Spanish Angel (Phantom of the Opera)

Chapter 2

"Day six." Candela said out loud as she wrote date and time down on a piece of paper. After being beneath the ground for so long, her mental clock was beginning to fail her quite horribly. With only the barest knowledge of it being dark or light outside, she managed to create for herself a calendar so she wouldn't completely lose track of time.

It had been six days since she had begun to care for the Opera Ghost.

After discovering the masked man was still living, Candela had decided she had three options. Two of which were the typical female reactions. Screaming and running away or fainting. As she had done neither of these on first instinct, she turned to her own way of doing things. Saving the man's life for instance.

With that decision in her mind, she had instantly gone about finding food, broth and water mostly, for him to drink. Something that even when unconscious, if fed in slow amounts, would provide nourishment to his gaunt body. In addition to food, she also examined every inch of skin, save for the more personal areas, for any sort of wound that would hinder his recovery but had found nothing more than a few cuts which were healing. But, what she had decided upon was his starvation wasn't accidental or the work of another.

It was a suicide attempt.

"Though, I suppose downing the complete contents of one's wine cellar would help to dull the hunger pain." She said her to herself as she removed her dress and slipped on her nightgown, a garment she had found in a chest of drawers in her room. Candela despised alcohol and had promptly thrown away the bottles, scrubbing any part of the house than even remotely reeked of the vintage to remove the offending smell.

"At least there isn't any left for him to drink." She muttered as she slid beneath the sheets of the four-poster bed and pulled them up to her chin. Closing her eyes, she drifted off to sleep.

E-OC

"Raoul, I have to go." Christine whispered very quietly as she huddled against her fiancé's side, fear radiating from every one of her twitching muscles. "But, I'm so scared." The blond youth lightly stroked her hair, desiring to take away her pain but unable to do so.

"You don't have to. A promise to one such him isn't overly binding." Raoul whispered as he kissed the top of her head, offering comfort in the one way he could. While they were quickly becoming the talk of the city, he felt helpless to stop the rumors which varied from close to the truth to outlandish.

"But, I promised! I won't go back on my word." Christine murmured, her voice not raising above a shuddering whisper. "Whenever that announcement appears in the paper, I have to go." She lightly fiddled with his coat buttons before trying to snuggled closer to him. "You must go with me! I won't survive seeing that place alone again!" Her pale fingers clutched at his lapels and her eyes widened, riddled with memories of what he could only imagine unspeakable horrors.

"Of course, I'll go with you, dear." Raoul quickly spoke up, his tone soothing as he covered her hands with his and squeezed them gently before massaging her shoulders with his one arm that was around her shoulders, loosening the muscles which had tightened.

"Don't call me that, Raoul! For your love of me, don't call me that. He called me that...that night." She shuddered in his arms and covered her pale, drawn face. Her blue eyes closed, reliving that night vividly.

"How do you remember such a small detail?" Raoul questioned, not understand her perfectly mental clarity of that night.

"I relive it every night. Every night, I relive every moment. How can I forget even a little of it?" Crystal tears fell down her cheeks and her fiancé gently wiped them away as he kissed the dried paths of those salt drop.