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

"In Hell, I imagine"

(In which Raoul comes to a verdict...)

Chapter 2: "In Hell, I imagine"

The sounds of the ship were a little more intrusive here; for all the panelling, faint metallic notes carried along the passages from the Persephone's far-distant engines or from the working of her plates as she shouldered aside the oncoming seas. An indistinct voice drifted down from out on deck: somewhere further aft, there was a hint of music being played, and the buzz of a gathering. Behind a cabin door close by, someone laughed.

Christine glanced swiftly up and down, but the corridor was mercifully empty. Feeling ridiculously exposed, she let the door close softly behind her and took the few steps needed to knock for admission to her husband's cabin next door. After tonight's dinner, she could guess only too well at the mood he would be in; but to hesitate out here was to invite humiliation, caught out in apparent intrigue. The raised brows of passing strangers were more than, at this moment, she was ready to face.

She tapped again on the stateroom door, more urgently, and this time got an indistinct snarl in response that might have included the words "come in". Taking this, correctly, to mean that the cabin was not locked, Christine let herself quickly in and closed the door behind her, backing up against the panelling as she came under Raoul's glare.

"You — I thought it was the steward." It was a less than gracious welcome, even by his recent standards. With a sinking feeling, she saw that there was a half-empty glass at his elbow and an all-too-familiar glazed look behind the frown. He had taken off his coat and collar, and removed the links from his shirt-sleeves, but otherwise he had made no visible gesture towards preparing for bed since she had left him almost an hour previously. She wondered, sometimes, if he slept at all.

"So to what do I owe this pleasure?" There was no trace of slurring in his voice; but then, these days, there never was. "Not a sudden craving for my company, I take it. Or would that not, after all, be too much to hope for?"

"Please, Raoul —" Faced with his heavy irony, she had no answer, as ever. "Please let's not fight. I just need some clothes... for Gustave..."

The cabin was not a match for her own, but smaller, with no inner room for dependents or child. One trunk stood in the corner, still corded up, and the other had been upended and opened in almost the same chaos as she had left her own. A pair of razors lay on the washstand and several shirts had been flung across the foot of the bed, but otherwise Raoul had made no attempt to unpack. By all appearances he'd made little enough attempt at any sort of packing in the first place: finding them Célestine Bribot had been the valet's last generous gesture upon leaving in lieu of unpaid wages. Christine thought it entirely probable that her husband, thrown back abruptly onto his own devices, had simply tossed the spare shirts she had laid out for Gustave into the trunk along with his own.

But Raoul was sprawled there in his chair, long legs jutting across her path, and she shrank from pushing past. "Please —"

A brisk, professional rap at the door behind her sent her scurrying abruptly across the cabin, grasping the back of the other chair with both hands in a shrinking defensive move. The steward, smartly uniformed, entered in response to Raoul's impatient reply, crossed swiftly to the table to pick up the empty glass as Raoul drained it, and set down the fresh drink from the tray that he carried. A moment later and he was gone, in well-trained, deferential silence.

Her husband made no move. "Well? You had better come and fix the problem, had you not — whatever it is. The perfect wife and mother, as always. And no doubt the fault was mine."

His voice had thickened, and Christine winced. "Darling, no —"

She caught his hand as he reached for the glass again, and felt his fingers grip her wrist almost painfully, clinging like those of a child.