Thank you so much for your reviews, guys – they keep me going even when the going is very tough! A bit of quickie housekeeping for those confused by the title of Chapter 21: ghosts may indeed dissolve by daylight, but there is no daylight in that chapter. There's the rub. ;)

In reply to Fantomenfan1, and also because I think this has to be admitted at this point: this fic is not going to have an R/C end. Okay? All on board? Great. Then back to the story.

Chapter 23 – Family

In the cab, Christine sat with her hands folded in her lap, trying to look only straight ahead at the trotting horse. She was unused to being outside at this early hour, when the pale light painted buildings on the boulevards into things entirely unknown, stretching lilac shadows at improbable angles, throwing doorways into stark relief. It made her feel distant from it all, an alien in a city she had lived in since childhood. The Opéra had looked just like this on her return from the candle-lit cellars below: subtly altered without appearing any different, as if it was she herself who had changed.

And had she changed? Christine allowed the thought to spread through her, questing fingers searching for damage she did not feel. All she found was a kind of relief, a resignation to having done the inevitable. It was as though for the longest time she had been drowning, sinking through heavy water, and last night her feet had finally found the rocks and silt at the bottom and she had pushed instinctively upwards, desperate to break the surface and breathe. In a detached sort of way, Christine thought she ought to be appalled by what she had done, or ashamed, but she did not feel it. Perhaps there was simply nothing left inside her after the evening's terror, the night's need, the morning's humiliation... Yet in this numbness dark longings stirred like serpents waking, and she could not help seeing Erik's face open to hers in the light, his hair falling against her mouth.

He had not, after all, moved on, leaving her behind like debris strewn across the dance-floor after the end of a masquerade. He did not want this thing they had created between them, any more than she did – but the knowledge that it existed in him, too, was sharp and clear inside Christine, the shards of glass from a broken mirror. It hurt, but it was nonetheless a tremendous release, almost freedom.

It was still very early when she got home, less than an hour after sunrise. Christine took off her wrap, hat, shoes, and put everything away in its place, all the familiar actions made a little surreal by the morning light. There was still plenty of time to take herself to her room, change her clothes, maybe even get some sleep. She felt unnaturally calm and empty, almost indifferent. Spirit-like, she drifted through the parlour, opened the doors to the dim, sleepy dining-room and came inside.

It took her a moment to realise the room was not empty.

Meg was standing in her nightshirt with her back to the table, watching Christine. Behind strands of blonde hair, her face was white and utterly blank.

Christine halted, not knowing what to say. A tiny movement of Meg's hand caught her attention, and she saw Meg was holding the envelope with Erik's thank-you note. From where she stood, Christine could just about read the address: 15, rue Fontenelle.

The skin of her hands was turning damp. She ran her palms over the sides of her skirt.

"I didn't go to the cemetery," she admitted.

Meg made no response, did not even acknowledge that Christine had spoken, and this silence bore down on Christine more heavily than anything she could have said. In Meg's red-rimmed eyes she saw the sleepless night reflected as clearly as if it was being played out before her.

All the shame Christine had not felt before filled her lungs at once, choking her.

"Meg, how long have you been up?"

"Hours. I waited for you all evening, then I fell asleep in the parlour. Maman came home after midnight, woke me and told me to go to bed. I thought you were back. I got dressed for bed and looked in your room, but you weren't there. Only this." Meg held out the envelope.

Christine took it from her, feeling faintly sick. "Meg..."

"I didn't know what to do," Meg was almost whispering. "I thought of waking maman, but to what end, in the middle of the night? The police would do nothing until morning, and even then, with the riots..."

Her voice cracked, and for a dreadful moment, Christine could see exactly what Meg had gone through this night: her uncertainty, her fears, imagination picking over the worst possibilities like rosary beads, around and around. She, who had spent so much of her own life in fear, had thoughtlessly done this to Meg. The monumental selfishness of it took her breath away.

She wanted to apologise and could find no words except, "I'm sorry, I am so sorry..."

It was weak and silly, the kind of apology one might make after borrowing a ribbon without asking. Christine stared down at her hands, at her skirt, at the way the shadows fell into the folds of fabric. She wished she could disappear.

"Did he hurt you?" Meg asked unexpectedly.

Christine glanced up and followed the direction of Meg's gaze to her own dress, noting the pins on her bodice that replaced missing buttons, and the faint remnants of dust which Erik's landlady had not managed to brush out of her skirts.

"I fell." The truth of it sounded absurd in Christine's own ears. "I found his house, but it was dark..."

She thought to explain; all the half-sensible reasons about the war and Erik leaving Paris were already poised on the edge of her lips, but then she closed her mouth with a snap and said instead:

"I needed to see him again. To make sure that I wasn't crazy." Christine heard her voice stretch thin but strong somehow, like spider-silk. "Meg, I just needed to see him."

"Naked." Meg supplied.

Christine gaped, and in that flustered moment Meg shook herself, casting off the stupor of the night, and became pragmatic:

"You can't tell maman, she'll kill you. You better go and change out of that... I think I have some buttons that match, I'll go look now."

"Meg," Christine called after her quietly. "Thank you..."

Meg looked back for a moment, dishevelled in her unslept-in nightgown. She paused, seemingly debating something with herself. Then her eyes widened slightly, as if she asked against her own better judgement:

"Did he do something to you? When you sang with him on stage that last time, your eyes went all strange, like you couldn't fight him. Perhaps at the supper..."

Christine moved her head from side to side, No, until Meg fell silent. "This was me, Meg. All me."

"But you don't regret it."

"No."

Meg looked at her for a moment longer, then shrugged in that resigned way she sometimes did at rehearsals, when they encountered an impossible, unnecessarily complicated dance step.

"Go on, before maman finds you here. I'll bring the buttons."

Christine nodded gratefully. She was about to head to her room when her gaze landed on the balcony door. The new latch was polished brass, a replacement for the broken one. With a stab of belated fear, Christine imagined Erik out there, behind the curtains, waiting like a silent black shadow in a cloak and mask. Madame Giry had sat right here at the table, and then Christine had joined her after the Tuileries ball and they talked. Had her own arrival saved Madame Giry? It was an odd, disquieting idea. Christine did not want to think about it, but her mind resolutely turned to Erik's room, to the recent but dreamlike memory of his eyes in the greyish light of morning as he told her about this.

He did not want her forgiveness, and she did not want to give it – yet he had looked at her as if she had been a priest, as if she must hear his confession. There had been resentment in that look, and anger, but Christine felt a sudden fierce desire to protect the moment, to keep it as he had kept her ring.

With a swift movement, Christine flicked the latch and swung open the door to the balcony. Fresh air blew into the room. It ruffled the curtains, her hair, her skirts, and Christine took a deep breath, then another. And then she was simply standing there alone with the morning, inhaling lungfuls of cool air that smelled of horses and dew and some neighbour's early cooking, and in this one moment she felt she needed nothing else.

"It'll be all right," she said aloud, and it felt good to hear it. "Everything will be all right."

o o o

"It is nothing short of a disaster."

The Comte de Chagny said this in his usual calm, clipped tone, but Raoul had no trouble spotting the anxious edge in his father's movements. The Comte rose from his place at the head of the dining table and moved briskly to stand behind his chair, as though taking the floor at the emergency session of the Assembly for the second time this evening. Raoul saw his mother's frown of disapproval.

The Comte wrapped his hands around the oak chair, his fingers indenting the heavy upholstery.

"A crowd of a hundred thousand cramming the quays." He turned to Raoul, "I assume you did see them?"

"Yes, Father. I saw them." Raoul suppressed a twinge of annoyance at the question, and made an effort to continue sawing at his steak. It was done to perfection, and he wished it was not, so that he could pretend to be engrossed in the process of consuming it. In the time since he had lost Christine, his father had become the more determined to make a politician of him, and Raoul was rapidly tiring of these misguided concerns for his welfare imposed on him every time he obeyed his filial duty and paid his parents a visit.

Yet this time, his father did not press more questions on him, but merely resumed his speech, as if delivering a prepared peroration:

"A crowd of a hundred thousand outside, calling for a Republic, and what happens in the chamber? Nothing but bickering! Jules Favre and the Left are wringing their hands as usual and debating the logic of starting a riot – while the Right are heaping blame on Ollivier and us with him, as though it was not de Gramont but I who, two months ago, was demanding immediate action against Prussia."

"Really, my dear," the Comtesse remonstrated, "cannot this keep until after supper?"

"I'm afraid not." The Comte ran his hands through his silvered hair, and sat down again, heavily. "Ollivier is finished. The Right have taken over the government."

In the ensuing silence, Raoul could only stare at his father. There was nothing in his bearing to suggest a man defeated; his shoulders did not stoop and his eyes measured Raoul as coolly as ever, and yet Raoul understood very well that he was looking at the end of his father's career. The Comte de Chagny had thrown in his lot with Ollivier's party, rejecting the hard-line imperialists on the Right in seeking a constitutional monarchy, a Liberal Empire. These aspirations meant little to Raoul, but in the face of his father's calm demeanour at delivering such news, he felt a pang of fellow-feeling. This sudden sympathy for his father was oddly disturbing.

Across the table, his mother set down her knife and fork, saying in a neutral voice, "What happens now, Arsène."

Raoul could not remember the last time she had addressed his father by his given name.

"Ollivier is taking his wife to Italy. I imagine they will not delay their departure any longer than is necessary."

The Comtesse considered for a moment. "You are proposing we join them?"

"That seems best."

Raoul watched as their conversation continued in silence, without gesture or expression, as if his parents had withdrawn to another place where he could not hear them. He wondered that they could be so accepting of this, as if the two of them made a habit of going into exile every now and then. He supposed it was for the best: if they left the country, it would make the decision he had come to over the past few weeks somewhat easier.

Finally, the Comtesse touched a fingertip to the corner of her eye, briefly, and then the usual charming smile returned to her face. "I admit, it has been entirely too long since we have had a holiday abroad. I should very much like to see Florence again. Raoul, darling, do you remember Florence?"

The question took Raoul by surprise. "I can't say that I do."

"No, I suppose you wouldn't; you were rather young. You will find it delightful, I'm sure. It will be just what you need: a complete change of scene and society."

Raoul's heart skipped. So they expected him to come with them. He tried to make his voice gentle, but when he spoke it sounded strained:

"I am not going, maman."

"Don't be silly, darling, of course you are," she waved him off – at the same time as the Comte demanded: "What do you mean, you are not going?"

Raoul took his starched napkin, folded it carefully in half and then in half again, placed it beside his plate, and stood up. He squared his shoulders.

"Forgive me, but I cannot come with you to Italy. You have my deep sympathies, Father, on the matter of Monsieur Ollivier's misfortune, but I am unable to leave France at present, and unwilling to do so. I do hope you will understand that I have my own affairs to attend to."

His father's stern brows lifted in an ironical way Raoul did not like. "Dare I hope that these 'affairs' are not another wearisome round of frivolity and melodrama involving Parisian chorus girls?"

"They are not." What sympathy Raoul had felt for his father's plight was evaporating.

"Come darling," the Comtesse said peaceably, "of course you must be unhappy at this news. Your father and I completely understand your reluctance to leave all your friends behind so precipitously, but what affairs could you possibly place above the safety of your own family?"

The Comte gave a long sigh. "My dear, I believe all our son's affairs may be safely archived under the name 'Christine Daaé'."

Raoul reached into his pocket and withdrew a letter. Without saying another word he opened it and placed it on the table where his parents could see the official stamps from the War Office.

"You may file this under whatever name you like," he told his father. "I hadn't wanted you to find out this way, but perhaps it is best after all."

For a moment, both his parents were speechless. Then the Comtesse made a stricken, birdlike sound in her throat. "You cannot do this. Raoul, this is a cruel joke."

"It is no joke, maman. I'm sorry."

"Very well." His father sounded tired. "I wish I had discovered these papers sooner, but no matter now. How much is this folly going to cost us?"

"This is not a conscription," Raoul pointed out. "You cannot buy a replacement."

"Nonsense; it is a question only of price."

"Quite to the contrary." Raoul picked up the letter, and tucked it into his pocket. "It is a question of decency. I admit I have not your political acumen, Father, but I will not allow another man to die in my place."

"Then you are a fool," the Comte snapped. "Were you not paying attention to anything I have tried to teach you? The army of France is a shambles, and your presence in it, untrained as you are, is completely superfluous!"

Raoul shrugged. "My presence in Italy would be no less superfluous, and likely more so. At any rate, it will be," – he gave his mother a tight, apologetic smile – "a change of scene and society."

He went to his mother, kissed her cold cheek, and then stood before his father with his hand held out, until at length, the Comte shook it, and turned away.

"I will write to you in Italy. I hope your journey is a pleasant and safe one."

Raoul waited for them to say something, for an answer.

"Berthe." His mother raised her voice, calling the maid over. "We will have the coffee now."