"I am nearly eighteen, Father, I will do as I please now! And I will go and work at the Opera!" Journey Elise Du Chagney stood and faced the direction of her father, her blind eyes staring in their uncanny way, boring into him so that he was forced to look past her as he roared his displeasure.
"You will not go to that bedamned Opera! You are my daughter, and I'll be damned twice over before I let you set foot in the place!" He slammed his wineglass down hard enough to shatter the crystal, hissing as the base cut his thumb. "CHRISTINE!" He bellowed a moment later.
The woman that hurried into the room was strikingly beautiful, and yet, Erik would not have recognized her for the fear consuming her eyes. Her back bent, she hurried in, thin white hands flying nervously to strained features as she saw the blood trickling down her husband's hand. "Oh, Raoul, whatever happened?"
"Never mind what happened, just clean it up!" He still had not lowered his voice, so when his second daughter, Lydie, toddled into the room, sucking industriously on one thumb, her eyes wide at all the fuss, she burrowed up in fear against Journey, who stumbled slightly, having not been able to see her little sister coming. Lydie lost her precarious balance and fell with a hard thud on the fine wood flooring of the dining room, letting out a wail more composed of surprise than pain.
Raoul whirled, unbalancing Christine with a hard slap to the face. "Can't you ever get that child to stay in her room where she belongs?" Blood from his half-bandaged wound splattered across her face and dress, earning her another slap. "And you can't even be careful! Now look what your stupidity has done!"
Journey lunged towards her father's voice, homing in on the rough sound with surprising accuracy and slapping him as hard as she could. "If you don't leave Maman alone…!"
Raoul, rocked back on his heels by the force of the slap, grasped her hand tightly as she pulled it back for another blow. "You'll what?" He spat, breath already reeking of wine even at the breakfast table.
Her blind eyes narrowed at him and she gave him a tremendous, unexpected push, sending him off balance and stumbling back into the chair he had vacated minutes earlier. In one swift movement, she grabbed up her little sister and carried her out of the house, intending to keep her where it was safe for her – away from her father – until Raoul had calmed down.
Raoul was struggling and bellowing like the drunken ox he was, trying to get to his feet, demanding to know where 'the blind brat' was taking his daughter.
Journey whirled in the doorway. "The 'blind brat' is taking her somewhere safe, and I, Journey Du Val-Daaé, am going to find work at the Opera House, and show you – and the world! – Just what you, with your selfishness and drunken stupidity, have taken from my mother and mistakenly tried to take away from me!"
She couldn't see it with her own eyes, Christine knew, but with her blue, slightly filmed, eyes flashing, her hair cascading in angry waves down her tall, proud back, she was so beautiful… She reminded her mother so much of an angel… long forgotten… An angel with a soaring voice that could enthrall the nation if he tried, he had been a dark god to her… until she had seen his face.
His face had been ruined … she knew not by what, but she assumed he had been born that way. The last time she had seen him had been twenty years ago, far before Journey's birth… he had enthralled her, taught her to use her voice in a way she had never imagined…
And he had loved her.
He had loved her so greatly, so deeply; that she had left him kneeling before the throne he had built in his cold labyrinth and sobbing fit to break his ailing heart. She had loved him, oh how she had loved him as he stood there; his lips warm and spiced with the fine brandy he drank, as she kissed him for the first and last time. He had been crying then, she remembered, but so startled when she stood up to him, stretching to the very tallest she could (and still having to grasp his neck to tilt his head down) and placing her lips firmly to his. He had been so startled that for long moments, he had not kissed back and then … The passion in that man! Christine was old enough and mature enough now to admit to herself that nothing Raoul had ever done to her in the bedroom together (and they hadn't done much for a while, not since Lydie had been born) had ever sparked a passion in her as great as that single kiss had. It was if… as if all he was, his entire being, was placed into everything he did…
But in her heart, she knew, with knifing regret that brought tears to her eyes, she knew that the passion she had felt that night had been for her. Born from a love she still did not understand the magnitude of, it had been because of her and for her that he had lived, that his music had been made… and she had left him.
And as Raoul recovered from the shock of having his eldest daughter openly defy him, and rained blows down on Christine in retaliation, she bent her head and closed her eyes, tears falling silently for an Angel she had abandoned but never forgotten.
Little did she know that he hadn't forgotten her either.
