Chapter Text
The silence chilled Christine further to the bones than the gravestones did. Empty of any persons (and quite right too - who in their right mind was awake at this hour?) mourning their lost loved ones, the young girl stood alone, forsaken. Though barely sixteen, her slender frame shuddered uncontrollably despite her woolen cloak, brown eyes nearly swallowed by the dark shadow that hung over her complexion. She had been allowed to mourn this long for the sake of her age and lack of prospects, but even the empathy felt towards a destitute orphan would dry. Much like the life of her father, the life of her mother - all things ended.
It had been four months since the death of her father. Gustave Daaé had been a kind man, a man of soft smiles and gentle love despite their pauper-like status. The winters had seemed softer with him, the aches of missed meals meaningless when he told a story or played a melody on his beloved violin. Christine did not remember her mother… though she had been told she shared her mother’s voice. A high, delicate soprano that would enchant the rocks and stones to roll away if she had willed it. At least, that was what her father had told her.
Christine was no longer interested in singing. The violin had been buried with her father, and the love of her voice with it.
It was through the grace of Madame Valérius alone that Christine was not locked in an orphanage somewhere - a Dickensinian kind of place that could not, would not support the whims of another orphan in mourning. Madame Valérius had sworn to Christine that she would not lose her place in the Paris Conservatoire as long as Madame remained on this earth.
Christine had not the heart to tell her how every note ached in her chest, how every attempt at an aria felt as though she was watching her father’s coffin lower into the grave time and time again. Christine would not tell her - Madame Valérius was too kind, too uplifting to someone such as herself.
It was pitiful to be standing here time and time again, reaching out for a dead man who had nothing left to tell her. Gustave Daaé’s tombstone was as cold and lifeless as any other. The soft swirls of snow had banked on the base of his stone, blocking out his dates of life and death. Perhaps if Christine was to close her eyes, she could imagine her father’s hand on her shoulder, imagine that this grave was instead that of a distant relative. Gustave would whisper some story about this imagined relative to her, making her laugh despite the solemn landscape.
Papa had always been able to give that light, even in the darkest of nights.
The snow soaked through her skirts as she knelt in front of the tombstone. She could see him now - trapped under layers and layers of dark earth. Silent, asleep, with the violin cradled between his hands - like a mother and child. Had the worms begun to eat at him now? Or had the cold prevented the defilement? If Christine were to dig, to rip away at frozen dirt and roots until her fingers bled and her clothes were ruined, would she find her father, or would she find rot?
She wanted to know. Christine was so desperately alone that even a corpse would provide her better company than the Conservatoire halls. Perhaps she would lay here forever, die with her father, and let her bones mix and tangle with his until none could tell who was who.
Without Gustave, she was lost. Her music was gone, her soul crushed, and her existence an agony.
“Papa…” Christine breathed, voice cracking with hurt and the cold air. She had been crying for some time now, tears falling freely onto the snow. Her hands were numb, reddened by the snow and digging into the earth. “Papa… do not leave me here.”
Her sobs racked her body, every breath giving Christine the feeling of being torn apart. She pressed her head against the gravestone, as though trying to seek an embrace for her father for the last time. “You cannot leave me alone here!…”
She had been abandoned. Lost. There was no mortal alone who understood her plight - even Madame Valérius’ well-intentioned efforts crashed into Christine’s grief like a ship among the rocks. Christine knew it was not her fault - Madame Valérius had known the deepest sorrow of losing her husband only a few years prior to Gustave’s death. By any account, Christine should’ve been able to find solace in the older woman - both of them losing the men they had loved so dearly. But there was a disconnect - Christine could only feel a hollow thud where perhaps once, an emotion could’ve been felt. She drifted, afloat, empty of any mortal emotion that made sense to the poor girl. There was nothing, no-one who could reach Christine.
“Come back… Hear me, Papa. If you cannot come back, take me with you!” Christine’s hands pointlessly clawed at the gravestone, trying in vain to find any warmth, any trace of her father in the stone.
“I have nothing without you…” She whispered to the stone, lips pressed against the delicate carvings of cherubs and roses that Madame Valérius had commissioned for the stone.
‘Some warmth for the poor man.’ She’d said thoughtfully to the priest the day of burial. After the death of the Professor, Madame Valérius had clung to Gustave, perhaps as strongly as Christine had. The man had no way of affording such a luxurious burial - but Madame Valérius had provided it.
Her kindness, her pity, her love for her father and the love she showed to Christine made the poor girl sick. She was a selfish, ungrateful, rotten girl to reject Madame Valérius this way. To hide her voice, to deny herself from the rest of the world. To wish for her own death…
Something had snapped within her, a corruption that had rooted itself inside, and would never escape her. She knew it in her heart, as clearly as she knew her father would never return to her. Christine’s sobs crescendoed, no longer attempting to keep quiet. The dead had no interest in her attempts at respect, and there was not a living soul out here to hear her.
“If not you, anyone!” She pleaded to the corpse, to the headstone, to God and all his angels, to anyone that would listen to her.
“Some kindly being. Some spirit of another plane. A friend, an-” Christine stuttered, a sudden memory coming to mind.
“An angel.”
Strength built in her voice, her voice strengthening as she lifted herself off the gravestone, clasped hands raised to the sky. To God, to all the angels in His heavenly host, to Michael and to Gabriel and Raphael and Uriel-
“The angel that was promised to me.” Her voice grew in fervor, a sudden devotion to the stories her father told her sweeping over her. “Angel of Music…”
“Angel, come to me. Benevolent, kind, wise angel. Do not leave me alone here to die. I will die of loneliness without you! Angel, I beg of you, come to me!”
“Hear my call!”
Christine collapsed again on the gravestone, tears that had dried falling again, freely. Her body felt heavy, as though all the strength within her had suddenly been pulled out of her. She had hit her head against the rough stone, and Christine felt the dull pain and the damp warmth of blood falling from her temple.
“Angel…” She called for a third time, overtaken with vertigo.
Before she lost consciousness against her fathers grave, she heard from somewhere within the graveyard the keening wail of a violin.