When Raoul thinks back to the days at the Paris Opera House, he looks back with wonder. So many things could have gone wrong, should have gone wrong, but somehow they did not; somehow it seemed that everything came right. Then he remembers those who truly paid the price, the ones the Phantom killed and wonders why he doesn't feel guiltier about their deaths. He thinks perhaps it is because somewhere in his mind he's always felt that the Phantom must have changed after those days, that the Shah's assassin, the mad architect, the torturer, murderer, could not have continued as he was. There is a part of him, though, that believes it is because although neither he nor Christine killed the Opera Ghost, they might as well have. Either way, he believes that the murders stopped, that wherever the Phantom was, in this life or the next, he had taken no more lives.

This fact does not stop him from wondering, wondering if it was possible for the Phantom to have been redeemed. Perhaps it is only because he has looked into the same abyss that it troubles him so, and perhaps it is something else, some other part of the kinship he felt with the monster that he has never openly acknowledged. Raoul believed deeply in redemption, even in those days, believed that one could always find a path to change. He wonders if the Phantom ever found that way out. He often thinks of what Christine said, that night so long ago, that the Phantom's face was no longer what she feared, that it was his soul that was deformed. Even innocent Christine, who had for so long refused to see the harshness of the real world, recoiled from him in hate. He remembers all these things and they temper and morph over time, but all of them ring just as true as they did during those days.

He hadn't understood, at first, what drew him to Christine so strongly he could not fight it. She was so wrapped up in fairy tales and grief and unreality that a part of him despised her, for he had already seen too much of life. This part of him wondered that she had not chosen the Phantom, for it would have been a perfect fairy-tale, the beautiful singer saving the monster from himself. Christine always understood this feeling and would come and stand with him on the balcony of their home on the nights when he would be unable to shake his fear that none of this had happened, that she had never grown into the woman she was now, the woman he had always sensed she could be, the woman he fell in love with, the woman he had fought to free both from the Phantom and from the grip of her own fears. And she told him,

"I never would have been happy with him, you know. Neither of us loved the other truly, but only the mask the other wore. He loved my voice and my innocence and my beauty; I had everything he had ever wanted and could never have. It made him wild, unpredictable and obsessive, for he could not decide if he wanted to break me or possess me. I wanted him as a replacement for my father, the fairy-tales of my childhood; he told me that I never needed to leave the place I had found shelter, never needed to move on. I only desired him as much as I feared the world outside the Opera and the walls I had built. You saw me, believed in who I could be, who I really was before I knew it myself, and you fought so that I could make a choice, knowing the choice I was making, with no guarantee I would choose you. Is it any wonder, then, that when I saw clearly I knew who loved me truly and who I truly loved?" She always smiled at him then, the smile of a woman who has seen what it is she wants most in the world and has it, the smile of a woman who is happy and loves.

And when she died, too soon, much too soon, he was left alone, for the children had all grown and had left and he had nothing but his aches, the aches of an old man with old wounds and an empty heart. He returned to Paris to bury Christine near her father, to go to the Opera House, to see it one last time and to say farewell the only way he knew how. And maybe, somewhere deep inside, he thought that in returning, he would let the Opera Ghost know, if somehow he lived, that Christine was dead, for if the Phantom lived than he was owed that, despite everything. He felt Christine smiling at him again that day, for if he had taught Christine to live, she had taught him how to forgive. He honors her by making his peace with the past, this day and every day.

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Author's Note: This piece came to me after I watched the 25th Anniversary Production of the musical. I have always been bothered by the lack of coherence in the musical's treatment of Raoul and the Phantom and the stellar performance of Hadley Fraser gave me some of the answers I sought. It seems to me that Raoul in the musical is essentially three characters from the novel in one: he is his older brother, Philippe, the immature Raoul that we meet most often in the book, and Raoul as he could be when he has matured. In this fiction, I have tried to separate out these characters in several ways. First, I have restored Raoul's brother to the plot. Second, I have played slightly with the time-frame, setting the main part of the action in 1876, so that Raoul could have participated in the Franco-Prussian War. This has allowed me to use a mostly mature Raoul, who has a clearer grasp of his own motivations and can thus articulate them better, both to himself and to the reader. Finally, I have sought a way to keep the Phantom believable and pitiable, but to also emphasize what the musical often loses track of: that the Phantom has no moral scruples and has committed and continues to commit reprehensible crimes. Hopefully as I continue my work on this piece I will be able to return to the beginning and make everything more clear. Any feedback that you have is much appreciated.