| A cool breeze washed over her bare arms. She frowned slightly. Where had a breeze come from? Curious, she opened her eyes. Roiling silver mist filled her vision, veiling her hands as she raised them toward her face. She finally caught sight of her fingers when they were less than a foot away from her nose. So, she mused, her mouth quirking wryly, she wasn’t completely blind, but she might as well be. It was impossible to move about in this murk; she could walk right off the edge of the stage and not even know it until she tumbled into the orchestra pit. Why had the stagehands made it so thick? No one would be able to go on until it cleared somewhat. Still… in spite of the inconvenience, the silver particles were beautiful to watch as they flowed and shifted on the lightest breath of air. She abruptly twirled around once, then again - slower this time - watching the mist swirl into wild eddies about her. She smiled as the chaotic waves gradually settled, then she spun again. As the silver ripples settled the second time, she glanced down and noticed that she could see the floor. It appeared that the mist was finally thinning. Looking back up, she watched it retreat, flowing away until the entire stage was bare (so she was on the stage, as she’d thought), but drifting in front of the footlights and pooling in the wings. She could see movement through the mist: stagehands, no doubt. They didn’t concern her. She turned her attention to the stage, orienting herself. Directly opposite her was Don Juan’s bedroom, the red velvet curtains tightly closed. She wondered if Piangi had gotten into position yet. It seemed unlikely; it would be some time yet before the scene could get underway. A faint melody in a minor key reached her ears: the orchestra, no doubt, playing to soothe the audience’s impatience. Although… she concentrated on the music… she recognized a few bars, but she was certain she’d never heard this particular piece before. Whatever it was, it was lovely. Humming along with the parts she recognized, she slowly circled the table in the center of the stage, trailing her fingers over the wine decanter, tracing the rim of an empty goblet. It was beautiful; the entire set was perfect. She glanced down at herself, one hand smoothing the bodice of her dress. Her costume was lovely, she decided, after critical consideration of the black shawl draped over her arms, the full skirt ending just inches below her knees, the low black boots that laced up to the tops of her ankles. Absently, she pulled the shawl from her arms and drew the material through her fingers, folding it and placing it on the edge of the table. She traced the grain of the wood with one fingernail – focusing all her attention on that little detail, using it to anchor herself, to convince herself that this was really happening. It was so beautiful; she was half-afraid that it would all just shimmer and blow away on the breeze, leaving everything the way it was before. Leaving her alone and empty and aching. No! She gave her head a violent shake. This was real. After all the heartache she’d gone through – they had both gone through – there was finally a chance for happiness, forgiveness, and – most marvelous of all – love. She smiled wonderingly and raised her left hand to her face, pressing the simple gold engagement ring to her lips. Erik still loved her. After all that had occurred, it was amazing that he could. So much had happened in that one short night, the night that had turned her world upside down. That night… just thinking about it caused her to shiver. She would never forget the dull smack of Joseph Buquet’s body hitting the stage. Time might dull the harsh clarity of memory, but it could never fully erase the fear, the panic that had squeezed her chest in a vise, the ultimate aching emptiness where her heart used to be. She had been in the wings, about to go on when movement had caught her eye and drawn her gaze upward. Nothing had blocked her view of the entire event: the limp body falling, sprawling in the center of the stage, the limbs bouncing as they hit, the mouth open in a soundless scream…. She’d been overwhelmed by the sudden need to get as far from the stage as possible. The roof of the Opera House had made sense in a strange way: nothing could fall on her there. Raoul had found her backstage and had helped her fight her way through the gathering crowd, helped her reach the stairs. She knew he hadn’t approved of her decision, but she couldn’t, she could not stay there for another minute. She’d been gasping for breath by the time they reached the roof. It hadn’t just been from exertion, although she had practically flown up the winding staircases, leaving Raoul to catch up as best he could. She could have run twice as far without tiring, run and run and run to escape what she’d seen… but the stairs only went so high. The roof was as far as she could go. The cool night wind washed over her, soothing the knife-edge of panic that drove her. Trembling, she stumbled over to the stone balustrade and leaned against it, needing something to hold onto as the world tilted around her. How could he? How could he? She wrapped her fingers tightly around the railing, trying to stop the uncontrollable shaking that gripped her. Erik had killed Buquet, killed him in the darkness above the stage. She saw again the graceless plunge, the body slowly turning as it fell. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth, fighting down a rolling wave of nausea. “Oh, Erik, why?” Her voice was an agonized whimper. Why? Why kill? She couldn’t see beyond that question. The Erik she knew would never… he would never…. Would he? There had always been rumors among the ballerinas, whispers of impossibly lurid murders committed by the Opera Ghost. She had never paid attention to their dark stories because she hadn’t believed any of them. She knew the man behind the gossip. Rather, she had thought she knew him. Who did she know? He had killed tonight. There was no other possible explanation. Buquet was the only one who manned that section of the flies. None of the other stagehands had the size or the strength to overpower him. Might the rumors be true? She opened her eyes and looked down, down into the empty street. It was so far away, such a long way to fall. “Raoul.” He heard her whisper and was beside her in an instant, pulling her chilled, cramping fingers away from the balustrade, turning her and folding her within his arms. She leaned against him limply, her head falling forward to rest against his shoulder. She sighed weakly, her gaze roving over the vast expanse of the Opera roof. “What am I going to do, Raoul?” Her voice was soft, entranced. “I am doomed. Damned. Doomed to damnation.” She buried her face in his jacket, muffling the hysterical giggles that rose in her throat. His arms tightened around her shaking shoulders, gently turning her. “Let me take you back down, Christine.” “No!” She jerked away from him, her eyes wide and terrified. “No, I can’t go back there, not yet. He’s down there. He could be anywhere.” “Christine, I’m here.” Raoul caught her arms, sliding his hands up to clasp her elbows. “Nothing will hurt you. I’ll keep you safe.” “Oh, if only you could, Raoul. If only you could.” Her voice caught on a sob. “Christine…?” His voice was low and questioning. She shook her head. How could she make him understand? Raoul couldn’t stand between her and what she feared. He couldn’t protect her from herself. No matter what she knew of him or how much that knowledge frightened her, Erik was part of her, and he always would be. She loved him. God help her, she loved him. It might very well prove to be the death of her. Because even though she knew his hands were stained with blood, even though she knew of the danger, she would plunge into his darkness, plunge into his haunted world of music with both eyes open, welcoming her death at his hands. That certainty terrified her. She shivered and clung to Raoul, warm reality in the face of her nightmares. “Keep me safe, Raoul.” She knew he couldn’t: when they left the roof she would once again be on her own, alone to face the man she loved and – now – feared. But Raoul promised temporary refuge, refuge she desperately needed. “Keep me safe,” she repeated in a whisper. “Don’t let him touch me.” She cringed now as she remembered what she had said while sheltered in Raoul’s arms. She’d been such a little fool. She should have kept quiet until she had calmed down. She should have done a lot of things, but that knowledge couldn’t change what had already happened. Standing under the stars that night, wrapped in Raoul’s arms, she’d heard a moan: a low heartbreaking moan that went on and on and on. She’d known it was him. Words froze in her throat as numbing realization crashed over her. Had he heard everything? Her first instinct had been to shout that she hadn’t meant it, that she still loved him – anything to stop that terrible sound, worse than any shouted condemnation – but Raoul had dragged her from the roof before she recovered her voice. She’d tried to go back up – to find him, to explain, to beg for forgiveness – but Raoul wouldn’t let her go. She’d screamed at him that he didn’t understand and he’d yelled back that he had to keep her safe. Safe? Didn’t he know that there was no place in the Opera Erik couldn’t go, if he wished it? How did Raoul intend to protect her from Erik’s anger, or – worse yet – his tears? She had seen Erik cry once, only once. It had been the day she first saw his face, the day she ripped away his mask to expose what lay beneath it. He’d tried to hide from her, but too late: she had seen. He had finally turned back, daring her to look her fill. But she had barely noticed his skeletal features, his gaping hole of a nose: his eyes had captured her. Dark, overflowing pools of hurt and despair, his eyes burned her, his silent tears a more painful recrimination than any words he might have uttered. That was the only time she saw him cry. She never wanted to see him cry again. What if Erik was crying now? She fought Raoul the whole way down, but he was stronger and pulled her back to her dressing room… which was absolute bedlam, full of dancers and seamstresses and gossip. She was surrounded instantly – Raoul was chased away so she could get into costume – and all hope of returning to the roof and finding Erik disappeared. Everyone had been determined that the show go on, despite Joseph Buquet’s grisly interruption. She’d let them push her back onto the stage and she’d sung the Countess’ lines – she must have – but she couldn’t remember any of it. She’d moved about in a daze – the other actors steering her through the scene – until she’d been jerked out of her inner turmoil by a scream from the audience. She’d looked up and seen the main chandelier spinning crazily as - one by one - its supporting cables had loosened and snapped… then it had come swinging down toward the stage. She’d watched it fall, mesmerized by the shimmering light, not even thinking of the danger. She’d been yanked into the wings by one of the younger actors: an understudy… she couldn’t even remember his name. The chandelier hit with a crash, splintering the stage. In that moment – that timeless, frozen moment when the only sound she heard was the tinkling of crystal shards as they slithered through the splintered boards and cracked on the floor below – she realized that this hadn’t been an accident. Only Erik could have engineered it so carefully that no one would be hurt… no one except her, of course. The broken chandelier was a message: she read the meaning all too clearly. He had rejected her. She hadn’t cried then; she could have, nearly all the female cast members had gone into hysterics, Carlotta included. But she hadn’t cried. She’d been numb, frozen. She’d stayed that way for a very long time. She had hurt him, and he had hurt her in return, hurt her in a way she’d never expected and couldn’t have prepared for even if she had seen it coming. He was gone. Erik – a mysterious, terrifying, enchanting man; a man filled to overflowing with music and power – was irretrievably gone from her life. How was she supposed to live without her angel? He was everything to her: protection, strength, guidance, love. Knowing that he was a murderer changed nothing. She still loved him. She would love him until she died; love him in spite of the rumors that whispered in his shadow. He was not the demon the managers and ballerinas claimed him to be, nor was he the angel her father had promised her. He was human: a man like any other, a little piece of both heaven and hell hidden within him. His shroud of darkness hid a soul of incredible beauty and infinite tenderness. A soul she had wounded through her own careless words. Why hadn’t she had more faith in him? As the days and weeks passed, her grief and bitter self-reproach steadily ate away at her composure, leaving behind a mere husk of her former self. Her performances suffered: with the loss of her teacher, she lost all joy in singing. Eventually the managers requested that she take a short leave of absence from the chorus until she was “feeling more the thing,” as M. Andre delicately put it. She had quietly agreed, unable to care one way or another. The Phantom completely disappeared from life at the Opera after the chandelier fell. The ballerinas somehow reached the agreement that the destruction of the chandelier had exorcised the opera ghost, but there was much dispute over exactly how that had occurred. Most believed the ghost’s soul had been trapped in the chandelier and had been released when it broke apart. There were other – wilder – speculations, but Christine hadn’t paid much attention to the gossip. She hadn’t paid much attention to much of anything, actually. Raoul had been her salvation during those six months. He’d taken her for drives in the country, made sure she ate properly… taken care of her since she hadn’t been able to summon up the energy to do it herself. It had taken a long time, but time had eventually begun to heal her. Little by little, she had regained interest in her music and her life at the Opera gradually returned more or less to normal. She missed Erik fiercely: that ache never grew any less – she doubted it ever would – but it eventually became easier to bear. She began to once again find room in her life for something besides pain. As the months passed, she grew to enjoy her time with Raoul more and more. They were comfortable in each other’s company and understood each other perfectly… or at least as perfectly as is possible between two old friends who have been apart for years and are just now learning how much those years have changed them. And they were friends – good friends – although she knew Raoul hoped they would eventually become something more. It wasn’t really fair to him, she knew, since Erik would always be her one and only love. But Erik was irrevocably gone from her life; she could not spend the rest of her days pining after him. So when Raoul at last proposed, she accepted. They had planned to announce their engagement at the gala held at the Opera on New Year’s Eve, then have it published in the papers the next morning. But Erik chose that moment to suddenly burst back into her life, appearing in the ballroom dressed as Red Death. His costume choice was mocking, ironically appropriate. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if he wore it deliberately, wore it because of what had happened an eternity – only six months – ago. Then it hadn’t mattered; nothing had mattered except the fact that he was there, in the room with her. Seeing him (no matter how morbidly attired), hearing his voice again… she came very close to fainting. The intensity of her reaction almost surprised her. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how desperately she had missed him, how fiercely she still loved him. Why was he back? What did he want? He gave M. Firmin a thick folio: an opera, he said. And then… and then… he turned and approached her. She was unable to move, watching him come closer and closer. He stopped directly in front of her and took her hands. He removed Raoul’s engagement ring from her finger. How had he known? He slid a different ring onto her hand: his ring. "You belong to me," he said softly, intensely, for her ears only. Shock and disbelief splintered apart the things she wanted to tell him, the questions she wanted to ask. She was unable to form a coherent thought. Somewhere amid her jumbled feelings, the broken phrase kept repeating, "But I thought... but I thought...." She shook her head in wordless confusion, searching his shadowed eyes for a confirmation of his words. But he turned quickly and she was left staring at his back as the ballroom was plunged into darkness. It was only after light had been restored and the guests were milling about in panic that she finally found her voice. "But I thought you didn’t want me," she whispered, her words instantly swallowed up by the outraged and frightened questions flying about the room. She’d seen how wrong – how utterly, totally wrong - she’d been when she read his opera the next morning. His love had been burned into every line, every phrase. She’d cried then, clutching the sheets of music to her chest and weeping uncontrollably. The managers must have thought she was hysterical, that she was afraid to perform “the Ghost’s” work. They had been falling over each other, frantically attempting to console and reassure her. She might have laughed if she hadn’t already been overwhelmed by emotion. He loved her. It was too incredible to believe, too beautiful to even hope. But it was true. When she at last regained control of herself, she had assured them that she would sing the part chosen for her. She had to. He’d given her a second chance. |
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| Wake to Dreams' Fulfillment |
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