Gustave felt sick to his stomach. There was blood everywhere. Mother's blood. Despite Mr. Y's best attempts at trying to stop the bleeding, there was nothing they could do, and even he, a ten year old child, knew it. Gustave needed to find his father. Maybe he could fix everything. At the very least it was someone familiar to cling to. "Where's Papa, he should be here!" Gustave cried through his tears. "Where's Papa?"
Mother grabbed his arm when he tried to run to find him. "Your father," his mother replied softly. "Your REAL father…" Mr. Y's eyes grew wide and he began to plead with her. But she whispered back to him, "He has to know, you're all he has left now." What could she mean by that? They had just met Mr. Y a few days ago. But his mother began to sing softly, explaining what she meant.
"Look with your heart
And not with your eyes
The heart understands
The heart never lies
Believe what it feels
And trust what it shows"
He needed to find his father. Gustave needed some sense of normalcy and quickly. His hands were shaking from shock and Gustave needed the reassurance that everything would be alright, but when he tried to run, his mother grabbed his wrist to keep him there as her song grew weaker and weaker.
"Look with your heart
The heart always knows
Love is not always beautiful
Not at the start
So open your arms...
And close your eyes tight
Look with your heart
And when you find love…"
Suddenly everything made sense. The way Mr. Y looked at Mother, the way Mr. Y looked at him. Gustave's eyes grew wide as he realized what that meant. His father wasn't his father; Mr. Y was his father! Everything he had ever known was nothing but an elaborate lie. Mr. Y reached out as if to touch him, but Gustave shrank away. It couldn't be true! "NO!" he screamed before running to find the man he had always thought was his father. Surely he could explain everything!
"Gustave!" Mr. Y screamed as when he ran. He glanced back and saw Mother trying to get up to follow him but she collapsed into Mr. Y's arms.
"Father!" Gustave sobbed when he saw the familiar figure in the crowds coming towards him. He threw himself at the Vicomte, in desperate need of reassurance. "Mother…Oh Father, it's awful! You have to hurry Father!"
"What's wrong Gustave?"
"Miss Giry…she…and Mother…" Gustave's body shuddered as he sobbed into Raoul's chest.
"Where's your mother?" he demanded.
"The…the p…p…pier!" The next thing he knew, Gustave was being pulled through the park by his hand back in the direction he had come from. No sooner than the pier came into view than Gustave's father stopped. The sob in his throat caught and he stared in shock. Mr. Y had Mother in his arms as he whispered her name over and over again. She wasn't moving and her eyes were closed. "Mother?"
His father put his hands on his shoulders. "Come Gustave, there's nothing we can do."
"But…but what about Mother?"
"There's nothing we can do," he repeated before leading him away, Mr. Y never becoming aware of their presence.
Erik watched Gustave bolt through the crowds like a spooked horse. There was nothing that he wanted more than to go after his son, but Christine was dying in his arms. He had to do something, anything to save her. "Christine, stay with me," he pleaded as he put more pressure on her wound, trying desperately to keep her from bleeding to death.
Out of the corner of his eye, Erik saw a crowd forming. The gunshot, Gustave's screaming, and his own had attracted a lot of attention from Phantasma's spectators. Everyone was staring as the famous Christine Daae lay dying in the arms of the mysterious Mr. Y. "Get out of my way!" a male voice shouted. An older man with salt and pepper hair pushed his way through the crowds and made his way to kneel beside Erik. He pushed Erik's hands away and took over. "Bullet to the stomach; that makes things more difficult. But not my first case. Pinch here." Erik did as he was told, as the man seemed to know what he was doing and was at least slowing the blood flow. "Spent some time down in Cuba when we were fighting the Spaniards. Never lost anyone to a bullet down there and I'd hate to lose one now that I'm home."
"Who…who are you?" Erik asked, staring at the man in disbelief.
"Louis Katz," the man replied. "I was a surgeon with the army for a number of years." He began to rip long strips from Christine's skirts to use as bandages. "Guess you were lucky that my wife decided to bring the children today. Let's see if we can keep her going until someone a little more prepared can get here. I said to pinch that!"
He wasn't sure how long it took, but the surgeon stayed but his side until proper help arrived, and Erik was dragged away from Christine. He fought violently to stay with her, but eventually he was overwhelmed and pulled away to make room for someone who could help her better than he. "Meg!" he heard a familiar voice shout, followed by a feminine scream. Erik saw Giry being restrained as a hysterical Meg was seized by the police.
"Wait!" Erik shouted to be heard over the chaos. Everyone turned to look at him. "She's not dangerous!"
"She shot an unarmed woman!" one of the policemen protested.
Erik shook his head. "She didn't mean it! It was an accident! Jail won't help her, she needs real help. She's troubled and…and I didn't realize it until it was too late. I swear, she's never been violent before."
"Please," Giry pleaded. "She didn't mean to hurt Christine! She was going to hurt herself and when he tried to take the gun away, it just went off!"
The police officer glanced back and forth between the two hysterical women. Meg was being held by two more officers and was screaming for her mother. "It's not my call to make," he finally said. "We have to take her in. But if what you say is true, then she'll most likely wind up in a hospital." Erik nodded, knowing there was little else he could do for the Girys. He knew that it was his fault that this had happened to Meg, and therefore to Christine, and the least he could do was get her the help she needed.
Christine was in the hands of those who could help her best, and Meg was in the hands of the authorities. That just left one person left. "Gustave?" he called, scanning the crowd for his son. Gustave had run off after Christine admitted the truth. Erik had been afraid this would happen, but hopefully the boy would warm up to the idea. Or at least not fear him any longer. "Gustave!"
"What's wrong?" one of the policemen asked.
"Gustave, m…her son, is missing." Erik realized that he nearly said 'my son' but right now that would cause more questions that he didn't want to answer. "He was here with Miss Giry, that's why we were down here, then he ran away after she was shot. You have to find him before something happens to him." Erik turned to Fleck, Gangle, and Squelch, who had finally arrived to figure out what the commotion was about. "I want one of you to check Miss Daae's dressing room, one of you to check backstage where he liked to go exploring, and I want one of you to check Miss Daae's hotel room in case he went all the way back there."
"What about the boy's father?" the officer asked. "Maybe he went to the Vicomte, or at least he might know where to look."
"The Vicomte de Chagny is gone. He left the moment the performance was through. One of my employees saw him leave," Erik admitted. "I'm not sure anyone but the Vicomte himself knew where he was going."
"Well that's rather convenient."
"Are you implying the Vicomte knew that Meg knew she was going to shoot his wife?" Erik shook his head. "No, it was an accident, and even if Meg had planned on hurting Christine, that's too cruel, even for the Vicomte."
Erik led the search for Gustave for hours, but there wasn't any sign of them. Eventually Fleck found him sitting in the aerie with his head in his hands. On a whim, he had come up here, thinking that since Gustave had been so enthralled with his automatons, he might have come up here, but there was no sign of his son. "Have you found him?" he demanded when he saw her.
Fleck got quite for a moment. "We're not going to," she finally answered. "The Vicomte and Gustave's belongings are gone. They're no longer on Coney Island."
He roared in rage. "I'll kill that drunken fool!" Erik screamed. "How dare he take my child?!"
"That's not all, Sir… Erik exhaled slowly, trying to reign in his temper. "I found a single ticket for a boat back to France with Miss Daae's belongings."
His eyes grew wide. "When does the boat leave?"
"It's already gone. It left a few hours ago."
With a roar of rage, Erik lashed out at the nearest automaton, sending it crashing to the ground, essentially destroying it. "Gustave is my son! Not his, mine! If he thinks he's escaping this unscathed, he's sorely mistaken! I'll kill him!"
Erik stormed out of the room, unable to stay there any longer. He needed an outlet for his rage, and there wasn't anything for him there other than his work and ruining it would only anger him later on. He hadn't made it very far when he slammed into someone. Erik was about to shout when he realized it was the same man who stepped forward to help Christine on the pier. "I was hoping to run into you eventually," the former surgeon said with a tired smile.
"Why are you still here?" Erik asked, too angry with the world for formalities. It wasn't fair! Why did everything bad have to happen to him? He finally had chance to have happiness for the first time in over ten years, only to find it slipping through his fingers like sand.
"I was asked to assist with the care of the Vicomtess," Katz explained. Erik couldn't help but cringe at the use of Christine's proper title. Most of the Americans were crude and saw the Vicomte as a target of gossip and nothing but baggage that the famous Christine Daae was forced to deal with. Americans loved Christine and loved to hate her husband, which made it easier for Erik to deny the existence of their marriage.
"How is she?"
"Extremely lucky. A few inches up and it would have hit her stomach, which probably would have killed her. An inch or two down and I wouldn't have been able to save them both."
He could feel the blood drain from his face. "Both?" Erik repeated weakly.
"Oh shit, pretend I didn't say anything…I'm sure she would have announced the news when she was ready." Katz pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "But she'll pull through. She's awake and asking for her son and someone named Erik."
"That would be me. May I go see her?"
"She's resting now, but I don't see why not. But I'm warning you, we had to give her some morphine to help with the pain. She might be a little…well…And she's going to need 'round the clock care. If anything doesn't seem right for any reason, take her to a hospital."
"I understand," Erik replied. He held out his hand. "Words cannot express my gratitude. You saved her life and for that, I'm forever in your debt."
Katz shook his hand. "I was just doing what any decent human being would have done." The two shook once more before Erik ran to Christine's side.
"Erik?" she murmured as he knelt beside her bed. "Erik, I don't feel right."
"It's from the morphine they had to give you from the pain."
Christine blinked slowly and looked around the room. "Gustave? Where's Gustave?"
Shame and anger welled up inside him. "Christine, oh my Christine…" Erik buried his face in his hands trying and failing to keep his composure. "We need to talk."
There was nothing Raoul wanted more than to drown his sorrows in drink. The love of his life had been murdered and his child wasn't really his child. But Gustave had finally fallen asleep after hours of nonstop sobbing into his chest; if Raoul got up for a drink, he risked waking him and repeating the process. Gustave had held up until the ship left the port, and he realized that his mother was never coming back.
Raoul felt terrible about pulling Gustave away like that without giving him time to mourn, but he also knew if they stayed on Coney Island any longer, the Phantom would have taken Gustave away. The Phantom might have been Gustave's father, but Raoul had invested ten years of his life raising the little boy, and even though he didn't always know how to show it, he did love him.
The Phantom had taken everything from him: his wife, his chance at a loving marriage and a happy life, and Raoul wasn't about to lose his son too. He smoothed the sleeping Gustave's hair as the ship rocked back and forth soothingly. All he could do was hope that Gustave could eventually forgive him for what he had done.
