The Choices of Raoul de Chagny: Epilogue ("A World With No More Night")

Right; I've been over and over this chapter (which suffered from not having a pre-written plot outline: making it up as you go along is not the same), and I think this is the best I can do with it.

Happy endings all round, then!

Raoul gets to take the lead for once, at least partly because Christine is a little too emotionally involved to see the wider view... and partly because the author felt he'd earned a turn by this point :-) Raoul likes looking after Christine -- it makes him feel needed -- but he also gets to display a bit of insight. (Plus, he had more education as a child, which gives him a slight advantage when it comes to skimming foreign text..!)

And if they both seem slow on the uptake... remember that, in canon, they neither of them even guessed about Phantasma until the truth was thrust in their faces. They've had a lot of other concerns over the last ten years, and speculating about mysterious rich producers isn't top of the agenda any more.

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( Epilogue: A World with No More Night )