Chapter Text
“You try my patience,” the Phantom growled. “Make your choice.”
Here was this ghost of a man, a man who had been denied simple tolerance for so long and wanted only to feel loved. This was not a very good way to go about asking for love, but Christine reasoned with herself, he’s never known love before. He doesn’t know how to love. How to be loved.
She didn’t either. It was only in this moment Christine realized she didn’t know what love felt like. She thought she loved Raoul. She wanted to love Raoul. Society would object, had already objected, sure, but it wasn’t like her other prospect was better. No, in the eyes of society, he was much, much worse.
She should have known the game was over before it even started. Somebody—or something—had to die this evening. Either her freedom or her fiancé. She thought back to that day on the rooftop, when he had proposed. The comfort she found in his arms. She had been kidnapped, discovered her Angel of Music was not, in fact, an angel, but a man, and he—
He told her of his plans to marry her. He had put his hands all over her. He showed her the doll he had made, the doll that looked just like her, the doll that was wearing a wedding dress, the dress that she was now wearing. And she had fainted, and when she woke up, she discovered that man was deformed; but she wasn’t scared of his deformity. He had screamed at her, told she she could never be free again, that she would see how fear can turn to love. And it—
Then he forced the managers of the opera house to give her the role of the Countess in Il Muto. He sabotaged Carlotta so she could go on. (She was actually very much enjoying the overexaggerated and comedic role of the pageboy.) And then, when she thought her living nightmare couldn’t get any worse, he had hanged Joseph Buquet from the rafters.
A small part of her thought he deserved it. There was no telling how many ballet girls had been molested by him. He was a creep, that was for sure. The rest of her despised that small part for thinking any human being deserved to die.
Raoul had found her when she was her most vulnerable. He had comforted her and loved her. She owed him for that, did she not?
But he smothered you.
She pushed the thought away as quickly as it came up. He had not done anything like that.
But then she truly thought about that night on the rooftop, maybe deeper than she ever had before. She had brought him up there, to escape the Phantom. He had protested, telling her to calm down, that there was no such thing as the Phantom of the Opera. That it was all a dream. That his voice, his home, his touch were all a figment of her imagination.
She could almost laugh. So he was all a dream, Raoul? A dream that is currently about to strangle you to death!
She had been at her most vulnerable. She had been scared, and torn, and desperate for simple companionship. For support. For someone to acknowledge her feelings. Did Raoul truly do that?
No! He brushed her off, he listened to what she said and his only solution was marriage. She knew that would only anger the Phantom further. Hence, she wore Raoul’s ring on a chain around her neck rather than putting it on her finger.
Was that the only reason?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Do you really want to marry him?
She never had the energy to refuse that night. She was so tired, she only wanted a short-term solution. Then a week later, she woke up, truly woke up, and reality hit, that she would be bound to this man for the rest of her life, and once she got married…
If you choose him, you will never sing again.
There it was. She could not marry Raoul. She loved him, but only as a friend. She thought she had loved him as a child, but did she? No, back then he felt like a brother to her. She had been forcing herself to love him for 6 whole months, and in the end, it didn’t work.
She found herself asking the same question again: What does love feel like? It wasn’t what she felt for Raoul, she knew that now. To love someone meant to want to spend the rest of your life with them. To love someone meant to care for them no matter what, to take them at their worst and their best and come out of it stronger. To love someone meant to loath every moment you were away from them. To love someone meant—
You alone can make my song take flight…
To love someone did not mean Raoul. She could not marry him. She could not choose him. That thought made the knowledge of what she had to do a bit easier.
She took a sharp, deep breath, and felt as though it was the first burst of oxygen that had entered her lungs in hours. She was suddenly aware of the tangles and lake water in her hair, the torn and dirty dress whose fabric was pooling around her feet, the tears and grime on her face. She fisted her hands and let go, fisted and let go, over and over, like a cat kneading with its paws. Slowly, she began to speak, with a tremor in her voice, as she walked toward the Phantom.
“Pitiful creature of darkness, what kind of life have you known?”
The tears were once again flowing freely down her cheeks.
“G-d give me courage to show you, you are not alone!”
And she kissed him.
It wasn’t supposed to go this far. It was only supposed to last a second. She wasn’t supposed to cup his face, he wasn’t supposed to grab her waist and pull her close and kiss her back like he was stranded in the desert and she was water. She wasn’t supposed to feel that alive. She wasn’t supposed to notice how perfect it felt, his lips on hers. She wasn’t supposed to think of every time she had ever kissed Raoul (which wasn’t a lot) and find that it couldn’t even compare to him. She wasn’t supposed to kiss him again after he had pulled back.
Eventually, they were forced to break apart for air. Finding herself unable to speak, Christine stared into his eyes—his beautiful eyes—and hoped the look on her face conveyed what she wanted to say, if only her voice was working. I love you. I love you. I love you. And for a moment he looked at her with such disbelief and longing and happiness that she thought it had worked.
Then he said it. At first, she didn’t believe her ears. Thought she must have been imagining it. But he repeated it, again, and again, his voice rising, partly from fear and partly from devastation and partly from a last desperate attempt not to burst out in tears.
“Go! Go now! Leave me alone!”
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
“Take the boat, swear to me never to tell the secret you know of the Angel of Hell.”
It broke her heart to hear him call himself that. The mob was getting closer, she could hear them in the distance. She was so scared. They couldn’t hurt him. They couldn’t. She couldn’t leave him to them.
She was only faintly aware of the Phantom trudging over to the portcullis and untying the ropes that held her fiancé captive. She was only faintly aware of Raoul pulling on her arm, telling her they had to go. She was only faintly aware of walking toward the little wooden gondola sitting on the lakeshore. She was only faintly aware of everything except the ghost of the Phantom’s kiss, the burning feeling still lingering on her lips. Raoul helped her into the boat and they rowed off. He never once bothered to ask how she was feeling. She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take the knowledge that the only tangible thing she would have left of him was his ring.
She loved him. She needed to be with him, no matter how, she needed him.
“Raoul,” she began, shaking. He didn’t turn around, didn’t stop rowing, and she contemplated just letting it go. Learning to be happy with Raoul. Burying her true feelings and pretending everything was normal for the rest of her life. But then she remembered his ring on her finger and it gave her the courage not to.
“Raoul, stop the boat.”
“What—Christine, why?”
“I can’t do this. I can’t leave him.”
Raoul reached up to cup her cheek. She involuntarily flinched.
“You’re free now, Christine. He let us go. I’m here now. You don’t have to worry about him any longer.”
“But I can’t!” She shouted, louder than she meant to. “I can’t forget about him. I can’t leave him. I…Raoul, I love him!”
The dried tears on her cheeks were quickly being washed away by the ones now falling. She wondered if she would be stuck like this forever, new tears always replacing the old ones, never ceasing to cry.
Raoul had frozen seconds ago. He looked shell-shocked. He likely was.
“I’m sorry, Raoul. I hope you find happiness.”
With that, she walked away, and she never saw him again.