A/N: This is my first time publishing something here, but I hope you all enjoy! As stated in the summary, this is a combination of Scarlet Pimpernel, Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, taking place during the French Revolution. It jumps around between characters, so there are different things going on at different times, and it's a bit schizophrenic in nature.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, The Scarlet Pimpernel, or Les Miserables, because I am not nearly as brilliant as Leroux, Hugo, Orczy, Llyod Webber, Wildhorn, or Schönberg, and I never ever will be.

In the Streets of Paris

By Blushing Juliet

Christine Daae

Think of me,
think of me waking,
silent and
resigned.
Imagine me,
trying too hard
to put you
from my mind.

The lake water swarms around my pale legs, the pale filmy skirt becomes translucent and caught up in the tide, swimming around in the green glass. I can still feel that kiss upon me. The warmth of it freezes there as if tattooed upon my lips, and seeping into the creases.

The silence that had resided in my mind before was deceiving, for it was only a false silence. Now the trembling of the foundation of the Opera House rumbles in my ears like a growling beast, the stone shifts above my head. Flames lick away hungrily all around me, only teasing fire, still youthful, and not fully yet capable of destruction. Sparks spawn from those childish dancing flames, sifting through the air as it grows increasingly hotter, even though the water swirling around my knees is bitter and freezing, as if the lower half of me had broken through the ice of a winter pond.

I can hear the shouts floors above me, and the dampened roar of the fire consuming my home as I run. And amidst this chaos crumbling around me, I halt and turn back, the white wedding dress curving along with my body in the lake.

The spikes of the gate that had trapped me hover, as if threatening to plunge down and seal away that hell. But I am no longer there. I am no longer trapped. I can see the flickering soft glow of the hundreds of candles within their light sheds upon a bit of the swan bed, and the twisted Gothic organ. But you are not within my view. I know you are there.

Someone will be trapped. It will be you, you my Angel. You will be condemned to this living nightmare of darkness, eternally damned to live alone. And it shall not be those hovering gates or any physical or architectural means that shall bind you. I'm sorry I could not free you. I tried, but you refused to keep me. Even though I gave you my kiss, and you took it, like you have taken so many things from me. My shoulders shake as I remember your voice when it first appeared in my dressing room that one day. That one day when I had been innocent. That was the beginning of the end, and here we are, here I am, as the curtains draw closed on our story.

But... must they? Can I still save you? Is there still time? You send terror riding along with my blood cells and cause fear to rise upon my bones. But I pity you... I hold compassion here, even though you frighten me so. My foot wanders forward, in the opposite direction of where I had been fleeing, in the opposite direction of the air and the light. Back to you.

Raoul's hand grasps my wrist and I twist to face him. His face is etched with concern, but an almost invisible fire or defiance lies there. His blue eyes are raging like the choppy, billowing sea within him. He won't let me go back to you. He wants to save me. He knows I cannot return.

"Christine, what are you thinking?" he bellows over the growing roar of the fire overhead. "You can't go back there."

Despite his words, my gaze travels behind me once more.

His hands move to my shoulders, and he shakes me and my heart rattles around in my chest. "Christine, listen to me," he states desperately, almost harshly. "You can't go back there. Not to him. Please, not to him."

Tears are building in those twin pools of sky and sun and sea. He is terrified, but he is wounded that I even consider going back to you. He doesn't understand how I could dare think it. I've been so cruel to him. He has given me his love, given me everything. And all I have given him is a lifeless girl, hardly a lover. But still he presses on. He loves me; he wants to liberate me.

I swallow, my eyes locked on his, and his hands digging into my shoulders. The Opera House gives a warning, and I can sense the shifting in the air above us. Raoul jerks his head up, and his gaze is on me again. "Go!" he shouts, and pushes me forward. I stumble, but I run.

Suddenly, a crack jolts through the stones above me, as they grind and creak menacingly. The Opera House screams out as the foundation starts to crumble beneath her. The wailing song of the building quakes like the ground below the water around my feet. In this instant, I turn again and freeze.

Time slows as my eyes fall upon Raoul, but he is not looking at me. His face is heaven bent, chin in the air. My eyes fall upon what he staring at in horror. The ceiling seems to struggle for a moment, as if attempting to defy gravity and to not to heed to the destruction weakening it. But in the next moment the stone breaks loose, great tumbling boulders crash down, and Raoul's eyes capture mine for a split second, those raining skies snatch my gaze, as his mouth forms two syllables, "Christine." I know no sound has spilled from his lips but I can hear his voice as clearly as if he is beside me. And the next moment he is gone from my view, crushed beneath the rocks.

There is no hesitation, no question in my mind. I know that he is dead.

But still a strangled cry struggles out. "Raoul," I rasp, the moment replaying over and over and his voice echoing in my ears without end.

The false silence hits me again, consuming my brain, only to be shattered by the groaning of the foundation, and I start running again. My mind is controlling me now. My heart is screaming to run back, but my mind pays no attention, and forces my feet to lift off the bed of the lake, time after time, as the water sloshes up around my hips.

My feet finally hit solid ground, but I do not break my stride. I am racing, racing up those twisting cold steps, ones that had been lit with warmth, but only for me.

I break through to the surface and the blast of the heat lurches forward and sweeps me up in its blazing grasp. This is a full-blown fire, not like the gentle flares below, which were probably maturing at this moment. The flame's breath reaches out and slaps my cheeks, beats my limbs and wrings my neck. But I keep running.

The screams of frantic urgency reach my ears, faint, farther towards the exit. Nothing back here. Everyone is out of here—safe--or else lying back here--dead. The smoke forces its way into my mouth, choking me, and fills my lungs with its fatal seducing gas, gray as granite, thick as ash.

My breath is starting to fail me, and my eyes are stinging, the smoke pricking away at my pupils. My mind and body calls out for the sweet release of unconsciousness, of having not having to breathe--of the blissfulness of nothing.

The golden doors are up ahead of me, split open the reveal the royal blue night sky, which is blanketed in a coating of stars. Some sweet air reaches out and tempts me and drives me to take those last few steps.

And I am out. I am free. I can breath. I choke on the shock of fresh air and the remaining twists of smoke still clutching at the insides of my lungs. My body fails me and crumples to the ground, falling against the pavement that mirrors the golden and orange and red and blue fire that dance in triumph.

It is now that tears seep out of my eyes, and gently sting at my cheeks as they caress them, before they slip off my skin and puddle at my feet. People swarm around me, but no one looks and sees the famous soprano, Christine Daae. They only see a poor girl wracked with coughs and in a singed soaking wedding dress.

I glance up once more at the building of song, of dance and wonders. Soon it will be nothing. Yet here is where it began, and this is where it all ends. Here on these Parisian streets before the place where my Angel shaped my fate that now leaves me lying here.