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Chapter 1: Drowning

Grief is like a wave.

That was what Christine Daaé's therapist had told her.

Grief is like a wave. A tsunami wave, in fact. It is impossibly large, and when it hits, it feels like everything is destroyed.

Christine had wanted to counter that it didn't just feel this way. When her father died last winter, her entire life had crumbled. But she refrained. It had been nearing the end of the session, and she was tired.

But a wave passes. It shrinks. Slowly, it loses momentum and fades into calm. Another wave might come, but it will be smaller. Each wave will be smaller and smaller until it is only the crashing of a serene tide. Still there - the waves are still there - but manageable.

He'd told her those words half a year ago.

And yet the tsunami still raged.

It takes time.

Well, Christine was drowning. She didn't have time. No - actually, she did have time. And that was the problem. She was young - twenty-two years old - so she had all the time in the world. Sixty, seventy, maybe even eighty years of this grief.

It wasn't like a wave.

It was the whole fucking ocean.

It was vast and endless. No lifeboat in sight. No land to rest upon. Just swimming forever, barely keeping your head above water. Drowning. Drowning but not dying. Suffocating.

And nothing - absolutely nothing - would make it stop.

Christine opened her eyes. She barely saw her bedroom through the haze of pounding despair in her chest. Relentless. That's what this was. She wanted to enjoy tonight - it was a Friday night, and though she didn't currently work, her roommate Raoul de Chagny did. And he was finally off for the weekend.

They were supposed to go grab Mexican tonight with a couple of his friends.

People. She was supposed to be meeting and hanging out with people.

But the task seemed impossible.

The window right by her bed was open to the evening June air, and Hell's Kitchen was bustling. A bus honked. Someone cursed. Someone else laughed. Hip-hop music blared.

New York was a city full of life. It was huge, full of possibility, but its size meant that getting lost was not unheard of.

That's what she was.

Lost.

It was like she had a map. She knew what she had to do - she had all of her therapist's advice, all of her roommate's brotherly love. She had all of the ingredients to make a cake called feeling better.

She had a map to the destination called moving on.

But she couldn't seem to find the road. Or the road was under construction, and this stupid, ancient map didn't have any detour routes.

A knock rapped at her door. "Chris?"

"Mhmm?" She didn't bother closing the laptop currently open in front of her as she sat cross-legged on the bed.

"Are you…coming?"

"I don't know."

A pause. "Can I…come in?"

"No." She could hear how much she'd deaden the mood tonight in her own voice. "That's okay. I'm good."

"Okay." She could practically hear him struggling not to push her to come out. Maybe he should be pushing her. Maybe it would be good for her, but the last time he'd done that it had ended in her locking herself in a bathroom stall of a nightclub, crying harder than the drunk girls on either side of her. "I'll let Meg and Gabe know you're not feeling well. Okay?"

"Okay. Thanks."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Say okay one more time."

"No."

He sighed, but a little bit of a laugh came out with it. "Well…hey. Text me if you change your mind."

"I will." She wouldn't.

"And…you know. Text me if…you know."

"If what?"

"If you just…want me to come home."

"I'll be fine."

She really should be fine. It had been six months.

This was getting out of hand.

She was exhausting herself.

Of course, it wasn't constantly like this. Just…at night. At night it was bad. During the day, she could distract herself by going to the park, museums, the movies…but at night? When she needed to either pretend to have fun or stay home alone.

It was bad.

"I'll see you," Raoul said. He started to walk away.

"Hey-" she called, and she heard him stop. "I know you have a coffee date with that guy tomorrow morning. What's his name? Felix?"

There was a smile in his voice. "Yeah."

"So…you're dating a cat?"

"Yup. You got it. I realized men weren't worth my time anymore and decided to branch out."

"Kinky."

"Gross."

"You're the one dating a cat, you sicko."

He chuckled. "Text me if you need anything. I mean it."

And he was gone.

Which meant…Christine was alone.

Quickly, she opened up a new tab - careful not to close the current one - and found a YouTube video. It was something she really wasn't into - a gaming stream - but the person playing the game was fun and lively and had bright blue hair. So…it filled the void. And honestly, he had Raoul-esque energy.

Maybe Raoul could be a video game streamer. He was cute and had an infectious laugh. He'd probably rake in the subscribers.

That would give him two jobs, while Christine had none.

Which was what she was currently trying to fix, but for some reason each application felt like…the most monumental task. At least here, in the twenty-first century, all she had to do was click a few buttons, type out a few words, and the application was off. She couldn't imagine going to an actual building and filling something out on paper.

She'd be jobless forever.

And the sad thing was that she hadn't always been like that. A year ago, she'd had more energy than she knew what to do with. She'd made Raoul seem shy and boring by comparison.

But that person was gone. Like she'd stopped fighting. Like she'd given up.

Christine had heard somewhere that people who were drowning didn't make waves. There was no splashing involved. They were still. Eerily still and silent.

She didn't understand at the time why.

Not at the time.

Overcome with the urge to just…honestly, lose herself in the mindlessness of this YouTube video, she hurried through her current job application. One she probably wouldn't get anyway. But a fine arts bachelor's degree in theatre didn't offer many prospects to someone no longer interested in performing.

So she hit submit on the application - Professional Assistant to Composer Erik Lenoir.

Then she sat back and watched this funky dude play a cute little farm simulator while the rest of the world went on around her.