Another Man's Rose

Disclaimer - POTO does not belong to me, though I wish it did.

Rating - G

Summary - Raoul de Chagny's first encounter with a red rose. Raoul's POV. Based upon the film. Angst-y, sad, and undeniably E/C.

I am the Vicomte de Chagny. A young man born into a noble family who has had the very best of everything the world could offer him.

But what I cherish the most is my beautiful wife, Christine. For her, I would gladly give up my title and reject the offers of the world. Her smile, her laugh, her love…those are the only things I will ever truly need.

I see her smile and hear her laugh every day. I have her love, and she tells me I have her heart. To those on the outside looking in, our life together is a perfect paradise, filled with young romance and genuine affection.

We have romance and we have affection, but our life together is not a perfect paradise, as many would believe. There can be no perfect paradise when there is another lurking within its walls, and there is another.

The other man.

He is not a tangible presence in our home, nor in the village nearby. He does not come to our door in the darkness of the night and spirit my wife away. He does not send her flowers, or jewels, or letters of devotion.

He is a phantom. The irony of that label is not lost on me. He haunts her mind, perhaps even her soul.

The Phantom of the Opera.

I bought her roses. Several bouquets of winter white and pale pink. I did not see the lone rose, a radiant shade of red, amongst their delicate beauty. Even if I had, I would have thought nothing of it. I gave them to her that evening, after we had shared dinner in the muted candlelight of our dining room. She smiled joyfully at me and proceeded to place them all about the house…in the drawing room, in the foyer. She took one of the bouquets into the study that I had converted into a library for her shortly after our marriage.

The unnoticed red rose went with it.

Christine had not continued singing upon our leaving the Opera Populaire on that dreadful night months ago. Though I missed her glorious voice, I accepted her silence without question. After all that had occurred, it made sense to me that she did not wish to sing. Singing would surely remind her of the events that we had both put behind us. I thought I understood.

It was late that night, the night that I presented her with the roses, that I realized I did not understand.

I am not sure that I will ever truly understand.

I had awakened to find her absent from our bed. It was a rare occurrence that I did not wake to find her in my arms, and so, worried, I rose from our bed and searched for her. I had given her the library and I had known it was her sanctuary, but I strode through every other room in the mansion before I stepped through its wooden doors.

I knew why I hesitated, why I did not immediately rush to the library to be with her. I had already known what I would find.

The truth would be there. The truth that I would have to face.

I saw her instantly, she was sitting in her favorite chair. It was facing the window, and the moonlight cast its soft glow onto her porcelain skin. Her eyes were wide and luminous, her face a reflection of the sadness that I had known was inside of her, but had never seen before then.

When one does not see something, one can ignore its existence very easily, especially if they desire to.

I did not just see that night as I looked upon my sweet Christine, my Little Lotte.

I heard.

Her voice, His music, flawlessly melded together as part of one whole, much like the red rose and its thorns. She held that red rose carefully in her small hands as she sang softly into the darkness.

I did not enter. I did not disturb her song. I stood in the doorway for an amount of time that I have never been able to ascertain before I closed the doors quietly behind me and with heavy steps climbed the staircase that would lead me back to our bedroom, to the bed where we first made love. That night the bed was my only comfort, sleep my only escape. But I did not evade so easily what my heart longed to hide from.

I have made tremulous peace with it over time, even as I hear the rustle of her nightgown as she leaves our bed and her footsteps as she moves quietly down the stairs. I lay in the bed and strain my ears to hear those soft notes float from the library and drift through the corridors of our home. Sometimes though, the urge to check on her becomes too strong, and I cannot stifle it. I will make my way downstairs, lean against the library doors and listen.

Sometimes, like now, I open them slightly, just enough to see her.

She is standing near the window on this night, and in her hand she holds the red rose that had somehow found its way into the throng of the others I had given her. It is wilted now, the crimson petals are no longer soft. They are brittle, but they do not break under her touch. The others have faded away and no longer decorate the tables in the drawing room and foyer, and yet she keeps this one, the red one, on the library's windowsill, and each night she sweeps it up and holds it close to her.

She sings to it, her voice low and beautiful and filled with the melancholy that she only allows to surface during the night. The song is one I recognize, and yet its lyrics hold new meaning for me as they dance mournfully from her lips.

"Masquerade... paper faces on parade…

Masquerade…hide your face so the world will never find you…"

The truth I face is silent, yet it echoes endlessly in this room through the voice of my beloved.

I once told Christine that the Phantom of the Opera would haunt us until we were dead. My words were spoken then in the utmost sincerity, but I did not know how truly significant, how utterly accurate, they were.

He haunts her mind, he haunts her soul, and he haunts the part of her that she assures me beats only for me.

He haunts her heart.

Her voice, the same voice she uses to assure me, betrays her as she sings. Her words soar sadly from her lips, a confession that she does not know I hear. The hands that often so tightly hold mine slowly caress the red rose. It is a lover's caress that she bestows upon that dying flower, and this is the moment when I feel I have intruded.

This is the moment when I feel as though I am the other man, as I leave my wife to her rose and its thorns.