Death of an Angel

by Gumdrop1

The Phantom of the Opera: Christine's life and death through Raoul's eyes

Arc: Movie
Title: Death of an Angel
Rating: PG
Character/Pairings: Raoul, Erik/Christine, OC
Warnings: Character death, this story is a tragedy.
Word Count: 5,574

We were happy at first. She was happy at first. I bought her a house by the sea. She would spend her days as most future brides with a house would, decorating it. Her nights were spent walking on the beach singing to herself. She kept putting off the wedding, I didn't think anything of it, I thought she just needed time. But after a few years, after she had reached her twentieth birthday, long silent gaps began to appear in her songs as if she was waiting for someone to join in with her. I did one day. I meant well. She stopped dead still and looked at me. I'll never forget that look as long as I live. A look that said I had committed the worst kind of blasphemy, and how dare I attempt to sing the part reserved for an angel, for her angel. I wasn't stupid. I knew why she was unhappy. I knew what she wanted, whom she wanted. I should've let her go then, made her go. Had I done so then maybe she wouldn't have lived out her life in misery. How many lives did I ruin because of my pride? Four at the very least. Pride, how foolish. Giving her up back then would've hurt so much less then how things turned out. But how was I to know? I thought she would improve in time, I thought she would forget. But she didn't on both accounts.

I forbade music from her life after that. I thought that this would break his hold over her. I understand now that his hold could not be broken because she did not want it to be broken. But what else was I supposed to do? Not the sensible logical thing of course, instead I chose to do nothing, act as if it was all nothing. This seemed to only drive her further inside herself. I stopped talking of marriage, I stopped talking at all.

Things seemed to, well not calm down exactly, but mellow out for a while. I should've known better, that this was just the calm before the storm. I shouldn't have been surprised when I came home one night and found that Christine had dismissed all the servants. But I was. I was surprised to find every mirror in the house smashed to pieces. I was even more surprised to find Christine hiding underneath the old piano in a dark corner of the basement. I had told the servants to get rid of that piano years ago. The basement was cold and damp. Christine was laying on the stone floor in nothing but a thin nightgown, corset, and stockings that must have done little to shield her from the cold and damp. Christine was lying on her side with her hands up in front of her face. There was blood on her hands and it was with a shock that I realized she must have smashed all the mirrors with her bare hands. I crouched down at the end of the piano but made no attempt to approach her further.

"You're hurt."

"I'm always hurt." She squeezed her hands into fists, causing fresh blood droplets to spill out from the numerous little cuts. She didn't even flinch at the pain. How had I not seen previously that she'd gotten this bad. I had known she was unhappy, upset, but this?

"You can't go on like this Christine." Silence. "Go to him." She perked up at this, raising her head off the floor to look at me.

"If I knew where he was I would've left a long time ago." I don't think I'd ever seen such a coldness in her eyes. But I know now I never really knew her like he did. For all their age difference he saw the woman were I still refused to see anything but the child I fell in love with. I realized that that's why she had stayed at that house by the sea for so long despite her terrible unhappiness, because she couldn't find her lost angel and she had no where else to go. No doubt all those mysterious expenses I had been paying out were her paying people to help her find him. He beloved angel of music. My heart should've been broken but I was almost as numb as her at this point. We had lived in this house for ten years and yet we were further apart then we'd ever been before. I stood up without another word and walked away, leaving here there bleeding and crying on the damp basement floor waiting for her angel to come and take her away to his world of endless night. I used to hate him for loving her, but at that moment I hated myself for not loving her as unselfishly as he had that night in the opera house. I had watched her misery grow these past years and done nothing.

She was gone the next morning. There was no note, not that I was expecting one, besides I was sick of notes anyway. I suspected that she had left in pursuit of her beloved angel. I wished her well, truly, maybe she would find the peace with him that she couldn't find with me.

I have no doubt in my mind that she found him. But any peace must have been short lived because ten years later she returned as mysteriously as she had left. I found her sitting in the living room waiting for me to return home one evening. She didn't look much better then when I had last see her though the cuts on her hands had healed long ago.

"What do you want?" I asked, not wanting to be the pawn in any more of her mind games. Ten years of watching her go around the house talking to mirrors and hearing her cry at night from the other side of the house had been quite enough.

"I want to marry you." I laughed, honest to God I actually laughed.

"Are you mad? You've been gone for ten years. You left me to be with another man and now you want me to marry you just as if nothing had ever happened?"

"Yes."

"That's it? No explanation, no apology, just 'yes'."

"What more do you need?" I wanted a lot more and I should've told her so. But the truth was that despite my surety now that she was with the phantom at that moment I didn't know for sure. I wanted to believe that she hadn't found him, that she had come back to me because she loved me. I knew better, but I still wanted to pretend, I wanted to try. All I knew for sure was that I still loved and wanted her and I was too selfish, to stupid to see that she was in no condition to make good decisions on her own any more. God love her Christine's convictions only carry so far. But I was even weaker then she. Even though I knew in my heart that it would destroy her in the end I married her anyway.

On our wedding night she sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window into the night sky. I wondered what she was thinking. I went over to her and laid my hand on her shoulder. She stiffened and looked at me. I could see in her eyes what she was thinking and it wasn't anything I had hoped for. I never touched her again. She went back to her own room in her own wing and I left her to her own devices and her own piano which I had moved up from the basement. Though she still wasn't happy she seemed more balanced, and slowly she even seemed to grow more content with herself as if some invisible weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. It wasn't until two months later that I learned the reasons for Christine's demeanor.

Looking back Christine never did come straight out and tell me the secret that she was carrying. The obvious swell of she stomach made the confession for her. Christine was six months pregnant. I never asked, I never needed to. I knew the child was the phantom of the opera's. But I always wondered if he ever knew or if he had would it have fixed whatever it was that had torn them apart. I'll never know of course, but I still wonder.

Christine's spirits seemed to grow along with her child. She never told me so, she never spoke to me at all, but I would catch sight of her admiring her pregnant form in any and every mirror she passed. And she smiled, I hadn't seen her smile since we had first arrived to that house by the sea. I should've been hurt, angry, and jealous. But I wasn't, I was just so glad to see her happy again.

Christine gave birth on a freezing cold night in December. I paced down stairs like an expectant Father, though I had no illusion about my role in this child's life. I was not it's father. I remember hearing it's first cry. A high soprano if I'd ever heard one. I shouldn't have been surprised, it had it's parents musical talent. I did not see either of them until the next morning. Christine was laying propped up on her side gazing lovingly at the child.

Isn't she beautiful Raoul?" I slowly stepped closer to the bed. What kind of monster would the phantom have fathered? Looking back it seems like such a cruel thought. For the child that Christine gave birth to, the child fathered by the notorious phantom of the opera, was the most beautiful child I had ever, or will ever see. I couldn't help but smile at the tiny little girl cradled in Christine's arms.

"Yes she is." And Christine had never looked more beautiful since the night I saw her sing the lead in Hannibal. Sometimes, often, I wonder what would have happened if I had never come to the Opera Populaire. Maybe if Christine had gone with him in the beginning they wouldn't have fallen apart. Maybe they would've been able to hold themselves together and Christine would've been happier. Maybe.

"I'm going to call her Little Lotte, for she has been blessed by the angel of music."

"No doubt of it."

Little Lotte seemed to breath new life into Christine. It seemed like there was hope in her yet. She would walk up and down the shoreline with Little Lotte in her arms. Singing. But eventually the gaps reappeared in her songs. And despite the joy that her daughter brought her the silence of those gaps started to weigh her down again. And once again there was no Angel of Music to sing songs in her head. I walked on eggshells around Christine, giving her plenty of room for her to be with her child. I had decided that I would not be unkind to Little Lotte. After all Christine was my wife and she loved that little child more than anything. Christine, however, had other ideas.

Christine and I always ate in the dining room together. I don't know why, we rarely spoke, and my presence seemed to unnerve her. But none the less there we were one morning sitting down to breakfast. Christine laid Little Lotte down in her bassinet and realized she had forgotten to bring down the baby's blanket. Or so she said to the baby, she hadn't said a word to me all morning. She left the room and headed upstairs to the nursery. A few moments after she left I heard the baby gurgle. It was sheer curiosity that drew me away from the table and over to the bassinet. Wanting a closer look at the phantom's child. At first her eyes were closed. The baby's hair was brown and curly like Christine, no everything was like Christine. The child looked exactly like it's mother. Or so I thought, but then Little Lotte opened her eyes. Those eyes, those haunting eyes that seemed to bore into your very soul. If I had had any doubt before I had none now. There was no question that the phantom of the opera had fathered Christine's child. The baby looked up at me in wonder, unsure of whom I was. She didn't move a muscle, only stared, I didn't want to frighten her and make her cry so I reached into the bassinet and rubbed the baby's stomach softly. "Hello Little Lotte." I cooed at the baby. "Aren't you a pretty little thing." No sooner could I get any more words out of my mouth then Christine ran into the room and snatched the baby out of the bassinet and backed away from me. Lotte, startled by her mother's agitated state started to scream. Christine held the child against her shoulder and bounced slightly, rubbing her back. "Shh Little Lotte. Don't be afraid, Mama's here, everything will be alright."

"I would never hurt her Christine." I said, standing up slowly.

"You wanted to hurt my angel before."

"I let you go to him didn't I?" Christine seemed to ponder this for a second. But her mind just would not allow her to be rational.

"Little Lotte is mine."

"I'm not arguing that." Christine looked around distressed, as if her mind was suddenly betraying her. As if for the life of her she just couldn't understand, like she was trapped in a dream state she couldn't escape from.

"She is blessed by the Angel of Music."

"I know that." Christine's eyes darted from side to side and she shifted her weight back and forth from foot to foot. Her face contorted and she looked as if she was going to start sobbing any second. The baby continued to scream.

"Leave us be!" She screamed, then tore out of the dining room. I sighed. I didn't understand what was happening. If the phantom had died or had sent her away I would expect her to be grief stricken, but this? These hysterical outbursts were becoming all too frequent. The only explanation was that Christine was losing her mind. Perhaps the girl I knew was not as strong as I had thought. Only thing I could do was to try and be patient with her and hope her condition improved. I informed the maid that Christine would be taking breakfast in her chamber and I sat back down at the table to eat my own.

From then on I did my best to stay away from both of them lest risk another outburst from Christine. The child never seemed the least bit interested in me though I continually wonder what she thought of the insanity which she was born into. I feel sorry for her that she never had a chance to know what her mother was like before this dark cloud came to rest over her head. Make no mistake that Christine loved her Little Lotte more than anything. She doted on the child and I saw to it that Christine had the means to do so. But by the time Little Lotte was old enough to really talk to her mother Christine was too far gone to hold up a substantial conversation. Christine sang to and with her little girl, the child showing genius ability with music. I wasn't surprised, after all, just look at who her parents were. Christine told her daughter stories for her namesake and the angel of music. She told her how her father had sent herself the angel of music. How he trained her voice and blessed her with her daughter. I don't know if Lotte understood what that meant. If she could ever extrapolate from those stories that the angel of music was a real man and her father. I'll never know.

Lotte never openly questioned my presence or place in the house or her life. In fact she showed me the same cold indifference her mother did. But sometimes she would stare at me with those eyes, the phantoms eyes, and it was if she was looking right through me. Like she could see all my sins and secrets. Like she blamed me for whatever had gone so wrong with Christine. Maybe she was right to blame me. When Lotte was sixteen she ran away. Her and Christine were so detached from me that I didn't notice her missing for several days and it was only when I inquired about the child did Christine inform me. She didn't say that Lotte had run away per se. She said only that she had gone and that she would be ok as the angel of music would watch over her. Later the maid told me that Lotte had left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye to her mother. What happened was another mystery that I would never figure out

Christine stopped singing after Lotte left. And she rarely spoke, or even left her bedchamber for that matter. It was decades before Lotte returned to our house by the sea. It was a freezing cold night in December, the same kind of night she had been born on. I wonder if Lotte even knew the day of her birth. I don't recall Christine celebrating the child's birthday but it's possible they celebrated away from me. It was a big house and Christine had kept her and her daughter to themselves as much as possible.

I was surprised to see Lotte walk into the den that cold December night. Though the butler had announced her arrival I was sure she'd go straight to her mother without casting so much as a glance to me. But there she stood shivering, the snow on her dark cloak melting to drip down onto the floor. Her eyes were even more intense then I remembered them. I waited for a long while but she still said nothing. I knew there was no way to outthink her. She was her father's daughter after all.

"Come and sit Lotte, you must be cold." She let the butler come behind her without a glance, used to the luxuries she had grown up with. She sat in the stiff wing back chair across from me. The large chair made her look small and lost, especially when she leaned back and closed her eyes. She stayed like that for several moments before I finally decided to speak to her. "I'm glad you decided to come back. Your mother has missed you." She opened her eyes but did not look at me, instead she stared into the roaring fire place.

"Surely she's lost her mind. Please tell me she wasn't always like this."

"No your mother was very strong and gentle, and happy." Lotte shifted in her seat

"Happy is not an adjective I would think about associating with my mother. Even in her best moments it seemed as if she was haunted by something she just couldn't put her finger on."

"I agree." I sighed.

"So what happened? What caused her to lose her grip on things?" I sighed again and pondered Lotte's question.

"I used to think I knew. That I could pinpoint one specific moment where she got pushed over the edge of sanity. But now I think that there isn't one."

"Then why is she like this?"

"I think that she is sick Lotte. I think that there is something terribly wrong with her. I think that it's probably been there all her life. I know as I think back about our childhood together there were things that I didn't understand that make more sense now. I think it's gotten worse as she's grown."

"She's insane."

"I think there's more to it than that. I think one day doctors will be able to figure out what goes so wrong in some people's minds and know how to fix it."

"That doesn't help her now."

"No it doesn't." Lott paused, seeming to collect her thoughts.

"Why did you keep her? Why didn't you just send her to the asylum and me to an orphanage and be free of the burden we caused you?"

"Because I love her."

"Mother doesn't think so." I sighed, I wasn't surprised.

"I tried to give her everything she wanted, but I don't think she even knew what she wanted."

"Because of her…condition."

"Yes, because of her condition." Lotte sat a few moments longer before rising and heading to her mother's side. I called to her and she paused. She tilted her head slightly towards the sound of my voice but did not turn around. "She loves you more than anything." She didn't respond, instead leaving the room with the same well-choreographed grace with which she had entered it. Her father's daughter indeed.

Christine seemed pleased with her daughter's homecoming. She began to eat more and venture out of her bedchamber. She became more light and friendly with everyone, myself included. It was almost as if I got my own Little Lotte back. She could only manage small talk but she was calmer and her health improved. The real Little Lotte had little to do with me. The conversation we had on the night she returned must have satisfied any curiosity she had because she never sought my company again.

Fifteen years later Christine started getting sick. One illness after another, and her mind only detierated further. She started singing to mirrors, trying to call forth her angel. She would gorge herself on food then refuse to eat for days. Her emotional outbursts became more frequent as well. Teacups were thrown at the wall, her wedding dress was thrown into the fire, and mirrors were once again smashed as she tried to search for her angel behind them. Sometimes I would walk past a room she was in only to have her come running out of it screaming at the top of her lungs how I had taken away her angel of music to punish her for not loving me. I could only stand there dumbstruck as Lotte came out and began to calm her mother down. Sometimes I would try to catch Lotte's face to see whether Lotte believed her mother's accusations, but I could never catch her gaze. I don't think Lotte cared what I did or didn't do, all she cared about was tending to her mother. Lotte was the only person in the household who could calm Christine down.

Christine's illnesses started to take their toll on her. She spent more time in her sickbed then out of it. Her mental state only got worse. I would hear her shrieking from all the way across the house. Because of the continuous destruction at Christine's hands I had all the mirrors removed. Slowly she began to lose her hold on all facets of reality. She would suddenly forget where she was and scream at anyone who was near her. Thinking that we'd kidnapped her she'd call out to her angel of music to forgive her and come to her aid. Eventually she became so disorientated that she became violent. One night she ran out of the house and down the beach and continued out into the ocean. Fearing she would drown I chased after her. Though I succeed in dragging, and I do mean dragging her back into the house she had taken her anger and frustration out on me. I had bruises, scratches on my face, and a bite wound on my hand. After that none of the servants would care for her, leaving Little Lotte to care for her mother alone. Alone, that's what it all comes down to isn't it? In the end we are all alone. But now I am getting ahead of myself. Lotte cared for her mother during the day, then at night I would sit up and watcher over her. Lotte slept on a small single bed in Christine's room in case Christine woke up frightened but it still seemed to ease her mind that someone was sitting up with her mother at night. Still, despite the tired look in Lotte's eyes she seemed much happier now that she was her mother's primary caregiver, and Christine was certainly a lot calmer in her care. Christine was so delusional that at that point I am unsure of what she really was able to comprehend. I can't sat for sure if Christine even recognized Lotte anymore, but she recognized her eyes and would still at the fight of them and whisper about blessings from an angel. Christine would wake up in the mornings fine for a few moments, looking around to see where she was. But soon she would realized that she wasn't where she wanted to be. She would struggle to sit up and reach over to her nightstand. She would shuffle the things on it around as if what she was looking for would suddenly appear if only she continued to look for it. Eventually she would become frustrated and begin to talk aloud, to herself or us I never knew.

"Where is it?" she'd call.

"Where is what Mother?" Lotte would ask, having stirred at the sound of Christine's voice.

"It's supposed to be right here."

"What's supposed to be there?" Lotte got up, put her robe on and went to sit at her mother's side.

"The monkey." Christine's voice softened a bit but she continued to rummage through the items on the nightstand.

"What monkey?" Lotte was always so patient with her mother. I envied that. Truth be told I'd been glad that Christine had wanted little to do with me all these years. I had run out of patience for her insanity years ago. By this point I was an old man who was too tired, too exhausted to even think about making things better. I didn't know what to do and didn't care to try.

"The one that plays music. He always kept it by the bed."

"But you're not there mother. There's no monkey here." Lotte fluffed Christine's pillows then helped Christine to lay back. Christine let out a confused sigh. She seemed to except Lotte's explanation even if it confused her still. After Christine laid back she would look up at Lotte and she would freeze. "Oh." she would whisper, it sounding like all the air had whooshed out of her lungs from the shock at seeing her daughter's eyes. Lotte would smile down at her. This was an impressive sight to see as Lotte rarely smiled.

"You have my angel's eyes."

"I know. He sent me to you, you're angel of music. He sent me to watch over you." Every muscle in Christine's body appeared to relax under her daughter's gentle gaze. This was the point where I would leave them. Closing the door behind myself, envious of the well choreographed routine that I played no part in. If I had use at all it was only not to interfere with Lotte's caring for Christine. All of this continued for several months. Until one night as I climbed the staircase to begin my nightly vigil for Christine I saw Lotte's outline in the darkness of the hallway, she was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest, silent as a ghost.

"Lotte." I whispered. She slowly turned her head to face me and I looked into her eyes. Those eyes, her father's eyes. I had never seen such a haunted look in Lotte's eyes, but I recognized that look from the look in the phantom's eyes when he released Christine and I. I understood then, it was a look of great loss. "She's gone." Lotte's only acknowledgement was a blink of her haunted eyes. "When?" I wasn't sure if she would even speak to me but she replied in that melodious voice.

"This afternoon. I had just brought up her lunch and had turned around to put things on her bed tray. When I turned back around she was gone."

"You've been sitting up here all this time?"

"Where else would I go?" I sighed. Where else would she go indeed. I went to sit beside her, not too close. She watched me as I slowly sat down about a foot to her right. My aged body complaining painfully that I should've never tried such a complicated maneuver as sitting on the floor but I completed it none the less. Once seated as comfortably on the floor as a man of my age could expect to I turned my head to look at Lotte.

"You could've come to me."

"Could I?" She turned her head away from me, hiding her face in her drawn up knees. "What could you have done?"

"I could have been here with you so you weren't alone."

"You've never been there before. You hardly ever spoke to me. You never helped me find seashells on the beach or sat and played with me on the floor, or even smiled at me. I don't remember you smiling at me even once my whole life." I sighed. She was right, she was right about all of it. I was always concerned with the way she had stared at me, without smiling, that I never stopped to consider that she was waiting to see how I would react to her. She was just a child. No matter how intense her eyes were, how strong and wise she seemed she was still just a child. I think, in truth, I think that there has always been a part of me that feared Little Lotte. The only child of the phantom of the opera. How was I supposed to know what powers she held. Foolish, I know, but trapped in that dark house by the sea I no longer knew what to think or believe about anything. Still, none of that could fix the loneliness that lingered in Lotte's form as she sat curled up on the floor outside her mother's door.

"I know, I'm sorry." She raised her head and looked at me, what she was thinking as she stared at me I do not know. After a while her eyes glanced down briefly to the floor and then back up to me.

"I've never been around somebody who died before. I don't know what to do." What was I to say.

"I lost my parents. I was younger then you."

"Mother just died, but she was lost a long time ago." I didn't say anything else to her, there was nothing left to say.

I buried Christine the next day. I would like to say that I buried my Christine but she was never really mine. Lotte didn't come near the coffin. She stood like a statue in front of the DAAE crypt until the people had dispersed and I was the only one who remained. She came to stand by my side and I dismissed my nurse and driver. I didn't say anything to her for a long while. I didn't know what to say. We may have had just buried Christine's body but she had died long ago. I'm unsure if she really lived at all. What was it like inside her haunted mind. When I had taken her away from the opera house I thought I was saving her. I was so concerned with saving her from the phantom's grasp that I didn't realize he had been the only thing holding her together all those years. Without his strength to hold her together she had fallen apart. And now there was Lotte. She had lived her entire life with a mother whom had lost her grip on reality and without a father to love her. I couldn't blame the phantom for that. He probably never knew of Christine's pregnancy. No that sin was mine and mine alone. I had been all she had in her tragic little world and I had failed. I wanted to say I was sorry but I knew she would offer me no forgiveness, and I deserved none anyway.

"There is an auction and the old opera house. I am going to go and try to get that music box she loved so much. Are you going to come with me."

"No."

"Will I see you at home then?" She didn't respond so I left her there to stand over her mother's grave. When I came back with the music box she was gone. But the phantom had been there. Had they run into each other? For there sakes I hoped so. Father and daughter deserved a chance to reunite, and they were all they had in the world. The phantom of the opera and his child. I don't know what happened to either of them. I never saw Little Lotte again. Laying on my deathbed I knew better then to expect her. I was not her father. I would die alone. But I took peace in knowing that Christine, though she had lived her life in turmoil, had died in peace under her daughter's angelic gaze. And I knew that Lotte would be alright, for just as Christine had always said, the angel of music would watch over her.