Tears of hate

Chapter 1 Paris, Opera Populaire Feb 6, 1881

Christine Daae's point of view

For as long as I live, I will never forget the terror that I felt on this night. It was a night of betrayals, first I betrayed my angel and then Raoul betrayed me. I was twisted in every way by my angel on one hand and my fiancé and employers on the other. My angel wanted to take me trap and consume me, as if I were his prey. Raoul, and the managers of the opera, wanted me to help them trap and kill the Phantom of the Opera, who happened to be my angel. As my angel would later tell me, either way that I would choose, I would be the loser. My angel had taken a shy eight year old orphan, who had no one in the world to care for her and gave her love and music. He was warm, gentle and loving and made my song take wing. I did not know that he was a real flesh and blood man until I was eighteen years old, at my debut performance at the Opera Populaire. It was that night that a man who posed both as an angel and a Phantom revealed himself to me.

At first he mesmerized me, with his beautiful voice, handsome half face, and strangely magnificent home far below the Opera building itself. But when I tore off his mask and the other fearsome half of his face was revealed, my teenage mind could not look past the hideously ugly exterior and into his golden heart. I spent the next year trying to avoid the man that I once cherished as an angel. Although I once begged for him to reveal himself to me and stay by my side forever, I denied him at every turn. Soon my rejection had mercilessly wounded his poor fragile heart and in his pain he turned to madness. In hindsight, how could it not, when he was such a lonely genius searching for love who had hoped for one shining moment that I would be different and give him the love that he had been denied for his entire life.

Raoul was easy to love. He had been my childhood friend and companion. I would play with him and my father would play the violin while we would scare one another reading stories from Hans Christian Anderson and Swedish stories as well from my native land. One such story was about a girl named little Lotte who had her own angel of music. I wanted to be Lotte so badly, and Raoul began to call me that. We imagined that he was my fairy tale prince who would protect me from the monsters that dwelt beyond the walls of our exquisite castle. I never thought that it would become our true life story, but it did. After many years apart, Raoul reappeared in my life at the same time as my angel revealed his true visage to me, and we fell deeply in love with one another, or so I thought.

As the months passed, I realized that my angel and tutor was none other than the dreaded Phantom of the Opera who terrorized the Palais Garnier. Soon he was making demands on my behalf, forcing the managers to do his bidding and place me in starring roles, at the expense of La Carlotta, the reigning diva. A part of me was glad that he would do such a thing for me, but then a stagehand named Buquet was murdered by him, and I turned to my old handsome prince to love and protect me from him. I grew more and more afraid of my angel and he grew more demanding. He forced the Opera managers to stage his opera and make me its star. At first I refused; but then Raoul convinced me that we had to end his reign of terror, and I was to be the instrument of his betrayal.

I did not want to do it. In my deepest darkest parts of my soul, the fragment of the girl who loved and cherished her tutor cried out in despair. Although I was afraid of him, terribly afraid, I could not forget all that he had been to me before I let my fear take hold. With the exception of the time that I tore off his mask, he had always been loving, kind and gentle. He would sing to me and sooth my nightmares. Advise me on almost every matter. Even laugh with me at some ridiculous joke. As long as he was with me, I was never alone or unloved in the world, and neither was he. But I ignored what my soul wanted, and followed what I was told to do. I ripped off the Phantom's mask in front of everyone at the very moment that he pledged his eternal love to me. I stood and watched as the bridge that once bound our two souls together burned.

He escaped their trap, as he always did, and took me back to his dark, sunless kingdom. Despite what I had just done, he begged me to understand him. But I was even more afraid. When Raoul found us, the last tendrils of my angel's sanity burst like a dam releasing a torrent of anger against us both. He used his Punjab lasso to trap Raoul and threatened to kill him, unless I stayed with him forever. In return I spewed out my temporary hate for him, but then it was gone. In truth I could not hate him. For a brief moment I caught a glimpse of his beautiful green eyes, and could feel the hurt and the pain in them in the bottom of my soul. That small tortured part of me that loved him without reservation grabbed hold of me for one glorious moment. I realized that it was not my angel who put me in this position, but it was I who put him there. I had shattered his heart without a thought, and he was lashing out in pain, in the only way that he knew to make me listen and I finally did.

At that moment I gathered the courage to change the course of action, and told him that I would stay with him, and I meant it. To prove to him, and to myself that I could I cupped his ravaged face in my hands and kissed his lips. I had expected to be disgusted but instead the kiss unleashed my hunger for him. I did not see an ugly face but a beautiful soul underneath, and for a moment my soul and his were linked together as one once more. I gave him a second kiss which felt even more right. I could feel him trembling with emotion. I knew then that he had never been kissed by anyone until that moment. He pulled away from me and for a moment we stared into one another's eyes. I could see the madness flow away from him and my gentle tutor returned. If the peace had not been shattered by the approach of a mob, things might have ended much differently than they did. Because he feared for my safety above his, he released me and then he released Raoul, and told us to go and forget about him.

I stared at him in confusion, because I had just pledged my love to him. But he again told us to leave him. As we walked towards his gondola, I felt the pull of my engagement ring on my finger. I wanted to give him something of mine to show him that I was still bound to him, and so I went back. He looked up at me, a hopeful glimmer in his eyes and brokenly admitted his love for me. I smiled back as I pressed the ring into his hands and intended to remain with him. Suddenly a shadow emerged behind us and before I could say a word, Raoul had plunged a knife into my angel's back, and he fell away from me, mortally wounded, or so I thought. It was the very knife that my angel used to cut away the noose from Raoul's neck.

"Good work Lotte, we have killed the beast." Raoul boasted with boyish glee. "I could not have done it without your help. He will never bother anyone again, especially not you."

I looked over at my angel's ashen face which had taken on the pallor of death. I was speechless with shock. His blood was everywhere.

Raoul smiled in satisfaction "He really was an ugly bastard. Good riddance. Look Lotte, I was truly your errant knight just like we used to say, I have slain your dragon. Let's go now; the mob is almost here." I thought that heard a gasp but could not see where it came from."

I wanted to help my angel, to hold him in my arms one last time, give him one last kiss, but my 'savior' pulled me away and into the gondola. My heart and my soul cried out for my angel in silent pain but my words of anguish were trapped inside of me. My angel did not know how much my heart had been stricken. Raoul had plunged the knife into my angel but it tore through my heart as well.

I felt nothing but a feral grief as Raoul boasted "Now we can live happily ever after."

But I knew that we never would. He had slain all of my love for him. I looked at him feeling nothing but hate but I was numb from my pain. I took one last look at my fallen angel; there in the distance was my best friend Meg Giry. She rushed over to him and I could see that she was looking for signs of life. For a moment she looked up at me and our eyes met, she looked at me with an indescribable fury, and then we were gone.