Hello all. I present to you another unbeta'd chapter, again because I've been so busy I can barely write this, and also because I needed to post tonight. Tomorrow I'm going away for three weeks to work on an original book. Wish me luck!
This is an interlude chapter, heavy on the foreshadowing, and not my favorite to be honest, but it's necessary. Soon it'll get fast paced again—promise.
So read and review, and thank you so much as usual to my lovely reviewers. What you say means the world to me, and it keeps me inspired. Thank you.
Onward!
Chapter Twenty Nine: The Eavesdroppers
The first week of November was unseasonably warm and clear, an 'Indian summer', unnatural peace before the winter. Christine took to spreading a blanket outside on bright days and spending hours doing homework or just lying on her back, staring into the blue sky. Her pale skin slowly became flushed and pink, and she seemed happy.
Often Raoul would sit with her and talk; she was more relaxed in the sun, more like her old self, just as secretive but also playful and bantering. She said that she felt safe outside, and though he thought endlessly about that statement he couldn't figure out what she meant.
On the fifth of November they sat high on the hill of a nearby park, eating sandwiches and chatting, until the breeze picked up and they both shuddered with cold. He stood and scooped up his bag, offering her his hand, but she shook her head and smiled.
"I think I'll sit here for a little while longer, the sky is so blue today. I'll talk to you later, ok?"
"Tonight? We could do dinner or something," he offered, and she shrugged and picked up a book.
"Maybe."
Later that night he knocked on her apartment door, but there was no answer and when he pressed his ear against the smooth wood the inside was silent. Frowning, he tried the library, then her old apartment, wondering if she wasn't with Meg.
The small girl opened on the second knock and shook her head at his question. "No, I haven't seen her all day. She hasn't come around often since she moved out. Why, is something wrong?"
He ran a hand through his hair. "No, I don't think so, I just can't find her, and I was hoping that we could hang out."
Meg leaned against the doorway and crossed her arms. "Could she be at the library?"
He shook his head. "No, I checked."
She sighed. "Maybe she's with her mystery man."
He looked at her sharply. "Do you think so?"
Meg shrugged. "I don't know anymore. I feel like I don't even know her anymore. I think we may have to face it, Raoul: this might be a mystery we can't figure out. Maybe we should…"
"Let it drop?" He finished for her, and then shook his head vehemently. "I've thought about that before, but I can't. You haven't seen the things I've seen, Meg, you haven't seen how scared she is sometimes. I believe that something is really wrong."
Meg was silent for a moment. "But what can we do about it?" she asked quietly, and he took her hand.
"First of all, we have to find her. Come on."
He started pulling her out the door before he realized that she was in her pajamas and shoeless, and consented to wait a few minutes while she changed. There was a fierce intensity to his voice that surprised even him, and he felt hugely, justifiably like a hero. Christine had claimed that she didn't need saving, but he knew she did, and he would be the one to rescue her.
Raoul fairly dragged Meg out of the building and across the campus. She jogged lightly to catch up, her short legs quickly growing tired. "Where are we going?"
"To the park; it's the last place I saw her. Maybe there we can find some clues or something, figure out where she went after that."
"Clues?" Meg asked, tugging at his sleeve to slow him down. "Raoul, we're not detectives. We wouldn't have any idea what to look for!"
He glanced down at her and for a moment his eyes were old, sad. "I know, but I don't know where else to look."
Meg stared at him and felt his helplessness and his hope, like a ship that was about to fall off the edge of the world. "Alright," she nodded, needing something else to focus on beyond her worry for her friend and Raoul's lost eyes. "Let's check out the park."
His old determination flickered across his face, and he gave a half smile before starting off again.
It took them ten minutes to walk there, and in that time Meg heard increasingly distraught rants about all of the possible things that might have happened to Christine. He fell silent as they approached the hill where he had last seen her, and as Meg opened her mouth to ask a question he suddenly grabbed her arm.
"It's Christine," he hissed, both surprised and worried. "Oh my God, she's still sitting there."
"What?" Meg peered through the darkness. "That is so bizarre. It's been like….over seven hours. What is she still doing here?"
"Let's find out," he stated, starting to walk up the hill, but this time it was Meg who grabbed him and yanked him to the ground, nearly pushing his face into a large rhododendron bush.
"Check this out," she whispered frantically. "There's someone else here."
A lone shadow was moving toward her still form and as they crept closer Raoul could just barely see her face turn to smile weakly up at it.
"Hello," she said, and her voice carried clearly across the empty space, drifting to where they crouched behind the scraggly bush. "I was wondering when you would come."
A voice—that voice, he recognized it, where had he heard it before?—spoke, its sound oddly muffled but still achingly beautiful. "You never went back to your apartment. I was worried."
"I was looking at the sky, at the stars," she said, her voice dreamy and a little sad. "Sit and watch them with me."
The shadow paused and then sat, a slow folding of limbs that in the darkness seemed disproportionately long. Christine was leaning back on her palms, her head tilted upward, face wax pale in the moonlight.
"Everything is so quiet," she said, and the figure shifted.
"You were waiting for me," it stated, that lyrical voice still jarring Raoul with its familiarity. "Why?"
"I like you when you're outside," she said simply. "You're more real to me."
"Is it important that I am real?" The question seemed almost cautious, like testing thin ice over cold water.
"Oh Erik," she sighed, and suddenly the realization hit Raoul; the puzzle pieces, the name from the phone call and the man from the dance, suddenly fell into place and he had to stifle a gasp. Next to him, Meg stiffened.
"Erik," she said again, and turned to face him. "You should know that reality is all I want. I want…." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like she had been holding it in for a long time. "I want to be able to sit outside all day and all night if I want to. I want to see the sun rise every day. I want to get up and make tea and struggle through classes and be unhappy and lonely and free and…real. Even if it hurts. Even if sometimes I want to give up."
The voice was gentle when it spoke, and a little sad. "You've said this before. What do you really want to say?"
She leaned back and closed her eyes, and under the pale light of the moon looked like a dead child. "Why me?" she whispered. "I've wanted to ask for so long. More than my voice or whatever initially drew you to me… underneath that, deeper than that…why me?"
"I believe that we are alike," he murmured. "And in being alike I believe that you can understand me, that you can save me."
"You want me to save you?" her words were a broken laugh.
"No one can be alone forever, Christine," he said, almost too softly for them to hear. "No one can survive alone. You of all people should know that."
She was quiet for a long time, so long that Raoul was beginning to think that she had fallen asleep, but finally she asked, "Why do you think that we are alike?"
He spoke swiftly as if he were purging something, exhaling words that he had wanted to speak for a long time. "You have a great sadness inside of you that you feel is eating you from the inside, swallowing you up…it has been there ever since your father's death. You have no ties in this world, no one who cares for you, save me. You sing not because you love to but because for those few moments you can forget and become someone else, someone different, stronger…"
"Stop it," she whispered suddenly, but he pressed on.
"When you sing you feel as if your soul is rising up and you believe that if you can just express that talent, make a difference with one thing, just that one thing, then your life will have meaning and the… satisfaction and pride will fill the empty space that has been eating away at your sanity and you hope that in place of love and happiness you could have talent, and it would be enough…"
"Stop it," she whispered again, and this time he complied. "That doesn't make me like you."
"Oh Christine," he let out what could have been a pained laugh, or a sob. "That makes you more like me than you want to admit."
"Maybe," she whispered, as if her heart were breaking, and the sound carried liltingly on the wind. "I just never imagined this happening to me."
"Before I met you," came his soft reply. "I never imagined I could feel."
"What happens next?"
Raoul wished he could see her face clearly, because he understood nothing from her tone; she could have been wistful, or resigned, or sad, or content, he couldn't tell.
"We go home," the man said with finality. "And you go to sleep, and tomorrow you wake up and watch the sun rise. Life continues, Christine, and you…you will be happy."
"I suppose," she said, and shifted before standing up. He stood with her, and Raoul watched as his hand, shadowed and eerily elongated in the moonlight, took hers as she gathered her blanket.
And then, right before they walked away, the man turned, and Raoul, heart beating wildly, jerked behind the bush as two yellow lights stared right at him.
"Is everything all right?" Christine asked, and he turned back to her.
"Everything is perfect, dear," he said, a certain smugness to that beautiful voice. "Shall we go?"
"Mmm," she murmured in affirmation, and they moved hand in hand in the opposite direction, disappearing rather gracefully into the night.
When they were out of site Meg turned to him with wide eyes. "Raoul, he looked right at us!"
"He looked right at me," Raoul corrected darkly, and Meg bit her lip in thought.
"I can't pretend to even begin to understand what just happened," she started, tilting her head to the sky pensively. "But they did seem rather…serene. Maybe she's really ok, I mean they just sat and talked and were peaceful. If they can sit and talk like that, how bad can it be?"
"I don't know," he replied, his brow furrowed. "You're right, we don't know the truth, and they were peaceful, but…"
He took a deep breath. "But I just can't help but wonder if this is the calm before the storm. There was something wrong with that situation, with what they were saying, with her tone of voice. No matter what they looked like, something was wrong."
"Maybe this isn't our battle to fight," Meg suggested gently, and his shoulders sagged.
"I won't interfere," he said softly. "She's already made it clear to me that she doesn't want my help. But that won't stop me worrying, and if she ever asks me…I'll be there by her side."
Meg didn't answer, but stared at the stars for a long moment before standing and brushing her knees off. "Come on," she said. "Let's get out of here. I think I've had enough weirdness for one night."
Raoul rose and followed her small figure, his mind wandering as she tried vainly to make upbeat chit-chat. He couldn't shake the feeling, the instinctual premonition of danger, the drumbeat in his head that sounded 'soon, soon.' He knew, deep in his worried heart, that this calm moment under the stars wasn't going to last forever, and when it ended…
When it ended it would encompass them all.
