A Phantom Christmas Carol - *Phantom of the Opera*

Chapter Twelve

A/N: Three more chapters to go for written story, including this one, and two more chapters for video... for video: asterisks (* ) are unspoken thoughts. credits for music: Anna's theme from The Red Violin, I've Seen Hell- from BBC North & South soundtrack, assorted music from Phantasia. Clips from Phantom of the Opera 2004 movie, Smallville, and The Gospel According to Scrooge. E/C manip at beginning made by me for this story.  Please note, end of this chapter and the next two are almost entirely different from video story. Video story wraps up ending completely- written story does not even come close. lol Since I wrote a romantic angsty sequel to this (and am almost at the end of writing that.) :)

Knowing We Must Say Goodbye...

XII

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Minutes dragged past while the Phantom paced his lair, his mind wrapped around the night's ghostly events and the bleak future shown to him. He had long ago discarded his soiled clothes, damp with snow and earth, and had donned a fresh shirt and trousers.

Staring at the myriad images of Christine on his wall, he stood silent as her last words to him reverberated with alarming clarity inside his mind. She had not spoken to the pathetic shadow of himself in the future, but to him alone. She had seen him, had known the reason for his presence there. And she had told him to let her go.

Shutting his eyes, he clenched his jaw and curled his hands into fists. He winced as his nails, ragged from digging through snow and earth, buried into torn flesh where the thorns of the rose had pierced him.

The gradual slosh of water alerted him to his assistant's arrival, and he collected his tattered emotions into a semblance of calm. He turned and watched as she maneuvered the boat through the open portcullis to the bank and stepped out.

"You look terrible, Maestro." Tact was not her forte this morning. "Did you not sleep well?"

"I do not wish to discuss my evening's activities with you." His half mask and wig were safely in place, but nothing could hide the dark shadow beneath his exposed red-rimmed eye. Even theatrical pigment had failed where before it had served its purpose as an artifice to conceal. He walked to a nearby table and snatched up a bundle of envelopes. "I need you to deliver these, and do so quickly."

"More notes?" She made no attempt to disguise the cutting tone of her voice, but he wouldn't relent. Upon his return from the nightmarish world of the future, a world that had not been shadow at all, but as real as the one in which he now stood, he had spent the better half of the morning deciding what must be done.

Into her hand he placed the black-rimmed envelopes sealed with his Red Death stamp of wax, save for one missive that did not bear his threatening mark. He hesitated.

"How is Christine? Is she well?"

Madame's brow arched in surprised confusion at the urgency in his soft-spoken words. "She arrived late to the Christmas party and was tardy to rise due to too much frolicking with my daughter, but she is not ill."

He inhaled deeply and swallowed hard in gratitude, placing the last missive in her hand, one sealed with a few simple drops of red wax that by no design of his own resembled a newly budded rose. Though the realm he'd last visited shadowed dire things to come and, he reminded himself, he again inhabited the present, to hear that Christine was alive and well gave him immense relief.

Madame glanced about the room before looking at him again. Clearly she had something of import on her mind. "I would speak with you. About the new opera."

"Very well?"

"I implore you to change your mind and not commence with whatever disturbance you have planned for the opening of Il Muto." When he did not respond, she cleared her throat and smoothed a hand over the back of her head, flipping her long braid in front of her, twin signs of her nervousness. "I spoke with the managers on your behalf. They have agreed to a meeting of truce at a place of your choosing. This would be an excellent opportunity to show them the operas you have written."