Seal My Fate•Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction

Chapter 18: No Point in Fighting

I'm so sorry!! I had a plane flight to my hometown and I completely forgot it was Saturday until it was evening, so here we are in the evening!

I'll try to update before noon from now on to make up for it. Again, very sorry.

PoTO is still not mine, and I think I've said that enough times at this point that I'm going to take the risk and not say it anymore.

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Christine

One moment, my Angel of Music stood before me, promising me that everything would be okay and urging me to put my gloves back on. The next, I was back out in the frigid, misty air of the cemetery, unsure of how I'd left the tiny room I'd been in mere seconds before.

Something still felt off, and it seemed both less urgent and more at the same time. Throughout the entire conversation, absorbed as I was in the emotion of the moment, I was constantly distracted by the nagging sensation that had refused to leave since I'd first arrived.

I was forgetting something.

I was forgetting something.

What was I forgetting?

"Christine!" Raoul nearly shouted, even though he was right by my face. "Where have you been?"

"Didn't you see?"

"No, I didn't," he retorted. He tried to mask his frustration by exaggerating his exhaustion from the long horse ride, but it was obvious he was faking it. "Where were you?" he repeated.

"I was in my father's grave," I replied nonchalantly, chuckling internally at the shocked reaction this drew from him. "Why do you ask?"

"Christine, I was worried for your safety, and I'm afraid I don't feel the comfort I expected to from learning where you've been."

"But my Angel was in there!" I protested. "And I just knew-"

"Christine, whatever you believe, this man—this thing... look, he's not your father-"

"And I never said he was."

"Then why do you trust him?"

"Because," I sighed, "he's my Angel. And no," I added before Raoul could respond to that, "I don't think he's an angel. He's human. But he's my Angel. Raoul, I love him."

"Christine, you know I want you to be happy," Raoul sighed, "but I also want you to be safe, and this... this isn't safe."

"Maybe it's not just my safety I'm concerned about."

"Christine, he's-"

"And he would never hurt me," I asserted.

"How can you be so sure?"

I paused. I refused to admit it, but I honestly didn't even know myself why I was so sure. He had yet to prove it. Even when I saw the man's false outer shell as an angel begin to crack, I'd never doubted for a moment that the thing inside loved me just as much as the angel had.

Though I was never one to believe something without proof (or was I? Wasn't Christine Daaé the most naïve young woman in the world?), I couldn't remember what proof I'd been given. The best "proof" I could think of was the fact that he had been interacting with me for nearly a decade and hadn't killed me yet—and what kind of proof was that?

I was forgetting something.

"Look, Raoul," I started, "I love you, but you're not my father and you're not my husband. You don't need to protect me."