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Christine knew Raoul was dead. She could feel it in her bones, in the air she was breathing, in the movements of her soon to be husband.
It was really dark in the house beneath the opera. He had promised they were to move out, but the days went on and on, and she remained nothing more than his fiancée, nothing more than a prisoner in a place where the sun never shone.
“Erik, I am afraid of this darkness. When will we live in a house with big windows? Didn’t you promise me we will at least go out from time to time?”
He didn’t answer. He never answered. He only moved around their house, always silent and always sneaking, like a shadow that kept following her. A shadow, even in the darkness…
“Erik, what happened to Raoul? You promised me you will let him go…”
The world had gotten hazy; she seemed to be looking through her eyelashes and, no matter how hard she tried, her eyes remained only half open. Erik turned towards her. She couldn’t make out a face, just two dots of yellow fire fixating her and two gaping black nostrils.
“You let him go, didn’t you, Erik? He’s free now, isn’t he?” she inquired and her voice trembled worse than her hands.
“I did what I had to do, Christine.”
She never saw his mouth moving. The words resonated from around the room, converging in her heart, where they hit like a dagger.
“Can I- can I see him?”
“I don’t see why not.”
An ice cold grip fastened on her wrist. She couldn’t help but to follow him, through winding poorly lit corridors. The Phantom did not need light to see where he was going; his feet didn’t even seem to touch the ground and he appeared to be gliding over the floor.
They stopped in front of a door and Christine’s blood froze in her veins.
“He’s not going to take you, Christine. You’re safe with me, and the foolish boy will never bother you again,” the Phantom hissed.
She didn’t have time to reply before he swung the door open.
Raoul was dead. She had felt it in every nerve and was finally seeing it in front of her. Hanged by his wrists as well as by his neck, with his eyes swollen out of their sockets and his skin ashen, from asphyxiation as well from bruising, laid the inert body of the Vicomte de Chagny.
The scream that came out of Christine's throat never reached her own ears. She searched frantically for support as her knees turned to mud, but the darkness was too thick, her hands too incompetent and none of the objects – the door frame, the walls, a handle – she was reaching for seemed to be there.
The Phantom’s arm circled her waist. She could feel her mouth wide open, muscles hurting from the strain, as she screamed in horror and struggled to breathe in the same time. A thick darkness wrapped around her and the smell of death sunk into her nostrils. The icy fingers of her angel gripped her body and his cloak covered her completely. And suddenly he was gone, and there was nothing left around her other than the terror screaming in her bones, the feeling of his dead flesh against her wrist, her open mouth inhaling in vain and darkness, a thick, encompassing darkness, which soaked through her pores and filled her more and more…
○○○
Christine Daaé woke up in a sweat, staring at a wall she couldn’t recognize. She took a few deep breaths and squeezed her fingers tight, accommodating with the feeling of her body. When she begun to feel like herself again, she glanced around, quickly scanning her surroundings. It was her home, her well-known bedroom in the little Swedish village, where she shared happiness and sadness alike with her dear Raoul.
Raoul was dead. The thought suddenly hit her, like a freight train that showed no sign of stopping before the impact. She was sitting up on the left side of the bed; next to her a pillow, a neatly folded blanket, and emptiness.
“Raoul!”
Something inside her stirred and a small voice made itself heard in her poor troubled mind. “He’s not really dead, isn’t he? It was only a dream.”
Christine threw aside her covers and ran outside the room.
“Raoul?”
There was light coming from the direction of the kitchen. She walked towards it and yelled the name so dear to her heart one more time. She almost jumped when a voice responded.
“What? Christine, I’m in the kitchen!”
Raoul had been scrubbing the kitchen floor for the past hours; he hadn’t looked up from his bucket and cloth to check the time. When Christine stopped in the door frame, looking in distress, he sunk back on his bent legs and his eyes opened wide in surprise. As for Christine, only when she saw him bathed in the light of the many lamps he’d surrounded himself with, very much alive, she managed to breathe freely and her heart settled in her ribcage.
“Christine, darling, what is wrong?”
She didn’t respond. She pressed her fingers against her eyes and lowered herself against the door frame. When she was finally settled on the floor, head tilted back and hands propped on one knee, she turned her eyes in Raoul’s direction.
“Nothing much, really. Just a nightmare.”
He crawled towards her and sat next to her. Attentive fingers caressed her arm.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She looked straight at his face, warm and golden in the light of the gas lamps. The last thing she wanted was to revive any painful memories for him. But the thought of his corpse hanging in the cellar still burned in her brain, like poison, and she felt in dire need to cleanse her mind.
“You were dead.” She spoke quickly and simply, with just a slight wobbliness in her voice. “You were dead, I saw you. You were hanging in a cellar, tied up by your hands and your neck, and I-” she stopped to catch her breath, the air suddenly running out of her lungs, “I thought I was going to suffocate right there on the spot…”
Raoul listened patiently. There was nothing he could have said to make her feel better. It was a recurring theme, and so was her death for his own nightmares. He simply kissed her shoulder, then leaned his temple against hers, and they spent a long moment in silence, listening to their respective breathing.
Christine squeezed his fingers and rubbed her thumb against his knuckles. She could feel the blood pumping in his veins and his hot breath hitting her neck. It was settled he was still alive and, in the calming light of her familiar kitchen, her senses came back to her fully. She finally assessed the surroundings and noticed Raoul’s rolled up sleeves, the bucket and the cloth abandoned on the floor.
“Raoul, darling, what were you doing?”
He settled away from her, glanced behind and smiled awkwardly.
“Just washing the floor.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“I spilled some soup after dinner, it was getting sticky and I needed to clean up…”
“Raoul…”
He looked up at her. She pinned him with an all knowing gaze and he knew there was no point in trying to fool her.
“…and I didn’t really want to go to sleep.”
They looked at each other for a long moment. They were both seated on the kitchen floor, very late at night, both of them dreading, with every fiber of their beings, the idea of going to bed or merely closing their eyes. Christine let out a sigh, then tucked her hair behind her ears and spoke to Raoul:
“Do we have another sponge?”
He looked at the bucket, then back at her.
“Christine, I really don’t think you should be doing this right now, you need rest-”
“Had enough of that for tonight, my dear. Please don’t make me go back there… and especially don’t make me go there alone.”
It was Raoul’s turn to sigh. But there was a little bit of happiness in their desperate situation: they were together, married and living in a house that was all theirs, and if they wanted to waste a night scrubbing a floor that really did not need more scrubbing, they were free to do exactly that. He reached out for her and squeezed her hands.
“There’s a sponge in the cupboard, I’ll go get it for you. Should you be doing this in your white night dress? I don’t want you to get all dirty…”
Christine smiled, a gesture between resolute sadness and amusement.
“Then tomorrow night we’re doing laundry.”
The look of understanding on his face was a better response than any words might have been. Raoul got up, retrieved the sponge and handed it to his wife, who took it enthusiastically and soaked it into the water. They split the number of candles and each picked a spot to clean, babbling away about sweet nothings, forgetting the time and their fears.
○○○
The morning they so ardently yearned for did eventually arrive. The sun shone in the Daaé household, throwing its healing light through the open curtains of the kitchen. With his head by the bucket and limbs sprawled between a chair and a cupboard, Raoul Daaé was snoring away. A bit further away, with her nightdress lifted above her shins and hands clutched at her chest, laid Christine Daaé, breathing softly in the dreamless sleep of exhaustion. The sun beams they so much longed for only a few hours ago now warmed their toes and played in their blonde locks, and the Daaé spouses, finally at peace, smiled in their sleep.