Glorious Angel

[Mouette]

Hehe, sorry -- editing because I sortof forgot to put up a bit about this fic. I've always wanted to reconstruct that blasted ending--who hasn't?--but this is my first go at it. Its sort of . . . I don't know. Kind of Kay-ish, but a bit ALW too because the Phantom is definitely Gerik (so I'm a sucker for the half mask :D ). Enjoy . . . and if you don't, please tell me why. This is a first draft, so it is a bit rough. Thanks all!

Place: Vienna
Time: 1 year after POTO ends
E/C, but friendly to that wretched boy.


It was fitting to Raoul’s mind that this ancient, beautiful city—Vienna, with all her old-world glory, the acknowledged music capitol of the world—would become known as the first truly great solo triumph of Angela Gloriosa, the Glorious Angel. Little did the world know that just two years ago she had been merely a chorus girl; that only last year she had stood in the deepest pit of the underworld and chosen her childhood friend over the beautiful, terrifying lover of her soul.

He wondered if she regretted it.

Things had changed, after that night in the cellar. They were not married; that was a dream he had given up long ago. Yet still, like a chaperon, like a brother—indeed, as a friend—he followed her from city to city, opera house to opera house, giving her encouragement and love and watching in wonder as she raised audience after audience to tears with the clear, soulful heartache of her high soprano. He had not had contact with his brother in Paris for six months at least; it was quite possible that the older Count had disowned him. But Raoul, though he knew—he knew, without a word between them—that she could never feel love for him beyond a gentle affection, found he simply could not leave her.

Raoul stood out of the way, in the backstage area of the Vienna State Opera, and watched as Christine, her hair held back from her face, prepared for her opening solo. A strange shiver passed over him, watching her; a powerful cloud of pain held ruthlessly under a veneer of cold indifference seemed to engulf the riot of motion backstage. Raoul took a deep breath and tried to ignore the chill running down his back; he had not felt such a powerful presence since . . . since . . .

Everyone else had paused, just for a moment, then shaken off the odd feeling and moved about their last-moment duties. But Christine was suddenly next to him, her arms tightly circling around his neck. He always kissed her forehead for luck before a performance; but now she was shaking, her face pale under her makeup. “Tell me I’ve been dreaming, Raoul,” she whispered, lifting her head to meet his gaze. Her eyes were tearful. “Tell me it's impossible, tell me that you felt nothing . . . Raoul, please, please tell me I’m imagining things,” Christine pled, her vibrant voice shaking lower with each word. He hesitated, and in that moment she knew. “You felt it too. Raoul, he’s here. What can I do? What if . . .”

What if he was furious with her? What if he had followed them to extract his revenge? Forcing himself to put his own fears aside, Raoul tenderly took her cold hands in his and stared straight into her eyes. “Then sing for him, Christine. Sing for him as you never sang before, even for him. Put your heart and soul into your voice for him, and if—not that I think it likely, but if—he is here, he will know what you are saying to him.”

“I’ve been running from him for a year, every moment looking back, hoping and dreading that he would follow. . .”

“You can do this. Go, Christine. Sing for your Angel.” She gave him a tremulous smile and kissed his cheek, then she was drawn back to her world, the stage full of curtains and attendants and above all, music. Raoul knew what he needed to do; if Erik was here, really here, there was only one place he would be. Turning away from the stage, Raoul began the brisk walk to box five.

[Mouette]

More to follow shortly . . .

[Mouette]

Sorry for the change from third to first person, but I just can’t seem to write Erik in third. Forgive me . . . btw, Erik is about 35, but he has lived most of the life Kay details . . . just in a shorter time (mostly, I’ve arbitrarily decided that in this story, the opera house didn’t take fifteen(?) years to build. Call it artistic license . . .)

Erik

It was purely on a whim that I still chose to sit in box five. It was habit, and habit was half of what had kept me sane, this last year; habit, and my beloved music. I had been in Vienna for a month now, longer certainly than I had stayed anywhere else—I had picked up my previous life of wanderlust easily enough, but something in that old city called to me. So much of music had been born and, I was certain, would yet be born there. I had even, half-heartedly, begun to tinker with a few compositions of my own. This particular night the city was abuzz over some new young soprano who was to open for the Vienna State Opera. They said that her voice was purer than an angel’s . . .

That, of course, was the point at which I stopped listening. I had already heard the voice of my angel on this earth, and she had left me. I didn’t have enough heart left to be angry with her; she was so much younger than I was, so much purer; until I had forced my way into her sorrowful existence, she had known melancholy but never true darkness. It had been me who put pain back into her once-empty voice . . . me and my wretched depravities. Would she be glad to know I had not killed, had not even come close, since the night she left?

Would she even care?

Undoubtedly not. She was happy, somewhere, living out a gentle quiet life with her aristocratic Adonis. And, in the end—as long as I could convince myself she was happy, as long as I forced her last bewildered, almost pleading look from my mind—then I was content. I had given her up willingly, and the consequences were mine alone to bear. I would never, never consciously burden her . . . particularly not with memories of me.

I was aware of someone coming into the box and sitting next to me, but I ignored them. If some poor fool had the gall to enter a privately held box and disturb the single, eccentric occupant, who was I to argue? He might even turn out to be good company. As long as he dismissed the mask as the strange custom of a rich patron, I was safe enough. The tales of a masked terror who enjoyed opera had not, as far as I was able to determine, made it out of Paris yet.

My composure flew out the window when he quietly spoke my name. No, he definitely was not going to be good company.

“Erik.”

I knew that voice. It was a warm, good tenor—a voice that, under other circumstances, I would have been quite happy to work with. These, however, were not other circumstances. I froze, feeling every muscle in my body tense as I waited for the muzzle of a pistol to poke into my side. After all, I had been trying rather enthusiastically to kill him at our last meeting; why should he hesitate to return the favor?

What on earth was he doing here? I had left Paris—I had specifically left Paris to them. Had left the whole bloody country of France to them, for that matter. I would have been happy to leave them Europe and the whole western hemisphere with it, but the Orient had proven too tempting a place for a man of my past to stay indefinitely.

“Erik, look at me.”

Blasted boy. No, what had I called him before? Wretched, that was it. Wretched, wretched boy. At least tell me he had spared me the pain of seeing Christine . . . surely the Vicomtess, by now. I could not bear to see her walk away with him again, despite all my noble intentions. If I had to go through that night again, I knew what slight hold I had on sanity would disappear without compunction.

There was no pistol. In fact, as I turned very, very slowly toward him, I realized that he was completely and utterly unarmed. Unarmed, and holding his left hand out to me as though it was of vital importance. A courteous and knowledgeable man would simply have been compensating for my own southpaw grip, but Raoul and I had never gotten around to being courteous with each other. Fighting over an angel will make demons out of even the best of men.

“Erik.” He was exasperated with me, I could hear it. Strange, how slowly my mind seemed to be working right now.

Calling my vocal chords out of their inexplicable and brief retirement, I managed to answer with something approaching a coolly civil tone. “Monsieur? I believe . . .” I couldn’t say you are mistaken, not with him giving me that blasted look of . . . was it possible? Pity? I sighed and began again, more simply. “Good evening, my dear Vicomte.”

If he noticed my deliberate, ironic mocking of Firmin and Andre, he didn’t acknowledge it. The young man—oh, very well, Raoul—was very earnest and serious now, looking straight into my eyes without flinching, which is a trait I have always appreciated in others. Fine, I could play that game as well. “Did you need something, Monsieur?” Such as a particular length of catgut?

“Her name is still Daae, Erik.” This was said quietly, that invading left hand still held out as though for my inspection. I noticed that it was utterly without adornment, no rings of any kind . . . and then what he had said registered in my mind. My head jerked up, and I stared at him wide-eyed. He couldn’t possibly mean . . . could he?

I was saved from answering by the voice of an angel.

The curtain must have risen, the orchestra must have begun to play, all without my noticing, but nothing in the world could have prepared me for hearing her voice again. My Beloved, my Angel of Music! I whipped around to face the stage, and there she was, her dark curls cascading around her, her porcelain-pale skin glowing in the light, and her voice . . .

Her Voice!

She sang an aria to a lost lover, but I could not hear the words, for I was overwhelmed by the unashamed longing . . . the love in her voice. The love . . . and the heartbreak. She had surpassed my teaching. Somehow, in the last year, life had given her the heart to sing as she had never sung for me, not even when she tried her hardest—her whole soul was in that voice. For the first time, she was holding nothing back, and the intensity of her ability shattered every wall around my heart.

Then she looked up into my box, and I knew—beyond the opera lights, beyond the darkness of the audience—I knew that it was not the young man beside me she was singing to.

She was singing to me!

Her song lasted for an eternity, and that final note, rising higher than I had dared take her voice for fear of harming her beautiful clarity, seemed to echo in every chamber of my soul. I didn’t think. I simply acted. Unbidden, my voice rose from the stage in all its own power, enchanting and strange and beautiful in its own right. I had just enough presence of mind left to throw my voice to the tenor across the stage from her, though I believe he was so shocked at hearing someone else sing his part that he never made a sound . . . I did not care. Her voice rose again to meet mine, and we danced around each other in music, harmonizing, yet with an weird and triumphant discordance that made me—and everyone else in the audience—shiver.

I don’t know when our song ended; I don’t know whether we even sang the right parts. I don’t remember the rest of the opera, even; the next thing I remember is Raoul—dear, dear boy—helping me into a carriage and driving me to their hotel. It must have been an hour later, but it felt like only minutes when she walked through that door. I was standing by the window; I had seen her carriage arrive. The only power that was left me was to turn and quietly speak her name.

“Christine . . .”

[Mouette]

Christine

It should have been so easy. After a year of wondering, of longing, of wishing to hear his voice, he was there—just across the room. How could it possibly be difficult to simply walk through a room to a man who she had just given her soul to in song?

Yet here they stood. And he knew her better than anyone; he had seen her in every mood, every shadow, and she could see from the pain in his eyes, the way he turned away from her ever so slightly, that he knew exactly why she hesitated. After all they had been through, after the long and painful tapestry of their love, he still had the power to frighten her.

It wasn’t much—the shadow of a shadow of doubt, of fear, but he knew it and she saw the hurt on his face before he looked away from her. For a moment Christine wondered if he would turn aside from her in silence, as he had done so often before, and let the unspoken shades between them pass. Instead, his voice came clipped and cold, and she knew that he understood—as she did—that if there was ever going to be a chance for them to be together, they would have to drag out all the old demons and deal with them. Now.

“A year in my house,” he murmured, the sheer flatness of his tone hurting her almost more than his words did, “a year spent sleeping in my home, alone, utterly untouched and unharmed, and still you cannot trust me.”

The thread of fear restraining her snapped, and Christine felt a well of anger and hurt rising to her heart. Without a thought she crossed to him, and without a thought did what she had never dared do, no matter how often he had deserved it.

She slapped him.

The face that had been turned away snapped back to her fully, and he caught her wrist with a graceful, lazy negligence. There was nothing lazy about the warning tilt to his eyes, however, as he regarded her with all the steady distance of a cat. “Trust? You sent me away!" Christine said sharply, not certain how the subjects of her fear and his dismissal were connected but certain there was a tie between them.

His laugh was short and harsh. “You chose to leave.” With him Erik left unsaid.

“I chose to leave because you bloody told me to! Or had you forgotten the power of your own voice?” Oh, that wasn’t fair, that wasn’t fair and she knew that it wasn’t. It was a good thing, Christine decided, that they had never had a fight before tonight. If she had known how painful arguing with him was, she wouldn’t have come back to the hotel. For that matter, why were they fighting?

“There is much I wish to forget about that night,” Erik retorted darkly.

She softened suddenly in his grip, sliding her wrist free of his fingers to wrap her arms around his neck. “There is much that I wish never to forget,” Christine replied quietly, lifting her lips to within a millimeter of his. She would invite, but this time he would be the one kissing her, or she’d know why.

Then he closed that last tiny distance between them, and she could think of nothing but the ached-for feel of his kiss.

***

More perhaps on the way . . . tell me what you're thinking!

[Luciana]

I hope you don't mind me interrupting, but I just wanted to let you know that your story is turning out really well. Erik and Christine are so perfect... Write more please!

[Mouette]

Why thank you--I've actually stopped updating on this site (lazy . . .) but it is at fanfic.net. Thanks so much for reading! Here's the link:

http://www.fanfiction.net/secure/live_preview.php?storyid=2495513

[The_Persian]

WOW! that is so good!
We had got some REALLY talented people on this board!
You write so beautifully, Whittney!
I love that... "She was singing to me!"

[Mouette]

Thank you! Click on the link for the rest (or if enough of you are interested, I'll post it). There are 18 chapters up!