THIS IS A BOOK/MOVIE MIX! PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THAT, BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYTHING IN HERE IS A MIX BETWEEN THE BOOK AND THE MOVIE, AND I DON'T WANT YOU GUYS TO GET CONFUSED.
Full Summary: Erik, instead of dying of lov, lives to see Christine keep her promise. When she does, he decides that death may not be so bad, until he sets eyes on a young dancer, almost a clone of his last love. Will our beloved Phantom find love, or will he be diestined to live his life alone? And what happens when the Ratcatcher gets jealous...?
Disclaimer: I do not own PotO
Erik waited in the shadows, his breathing silent and his eyes wide and piercing. Would she come back? Would his dearest Christine keep the promise she had made him?
A soft splashing sound made Erik sit up. A small boat was being rowed by the man who was recently given the title Count de Chagny, and Erik knew that the small, beautiful figure dressed in black with a hood over her face sitting behind the count was Christine. She was here!
"Well, Christine, here we are. Where did he say his body would be?" Raoul asked his new wife as he stepped carefully out of the boat and helped her out also.
"In his... In his coffin. The one he used to sleep in," Christine answered in a barely audible voice. Erik watched as she and Raoul disappeared through a doorway and came out with the ugly, wooden coffin. The body of a poor stagehand was lying in it, one who looked just like Erik (minus the deformity, but Erik had taken care of that by putting his mask over the dead man's face).
Erik prayed that Christine would not remove his mask from the face of the man in the coffin, and was relieved to find that she seemed to want to do nothing of the sort. She simply took the small wedding ring that Erik had given her off of the fourth finger of her left hand, and gently put it on the finger of the man who she thought was Erik.
Raoul gazed at Christine's face all the while, and was slightly surprised to see the pity etched in her expression. He decided not to be jealous of a dead man, though, and shut the lid of the coffin before Christine did something unexpected and possibly unwanted.
"Come, my beloved," Raoul took Christine's hand and led her into the boat, "I will come back later on tonight with some men and we will bury him. But you, dearest, look exhausted. Come, let us go home now. You have kept your promise. That monster will be out of our lives now."
Christine nodded, and looked one last time at Erik's coffin lid before turning back to Raoul. She smiled and gave her lover and husband a kiss, then stepped lightly into the boat and sat down, smiling at Raoul with soft eyes as he got into the watercraft also and began to row.
Erik watched as they left. Christine had, indeed, kept her promise, but Raoul... Erik hated him, with all the anger and hatred in his heart. If only that stupid, ignorant boy had never been born! Things could have been different... very different. Perhaps Christine could have loved him... perhaps he would not be condemned to live the rest of his life in loneliness.
"How long shall I live in this way? For the rest of my life? How long is my life even going to be? How long will it take for the emotional pain to catch up with me? Why isn't it me in that coffin, wearing that infernal mask and that ring, which is probably still warm from Christine's touch?" Erik asked himself in a barely audible whisper.
Because you were too cowardly to die. A cruel voice at the back of Erik's mind told him harshly, The reason you are here, in the shadows, alive and breathing, is because you were too much of a coward to kill yourself! You were too afraid to bask in the flames of hell that await you...
"No, that's not true," Erik contradicted to himself, unaware of how mad this made him seem (even though there was no one there), "I wanted to make sure Christine would keep her promise. I... wanted to see her again."
Liar. You were too afraid. If you would have thought you were going to heaven, you know that you wouldn't have had a second thought about killing yourself, but you knew. You knew that God would never accept you, after all of the things you've done. You knew that you were bound for hell, and that's why you aren't dead right now. You were afraid... afraid...
That word circled around Erik's mind mercilessly, until he fell to the ground with tears in his eyes. He was a monster, he had always been a monster. He would never escape that fate.
"Maybe death... isn't so bad," he breathed after a long time, "and maybe hell isn't such a bad place. After all, I've never been there before, so who am I to make any assumptions?" An evil glint found its way into Erik's eyes, "But if I'm leaving this cruel world to be in another, possibly better, place... then why should I be so evil as to not let hundreds of other eager Parisians accompany me?"
Erik thought about it. Yes, he could make it work. The opera house already believed him dead, since he was sure everyone who really knew him had spread the words, as per his instructions. They would be performing another opera in about four months, and a glamorous opera at that, to celebrate their riddance of the opera ghost (they thought!), and he was sure the theater would be full of people. The barrels of gunpowder would be dry by then, and he would be ready. Yes, he would be ready...
I hope you guys liked that, I know it was very... intense, non? But I don't want to seem cocky, let me know how you guys like it, please? REVIEW!
