He had hoped that he could live without her. He had wanted to continue to breath without her sunlight filling his life. Love without her being beside him. After all, he had survived without her for the greater part of his life, it would not be impossible to continue as it was before.
But he couldn't.
Everything had changed. Everywhere he looked, traces of her flowed in a constant pattern of loneliness and bittersweet memories. And anger. Not at her, of course, but at the man she had chosen over himself. And now there was no escape. Not anymore.
He'd known from the start really. From the first time he had seen her, small and scared and alone, he knew. She was the one. She was the one that would claim him, heart and soul. And then he would break. Shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. He just never expected to happen so soon.
He had tried to run from the memories. Tired to run from her, but she was always there. He would try to lose his thoughts in the depths of a bottle, in the arms of some common woman he had found, but her face remained.
And oh those eyes!
Oh those cruel, cruel eyes! Those eyes that made him pray to whatever god or demon there was to help him. To let her come back to him. But she was never coming back. Not in a physical form anyway. But in his mind, there she was. Gazing at him from over his shoulder in the mirror. Smiling at his pain. And then she would cry. And oh how her tears would sting him! How they would throw him into rage for not being able to protect her from the world, from himself.
And then one day, the images were gone. He had nothing left anymore. He could not cry for his lost love, he could not mourn any longer. Even anger forsook him. He may have seemed like a heartless bastard, but he was still human. He still had a heart. A heart that could break and a heart that had broken. And now, now it would positively shatter if he had to continue another day without her.
It was Madam Giry that found the letter. The only one that knew how he had loved her. How he had idolized her. And she understood to a point. Madam had known what it was like after she had gone. She knew. And she knew what the girl had meant to him.
No one else would mourn the loss of the Opera Ghost, no one would come to his funereal. He left the world as alone as he had entered it.
And as Madam Giry watched the letter burn in the grate, those words stood out, even among the flames, even after the scrap had dwindled down to ash, those words continued to play out across the wood.
I loved her
Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust.