#cheristine

It wasn’t supposed to be so angsty, but here we are I guess XD

"It's not the same kind of love I have for you," she'd promised, her voice more confident than she truly felt. "It's not the same at all!"

She'd kissed him, though perhaps to reassure herself more than him.

It hadn't worked.

Christine stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, and not for the first time. Phillippe snored quietly beside her, as he did every night, completely deaf to the music that seemed to fill the room whenever she closed her eyes. The music always seemed to wait for him to fall asleep, before it began its lonely serenade.

It didn't matter how often she reminded herself the soft sounds of a flute were just in her head, the products of a grieving mind, or how often she listened to Phillippe's or Gerard's gentle reassurances that her Maestro was sleeping quietly five stories below the Opera House, she simply couldn't hear anything else but that terrible music, music so soft and sweet it plunged daggers into her heart over and over until she wept silent tears into her pillow.

Gerard was usually more patient with her when she told him of the dreadful flute of the night. He sat with her as she described the careful notes and calm, gentlemanly rhythm that only her Maestro could create. Sometimes, his tears would join hers and they would weep together for the lost genius, teacher, friend, son. Phillippe tried, he truly did, but he would often times grow weary of her mourning and ask her desperately, usually on his knees before her, to try and cheer up, to perhaps distract herself from the memories of the man who looked at her with all the admiration she'd ever seen a human being possess.

It was such suggestions of distractions that saw Phillippe leading her to a spare room one day, pressing her on from behind with his hands over her eyes. That was how she came to sit daily before an easel with a brush, dipped in a mix of coppery auburn, poised over the canvas.

She always painted the deep blue eyes first, always added the white flicks of light through them, and therefore added life. His eyes kept her company as she painted, for he was all she painted now; the vase of marigolds set on the table before her had long since wilted away into thin stalks over the past three months.

A tear rolled down her cheek.

She closed her eyes and pushed herself up from the mattress, as slowly and quietly as she could, as not to wake Phillippe. Amid the darkness, she found her dressing gown and flat shoes and tiptoed to the door.

Phillippe stirred as she crept out and shut it behind her, but she was already gone, and he slipped back into the thick, cloudy confines of sleep.

Christine knew her way to her little painting room even through the pitch of night by now, as though she'd worn the carpet down and followed the same trail every night. It wasn't too far from the bedroom, just two corridors away and the third room down. She pushed the door open and within minutes the little, converted salon was awash with candlelight.

She set herself before the easel and eased the cover from the canvas. Her breath caught; she'd never get used to meeting those impossibly intelligent, shimmering eyes. Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs. It was no use denying that she missed him, that his death had shattered something so deep within her that it had taken a month or two for her grief to show upon her face. No use denying she often thought of nothing but his voice or music or dreamt of him when she, at last, managed to sleep.

Or that she loved him.

Even Phillippe knew that.

A deep breath to calm her racing heart. Christine found her brush and paints in the little artist's box Gerard had presented her with.

"A friend's," he'd explained when she unwrapped it that sad, terrible Christmas. But the look in his eyes when they caught hers gave it all away.

She treasured that artist's box now. It never, ever left her salon, and woe to any servant who dared enter the dusty confines without her permission.

She hummed as she dabbed some copper into his fluffy hair, hoping the melody would raise her spirits somewhat.

She didn't have the heart to paint his mask. It was always the last addition to the paintings, a begrudging feature she felt she simply had to add out of respect; her Maestro would utterly detest any portrait where he was unmasked. She could never give him an unmarred face, for that simply wasn't him. And yet, she could not bear to detail his true visage, and therefore set in stone his accursed ugliness. And so, the mask must be added, she'd decided unhappily.

Bit by bit, she brought her lost Maestro back to life on the canvas, first by finishing his eyes and hair, then adding the detestable outline of his mask, followed by his ever-pristine clothes, for she would never see him in any less than expensive tailcoats and finely sewn trousers, with newly-polished boots. It was just his noble head and shoulders on the canvas tonight, with perhaps the top of his pocket square peeping from his coat.

"You have nothing to be concerned about," she could imagine him saying, his voice close and soft by her ear. Despite her sorrow, a smile tugged at the corners of her lips and she felt her cheeks go a warm, rosy red. "I have faith; I promise you you're going to be fine."

This had not been the sort of distraction Phillippe meant when he'd funded all the paints and canvases, but what did it matter? Her heart had slowed to a steady pace and her tears had dried on her cheeks.

By now, her Maestro smiled proudly back at her from the confines of his fabricy realm, contained forever in his little prison, unageing, unchanging, undying, and eternally hers.

It was dawn by the time she finished. Servants had long since begun their daily bustling about outside, but still, she sat before the easel, adding carefully placed, colourful marks to the mask and hair. The sun peered over the horizon and almost through window and slowly lit the canvas from top to bottom with its gentle, golden caress. Christine bit her lip. Moving her hand away, the light fell upon her Maestro's eyes. It was as though, for a split second, it had never gone out in the first place.

Someone passed in the corridor, humming, and she jumped. Another voice that sounded too much like her Maestro's, only noticeable for its untrained melody.

A wash of fatigue reminded her that she hadn't slept one wink. She slouched on her stool, washing the brush yet again and setting it aside to dry, free of its colourful stains.

Her eyes almost flitted back to the canvas as she stood to cover it once more and put it away. But no. However long she spent painting, she could never look at the final product, and she feared she would die of guilt if she did. Any finished piece would be covered and put away in the cupboard, one on top of the other in a neat pile, never to be regarded again.

Perhaps if she looked closely, she would notice that the pile never grew.

A yawn. She made sure to lock the door firmly behind her.

Phillippe had already risen when she returned to bed and flopped into the silky sheets in the most unladylike way she could manage. For that brief, sweet moment, she forgot her husband, forgot her duties and forgot her Maestro. Instead, she gazed through heavy-lidded eyes at a pair of stars that the morning light had not yet faded, for the bedroom faced west and the sun had not yet illuminated the shaded tree just yet, and would not for another few minutes.

Her eyes closed, and, at long last, her breaths shallowed.

But what Christine did not realise, was that the stars that peered through the branches of the old oak outside her window, the ones she always watched rise in the night sky as a means to find sleep, could themselves blink. She fell asleep that morning to the same thing that kept her up throughout the night: the soft, lonely sound of a flute.