All the Rules Rearranged - Chapter 1

I've based this on the original cast recording and -- so far as I could establish it -- on the costuming and staging of the London production. (Christine is not wearing the 'peacock dress' for her stage performance, for example, but a skimpy modern-style evening gown!)

As will become obvious, this story does not take place in the same continuity as either of my other LND plots set in this universe, The Choices of Raoul de Chagny or To Ease Your Troubled Mind...

All the Rules Rearranged

Chapter 1: What is to be Done?

Her dressing-room at Phantasma held no clock. But the call-boys had been past, the dancers had flocked outside in their bright chattering gaggle, and soon it would be her turn.

She’d come so far to sing this song; so far, in so many ways. The past she’d thought forgotten had opened its guilt from the grave — its guilt and its allure both — and that old storm of tears had closed weeping and raging over her once again. Somehow she’d held herself together through it all with a strength learned from womanhood and ten years of marriage. Only a few more minutes now, and it would be over. One last aria to pay their debts — and repay a debt that was all her own — and she and her son would be gone from this place, leaving the tormented past to rest at last in peace.

She and her son and Raoul, and their baggage with them. Safe on familiar shores, in the life that she had so painstakingly pieced together for Gustave’s sake out of the ashes of their young dreams...

One song, Christine had told herself throughout the hours of waiting. Just this one song left, this one thing she needed to do, and then they would be done with America and all it stood for. Time itself had narrowed down to these few minutes ahead of her, and the music she had rehearsed over and over again.

And then Raoul... had changed everything. For a second time.

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