The Choices of Raoul de Chagny (Phantom/Love never Dies fanfic)

What Little We Deserve

Note: Continuity is Lloyd Webber ("Phantom of the Opera"/"Love Never Dies") with sizeable helpings of the Leroux novel for the backstory where not actively contradicted in the musicals: the only thing I have deliberately changed from the musicals is that Raoul's parents both died (as in Leroux) while he was still a boy (although as per Lloyd Webber, he holds the title of Vicomte and not Comte de Chagny!) Specifically, the story is dated very precisely to 1907, which is supposedly the setting for "Love Never Dies" (whether or not this is consistent with the time-period for "Phantom"...) It is also tied definitely to the events and lyrics of the original London production, rather than the revised version - largely because a number of the specific lines I referenced here were among those subsequently removed in revision. I suspect this may have some relevance to the colossal struggles I myself had in getting this stuff to work together!

Chapter 1: What Little We Deserve

Christine de Chagny unclasped the single string of pearls she had worn at dinner, laid them carefully aside into the worn shagreen case that had once held the de Chagny rubies, and began to loosen the pins from the piled masses of her hair. Far below, men toiled in the stokeholds of the great Atlantic liner, and vast masses of machinery rocked back and forth with the regularity of clockwork in the beating heart of the ship; but the power that sent the ocean churning far astern in the Persephone's wake made itself felt only as the faintest of steady vibrations in the staterooms high above, and the electric light above the mirror glowed without a flicker.

Nothing but the best for the great soprano Christine Daaé... first-class tickets from Cherbourg on the Hamburg-Amerika Line, flowers in her cabin as she boarded, dinner tonight at the captain's table... Her eyes met those of the weary reflection in the mirror, and acknowledged the bitterness there. That young man, von Enck — would he have paid all those fulsome compliments to the simplicity of her taste if he had known just how few jewels she had left to wear? Would that pompous English colonel have shown her quite such marked attentions if he and the other guests had guessed the true extent of the Chagnys' debts? And would she have been spared the constant, gushing expectations of enthusiasm for all things American — and for her great future in the New World — if they'd had even the slightest idea of the sordid mercenary necessity that was taking her across the Atlantic, on a contract she had simply been unable to refuse?

Raoul — she and Raoul needed the money. It was as simple as that. So Christine Daaé had been hired, body and soul, by the highest bidder; tickets and bouquets dispatched, in a show of favour, to tighten the gilded chains. And now she was to sing in New York, for a preposterous fee whose very size would doubtless be blazoned as an attraction on the billboards: "The Soprano of the Century, At Enormous Expense"... Bitterness deepened at the corners of her mouth, where two fine lines had begun to form themselves.

And Raoul — Raoul, descending one step behind her on the grand staircase yet again, as the young officers jostled among themselves to escort her to the table — Raoul, who on that polyglot table had let slip no word of anything but French, and no hint save for the ever-refilling depths of his glass that he understood one half of what was being said — Raoul had endured the evening at her side with the same savage, impotent misery that was devouring the husband she had so much loved, that was driving them apart month by month and year by year.

Christine let fall a handful of hairpins one by one, and dropped her head into her hand, fingers massaging unconsciously at her temples. Von Enck had showered her with flowery praises. Raoul de Chagny had not even returned her tentative smile.

She got up abruptly, leaving her toilette half-finished. In the far room, she could hear the sound of trunks being opened. "Célestine?"

A gruff sound that might have been "Madame", or simply an unspecific retort. Christine wished, yet again, that they could have brought Mathilde: Mathilde, who had spent her life down at Chagny under the old Vicomtesse, and who had welcomed and befriended her new young mistress in those first uncertain weeks in the great house with its staff. Mathilde, who had chased after Raoul when he had been no more than a tubby tow-headed infant, who had recited tales of his boyhood exploits with a relish that raised a blush to the grown man's cheeks for Christine to kiss away, laughing; Mathilde, whose wisdom had calmed Christine in the months that the child grew within her, whose gnarled hand had held hers during the endless all-consuming struggle of his birth, who had nursed her through the long months of weakness that followed; Mathilde who, twenty years older, had let a toddling Gustave run rings around her even as Raoul had once done, and who had whipped him soundly on the one and only occasion when he had escaped her vigilance, at the age of seven, and terrified his mother by almost falling into the lake. Mathilde, who had somehow known the secret, these last few years, of easing the harsh lines from Raoul's face, granting whatever absolution he seemed to seek, at times when even Christine was shut out; it had hurt Christine more than she could admit, then, to find herself powerless, but it was to old Mathilde's influence that she had owed those last snatched weeks of happiness down at Chagny, when Raoul had laughed again, a little, and smiled at Gustave's nonsense instead of snapping, and on one, long-lost occasion — locked deep and precious and painful in her heart — had dropped suddenly to one knee before breakfast in the dew on the terrace, and poured out a passionate, incoherent avowal.