Disclaimer – the phans own Erik, for it is us who made him famous with our desperate phan-girl love! This is a strange version based on no ones Phantom, I created an Erik! I wrote of a Christine with troubled real emotions! I made Raoul not such a egomonger! SO HA! I OWN PHANTOM! (except that Gaston Leroux made them famous through literature… um… right… okay, so it's really all Gaston's. I still think you can't own someone who really existed.)

An – I renamed this chapter because I stole a line from the song, and it made me feel I had to give it credit.

Chapter Seven: My Immortal

Signora!
You are our star!
And always will be!

"Christine..." Dr Leblanc said holding her hands in-between his. His gaze pieced down on her, and she couldn't find the strength to look back into his eyes, to see whatever they held.

Christine was expecting the worst. Oh dear here it comes, she thought. He will tell me I'm dying and that this happiness is to end.

Would that be so terrible? A voice whispered to her. She then began to think, of course she was happy and loved Raoul, but if she were to die, would she spend her eternity in the arms of her father? What would be so horrible about that? Living happily with her love until reaching the ultimate happiness by spending eternity in the arms of a loved one.

Maybe even Erik's?

She was bemused by the fact that still, the one person who instilled the most fear into her being could also bring the most pleasure.

Singing was something Christine had been forbidden to do, because of the pain that came from it. What Raoul had not known that she could no longer sing for her own reasons, not because of the physical pain that it held, but the emotional stress it caused. All she could think of was Erik's voice, his strong velvet voice, which could caress her in ways that her own husband's hands could not. His voiced chased all the sanity away in her, making her forget propriety and who she was. This is why she had not been able to sing for sometime, and slowly she felt as though her soul was dying.

For instance, last night at Faust, oh lord, how painful it was to sit and watch Carlotta sing the Aria's that Erik had taught her to sing perfectly. Carlotta had come back after a much needed vacation due to Piangi's death. The Opera Populaire had found no use of her, until Christine was quietly disposed of, thanks to her darling husband, Raoul.

Raoul didn't notice her silent tears, and if he did, he ignored her sobs that were quietly being choked back.

Christine knew that these was not one of those moments were she was crying over nothing, something that had been happening a lot lately. She began to laugh at her own twisted behavior. Why must I either laugh or cry? Am I really that different from Erik?

She realized this was pure regret, despair and bitterness. She felt as though Raoul betrayed her, that he had let her rival win. Of course she was the Vicomtess de Chagny, a title that many young women would do the unthinkable for. Nonetheless, Christine's whole life was centered on music. It sickened her that the only decision she had ever made by herself, which had been choosing Raoul over Erik, had lead to this. Had lead to Raoul taking away her passion, her life.

So the question that lay before her now in the hands of Doctor Leblanc was, am I dying? Will I return to my love of the arts? Could heaven be that dark old Paris opera house, where even last night I felt the presence of the infamous Opera Ghost?

"Christine" Dr. Leblanc said again, "Christine, you are pregnant, five months now to be exact."

Christine felt her heart stop. Slowly her legs and hands began to tingle. She went numb, she was having a baby, and she was to be a mother, and Raoul lied to her, he had hurt her again.

Joy, pain, anger, resentment, love, and fear seeped into her soul, and a feeling she never expected was there, one she was ashamed of.

Disappointment.

She realized she hadn't responded when she looked up into the doctor's eyes and those of her husbands with her own sparkling blue ones. She felt the tears in the corners, threatening to spill like her own sanity onto the floor.

"I um, I don't feel, too well..." Christine said, feeling her head go into a spin, her heart constricted and she felt panicked. Although she was sitting, she felt the room spinning around her.

This was all too much.

"Please, I must, go lay down, or something..." She muttered under her breath, and then rose from the den and left the doctor who had bore her the strange news.

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(' ) '
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Little Lotté let her mind wander. .
Little Lotté thought: Am I fonder of dolls . . .
or of goblins, of shoes . . .

Raoul could not understand. He refused too! How could Christine not feel the tremendous joy he had? Why did his wife just look like they had told her that her father had died?

The Doctor could tell he was confused.

"Every woman reacts different, she is most likely just so please she is in shock." He said reassuring the young man.

"But, the look on her face! Didn't you see! It was if I had killed her," Raoul said sadly.

"Maybe I had steered you in the wrong direction, maybe she is upset that you lied to her for the last two months, If so, I take full responsibility. You can tell her as much. I merely was thinking of her heath, yet you even told me she didn't know of the pregnancy and she still did not sleep well."

"No she didn't. We tried everything! I moved her back to old room, then I slept in the guest bedroom and she tried our room, nothing worked! I woke up one morning and she had baked a cake over night to pass the time... Oh Christine..." He said running his hands through his hair.

What had happened to the happier times? Where was the bright smile of a little Swedish girl they called Lotté?

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(' ) '
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Somehow, I know he's always with me . . .
he - the unseen genius . . .

He had seen her last night, and now he knew that his heart would not give out until he willed it too. She had looked utterly magnificent with her flowing tresses mostly done up with silver combs. He had come to make peace with the music, and found himself betraying it only yet again with impure thoughts of his Angel. To him though impure was just to touch her, to smell the soft ringlets of hair that dropped carelessly down her back. To touch her soft lips with his was the most impure thing he could do, and he had only ever done it once.

It was his savior; his will to live that kept drawing him to her.

Then she cried! Oh, she had cried her soft blue eyes 'til they ran dry. And the Vicomte! He had done nothing! Nothing to soften or hush those tears from spilling! How could he not? How could he pretend that everything was ok in their happy little world where Christine was his and his alone?

Oh, a new rage brewed in his soul, for now Erik did not believe that Raoul could be the second best choice! He had let the most beautiful and majestic angels of all the heavens become a patron of the arts, and not a performer.

No... You mustn't keep doing this, Erik growled in anger. He obviously had his reasons.

Christine was with child, and she might not be in condition to sing or perform. She was creating a child; a child that was not his, it was another man's. His angel was now an everyday woman, soon to be mother, mother of a child that belonged to Raoul de Chagny.

Erik could no longer watch Faust, or Christine softly cry, so he returned to see if he could still salvage anything from his old home.

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(' ) '
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. . . No thoughts within her head,
but thoughts of joy!
No dreams within her heart
but dreams of love

With child, it means, I'm going to have a baby.

I will be a mother, a mother of a little boy or girl, and only four more months to go. Is it possible? She thought to herself as she lay on the bed that felt as if it were spinning.

Raoul must be in despair over my reaction.

And why shouldn't he be! A darker voice entered Christine's mind.

Because I love him and he will think I do not want to have the baby. She replied to the voice.

Oh, let him be! He lied to you... what makes you think he won't again? It echoed inside her ears.

Because he loves me, and he obviously had a reason, Raoul would never lie to me unless it was to protect me.

Protect you from what? Yourself? When will he learn that you don't need to be protected?

... I don't know, Christine said, letting the darker voice take the lead.

Did it ever occur to you that it might not be the baby you don't want, but Raoul's baby?

"NO" She said aloud, not caring that she was taking the insanity of talking to herself to the next level and vocalizing it.

"No, he loves me, and I love him. That is the way it was meant to be and will forever be." She said in an unconvincing tone.

But the dark voice did not reply she was left alone to think again. One thing she did not want to think about is how eerie it was that the Dark voice had sounded like Erik's.