A/N:

Okay, so this is basically a retelling of the musical, taken from the key moment of the 'All I Ask of You' scene on the rooftop, where Christine realises her heart belongs to Erik, and not her childhood friend. This is taken more heavily from the movie version than the stage production, mainly because scene and dialogue wise, the film is (obviously) easier to refer to. But feel free to imagine any other casts while reading this, or make up a dream cast of your own, it's not like I'm going to know...or hunt you down...or anything.

So anyway, enjoy and please review as hearing back from you guys is always really rewarding and also helpful in the direction and writing of the story :-)

So yes, the usual stuff about not owning anything, this is just for entertainment purposes, blah, blah, blah.

Also the song in this chapter, as many, if not all of you will know, is Christine's song Look with your Heart from Love Never Dies. Anna O'Byrne (Australian Production) singing this is just so beautiful sounding.

Also I do write Viscount rather than the more modern term Vicomte as that is what the term is in the book and what it would have been at the time.

Anyway, on wiv ze show. Enjoy!

Look with your Heart

"And soon you'll be beside me!"

"You'll guide me and you'll guard me..." She held his hand tightly, desperate for him to whisk her away from all that frightened her, all that made her fear her own shadow, any shadow.

"Monsieur! Viscount!" Someone called from below, "I'm afraid we desire your immediate attention." Raoul did not immediately reply, reluctant to leave Christine, and the voice below seemed to feel more persuasion was needed, "As our patron, Monsieur! In light of our recent..." The voice cleared his throat, "Erm, accident?"

Raoul turned to Christine, apology and regret in his eyes that he would soon have to leave moments after a promise to remain by her side.

"Go," Christine smiled, "Madame Giry will need me in my dressing room."

Raoul nodded and swiftly set to where he was needed and Christine went to head in the direction of her dressing room, but something stopped her in her tracks. She could hear something. It sounded like...crying. No; sobbing. She turned and walked back up the very few steps she and Raoul had just ventured back down and found herself back on the cold snowy rooftop. She gazed around and her eyes came to land on the most pitying sight that she felt the tears pour down her cheeks at the moment of witnessing it.

It was the afeared Phantom of the Opera on the ground, his knees in the snow, huddled over the rose she had dropped. The rose he had given her, cradling it.

"He was bound to love you...when he heard you sing," His voice was breaking with emotion, "Christine..."

She took a step forward almost instinctively, but the brush of her skirts against the cold, wet snow prevented it from being silent and undetected. She saw his shoulders tense, his gentle grasp on the rose becoming tighter. He did not look at her and she could see nothing but the smooth, white mask which hid his deformity. Looking upon this poor creature she could not connect him with the murder of Joseph Buquet down below on the stage of the Opera Populaire. It didn't make sense, neither her heart nor her mind could accept, despite all the facts to the contrary. He was just such a...sad sight.

"And in his eyes all the sadness of the world...." She repeated her words from earlier and he slowly, ever so slowly, turned to look at her, "those pleading eyes...that both threaten and adore..."

She walked towards him slowly and deliberately until she was stood beside where he was kneeling. She paused a moment before holding her hand out for the rose and she couldn't ignore the mirroring resemblance to when he had silently requested for his mask in the same way. Noiselessly he placed the rose into her palm with an almost shaking hand, before finally rising to his feet. His once cowering shape now broad-shoulders and towering over her and she again felt those sensations he caused in her which she was too frightened to investigate.

"Christine," The hand that had returned the rose now lifted itself to her cheek, to caress it but there was barely the most feather-light of touches before she took a small step back, out of range.

"Why?" She asked him, her eyes searching desperately for an answer. It was only one word and yet he knew immediately that to which she referred.

A thousand answers ran through his mind; Buquet had spied on him, found his trap doors, mocked him, told false tales of him, stuck his nose where it didn't belong, tried to stop him, got in his way...and had leered at Christine and Madame Giry's young daughter repeatedly. All these answers were there, but he found none which would give Christine the justification she clearly sought.

"I know nothing else," He finally answered, "He was a foolish man who did foolish things. Before a final foolish end."

She looked at him, her eyes wide with fear, yet the look of sympathy was not yet gone from her face. Rather than give him hope, this made him turn inward, hate his own actions, curse his own life for making him what he was. A monster out and a monster within.

"Fear will turn to hate...you'll learn to see, to find there's no man behind the monster. This...repulsive carcass which 'hunts to kill'...who cannot escape his past and never will...never will..."

All he had known was rejection and hatred and loathing. All he had known was the dangers of if anyone found him, how his life, the small chance at life Madame Giry had given him in his youth, would be destroyed. And he knew no other solution than to remove the problem completely. Violence had always been his survival instinct- he'd had no choice and now it seemed he had no choice to escape it either. He turned away from Christine, unable to bear him looking upon him. Look on him with disgust and fear with the slightest of that despicable emotion pity mixed within in.

"I remember there was music." The haunting melody from her time in his watery underground home. "Music in my dark lonely room. And this voice of an Angel sang to me, saved me from despair." He turned to look at her slightly, not quite believing the words his ears knew he was hearing, but his mind denied. She stepped towards him and placed her small hand upon his arm softly in a comforting, reassuring gesture, "And from that voice there was a man..."

"A man..." He repeated the word quietly, in barely a whisper.

"Your anger frightens me," She told him, "Your violent emotions...they consume you completely and in those moments...it is hard to believe there is a man behind that mask. And yet I cannot deny that it rises from a deeper place, a place so sad, I feel if I knew it entirely I could never escape it. Your music and your voice, your love and your passions are so...beautiful that they couldn't be if the owner did not have true goodness inside him."

"Christine-"

"What frightens me most," She spoke over him, only quietly but the merest breath of her voice was enough to silence him at this moment, "is I do not which part of you is stronger. Which dominates you truly. Something angry and violent...or something beautiful and angelic."

Her part said she bowed her head, finding herself unable to meet his eyes, finding herself afraid, no- worried, of his response.

"Christine..." He took her hands in his with a desperation that made him squeeze a little too tight, "You are what breaths life, joy, music into me! If I had you by my side Christine, I would have nothing but good to give to this world! Everything twisted and dark within me would turn to light...with you." He said these last two words softly, and she felt him staring intently at her waiting for a response and she knew the look that would be there in his eyes. A look that drew her to him as much as the sound of his voice. To look would be to let him into her soul and she knew from that moment, there would be no going back; they would be entwined forever. She took a deep breath, the deepest she had ever taken or ever would, and raised her eyes to look at him.

Below in the Opera Populaire they heard the strands of Il Muto attempting to begin again, anything to calm the distraught audience. Anything to prevent bad reviews, comments, and gossip spreading about the place.

At this, the Phantom's emotional mask resumed it's place and he stood up straighter, still holding Christine's hands.

"You had better return." He told her, "Before they come looking for you. And before this cold night air reaches you..." He placed one hand on her cheek and she did not step away as before but continued to look at him, "My Christine..."

Afterwards, when all the audience had left, tongues wagging despite the two directors attempts to counter this, and all the dancers and singers were changing out of costume, and Carlotta had fled the building with Piangi at mortified horror at her own croaking performance, Christine retired to her dressing room but was stopped by Raoul.

"Christine" He called out to her, rushing his step a little to catch-up, "I am sorry had to leave you early. Those darn directors- they felt my presence, that a member of aristocracy announcing the all's well would have a better effect than anyone else. Particularly the a current patron" His voice was full of apology at having been dragged into such a farce. He took Christine's hand in his, "You were okay weren't you?"

She gently pulled her hand away from his, enough to make the move noticeable but not enough to offend.

"Yes. I was fine." She looked at him and knew she would have to tell him soon that their relationship, established so firmly only a short while ago, was now completely upturned. But not now, the story was too long and too complicated. And how on earth would she confess it all when the time came? That she had pledged her heart to the Phantom of the Opera, the one person everyone was searching for and afraid to find. "Raoul...I have to...I have to dress. I will speak to you soon" She turned and walked to her room, leaving the Viscount stood in the dark-lit corridor, bewildered by his pseudo-fiancée's behaviour. Frowning, and trying to work it out, he eventually left in the opposite direction, oblivious to the fact a young member of the Corps de Ballet, Meg Giry, had watched the entire exchange.

Christine was about to don her dressing gown when she found herself interrupted again as someone knocked on her door before almost immediately walking in and she turned to see her close friend and almost-sister Meg.

"Meg," She smiled warmly at her friend, but the smile was not returned.

"Christine, why did you just send Raoul away?" The question was not accusatory but said with genuine inquisitiveness as though her friend's action were beyond what she could understand.

"Pardon?"

"I just saw you...I wasn't spying...I just happened to see. You took your hand away and left him stood there...I thought you loved him Christine," When Christine did not reply but instead remained silent Meg felt she had to continue further, "And that didn't seem like the actions of a woman in love"

"You are wrong Meg," Her friend told her warmly, feeling she could confide in her long-time friend, "For I am a woman in love" She paused as she prepared to bare all, "But Raoul is not the one to which my heart belongs. I do love him but as I love you, not as one loves a fiancée."

Curiosity overtook Meg's concern and she smiled with eagerness to know more.

"Oh Christine, tell me. Who are you in love with?"

"I'm afraid the answer will be too much for you to hear..." She bit her lip in worry.

"What do you mean?"

"The Phantom of the Opera..."

"The Phantom of the Opera?"

"Is there inside my heart...."

"The Phantom of the Opera...but he's a murderer Christine," Meg reminded her, taking a step back in horror at her friend's admittance, "Christine, he is a menace and he has killed. The directors, they say it was an accident and nothing more but I know it was him. I saw. And there's nothing to say he won't do it again"

"No he wouldn't" Christine immediately protested, though she knew she couldn't be sure of such a thing. But his promises had been so heartfelt, so genuine.

"Christine, he is capable of anything. What possible good could you see in him, that would make you...make you love him?"

Christine turned to her dressing table, fingering the items laid out there, as she thought of the answer to give. As she looked at her own reflection she remembered the first time she had come face to face with her Angel of Music who had not been an angel at all, but a man of flesh and blood.

"Love's a curious thing, it often comes disguised. Look at love the wrong way it goes unrecognised. So look with your heart and not with your eyes. The heart understands, the heart never lies." She turned around to look at Meg whose look of horror had faded away but had been replaced by one of utter bewilderment. "Believe what it feels and trust what it shows. Look with your heart; the heart always knows"

"But Christine, people all say he's a monster. That to look upon his face, his true face is...that it's horrific. How can you-"

Christine merely smiled at her.

"Love is not always beautiful, not at the start. So open your arms and close your eyes tight. Look with your heart and when it finds love...your heart will be right" She looked at her friend with a sudden wisdom in her eyes that was beyond her years, "I feel when I look into those eyes and see all the pain and sadness there and so much hope for more, for anything but the awful things he has suffered and seen and...I feel as though I could forgive him all the sins in the world."

"Christine I don't know what to say. Or what you wish me to say"

"Say nothing," Christine told her, hugging her briefly, "Just promise me you won't turn away from me and that you will not breath a word of what I have told you to anyone. Please"

It took a moment but eventually Meg gave the only answer she could.

"I promise"