Author's Note:
I appreciate the great deal of positive, encouraging, and helpful reviews that I have recieved over the course of this story. I must say, however, that if you must leave flames, as one reviewer has, that you offer constructive criticism and perhaps a way to make the story better rather than simply leaving negative comments.
steps down off of soapbox
A longer chapter this time, please enjoy!
And review, as always!
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Chapter 32: All Of The Lies At Last Revealed
When she stepped out of the doors of the Opera Populaire, Madame Giry only a few steps behind her, Raoul felt his heart begin to ache all over again. What if there was no recapturing what had been so cruelly lost? What if he poured all his heart out to Christine tonight, all his pain, all his deception and all of his madness, and still she turned from him with a kind word and a smile?
What if she turned from him as she had once turned from the Phantom?
The singularly unwelcome thought made him feel as though he had been punched squarely in the stomach. He saw in a moment's flash the pain on the Phantom's unmasked horror of a face as he played the only card that had ever given him victory—fear, because love and honesty had gained him nothing in all his sad life.
And now, as he watched Christine Daae walk to his carriage, attired in a lovely evening dress of midnight blue, her hair pinned up and studded with a few small diamond starbursts, he thought he knew, with more clarity than ever before, the misery and insanity of love that had driven his rival to such madness.
He would gladly kill to see Christine as his bride.
You will never see him as I do, Raoul. That is your curse, and your gift, also.
Her soft words came back to him, and Raoul knew that still, he could see the Phantom as nothing but a monster who had stolen away his bride, the dragon who had overcome the knight.
But one thing Raoul could not deny, the beast had loved her enough to send her away when he could have had her forever. He had possessed the courage to give her into the hands of the man he hated above all else, simply to see joy in her eyes and a smile upon her lips.
Raoul knew he would never have such strength.
God help him, he would never willingly surrender her.
-
Madame Giry laid a hand on Christine's shoulder. "Are you certain of this, child? If Erik finds out…"
"He does not even know where I am, Madame Giry." Christine reminded her softly.
"He has ways and means. Do not forget what he once was. It is never wise to incur his wrath."
"I have already done so, Madame, and survived. If he did not kill me then, he will not do so now."
Madame Giry shuddered. Christine did not know by what tenuous thread her life hung. A moment more in that dreadful room and Erik would have killed her…he had said so himself…
Christine turned, and Madame Giry could see, even in the dim gaslight from the street, that there was the foreshadowing of tears in her brown eyes.
"You have been like a mother to me, Madame, more than any daughter could ever hope for. But I am a child no longer, and it is time that I ceased to behave as one. My fate, and Erik's too, and perhaps even Raoul's, remains in my hands, and I must take responsibility for what I have done, both in the past and now. I have been a child, Madame, I have thought that I could be Little Lotte, Raoul's sweetheart and my father's daughter, while being a woman and a bride also. I have thought that I could live in the past while making a life for the future, and I must now pay the price."
She smiled and touched Madame Giry's cheek, a fond gesture that the chorus girl would never have attempted. It was the gesture of a woman to another woman who is much loved, and Madame Giry recognized it. Tears filled both women's eyes at once, and Madame Giry patted her hand reassuringly.
"Go then, Christine. Make peace with your past and see if what has been done cannot be mended, after all."
Christine smiled then, and, tears trickling down her cheeks, embraced the older woman. "Thank you, Madame."
She turned to face the carriage.
-
The small starbursts in her hair caught Raoul's eye as she stepped into the carriage, the thin light of the street-lamps causing them to twinkle and glitter with an icy fire.
He remembered another night when lights flashed off of the diamonds in her hair, a night when he had sat in Box 5 and listened to her voice ascend almost to the heavens, when he had realized at once that the shy chorus girl that he had passed that afternoon was in fact Christine, Christine Daae, his childhood sweetheart, and a girl he had never been entirely able to forget.
We never said our love was evergreen, or as unchanging as the seas…
Yes, things changed.
She stepped into the carriage, and a tiny dart of pain pricked at his heart when she sat across from him, instead of next to him, as a lover, or perhaps even a dear friend, would. Clearly she meant to keep a distance from him tonight.
"Bonsoir, Christine."
"Bonsoir," she replied, and for one torturous moment, he thought that she would address him by his title.
"Raoul." she finished, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps not all was lost, after all.
-
Now tell me, where may I find Christine?
Giselle took a deep and shaky breath. Her bluff had been called, as she should have expected from a frantic statement so paper-thin.
She did not know where Christine was. She had never even seen her, save for that brief moment in the cathedral.
She bit her lip, and answered truthfully. "I do not know, monsieur."
His jaw tensed. "I am in no mood for games, mademoiselle, and I dislike riddles above all. I brought you here so that I might have a bit of peace in which to find out where Christine has gone, but if you prove to be a nuisance rather than a help..." He trailed off suggestively. "Nuisances are expendable, mademoiselle, and from the look of you, I doubt you will be missed."
How strange that something she had told herself so frequently over the past two years could prove so painful now.
"You are right, monsieur. I will not be missed. I am just a whore, monsieur, a bit of comfort to lonely men, and one night I was comfort to a man called Raoul de Chagny. I was comfort to him for many nights, and I began to wonder why, until he asked me my name, and when I refused to tell him, he said that he would call me Christine."
The man stiffened at that, and Giselle continued.
"I knew then that I reminded him of her—whomever she was. He told me that he could take me away from the brothel…and…" she broke off for a moment. "It was like being offered Heaven, monsieur! If you think this is hell, you should spend one night as a prostitute, and you will know what hell is!"
-
Erik shifted uncomfortably at the sudden emotion in her voice. He just wanted to find Christine, not listen to an impassioned tale from a woman who was, by her own admission, nothing but a whore that the foolish boy had seen Christine's likeness in.
And the last thing he wanted to hear was an assumption that he, of all people, did not know what hell on earth truly was.
"Did he take you away?"
She nodded. "Yes. He wanted me to impersonate Christine. Before he bought me from Madame Lavage, he told me Christine's story."
She looked squarely at him then, and Erik felt strangely bare, as though the mask covered nothing at all, and she saw him as clearly as Christine ever had.
"He told me about you."
-
Christine winced when she recognized the place that Raoul had taken them. He had taken her here many times before, and she had always felt rather out of place and uncomfortable.
At least, tonight, she was dressed for it.
Once they were seated, and their meals ordered, she wasted no time in coming directly to the point.
"Raoul, who was that young woman, and why did she have your mother's prayer book?"
He passed a hand over eyes that suddenly seemed very weary, and took Christine's small, pale hand in his other. She did not pull away, and he was grateful for it.
"When you left me, Christine, I was despondent. I did not understand how, after all of our declarations, knowing how much you loved me, knowing that you were betrothed to me, and knowing what horrid violence that monster had wreaked upon us both, I did not understand how you could go to him and say that you loved him!"
She looked away. "He has a name, Raoul."
"So does the Devil."
"His name is Erik."
"His name is not the point, Christine. Do you want to hear, or will you waste my time and yours in continuing to defend a man who will be forever defenseless in my eyes?"
She was silent.
"My brother and I had words one night over you, and he condemned our engagement and called you unsuitable and a whore. We nearly came to blows over it, but I left, and went into town. I visited a brothel," and here he could not miss how Christine flinched, "and there found a woman who looked enough like you to be her twin."
Christine's eyes were wide, and Raoul frowned suddenly.
"I did not say that the truth would be pleasant, or that it would be suitable for a lady's ears! But if you want the truth, I will tell you, and you will not shrink from it! I took a whore, Christine, as men do, and I saw your face on hers! Do you see what madness you have brought me to!" He kept his voice low, but the words were forceful, and Christine was shamed suddenly. She had not thought once of what pain she might have brought the man who had loved her so dearly, only of the happiness she had brought to the man who loved her so dangerously.
"I visited her for several nights, and one night, inquired as to her name. She would not tell me, but I found out from the madam of the brothel."
"Giselle." Christine whispered.
Raoul nodded. "I said that I would call her Christine. I offered to take her away from the brothel, and have her pose as you, as my mistress, since Philippe was so adamantly opposed to the idea of my marrying you. I brought her to my home, bought her a wardrobe of clothing suitable for the mistress of a Viscomte, and there the masquerade began."
Christine felt tears forming in her eyes. "The poor girl." she whispered. "Poor Giselle."
"Do you understand, Christine? I never once saw Giselle. Every word that she spoke, every moment that I looked at her, every night that I held her, she was you. I lost myself in a fantasy surpassing any I ever saw played out on the stage, and I found a small measure of peace, but at the core of that peace was madness."
Suddenly, Christine thought of the wax mannequin in the lair, and of Erik, dressing the silent effigy of his Christine in a wedding gown and veil, and seeing not a pale, cold doll, but instead a woman who loved him, who would come to him willingly and be his living bride.
Giselle was Raoul's mannequin, his plaything that he could dress in beautiful clothes and call Christine, so that he would never have to face the reality of what he had lost.
That he was facing it now spoke volumes.
"She left last night, to the cemetery. I followed her, it seemed so like that morning that you went to visit your father's grave. But I found you in the cathedral instead, and that was the end of the charade."
Christine knew what was coming, and her heart sank when he took her hand.
"If Giselle returns, I will end this. I cannot pretend any longer, Christine, I cannot have a whore in my house and in my bed and see you anymore! I have done you a disservice in this, Christine, and I ask your forgiveness."
"It is not my forgiveness that you should seek, Raoul, it is Giselle's. You have done me no disservice at all, but Giselle you have wronged greatly. She knows what she is, Raoul, and you have done nothing but remind her of it, day after day, night after night, every time that you have looked her in the eye and called her Christine, and not Giselle."
"How do you know, Christine? You have never met her."
"I have seen her once, in the cathedral. I saw the look in her eyes when she beseeched the Virgin, and I have seen that look in the eyes of only one other."
And in his eyes, all the sadness of the world…
"What did you see, Christine?"
"Suffering."
-
"You see, monsieur? I am not Christine, but at the same time, I am. I have spent countless nights in the home and in the arms of a man who loves her so much that he seeks a whore to paint her face upon, and I have been her. I have learned how she spoke and how she moved, I have learned of her sorrows and of her joys, I have answered to her name and heard him cry out for her instead of me, and you wonder why I am loathe to say that I am not Christine. Giselle is nothing but a whore, a forgotten bit of nothingness, expendable, as you said. But Christine…"
Erik saw the tremble in her lip and the pain in her eyes, and he felt a sudden twinge of conscience for what he had done to her, for the threats and the violence and the fear. She had thought that he was going to kill her.
He had threatened to kill her.
Perhaps he had been going to kill her, just to hear the screams and feel the blood on his hands, just to smell Death again and be powerful once more, not a shell of a man broken by obsession and love, but the Phantom of the Opera, feared and invincible.
He knew now that it was hopeless. Christine had killed that part of him with her kiss, had buried it with her touch, and had left the grave unmarked and forgotten with her love.
"What was different about Christine, Giselle?"
The fear lifted when he said her name.
The agony remained.
"Christine was loved…"
-
"You see Erik in her."
"I see the suffering of an outcast from society, made to suffer for something that is not her fault. I see a girl given false hope and a taste of heaven, only to have it snatched away."
Suffering for that which is not their fault, false hope and a taste of heaven, snatched away.
"Yes, I see Erik."
"Christine, do you think, if you had gone with me, that Erik would have ever let you be?"
Christine hesitated only a moment.
"Yes. Because you see, Raoul, he let me go. He loved me enough that when he saw what he thought was a terrible sacrifice, he realized that he had to let me go. And he never expected me to return."
"Christine, I do not have that strength."
She looked questioningly at him across the table.
"Don't you see? He has let you go again, and this time, he has hurt you. What madness could possibly draw you back to his side?"
He caught both of her hands in his now, and there was love in his eyes, passion and pleading.
"Come back to me, Christine. Don't make me suffer so, loving only you, and never having you. Anywhere you go, I promised you. What happened to your promise, Christine?"
She looked down at her hand, at the ring finger where his ring had once been, and smiled sadly. "I gave it away, Raoul."
"Christine, I love you. Please, please come with me. We'll go away from Paris. He'll never find us. We can be happy, Christine, so happy. You will remember how you once loved me. Please, Christine, just say you'll go with me."
She laughed bitterly. "What hellish curse is upon me, that for love's sake I drive men to madness?" She looked at him, and there were tears filling her eyes and sliding down her cheeks. "Would you be happy, Raoul, with a woman who will forever belong to another man?"
She drew her hands away. "I did not go back to the Phantom, Raoul."
He frowned in confusion.
"That kiss broke the Phantom's chains and freed me forever. When I kissed him again, he was no longer the Phantom."
Raoul looked away.
"He was only Erik."
-
Giselle looked away, slumping to the ground in defeat. "You see, monsieur? I do not know where she is. I know who she is, I know everything about her, and I have been her, and now I do not know where she is. Christine is gone, monsieur. There is only Giselle here."
A tear began to form, and she bit the inside of her lip to keep from sobbing. The pain was welcome. "So you may kill me now, monsieur, now that you know the truth, and be done with it. There is nothing for me to live for, anyway. There has not been for some time."
She hated herself for the last statement, for the self-pity in it and for the horrid little sob that choked out at the end.
She was completely unprepared for the masked man to pick her up in his arms, as gently as though he were lifting a child, and begin to carry her away from the lakeshore and the dais.
She felt softness beneath her, like a cloud, and looked around, startled to see that she lay in a bed now, an opulent bed covered with red velvet.
He looked down at her, and there was compassion in his eyes now.
"You love him."
It was not a question.
She nodded wordlessly, and then the tears came.
He had never known what he should do with tears, not even Christine's, and so he merely walked from the room and let her cry.
He found the sound of her sobs unbearable, perhaps because in her lost eyes and broken soul he saw a reflection of himself, and so he took a seat at the organ and began to play.
But instead of the harsh, discordant melody that he expected, something soothing came from the aged instrument, and it was not long before the sound of the young prostitute's tears had died away.
-
They ate their meal in silence, and returned to the carriage without another word.
The streetlamps shone through the windows of the carriage, and made Christine's pale skin glow.
Raoul moved to sit beside her, and when she turned to look at him, her eyes slightly reddened with tears, he could not help himself.
He left her no room to refuse when he took her face in his hands and kissed her, kissed her as she had not let him kiss her since that night on the rooftop, using maidenly blushes and virginal excuses to ward off his amorous advances.
But she was maidenly and a virgin no longer, a woman entire, and he knew that if he did not kiss her he would die.
She did not yield to him at first, her lips as smooth and motionless as sculpted stone, but then he felt her tears against his skin, and he moved to kiss them away, and then she yielded.
She loved him still, had always loved him, and this was what Erik feared, that the gentle ardor that Raoul offered her might one day reclaim her, even over the fiery passions that had long since claimed her soul.
She gave into her heart's agony for a moment, and in her kiss was the sweetness of a young girl's love. The touch of his lips on hers took her back to brighter days, to a house by the sea and a warm fire at night, to dark stories of the North that made her shiver with delight and a touch of fear, to dreams in which the Angel of Music was just that, an angel, and not a man who confused and frightened one at the same time that he possessed one's soul completely, not a man broken and scarred, not a man desperately in love, and not a man that she had come to love in return, even beyond her love for her childhood sweetheart.
Her lips parted and he deepened the kiss eagerly, and she was no longer at the house by the sea, no longer a little girl, but she did not know where she was or who she was, only that for a moment, she felt safe.
He would keep her safe.
The carriage stopped, and Raoul lingered a moment, one hand on her waist and the other tangled in her hair, the palm warm against her face, and then he drew away.
The knowledge of what she had just done nearly took the breath from her body.
She scrambled from the carriage, and he exited after her, desperate not to let her go.
"Christine!"
She turned to face him, and she was crying.
But if you can still remember, stop and think of me.
"I should not have let you kiss me, Raoul."
"Do you not love me, Christine?"
Think of all the things we've shared and seen, don't think about the way things might have been…
She took a step towards him, and placed a hand on his face, her fingers brushing against his skin.
Think of me, think of me waking silent and resigned.
"I would not presume to lie to you, Raoul. You are far too dear to me for that."
"Please, Christine."
Imagine me, trying too hard to put you from my mind.
He took her into his arms again, bent his head to kiss her, but she pulled away.
"You risk my life and yours with this foolishness, Raoul. You should have learned long ago that we cannot hide from him."
"Then you will go like the lamb to the slaughter for me again? Don't throw your life away, Christine!"
"No, Raoul. I will go to him because I love him, and because there is no one else in this world who will love him as I do."
"There is no one else in the world that I can love besides you, Christine."
"Perhaps you simply have not looked hard enough."
Recall those days, remember all those times, think of the things we'll never do.
"Christine, I love you."
"I know. It changes nothing."
To have had the sweetness of kissing her again, and having her kiss him in return was nearly too much for Raoul to bear.
"Come home with me, Christine. Just for tonight."
"Would you have me betray him again?"
She turned then, and hurried away into the opera house before he could stop her, before he could say another word, before he could do anything that would make her stay.
There will never be a day when I won't think of you.