Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from "The Phantom of the Opera". The belong to Gaston Leroux / Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Author´s notes: Obviously this is not the sequel to "A wish your heart makes". I want to write this story first since it has been on my mind for quite a while. It should have been a one-shot but I decided to make it a chapter story when I saw it´d become too long. However, I don´t think it´ll have more than a couple of chapter. But we´ll see...
Chapter OneThe Opéra Populaire resembled a gigantic hive, tonight more than ever before. Crowds of people were rushing in one of two directions, either through the doors and down the street, not even waiting for their coaches to arrive, or into the depths of the building, after him, the Phantom, who had abducted Christine Daaé. The managers behaved like frightened horses during a thunderstorm, sometimes running around pointlessly, sometimes too scared to move at all. Carlotta was unusually quiet. Only an occasional sob which escaped her throat gave away that she was still alive as she leaned over her beloved Ubaldo´s dead body.
And I? I had gone home. I had already done too much – or maybe not enough. Though I had not agreed with the young Vicomte´s plan, I had done nothing to stop him in his youthful abandon. And when the plan had failed I had simply shown him the way to the Phantom´s lair, not caring how he´d deal with the older man and his often lethal tricks. Whatever happened down there would be indirectly my fault. Why I hadn´t accompanied him, making sure he also arrived there? Even now, sitting in my living room, I knew no answer to this question. Perhaps I had been frightened what we would find. He could have done violence to the girl, in more than one way. He could have even murdered her. By now I didn´t rule out anything.
There had been times when I hadn´t thought him capable of committing such crimes. I had liked delivering his letters and receiving boxes of chocolates in return. In secret I had approved of most of his decisions regarding singers and musicians. He was a musical genius, that much was certain. And never, not a single time, had he questioned my choice of dancers. This area had always remained mine, and I had been grateful for it. In no other opera would I have had so much freedom, as strange as it might sound with the pressure he had set the managers and M.Reyer under. We two had always gotten along well, maybe because I was the only one who had accepted his authority right away.
The death of Joseph Buquet had changed everything. It had clearly shown that there was a side of the Phantom I had chosen to ignore, shrugging off his activities as practical jokes. Still I had tried to defend him. Maybe it had been an accident or M.Buquet had provoked him. The fact that I hadn´t been too fond of the stagehand had helped a lot. I shook my head. It was so easy to delude oneself if only one tried hard enough.
Yet the reason why I insisted on thinking of a man whom nearly all other people regarded as a dangerous lunatic as a good person remained a mystery to me. Somehow he had grown on me over the years, ever since I had received his first letter, bidding me welcome and asking me to tell M.Lefèvre about the monthly salary he expected. Of course I had been astonished about this request, but right from the start there had been something in his words that made resistance impossible. Besides, he had always been exceptionally friendly and polite. I had often thought that many of the so-called gentlemen who attended a performance mainly to impress the ladies who accompanied them with their clothing could learn a lot from him. No matter how bad the situation was at the moment I wouldn´t forget the day after my husband´s funeral. I had never read a more beautiful and sensitive letter of condolence than the one I had found in Box Five that morning when I had come to work because my house had been unbearably quiet, even with my little Meg trying to comfort me. I had kept it in the top drawer of my desk, and it still gave me strength every time I took it out when Jaques´ birthday or our wedding day approached.
But all this couldn´t make up for what had happened tonight and was probably still happening. Obviously the relationship between Christine and Raoul had made the kind man I knew become a murderer again, just because he had wanted to take Christine with him. I didn´t blame him for loving her. She was a pretty young girl, and as much as he had worked on his image as a mere ghost, he still was a human being. No, I didn´t doubt that the feelings he had for Christine were anything but love, pure and untainted. Yet I despised the way in which he tried to force her to return this emotion. Why couldn´t he simply accept that she loved Raoul?
How easy it was to think about these things rationally when one wasn´t personally involved, but merely watching them from the shadows! I gave short bitter laugh that seemed to echo through the entire house. This made me jump slightly. Under normal circumstances I wasn´t frightened that quickly, but the events of the last hours had left their marks on my nerves. Suddenly I was aware that the room was only lit by a single candelabra. It had been sufficient when I had come home, but now I needed more light.
So I leaned forward, reaching for a candlestick that stood on the table. I was about to stand up to light it when a voice broke the silence like a bolt of lightning. "Don´t do that, madame!" The silver object fell out of my hand and hit the floor with a clattering sound.