One heart's darkness

Disclaimer: Hmm... If only I owned POTO... if only Gerry Butler were mine to hold and cuddle... if only chocolate grew on trees...

Erik: Would you really want chocolate to grow on trees?

Me: I don't know. I think I'd be too tempted to eat it then. Let's change the topic.

Erik: Ok. Why do you want to hold and cuddle Gerry Butler when you've got me?

Me: Good question... Because I imagine him to be not quite so moody! And don't give me that look now... Primadonna!

THANKS to my oh-so-wonderful reviewers! Thanks to you I now have an ego the size of Germany! Hehe... I hope you still like me as much after this chapter... By the way, I was going to update yesterday, but wouldn't let me. So don't blame me, please! I tried!

Chapter Fifteen

Erik and Christine were singing a duet from 'Faust', and everyone was enraptured. How could it be, Madeleine mused, that vocal cords became the instrument of such a heavenly sound? She had been told that her voice held power similar to her father's, but she doubted that. The dazed expressions on Meg's and Julie's faces were priceless.

Only Raoul was watching everything with a very wistful smile and a strange shimmer in his eyes betrayed his emotions.

True enough, the Vicomte couldn't keep his eyes off Christine, even through the veil of tears in his eyes. She had never really sung whilst married to him, only to put the baby Julie to sleep. And never had he seen her with such a brilliant smile.

He missed her already. He missed her so much it almost tore his heart out. To be here, to see her get married to another man, his rival, was a horrible torment for him. Still, he couldn't just walk away, he had to see her still, he had to make sure everything was in order, so that this new mad life of hers would not take a turn for the worse… And yet, for once, it was not Erik's fault, nor Christine's… his, perhaps, yet he couldn't ponder too long on the what could have happened had he not taken Madeleine away, for it would surely drive him insane.

For a fleeting moment, he lost his composure and exhaled shakily, almost like a sob. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed it. Most of them were still listening to the beautiful duet, only Madeleine's eyes were not fixed on them. They gazed at him with compassion and understanding, and for a moment, her bony fingers touched his arm. She leaned in and whispered, "We're even, Raoul!"

OooOooO

She knew she shouldn't be here. The goose bumps on her arms and the coldness of her hands and feet betrayed her guilty conscience, even to herself.

Her feet, stuck in ordinary ballet slippers, made no sound in the dimly lit corridor, and her tutu whispered only slightly, as she drew nearer to the dressing room Jean had told her about.

Suzette cast one glance behind her before she reached for the doorknob and pulled. The door squeaked slightly and gave her a horrible start, but the room behind it was empty, yet the lights were lit.

True, everything looked much to clean and too well furnished to be quite as unused as the managers had proclaimed it to be.

She entered, carefully closing the door behind her. After a few seconds of simple steadying her breath and calming down, she began inspecting the drawers of the armoire, the vanity table and the divan.

It was pure luck that she had just opened the doors of the huge wardrobe when she heard footsteps. Quickly, she stepped inside and pulled the doors almost shut. Cloaks and dresses hung around her. Strangely though, none of them smelled old or dusty, like forgotten costumes. Someone –Madeleine, probably- had to be using them still.

Through a small space in between the two doors, she could make out the room around the vanity.

A strange sound caught her attention, like a light door with well oiled hinges opening, that was slightly too big for its frame, but it was on the wrong side of the room. Unless the tall mirror didn't only give the impression of a doorway…

A figure walked by the closet, a small, thin woman in a dress of burgundy taffeta with long, wide sleeves made of a lacy fabric in the same colour. Her hair was a mass of curls that poured down her back and Suzette was just about to decide that she was quite pretty when she beheld her face. Only, it wasn't a face at all, it was a mask of white satin with neutral features. The lips and chin that showed were almost as white as the mask, a distinctly unhealthy pallor.

Through the eyeholes of the mask burned a pair of golden eyes, glowing in the dim light of the gas lamps.

The woman's thin and extraordinarily long fingers reached for a brush in one of the drawers and put it on the vanity table. Then she reached into her long hair and undid the straps of her mask.

Before she pulled it off, she turned away from the mirror. Then she laid it onto her lap and reached behind her for the brush to comb out her curls.

In the closet, Suzette was frozen in terror. How could such a being be alive?

The golden eyes, so full of life behind the mask, were sunken in their sockets and their intensity only made the skull-like appearance of those sunken sockets even worse. Her cheeks were thin as well, her whole face bony and pale. Parchment-like skin was stretched over the bones and purplish veins showed clearly at her temple.

Oh, how Suzette wanted to close her eyes, to block out the nightmare, yet she could not. Finally, after what had seemed like an eternity, a knock on the door interrupted the woman who looked like a walking corpse.

Quickly, she rearranged the mask on her face and called out, "Come in, Raoul!"

A man entered, whom Suzette, to her surprise, recognized as the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, who had been the focus of one of Paris' scandals three months ago, when his wife divorced him only to marry another man barely a month later.

She had met Raoul at the opera a couple of times, as he was the patron and he had always seemed nice and controlled to her. Now, however, he looked dishevelled. His hair was unkempt, his shirt was buttoned the wrong way and he wore no vest under his brown suit jacket and coat.

He had obviously run a good way, for he was out of breath and it took him a few moments before he had regained the power of speech.

"What is it?" the woman asked, concerned, grasping his hands in hers.

The Vicomte looked into her eyes and, with a sharp intake of breath that sounded almost like a sob, spoke.

"Madeleine, it's terrible. Julie is… she's very ill. Her fever is so high, she is burning up. She won't take any water, she barely even recognizes me. I can't have dinner with your family today, I must get back immediately. I only wanted to see if maybe Christine would accompany me. Julie… needs her. And so do I!"

The woman – Madeleine?- nodded. She looked very shaken. After a moment, she let go of one of Raoul's hands and pulled him away.

Again, Suzette heard the sound of the door in its small frame. It had to be the mirror. Then, when she was sure that they had left, she climbed out of the wardrobe. Only a soft fragrance of roses still lingered where Madeleine had stood. She shuddered. Suddenly, she whished she could take back her encouragement of her brother to speak to her again. The fierce eyes from that dead face had burned themselves into her memory, and although she felt shallow herself, she couldn't help but be frightened at the possibility of ever meeting that… creature… face-to-face.

OooOooO

"…and then they left!" Suzette finished telling Jean about the conversation she had overheard. He was slightly angry at her for endangering herself so by going into that room, but he knew how nosy his sister was.

What startled him more had been the remark about Christine being part of Madeleine's family. He was sure that the woman in question was the former Christine Daée de Chagny, now Christine Lescaut who had caused such an uproar by marrying someone no one had ever seen or heard of.

Should this man be the stranger, Erik, who had almost killed him that night, Madeleine's father? And would that make her the singer's stepdaughter? Or…?

He firmly shook himself out of his thoughts and stood up from the narrow couch he had been sitting on, picked up Suzette's cloak and offered it to her.

"We should get home, Suzi."

She stared at him, slightly affronted. "That's all you have to say about that?"

He sighed impatiently. "Everyone else has left, it's almost midnight, we still haven't had dinner, I'm hungry and I had not planned to stay in your dressing room overnight, so would you please move!"

She folded her arms across her chest in a gesture of defiance. "Not until you tell me what you think about all that!"
"Suzette Des Cars, you're behaving like a spoiled little child, it's most undignified," he scolded her, his baritone voice holding a light teasing tone, "but suit yourself!"

With these words, he put her cloak down again and walked out of the dressing room, ignoring her angry howl behind him.

She joined him a moment later outside, but refused to speak to him on the way to their house.

The silence suited Jean quite well, though, as the gentle rocking of the carriage and the feel of the fresh night air were soothing.

His thoughts returned once more to Madeleine. Someone close to her was unwell, that he knew now. So he resolved to contact her the next day. He even had a plan how. It was time for him to find out whether Tier One Box Five was called the Ghost's box for a reason…

OooOooO

Madeleine watched the clock in the study nervously. It was six o'clock in the morning. Her parents should have been home an hour ago.

Was Julie so very sick? Raoul had not said much, only that her fever was insanely high and then he had dragged Christine and Erik with them.

She had been left behind, as too many visitors might disturb the ill girl.

Madeleine sighed. Her long fingers played with a dried rose, which had once been white and was now a yellowish grey. It was the rose she had been wearing in her hair on the day of her parent's wedding three weeks ago.

Had it really only been three weeks? It seemed like forever, but really, only such a small amount of time had passed. Julie had been fine three weeks ago and she hadn't seen her sister since then.

And now? How sick was she?

The girl shifted uneasily on the ground in front of the fireplace, her simple taupe muslin dress already showing creases.

The sound of the front door opening gave her a horrible start. She leapt to her feet and almost ran into her father as he entered their home. He pulled off the mask and the grave expression on his distorted features, along with her mother's continued absence, told Madeleine a lot without question.

She asked, anyway, "How…how bad is she?"
Erik put a comforting hand on her shoulder before answering softly, but with a light tremor in his gentle tenor voice, "She fell into a coma last night. Several physicians have seen her and the consensus is…"

"Is what? What?"

"If she doesn't wake up before the week is over, nothing else can be done for her!"

Madeleine felt her face contort in pain, even before her mind had registered the dreadful news.

"B-but… she will wake up," she stuttered, "won't she?"

At that point, Erik could no longer meet her gaze.

"Probably not, child. The doctor told Raoul to… say goodbye."

Suddenly, the room seemed to start choking her. Gasping for breath and trying to keep her threatening tears in check, Madeleine ran past her father, her skirts billowing behind her. She ran over the narrow ledge along the lake, up the stairs… she didn't stop running until she finally collapsed in the comfortable dark and cool interior of Box Five. There, she finally allowed herself to cry.

A/N: So, there you go. Chapter Fifteen. REVIEW! I hope you know I'm aiming for more than 200 reviews till Chapter 20!

A short notice in regards to the future of the Jean/Madeleine realtionship: As you can read in my profile, I'm an 18 year-old girl who you could call "Phluffy" as a nickname. D'you get my meaning?

Love you all!

P.F.A.