Who: Christine → Sam What: Short narrative Where: Paris → The Ranch When: Recent Warnings/Rating: Language
Christine spent the day through the door.
It was not the pretty black door of her Paris flat, because that was hers no longer. She would not take the charity from Raoul, even if he had offered it, which he had not. As his future wife, she could reconcile herself with it being her due, that she needed to live a certain way to represent him without shame, to be a certain way. But she was not his intended any longer, and so the door did not become sleek and black for her.
Neither was it the sumptuous gold of the Opera House with its flickering sconces and the smell of wax and floorboards. The Opera House remained closed, the planned reopening after the ordeal with the Phantom all those months ago postponed indefinitely due to the fire in the belly of the Opera in recent months. There was no Opera, no ballet dormitory, no place with the Girys for her.
The door, when it opened, was in the cemetery, at the Daae grave. As good a place as any, and the temperature was not as terrible as it could have been in the late evening. She had no money for a carriage, and so she walked as though she did not mind it. Her father had not been a wealthy man. His wealth had come in a different way, and musical talent had always opened doors for them when she was small. It was from him that she took her cue.
She did not stop by the docks, where a fallen woman (for that is what she would now be considered) must ply her wares. She made her way to Montmartre, to where songbirds could earn a living in a way that was better than the docks. She was young enough, pretty enough that she fit into that dark world. And, though it terrified her, she was now accustomed to darkness in a way that she was no longer accustomed to the light.
***
Sam thought it was all fucking bullshit. Sure, yeah, great, so they had avoided some great catastrophe, but at what cost? Louis had given in to Loki, Liam was being controlled by everything but himself, Neil was- She didn't even know what Neil was, and Aiden thought it would all go to shit again eventually anyway.
What was the point?
And worse, now she knew exactly what the stupid broken girl in her head felt like. She'd known before, sure, but it was like talking to someone, knowing their shit that way. This was different. Now she understood. And while it was entirely Sam that was there now, it didn't change the fact that the experience had affected her. She might not run around admitting it, but it had.
She'd forgotten all about her teasing with Tiffani about the Scottish male hooker, but when the other woman brought it up after all this shit, Sam said what the hell? What could it hurt? Some booze, a hot guy. Maybe she could score a dimebag and scratch this itch once and for all.
He was tall, built, and his voice was a little too low, a little too growly. His accent was definitely too thick, but whatever. That wouldn't matter once she was high and drunk on some nasty pink comforter in a room with mirrors on the ceiling.