A/N – I think this has to be the shortest length of time in between updates from me in years: perhaps my muse decided that Siberia was too cold for her. This chapter is still padding though, really: I swear the good stuff is coming later – there is a plot buried somewhere under all the nonsense. Christine Persephone tells me E/C fluff is no longer a valuable commodity here at ff.n … I really hope that isn't true. Where have all the E/C shippers gone?
Lavendar: Christine as Mimi? Now, wherever would you get an idea like that from …? ;) We'll see! :P
Love and hugs to all who review; you make my day.
"I won't have it." Philippe strode across the room, his fist clenched around his brandy. His demeanour was rigid – his self-control never in doubt – but the whiteness of his face and the high spots of colour on his cheeks told St Cyr that he was struggling to hold back the urge to throw his glass of brandy across the room. "I will not have it. God knows she managed to soil the family's name sufficiently last time with all that business about the ghost; I'm damned if I'll let her drag his memory through the mud as she did his reputation while he was alive."
St Cyr rose silently and relieved Philippe of his glass.
"Don't you stand there in judgement on me!" Philippe snapped, frustrated by his friend's stoicism. "I'd like to see you stand there so bloody calm and reasonable if it were your sister-in-law making a public spectacle of herself!"
St Cyr took a sip from his own glass. "It's been six years, Philippe. She's been a model of decorum for that time; there has been no stain on Raoul's memory because of her behaviour."
"Until now!"
"It is … unorthodox. But this is an enlightened age, Philippe; and you know she will behave in a manner befitting her state."
Philippe shook his head stubbornly. "I won't have it. What would Raoul have said?"
"He first fell in love with her onstage. And … he would have wanted her to be happy. A woman needs occupation just as a man does."
"Then she should marry again. Why must she be so stubborn?" St Cyr did not reply, and Philippe drained his glass, his movements uncoordinated. "Why don't you marry her, Armand?" he persisted with the irritable frustration of half-drunkenness, placing his glass rather too firmly on the side table.
St Cyr laughed sadly and took a sip of his cognac. "Ah, my friend," he sighed, gazing into the fire. "If only it were possible."
Philippe's temper was eased for the night, but all of St Cyr's reasoning and calming influence could not heal his friend's indignant fury that his brother's wife should think of resuming her former career. St Cyr shielded Christine as best he could from Philippe's wrath, minimising the situation by dismissing it with careless humour as an insignificance, but Christine was still stung and hurt by this latest evidence that, tolerate her as her brother-in-law had for Raoul's sake, he had never liked her.
Only Erik's ramrod support and the laconical amusement of St Cyr gave Christine the strength to withstand Philippe's rage. As it was, her return to the stage caused a minor sensation in the tabloid press, but after a few weeks of rehearsals, by which time the disappointed reporters had largely given up their hopes of stories of atrocious behaviour or tawdry love affairs, Christine was allowed to settle back into the routine of life at the Opéra with surprisingly little fuss.
As the opening night of La Bohéme approached, however, Christine's nerves began to get the better of her.
"I can't do it," she said abruptly as Erik opened the door to her one crisp December day less than two weeks before the first performance. She strode into the flat and began to pace up and down with a nervous energy that amused Erik.
"I can't do it, do you hear me?"
Erik silently took her cloak, a faint smile playing about his lips.
"Don't laugh at me, Erik!" She began to pace again, a lock of her hair coming loose and falling into her eyes. "I'm twenty-six, do you hear me? I haven't sung in front of an audience for six years." She swept her hair out of her eyes with a feverish gesture of nervousness and continued. "My voice is horribly out of condition, and if I don't make myself ill with nerves before opening night I'll probably faint onstage and …"
She paused, rather out of breath and feeling somewhat at a loss, disconcerted by Erik's silence. Having run out of steam for individual panics, she reverted to easier expostulations. "I just can't do it."
Erik did not comment.
"Well, aren't you going to say anything?" she asked at last, frustrated.
Erik gestured towards her chair and, when she shook her head roughly in dissent, sat down with languid grace in his own.
"Which of those assertions would you like me to dismiss first, then?" he asked. "I assume that's why you've come to me. Shall we start with your age? You are, it is very true, twenty-six years old. I might remind you that the Opéra's current lead soprano is almost exactly three months older than you." He paused, offering her an opportunity for comment, and, when she did not avail herself of it, continued. "You have not sung in front of an audience for six years; again, true. You have, however, been singing for me for at least the last – what is it now? nine months? – and I guarantee I am a more exacting and critical audience than any you will find in your opening night crowd at the Opera Populaire. I will pass over the insult to my teaching implicit in the suggestion that your voice is out of condition and settle for assuring you that it is not; and finally, think of the headlines if you were to faint onstage in the middle of the first performance."
Christine nodded breathlessly, taken aback, and he smiled gently, abandoning irony.
"Tell me what prompted this attack of stage fright."
Christine shuffled in her seat and looked down at her toes. All the nervous energy of only a moment ago seemed to have drained out of her, and she suddenly looked very young indeed.
"I've never …" She stopped.
"Go on." His voice was soft and very kind, and she was encouraged.
"I've never performed without you," she said at last. "Never. Always, when I was at the Opera before, you were there to watch … and it made me feel braver to know you were with me. And now, performing without you there for the first time … I'm scared." She blushed and lowered her eyes. "I know it's silly."
Erik was silent for a very long time, and when Christine looked up, embarrassed, into his face, she saw a smear of heightened colour across his face.
"It's not silly," he said, very softly. "Not at all."
All his wry humour had vanished; he now appeared utterly sincere.
There was a brief pause, in which Christine felt relief ease through her. At last he spoke.
"How could you think I would not be there?"
She looked up, startled. "But … you haven't lived there for years."
He smiled tightly. "There are other ways of procuring a seat at the Opéra than extortion, my dear," he informed her ironically, moving to stand by the piano. "For once, I have resorted to the legitimate purchase of a seat."
Christine's uncertainty vanished; her eyes lit up. "Are you – I mean … oh, thank you!"
And before Erik could stop her, she had leapt up and flung her arms around his neck like a small child overjoyed with a beloved parent's gift. Erik, unprepared for her sudden weight, took a step back, steadying her with a hand on her waist.
"I'm so glad … you've made me feel so much –" She looked up into his eyes, and stopped abruptly, awkward embarrassment suddenly replacing her smile as she registered the expression in his eyes and his hand at her waist.
"… better," she finished awkwardly, stepping quickly backwards and stumbling on her skirts. Erik put out a hand to steady her, and she waved it away with a quick gesture of embarrassment. She looked up, her face scarlet, and gave Erik a flushing, embarrassed smile. He was standing quite still, and only the faintest staining of colour around his visible cheekbone betrayed any agitation.
"So," Erik cleared his throat, and a rather forced smile formed on his lips. "Has that cured you of your stage fright?"
Christine laughed, still a little flustered, and sat down, folding her ankles beneath her skirts like a small child.
"Yes … thank you."
Erik smiled and seated himself at the piano.
"You are very welcome. Now … what are you going to sing for me?"
The first night of La Boheme was not an unqualified success. Knowing that Erik was in the audience, Christine was comforted, and her nerves did not undermine her performance; but the lead soprano, an English beauty named Angela, having learned the week before of the sudden and unexpected death of a sister, was still shaken and delivered a performance which was, albeit brave, decidedly undistinguished. The critics were kind, but their praise was muted, and the production was not expected to last.
Erik endured the intense discomfort of being among so many people again sustained only by the promise of Christine's company at the end of the night, and sat through the performance fighting not to betray the unbearable frustration he felt as the unfortunate Angela stumbled through her scenes. Had Christine only been a little more confident, the part might have been hers; and although Angela's voice was not unpleasant, he knew that Christine would have been better.
By the end of the performance, he was simmering with irritation, and was forced to make a conscious effort to calm himself before Christine hurried out of the stage door, muffled in a thick cloak against the cold.
He was generous in praise of her, but conspicuously silent on the subject of poor Angela; and Christine, feeling vaguely guilty without quite understanding the cause, almost wished that she had asked to be considered for a larger part.
He took her for dinner at a small, quiet restaurant with snowy linen and crystal glinting diamonds in the muted candlelight, the faint chink of cutlery against china and soft conversation providing a soothing background. After leaving the restaurant, they wandered with seeming aimlessness into a wooded park, and it was not until it began to snow, tiny soft flakes drifting tenderly down from the midnight-blue sky, that they retreated to Erik's flat.
As Christine crossed the threshold of Erik's flat, bending to acknowledge Marguerite's hysterical greeting, she realised that it had been years since she had been so happy. Late-night dinners and moonlit walks had always been a central part of their routine when she had first performed at the Opera Populaire: regardless of the countless other offers she might receive, Erik would always arrive at her dressing room and take her down to his house on the lake; the disastrous performance of Il Muto and, of course, Erik's ill-dated Don Juan Triumphant, were the only two occasions she could recall when she had not spent the night of a performance in the beautiful pink room Erik had prepared for her in his house.
Once safely inside Erik's flat – smaller and yet so similar in feeling to the house on the lake – and having calmed Marguerite, who remained so obsessively protective of Erik that prolonged periods of absence on his part had a tendency to induce hysteria upon his return, they sat, and Christine closed her eyes, relaxing into the softness of her armchair. She opened her eyes at the sound of Erik's voice.
"Here."
He offered her a glass of red wine, and seated himself in the armchair opposite, taking a sip from his own glass. There came a decisive meow, and Marguerite leapt up to curl possessively in his lap. Erik smiled and passed a hand gently along the soft fur of her back, and Christine began to laugh. Something about Erik's cat's single-minded devotion to her master struck her as extremely funny; he appeared so sublimely normal, sitting in an armchair with a cat on his knee.
Erik smiled and rolled his eyes in eloquent irony. "Ridiculous animal." Christine began to laugh even harder.
As the night wore on, Erik found his mood changing subtly: ever since the end of the performance, he had silently rejoiced in her company, thrilling in having her so near; he could not remember the last time he had been so happy.
But as time slipped away, a shade of wistfulness began to creep into his happiness: she was near enough to touch and just too far away for him to dare. She was laughing and unendurably beautiful. To give himself something to do with his hands to prevent himself from reaching out to touch her hand or stroke her hair, he kept refilling her glass; and it was late at night before he realised that she might have had a little too much to drink.
It had not occurred to Erik, on whom alcohol rarely had any effect, that Christine might not be of his body type; and although he at first interpreted her noisy gleefulness as a rather extreme reaction to the thrill of returning to performance, he slowly began to realise as she became more and more pliant across the table that the alcohol might be affecting her adversely.
Everything would have been all right, of course, had her state of giddy excitement endured. But as it was, it did not.
It was some time after midnight when her joyful exuberance began to fade into subdued melancholy.
"Raoul always used to say red wine made him feel guilty," she murmured, staring into the crimson depths of her glass. "It made him think of communion …"
Erik sat quite still, stricken. By unspoken agreement, they did not speak of Raoul between themselves: the memories reference to Christine's husband invariably brought were painful for both. Erik knew she still thought of him, of course – after all, they had been married for the better part of a year – but he was still unprepared for the rush of pain that hearing her speak of him brought.
To stave off his own unexpected reaction, he rose and refilled his own glass. When he turned back to Christine, he felt a resigned shock of depression as he realised she had begun to cry, and that he could no longer stall the inevitable conversation. He resumed his seat opposite her, and waited for her to speak.
"I miss him," she whispered at last.
Erik turned his head away. "I know," he said, almost inaudibly.
"It's … the little things," she began tearfully. "When I wake in the night, he isn't there. And it still comes as a shock, however many times …" she broke off, tears choking her. "And … and coming home and being alone … all the time …"
Erik stood up abruptly, feeling sick. He, of course, was used to waking to an empty house in the night; and he knew far better than Christine what it was to be terminally alone.
"Don't go," she wept.
And he did not.
They sat together throughout the night, Christine talking rapidly, tripping over her words as grief and alcohol combined to rob her of her coordination and reserve. And when, in the early hours of the morning, she finally sank, exhausted, into his arms, Erik experienced an emotion utterly removed from the consuming, scorching torment he was so accustomed to associate with her. For once, all he wanted was to comfort her; to see her eyes shine with laughter again rather than the false diamonds of tears. He let her cry herself out on his shoulder, and, as his hand stroked her hair, smoothed the soft tangles back from her face – lovely even in grief – he could almost believe that one day this would be enough. Enough to hear her sing, see her smile, feel the room light with her laughter; one day, one day he would teach himself that this could suffice.
