If I were Vicomte (ch4)

[igenlode]

Final and even more fragmentary sections; I spent a bit of time trying to make it a little clearer what was going on and to tie it together better, which pushed the word-count just about over a thousand words. It really does come across as a bit rushed, though... and I suspect, going on reviews so far, that the fanfiction.net readers are going to feel short-changed by the total absence of any Phantom-related action. (That aspect hadn't even occurred to me while writing; set it down to my customary complete lack of interest in that direction.)

Yann barely even thinks about the Phantom here -- his jealousy is entirely concerned with his supposed aristocratic rival, or in other words his canon self. The whole 'Lyre of Apollo' confession and its consequences has been pretty much swept under the carpet... which is reasonably accurate to canon, since Raoul doesn't learn the truth until the day before Christine's abduction and spends most of the intervening period being jealous of an imagined rival, but does leave out a major and memorable element of the original: the bit that most people think of as the main part of the story :-(

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4. Les Amants

Buffeted amid the chaos and panic of the Opera, Yann was desperate for help... and no-one would listen to him. But then, they never had. His own utter insignificance had never been driven so brutally home to him as in the past weeks, since Perros.

He’d managed to convince himself that Christine had sacrificed her self-respect and become the mistress of some dissolute young aristocrat; he was hotly ashamed of that now, but at the time it had seemed the only explanation. Where else could she have been staying, in those weeks when she was absent from her home? Who else would parade with her around Paris in a carriage? And who else could have procured for her lessons of a quality to enable her so quickly to excel, and the convenient rendezvous at the Opera that went with them?

And so Yann had posted himself out of jealous suspicion in that lover’s lane behind the racecourse, then proceeded to make an even bigger fool of himself in his ridiculous pierrot costume at the masked ball. Some of the things he’d said — and thought — about her were burned painfully into his conscience still.

But nobody had paid any attention in the least to his increasing desperation to find her, either then, after the disaster of the chandelier, or now, in his rival’s final, culminating stroke. Christine Daaé had just been snatched from the stage before his very eyes, bare minutes before he himself had planned to carry her off.

He’d have helped take her to safety even if she hadn’t agreed to marry him, of course. But with the prohibition from the “Angel of Music” revealed for the fraud that it was, the only thing keeping them apart had been her fear of what this Erik might do to Yann out of jealousy. After all, his career was secure, his future bright, and Yann was quite certain that his parents would be happy to give them a home when he brought home little Christine as his bride.

They’d pledged themselves to one another a month ago in secret. It was not, however, until he had mentioned his plans for marriage to the senior lieutenant yesterday that he’d been subjected to the full offensive force of Philippe’s views on the subject. On officers who, as he put it, were fool enough to take on a leg-shackle in their infancy and marry the first piece of skirt who ensnared them.

Yann’s fists clenched again, remembering it. He’d stormed out of their lodging this morning with every intention of carrying through his plan and furious at the regulations that kept him subject to such dinosaurs of opinion. Philippe had paid no more attention to his arguments than the managers had when he’d begged them all those weeks ago for information on Christine’s whereabouts — they saw him as a nobody, no doubt, whose enquiries were to be impatiently brushed aside — or the police inspector who a few minutes ago had all too clearly treated Yann Le Coennec’s pleas for help as ravings born of peasant superstition. In his quest for Christine he’d been jostled and laughed at by everyone from the audience to the concierge... and now he was being accosted by a Persian who appeared to delight in talking in riddles.

If he had a title to wave in their faces, Yann thought helplessly, people might at least pretend to take him seriously...

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It all seemed a very long time ago, now.

His watch ticked quietly on its nail in the cottage wall where he had hung it, and the Breton sea-breeze brought the sound of the waves faintly from the beach below. Outside the dusk was drawing in and it was growing chill; but there was a fine fire crackling in the hearth with the stock-pot swinging over it, and he’d filled and lit the lamps when he came in. The little room was warm and bright, and it was easy at last to talk over events beneath the Opera as if they were no more than a distant reminiscence — or a tale told to two eager children all those years ago.

Some things he could finally even laugh about. Others not so much.

“And did he ever explain ‘your hand at the level of your eyes’?”

Yann considered the question, thinking back over those hectic hours of trust and terror. He’d been through so much at the mysterious Persian’s side... but they’d never even had the chance to say goodbye. He remembered his last view of the man, grey-faced and barely breathing in that heavy, old-fashioned bed.

He hoped the Persian, too, had survived. He’d never had the chance to find out.

His wife had raised an enquiring eyebrow, looking up from her lace, and Yann gave her a rueful smile. “Explain? You know, I don’t believe he ever did.”

Gazing across at her cherished fair head, gilded now by the lamplight as she bent again over her work, he felt a familiar pang of guilt. She had sung in front of glittering crowds. She could have been the toast of Paris. She deserved so much more than this cramped cottage on the fringes of France and a life shared with the fishermen’s wives. And he would have to rejoin his ship soon, leaving her bereft and lonely...

“If only I had more than this to give you,” he burst out for the hundredth time. “If I were vicomte, we wouldn’t be living in obscurity in this little place — you would have a maid and furs, as you did at home, and we wouldn’t be virtual exiles—”

Christine set aside the tiny cap she had been trimming, and smiled up at him with more love in her eyes than any one heart could hold. “Dear Yann... I think we do very well as we are. Don’t you?”

And with his mother’s warm soup simmering over the fire, with Philippe mollified and those childhood dreams all come true, Yann Le Coennec began to have faith in his own good fortune at last.