A note: This was intended to be a one-shot, but got too long to all reasonably fit into one chapter. It is now a two-part story. Thank you for reading!
That night, as Gustave sleeps peacefully (and Raoul is not yet home from the casino) Christine leaves the house. She locks it tightly behind her, knowing that so many things could go wrong. She walks quickly in the dark, guided only by the beams of streetlamps and occasional bursts of lightening from very far away. It isn't safe being out this late, but Christine is a grown woman now, not a child, not a little girl afraid of the dark.
She reaches the sight of the Opera House in record time and steps tentatively onto the ashes, walking slowly across the place that used to be her favourite place in the world.
Like a home.
It burned down years ago, but the scars are still fresh, and Christine wipes at her eyes, picking up a straggly, dirty feather, part of some elaborate costume once. The fire consumed everything, it seems, and there is no trace of the father of her son; he is long gone like everything else that used to be here.
Except...
Christine steps forward and her shoe lands on a line, traced into the blackened ashes that no one has bothered to clean. She quickly steps back and onto another line.
They're everywhere...
Christine practically runs off the ashes, standing on tiptoes, trying to see the entire picture. There are so many lines that she can hardly tell them apart, all intersecting and coming together again like a kaleidoscope. She backs up and tries to see the picture again, finally becoming clear.
A rose.
A traced outline of a rose, done very recently, or the wind would've smudged it away. Christine turns and whispers, out of habit, spontaneously,
"Erik?"
There is no reply, of course.
Christine waits for several more seconds, then runs home, never looking behind her, ignoring what sounds like voices calling her name (it's only the wind) and bursting through the front door of her house. She stands there, panting, until she realises something.
Didn't she lock the door on her way out?
Raoul's automobile isn't here so it wasn't him that unlocked the door. Christine tears up the stairs, frantically fumbling the doorknob to Gustave's room and bursting in.
Gustave is lying safely in bed, his back to her, breathing peacefully and completely asleep. Christine is about to sigh in relief when she sees the window is wide open, the curtains blowing in the wind.
Suspicious and afraid once more, Christine tiptoes over to Gustave, turning him by the shoulder.
Someone has placed a single red rose between his lips as he slept.
Christine covers her mouth to stifle a scream so hard that she digs her fingernails into her face and makes it bleed. She carefully leans and slides the rose from Gustave's mouth (how does he keep on sleeping through that?), crumples it in her fingers and hurls the petals out the window.
They are not safe here.
Christine spends the rest of the night perched on the edge of Gustave's bed, sleepless and scared, twitching every time the curtains rustle. When Raoul finally arrives at home, he is far too intoxicated, with both alcohol and success at the casino, to notice her.
It doesn't take long for Christine to convince Raoul to leave. Probably he has debts that follow him, debts he needs to escape from. Christine worries about him, but she still loves him of course, even with all his faults. No one ever promised her a perfect husband.
Their new house is smaller, but more open than the first, with more sunshine, more light. It constantly smells of baking bread, and something that can only be described as comfort, a relaxing smell. It is more out in the country too, and Christine and Gustave have already trekked through the nearby woods and discovered a secret little river, shining clear with flowers all around it. Gustave will be eight soon, (it's so difficult to believe how time keeps moving on...) and he's still as sunshiny as always, as lovable as ever...
Even when the shadows gather in his face, and he practically becomes his father...
She knows now, that what she thought before was all a lie. Somehow, she doesn't care, doesn't care that she has done the undoable. After all, she was never promised a perfect family, and she never even asked for one.
She can keep pretending.
She is happy with what she has now.
And now, as she watches Raoul helping Gustave do his homework (his new school has a lovely, harp-playing headmistress named Abigail) she smiles, and perhaps, though no one can hear it, she hums a few bars of a song.
The End