Written for the PFN Secret Santa 2005.

To TheAngelCried, Merry Christmas!

Here was her request:

"it's some time around christmas. let's say christmas eve. anyways, somehow christine (just don't make her from any of the movies, please!) is somehow alone, and/or sad. the author can decide how that happens. somehow christine ends up with erik for christmas, and i WILL ACCEPT DARKNESS. and FLUFF! no deaths, but it can be all morbidy-creepy-gothic, but everything must be all right and good at the end. let the writer bear in mind how much i adore DARKFLUFF, so making it a fluff/darkness mix would make my day. oh! and i don't want romance fluff, i want more of the father/daughter kind of thing. meaning that he calls her "child." :melts on floor:"

Further notes follow the story!

In Nomine Patris

It is commonly believed that Christine Daae sang no more, after the infamous affair of the Opera ghost that led to her retirement from the stage and made forcibly public her relationship with, and engagement to, the then-viscount Raoul de Chagny. It is said, among the circles of upper-class ladies who know no better, but who persist in keeping the ghost alive in gossip over their afternoon teas, that the newly-made diva was so enamoured of the ghost that his disappearance – or death, depending on which gossip you choose to believe – was enough to tear from her soul the song that had been bestowed upon it the night that she first sang Margarita, leaving her forever sorrowful and silent. Among the girls of the ballet, only slightly more knowledgeable than the patrons in regards to the events as they actually transpired, it is said that it was not her love for the ghost, or even the Angel of Music that she had once believed him to be, but her great devotion to Raoul de Chagny that kept her from the stage. Perhaps that is true; it is one thing, after all, for a nobleman to keep a mistress at the Opera House, and quite another to actually make her his wife.

In the weeks and months following what had come to be referred to merely as "the disaster," it is certainly true that Christine devoted herself to nothing except for Raoul, and spent her time preparing for her life as countess. Though her letters clearly reveal that she found the task to be daunting (she had, after all, led a life couloured entirely by the road and the stage, and would have been deemed a completely inappropriate wife by any young count who had not fallen irrevocably in love with her), those who knew her would swear that she wanted nothing more. Her love for the Count de Chagny was genuine, and her aspirations lay no longer in the limelight, but in the confines of the Chagny estate.

That has little to do with our story, however, as on the night in question the young count was out of town, attending a holiday function hosted by some distant relatives, to which it had been made quite clear that Christine was not invited. To most of the nobility with whom Raoul regularly associated, she was still little more than a former opera singer – a former opera singer, for that matter, who had been caught up in a scandal.

And so it was that Christine came to attend Midnight Mass alone, and in the calm anonymity of a crowd that had once called her name from the boxes and the stalls, she sang one last time to a congregation that, tonight, could put no name at all to the hesitant voice that rose with theirs in the Gloria. Her voice was no longer remarkable; like her face it was tired and stretched, drained of that brilliant vivacity that for a moment had brought all of Paris to her feet.

There was nothing, now, to set her apart from the crowd, except perhaps for the fact that she did come alone, and for all of their charitable donations and kind-hearted words about the poor and the lonely, the well-to-do of Paris were not, in fact, terribly inclined to show any concern for the suffering of others on such a joyous night as tonight. There was only one man who deigned to notice the small, frail, wide-eyed child who lifted her eyes to the Christ-child and the crucified Saviour as though to plea with them, and it is perhaps no coincidence that this man was the very one for whom Christine had offered up her silent prayer.

"Erik."

The name was inaudible upon her lips, but her heart must have cried it with all of her strength, for the barest movement of her mouth corresponded with a silent flood of tears from her eyes, though she never averted her gaze from the figure of the bleeding Christ.

You were born to die, she begged him. And you died to redeem our sins. Life in the midst of winter… Light in the midst of darkness! What is Christmas for, if not that? And yet… I wonder if you will save him? Can anything… can anyone save HIM?

Christine had been almost glad, when Mamma Valerius had apologized to her, saying that she was too old, too sickly to accompany the child to Mass. If only she'd wait, the dear woman had offered, the priest would come to offer Mamma's own communion in the morning, and Christine might take hers then as well? But Christine had refused. She had been a poor Christian, since the affair at the Opera House. For an able-bodied young woman not to go to church – on the eve of the birth of our Saviour, of all nights! And yet, even tonight, it was not to rejoice that Christine had come here, but to plea. Please tell me, Lord Jesus… please tell me that he is with you, that he has been forgiven. You may take my place in heaven from me, if only he may have it in my stead!

She rose with the rest of the church to receive the Eucharist, though her lips continued barely to move in that most terrible of prayers. Perhaps she was, after a fashion, rejoicing in the birth of her saviour. She almost certainly was mourning his death, and hoping against hope for his return. As those who knew her have confirmed, however, Miss Daae believed just as strongly in the ghost stories of the north as she did in the Gospels, and it is more than likely that the saviour to whom she prayed died, not on a cross, but in the depths of the opera house that was both his kingdom and his tomb.

There is also considerable evidence to show that, unlike the other hundreds and thousands of believers who broke bread in celebration that Christmas Eve, Christine Daae had the singular honor of seeing the one for whom she prayed, in the flesh, though she had every reason to believe him dead.

No one had seen him enter the church, and while it could be universally agreed upon by the gossips and the rumour-mongers who had been at Mass that night that the strange figure in evening dress and a mask had not taken the Sacrament with the others, not even the most creative of storytellers among them could tell you, after the event, exactly when he had materialized in the crowd and seated himself unassumingly next to Miss Daae. Suffice it to say that he did so without a sound, so that Christine herself did not notice his presence until he whispered her own name in her ear.

"Christine…"

Tears came to her eyes at the sound of his voice, for she believed him dead, and the voice a figment of her own imagination.

"Christine, it is I… Child, it is Erik!"

His voice was so quiet as to be audible only to her, and yet she knew it at once. "It cannot be." She spoke in a whisper, refusing to look in the direction of the voice. "It cannot be. Erik is dead."

"And Christine Daae sings no more. Don't tell me that you truly believe death is the end of all things?"

The priest began his final blessing then, and Christine made the sign of the cross, mouthing the words silently as the rest of the congregation spoke them aloud: "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."

"And who is it that you long for tonight, child? Tell me that. The father? The boy?" His breath reeked of death as he hissed the mistranslation into his beloved's ear. "Or the ghost? Christine…"

"You are mistaken, Erik." Christine did not move, though those around her had begun their orderly procession from the pews to the Christmas Eve night that awaited them. "I am not alone tonight. I belong to Raoul now. You set me free, and I am faithful only to him."

"And yet, you swore a vow to me, did you not? My living wife…"

All trace of the girl she had been vanished from Christine's tone then; those who had seen her sing, those who had met her in the foyer of the opera and marveled at her goodness and her youth would not have known the young woman who stood like a rock among the joyous multitude and faced the man who had once inspired in her such awe. "I am not your prisoner, Erik."

"And yet…" The voice that spoke to her then was that of her angel, gentle and kind and sweet enough to turn the poor girl's attention for a moment – that precious moment! It was all that Erik needed. To he who had been personal assassin to the Shah of Persia, who had once had all of Paris at his feet… a moment was enough. "And yet…" he whispered as Christine struggled against the strands of catgut that made up the Punjab Lasso, "how quickly you have become just that!"

"It is useless, I assure you, my dear child," he remarked nonchalantly as she continue to struggle. "I am death incarnate! But what I want with you is not death… oh no. I assure you that your life and your… purity… are quite safe. If you cease this meaningless struggle, we may even, possibly, be finished before your dear Viscount comes home!"

She stopped struggling then, and asked him, "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" He laughed, drawing the attention of a few of the more curious parishioners. "I want, my child, what any man wants! Family… warmth… love… Christmas!"

The girl who had knelt before her father's grave that long-ago evening in Perros, trembling at the sound of the hands of her Angel against the strings of her father's violin; the girl who had fled to her dressing room after every show to offer up her soul to the only critic whose opinion she prized; the girl who longed still for that voice, for that music, with every inch of her body and soul, though her heart belonged to another! – that girl spoke now, over the rejoicing of the crowd, over the protests of the lady who had nearly eclipsed her. "I sang for you tonight. I gave you my soul… I gave you my soul, and I am dead!"

He must have removed the lasso from her neck, then, for it vanished and it seemed for a moment that she would simply collapse into the pew behind her. But Erik caught her up and held her, and together they joined the masses in the reverse pilgrimage to the world that waited beyond the cathedral doors.

Years later, when she would first dare to speak about the events of that night at all, Christine would claim to remember nothing that transpired between the moment that she stepped out of the sanctuary on Erik's arm and the moment in which he lowered her trembling form upon the bed in the Louis-Philippe room. Those few passers-by who noticed the couple at all could recall only that the man was unusually thin, perhaps ill? and that there was no indication that girl was not following him of her own will. "What a kind girl!" one older gentleman was overheard to remark, "accompanying her father to church on a night such as this!"

Christine awoke in a daze, unsure if she had ever left the house by the lake, if the past few months and all that had transpired had not been a dream after all. She called Erik to her side, and he came, shattering her illusions thoroughly, for he was unmasked and furious. "What is the matter? My… angel?"

"I need your flattery no more than I need your impertinence, child!" He spat the epithet in her face and took up her hand in his own terrible emaciated one. "Where is your ring?"

For a moment the words meant nothing to Christine; he repeated them. "You must know by now that it is futile to lie to Erik, to attempt to deceive him! Where is your ring?"

The girl looked down at her hand, and saw that it was true – the simple gold ring that Erik had given her was gone, though she could not remember having misplaced it. "It must have slipped off!" she cried, all semblance of strength vanishing from her voice. "I am yours, Angel… I have always been. Allow me to return, to retrace the route back to the church. It is there! It must be!"

"It is not."

"How do you know?" Tears had sprung to her eyes and were threatening to fall. Erik had promised to do terrible things to her, if she were ever to misplace the ring – if she were ever to forget, as she had, that she was married to music and must have no other!

"Because, child…" His voice was unusually cold and detached, though his eyes continued to burn with their eternal fury. "You were not wearing your ring in church, either."

Christine opened her mouth to object – she must have been wearing the ring! But Erik spoke first, silencing her. "It is of no matter. You are my living wife, Christine. But you are right – I set you free. I will therefore ask one thing of you, and one thing only. There is only one duty, as my wife, that I will require you to perform."

"Yes?"

"You must spend a single Christmas with me."

Christine's eyes grew wide, and as it had done many times before, her fear of him turned to pity and she clasped his hand in a gentler embrace. "Erik... you ask the impossible of me, but I will do it. How can I… How can you ask me to do such a thing, when I have promised myself to another? And yet I will. For you have been my only family, when I needed family the most. And I will be yours now."

She rose from the bed and followed him into the dining room, where the closest thing to a proper Swedish Christmas dinner that Christine had seen since she had left her own homeland waited for her on the table. Lutfisk and porridge, breads and pastries of all sorts, pickled herring and a proper Christmas ham! As she had done so many times before, Christine ate her fill while Erik watched, only seldom attempting conversation and never daring to lift a bit of food or drink to his lips.

"It's wonderful!" She found herself praising him between bites. "Where did you – Oh, Erik! It is just what I used to eat in Sweden, with my father. However did you know?"

"What pleases Christine, pleases Erik as well." He gave only this cryptic reply, and continued to watch her eat until she could eat no more.

She made as if to clear the table, but he caught her wrist and stopped her, promising her that it would be taken care of in the morning, that she was never to lift a finger in this house of which she was eternally the mistress. "And now, my child, a song. The opera is too… heavy, for this occasion, don't you agree? A Christmas song then, for our first and last Christmas as a family!"

He sat at the organ and began to play, and as she sang, now in Swedish, now in French, the goodness of their days together came flooding back to her and brought tears to her eyes. She had feared him, hated him, yes. But she had missed him, had cried when she believed him dead, and it was beyond any glory she had ever dared to dream of, to sing with him once more in the house beyond the lake. He sang with her, now and again, his beautiful voice rising to mingle with her poor, tired, unused one, and just when she was sure that the experience would kill her too, send the both of them together to heaven or hell – he stopped playing, and held her in his skeletal arms until the weeping subsided, and she was calm.

"I sing only for you, my angel…" she sobbed, and he held her closer.

"Then you must never sing again."

"I don't! I won't! My body and my soul are Raoul's, but I give my voice to you."

"Ahhh… a present!" Erik seemed to remember something then and, leaving her alone for a moment, retreated into the room that she remembered to be his own. When he returned, he bore a gift, wrapped in gold foil and tied up with a bow, no less fine than the packages that Raoul treated her to. Christine suspected at once that it must hold some sort of jewelry or other finery, and wondered what could be done about it if the gift were one that she must not accept.

She peeled the bits of gold wrapping aside with trembling fingers, and opened the simple white box that lay within. When at last she glimpsed the contents, however, she gasped, for Erik's gift to her was no ring, no pendant, no precious stone. What lay within the box was the bronze scorpion – the very scorpion with which she had pledged herself to him!

"What am I to do with this, Erik?" she asked, for Christine was not as naïve as she once had been, and could not possibly believe the gift to be simply a token of familial affection.

"You are to bear it with you, child, in the stead of your ring, forever! The ring you have lost – but no matter! The ring was my promise to you. The scorpion is your promise to me. My living wife, Christine! Though I have kindly made you a widow, you must never forget your promise to Erik, or the gift that you have given him in return!"

Christine returned to her flat in the morning, unharmed but unwilling to speak to anyone of the chance meeting which had kept her out until dawn on Christmas Day. But she never sang again, and when, thirty years later, she lay at last on her deathbead with the roar of the Swedish sea singing her a final lullaby, and her beloved Count de Chagny at her side, the Countess spoke for the first and last time of what had befallen her that evening.

Raoul had been a kind boy, and had grown into a truly good man who loved his wife above all else, and he listened to her fevered tale with a smile that tolerated and forgave this last of her childish fancies. When she came to the bit about the ring, however, he interrupted her, unable to allow her to deceive herself any further.

"But, of course you had lost your ring, Christine! Do you not remember?"

"In the church, yes…" her voice had grown faint. "I must have lost it in the church."

"Christine…" Raoul ran his fingers through her limp, graying hair. "Have you truly forgotten? We returned to the house on the lake together. We buried Erik, with your ring and your blessing. Christine… he set us free."

"No…" She closed her eyes, using the last shred of strength she had to point toward her dressing-table. "The second drawer on the right… open it, Raoul. It was… his Christmas present… to me."

The Count de Chagny crossed the room and opened the drawer. "Wh – Where did you get this? Christine?" He turned to her, his face white and his eyes wide with a long-forgotten fear, but he would never have his answer.

Christine Daae sang no more.

Notes and Apologies

First of all, to TheAngelCried: I'm not sure if this was exactly what you wanted. I didn't exactly keep the "no deaths" rule, but once this ending came into my head, I couldn't not write it… and the deaths are all canon, so I hope that is okay.

I think that I definitely took too much onto my plate for this gift, working too many themes into a story that was by its very nature short and on a deadline! I hope that the result is okay.

The title of the story means "In the name of the father," by the way, it's the first part of the Sign of the Cross ("In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," or before Vatican II, "the Holy Ghost.") Seemed like too nice of a parallel to pass up. No negative religious vibes are intended, sorry if those sorts of parallels offend anyone.