AN - Hey guys, a bit faster this time with the update. I'm really starting to peice together what I'm going to do to make this story better. It will now have three parts instead of two, I have love triangles up the kazoo! or yin-yang, which ever terminology you prefer.

Tracy Davis- thanks for your review! I love seeing new names.

KieraLee- Your signing off makes me think of Monty Python and their obsession with Llama's. hehe, yes... the grail...

Rikku Ree- Don't cry sweetie! but I can't promise anything, it's an E/C R/C, eventually M/R, D/A, D/D, A/A story! You totally have no idea what I'm talking about but you will one day... oh yes... eventually it will ALL make sense!

Chapter Seventeen: Thoughts and Foreshadowing

Share each day with me,
each night,
each morning . . .

He sat there in comfort, the arms of the chair wrapped around his naked form. The room was filled with darkness, but a soft light shone through the open window. It was hot, much hotter than usual for a Paris night, he watched as the wind caused the curtains to flutter. He sat, still and silent, barely breathing. He wished he could just close his eyes and everything would vanish, but he knew that there was no way he could just wish this situation away.

Raoul looked back at the bed to see a languid and sleeping form resting on top of it. Her body bare and enticing, tangled amongst the sheets. To many men she would have been a dream, but to him now she only served one purpose, to help him empty his stomach into a basin. He had promised himself he would not do this, that he would not ever treat Christine with such malice but he wasn't able to help himself, he had been drunk. She had been staring at him from across the room of the musky bar smiling. She had been gentle, and smelt of vanilla. Christine wore vanilla. She was a courtesan. A prostitute. A whore.

She had been soft, and gentle, but looking back, he knew now it was for the large purse he had carried into the tavern. He couldn't bring himself to go home just yet. How was he to face his wife? This was something he would never forgive if circumstances were reversed. First, there had been love, then anger and frustration, then hurt. The hurt was followed by fighting and then the birth of Danielle made him realized how much he still loved her even if they were just being civil.

That was what most likely made him do it, the civility. It had been tearing away at his insides knowing that their emotional responses were dying. He felt like Christine didn't need him anymore, he had just been a substitute for her father, her angel. Now she had grown up and had a baby of her own she could not be that child he had loved by the sea. She did not need that boy to save her scarf anymore.

He wanted to feel like he was needed, and in some basic way he had been just that with the prostitute, she needed his money to survive, to live another day in this lonely world. In other ways, he did it because he needed to know what Christine still felt. Did she still care enough to feel anger over the situation? Would she be upset with his infidelity?

Well damn it! She should, he thought. She should care and she should be mad and we could fight and argue all night like a real wife and husband. Then we could retire to bed wake up in the morning, feeling horrible and restart from there.

He wanted to restart from there he just needed to know if Christine would. There was only one way to find out, he realized.

"NO!" Raoul woke up screaming, looking around for another body in the room he found none. Slowly he began to recount what had happened. Nothing had happened, the musky bar, the beautiful woman, they were all just a dream. A dream that was not real except for the emotions behind it.

He sat on the bed going over what was going on. He was tired, very tired, and worried about returning to Christine. He couldn't take such distance between them anymore, he loved her too much to allow their love for each other to slip away into the nothingness it had become, the only problem was he didn't know what to do. It had been different fighting for her love from the Phantom, all he had needed to do was support her, and show her all his devotion and love, now he was stuck with nothing. Nothing and yet, everything had come between them and he was outraged he had let it come to this.

What had he been thinking when the doctor told him not to tell her about the pregnancy? And what about the opera, why had he been so callous to take her when Carlotta preformed... Thoughts raced through his head as he prepared to make his journey back.

And what of last night, what would she have done if she knew that in his thoughts he had pondered finding service from a courtesan? For a mere second it popped into his beaten and broken thoughts till he thought of what his precious daughter would think.

Little Dani, little Danielle, he loved her more than words could describe. When Christine wasn't busy changing or feeding or treating their child with love and devotion, he would sneak in and watch her sleep. The way her chestnut locks bounced as her chest lifted and lowered to the rhythm of her breathing and small caring heart.

What were they to do if they couldn't work this out? They loved her more than life itself, she was perfection, a beautiful angel created out of love only to arrive to a cold and dismal earth. She didn't deserve this, anything but the life that she was going to have if Christine and he kept fighting.

No! He realized, it HAD to work out, they had to get on their feet and try to make it work, it was what had to be done, no if's and's or but's...

(' ) '
-

Let me be
your freedom,
let daylight
dry -your tears.

Christine sat at her vanity table recounting her evening before and what it meant. When did life become so troubled and confusing? She remembered a time when the only man she loved was her father. Now she had a child to think about and a husband. She loved Raoul, or she had, she would always love him in some way. He was the father of her child, a man of great dignity and honor. He loved her as well with everything he had, and she felt guilty she could not say the same. Half her heart went to another man, a more tortured soul. A person she started to feel like she owed an explanation to, some sort of penance for her cruelty in handling their affair. Would there ever be words to describe what she felt for him after the last two years?

She was all of twenty-one now, almost twenty-two and she felt old. It was if she needed to escape, but from what? She had Raoul and Danielle, the perfect house, and the perfect family and she should be happy and grateful that she had all she did... Nevertheless, all she could think about was Erik, his small gestures of kindness, his brutal temper that never faded, and his ways of dealing with goodbyes. She was going to have to make a choice. Erik or Raoul, and she was going to have to make it soon, because it was time to cut the ties to one of them so that they could eventually heal, as well as she. Now all she had to do was figure out which flawed but loving man she loved more...

(' ) '
-

They say that this youth
has set my Lady's
heart a-flame!

Claude looked at the estate in front of him looming ahead, it was perfection personified. It indeed resembled exactly what he thought it would look like, the Vicomte's happy home, happy wife, and their happy child. It made him sick that by birth people were allowed to share in this comfort of wealth and bought happiness, while others had to struggle till they were six feet under.

Taking another swig of liquor from his flask, he stumbled closer to the house from where he had been standing...

No longer would the rich invest this world with their leeching ways. They needed to be made an example of, to be shown that no longer would the poor endure such treatment, and he thought of no better way to start then with the Vicomtess de Chagny and their child.

He quickly found a large branch, tore a strip of his clothing off and wrapped it around the wood. Claude took one last sip of the alcohol in the small flask before pouring the rest on the stick and pulling out a match. The night erupted in a burst of flames lighting the man's way towards the house.

He thought one last time about what he was doing, and could not find anything to stop his actions any longer, if he were to be caught or die, it would not matter, he would be a martyr for all, and remembered so...

Bogart, dear brother, I shall avenge your death, your children will suffer, but hold onto pride knowing that their uncle caused the same pain on the family that took their father from them.

Laughing, he threw the torch at the house only to hear glass shatter shortly after.