Christine
She stared at him, wide-eyed at the pleading, implacable boy before her. My poor Raoul. She thought. You never realized what I would do to you. I've been nothing but a burden, a weapon to cut yourself on.
"Raoul." The sound of his name seemed to jerk him back into some semblance of composure. His face was tight, eyes lit with a painful hope. Christine felt her stomach churn. Now. Now, before I lose my nerve - before I lose my will.
"Raoul." She looked back into the naive eyes, so bright with hope, so helpless. "Raoul, you don't have to protect me anymore."
"Christine-" he exploded, losing his temper for the second time that day. "Do you really think that I did-everything- only for your protection. Do you think I proposed to you- do you think I went down to that- that thing's lair merely to protect you? I love you, Christine, I love you, dammit. Of course I want to protect you- but not for the reasons you believe! Can you honestly tell me that you trust him-that he won't hurt you? Christine, you need someone who can offer you more than a life of darkness. You need someone who will love you unconditionally, someone sane, for God's sake! Not a murderer, not a criminal, not a damned maniac!"
He was as pale as she, hands shaking. "You need me."
Her eyes were pitying. "Oh, Raoul. My poor friend." She had not thought that he would delude himself thus, thought that-
That you still loved him? You left with him, Christine. You left Erik for him.
She stared off into the distance, remembering Erik's warm hands on her in that fateful, overwhelming performance. Don Juan. 'Lead me, save me from my solitude'. He had whispered, the words a desperate plea, sung with all of the years of loneliness and darkness that he had spent behind them, all the years of a heart barren of love or comfort.
And yet- and yet, she had heard the depth of the love he had promised her in his voice, the emotion that refined his eyes to blue suns. The tenderness in his caress, the hesitancy, soon lost in a last effort to reach her, lost in the blaze of emotion that was his love. A love that she had rendered flightless, a bird of paradise whose wings she had clipped in the foundations of the Opera House. A love that could not take flight.
But it was alive. He was alive. Christine knew that she must betray her promises to them again. Promises to love them alone, promises that she had broken to both of them.
She had seen the love in Raoul's eyes, fondness, nostalgia for a lost childhood. A desperate clinging for the past. A world of opulence and tranquility.
She had seen the love in Erik's eyes, a blazing brand, a promise of eternity, a promise for all the years ahead of them. A world of music and light.
She had felt its answer in herself, resonating with a force that transgressed her mortal frame.
"Raoul." She began. "Please, try to understand. I did not choose to love Erik. I know that he has been shunned all of his life, and it marks him. I know that he seems unpredictable and volatile. I also know," here she paused, gathering her thoughts, "that he would not hurt me for the world. And that there is no one else in the world that I would have chosen to love." Her eyes softened. "No one. Raoul, you are so dear to me, but not in the way a husband would wish to be dear to his wife. You are still the friend of my childhood, no matter what you have done now, and you will remain my childhood friend forever.
'But I do not love you"
He stared at her a moment. She stepped back from him, waiting. He moved towards her again, a boy searching for a light in the darkness. Before he touched her, she pulled back. It was then she realized that the thunder that had been in her ears as she spoke had not been her own heart. It had been hoofbeats.
And they had stopped.
Erik
He looked at her- simply looked, because he could do nothing else. She blazed in his sight, his angel. The light of her eyes was a beacon in the dark shadows that began to creep around them. Christine's eyes were fixed on his, something was in them that he dared not name, to name it would have been to define it, to limit it. And what was in her eyes could not be limited.
He slid from the horse, leaving it standing in the snow, breath coming in quick clouds. "Christine." She smiled, and took a step toward him.
That one step was all that he had needed. He caught her up, wrapping his arms around her, stroking her hair feverishly. The petite frame of his angel fit perfectly against his, her arms fastened around his waist, forehead resting against his collar. "How much did you hear?" She asked softly. He tightened his hold on her, for a moment almost believing that she would disappear. There is no one else in the world that I would have chosen to love. "I heard enough, Christine. Are you hurt?"
"No. No," she whispered. "I am not hurt. How did you know I was here?"
"The boy sent me a message of sorts. I will not shut you away in a cage of glass, Christine, but neither will I abandon you when you need me."
A sharp sound, almost animalistic, broke him from his reverie. He looked up from the soft eyes to see the boy, eyes distraught, staring at them; slowly the Vicomte drew his sword. "I almost wish I knew-how you had deluded her so, Phantom. But-" he settled into the classical fencers en guarde. "I suppose it won't matter once you're gone"
Automatically he pushed Christine behind him, drawing his own sword. "Do you really think this serves any purpose, boy?" Oddly enough, he felt pity for the fop. He had been in the same situation, felt exactly what the boy was feeling now.
Desperation.
"I've beaten you before. You're not the Ghost you would have us all believe; you're only a man." He lunged toward Erik, a reckless look in his eyes. Erik recognized it, he had felt it course through his own veins often enough.
Bloodlust.
Erik slid out of the way and the Vicomete whirled, reflexes quickened in his high-strung state. He stared flatly into Erik's eyes.
"And men bleed."
My God, Who Is This Man?
Raoul
He had almost believed her- God he had almost believed her! The conviction in her voice, the brilliance exuding from her eyes... he had almost believed her. Had almost believed that his Lotte loved another man. Than-than he had ridden up, like Death on a black horse, ferocity and despair in his eyes. He saw him rein in behind her, stare at her as she spoke to him, still as one of the cemetery statues, and he knew. He's using her. He's controlling her- just like he did last time.
His heart contracted painfully at the joy in her eyes as she turned, the desire in his as she stepped away from Raoul. To him. Three running steps, and the murdering Phantom's arms had been around his Christine. She clung to him, he heard the murmur of a question pass her lips, the sickening smile he had given her. How his eyes had glowed, blue depths burning like the embers of Hell.
How can she love a murderer? The thought was inconceivable to him as he stood there, watching the man run his hands over Christine, caressing her hair, pressing into the small of her back, holding her to him. He saw her eyes, half-closed in rhapsody, and felt something begin to bleed inside of him. That- thing is beguiling her again. Oh, Lotte, didn't you learn the first time? Why are you letting him do this to you?
Images raced through his head, swirling like the mist upon the Phantom's lake. The harrowing journey down to the devil's lair after Don Juan, the burn of the rope against his windpipe, the cold grate scraping against him. How he had pleaded with them both, for the Phantom to release his Lotte, how he had begged her to let him die if it would win her free of the monster she now embraced. How she had ignored his cries, choosing to sacrifice herself for him.
How his Christine, his pure, angelic Lotte had went to the demon in man's guise, had kissed him with a passion that had struck the powerful Opera Ghost still and torn Raoul's heart. That kiss still haunted him, the terrible wrongness of it shadowing his nights.
His heart hardened. It would not happen again. The Phantom would not win his Lotte with his tricks. The sight of them, standing now, with such closeness his lips against her hair, froze something inside of him.
And shattered it.
He strode toward the monster who held his Christine against his sinner's body. A sharp keening had broken from his throat as he drew his sword.
And now they faced each other, the Phantom between him and his little Lotte, as he was ever determined to be.
"She is not yours." The words were cold, drawn up from someplace inside that was more hopelessly frozen and dead than the lifeless graves around them. "She never was."
He lunged forward again, frustrated as the man eluded the blow.
"Stand and fight me, devil!"
"I know that Christine does not belong to me. Christine is, in all things, herself." His eyes were eerily calm, catlike. "Ownership is not the nature of love- haven't you learned that, in your fine courts?"
Something deep inside him was stirring. "How dare you speak of love, monster? What would you know of love, Devil's Child? What could you hope to have from Christine but her pity?" The man flinched. Raoul smiled grimly and pressed his advantage as they circled each other. "Tell me, what could you know of love?" A flurry of snow was flung up in the wake of an exchange of parries.
One more step... Raoul thought. Just one more step...
Christine's voice froze him in mid-lunge. "Everything." Both of their heads turned toward her. She was flushed, her eyes intent upon the blazing eyes that Raoul was determined to dim. She seemed to exude a purity, a strength of emotion that Raoul had never seen.
"Christine." He said breathlessly. She ignored him, her dark eyes on another man. "Erik knows everything I could have wished him to know of love. Despite his past. Despite the world that shuns him, he still loves." Her eyes were shining, a tear made its solitary way down her cheek like a falling star. "I was blind enough not to see it before, Raoul, that Erik is everything I could ever wish in love. And I cannot love another while he holds my heart"
The man- Erik- seemed momentarily brought out of the extreme concentration of survival. His eyes had left Raoul entirely, fixed in something like rapture, on Christine.
Raoul lunged forward, whipping his blade in the move that had disarmed the Phantom the last time they had met in this cemetery. He twisted, faster than Raoul could have imagined with reflexes that were almost superhuman. A sword flew through the air, to land, in a shining arc, on the snow.
The Phantom raised his sword to Raoul's throat. "I told you this was useless, Vicomte. You hurt Christine with your actions, do you not see?" With the other man's sword at his throat, Raoul turned his head to Christine. His Lotte's eyes were mournful on his, seeming to ask her favorite question: Why?
"Lotte," he breathed. "Little Lotte, please-" he wasn't even sure what he wanted to ask her anymore.
I don't want to see you with this monster.
She bent those endlessly grieving eyes on him; he felt his heart turn over. "Enough, Raoul." She whispered finally. "I've had enough. Erik?" She looked away from him. The Phantom's eyes did not leave Raoul's face, his voice softened instantly.
"Christine?"
"Take me home?"
He lowered his sword from Raoul's neck slowly, almost regretfully. In a voice so low that only Raoul could hear, he said quietly. "Give up, boy. You'll only hurt yourself- and her." He turned, crossed to Christine with swift steps, lifted her onto the horse's broad back and mounted behind her. In a spray of snow, like a broken wave of foam, they were gone.
Raoul stared after them, no thoughts within his head but one. I cannot give her up. I will not give her up.
I will not give her up.