A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews! :) They are appreciated!

And now ...

Chapter VI

On the afternoon Christine read Madame's telling letter from the man, Nadir Khan, she went to her room and packed what little she owned into the carpetbag she first carried on her arrival as a child to the Paris Opera House conservatoire. Into its nubby interior, she included her locked box of money, the key to which she slipped inside one of a pair of well-worn gloves. Lastly, she packed her most prized possession of her father's violin, protectively held within a hard leather case and cushioned by her spare change of clothes: one shirtwaist, one skirt, and one extra pair of black stockings. She sat at Madame Giry's desk and penned four separate letters, one to Madame, one to Meg, one to Raoul, and the last…

She sighed with the loss, and a tear rolled down her cheek as she signed the closing lines. He had never told her his name, wishing instead to cut all ties with her. Her presence in the lives of those she loved had brought nothing but heartache and misery, the worst of it to the man she once called her Angel, and Monsieur Khan's cautionary letter to Madame Giry proved it. Christine felt she had no choice but to leave and find a life elsewhere. For the sake of those she loved, for her own peace of mind, she must go.

But what locale could give her a tranquil existence when the true source of her angst dwelt inside her soul?

For the remainder of the evening, Christine was withdrawn, speaking only when addressed. However, Meg, who assumed Christine's distress focused on her inability to find work, soon had her giggling over little absurdities in that silly way Meg had to take her mind off their problems. Of course, Meg had returned home with news of finding work in a bistro, so she had just cause to feel cheerful.

"Really, Meg, I highly doubt that the baker put sand in the macarons."

"No? I wouldn't put it past him, as a way to extend his reserves; they certainly are gritty enough. I thought I was sanding my teeth when I chewed the first bite!"

Christine let out a gurgle of repressed laughter. Oh, how she would miss her dear, quirky friend...

Once everyone retired for the evening, Christine lay awake, unable to sleep until late in the night, and then only fitfully. When morning dawned and Madame readied her basket to deliver basted clothing to the seamstress for whom she worked, while Meg finished her tartine of butter and jam before also leaving for her new job, Christine's heart bade them a tearful farewell, though she managed to smile and converse, not wanting them to become suspicious. Her hug to Meg might have lasted seconds longer than usual, but Meg thankfully didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. As she customarily bade them a good day and hoped for their success, Christine silently extended those wishes to cover them for the remainder of their lives.

She brushed irksome tears from her lashes that formed once the door closed and hurried to collect her letters, propping them on the kitchen table, where she was sure they would be found. She smothered the low fire in the coal stove with a scoop from the ash bucket then donned her Angel's cloak and fastened it securely, afterwards wrapping her scarf around her head. Once she collected her carpetbag, she barely offered a final glance around the room that had only just become home, her heart heavy at leaving those who resided there.

It was for the best. Theirs and hers. She knew it was. Yet the prospect was so difficult. Never had she struggled to live alone; always there had been someone to guide her. From her father, to Madame Giry, to her Angel. She had never needed to construct a living, or live in a self-imposed solitude to manage one.

The thought terrified her.

On her way to the station and only God knew where, water began to pour from the sky. She had been too distracted to take notice of the gathering storm clouds and groaned in dismay. Hurrying to stand under the stoop of a tobacconist shop, she took temporary shelter from the light shower that quickly turned into a torrent. Blast! She should have hired a cab, but had refrained, needing to strictly manage every coin she possessed.

Looking up and down the street, she spotted no carriage to hail, and was surprised to recognize her surroundings. During her mind's frantic meandering, had her feet subconsciously led her into familiar territory? Around the next corner and half a block down stood the ravaged building she had called home for more than half her life. Above the obstruction of rooftops, she made out the winged statue on the right topmost corner as lightning lit up the sky behind the figure of a Pegasus frozen in mid-leap.

Home…and yet never again could it be so.

She made no conscious decision. No deliberation of thought. But in the instant the storm abated, she found herself hurrying down the wet, cobbled streets, finally to slip through the back door of the theatre, surprised and grateful to find it unbarred.

Mortals had long abandoned these premises, no longer to walk its halls, leaving behind only phantoms to haunt and remind her of bygone days. Though the Ghost she would wish to see was there no more. He had abandoned his post, his dark, mellifluous voice never again to reverberate through the rafters. Never again to sing so sweetly in her mind or lodge so deeply within her soul. Those memories were now only bittersweet shadows to lend to her dismay.

The pervasive smell of smoke lingered in the musty air. The heavy stage curtains had burned away, the fiery carnage taking with it all that was within a broad circle of the fallen chandelier. She frowned to see such devastation and carefully stepped around the debris and past the hull of what remained of the once lush theatre, intent on reaching her former dressing room. The flames had licked the corridor there, the paper burned away from the blackened walls and the rose paint bubbled and charred on the double doors. But upon forcing the door to give way, inside her old dressing chamber she found little damage, the fire put to death before it could wreak further havoc. Save for the acrid smell of smoke that saturated everything in the room, the chamber was whole…as was the full length mirror that stood glistening against one wall.

The pungent air aggravated her dry throat and she coughed, wishing for a drink too soothe it. She moved to the looking glass and stood there a moment, taking note of her troubled reflection. The pallid face that stared back from within the glass was youthful and apprehensive, the eyes wide and uncertain, the cheeks rosy from her long trek - all of it an anomaly since she felt eons old.

They would search for her, once they returned and found the letters. She still had little idea of how to proceed, having dwelled more on the past she had been ordered to forget rather than the future she must consider. Where on this earth should she go? Where?

An orphan with no family, save for distant cousins in Sweden she had never met, she had no true home to find sanctuary. Even if she chose to travel to her mother's homeland, completely foreign to her, she could never afford the fare. Nearly her entire life was spent within these walls, and the thought of traveling alone, outside of Paris, petrified her. She had never even seen all of this city, and nervously wavered with what to do. There was Perros-Guierec, she supposed, but her time there as a small child had been brief, and their tiny cottage by the sea had been seized by creditors upon her father's death. She retained few memories of those carefree days, but she'd fondly told both Girys of her life there with Papa, and the seaside resort had been where she first met Raoul. They were sure to look there, if they ignored her written pleas not to search for her…no, Perros-Guierec was out of the question.

Perhaps her rash decision to flee without telling anyone had been yet another mistake to add to her troubled history of errors. But what choice did she have? She had become a stigma of burden, a pariah to avoid. Even should she change her name, her face was recognizable from those wretched posters plastered all over Paris, announcing the production of the doomed Don Juan Triumphant. She had learned firsthand just how far scandal could reach, with her failure to find work in the city.

The cellars would be cool, free of smoke, and no one would think to look for her there. Not after all that happened in this theatre. All of what she had so foolishly begun.

He was gone, never to return. And she needed a temporary refuge, to take the time to consider where her new home should be.

She picked up and lit the lantern left just inside the mirror, closing the reflective door and replacing the inside latch, before setting along a familiar path. Since the night her Angel had first taken her through this maze of cellars, they met several times more, always in the night for her lessons. She had returned to him, her teacher, as he had asked of her at the Bal Masque. But Raoul had grown suspect of her nervous behavior, often asking what she was hiding, and eventually kept guard outside her bedroom door, fearful for her safety and watching every move she made, making it impossible to visit further with her Angel. Until the morning she slipped away to the cemetery to visit her father's grave and to her shock, had found him there. But Raoul followed her once again, and that day, as every day following, had ended in disaster.

Christine frowned. Why had she never asked his name, once she realized he was a man? Was he right about that too? Was she such a child that she had only wished to continue with the fantasy? Fear to upset the familiar and venture into the unknown had certainly been a driving factor to keep her bound to childish ideals…

And paradoxically, now she traversed that ignorantly chosen path through this life that was no longer familiar.

She had watched her Angel during their handful of journeys below, barely able to take her eyes off of his tall, cloaked form, and so was knowledgeable about the two levers to pull to disable the traps and make the path safe. Soon she reached the subterranean lake where his elaborate gondola once waited and which she'd left outside the caverns, hidden on the bank in a copse of trees. A small rowboat was moored there, for Madame Giry's use he once told her, and Christine found it much easier to maneuver with two oars than an awkward pole almost twice as tall as she.

The sight of the abandoned alcove, its portcullis raised, brought tears to sting her eyes. She impatiently brushed the burgeoning moisture away with her sleeve and rowed into the gaping black hole of empty darkness. The flame from her lantern gave off only a modicum of light, bouncing off cavern walls and casting tall shadows that danced in an eerie flicker, to glimmer off once familiar objects in a frightful manner that made them oddly indistinguishable. Wisps of ghostly mist curled up from the surface of still, dark water, the dip and slosh of oars the only sound audible in the cold chamber.

Once the rowboat was tied safely to a tall, heavy candlestick, Christine lit enough candles throughout the cave to bring a gentle, calming glow over the Phantom's lair, which was still in an utter state of chaos, as she had left it.

She ascended the trio of steps to stand in front of his shattered organ, tenderly touching what was left of a row of black and yellowed keys stained with smears of crusted brown, as if he had bled into them. His music was his life, and she could imagine him sitting here for hours on end, pouring out his passion and his heartache onto the slender blocks of ivory, creating notes that tore through the fibers of one's soul…

Her tears splashed onto a key, diluting the stain there, and with her finger and short nail, she irritably wiped and scratched away as much of the telltale smear as she could.

She had caused his soul to bleed.

How was she supposed to live with that?

She turned away from the damaged organ to cast her despondent gaze over the demolished room.

The urgent need to remedy what could be managed overtook her rationale - for the one to whom she owed restitution wouldn't see her paltry token of recompense. Nonetheless, she set down her carpetbag, removed her scarf and his cloak, and immediately set to work. In one corner she found a broom of twigs tied with rope and used it to sweep away broken glass into the lake. She righted fallen candlesticks and statues of bronze, those not too heavy to manage, piling what broken furniture she could carry into a corner, and doing all she could to set his lair to rights. The tapestries she let fall back over what remained of the shattered mirrors, and a sheet she threw over the ruined organ, its presence a continual accusation.

Yes, it was foolish; the owner was not likely to return to see. But it helped somewhat to ease the steady, dull pain in her heart, to have his home returned as much as possible to its previous state.

During her whirlwind cleaning, she came across an iron box kept in the shallow part of the lake, and there found a wheel of cheese, a few apples, and what looked like the remnants of cooked poultry on a plate. She tore off a hunk of the cheese, also finding a bottle of wine and a glass. Her mouth parched, she poured herself a glass, and drank deeply, then collected her carpetbag and sank to the chair beside his mini theatre to rest.

As she nibbled the cheese and drank the wine, she retrieved her sack of saved coins from the locked box. Pouring them onto the table's surface, she frowned. There were not as many there as she remembered, and at once she recalled the fripperies purchased for a gala she attended with Raoul. A lace handkerchief, silk stockings, long white gloves, heeled satin slippers, even the velvet and satin dress of a noblewoman she had borrowed from the costume room – and none of it mattered one whit how splendidly she had clothed herself or how much she had attempted to pass as a lady of refinement. His acquaintances still had regarded her as beneath their status, the women especially treating her beastly when the Vicomte wasn't in attendance beside her.

Separating the coins into three paltry stacks - one for travel, one for room and board, one for food - Christine quickly saw that she barely had enough to provide for a month, and only if she was careful. But where could she go on such a measly sum? How would she live?

With what little she could spare for a train, she realized she would need to stay in France. But France had many cities, many villages, to lose herself in one of them, did it not? She could attempt to locate work using her greatest skill - her voice - though she wondered how far the Don Juan scandal had spread. She knew next to nothing about sewing or laundering; there had been servants at the opera house for those duties. Nor could she cook, except to make tea, which the Girys often heated when hunger gnawed and food was scarce. There was one other possibility, a slim one…

She could teach.

For ten years she had been taught by the most superlative of instructors and had retained all the knowledge he imparted to her. She could teach others to sing. And to broaden her services…

She pulled her Papa's violin from the carpetbag and set the case on her knees, unlocking the clasps. She had often watched him play with childish wonder, and in the evenings, on occasion, he would satisfy her curiosity and place her fingers on the strings, showing her the correct angle to hold the instrument and slide the bow. Her attempts had been pathetic, of course, the span of her tiny fingers too small to play well, but her father's unending patience and encouraging praises made her feel like a miniature virtuoso.

She frowned to see the condition of the bow after so many years of disuse. The horsehair had disintegrated and would need replaced. She plucked at the strings of catgut that were looser than they should be - the instrument needed tuned and possibly new strings added as well. Yet she could hardly afford the francs to have such extensive work done.

With a sigh of dismay, she carefully tucked the violin and bow back into their protective case. She snapped the lid shut, in the process her elbow hitting the bottle of wine and knocking it over.

"Horrors!" she gasped, jumping up from the chair before the fast-flowing stream of crimson could drip onto her clothes.

Quickly she righted the bottle and grabbed up a nearby cloth covered with streaks of dried paint. She dabbed at the table and the mini stage, mopping up the liquid as best she could. Pulling away a swatch of plush velvet that had not escaped the spill, she was surprised to find underneath a handle built into the table, the rectangular crevice around it suggesting a hidden space beneath.

She should not intrude; it wasn't right. But logic told her he was never coming back. He said he was never coming back, that his time here had reached its conclusion. More than a week had elapsed since their final, wretched encounter, and he had left all his possessions behind, wanting to start afresh. Just as she must do.

Those things she told herself; still she hesitated. Curiosity poked at her conscience that warned her to leave well enough alone, until tentatively she found herself slipping her fingers through the metal ring and lifting the handle. The cover came completely away, and she looked with furrowed brows at the rectangle of wood in her hand, thinking she had broken it. But no, it seemed designed that way…

Nervously running the tip of her tongue over her lip, she peeked inside. It was too dark too see what was contained within, the alcove deep, and she grabbed her lantern, bringing it close.

Inside were rolls of paper, tied together with black velvet cording, and she was curious to see a violet ribbon. She pulled it out, wrapping the satin streamer loosely around her index finger. A memory came from nowhere:

She had been a child of ten, playing hideaway with Meg, each taking turns hiding for the other to find them. Rehearsals had been canceled for the day, many of the cast and crew taking advantage of the unexpected free hours, and the girls had had carte blanche over the empty stage and auditorium. Somewhere in the course of their fun as she darted behind the upholstered chairs and hid from her pursuer in play, Christine had lost one of her two violet ribbons. A quick search did not produce the narrow slip of satin, and as their game resumed, she soon forgot its absence.

Was this that same ribbon? Surely not, but why would he keep it?

She looked further into the cubbyhole. A faded rose, near to crumbling, a button that looked vaguely familiar – and a white glove, similar to the pair she'd worn for the Christmas gala on her sixteenth year. She recalled that she misplaced one at some point of the evening, and Meg had laughingly chided her for always having her head in the clouds.

A mist of tears wet Christine's eyes. Had her Angel kept these as mementos to remember her by? If she had been so important to him, even then, why had he waited so long to come forward as a man, once she had become a woman?

Shaking her head at the frustration of questions never to be answered, she pulled one of the paper rolls out, her eyes widening to see that they were franc notes. This was evidently where he stored those treasures significant to him, and she gasped to see how thick the roll was. She slipped the cording off and thumbed through the banknotes – 20,000 francs – and she felt certain that the other fat paper rolls contained the same amount. She recalled what Madame Giry told the new managers on the day of their arrival -

'He welcomes you to his opera house – and commands that you leave Box Five empty for his use and reminds you that his salary is due…Monsieur Lefevre paid him twenty thousand francs a month…'

What she held must be what the Phantom extorted from the managers. Upon further inspection of the cubbyhole, she also found three drawstring pouches – each filled with gold napoleons.

She had never seen so much money in her life, and the lure of it in her hands prodded her quite viciously. Had he actually left such vast wealth behind forever? His parting words led her to believe he wished only to get as far away from her as possible, but would he not need this money to travel? Nearly two weeks had come and gone, and he had not returned for it yet. Perhaps, after all he suffered, with her betrayal and the obliteration of the musical association they both had cherished, to say nothing of the condemned opera house, he now felt the money was cursed. Perhaps he no longer wanted it…

Astonished at the path her wicked mind traveled, she dropped the roll of bills and pouch of coins into the alcove as if they burned her. Quickly she replaced the cover before temptation lured her to do what she mustn't.

She drank more wine, soon feeling lethargic. Surprised to see she had almost finished the entire bottle, she decided to lie down and sleep.

Christine found a blanket to throw over the slashed bedding and used his cloak to cover herself. Perhaps she should stay a little while longer and give herself the time needed to better chart her course.

And perhaps…perhaps, he might return for his funds, and she could then ask him to help her leave Paris. Perhaps he would no longer be angry and might agree to do this one last thing for her.

She would no longer beg him to stay; she had no wish to bring him further pain. But she felt at a total loss with the steps she must take to begin a productive life, independent of others. Never had she been entirely without support, and she needed the guidance of her Angel to advise her. Nothing more…

He was a genius who had lived his life in solitude. Who better to give her wise counsel?

x

Over what she assumed was three days, according to the grandfather clock that stood against a far wall, Christine wandered through the lair, inspecting this and that to pass the time. She found a small, thick leather book, and at first glance, she thought it was a journal. But upon tentatively opening the cover, she observed drawings of places, with names scratched beneath in his loping hand, pages of flora and of fauna, and images of herself. Pen and ink drawings of Christine as a girl, much simpler than those more recent depictions she found tacked to the cavern wall.

At every splash, every creak and thud, she turned swiftly. Always anxious and expectant, always dismayed to find she was still alone. The noise turned out to be common occurrences of dwelling within the cluttered lake cavern, at times due to the shifting of objects she had not placed exactly right, other times made by some unknown creature in the water.

She found a leather folio of hand drawn maps, one displaying France. Finding a small sheaf of paper he must have used to pen his notes, she studied the surrounding cities, all of them seeming too close, and broadened her horizon. She jotted down two then recognized the name of a seaport town he had penned in his book of drawings. The sketch had been quite lovely; certainly worthy of a home to build a life. Again taking the pen, she dipped its nib in the ink and wrote the town's name on the top page of a sheaf of paper, circling it. The distance did not seem too far – only a line as long as her index finger – certainly she had the fare to make it there, but what if she did not...

Her gaze wickedly strayed to the small brass handle that beckoned.

Chances were strong that he would never be back to reclaim his assets, having washed his hands of all that belonged to this life as the Phantom. But if he did return at some point - it wouldn't be stealing if she left a note that she would repay the debt as soon as she was able, by sending the amount owed through Madame Giry…would it?

She wouldn't take much; she wasn't greedy. Only enough to replace what she'd spent on those foolish fripperies, all of which had been left behind at the theatre, their reminder of her crass insensitivity, to so thoughtlessly abandon him and cater exclusively to the Vicomte, causing a bitter ache to throb inside her soul. At the time she had been apprehensive to be near her Maestro, after all his lies, but it all seemed so pointless now.

She had been such a ninny, both pride and fear keeping her distant, and on the night of the Bal Masque, in front of all who were present, he arrived down the stairs and told her so.

She wished she could turn back the clock, but even then, she could not give him the answers he had been seeking, not when she still felt so horribly confused. He was a murderer, an arsonist, a destroyer of all things good -

No, her heart whispered, not all things good. He was also your Angel.

Each time Christine remembered the substantial havoc he had visited upon the theatre, the great amount of suffering and the tears, her heart countered to force her to recall the many kindness he had bestowed upon her and the untold delight she had felt to be in his presence...

Once the food dwindled to almost nothing, she knew she couldn't extend her stay in these caverns any longer. She was foolish to wish it, perhaps, but in part she had lingered with the faint hope that her Angel would appear to her one last time.

xXx

A/N: No Erik in this chapter, I know - you'll see him in the next one, I promise. ;-)