A/N: This little story pretty much follows Susan Kay's version but kicks off just after Christine left with Raoul and from there will start taking a different turn.
Between the Lines
Prologue: Erik, 1882
After she'd kissed me, I was certain death would come for me at last and I was prepared to meet it with silent resignation. My bones weary, I no longer possessed the youthful spirit to persevere. I had witnessed the splendour and the horrors of the world; I had built a shrine that was testament to both my music and the architectural skills I had been entrusted with and I had composed and performed my final masterpiece. I had accomplished all but the greatest feat of humankind.
But I had been granted a kiss, a final act of compassion. I was no longer severed from mankind but forever bound to it by a desperate need I hadn't known existed until Christine touched it in me. That first sensation had sent my heart racing and it only stopped its erratic fluttering when she departed with the Vicomte de Chagny. Then it stopped, clenched painfully as if it, too, felt the dreadful absence. Its final beats pulsed through my wrists and my lids closed, preparing to embrace the welcoming darkness.
When I awoke again, no heavenly chorus welcomed me and suddenly a dreadful fear befell me. Had I been denied that privilege also? Had my last acts been so abhorrent that I'd not been granted absolution? But as I looked around, my vision clearing, I came to see that I had not yet been taken from this earth. I had not been granted peace.
Around me lay the scattered remains of my most prized possessions, torn down in a fit of rage I could not recall. The silence of these ruins settled around me and blocked out the deafening pulse that had been beating in my ears.
I was alive.
Waves of despair would surely have overwhelmed me, had he not made his presence known at that very moment. Nadir, my friend and chaperone.
He navigated through the rubble of my past and offered me tea as if it was a customary tradition. He did not speak of my murderous rage that had very nearly cost him his life, nor did he mention Christine. Instead we talked like two civilised men might do in the Café Verlet whose most pressing concern was the change in the weather. He, too, could have convinced me at that moment that my coffin was a cat basket.
But as the hours ticked by and one day slipped into another, I suddenly remembered my final request, uttered in the throes of desperation. I realised then that my masterpiece had not yet reached its end; that Christine and I still had one last act to face. But I could not bear to see her again nor could I bear to witness her absence.
So I began to formulate a plan, a plan that would take me far away from the confines of the opera house. There was no doubt in my mind that I was a dying man but when that final pardon would be granted to me, I wanted to die in a place of beauty. My house, my sanctuary beneath the opera had lost its splendour in the tragedy I had inflicted upon it and it no longer befitted my idea of a suitable tomb.
Instead I would embark on one last voyage. Like Odysseus I would reclaim my rightful kingdom. I would return to the country I had once called my home. To the only place that could possibly satisfy my final greed for beauty.