A/N: they meet at last. I suppose this is the "preliminary climax"… from here, expect action, action, plot, action… I hope you know Jaq, Raian, Gerard, and my version of dear Erik well enough that it is believable.

I own this not, or those last few chapters when I forgot that key phrase 

Warning: long chapter!

XIII: WHOSE IS THAT VOICE?

"We are born alone, and we die alone. In between we may be touched by love, but we are still alone." –Tae (Gemmel)

"Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough. It is potentially liberation…" –Laing

The torch flared in the darkness, casting fleeting shadows that seemed to come alive with grasping hands, reaching hungrily from the darkness. Raian's grip on the torch tightened and he held it higher, illuminating the path at their feet. "This way," Raian said, reaching out to take Jaq's hand. "Stay close to me," he warned. "The way is riddled with traps and pitfalls to ward off the unwary."

As they progressed deeper into the labyrinth the sounds of the post-opera celebration began to grow muffled, then faded entirely into silence. The flare of the torch and step of their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud. "What is he like, the Opera Ghost?" Jaqueline asked at length.

Raian hesitated, counting steps down the staircase, leaping lightly over the trick step and helping his sister after him. "Quiet, I suppose. For like h is used to solitude. A dark, cold Master… at least, so is the façade. But there is a full raging fire there, barely hidden. A vast surging current that hides dozen of corpses of the past."

"You paint a frightening picture."

"Aye, for he is a frightening man. 'Man' itself hardly seems a fitting appellation. But his voice… I have never heard such sorrow, triumph, wrath, boundless pity, pitiless rage… power to move mountains delivered in a whispered breath. Once I head him sing. It was like swords that strike the heart, and from the mortal wounds flow wonder and joy and awe to blend as one with fear, and I knew not the difference."

There was a heavy silence. "I have never heard you speak with such passion, Raian."

"Whatever you think you know of passion, forget; when you hear him you will realize how empty your thought of it is. You know not grace, silence, power, fire, ice, fear…"

Jaqueline rubbed her arms, unsure if the tingle was Raian's voice or the growing cold. "What does he look like?" Talking, even of this creature of night, was better than blank silence.

"Remember in Father's library, the Greek mythologies? How we used to imagine them, or look at Father's drawings, compare them to the Romans and the Norse? Think Odin, with a touch of Father's Prometheus, a siren's tongue, and the dark of Hades." She had nothing to say at Raian's description. Part of her still squirmed with the supposition that this was some scheme of Raian's. The rest of her screamed with dreadful longing.

They wound on, at last descending a short, broad flight of stairs that ended in the still edge of a lake, swirling mist hovering above it, never quite daring to touch. On the lake there was a boat, and in the boat…

"Jaqueline. May I present… the Phantom of the Opera."

"Honored, monsieur," she said, dipping into a curtsy. His twin green eyes lanced into her. She fumbled for words to describe that gaze, and grasped only empty air

"The honor is mine," he said quietly, extending a hand. She took it slowly, shivering at the sheer power in his voice, somehow tamed into a gently courteous tone. As if in a dream she stepped into the boat after him; his touch was strangely cold on her, colder even than the dungeon-air. "Here," he said, and in one deft motion unclasped his long dark cloak and draped it over her shoulders. She clutched the fine dark material to her, feeling the soft weave of it under her fingers, close and warm.

A moment later Raian settled in front of her and a single gentle heave from the pole in the Phantom's hands sent them along. She watched in awe a moment at his powerful build as he propelled them, at how the candlelight played along his face, gleamed eerily off the white half-mask that he wore. The Phantom. The Opera Ghost.

Christine's Angel of Music.

At length the silent journey concluded, the boat nudging up against the shore. The Phantom stepped out, wordlessly offering her a supporting hand.

She is so much like Christine. The words were bitter and full of longing. She looked up at him, awe lighting in her eyes. Yes, her eyes, the one feature that differed. They were a light gray, clear and trusting, a variation on Raian's darker shade.

Still the similarities were striking, so much so that for a moment he forgot—forgot that she had betrayed him, taken the gift of his song and repaid him with denial… Jaq flinched back as hate glittered in those eyes, a hate made all the more potent that it sprang from love.

"We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love…" –Freud

"Jaqueline." Just the way he said her name sent shivers through her… pleasure, or terror? She could not tell. "Will you sing with me?"

"Gladly." The word was out before she realized it, and she was rewarded wit hone of the rarest smiles on Earth. Half Phantom, half man.

In all her life, Jaqueline had never had an experience to match that night in the Phantom's lair. At the time her mind was unable to comprehend it; so lost it was in the glory of the song, that rational thought fled to nether worlds of consciousness, leaving vague emotion. It was as if she had abandoned thought entirely, opened her mind to a world of fantasy, empowered by a voice she could not fight and could not find the desire to resist.

Later, when thought returned, she would find it equally as impossible to qualify the experience of that night, realizing that—like a dream—it was too close to her own soul to be brought to light, lest the dark of pain of it sear her until understanding fled. Like a dream it haunted the edges of her mind, elusive and taunting; yet at the same time it seemed more immediate than reality itself. After all, the Phantom of the Opera was, in a way, the greatest dream ever told…

Then somewhere the vision ceased, the timeless duet faded, the organ music faltered, and sleep descended in dreary waves, until she was left to dreams alone.

Raian watched with a sort of detached wonder as the Phantom carefully and gently lay Jaqueline to rest, long fingers flicking deftly to smooth the quilt over her. He stood, swinging his reappropriated cloak over his own shoulders, looking down on her sleeping form pensively. Raian stirred. Was it kindness, or subdued passion, in those eyes?

Their eyes met, gray and green, and Raian looked away. With the faintest scrape of leather on stone the Phantom ascended the steps to the organ again. Raian closed his eyes to the delicate dance of agile fingers over willing keys, the melodies of night filling his mind.