Author's Notes: rubs hands together gleefully Oh yes, I dared to tackle Don Juan Triumphant. "Past the Point of No Return" was only the beginning, right? So, I got to make up and ending for it. Yes, the few unrecognizable lines I made up, and the very last two are supposed to be sung together (just wait and see). I'm pretty happy with this chapter, but I might end up going back later and sprucing it up a bit more, so if I edit it I will let you all know.

Pretty please R&R. Tell me what y'all think!

Chapter 12 – Before the Bridge

Summer had been short. Russia's winter was always an early guest, settling in for a nice long stay that was showered with cold storms and colder nights. Those nights were still far off, the fall just beginning to descend into frost and the crisp colors into shining white. Only a dusting was over the ground, more frozen dew than snow. Danielle wriggled her fingers in her gloves as she hefted her suitcase in front of the latest opera house.

Whispers had flown ahead of them. The first night, Don Juan was a god, astounding the audience with his song. But in the second performance, Aminta was a quiet, passionate goddess, and her Fenris' Cry became an attraction as much as the opera itself. It swept from Luxembourg to Belgium to Germany. And now back to the winter cold. Nearly a year. Could it really have been that long already? Sometimes she nearly lost hope of every catching up, of ever finding Erik. Sometimes she feared she was doomed to follow in his footsteps and repeat his song with her own, like Echo crying after Narcissus for eternity. But then she would sing, or play Fenris, and she knew she had to go on.

She pushed open the door with an ancient groan, her bag bouncing against her leg. She bypassed the man in the lobby selling tickets and walked imperially though to the house as if she had done it a thousand times. She could feel the blood flushing her cheeks as the warm air of the theater enveloped her.

It was a familiar sight that met her when she stepped inside. People hurried about in anticipation for the night, props being arranged, seats cleaned, costumes being fixed. The orchestra played beneath the baton of a rather energetic man. Danielle strode down the aisle, now so used to the routine of appropriating her part that she felt no hesitation. Her suitcase fell into a seat, followed by her bag, while she waited patiently for the particular song being rehearsed to end. She pulled her gloves off.

"And who might you be?" he said suddenly, twisting his head around. The maestro was surprisingly young, dark curly hair falling in his eyes. He had an old green scarf wound around his neck, the fingers poking out of his gloves tapping the baton in his other palm. He waited impatiently, the baton smacking constantly in his palm, but despite his restlessness he didn't seem angry at all.

"Good day, monsieur," she said, offering a small bow of her head. "I wish to offer to sing in tonight's performance." The maestro unexpectedly sprang from the pit and came to stand before her. His arms folded across his chest as he looked her up and down, and Danielle frowned indignantly, standing taller and lifting her chin.

"You want to sing Aminta's part, is that it?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Enough 'monsieur,' girl. You're a soprano?"

"Yes," she said crisply. He was no where near old enough to be calling her 'girl.' The maestro tapped his finger against his cheekbone, still eyeing her. It was a very precise look, not that of a man checking out a flirtatious brat, but looking for something he needed. He carefully circled around her, examining her posture.

"A little tall," he muttered, "and straight hair. Hmm…"

"What, do you want me to show some leg?" Danielle finally snapped in exasperation. The man suddenly laughed, a deep chuckle in his throat.

"Well, go on, sing a bit for us." Some of the musicians and actors were watching them, nudging each other congenially. Danielle could guess that the man made sport of everyone who came in here. She pulled off her coat as he strode back to his stand, but she didn't bother to step up to the stage. Three perfect lines rang out, and the maestro froze and very slowly turned back around to face her. A boyish grin and a mischievous light were in his eyes, like Maurice sneaking into the dormitories late at night.

"Perfect," he murmured to himself. "So this is what he wanted. We have our Aminta," he announced louder to the rest of the people gathered. "When Don Juan gets back, tell him he can stop searching for some naïve chorus girl to sing. Miss, if you wouldn't mind going to the back for some measurements…"

"I have my own dress." He blinked at her in surprise, but Danielle ignored it. "Who is playing Don Juan?" She had no idea how long the opera had been playing in Russia: it had taken her longer to get here than she had liked.

"A superb singer, miss, don't worry. You can meet him when he gets back. I must say, quite nice of him to go running off to try and find another girl to sing the part. You see, my prima donna stormed off a few days ago because I refused to let her ruin Aida with her overbearing pompousness. Very fickle, prima donnas. By the way, I am Vladimir, miss…"

"Danielle Daaé de Chagny," she said. She was starting to like this man. He took her hand and kissed it extravagantly.

"Enchantez. If you'll come this way." He showed her himself to a free dressing room and waited while she changed, discussing the score with her. "You're quite familiar with it, aren't you?"

Behind the screen, Danielle sighed softly. "Yes, monsieur. Very familiar."

"Then perhaps you can explain to me this whole thing with Don Juan's mask." She paused in pulling the lace over her shoulders. No one had ever bothered to ask about the story. When she arrived, most directors and maestros were still working at perfecting the score, getting every last note down. Of course they were impressed with how she knew every detailed nuance of it. But none of them had asked about the story, about what the piece was really about.

"Don Juan is just what his reputation implies," she started softly, "a man who can defeat anyone in battle, bring any woman to his bed, and has a face so handsome he could command the world to his feet. At the beginning of the opera, his lusts are focused on Aminta, the maid of one Isabella. Isabella herself has her eye fixed on Don Juan, but does not know his face. So he contrives the great plan to disguise his servant Passarino as himself to distract Isabella, while he steals Aminta away into his own bed.

"After that fateful night, Don Juan detaches himself from Aminta. He tries to forget her like he does most women, but he finds his thoughts filled with her, his mind clouded with her scent, his hands aching for the feel of her. Mariana herself attempts to ignore him, convince herself that she should hate him for the lecherous demon he is. But she can't. Isabella, meanwhile, plots to get Don Juan for herself. She invites him to her own home, sits by her fire and flirts disgustingly. But when the moment comes, he cannot betray the love he harbors for Aminta. Isabella becomes filled with rage, sweeps up a pan of hot coals and flings them into Don Juan's face. He cries out and clutches his face, now burned and excruciating. He goes back to Aminta, crawls back to her in disgrace with his shame hidden by a mask. His face, he thought was the only thing he had to offer to her in retribution for his terrible past." Danielle came out from behind the screen, pinning the red rose into her hair distractedly. "Is that what you meant by the 'thing with Don Juan's mask'?" she asked quietly.

Vladimir stared at her for a moment. "I don't think the composer himself could have explained it better," he murmured. Danielle dropped her hand back slowly to her side, staring at the young maestro.

"No," she said to herself, "no he couldn't." Because that's what he told me. Blinking, Vladimir rose from his seat to bow politely before opening the door. He seemed to be thinking about it all the way back to the house. When they reached the stage, everyone admired Danielle's dress when she climbed up to the stage with gooseflesh beneath the light fabric. Vladimir assured her that it would get warmer once the furnaces were stoked up.

They ran through the opera in a by now very familiar routine to Danielle. She smoothed out the more difficult parts of the score, pointed out where props and sets should go, while constantly glancing back to the door. No one seemed anxious about the lead male still not being back. The day wore away, and still nothing. A woman eventually came to take Danielle back to her dressing room. "Oh, he'll show up any minute now. Foreigners, always fashionably late, dah? Let's go and get you ready, though." Still looking back to the doors with a strange sense of anticipation, Danielle let Natasha lead her away to the dressing room.

---

Francois Nereaux had decided that he hated Russia. The city was too big and sprawling, the streets already beginning to grow muddy from the melting frost and the pending snow. He had abandoned his uniform, sadly—the stark blue of the police gave him great pride to wear—in exchange for plainer clothes, blending in. He just managed to buy a ticket to the opera, all the way in the back of the house. Apparently, the Gypsy woman had been right.

After making his deal with her, she had smiled and said that she and her friends would wait in Germany for him. No need to rush, she had claimed, just bring him back. And, she had pressed with a surprising amount of fierceness, don't damage him.

Over the months, he had become fiercely eager to find this masked man. His correspondence with the Parisian gendarmes had produces an unbelievable amount of incriminating evidence against him: a thief, prying money out of the management twenty years ago; a murderer, hanging Joseph Buquet during a performance of Il Muto; even a kidnapper. No one on the force really knew what had happened after the first performance of Don Juan Triumphant twenty years ago at the Paris Opera, but there was enough information for Nereaux to start making guesses. The Opera Ghost had abducted Christine Daae, le Vicomte de Chagny had followed, and then somehow the murderer had escaped under the noses of a mob of gendarmes and angry men and women under the employ of the Paris Opera.

Francois refused to let the same happen again.

---

Erik strode into the theater grimly, a very black mood hanging about him. "Not a single woman worth dragging down here. Not one! Where has all the talent in Russia gone?" The actors fell silent as he drew down the aisle, watching him warily. A few gazes flicked between him and the maestro, who sat in the front row with a smug, poorly-concealed grin on his face. Erik's thick cloak swirled around him as he drew to a halt by the man's seat. "What has you grinning?" he snapped.

"Well, what would you think if I told you that I found a girl to sing Aminta for you?" Erik scowled behind his mask.

"And how is it that I have not heard of this girl before now?"

"She came in shortly after you left, very confidently offering to sing the part. She knows the opera quite well, Don Juan, I'd say as well as you do."

"Can she sing?"

"You know I wouldn't have given her the part if she couldn't." Vladimir waited patiently as Erik frowned, thinking. It was nearly time to begin, and he hadn't expected to be performing tonight with the lack of a soprano. But if Vladimir claimed that he had found someone…

"I'll be in my dressing room," he said briskly before striding off.

He had been getting pickier. After months of barely trained chorus girls, impossible prima donnas, he had begun to remember why he used to drop sceneries on Carlotta's head. No one was worthy of singing, and it wasn't just because it was his opera. No one's voice sounded right in the part, except hers. He would sometimes stand behind the curtain, waiting to hear her voice on the other side. He could barely stand to hold another woman near him, couldn't stop thinking of how they would try to see behind the mask, how they would cringe and flinch and run from it when they foolishly took it off.

Of course he hadn't allowed it to happen, not since Giselle. But he still thought of it. He was an outcast, doomed to live a life apart.

And without Danielle…that life had no meaning to him.

---

The lights dimmed in the theater, the orchestra striking up the interlude. Danielle raced through the backstage, stopping just behind the curtained wings to catch her breath. Natasha had kept her nearly to the beginning of the opera. She had missed Don Juan's entrance, but that was how it was in the play. Aminta didn't know who he was until now, anyway. Fixing her hair and taking one last even breath, Danielle scooped up her basket of roses and glided onto the stage. The flowers were beautifully soft and wine colored when she knelt, picking idly at the thorns. Her gaze passed discreetly over the audience, and for a moment she thought she saw Nereaux's shock of blond hair. Curses, she was going to kill that boy for being so determined. Why couldn't he be a spy or something, somewhere far away where he wouldn't bother her?

The soft sound of the curtain stirred behind her as Don Juan entered, and Danielle's fingers paused on the stem of the rose.

You have come here in pursuit of your deepest urge

In pursuit of that wish which till now has been silent…

Danielle's breath caught in her throat, and she nearly dropped the flower. She turned her head to glance over her shoulder. Erik stared down at her, breathing hard. The rose slipped from her fingers to fall on the ground.

It took everything she had not to leap to her feet and rush over to him. She was so stunned that she nearly forgot to breathe. He swallowed and gave his cloak a flourish. Danielle recalled herself and stood, unable to tear her eyes away from him. After a moment, Erik smiled faintly and a look of triumph came back to his eyes. He started singing again. It was as if they were back in Paris, no one watching them but their silent theater, singing for each other and no one else. They climbed up the stairs to the balcony above, finally falling into each other's arms as they sang.

Past the point of no return, the final threshold,

The bridge is crossed so stand and watch it burn.

We've passed the point of no return.

Erik wrapped his arms around her, Danielle leaning back into him. Her arm reached back to hold his lips against her shoulder, her head falling back on his. "Erik," she whispered as the lights dimmed on the first act. All she had wanted for months and months was to be in his arms, and now that she was here there was nothing else to say. Erik breathed against her skin and nestled his cheek against her hair, unable to form any words. His fingers trailed over her arm, paused over the small scars beneath the lace. He brushed her arm tenderly, apologetically. His sigh, if it was possible, was the happiest and yet saddest sound in the world.

He had tried. He had tried to convince himself that when he saw her, she wouldn't rush into his arms and everything would be the way it had been. That the little ring wasn't meant for her, even though he knew it would fit perfectly on her slender pianist's hand. That the touch of her skin wouldn't put the warmth so long absent back into his blood.

He had tried. But, oh, how in vain.

The instant he had heard her voice, his spirit had soared. The world had dropped back into place, like a key finally giving way in a lock, and he had sighed from pure relief. He hadn't realized how incomplete he had felt, how torn asunder and cast into the empty darkness he had been. He had swept aside the curtain to step out to her, but when he saw her…

His voice had faltered, his spirit falling as if it had been struck by lightning. She was kneeling on the ground, not even aware he was behind her. Just like in his dream. The rose slipped from her fingers.

And then she had turned to look at him. Her eyes, her beautiful eyes with their sparkling hazel depths, had lit up at the sight of him. He knew that everything he was feeling at that moment was reflected in those eyes, those beautiful eyes. He had treasured them since he had first seen their flash of green that night long ago, holding her against him after their dance. She had said that no one ever noticed it, no one but him.

Erik suddenly found his voice, then, the rest falling away, and he clung to the pure joy of having her here, of singing with her like he could with no other. Their voices were otherworldly, overpowering anything the world had come to expect. And when she was finally in his arms, it felt so right that there were no words to express it. Now he could only breathe against her shoulder, holding her close.

Then she whispered his name. That was it. He remembered her calling him in her twisted, fever-wracked dreams, breathing it as she clutched him tight in the Opera after the masquerade. He unwrapped one arm from around her and brushed the scars still there. He needed her to yell at him, to blame him for letting her be hurt. Anything to make leaving her again easier. He couldn't stay and put her in danger again. It would be like running a stake through his own heart if he let it happen. Leaving would rip it out, he knew, but he could live through that. It had happened before, his fragile heart dropped and forgotten along with a rose on the roof of the Paris Opera twenty years ago. He had survived, if barely.

For now just let me hold her. Let her know I love her before we're torn apart again.

---

Aminta sat on Don Juan's bed, waiting anxiously and toying with the pristine sheets. When he came in, his steps dragging, he touched the mask he wore wretchedly. Aminta saw him and leapt from the bed, about to fly into his arms, when he looked up at her. The pained light in his eyes halted her steps, leaving her beside the bed.

My masquerade is over and my past now claims my soul,

The gift I would have given now lies twisted, shunned and cold.

His slow steps brought him closer, and Aminta stepped towards him worriedly. He took a terribly shuddering breath and gathered her hands in his own. Danielle's heart quickened as she looked up into his eyes behind the black mask.

Those eyes weren't the eyes of an actor. Erik's pale gaze looked down at her, filled with more pain and regret than Don Juan ever could have felt. From beneath his coat he pulled out a shining dagger and pressed the hilt into her palm. Danielle would have cried out even if she wasn't supposed to. Why, she was whispering fearfully in her mind, why did I never realize? How many times had she acted this scene, never feeling this real? They weren't acting anymore: this was their story. She tried to pull herself away from his grasp, but he swept her hand up and pressed the tip of the blade to his chest.

For now I wear death's own dark face

And only wait for steel's cold embrace.

Free me from this waking nightmare

Take the hellfire from my soul! But…

And he paused, Danielle letting one tear slip down her cheek. He blamed himself for everything, she saw now, and the opera was no longer a fantasy they could play out. He leaned forward, his hand shifting on hers over the hilt. His breath was weighted with unshed tears. "One last kiss, before I close my eyes and face the end alone?" He hesitated over her lips, and Danielle leaned forward and kissed him. His hand clung to her back as he held her close. His lips tasted like the ocean, like the sea from all the tears he had never let fall on them. The tears he had finally let fall on her shoulders. With a gasp he pulled away and dropped his hands from hers, holding them palm forward in a desperate plea. He shut his eyes, but Danielle saw the single teardrop fall beneath his mask.

Danielle stood there, staring at him. He's not asking me to kill him. He's asking me to end it, to tell him I never loved him. He's been waiting on the edge this whole time, looking down into the abyss of his loneliness. He's waiting for me to choose to leave. To push him over.

The dagger clattered away across the stage. Erik opened his eyes, meeting hers. Tremulously, Danielle reached out her hand to touch his cheek, a sad smile on her lips.

Your masquerade is over, and your noon of triumph fades.

And now the dark you once revered has laid on you its chains.

But you hold my heart inside your palm.

With out without your mask, Don Juan, I love you.

Danielle slid her fingers beneath the mask and carefully pulled it off. The audience gasped in horror as she unveiled his face, and Erik himself looked remorseful. But there was more. He looked hopeful, hopeful after such a long time of denying himself. The audience fell silent as she traced a loving hand over his face, transfixed by the two on the stage. They weren't even aware of them. Erik's hand trembled faintly as he rested it over her own and pulled it down to hold against his heart.

Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime

Lead me save me from my solitude.

Say you want me with you here, beside you.

You alone cane make my song take flight.

He pulled her against him, and Danielle wrapped her arms around his neck as she sang the last line with him.

-Guide me through the darkness of the night.

-I'll hold you through the darkness of the night.

The curtain fell on perfect silence. Danielle and Erik stayed still in each other's arms. She drew a shaky, tremulous breath and buried her head in his shoulder.

"I tried, Erik," she murmured, tears falling on his coat like dewdrops. "I tried to free you from your chains. But I've only given you new ones, haven't I? The gendarmes will never stop following us; Nereaux will never leave us alone. You can't even go back to Paris."

"No, Danielle, no." He drew back and wiped a tear from her cheek. She couldn't help smiling faintly at the touch of his hand. "You have given me a second chance. Don't cry, Angel." She stared at him for a long time, studying his face. She finally leaned against him again and wrapped her arms tight around him. His hand stroked her hair gently, resting his head on her shoulder. Danielle wished that they could say like that forever, lost in a world of dark silence.

"I love you, Erik," she said softly. His hand paused.

"So that's how you say it," he whispered. His arms gathered her closer, if that was possible, and he leaned down to breathe in her ear. "I love you, Danielle," he said. Why had he never said that to her before? It seemed so strange that he had waited so long to admit it to her. "I love you." He sighed against her neck, pressing his bared cheek against her skin. Danielle smiled and ran her hands into his hair. A smile crossed his face, and he suddenly lifted his head and pushed her back just enough so he could look at her. "Danielle, let's go," he said. She blinked up at him, her wistful smile growing on her lips.

"But what about Nereaux? He followed me, I know it."

"I don't care," he said, shaking his head. He laughed faintly. "I don't care anymore. He's only one man. We outran them before. I have a room in the city where we can go. You won't have to wear my mask. We won't have to run anymore after this." A slow smile spread on her face. Erik was suddenly laughing, and when she nodded he bent down to kiss her. Hand in hand, they fled the stage, racing to their dressing rooms.

They were escaping the opera. They were escaping the world

All they left behind them was the mask.