A/N: Sorry for the long break, been a bit busy. Next chapter, a slightly amusing one with Erik,will be up more quickly. :)

14. What Madame Rosa Thought

Christine always wore her shabbiest cloak to see Madame Rosa. The gypsy's home was in an unsavoury part of town, wedged between a pawnshop and a tobacconist, so such precautions were necessary to ward off the muggers and pickpockets that crawled the streets there. She walked quickly this morning, deftly dodging the pools of water left by the previous night's rain. The broken clay figurine was stored safely in her reticule, and she could feel the weight of it swinging gently under her cloak like a pendulum – the twisted, silken cord of the purse rubbed against her wrist, back and forth, to the rhythm of her walking.

She had visited Madame Rosa a few times since their first meeting around a year ago. The Baroness Vilente had thrown a party one night and the gypsy had been hired to serve as entertainment, delighting guests with reports of future lovers and next big wins at the racetrack. However, when Christine's turn came, the gypsy had offered nothing.

"I'm sorry, child. It is all cloudy, I cannot make it out," she had said, peering into her crystal ball. "Sometimes the fates like to play coquette with me, you know – they think it's part of their charm." The plump, rosy lady winked conspiratorially. "Bothersome things."

Christine was somewhat uneasy. "How can you see nothing, Madame? Please, do try again." The girl looked desperately into the ball, as if hoping to detect something there herself in its dense, icy depths.

"Well, my pet …if not a fortune, perhaps there is something else for you, hm?" The gypsy squinted into the ball for a long time, concentrating, then spoke slowly and deliberately. "'Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.'" She looked up with a triumphant smile and laughed good-humouredly. "There you are. Well I'm glad I saw something, even if it was only some dusty old words from the beyond. That quote is from Plato, if I'm not mistaken, and he was a very clever man. Very clever. He does so like to hand out a big dose of wisdom now and then … though unfortunately for us his contributions are not always relevant to the situation at hand. You would think with that intellect of his, he'd manage things a little better!" She chuckled again, then sighed. "I'm afraid that will have to content you for today, dear, for I can see nothing else. I'm sorry it turned out to be such gibberish."

Though their first meeting had been less than ideal, Christine had felt compelled to see the gypsy again. She didn't know if she believed in this sort of magic – certainly the Church didn't sanction it – but the idea of being able to go to someone for answers (vague as they were) appealed to her, and had quickly become necessary for her peace of mind. She had, for years, received her direction from a real, live Angel, who talked to her directly, accessibly – the soft, ethereal voice had always been a ready source of comfort, inspiration and wisdom from above. It had been a live, shimmering connection to that world which is removed from ours. But … that had all fallen apart. He had, in the end, been only a man.

In the months following the events at the Opera House, she had tried prayer, spending hours in the church, talking in her head to statues and stained-glass saints, confused questions. But they never answered back … the images continued to smile benignly, silently, remote and unblemished by her confessions. After having had a private line to heaven in the Angel's voice for so long, the result of her prayers now was distinctly unsatisfying. She doubted everything she thought she had known about the saints and angels – after all, many of the things she had learnt had been fed to her by a fraud, a mere mortal, not the celestial being she had imagined. She felt lonely and ignorant.

Madame Rosa therefore came as a relief. To the gypsy she could bring her irrational, unanswerable questions and obtain, if not an answer, at least a few concrete words to take away with her. No matter if they made little sense, no matter if they were based on sacrilegious magic; at least it was something, not the stony silence she received elsewhere.

She turned into the dark doorway now and went down some stairs; the smell of essential oils became stronger, and finally she stepped through a beaded curtain. The small room was familiar to her: windowless and candlelit, it was crammed full of shelves holding an infinite number of bottles of various shapes and colours, some old books and plenty of arcane bric-a-brac, including a stuffed owl and an African mask, staring at each other with mutual suspicion. Christine's entrance brought a draft, causing the candles to flicker and sending shadows skittering across the shelves like a school of frightened fish.

"Ah, hello my dear!" The gypsy greeted her with a warm smile, heaving her stout figure off the chair and taking Christine's hand. "I trust you have been keeping yourself well." She led the girl to the chair on the opposite side of the small table then took her own seat before the ball. "What brings you here?"

"An accident." Carefully, Christine retrieved the smashed figurine from her reticule and placed the pieces on the table, sliding them towards Madame Rosa. "What does it mean?" She waited, the lines of face tense

The gypsy's eyes looked the fragments over, the network of wrinkles on her face contracting into a quizzical expression. The bangles on her wrist clanged as she pushed the clay pieces around. "This is the item I gave you last time you were here, yes?"

"Yes. It was for luck."

"I remember." Her voice was soft and solemn. "You were hoping to have a child."

Christine nodded.

"Hmm." The gypsy's eyebrows came together over her coal-black eyes and she shuffled the pieces around some more. Some moments later, her puckered lips parted and she spoke: "How did it happen?"

Her client fidgeted a little and looked down at the table. "Well, I was preoccupied, and accidentally knocked it off the mantle with my hand."

"I see." The fortune-teller nodded thoughtfully. "And what was it you were preoccupied with at the time?"

A pause – Christine didn't know quite how to answer … she certainly wouldn't be revealing her crazy antics here. "The past," she said simply.

"Hmm," Madame Rosa said again, in a contemplative tone.

"Please … please tell me how I can fix it. I do so want a child."

The gypsy sighed, then spoke softly, with compassion. "Well my pet, I think the message here is quite clear. Something is preventing that blessed event from taking place … you must make peace with the past."

Christine bowed her head and was still. She was thinking; she gripped the edge of the table as if she needed the contact to keep her balance. Finally, she looked up in supplication. "But … but … I don't know how," she finished weakly.

Madame Rosa shook her head sagely and reached across the table to squeeze the girl's hand. "Don't worry. You'll find a way, my dear … or it will find you."

Later, walking home, she thought about the past. She knew exactly what 'the past' consisted of – there was one large shadow hovering there, looming over everything … one figure, one voice that defined those years … and that was the Phantom.

She exhaled deeply as she strode along, trying to disentangle her thoughts. She felt … what did she feel? It was hard to know anymore. Once she had been able to label her emotions, but now it was as if the more she tried to use words to describe them, the more confused she became.

At times, she found it useful to remind herself of the way he had looked at the very end: a man, just a man. A defeated man. A pitiful soul. Earlier on, he had almost succeeded in convincing herself that this was all there was to it – it was so much simpler that way, seeing him as a wounded madman.

But thinking about it in such a way … it made it all seem so … empty. If it was true, then everything he had said … everything he had taught her …

This was where she became entangled, as she remembered his music. Such glorious, soul-captivating music. And such a singing-master – he had seemed a fount of infinite wisdom: firm but sensitive … he had known exactly how far he could push her in her studies without it being too much. And further back, he had been a comforting voice in the darkness, telling her stories as a child.

All of that … and yet, he had been a madman. A murderer.

She felt as if she were caught in a net of insidious silken threads – thin, almost invisible strings that would not let her escape from his image. She felt his presence constantly, in some form or another … in her dreams, during her spells … and even in her waking hours. She sensed him everywhere, in the most impossible places: at the theatre, at parties, at the churchyard, lurking about her father's grave. And the smallest things could remind her of him – a snatch of music here, the gait of a man on the other side of the street as he walked. How many times had her heart begun to race when she saw a dark figure on the corner, only to find it was just some gentleman in a cape? She had learnt not to trust her perceptions such things, as she turned out to be consistently wrong – in fact, she had long ago learned to control any outward signs of these feelings, and even to ignore them … the way some madmen learn to ignore their delusions in order to lead normal lives.

What was it that prevented her from forgetting? Part of it was the shadow of her own guilt, she thought, remembering the way he looked as she and Raoul had escaped. They had left him in the dark, alone in the dark, the unhappy creature. He had been shunned all his life, and when he had looked to her for salvation, she had shunned him too; her human compassion rebuked her for it. In the early days, she had clung to this logic, for it was a comforting, noble explanation. Yes, his grip on her was simply the result of her own conscience and her good Christian upbringing. But … she knew it was more than guilt.

Part of it was also the alarming idea that he could still be alive somewhere. Where was he? Did he even still exist? If so, in what manner was he living now? Such questions haunted her, as did the possibility that they would one day cross paths again. Though she had no idea what would happen if she ever met him again in the flesh, she wanted know. This was certainly something that preoccupied her, yet … his hold on her was more than this too.

A great deal of it was the mystery, she realised – disturbing "whys" and "what ifs" came to her, begging for answers that could not be found. She really didn't know who, or what the Phantom was … she had been given glimpses of the submerged character, but understanding what he had been was like trying to describe a sea monster from a momentary shimmer of fins and scales on the water's surface. The time they had spent with each other – not as child and angel, not as master and pupil, but as human and human – had been so short, and yet so dizzyingly contradictory. Half their words to each other had been hallucinatory expressions of love … the other half, of passionate hate and bitterness. They had parted with only the beginnings of understanding between them: there were glimmerings of insight, but many more open-ended questions.

Since then, she had been through too many states of mind with regard to the Phantom – trying to construct him in her mind and reconcile the irreconcilable fragments of him she had. He was barely even a person for her anymore … just layers of conflicting images, some real, some she had perhaps imagined into reality. To her, he was all things and nothing.

Such imprecise images are dangerous, she thought with a frown, as she walked up the steps to her home. They stretch into whatever you want them to be.

Why did she so desperately need to understand him? After all, he was a madman, wasn't he? Madmen are supposed to be un-understandable … why couldn't she leave it at that?

Inside, she greeted the servants warmly, removed her cloak, then collapsed onto a sofa in the parlour. She lay with her head on a cushion, playing with the fringe of the curtain, staring at the late afternoon sunlight and listening to the steady, echoing tick of the clock.

It was more than idle curiosity, she had to admit. She needed to know because … well, she couldn't quite define it, but sometimes he seemed to be calling her from afar … coaxing some hidden part of her to its rightful home. That was all she could feel, and it didn't make any sense to her. She hated this … she hated him being a mystery to her, because it made her a mystery to herself.

In fact, she realised, tensing up, she hated him. She hated him for making things so complicated. For killing people. For hurting Raoul. She hated him for what he had put her through, for making her different, for immersing her in his strange, dark world. She hated him for what he was still doing to her – making her crazy with her spells and her dancing and endless ridiculousness. Right now, she should be a blissfully ignorant and happy young wife … they way all her friends were. She should have a happy home and a happy family. He was ruining everything.

But ... he let you go, Christine, so you could have all of that, a part of her whispered.

Ha! Another part retorted scornfully. He may have let them go, but he had probably done it on purpose, knowing how things would turn out later. Vindictive ghost. She wouldn't be surprised if he had put a spell or a curse on them somehow, so he could enjoy her pain. Perhaps a curse from the Phantom was the reason she had been unable to fall pregnant: he didn't want them to be happy. If only …

She caught herself before she spiralled down into even more irrational thoughts.

Never mind. The point now was that Madame Rosa was right. You have to make peace with the past, she had said; Christine's meditations so far had only proved the point.

But … how does one make peace with a ghost?

She sighed and thought some more, her fingers drumming the windowsill.