A/N: I promised myself that I wouldn't write another fic until I finished my large ones. However, here I am after PotO25th and I'm desperate to write something based off of Ramin/Sierra/Hadley. I do love them so.

Not sure where this will go but here we have it.

~o~

Could she have possibly made a mistake? Why had he let her go? She had chosen him! Couldn't he tell? Or was the whole situation so convoluted that he had misunderstood her choosing him for her choosing Raoul.

He had let Raoul go.

Buy his freedom with your love.

But that wasn't what she had done. At least not what she had intended with that kiss. No, she'd meant to show him what it meant to be touched, to be kissed, to be….

No. She didn't love him, she loved Raoul. Didn't she? She had agreed to marry him after all. But everything was so different now.

"Christine?" She turned at the sound of her name, hearing Raoul's heavy footsteps as he bolted up the staircase just outside her door. She curled her feet close to her bottom as she hugged her knees and stared out the window of the little bay window. "Christine are you in there?" He knocked at the door before opening slowly.

"Yes I am here." She replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Come away from the window Christine, you'll catch a chill from the drafty old thing."

"No Raoul…" Christine shook her head, her eyes still glued on the moonless Paris below her. The de Chagny manor had such a beautiful view of the city.

"Christine…" Raoul insisted, trying to change his forceful tone into something gentler. "Please, you've been sitting in this window nearly every evening. My brother would like to see that I have been honest in saying that my fiancée is not insane."

"Raoul!" Christine gasped turning to look up at him with her wide doe eyes. "How could you say that I am insane? You act as if you had not seen the Phantom for yourself."

"It is not me Little Lotte," Raoul took a hold of her cold hand and pressed his warm lips to the top. "My brother is the one who taunts me with the fact that you have all but locked yourself away in the attic of our manor."

"Oh! But Raoul, I am only admiring the view."

"You have been watching the Populaire, haven't you?" Raoul asked, kneeling beside the window seat, his hand still firmly around hers. He reached up to stroke her tangled mass of curls. "Has the smoke stopped?"

"Yesterday. They put out the last of the fires yesterday." Christine turned back to look out the window, letting her hand fall limp in Raoul's grasp. "Just seven days ago I was performing there."

"Yes, Christine, but now you are to be married to me and you shan't ever have to perform again. What a trial it had been to convince you to sing again on that stage."

"No!" Christine dropped his hand abruptly, pulling away from him completely. "Raoul, no! I won't ever stop performing."

"But you were so determined-"

"Not against performing… Against betraying."

"He was a murderer Christine!" Exasperated Raoul rose to his feet and threw his hands up into the air. "How is it that you can possibly feel a sort of allegiance with that monster? One that would lead you to feel like you betrayed him. He had a noose around my neck Christine!"

Christine bit her lip and stared up at Raoul, "Please… Raoul… I don't want to argue with you. If you would like me to come down for dinner…" Christine rose nimbly onto her feet, wrapping her dressing gown around herself tighter. "I will need only a few minutes to ready myself." She stared down at her feet as she brushed by Raoul.

"Christine, wait." He caught her arm and turned her around. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's alright." Christine kept her eyes low, unable to meet her finance's eyes. "Let your brother know that I will be down shortly. I promise you… I will be there."

"Christine," Raoul started as she walked. "It is the evening before our wedding, I just do not wish for us fight."

"I know Raoul." Christine shrugged her shoulders as she left the room. With unsure steps she made her way down the staircase until she reached the landing that presented her with a corridor leading to her bedroom. Her legs felt heavy as she took each step. Every day she argued with Raoul. He seemed to want to pry her innocent and childish manners out of her grasp. He wanted to change her and she was not yet ready to change.

Christine.

She turned, looking behind her down the dark corridor of closed doors.

"Hello?"

Christine felt like a fool for letting the entreaties slip her lips. Perhaps Raoul was right. Perhaps she was childish. She wished more than anything for her father to be there. To wrap his arms around her and pull her close to him, to tell her that everything was going to be alright, to wish her all the happiness and perfection in her life that she deserved.

As she pushed open her door she rushed inside and threw herself onto her bed. She couldn't let herself cry and ruin her face before making her entrance to dinner. Her future brother-in-law would think her mad for sure. She hid herself in dark, empty, rooms staring out across Paris, weeping.

It was all because she was here and not there. Where was there even located? Somewhere where he was? But she didn't even know where that was. For all she knew, the mob that was descending on his world could have set fire to his lair or beaten him.

He could be dead.

Her Phantom… gone?

"Father why has this happened to me? What have I done?" Christine sobbed into her pillow, startling as she heard banging at her window. She half expected to see the Phantom there in the shadows of the pale light from the stars.

There was no moon tonight in the sky to light the shapes in the darkness. The most peculiar sight to see. No moon.

Just as she had no will to live if she could not sing for him.

She rose, trembling, as she moved towards the tall French doors. There was no one outside on the balcony, only the wind beating against a half locked door. Her heart sank at the revelation, and she locked the door securely.

She had barely turned away when a thought crossed her mind. She unlatched the door and moved out onto the balcony. It wasn't very far to the ground below. Her room was on the second floor and such thick ivy grew up the lattices against the house.

Christine made haste in dressing for such a nighttime excursion.

She needed to be at her father's grave, in hopes that somehow everything would make sense. Her father had always been her one steady force in her life and once he was gone nothing made sense.

If Raoul saw his fiancé now, donning a simple beige shift and wrapped tightly in a dark blue cape, climbing down the trellising outside her window, he would be appalled.

~o~

A/N: I think I will make this a two parter. Yes? No? Like? Dislike? Questions? Answers?

I loved Hadley's crueler Raoul, fits the ten year later story line perfectly. Also, hesitant Christine about leaving the Phantom. I'm just playing off it.