A/N: Thank you for your patience, guys. It's not the easiest few chapters to write and I have had even less free time than usual, so I apologise for the delay. This is a pretty important (and long) chapter and I'm very interested as always in your thoughts!

Chapter 48 — The Hearing

The ambulance had every comfort, as these things went. Nestled amid pomegranate trees rustling with the last of their golden-brown autumn foliage, nursed by charitable ladies of the highest society, given freedom to drink coffee, play at cards and listen to earnest poetry recitals, it was easy to forget the storm. And if one struggled still, if the seagull shrieks of the wounded brought in the breath of winter, then there were always doctors ready with their soft foreign accents and their inexhaustible doses of opium. After all, why fight the inevitable? Then another blanket would be pulled over another glazed face, the parcel wrapped and swiftly borne away, never disturbing the peace. A paradise of warriors straight from the pages of Christine's storybook.

Raoul hid the book away under his pillow, dressed and combed his hair. The simple tasks of pulling on trousers and buckling boots took an interminably long time these days but they had learned by now to leave him to it, all those charitable angels of mercy, and let him struggle as he would. The others in his tent had no such qualms; the more lightly wounded of the officers made no secret of enjoying the ministrations of the American ladies, and Raoul could only watch in morbid fascination the way they thrilled and preened when the troupe of the day's nurses would enter the tent.

For his part, he had resigned himself to readmitting the nuns. They demanded no social graces from him, asked few questions, and had never read his name or Christine's on the gleeful pages of the newspapers.

"Will you take a walk this morning, monsieur?"

Raoul turned on his heel, startled. Sister Thérèse has entered quietly and stood by the doorway, her soft white hands folded dutifully over her robes.

"No," Raoul said too abruptly, then softened his tone. "No, thank you, Sister. I am expecting Mademoiselle Daaé any minute."

"This early? It is scarcely gone eight."

She followed Raoul's glance to the envelope by the bed that had a runner had brought with the morning's post, and smiled slightly in benevolent understanding.

"The Lord keep you both," she said, touching her rosary, and retreated.

Raoul knew what she thought, what they all thought: a young woman who visited daily, yet not a sister — even Guyon, who knew all about the broken engagement, seemed to assume it was only a matter of time. Raoul had half a mind to call back the sister and show her the letter, just to see the expression on her face when she'd read what Christine wanted of him.

Please, Raoul, I need to know what happened in Bazeilles. Erik's life may depend on it.

Andersson. Somehow or other, everything always revolved around him, his life, his needs. Murder, extortion, arson, kidnapping — none of it mattered. The laws of God and man did not apply to him; he could escape the cage and the theatre and create a new life for himself in Bazeilles or in Paris or wherever he pleased, over and over again. And they would help him still, the likes of Madame Giry and his unfortunate Egrots, and even Christine, because men such as he did not pay for their crimes… But now he was finally cornered. What difference did it make whether he was innocent of the treason of which he was suspected, when the man was a murderer thrice over?

And yet Raoul could not summon even the shadow of triumph. Too much time had passed, and the Phantom who had torn Christine's childish fairytales from her eyes to replace them with terror had vanished, leaving behind nothing but the pitiful raw form of a human being.

Raoul turned Christine's frantic letter over in his hands, then folded it and stuffed it into the inner pocket of his offficer's jacket.

What happened in Bazeilles…

Noise, fire, the recoil of a gun against his shoulder. The throbbing agony in his leg. The Phantom dragging his prey through the buzzing swarm of bullets. Blackness. Later, the same man standing at his side and firing into the dusty yard of the little house in Bazeilles, into living men intent on destruction. He had wept afterwards the way Raoul could not, for the honour a killer did not have.

Well, Vicomte? How does it feel to be a murderer?

It was not murder, but it stank just as foully. It was war, and there was no honour in it. Christine's book was full of wondrously detailed images of battle, of heroes slaying monsters. That was not murder either, but Raoul wondered how many of them woke nightly afterwards, their nightmares pierced by the monster's dying scream.

He was no hero. Christine had saved him from the monster, sacrificing herself to win life for them both. Had it been one of her stories, there might have been some dreadful magic in it, to rip a piece each from the hearts of monster and man and exchange them, binding them to kinship.

The reality was more prosaic but just as binding. He owed his life to Christine and to the man who was guilty, but not of the crime of which he was accused. And Raoul de Chagny was not a murderer.

"Christine?.."

The doorflap parted, but it was not Christine on the threshold.

Raoul bowed slightly to Madame Giry, trying to conceal his surprise. It had been several months since he had last seen her, but she was unchanged, calm and straight-backed as ever, and carrying herself with the same graceful step. She returned his greeting, ignoring the grotesque swelling of bandaged thigh that strained the seams of his uniform, and instead levelled her gaze at his face.

"It is good to see you again, monsieur. My apologies for the early visit." She cast a quick look around the empty tent. "You are recovering?"

"As well as can be expected."

Raoul took up his crutches that had been propped against the foot of the bed, and hobbled over towards her. Behind her, the canvas doorway flapped in the breeze, empty.

"Christine sent me a letter this morning, madame."

"Yes. She would have liked to come and speak with you herself, but it seems justice must not be kept waiting. The audience is not patient." Madame Giry's mouth twitched in a smile but there was no humour in it. "You know something of what has happened, I believe. The charges against… our mutual acquaintance are serious."

"Aiding the enemy." Raoul frowned, touching the pocket where he had concealed Christine's letter. He could not bring himself to take it out. "Christine says there is to be a trial, and quickly."

"A hearing of sorts, by the people."

Raoul's frown deepened. "The Reds?"

Madame Giry gave a resigned shrug, "People come in all colours, monsieur. They are poor, and hungry, and growing leaner by the day on this diet of half-truths and inaction we are fed by our new government. You must read the papers here. We need a reason for our suffering, and traitors are all the fashion."

Raoul felt an unpleasant twist of fear in his gut. The spectre rouge had been a refrain of the newspapers for years, a convenient diversion from the faults of the Empire, but now the ghost seemed to be taking form. That very morning, an announcement with a black mourning border in a Red paper had claimed Metz was betrayed, with Marshal Bazaine treasonously negotiating surrender. It was a dreadful rumour to peddle. And a dreadful time to be suspected of treachery by the mob.

"Traitors may be in fashion," he pointed out, "but the people cannot hold a hearing. They must hand all such enquiries to the gendarmerie, that is the law."

Madame Giry gave a slow nod. "Doubtless the gendarmes will be informed, soon enough."

Raoul thought of Andersson in the cellar in Bazeilles, his filthy shirt and hands black from gunpowder, reeling backwards from a punch. They are headed for Paris. And he had returned, gendarmes and Prussians be damned.

Raoul nodded and took an awkward step back, balancing on his crutches.

"If my testimony can help then I am at your disposal, madame, as soon as we can find a conveyance. I take it you have the address."

Madame Giry sighed and adjusted the shawl about her shoulders. "Monsieur le Vicomte. If Christine is to be believed, you owe him a debt. That is so?"

Raoul acknowledged this in silence.

Madame Giry closed her eyes for a moment, and Raoul saw what it cost her to speak:

"You must not repay it like this."

Raoul knew his astonishment must look foolish, but he could not disguise it. "You would have me refuse?"

"You may owe him your life, but — you cannot owe him your honour. For years I gave mine to buy his safety, and won nothing but suffering for us all. Do not damn yourself as I have done. If it is true he dealt with the Prussians, then you must not let your debt force you to speak on his behalf, and make yourself a liar."

"A liar?"

At last Raoul found the anger he had not felt before, and it rose in a fiery choking tide. "It is not a question of debt. Madame, I stood side by side with that man in a house surrounded by the enemy, and my hand squeezed the trigger of a rifle exactly like his. If he dealt with the enemy, then so did I. Were I to remain silent, tell me, what would I do but damn myself?"

Madame Giry's silence made Raoul aware he had raised his voice inexcusably.

"Monsieur le Vicomte, is something the matter?" The sister was back, peering into the tent in her solicitous way, pretending she had not overheard.

"Not at all," Raoul told her, finding a bland smile to counter her unvoiced questions. Madame Giry raised her brows slightly, but said nothing. "But I think I will be taking a walk this morning after all. A long walk."

Sister Thérèse bowed her head. "I shall get the chair. I do hope all will be well with your friend."

"My friend. Of course."

Raoul looked straight at Madame Giry, and it was suddenly so easy to take out Christine's letter from his jacket that he could not understand why it had ever seemed a struggle. He flapped the paper open before her, not caring if the nun read it too.

If he is guilty and you know of it, then I beg you, tell me anyway, and the truth will set me free. I cannot live another illusion, the fear of it will drive me mad. I need to know.

"She is in love with him," Raoul said to Madame Giry, and heard the nun clatter her rosary beads, over and over again.

He had expected the words to hurt, and they did, but only as the rebound of a shot, fired from a knowledge he had held too long and too heavily. And now there was a vast, empty freedom.

Madame Giry moved her shoulders a little, spreading the burden. "Yes," she said, simply. "I believe you are right."

Raoul took back the letter and hid it away.

"Let us go." He turned to the nun. "It is time for my walk, Sister."

o o o

"And the nighttime excursion to the ramparts. What was its purpose?"

Christine did not look at Jean Gandon or at the clerk seated at a trestle table and dutifully transcribing every word, but only at the gathered crowd that spread from below the stage all the way to the back of the dance-hall: children, rowdy and bright-eyed, squeezed cunningly to the very front; kerchiefed women and men in National Guard uniform, some flint-eyed and angry, most merely curious for the spectacle. There were no chairs; the audience — she could think of it as nothing else — stood shoulder to shoulder in rapt attention, gazing up at the proceedings. She could just make out Louise's imposing form near the side door, watching with her arms crossed, but of Madame Giry there was no sign. The gaslight blazed brighter than Christine had ever seen it, exposing every crack in the plaster and paintwork, every mousehole and broken floorboard. Exposing her as well. The theatres and dance-halls were shut, and this was all the entertainment the people might have.

Christine sensed their growing impatience and knew her performance was woefully inadequate to convince them, but it was all she could do to repeat the same refrain over and over in different guises.

"Monsieur Andersson was at the ramparts to speak on behalf of an artist friend. It had nothing to do with the defenses."

Jean sighed at this now expected answer. "You must admit it is a peculiar time and place to be visiting acquaintances."

Christine felt a stirring of anger. "Peculiar is not yet criminal, Monsieur Gandon. There are thousands on duty at the ramparts every night, not least yourself and half the people here. Should we suspect them all?"

This was a mistake; she had provoked instead of entertaining. An incensed rumble ran through the audience and a few shouts rose above it — "Enough of this! Bring out the spy!"

Jean raised his hands, asking for silence. When at last he had it, he stared heavily at Christine.

"You are right, citoyenne. Duty. We serve as best we are able. Andersson shows nothing but contempt for what is the duty of every decent Frenchman to defend the Republic. Why has he refused the call to arms?"

Christine bit her lip. "He fought at Sedan."

"Did he!" Jean rose in his seat, angry now. The clerk scribbled furiously beside him. "He fought there, you say. Is he a soldier as well? He spun us a story about a courthouse he was to construct, there, in the midst of the fighting. Did you know he claimed to be an architect?"

"He is an architect."

"An architect who fights at Sedan, but goes to the Paris ramparts only to pay his friends a visit, and spends the remainder of his time singing with you, in an empty theatre that just so happens to be our Club. Is there no limit to how far you expect to stretch our credulity?"

Christine felt the wave of dismissal from the audience, and knew she was floundering, drifting further and further out of their interest. People were starting to fidget and whisper. They wanted more than her stubborn clinging to the same improbable story. They wanted her to faint perhaps, to throw herself at Jean's feet and plead, to sob and rend her clothing and tear her hair. Or, equally entertaining, to disavow Erik Andersson completely and trot out some fresh evidence of his treachery, of strategic building plans sold to the Prussians or some similar nonsense. She could offer them nothing. Her body felt frozen numb with the expectation of the next act, the inevitable moment when Erik would be led out here, and forced to endure the same questions. And then the third, and final, act. Finale, with apotheosis. Another traitor dead. Long live the Republic.

Christine held Jean's challenging gaze, and managed at least to keep her voice under control, even if she could feel her hands trembling badly. "Why do you ask me these things, when you know I have no way to prove them? You are determined to condemn him no matter the evidence."

"If you had evidence that he fought at Sedan, and fought bravely, would that satisfy you?"

Christine's head whipped up, she searched the audience frantically for the source of the voice — there! The side door had been opened, thrusting Louise aside, and now people were shuffling out of the way, parting to clear a path for a procession so improbable in this place that they merely stared: a wheelchair bearing a young officer in full uniform, manoeuvred by a nun. The wheels squeaked as they advanced. Behind them, Madame Giry came in and Meg closed the door.

"Raoul!" Christine mouthed, and could not help beaming at him, at the warmth of the smile he gave her and at the familiar, beloved spark of humour and reassurance in his eyes. When he reached the edge of the stage, he nodded to Christine gravely, but she read the movement of his lips, the same incantation they had always shared before facing the scorn of society. Ignore them. She would have hugged him, if she could have safely left the stage. He was here.

A clearing had formed around Raoul and the nun. The audience grew silent, waiting.

Jean removed his glasses and cleaned them on a handkerchief before putting them back on, then mopped his forehead with the handkerchief. "Are we to understand that you have information about this case, sir?"

"I do." Raoul sat back in the chair, upright and undeniably impressive in his officer's stripes. Christine suddenly recalled his father, the Comte, presiding just like this over the dinners she had seen as Raoul's guest. She supposed he must have looked like this at the Assembly as well. She glanced over the audience; the people were fascinated — thus far at least, this evidence of aristocratic bearing brought forth no outcry, but that could so easily change…

"Your name then," Jean said, nodding to the clerk to record this.

"Raoul de Chagny."

Christine breathed lightly at the dropped title, and saw Madame Giry do the same where she stood. Raoul knew where he had come.

"Chagny?" Jean's eyebrows rose past the frame of his glasses. "Related to the Comte de Chagny, Ollivier's man? Not exactly a friend of the Republic—"

"Nor its enemy," Raoul countered, with such perfect, fiery conviction that Christine could only watch him in wonder. He walked this knife-edge between impudence and respect without the least hesitation, as if he had done it his entire life. Christine saw people leaning forward, craning their necks, and found herself taking an involuntary step nearer.

"My birth is not at issue here. I believe you are holding prisoner a comrade of mine, by the name of Erik Andersson."

"Your comrade." Jean gestured at Raoul's uniform, "You are an officer with the regulars."

"Sous-lieutenant, 12th corps."

This caused a stir; even the clerk looked up from his meticulous scribbling for a moment, his pen dripping ink.

Jean looked uncomfortable. "The 12th is imprisoned at Sedan."

"Most of those who remain, yes. We are regrettably few. I was fortunate to have escaped," Raoul motioned at his leg, "relatively unscathed."

"And is it your claim then that Andersson fought with the 12th? With you?"

Raoul sat straighter in his chair, and put his hands upon the armrests. "It is my testimony, which I hope you will be good enough to record, that Erik Andersson was an architect on a civic project in the area, and was well known to the local people. It is further my testimony that he was in no way engaged with the regular army."

Amid mutters of incomprehension, Jean was forced to raise his voice again. "And yet you say he fought?"

Raoul caught Christine's eyes and she saw a flicker of dread behind the façade as he gathered himself, filling his lungs with air, readying for a dive into the cold sea. Then he spoke, and his voice was steady:

"Sedan is but one city in the valley of Givonne, but it is — was — surrounded by many pretty villages. Balan, Bazeilles, others. Some of the people managed to take shelter behind Sedan's walls before the Prussians came. Many more could not. Andersson's friends were among those who stayed."

There was absolute silence from the crowd. Christine had never before heard Raoul speak of this, and she saw now what it was she had asked of him: he unwound the memories in sharp bursts, like layers of bloodied bandages, his eyes never leaving hers.

"My division was to take up position in Bazeilles and hold it, and this we tried to do. We barricaded the streets. The people — those good loyal Frenchmen — stayed shut up their houses and barred the doors, afraid to give us bread, afraid they would be mobbed by their own army for a morsel of food. We had been marching for days on rations of hard biscuit and potatoes. We had not slept. The men did all they could but our condition was desperate, and the Bavarians who came upon us took advantage of it."

A child's high voice began chattering and was instantly hushed by its mother.

"I was shot. I should have bled to death in that street of locked houses, had Erik Andersson not seen me. The man you accuse of treason made his friends open their door and brought me inside. Then, from the attic of that house, Andersson and I tried to hold back the Bavarians."

Raoul looked around slowly, from face to face. "It is my testimony that he was not in the army. He did not need to do it. He could have waited in the cellar below, or gone to his construction site in Sedan. He could have returned to Paris or fled across the border to Belgium. But he stood at that attic window, hour after hour, and he fired at the enemy. His aim was exceptional; he never faltered. All through that day and the evening, the Bavarians came. And they died."

Christine's heart thudded dully in her chest. Against her will, she saw the image Raoul's words had conjured: Erik in a stranger's house, Erik holding a rifle aimed at the men far below. She could picture it, could almost smell the smoke. Had he seen in that army a new mob come to tear apart his shelter? Had it held a thrill of power, the lure of dealing legitimate death?

It was only when Jean spoke that she realised the effect Raoul's story had had on the rest of the audience.

"Then he is a hero," Jean said, in perfect earnestness, and stood up. A slow tremor of noise began somewhere at the back of the hall, gathering force, growing louder and more certain with each passing second. Christine glimpsed tears in their eyes, and even Louise, who had regarded with such suspicion the Imperial braids of the officer's uniform, now shone with a powerful, furious joy. Raoul had given them the very thing so sorely needed in the grim tedium of the siege, better even than a spy's downfall. He had given them glory.

The same people who minutes earlier had been clamouring for the traitor now stood and cheered in a spontaneous and heartfelt ovation.

Christine felt heat sting her eyes, her nose, threatening to dissolve the composure she had fought so hard to maintain. It had to be true, and she could only admire what Raoul had accomplished here, an oration his father might have been proud to hear… And yet, and yet. Raoul was saying something else, gesturing to her, but his voice was drowned out by the hubbub, and she could no longer stand this. She stared at her clasped hands, at the fingernails she had bitten last night in trying to write the letter to Raoul. She told him she wanted to know the truth, and she did. She did. But it hurt so very much, this portrait of the Phantom raised far above the battle, raining death onto the enemy below.

A hero.

She remembered the way Erik had stood in her apartment the night he had returned to her from the war, his clawed hands gripping his shoulders and the wildness in his eyes. He had spoken of battle as something immediate and terrible. She had not wanted to know any more, then.

"Mademoiselle!"

Someone was calling her insistently from below the stage: the elderly nun who had wheeled Raoul's chair. In the general confusion, Christine knew herself forgotten by her interrogators, at least for the moment, and she could no longer see Raoul's face for the milling people.

She hurried over to her, unnerved by the woman's anxious gesticulating. "Sister?"

"Mademoiselle, the Vic— your young friend would speak with you."

Christine slid down to join her and squeezed through the crowd, and in that moment Raoul somehow succeeded in turning his chair away from them and toward her. His face was chalk white, startling her from her own fears. God only knew what he had seen between the lines of his memory, within the hell she had forced him to recount.

"Raoul!" She rushed over to him and then stopped, suddenly uncertain. There were too many people here, and too many things to say… The words caught in her chest.

"Lotte. You're trembling." He looked up at her, no longer the splendid officer but again her friend, the young boy who stumbled dripping from the sea, and the man who had swum the Phantom's lake to find her. She had asked him to speak for the man who had almost destroyed them both. For the man he had just made a hero. For Erik, her Erik, who could not turn away from the blood.

"Christine, the last thing I wanted was to cause you pain…"

"No, you didn't, I — it is only this place. Thank you. For coming here, despite," she frowned at the wheelchair, "despite everything. I saw how much it hurt you to speak."

Raoul did not deny it, but the colour was gradually returning to his face. "It was only the truth," he said. "Even if my honour were not at stake, it had to be done: the people do not have the right to hunt as they will. But I did not think they would do this…" He winced at the jubilant chaos that continued around them. "I envy them."

"Envy them! Why?"

"They are so sure there must be heroes somewhere."

"There is one before me now." Christine met Raoul's surprised gaze, with complete honesty. She tried to shape her mouth into a smile for him, but could not, and the fear would not go away.

"Don't," Raoul said. "Heroes and monsters belong in your book. It has taken me a very long time to see it."

She reached out and took his hand lightly, trying in vain to draw comfort. "I did not think it had been like that. The battle."

"Like what?" he said in bemusement.

Christine squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again, blood-red circles swam over her vision. "Raoul… Did he enjoy it? Standing above them all. Shooting."

The understanding unfolded in Raoul's face leaf by leaf, a whole book of pity. He shook his head, slowly. "No. He did not."

"He has asked to court me." Christine could not hear herself speak over the noise of the crowd, but Raoul heard.

He nodded. His hand curled into hers slightly, then let go. Christine wished she could hold it, catch it, try to explain, but she had no right to this, to any of this — not his friendship, not his understanding. Everything he had given her, she had given away.

"Raoul…"

"You should know all of it then." He looked squarely at her. "There was more, after the attic. Will you hear it?"

Christine stood riveted to the floor, unable to move. What more could there be? "Yes."

"It was after nightfall. We were almost out of ammunition, but the battle was not yet done, only paused until morning. The Bavarians had reinforcements. And there were Prussian batteries already moving to the high plateaux. It was not a matter of whether we died there — only how. He… Your very brave suitor wanted to us to go into the cellar, to hide out. His friend wanted to fight."

"...And you?"

Raoul gave her a lopsided smile. "I was too busy bleeding to care. But Andersson wanted to live. He wanted to live very much, Christine, but in that place there was only death. I do not think I have ever seen such revulsion in another man's face as when he knew he must kill, and he picked up that gun again and went to collect cartridges. Except perhaps when he returned, covered in blood and filth, half-crazed, without the gun… He had spent that whole morning outside, among the shells, the mitrailleuses, the dead and the dying. I do not know what he saw. I pray I never will. But I know of no other man who could have seen what the Prussians did afterwards to that unfortunate village, and not vowed revenge."

Raoul looked past her to the stage, where Jean and a few of the other men were now caught up in an increasingly heated discussion. A kepi was flung to the table, a stack of paper pounded by a fist.

"They have called him a traitor for it, Christine, and a coward." Raoul nodded at the stage. "It isn't cowardice, though I do not pretend to understand it. But I am beginning to think you might."

Christine could not speak. She felt a presence behind her and turned, grateful, into Madame Giry's arms, too much a child just then to care what the commotion up on stage was all about, and why the audience was once again growing quiet.

Another hand touched her elbow.

"Christine." Meg's voice. "It's him."