Chapter Text
The Phantom cannot stop her hands from shaking. She tries glove after glove, looking for the pair with the magic ability to make them calm themselves, but nothing will do it. She scoffs in disgust before the mirror in her lair, and pulls on her usual ones. Whatever. It’s the opening night of her opera; of course she’s nervous. A voice in the back of her head insists it’s more than that, that it has more to do with—
She shushes that voice, and goes about her preparations.
***
Upstairs, preparations of a different sort are underway. Raoul rushes about all morning with the police constable, searching for exits and passageways that might afford the Phantom any sort of escape. Christine ignores it; she’s busy with fittings. Carlotta is complaining on the stool next to her, lamenting the hood she is to wear and the atonality of the music. The latter is a valid complaint; the songs are difficult, the intervals unusual to the ear, and remind Christine not a little of some of the eerie music she used to hear from beneath the stage. She’s working on the Phantom’s final edits even now—a B to a B flat, for no seeming reason, but she sings it over again. The story has been altered, ever so slightly—a cruel, callous piece about people taking advantage of one another to something perhaps… nearly romantic. Still a bit cold and cruel, but the ending doesn’t make her quite so sad. There’s a bit more kindness to the Doña’s advances, a bit more cleverness in the shepherdess’s response. And the Doña lives in the end, which should serve to make Carlotta happy. It does not. “It’s too low, too low all the time!” she whines from within the folds of the hoods, and sings it mockingly an octave higher. The Phantom has not responded to requests for octave changes in the Doña’s part.
The costume has remained the same, and for that she is secretly grateful, for it is a lovely thing. A short bustled skirt with an incredibly entertaining amount of petticoats, and beautiful embroidery demanded in harsh red ink. It’s designed with strokes of genius just as she can tell the music is composed—the Phantom, it seems, has an eye and an ear finely attuned to their theater. Dancing in it is effortless, but she puts in effort anyway, pushing her body to wider arcs and marking her blocking with pinpoint accuracy. The Phantom has given her a chance, for reasons she still doesn’t understand, and while Raoul plays soldier she’ll take that chance. She pushes her voice for that depth and strength the Phantom told her she needed, but she never hears a sound in response. No matter. The Phantom will come to the premiere of her own opera, and perhaps she’ll get answers then. Until then, it’s on her as one of the leading ladies to make a name for herself and for the show.
The sun goes down, and Christine’s costumes are finally delivered to her dressing room. “Hair and makeup in fifteen,” the seamstress informs her, and she nods, turning to dress herself. The costumes are on her table, alongside the pin and cloak she took from the Phantom. She considers them for a moment. It would probably annoy the Phantom to have her careful costuming interrupted by a token of—what, gratitude? Gratitude, she confirms, and considers, then pins it to one of the garters of her stockings. Out of sight, but still there. If breaking a leg is good luck in the theater, then a token from the Phantom of the Opera must be absolutely divine.
***
The violins buzz into the overture, a jarring discordant piece, and Christine can almost feel the audience squirming in their seats. The police presence around the aisles probably isn’t helping either, and Raoul’s adamant decision to sit in Box Five has her nervous herself. He checked in on her earlier, to make sure she was still comfortable doing this—”being,” in his words, “a sort of… bait.”
She hadn’t liked that—she hoped her impression of the Phantom’s motivations was more realistic. “It’s fine,” she told him, but he hadn’t seemed to believe her. She purses her lips backstage, stretches her limbs. It’s fine. She’ll deal with that situation later.
Now, the curtain rises, and Carlotta does her opening scene with no sign of her earlier complaint. That is one thing the diva has going for her—she’s a professional. She exits through the back curtains, and Christine takes a few deep breaths, says a quick prayer, and then plunges on.
The crowd is anxious, she can tell immediately. It’s not what they’re used to seeing out of an opera. But her part is a little closer to it, and maybe if she just… She sings sweetly, calmingly, and she feels the crowd calm with her. “No thoughts within her head but thoughts of love.” She’s got their attention, their allegiance now; they settle in, and she smiles.
Carlotta returns for the next scene through that back exit, skulking in a villainish sort of way, and Christine crosses and uncrosses her legs, seemingly unaware, at the table. This song is her favorite, though its equal treatment still irks her. Carlotta has invariably been taking those opening notes up the octave, and Christine is sure that wherever the Phantom is, she’ll be very annoyed to see her work altered in any way. She glances up to Box Five, sees Raoul watching self-assuredly, and takes a deep breath as Carlotta begins the song. “Passarino, go away for the trap is set and waits for its prey…”
The correct octave. Christine is surprised—the diva’s chest voice is decent. She turns her head innocently, bats her eyelashes at the hooded figure that makes its way around the table to her. “You have come here, in pursuit of your deepest urge; in pursuit of that wish which till now has been silent. Silent.” The figure raises its finger to her lips, and suddenly, Christine is struck by realization. That’s not the blocking she and Carlotta do. And Christine has felt that hand on her face before.
She keeps her face impassive, recognizing now the inflections in voice that mark a mezzo and not a soprano. That part was not written for Carlotta. That part was written for a deeper voice, and was not altered for a very specific reason. She swallows, wondering where exactly Carlotta is, but she doesn’t have time to worry for long—they’re on stage. She has the audience—she cannot let them go now. She tosses her hair out of her face, resumes her smile, and eats from the feast as the Doña tries to tempt her away. It’s the chorus that is supposed to catch her character’s attention, and indeed it captures hers as well—the Phantom sings in a husky whisper, the character’s want clear on her breath, and Christine shivers. She believes she could upstage Carlotta, but this—the duet with the Phantom is balanced exactly as it should be. “Past the point of no return.”
She trills her verse, the shepherdess and herself both nervous, and forces herself into that close blocking the Phantom herself requested. Is it to prevent the police from having a clear shot? “You have brought me to that moment where words run dry,” she sings, and means it. Now she really doesn’t understand what the Phantom’s motive is, and for a moment her old uncertainty returns. But no. Her purpose in life is to do this, to sing and act and command the crowd, and she can hold her own on the stage. “In my mind I've already imagined our bodies entwining, defenseless and silent.” She turns away from the Phantom, coquettish, and then turns back, tracing a hand along her thigh. The Phantom as the Doña reciprocates, testing at the hem of her skirt, and she jerks herself away, indignant and playful. The Phantom makes that tilt of her chin, devastatingly eloquent even under the hood, and Christine bites her tongue for fear of gasping. No one else seems to have noticed it’s not Carlotta, and no one seems to have noticed how much better the scene has become.
“Past the point of no return,” she affirms, and carefully creeps back to the Phantom, seated at the table. The Phantom makes a move for her and she trips back, the game a tease between pursuer and prey. It’s perhaps a touch too real to the situation, but Christine can’t think about that now—it’s all breath, movement, tone, acting. “Past all thought of right or wrong—” The shepherdess is convinced, and with caution, she moves forward, seating herself beside the Phantom and allowing her to take her hand. She moves the hand slowly, over her stomach up to her collarbones, and the Phantom seems to know her own blocking well enough, for she trails that hand out along Christine’s bare shoulder and raises her hand to her lips. Christine shivers—Carlotta was always quite a bit more perfunctory. She rises to her feet, allows the Phantom to twirl her through a few steps, and then departs from her, casting longing glances across the stage as the two of them mount the stairs to the set’s catwalk. The Phantom ascends with measured precision, and Christine matches it step for step, absorbed body and mind with the scene and her partner in it. They face each other down the catwalk, and for a moment, Christine catches glimpses of faces—of Madame Giry, looking pale and tight-lipped below, of Raoul, his face a mask of horror. She’s not sure what that’s about. But the Phantom stomps her boot and Christine’s attention is returned, matching the smirk on her partner’s face and slowly, oh so slowly making her way forward.
The Phantom hangs back, then seems to lose patience and catches her hard, a hand on her collarbone and the other at her hip, and Christine truly does gasp—to her relief, it’s an instrumental break. She feels the Phantom’s breath on her neck behind her, and leans into the touch, interlacing her fingers with hers and, in a touch of inspiration, making a show of taking her gloves off. The Phantom offers no resistance, and Christine replaces her hands at their previous locations, the Phantom’s fingers cold splayed against the hollow of her throat. They’re hands that have strangled, but somehow, that doesn’t seem relevant. She lives in the eye of the storm, after all.
She’s recovered her breath enough to sing the final chorus, leaning in against the Phantom and shutting her eyes as the Phantom pulls that hand down from her hip and towards the hem of her skirt, her chin on Christine’s shoulder. Christine nuzzles into the touch, her cheek pressed to the Phantom’s through the hood, though the acoustics of it are undoubtedly bad. Her pulse is throbbing in her ears and she can’t help but jog her knee into the Phantom’s grasp, letting herself be dipped low and practically dangled forty feet above the stage. The Phantom’s arms feel strong—she’s not concerned. The hood nods down for a moment, the Phantom’s grasp tightening where she’s holding Christine, and Christine glances down—she’s seen the pin. She swallows—that might have a different implication in this moment. In fact, as the final words pass her lips and she sings one last time that they’ve passed the point of no return, she finds herself extremely aware of what she’s said, and the danger she could be in. Her breath catches in her throat, and she gazes into the expressionless abyss within the hood.
And then, to her surprise, the Phantom sings. Not very loud at all, and nothing from the show. No, it’s… she recognizes it in surprise as the ballad the Phantom was writing the night they met in the catacombs. It’s quiet, and it seems to be just for her. “Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime… Lead me, save me from my solitude…” Her eyes are adjusting, and she can see the pinpricks of the Phantom’s eyes within the dark, her lip quivering. “Say you want me with you here beside you. Anywhere you go, let me go too. Christine, that's all I ask of…”
Her voice trails off, shaky, and Christine’s breath returns to her, shuddering. “You,” she says, finishing the Phantom’s line. The Phantom bites her lip.
Christine thinks this through uncharacteristically fast. She’s in a tight spot, physically, and if she were to displease the Phantom right now, it could be the death of her quite quickly. Or at least that’s what logic tells her. But… she feels safe, safer than she could have believed she could have felt, because she knows what it is the Phantom wants from her. It’s… just her. The Phantom… wants her. In the show, and out of it.
It’s mad, it’s truly mad, and she could scarcely believe it if it hadn’t just been sung to her. Christine is engaged, she’s—there’s a thousand reasons—and yet all she can feel now is the Phantom’s hands in all the places they’ve touched, burning and blushing. Raoul, for all his kisses and trueness, has never… never made her shiver like that, never made her breath catch in her throat.
She wonders what the Phantom’s kisses would be like.
Her fingers tighten on the arms of a flesh-and-blood woman, a woman who Christine is beginning to understand, a woman so painfully lonely and wanting for love that it makes her stomach ache. A murderer, a creative genius, a threat, a contradiction… she’s reached out to Christine, cried for help, prayed to her like some mischosen angel, and Christine has got to answer. What would make Christine happy? What would make the Phantom happy?
She reaches up to find the Phantom’s face within the folds of the hood, and the Phantom jerks back, perhaps afraid of what happened last time. The movement knocks her hood back, and for a moment, the two of them sway dangerously, before the Phantom pulls Christine back to her feet and takes a more cautious stance. But her hood is back, her face exposed, her body too far away from Christine’s. And the shot is clear. A bang shocks Christine back into the railing, and the Phantom staggers. In an impossible, just-so trajectory, the bullet grazes her head—and pulls her mask off with it.
The audience screams, whether from fear of the shot or sight of the Phantom, Christine does not know, but she wheels to find Raoul with his arm outstretched, pistol in hand. “Bar the doors!” he shouts to the militiaman beside him, and rushes to reload.
“My patience for you wears thin, Monsieur le Vicomte!” the Phantom shrieks, her eyes flicking wildly around the auditorium as patrons continue to panic and militiamen run down the aisle. “And you will pay for your arrogance!” She pulls a knife from her boot quick as a flash, and lunges past Christine, who screams involuntarily and watches as the Phantom slashes through a rope near the catwalk. It cracks like a whip as it snaps, and all of a sudden the tinkling of glass joins the pandemonium. All look up as one, to the great crystal chandelier, as it begins to fall.
All but the Phantom, who takes a step backward, ducks under the catwalk railing, and looks at the room once more, anger and grief warring on her face, and then steps back into thin air. Christine screams again, dives for her hand—but she’s too late to catch her, too late to do anything but catch her eyes as she falls through a trapdoor in the stage. That’s it—how she comes and goes, how she earned the name of Phantom. The opera house has secrets, and only the Phantom knows them. She runs down the stairs, jumping back as the massive chandelier crashes mere feet from her into the stage, and dashes through the fires beginning to lick at the set. “Madame Giry! Madame—”
Her guardian is walking quickly, her face a careful mask of neutrality, but Christine can see horror lurking in her eyes. “Madame, you’ve been here longer than anyone—how do I get to her? Where do I find the Phantom?”
“Christine, my dear, I—”
“Don’t lie to me!” she shrieks, and shakes her by the shoulders. “You know, you have to, and you must tell me! Please, please—”
Tears are welling in her eyes. “No, Christine, it’s too—she—it’s too dangerous, Christine!”
“Not for me!” Christine’s crying now too. “Please, it’s her life on the line, I can feel it—I have to help her! She needs someone to be there for her!”
Madame looks stricken; she doesn’t breathe for four seconds, and when she does they’re shallow and pained. “God, forgive me for my sins,” she mutters, and clutches Christine’s shoulder so tightly her nails nearly draw blood. “The mirror,” she hisses. “Carlotta’s dressing room. It slides back. Go.”
Christine nods and tears off, Madame’s voice chasing her down the hall. “Tell her I’m sor—”
She’s below the stage now—Raoul’s guards didn’t quite cut all of the exits off—and she’s alone, rushing for Carlotta’s dressing room. She enters cautiously, and nearly screams when she sees the diva lying on a couch, motionless. But her chest falls and rises, and Christine can see a glass on the floor, spilled onto the carpet. Drugged? It makes her a little less afraid to do what she does next—approaching the mirror and heaving it back with all her strength. It slides slowly and silently, and beyond… a hall she remembers very well. She enters the Phantom’s realm, and makes her way deeper.
***
A wracking sob echoes over the lake as she clumsily paddles the gondola across its waters, and Christine peers into the gloaming, her heart in her throat. It’s not quite as she remembers it—the mirrors are covered with sackcloth, most of the candles extinguished, and the aura of magic and mystery that had seemed to overshadow the place in her haze of champagne and breathlessness is gone. It is cold, and dank, and lonely. She draws the boat to the shore, and looks to the organ, where the shuddering shoulders of a figure seated there draw her attention. She takes a deep breath, steps onto the shore, and opens her mouth. “Are you hurt?”
The Phantom sits up, stiff as a board, and then lowers her hands into her face and sobs again. “Go. Leave me. Forget it. Forget all of this.” There’s blood on her hands, on the starched white of her fine shirt.
“You’re bleeding!” Christine says angrily, and takes an emboldened step forward. “Let me bandage it. Let me help you.”
“No, no, I—I—it is too much!” She sobs again, and backs away from Christine, her hands falling from her face and revealing the deformity beneath. Joseph Buquet’s old songs weren’t so far off the mark—skull-like, pale as death, her face withered and misshapen and pulled back taut around her eyes. It’s horrid at first blush, but Christine fights to maintain her gaze. “I am alone, I have always been alone, I must be alone!”
“You are not!” Christine chases her down, up against the rock wall of the grotto, and seizes the Phantom’s wrists as she moans and tries to wriggle her way away. “And you shall not be ever again!” She glares up at the Phantom, putting every ounce of stubbornness she has into her expression, and the Phantom quiets, looking down at her. “What did you just say to me upstairs?”
“A… a great many things.” The Phantom’s eyes slide sideways, and she squirms. “A… a momentary madness. A trick? Yes—I’ve manipulated you again—betrayal of the worst sort—”
Christine scoffs and digs under her petticoats, seizing the skull pin from her stocking and shoving it into the Phantom’s hand. The Phantom blinks, tears on her misshapen cheeks. “How long have you loved me?”
The Phantom hiccups, and gives a cynical laugh. “Since the night I realized there was a chance I might lose you.” Their hands are still half entangled, and the Phantom taps a long finger against Christine’s engagement ring. “Consider it a proposal, but I’ve thought better of it. Your lover seems to have a much more passionate claim.”
Christine growls in her throat, and reaches into her petticoats again, tearing a strip of the fabric off angrily. “When will—you idiots—realize that I—have my own say in this?” She yanks the Phantom down by her cravat and binds the gunshot wound. “Did either of you wait for my response?”
The Phantom looks chastized, her head bowed to Christine’s hands. “I am rather impatient by nature.”
“Indeed,” Christine mutters, and knots the last of the fabric. “Well. Shall you hear it now?”
The Phantom’s hand strays to the twisted skin of her cheek involuntarily. “I… don’t think I am being given a choice.” She looks sick with fear.
And then a clanking sounds, and they both spin to look toward the portcullises that guard the lair, to where Christine can see Raoul, soaked to the skin in shirtsleeves and looking desperate. “I knew it,” he snarls, and rattles the bars. “Christine, Christine—hold on, Christine—let me in, you bitch!”
The Phantom raises where an eyebrow might have been, and tilts her chin. Her mask—not the physical one, but the persona she maintains—is back up, and Christine can see her body tense. “Well, well, well. I think we have a guest. What an unparalleled delight.” Her eyes are roving over Raoul, looking—Christine thinks—for the gun. She turns, stalks to the lever that raises the gates, and folds her hands behind her back as she strides down the shore and into the water to meet Raoul.
Christine grits her teeth. “Both of you, just, stop! For one second!” Her plea falls on deaf ears.
“Set her free and let her go with me,” Raoul demands. “Your reign of terror in this theater is over.”
The Phantom shrugs half-doubtfully, and curls her lip. “Your visit to my theater has grown stale, Monsieur. And you interrupt my conversation with my prima donna.” Possessive, but Christine knows it’s a front.
“If you’ve laid a finger on her—” Raoul growls, then cranes to look at Christine, his anger morphing to fear. “Christine, are you alright?”
The Phantom interrupts before Christine can tell him yes. “Did you think that I would harm her ? Why should she pay for your insolence?” And then, quicker than sight, the Phantom lunges for a rope, hidden under the water, and goes for Raoul's throat.
Christine screams in frustration and runs into the water herself, her skirts dragging heavily. “You idiots!” Raoul struggles against the impromptu noose, kneeing the Phantom heavily in the stomach, and the two of them wrestle venomously up to the moment Christine slaps first one, then the other. They stare up, stunned.
“Stop trying to kill people to solve your problems!” she shouts at the Phantom, and elbows her way in between them. “And you, Raoul, stop barrelling in ahead! You’re a fool if you think you can beat her alone!”
Raoul staggers to his feet, and tries to start forward again. The Phantom bares her teeth, and Christine has to hold the two of them apart. “Stop! Stop, stop, stop!” she screams. “Now, you are both going to listen to me, and when I say listen I mean it! You will hear me for once in your goddamned lives—not just my voice but what I have to say! ” She pants with rage, daring them to contradict her, but they don’t. The Phantom stares at her, and Raoul swallows hard. She’s got an audience again.
“Now.” She takes a deep breath—she hadn’t quite figured out what she was going to say before she got their attention. “Raoul. You didn’t believe me at Hannibal , but it’s true—this woman taught me to sing. I owe her everything, Raoul. I owe her my life. You must give her back hers.”
“I’ll never cave to this snake’s demands,” he spits, clenching his fists. “None of it. I am the patron of this opera house, and I will not be ordered about by some—some—”
“Let her speak! ” The Phantom’s voice echoes powerfully throughout the underground cavern. She glares at Raoul with daggers in her eyes.
“Oh, yes, you want her to speak—she’s saying just what you want her to say!” A horrible suspicion enters Raoul’s expression, and he seizes Christine by the arms. “Christine, dearest, has she told you to say these things? You don’t have to, you’re safe with me, Little Lottie—speak your mind!”
“I am!” She yanks her arm away. “Raoul, you don’t listen to me! Little Lottie this, Little Lottie that—I’m a child to you! A doll to dress up!” She balls her fists in frustration. “You running around setting traps and trying to outsmart your adversary—did you bother to ask me whether she was actually an enemy?”
“She’s been stalking you!” Raoul looks disbelieving. “She kidnapped you!”
“She’s a dramatic fool!” Christine throws up her hands in exasperation. “You raise someone in an opera house and you expect them not to create characters for themselves? I’ve been pretending to be a good little girl for fourteen years, and she’s been playing a ghost for longer!” She rounds on the Phantom. “There will be no more of that, mind you. You will be truthful with me or we will be through.” The Phantom swallows, and nods.
“Christine, she’s a murderer,” Raoul says weakly. He’s looking at her with a strange expression. “She killed a man.”
“A horrible man,” the Phantom and Christine say at the same moment, and Christine glares at her suspiciously before expanding on the thought. “A lecherous, vile man who terrorized the dancers. At least after that I could undress in my room without fear of someone peeking through the cracks.”
Raoul’s shaking his head. “Christine, this… this isn’t you,” he insists, and backs away a step or two. “You’ve never thought this way before. I have listened, and you’ve never—”
“I never spoke up,” she mutters. “I should have—shouldn’t have just gone along with what other people wanted for me. But I’m speaking now.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “This isn’t you. You… you’re ill, or in shock. Come on, Christine,” he pleads, his voice close to breaking. “Come away from this awful place. You’re hysterical—”
“I am NOT! ” she snaps, and shakes her fists at her sides. “If you don’t like what I have to say, then, then—” A fit of anger overcomes her, and she works the ring from her finger, brandishes it in his face. “Then you can give this to someone else, who will let you think for her!”
Raoul looks horrified, and then looks over her head, and something clicks in his face. His brows lower, and his eyes burn at the Phantom. “You,” he accuses, and his voice trembles. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it, you depraved, ghastly—”
“This is my own decision!” Christine shouts.
“It’s not, Christine.” Raoul is trying to hold her now, pull her away from the Phantom. “She’s… she’s seduced you—” he spits it like a dirty word— “just so you’ll sing for her, be her prisoner. She’s a madwoman—she—”
But the instant Raoul lays a hand on her, the Phantom is moving again, a knife slipped from her boot and in her hand. “Don’t you touch—”
“No!” Christine holds up a hand as best she can with Raoul tugging on her, and the Phantom freezes. “No more violence.” She turns to Raoul, still preoccupied with action over speech, still ignoring her. “Raoul!”
He turns to her, slowly, and she sighs. She takes his hand, folds the ring into it, and stands on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Raoul,” she says again, and it’s final. “You are my dear friend. I love you. But I want to be something more than your wife and for that, I need her.” She leaves out the most painful parts; she has no desire to injure. “Go back.”
Raoul vacillates; she can see in his eyes that he doesn’t believe her, still, and that helps her feel more solid in her decision. But he can’t take Christine away without the Phantom’s retaliation, and he can’t fight the Phantom without Christine throwing herself in the middle. He bites his lip, then growls, presses the ring into her hand, and sprints for the gate. “I’ll be back,” he snarls at the Phantom, and gives her one last, pained look, then runs, his shouts for the militiamen echoing through the catacombs as he goes.
Christine watches him go, then turns, and gazes up at the Phantom. “We have to go,” she says sadly. “There’s no peace for us here.”
The Phantom blinks—or does so as best she can. “I… have been here for a very long time.”
“And I as well,” Christine tells her. They’ve been here together for a very long time. “But we can start again. Music is the same in any hall.”
The Phantom makes a strangled sound at that, and Christine takes her hand and pulls her from the lake. “Where is that twenty-thousand franc salary?” she asks, and the Phantom points silently to the desk, where Christine finds rolls and rolls of bank notes, enough to keep them running for a good long while. She’s dripping buckets from her skirts, but she stows some of the cash in her bodice and keeps going. The Phantom’s sword, the manuscripts, the books—
“What is this?” The Phantom’s voice is pained as she strides up the slope and gesticulates at her shoulder. “Why, Christine? You don’t have to run—you nearly have everything you want, don’t you? Carlotta will quit, she will! You’ll be leading lady!”
“Oh, you fool!” Christine slams the desk drawer shut, and turns on her heel to the Phantom. “You lie enough—can you not tell when I’m sparing Raoul’s feelings? This isn’t business.”
The Phantom eyes her warily. “No?”
Christine seizes her hands again, painfully aware of the mob from above that is no doubt seeking a way down to them. “Raoul is dear to me, but he doesn’t listen, and he bores me. Life is a bore without challenge, and you have challenged me constantly—terrified me, confused me, drawn me out and forced me beyond my limits. I want that. It makes me better. Playing this game, making this art with you—it has driven me mad, thrilled me, brought me to tears and made me so, so very happy. So anywhere I go, I want you too.” She squeezes her hands. “If you’ll let me run with you.”
“Yes,” the Phantom says softly, her fingers twitching in Christine’s, and finally gives a real smile—a lovely, uncertain, little-used thing that lights up her face entire. And Christine’s not past the point of no return, not physically at least—but it’s better to make the choice to love willingly, she thinks. She kisses the Phantom, and the twist of excitement in her gut is like nothing she’s felt with anyone else before.
***
The Phantom raises her hand to her mouth when they break apart, breathless, the feeling ghosting over her tongue and setting her mind aflame. There’s no time to let it consume her, though—the memory will have to sustain her till they’re safe again. She drops Christine’s hands, seizes her in a fast embrace, and then joins her at the desk, snatching up her most valuable possessions and tying them into bundles for their flight. Strange echoes sound from above, and the Phantom can tell they’re running out of time.
“Er—have you got a name?”
The Phantom glances over at Christine, who blushes as she snatches up a fine cloak and whisks it over her costume, not making eye contact. The Phantom glances away and bites her lip. “Madame, she… called me Erika, once. I… suppose that’s more of something than ‘opera ghost’ or ‘phantom’… I haven’t had much use for one, truthfully.”
“Erika.” She likes it when Christine says it. “Madame?”
The Phantom inclines her head, presses her spare mask to her face and ties its ribbons. “Your guardian. Giry. She… she brought me here. Watched over me, for a time.”
“She… she told me where to find you. And… that she was sorry.” They’ve all they can carry now—Christine’s stuck in her sodden costume but there’s no fixing that now. The Phantom pulls back one of her own mirrors to reveal a passage, and ushers Christine in, blinking back tears. Hmm. Inscrutable Madame.
When the militia arrives, the lair is empty, and no trace remains to the searchers, unless it is the extremely fine engagement ring lying upon the bench of a subterranean organ.
***
The passage releases them into the courtyard of the opera house, the main auditorium still crackling with flame when they emerge. The Phantom peeks out first, then pulls Christine forward by the hand, and together the two of them make for the street. A cab, an inn outside the city, and onward. They’re nearly there when the click of cane on cobblestone reaches their ears.
Christine wheels to find Meg and Madame Giry watching them from the shadows. “Don’t try—” the Phantom starts, her lip curled, but stops. Because Meg has run forward, hugged Christine tight, and then placed a suitcase in her hand.
“I’ll miss you,” she whimpers, and retreats. “Send me letters.”
Madame Giry approaches as well, her expression more measured, and holds out another bag. “Supplies,” she explains quietly. “Clothes, disguises if you need them, something to eat tonight. I imagine you have money?”
The Phantom nods stiffly, and Christine watches the two regard each other, equally proud and equally unwilling to broach whatever is between them. At last, Madame Giry takes the Phantom’s hand and folds it around the handle of the suitcase. She kisses the Phantom’s cheeks, kisses Christine’s, and waves. “Go. I hear Vienna’s operas are… quite nearly as good as ours.”
The Phantom tilts her head thoughtfully. “Indeed? Well, perhaps they shall be even better soon.” She squeezes Christine’s hand, and Christine squeezes it back, and together they nod and continue on. The cab they hail is dark away from the leaping flames, the driver uninterested. It is hardly long at all before the music of the night—the horses’ hooves on pavement, the click of the wheels, the rush of winter wind—lulls them to sleep on each others’ shoulders.