All the Rules Rearranged, Chapter 6

'Write about what you know,' they say. Well, I know a lot about unheated rooms... ;-p

The characters are so damaged at this stage that things are never going to be easy.

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Chapter 6: War and Peace

The gas hissed softly behind them and Gustave murmured something in his sleep; the window-frame rattled a little as a heavy wagon passed outside, and somewhere nearby a baby wailed and was hushed back to silence. Raoul looked back at her steadily, his shoulders set in defeat, and the span of their lives together lay trapped between the four walls of this little room, ebbing and ebbing away... Christine bit her lip, eyes filling unaccountably.

“Don’t you understand?” Her grip moved convulsively on his arm. “You don’t have to win to be with me. You never did.”

It wasn’t strength or protection that had mattered up on the Opera House roof. It was the answering joy of that promise given and returned; of his impulsive need to shield her, and not his success.

“Just... stay yourself. That’s all I ever wanted. All I was afraid of losing — all that matters to Gustave, or to me. Fail or succeed or lose your temper, forgive me and let me forgive you, but be Raoul. Be real and flawed and human: you don’t have to be strong all the time, you don’t even have to be right. We’re not those young dreamers on the Opera stage any more, and I’m not made of porcelain; I won’t break. Let me fight for you too. Let me in—”

That’s all I ask of you. She didn’t say it; didn’t think, at that moment, that she could say anything else at all past the ache in her throat that threatened to silence her altogether.

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