Author's note: HUGE thank yous to those who have left me reviews. It takes time and energy to review, and I hecking love you for it. If you're reading this and haven't reviewed, I love you too. We're fam.
Chapter notes - Erik is the worst. He really is. Don't get me wrong, I adore him, but I really do think he'd be difficult to live with. This chapter doesn't flatter him. But, you know, the best part about fighting is making up... ;) See notes below for info on the music.
Every muscle in the Phantom's body seemed to coil at once. The tender loop of his arm went rigid and sharp as an iron bar.
"... Poor Raoul," he repeated slowly.
She sobbed wretchedly, shaking her head.
"He thinks I'm praying. He thinks I came here to pray. God, if he knew..."
"Poor Raoul," he hissed through his teeth.
"What will he think of me tomorrow... what will he do... oh, why does every choice I make end in cruelty? Poor, dear Raoul!"
"Dear Raoul!" he snarled, jerking up from their makeshift bed. She rose beside him and groped in the dark for her discarded clothes.
"I must go," she cried. "I must tell him, at least. The wedding tomorrow – "
He snatched for her arm and gripped it painfully tight when he caught it.
"You're not going back to him!" he spat. With a wrench, he pulled her back towards their bed.
"I must!" she cried, pulling against his grip. "I won't leave him like this!"
"You think I would let you go back, to be poisoned by his words?"
"Poisoned!" she said, "You mistake your tactics for his. Let me go!"
"And what do you imagine he'll say? Do you think he'll give us his blessing?"
Christine twisted her arm in his grasp, but could not break his grip. "I won't leave him to stand alone at an alter, faced with public ridicule, when the fault is mine. Let go! He deserves better than this!"
"What your pompous, pretending little Vicomte deserves is an unmarked grave, which I pardoned him from once already," said the Phantom, voice full of venom. "He'll get no more clemency from me!"
She stopped struggling, and turned her face towards his voice.
"... How dare you," she breathed.
"He knows you're here?" His voice moved as he turned in the dark, as if looking for something. "You told him where you were going tonight?"
"How dare you!" she said again, voice rising in anger. She gave her arm another wrenching pull, and this time he let her go. She heard him shuffle around in search of something. "You, better than anyone, should know what Raoul deserves, from both of us!" But the Phantom didn't seem to be listening. His voice came, low and furtive, from near the stone wall.
"He'll come after you," he said, speaking more to himself than Christine. "If he finds you, he'll try to take you back. He'll refuse to see me as the man who's beaten him. He only sees a beast. He'll hunt us."
"Beaten him," Christine echoed his words in disgust. She shuffled towards the sound of him in the dark, reaching out to find him by touch, to pull him back towards her and demand that he hear her. "If he's ever thought you beastly, there's littler wonder. You've certainly given him reason. But Raoul will listen to me, if I tell him what is in my heart. He won't move against us if he knows that it's my choice. He listens to me. Unlike you, Sir."
"Did he listen when you told him about your Angel?" he snapped. "Did he listen when you refused your part in Don Juan? Did he listen to any of your warnings?"
She honed in on the angry sound of his voice, the sound of objects being rifled through in his search.
"No, Christine, he doesn't listen, he panders until it suits him not to. And no one in the world has listened to you as intently as I have. No one else heard you at all, until I nurtured your voice. Least of all, him."
Her hands made contact with the wiry stiffness of his arm and clutched it, trying to placate him.
"Please..." She refused to call him Angel. Certainly not when he was acting like a jealous child. And yet she had no other name for him. She had just given her virtue to a man who's name she did not know. "Please, stop. Whether you believe he will listen or not, you can listen. Listen to me." She felt him sit up, felt his arm flex with his grip on whatever it was he had found. "Come back and talk to me instead of behaving like a quarrelsome boy." She felt her way down his arm, intending to take his hand and lead him back by it, but it already clutched something. "There's nothing to fear, if you just – " Her fingers felt the rough twist of rope in his hand and froze.
Horror squeezed its chill fingers around her heart. But it did not hold sway over her long.
"Give me a candle," she demanded, her voice soft and full of fury.
He shook off her hand with a bitter laugh. "And suddenly she grows tired of the dark."
"A candle!"
"What, have you forgotten the face of the man you said you loved?" she could hear the repetitive jerk of his arms coiling the lasso. "Were you imagining the fair countenance of your dear Raoul? Perhaps you do need a reminder of what it is you've bedded..."
"It is not for me, but for you!" Christine cried fiercely. "You show your true face here in the dark, Monsieur Ghost! I see it plainly. It is you who are blind to your ugliness without light. Give me a candle, so that you can feel the same shame in yourself that I do in this moment!"
His movement stopped, and she heard only the hiss of his angry breath for a moment.
"...You told me that you loved me," he finally growled in accusation.
"Do you question it?" she asked through gritted teeth. "For I certainly begin to."
"I will not give you back to him."
"I hate you, too, remember. My love and my hate – they are two wolves battling for control of my heart, Monsieur, and you are feeding the wrong one."
"How can you love me, and still call out his name!"
"Is your heart so small that it can feel only one thing at a time?" she asked.
"Yes!" he shouted at her. "Yes, it feels for you! Only for you! There is no room in it for anything else!"
"Liar," she said softly.
He lunged for her in the dark and clutched his hand in her hair, grabbing tight in a moment of fury before he forced himself to loosen his grip.
"Why would you suspect my unfaithfulness?" he hissed.
"Music," said Christine. "You love music, far more and for far longer than you have ever pretended to love me. She is your first love. I am only your mistress." In his confusion, he released her hair, but she didn't move. "I love her, too, and begrudge her nothing. I know you cannot love Raoul. But you only kill my affection for you when you threaten him."
"I do not pretend to love you."
Her hand snatched out and groped until it found the lasso. She tugged on its coils, but he would not release it, so they held it taut between them.
"If you truly loved me, you would never hold this again. You forget your sacred promise to me."
"If you truly loved me, then you would not be so quick to think of him! Is your choice truly made even now? Or did you only intend to stay long enough to sample the forbidden fruit. Was it always your intention to rush back and play maiden for your poor little cuckold?"
Christine struck out blindly at the darkness before her, but only hit his upraised arm. He grabbed her wrist when she tried again.
"You insult me in every possible way." She spat the words at him furiously. "I've given you everything tonight. Everything. My love, my honor, my body, my soul. I've given you my future. And you answer me with spite." She turned her face away from him in the dark. The hand crushing her wrist eased its grip, and she pulled it away from him.
"... He'll come after us, Christine," he said, provoking a humorless laugh from her.
"That is what we whispered in fear of you, before we thought you were dead."
"He should have killed me when he got the chance, if he wished to keep you without fear. I won't make that same mistake again."
She pulled at the lasso with a last desperate tug, but he kept hold of it, and wrenched it out of her grasp.
"Don't make a mockery of everything we've said to each other tonight," she pleaded. But jealousy still blinded him, and he would not hear her. She heard him stand. Her breath quickened in fear as he moved away from her.
"Poor Raoul isn't worthy of your pity yet," he muttered angrily, "but I will correct that inconsistency for you by morning. And then you will be free of the burden of guilt, and he will be saved tomorrow's humiliation. You should thank me."
Christine was too astounded to speak. He brandished the threat of murder before her with all the petulance of a sulky child who was throwing a tantrum. A child, she realized. That was what he was, for all his years. A child who had never had the love of a mother, or any moral upbringing. A child who feared his one and only playmate might prefer the company of her other friends to his. And now his tantrums ended in lassos and mortal terror. You should thank me. It was her he truly wanted to punish, Christine realized. Not Raoul, not really.
"I see that Music and I have yet another rival," she said through fresh tears. "Death vies just as strongly for your heart. Music I will welcome, always. But this other bloody mistress I will not tolerate. Give her up, if you wish to have me. It will be one or the other. I hold you to your promise."
"Promises won't do either of us any good when le Vicompte sets his hounds on us," he snapped from somewhere out of reach. "And you are a little fool if you think his love will spare you. He doesn't love you. You are a pretty jewel on his hand that he can replace on his next stroll down Avenue Montaigne. When he discovers us, you will be as hated as I am."
"Give her up, and return to me. Or the two of us will be forever unhappy."
"Your false pity won't stay my hand a second time!"
The power of Christine's voice suddenly rang off the stone walls and filled the space between them.
"Chi ti salva, sciagurato, Dalla sorte che t'aspetta? In furor hai tu cangiato un amor ch'egual non ha. De' miei pianti la vendetta ora dal ciel si compirà!"
The refrain repeated, washing over the Phantom with all the fury of Amneris' spurned love and condemnation. He took the full brunt of it where he stood, there in the portal between the sacristy and the chapel, hearing it echo in the larger chamber behind him. Her voice wrapped its fingers around him and held him fast. He stayed rooted to the spot, even when silence descended again between them. When at last he spoke again, his silky voice had turned hoarse.
"...Radamè did not give up Aida," he said.
"And there was only death, and unhappiness for all," Christine answered softly.
There was another long span of silent moments. And then the blessed sound of a footstep towards her.
"...Sublime as your instrument is, taking a mezzo part would be ambitious."
Tears of relief streamed down her cheeks as Christine closed her eyes, and she happily accepted the backhanded compliment as the peace offering it was.
"Do you doubt your pupil's potential, Sir? Or do you only criticize in an effort to inspire me to improve?"
"Your potential is infinite," he conceded, "but range is given and not taught."
"Ahh, so my master has his limits."
He uttered a low, disdainful hum, and took another step closer. And another.
"Limits can be stretched. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps you only need another lesson to be queen among Contraltos and Sopranos alike."
"Then come and give me my lesson," she said. "and if you still wish to punish me, do it." The sound of his steps paused. "But take your satisfaction in a way that will not blacken your soul and kill our love. I will accept it, if it is what you need. Even though my crime is imagined."
"That other name on your lips was not imagined," the Phantom said, voice low and bitter. Christine sighed.
"I remind you, Monsieur, that I am with you and not with him. That I have given you everything that I have denied him. That in doing so, I have wounded him as surely as you ever could. My choices tonight will probably cause him more suffering that anything you are capable of."
"But I am a monster," he reminded her unkindly. "A creature such as me is capable of anything."
"Angel," she said, pleading with him, "give me the lasso." She held out her hand in the dark. "Come and feed the right wolf. I love you. Do not doubt it. Come, and show me that you love me in return. Please come."
The Phantom let an unhappy silence stretch before giving an entirely unsatisfactory answer.
"Will you hear my conditions?"
Christine let her hand drop and turned her face skyward, blindly beseeching heaven for patience.
"What are the conditions of your love, Monsieur."
"My love burns in me, even after hearing you swear yours to someone else all those nights ago," he growled. "There is nothing you or anyone else can do to diminish it, however much pain it causes me. It will burn in me until the moment of my death. But if you wish to take my weapon from me, then I demand a price."
"I'm still waiting to hear it."
"In exchange for the lasso, you will not utter his name again tonight."
"...not tonight," she conceded softly.
"And if you wish me to stay – "
"Merciful Lord in heaven!" she breathed.
" – If I am not to visit your poor Vicomte, then neither are you. We both stay."
Christine let her head fall with another wretched sigh.
"... You take the most precious of gifts, freely given, and turn it into a hostage," she said piteously. "How cruel has life been to you that you cannot even trust your own happiness?" She heard him swallow, and wondered if he might relent. But she understood, then, how great a task it was that she had taken on. This sacrifice would be the first of many that she would need to endure to begin to mend his brokenness. She wiped the tears from her face, and once again held out her hand to receive the lasso.
"I won't leave," she promised. "I will stay with you, and show you that I am willing to pay as bitter a price as any that has been asked of you."
The darkness stirred, and she felt the sack cloth of their bed snag under his weight. The coils of the punjab lasso met her hand.
With a silent prayer of gratitude, she took the weapon from him, and he let it go.
Author's note: Christine sings a bit from Aida, Act 4 scene 1. (The part is a mezzo-soprano, which would be deeper than Christine would naturally sing, though this little bit would, I think, be comfortably in her range.) Her character, Amneris, tells the condemned man she is in love with that she will save his life, if he gives up his love for another woman. When he refuses, she is full of scorn even as she weeps for his fate. The singing is beautifully angry and has a lovely high note. Hear it here, at about 7:40 - youtuDOTbe/6riddwCK9P0 (remove the DOT and replace it with . )