Post Leroux R/C, title from It Keeps Us Dancing by The Family Crest.
Raoul does not enjoy graveyard days. At least they're only once a month instead of every week, or every few days like they were during the first month after the burial. But they still have them, dictated by the preceding days where Christine will grow more wistful and spend her time staring off into the distance or humming snatches of music he can never quite place. Every time she offers to go alone, but he has yet to let her.
The first grave they visit together. Slowly his memories of Gustave Daaé are being replaced by this gravestone, humble and crumbling with little bunches of decaying flowers from previous visits scattered on the ground. Christine always has calm acceptance on her face as she stares down at the ground concealing her father's remains, and he wonders if years of practice have made her an expert in mourning.
He still wishes that he'd been there when Gustave had passed away. He wishes Christine hadn't needed to grieve alone, and maybe then he'd feel some kind of closure himself. Their summer together is preserved in amber in his memory, happy days and beautiful nights seemingly unrelated to the years that followed. Part of him still feels that if they returned to the seaside they'd hear distant violin music, be invited in to sit by the fire and hear him tell stories.
He's offered to pay for a more expensive grave, or a better tombstone, but she's refused. "He'd want us to spend our money on the living instead." It was petty of him, thinking that spending some of his fortune might help assuage his guilt, so he respects her wishes and settles for buying fresh flowers every trip.
The next two graves they visit separately. She didn't know Phillipe too well, and he has no wish to see Erik's grave ever again. So he journeys past marble statues and elaborate mausoleums alone, trying not to think about her walking past simple dirt graves slowly being taken over by bushes. He has not offered to pay for a better grave for him, and she doesn't ask.
Truthfully, standing at Phillipe's grave is rather boring. He never knew how to talk to his brother while he was alive, and it seems silly to try now when there's no possible way for him to respond. So he just stands there and stares at the headstone, listening for Christine's footsteps signalling their departure. He should probably feel guilty about being so inattentive, or the fact that if it wasn't for her he'd probably only visit once a year if ever, but those are the least of his mistakes when it comes to Phillipe's death.
Perhaps he'll bring a book next time. It's probably irreverent, but he'll compromise and bring something boring Phillipe would have wanted him to read. Something on economics or politics. His brother was always the more sensible of them, and he wishes it had stayed that way. Maybe then he wouldn't have been drowned by a siren in an attempted rescue of his brother. Raoul briefly entertains thoughts of hypothetical scenarios where he might have saved Phillipe, and then remembers that he wasn't even able to save himself. Christine did all the saving that night: her, him, and her strange murderous tutor.
"What did you talk about?" he asks her when she returns, and he offers her his arm as they make their way back to the carriage.
"Nothing much," she says, looping their arms together and pulling him close. "Just about the nursery." Her hand automatically goes to her middle, where she's just beginning to show. "I think he'd have liked to help design it. He made my whole room, after all."
"Didn't you say it was rather tacky?"
"Raoul!" she laughs, swatting his arm. "It was, but the baby wouldn't be able to tell!"
"You never know," he says gravely, trying to keep himself from returning her smile. "Perhaps our baby would be influenced by it anyways. Better to leave the decorating to you, my dear."
"But he would have been so excited," she says, her smile growing sad. "He loved building things, it would have made him so happy." Her gaze is distant and he has no idea what she's picturing, since that mask was unnerving in it's lack of emotion but it's still better than the face underneath. He still sees it in his (thankfully decreasing) nightmares, that skull with an expression of agony, tears pouring from those burning eyes. But maybe Erik wasn't always like that, maybe there were moments she'd actually seen him smile, and Christine is just odd enough that she could probably appreciate it.
He knows that she misses him, but he can't. Not when he still can't tie a cravat properly, flinching away from hands near his neck. Not when he has to triple check the locks on his window, and draw heavy curtains across them, and he still sometimes wakes up in a panic reaching for a pistol. But for whatever godforsaken reason Christine misses him, so he'll try to be patient and accept her musings and not point out that if he were here they would not be together at all, much less expecting their first child.
Soon they're seated in the carriage and on their way home; Christine usually prefers silence on graveyard days and Raoul obliges her, spending his time admiring the way the sunlight glints off her hair as she stares out the window. His thoughts are interrupted when Christine gives a little gasp and grabs his hand, placing it over her stomach. There's the tiniest flutter, but it makes his heart clench as he feels his world shift a little more to revolve around this tiny person.
"He's excited to meet you," Christine tells him, and Raoul smiles.
"The feeling's mutual," he says. She insists it will be a son, and he's not certain how to feel about that. He feels woefully unprepared for a son or a daughter, but the one thing he knows he can do is love either.
"Have you thought about names?" Christine asks him, and he stares at her. His wife, who's carrying his child and continues to amaze and confound him with each passing day.
"I thought… maybe you'd like Erik," he says, and her nose wrinkles as she frowns in thought.
"I thought about it," she says. "But it's your child too."
"I can get used to it," he lies. He doesn't know if he can, if the name will ever be completely free of the weight of her past, but she's more important. "I know you miss him."
"He was my Angel," Christine says. "I know you don't understand, but it means a lot that you come here with me." She takes his hand and looks into his eyes, her voice serious. "But Raoul, I never wanted to marry him. My love for you is not the same as my love for him."
Raoul won't ask who she loves more. He's learned that the heart of a woman is an altogether mysterious and strange thing, and he's content with however much of a place she's willing to give him.
"I don't understand," he agrees. "But if you want-" she shakes her head.
"He would have hated it," she says. "He's even more of an angel now, and I think that's enough."
"You're happy, then?" he asks before he can stop himself. "With us, with our life?"
"I suppose," she says. "I'm not a very happy person, I think. I don't know how to be." He wants to protest but knows better, knows that even when he'd first burst into her dressing room, even during the masquerade and their courtship, even now despite the months that have passed, Christine has always carried a touch of melancholy with her. Grief has changed her into somebody with a touch of wistfulness carried in every smile, a wisdom that matures them both into strangers to those children playing at the seaside. But maybe everybody matures thus, and they only did it faster than most.
"Are you at peace, then?" he asks. "Is there anything I can do?" She shakes her head and embraces him, presses her nose into his chest and he buries his in her hair and inhales.
"I'm happiest when I'm with you," she says. "All I want is for you to stay."
"Forever," he promises. "Or as long as you'll have me."
"Forever," she repeats, pulling back and smiling at him. "And I'll hold you to that, whatever comes our way."
"We can handle it," he says confidently. Not many couples face death to be together, and while he knows he'd do it again he prays they'll never have to. They've run their race, faced their monster, and now are free to find their happy ending.
"I think Phillipe would be a nice name," she tells him, and it takes him a moment to realize what she's suggesting.
"Gustave Phillipe," he decides with a sudden burst of inspiration, spurred on by her widening eyes and spreading smile. "His name will be Gustave Philippe de Chagny." She beams at him, and rests her hand over her stomach.
"We're so excited to meet you," she tells their son, and Raoul leans over to place a single kiss on her stomach. A name from their guardians, given in hope that their son will be guided and loved all the days of his life. A name salvaged from their past strife, and he already knows it will become something beautiful.