It was a bitterly cold, barren and windswept night, the streetlamps dimmed to the point of not being useful. The frigid, biting air seeped into every building in Paris, and the weather was not deemed fit for a casual nighttime stroll. Though this was so, a single solitary soul dashed about in the snow, treading just deep enough to leave light footprints in the snow, only to have them covered up by fresh snowfall. The solitary soul, a dark figure treading lightly, looked up into the dark night sky, speckled with snowflakes. They fell softly on to his awaiting face, but he could only feel half of them. He frowned in disdain, then whipped around, checking all around to verify that no one was coming anywhere near him. He squinted into the dark for a solid minute at least, until finally he was satisfied with his surroundings. Gingerly, he reached up to his face, pulling at a silvery-white mask until it receded from his face. Immediately he felt a surge of icy air, Winter's chilling breath, cold as death on the normally masked side of his face. He shuddered slightly at its touch, but took a deep breath through his nose and closed his big brown eyes as he took it all in. This was the one time he would ever even consider going out in public, especially without his mask on. What he was and what the rest of the world saw him as were two completely different things. On one hand, he thought himself an artist, a musically inclined genius of sorts. He knew he had a gift, but he had a curse just as powerful. His face. That was the world's justification for thinking of him as a monster.
In all honesty, he hadn't meant anyone any harm originally. That must've changed somewhere in the years he spent growing up in the bowels of the Opera Populaire. Something about having to hide your face, and in turn, yourself, from the rest of the world just because your face is a bit messed up is enough to drive someone to the brink of insanity. It was a life of little to no human contact, and what little human contact he got was usually forced. How could anyone blame him for doing the unspeakable things he did?
"Insensitive bastards," the figure in black mumbled to himself, crouching down to the ground to scoop up a handful of powdery snow. He packed it down and pressed it to his face in attempts to ameliorate his sudden throbbing headache. As he reflected further, he realized that when push came to shove, he was to blame for the cruel things he did to others, murder and kidnapping atop the list. His swollen lower lip trembled as he continued to think about how the closest thing he came to perfection stood up and left him just hours before now. He soon found out why his headache was only getting worse as he realized that he was digging his fingers into his sensitive flesh on crying out the word "Christine" time and time again. He collapsed in the snow and doubled over on the ground, thrusting his tightly folded arms into his stomach as he forbid his tears to fall.
The stark beauty of the Paris landscape at night clashed with the horridness of his deformed face. He gently held two fingers to his lips where his angel had kissed him only moments ago. He wanted to feel that elated forever, but as overwhelmingly joyful as he was, he knew that it would not last.
"What goes up must come down," he said to no one but himself, as if he needed a reminder. He seriously considered his death as an option to end the pain, but something in him screamed that his angel might still need him. "Absurd," he reprimanded himself aloud, needing to hear himself say it to get it through his thick skull twice over. As stubborn as he was, it was very rare that he felt the need to argue with himself. "She has someone else now, there's no more need for me to be in the equation."
He turned around stealthily and beheld the burning Opera Populaire, the distant flames setting his eyes ablaze. What he had done was rash - dropping the chandelier was a risky move that probably killed people - adding to his death toll. He rolled his eyes and turned around again, lifting his head once more to catch the liberating snowfall for the last time before returning the tailored half-mask to his face.
Just like that, the figure in black stood up tall, grabbed his hat hastily, and whipped his black cape around his bony frame, disappearing just as silently and quickly as he came, like a thief in the night, only leaving an echo behind that said:
"I am the Phantom of the Opera."
