Full Summary:
Shattered and panicked from his impulsive bet with the Opera Ghost, Raoul de Chagny knows that he has one last chance to try and mend his broken family and his fractured marriage. Despite years of distance and emotional withdrawal, does he have the courage to leap into the abyss for the family that he loves, or will he drown in drink and self-pity?
Haunted by the past, Christine must finally face the consequences of her choices. As darkness threatens to consume everyone she loves, will she reach for the light once more or succumb to the darkness forever?
What a fool he was!
Raoul adjusted the tie of his formal attire as he climbed the stairs to Christine's dressing room. Why did he let that lunatic trap him into making such a ridiculous bet? Christine was not a prize to be won. That game ended a decade ago when they escaped the phantom's lair.
Or so he thought. For it seemed that his betrothed had other ideas after fleeing the underworld. She had chosen to stay with the ghost then, and certainly in no way could she have expected to have been released from his clutches. Once free, she and Raoul had escaped together to a life of daylight, but she was still drawn to darkness, to the night, to hell. She had laid with the devil incarnate, and it seemed, she had also carried his child. Though she had been guided to the light, released from the clutches of madness, she still turned back and returned to the Ghost.
Raoul wasn't sure he wanted to believe it, that Christine could betray him like that. She was the only woman he ever loved, the only woman he ever desired. And even when she refused to accept him into her bed for the last six long years, he remained loyal to her.
He remembered those first few years of marriage with a positivity that he was not sure it deserved. Her pregnancy had been difficult, and during the first few months of Gustave's life, she had been inattentive, withdrawn, and lost. During that year, she had accepted his touches as if they were more a chore than a desire, and he now wondered if she was comparing him to another. If he had failed to please her.
Did she shun him because she yearned for another? As those first few years passed, her interest in him and their marriage had waned, though she focused more intently on their son.
The year Gustave turned two, Raoul turned to drink. He drank away the failures of his business capital, and drank away the withdrawal of his wife's inattention, and finally, he drank away his inadequacies. She returned to singing six months later, mostly because they needed the money.
Despite the gossip, the de Chagny family was not destitute, but finances were tighter than they should have been. It didn't help that Raoul's only skill seemed to be cards, but even in that venture, when he failed, he failed spectacularly. It was because of Christine's career that they still had clothes on their backs, a roof over their head, and food in their bellies. Drink in his belly.
Pausing at the top of the stairs, he thought back to the days and nights he wasted wallowing in self-pity, caving to the whisperings of their peers that taunted and emasculated him. If he were a stronger and better man, he would not have let their words affect him. If he were a stronger and better man, he could give up the drink for his family. If only he were many things ...
Frustrated, Raoul raked a hand through his hair, combing the strands back from his eyes. He should have known better than to act on emotion after the Opera Ghost revealed that caveat of his wife's transgression. He should have known better the moment he saw that reviled monster and left the bar without a word. He should have done a great many things over the last decade.
Would he be able to convince Christine to leave with him now? What did he have to offer her to make his case? He was a shell of the man who pledged himself to her ten years ago with romantic gestures and intimate whispers. Did that Raoul even exist anymore?
He opened the door to his wife's dressing room and stepped inside. He froze at the sight, and suddenly a decade of time faded away. He saw Christine as radiant and beautiful as she had been those many years ago, and in that moment, gone were the strains of their present and the weights of their past. Gone was the disappointment, the disinterest, the uncertainty and fear. She was angelic. Shame that the term had been sullied.
Christine glanced at him, and she tensed. When did his wife start to fear him? Had he become such a monster over these years that she thought he could ever physically harm her or their son?
Their son.
His gaze shifted to Gustave, and a pang of betrayal gripped his heart. Was it true? Was the child actually the Phantom's son? Did it even matter? Raoul had risked his family for the sake of his own pride, prodded to action in a rage of jealousy because of the accusations made by a manipulative madman.
What was best for them? For Christine. He felt sorrow for their tumultuous marriage, shame for his own failings as a husband and father, and wondered if he even deserved one last chance to make up for all of his sins. Why had he accepted that ridiculous bet?
Gustave looked to the door and smiled brightly at Raoul, dragging the Vicomte from his melancholy. "Father! Doesn't Mother look lovely tonight?"
"Indeed, she does," Raoul sighed, and he offered a genuine smile. Perhaps even charming. "As lovely as she looked the very first time I came to her dressing room."
Surprised by the compliment, Christine seemed taken aback, but the shock was quickly replaced with warmth. "And look at you, Raoul. You look just like that handsome boy in the opera box. The one who would always toss me a single red rose."
Had he been so monstrous that even a compliment was such a shock to her? Ah, how far he had descended. He did not deserve her love or her forgiveness. He ached at the loss.
Kneeling down beside Gustave, he took the boy's shoulders firmly and said, "Please, Gustave, if you don't mind, will you wait outside a while?"
Hopeful, Gustave asked, "May I go exploring? By myself?"
Christine smiled gently at her son and rested a hand on his head. "Yes, but stay backstage, my dear. When I'm finished, meet me here."
"I will!" Gustave called as he charged out the door.
There were so many things Raoul wanted to say to her. To plead with her to leave now with him, renege on the contract and flee with him to a ship set for France. To ask her to kiss him again like she used to all those years ago when they thought of only new love and dreamed of a blissful future. To beg her to love him and return to his arms forever.
But Raoul knew that he deserved none of those outcomes.
Any youthful and hopeful thoughts he may have had upon entry dissipated and were replaced with the heavy truths of the present. Meeting her eyes, he smiled sadly. "I have been horrible for years, haven't I?"
"Raoul …" she sighed with a placating expression.
"Please, don't deny it," He said, holding up his hand to stop her reply. "Can we be honest with each other now? For once? And not live in this half-world of unspoken truths that has been our life for so long."
When she did not respond, he turned his head to look at himself in the mirror. He wondered when he started to look so tired, so haggard. Reaching up, he traced the pronounced wrinkle line in his brow.
Christine shifted her weight; his eyes darted to hers, watching her through the reflection. Sighing, his hand lowered. "Are we at that point now where there is not even comfort in silence? Do I make you so nervous?"
She held her hands to her stomach and worried her fingers. "I'm just not sure what you want me to say."
He knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to ask her why she no longer looked at him as if she loved him, and wanted to know when that happened. He wanted to ask her why she had denied his touch for so long. He wanted to know where everything went wrong. Was it him? Her? Perhaps both.
But they were beyond the point for answers to those questions, to dissect what went wrong in their marriage, their romance, their bed chamber. He swallowed that bitterness, and could not help but wonder where it was that he lacked and that monster excelled.
"Raoul," she whispered.
Her trembling plea brought him back to the present, and he felt both self-loathing and frustration at the obvious unsettled expression on her face. "I'm sorry," he said. "For everything. For not being what you hoped or desired. For failing to live up to what I promised."
Averting his eyes from the mirror, he turned to face her. "This morning I was in a bar. I know, you are not surprised, and from your expression, quite disgusted. But as I was there, drowning in my own self pity, I was visited by a mutual friend of ours — Mr. Y up to his old games again. I fell right into his trap, and whether from the drink or my own misplaced arrogance … hmmf, perhaps both, I accepted a bet. About you, Christine."
Frowning, Christine stepped back from him. "Me?"
"Yes," he answered. "He set the wager that if you sing his song that I will leave for Paris alone, leave you forever. But if I could convince you to come with me, to not sing the song, or leave and never look back, then he would pay our debts in full … my debts, and leave us be. And in my idiocy, I accepted."
There was a long minute of silence as she reflected on that, and Raoul saw the thoughts playing out on her face — shock, confusion, hurt, and then finally anger.
"Raoul," she whimpered. "How could you?" Tearing, she frantically wiped the moisture away, smudging the kohl that outlined her luminous glacial-blue eyes. "How could you! As if I don't have a choice as to what I want from life. Or without a thought as to what my needs are. Or Gustave's! Did you even think about Gustave?"
He chuckled, shaking his head. "Ah yes. Gustave. Don't worry, my Dear, Mr. Y told me all about Gustave. And from how the color just drained from your cheeks, I take it that means there is truth to his words."
He wasn't expecting the confirmation to hurt so much. Shaking his head, he turned away from her and jerked out the chair at her vanity. He sank into it, watching her.
Christine paced away from him, her hand to her mouth.
He waited to see if she would say anything at all. He waited for an explanation, perhaps some kind of bumbling response. A denial. Hell, even a taunt, at this point. But instead she said nothing and simply stood with her back to him.
Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on his knees. "Was it consensual?"
"It was."
And again, it hurt more than he expected.
Resigned, he pushed to his feet and approached her. When he touched her shoulder, she flinched. Undeterred, he turned her to face him.
Even in her sorrow, she was beautiful. As beautiful as the day he saw her on stage at the Opera Populaire, as beautiful as she was when they professed their love on the rooftop months later. How was it that time had never touched her?
No, time may not have ravaged or aged her features, but her eyes glistened with unspoken sadness. How long had she been so unhappy? And what idiot was he to have been so blind to it for this long?
With tenderness, Raoul stroked his wife's cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I want you to sing, Lotte. I want you to sing like you never have before, and take the audience in your hand and have them beg for more. New York will fall in love with you, as they should."
Holding her emotional gaze, he trailed a single finger along the line of her jaw. "And then take the obscene amount of money he has offered you, and leave. Leave me. Leave him. Leave behind the poisons of your past that have done nothing but haunt you. His manipulations. My failures."
"No, Raoul," she softly protested. "Wait."
"I'll give you anything you need, Christine," he released her and reached into the inside pocket of his suit, pulling out a money clip with a small number of bank notes. "Sing, get your bank notes, and run. Run from all of this. This fevered nightmare. My inexcusable nonsense. All of it."
With a sharp nod, he stepped back from her, holding out a hand to keep her in place. "I'll keep an eye on Gustave while you sing and bring him back here. He'll be safe. Then, you do what you must, Christine. You deserve to be happy."
He walked to the door, and even though she made no sound to stop him, he still hesitated. With his hand on the handle, he looked back at her. Beautiful, ethereal, and quite frankly, shocked.
There was so much he wanted to know in that instant, in that last moment before he knew she would be gone forever. Her distance during the first year of marriage was all the more clear now that the truth of Gustave's paternity had come to light. And now that Raoul knew of her clandestine affair with the man who obviously earned her love and appeared to have sired her child, he wondered if their marriage could have succeeded at any point.
"Say it," she pleaded, softly, an uncertainty in her eyes as she took a single step towards him. She clutched the money clip to her breast. "Whatever you are thinking, please, say it."
Desperate for an answer, and yet unsure if he wanted the truth, he gathered his courage to ask. "Did you ever love me?"
"Oh yes," she breathed and the money clip dropped to the floor as she rushed towards him. Her arms wrapped around him from behind and she pressed her cheek to his back. "Yes, Raoul, I did."
And his heart broke. Did. Past tense. Any hope that had lingered of a future between them vanished.
Closing his eyes and ready for the inevitable, he nodded and placed a hand over hers where they were clasped at his waist. He felt her shakey exhalation of breath, but was certain it was more out of fear than any other emotion.
Gently, he pried open her clasping grip and turned. Cupping her face in his hands, he memorized her. He memorized her elaborate swirling curls that were intricately pinned off her neck. He memorized her flawless skin, her vivid eyes, and her lips. Those lips that he so often craved and that she rarely let him taste.
He memorized her in that stunning dress with the intricately beaded design, and the way her hands rested so absently on his hips, as if in that single moment they were familiar with each other again. If they ever were. And in that last moment, he could not help himself. Leaning closer, his eyes closed and he dared to kiss her. It was slow, sweet, and savoring. He needed to memorize that one last thing — her taste.
She returned the kiss, her lips pursing against his, and Raoul felt her tremble, both her mouth and her body. He memorized that reaction as well, kidding himself that it was a genuine and emotional response to a man she loved.
When he took as much as he thought she would give, he eased back from her to look down into her glazed eyes. And he waited, hoping that perhaps she would say something. Give him some kind of sign that his assumptions were wrong, and there was still a love between them. Simmering, perhaps, but not extinguished. Something that they could build on.
Christine reached up to touch her parted lips, and she watched him silently with an odd expression. Shaking her head, she searched his gaze and a myriad of emotions played across her features, none of which Raoul could identify.
When she still said nothing, he sighed and averted his eyes, turning to the door. Heartache ravaged him, but it was what he deserved for being so careless over the long years. "I will see that Gustave is here." He opened the door, and paused as a final expression of love danced on his tongue.
He resisted its utterance and exited the room.