen, and wonders. Wonders if this is some sort of a focal point, if his death is a marker in time that draws her back, again and again and again, something with a significance that she can never escape.

There were two Christines, he knows, when Sorelli died. The one that was with her, and the one that was with him. And who is to say that there were not more Christines out there, somewhere, staying away or trying to hide on the date?

True, it was not the first time there were two Christines. There was the awards ceremony, too, when she was caught on tape, and that day in 1947 when her older self met her child self and so confused him, and there must have been loads of other times.

But there were two Christines the day Sorelli died, three if he counts her a baby newly born. And it sits oddly within him, that she should have to live that day a few times, return to her own time with knowledge of where she had been.

That once was not enough.

There's a cruelty in that, too.

It is not that he does not want to see her from the future, does not enjoy her visits. He has always enjoyed her visits, even when he was first trying to get to grips with them all those years ago, after Sorelli first told him. But if coming back here to see him, now, so close to the end, only means that she has more to grieve when she returns to her own time, then he would prefer for her not to come, prefer that she not have to struggle with that.

She sets the tea down in front of him, and he gestures for her to sit on the arm of his chair. He is not sure how to phrase it, how to tell her this that has been on his mind, but he has to do it to ease this thing in his heart that feels like guilt.

A question, perhaps, is best.

He taps his fingers lightly on the back of her hand, and sighs. "Why is it that you keep—" The words catch in his throat, stall, and he swallows against them. "Why do you—" Dammit, lodged there again. "You know the way that I only—"

"Raoul." Her voice is soft, her hand turning over to take his. "Are you asking why I keep getting drawn back to this time?"

Thank God.

How she guesses at what he cannot ask he doesn't know, only that he's relieved that she has and has spared him needing to find the words. "Yes."

She is silent a long time her fingers curled between his, and then, softly, "I think it's because you're continuous. You were—you are—you have been the only one I've known past and present. I knew you in the present, and I know you in the past, and I think it lies in that. That you were never confined to a time outside of my life, or confined to within my life, but both." Silence, again, and he can feel there is more she wants to say, so he squeezes her hand, and waits for her, and her voice is fainter than before when she says, "I've seen my parents in the past, but I've never met their younger selves, never met my father from before I was born. And Sorelli—you know about Sorelli." And he does, how he does, the ending of one life and the start of another. "So I think it's you. You're the overlap, a fixed point." And she looks down at him, the tears damp in her eyes and prickling in the backs of his. "I wouldn't change it, you know. I'd never change it, getting to have this extra time with you."

It's still on his mind later that day, when he hears the noise upstairs.

He thinks it is her come again, most likely it is. Or maybe the Christine that left him half an hour ago to go home to Erik got caught somewhere in time instead and has landed back here with him on her return. (A little part of him hopes for that, so he can hear of her travels one more time.) He would not be surprised if it were one last visit from Alex, but he doubts if it is, though he'd enjoy it.

A muffled curse from the floor above, but he can't make out the voice.

His back cracks as he eases himself out of his chair. Whether it's Christine or Alex, there should be tea ready for them.

He sets two mugs on the table, puts the tea bags in them and takes out the milk, and the plate of chocolate digestives that he keeps ready.

His deafness has gotten worse the last while, enough that he can't distinguish which Daaé the step on the stairs belongs to. Another sign of what's coming for him, he supposes, though the steps are drawing closer now. The kettle flicks off, and he pours the boiling water in on top of the tea bags, then sets the kettle back down and picks up a spoon for to stir.

Then looks up into the face of a girl he has never seen before in his life.

It is some amount of comfort that she is staring at him just the same, eyes wide.

One blue, one hazel.

The spoon clatters to the table.

It is to his credit that he does not faint, though he does lower himself heavily into a chair.

"Raoul de Chagny?" The query in her voice, the musicality beneath his name like Christine but not Christine, different, her blonde hair short and curled.

He nods, and she pales. "Oh my God."

Rachel Daaé.

Rachel Daaé-Ansborough.

Rachel Eleanor Daaé-Ansborough.

Christine and Erik's daughter.

Christine and Erik's daughter, named after him and Sorelli ("they couldn't think of any girl's name that sounds like Raoul," said with a faint smile).

This girl of twenty-two, Christine and Erik's daughter, a time traveller too.

Of all the things—

Her thumb is soft, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

"I've always wanted to meet you," and she's smiling.

"Your mother never told me about you." He's hoarse, but God all the times Christine came back. She could have said something. It would have been nice to know.

And Rachel grins. "I knew she wouldn't."

The tea is ruined, but she boils the kettle again while he gains his composure, and after she's made it, just as he likes it, he notices, she sits down across the table from him, and tells him about the future.

(Christine, a distinguished historian like he knew she would be. Head of the History Department, and she's written that book about Noël that he knew she would, and one about Sorelli, too, and another about Philippe. "They made a film a couple of years ago about what happened," Rachel says, "and it was nothing like that mess they wanted to make in the eighties. Mom was so pissed when she heard about that. This one was proper, and you know it was done right because she was the historical consultant…" Erik, still tinkering at his computers, creating things out of codes and making music. "…Dad did the soundtrack for it and it won loads of awards. I don't think he could really believe it…")

("…they were frightened when they knew they were going to have me in case something would go wrong with all the time stuff, but apparently my future self went back and gave them a shock and said everything would be all right…they still decided one was enough to have…")

("I'm writing my own book about you," and she grins that bright grin again, "or I will be when I get my thesis finished which is still ages away. Dad has written some stuff from what you told him, but mine's going to be a proper history book and he says it's as well because anything he knows of history is what you and Mom told him." Her lip twitches, her smile fading, and there's that contemplative look in her eye that he's seen so many times in Christine's and knows it means she's thinking about time. "I suppose—I suppose that's why I've come back to now, to see you. So that you can know, and maybe—maybe so I can know if you'd be happy with it.")

(He smiles at her, and squeezes her hand. "I am happy with it," and he's hoarse, still, with the cold and the emotion and the thought of this girl coming back to all these years before she was born to ask his permission to write her book about him. "And I know you'll do a wonderful job with it.")

She goes, and he sits, a long time, watching the empty space where she was sitting, hardly daring to believe that she was here at all.

Then he cleans the mugs away, and sits down, and writes a letter to Erik.

He doesn't say anything about Rachel, but he says a lot of other things that need to be said, and when Erik comes the next evening, with his violin, and says, softly, "I have something I want you to hear," Raoul slips it into the violin case, while he's looking away, readying himself.

Only three days left after this one. Something for him to have, for after.

Then Erik sets the bow to the string, and closes his eyes, and the music that winds around Raoul takes his breath away.

That Erik composed a piece for he and Jack—

He closes his eyes, the tears trickling down his cheeks, and as the music winds around him, the memories come, soft and gentle.

He sits deeper in his chair, and surrenders himself to them.

A/N: Just one chapter left!