If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If not, it was never meant to be.
xxxxxxx
"Why have you brought us here? We must return!"
Christine ignored Raoul's attempt at pulling her back to the others, intent on only one thing. Or...in this case...someone.
"Here in this room, he calls me softly. Somewhere inside, hiding. Somehow, I know he's always with me. He, the unseen genius."
A siren's song, and Christine took full advantage of this innate ability to track the murdering bastard down. He was on the roof, she could sense it. Could always sense him...ever since that dark and stormy night in the chapel as a lonely child.
"Christine!" A strong hand shackled onto her wrist, forced her to stop and face Raoul, a wild look in the man's eyes that spoke of concern, confusion, towards Christine's unusual reason for going to the roof. We'll be safe there, she'd said.
Safe. What a laughable thought, that her angel would ever try to harm her. No, safety wasn't what she'd come up here for.
No...
She came because she knew this was where he'd be. While chaos ensued downstairs, he was untouchable, like smoke, slipping away into the relative sanctuary of the night again.
Then what was she here for? Why did she bring Raoul with her?
The answer was lost to her still, hidden underneath the all-encompassing fear and shock of what just happened, of the anger at knowing the reason why an innocent man had died.
How DARE he!? HOW DARE HE DO SOMETHING SO ATROCIOUS!? SO MONSTROUS!?
Her angel. Her devil. Her guardian. Her tormenter.
She felt Raoul start pulling her back to the stairs in the midst of her revelation. Alarmed at the mere thought of facing all of those people again - the accusation in their eyes, the poisonous words of 'condolences' at being the target of a crazed phantom - had her shrieking, "Don't take me back there! The Phantom of the Opera will kill and kill again!"
"There is no Phantom of the Opera!" Raoul barked, grabbed her by the shoulders as if to shake some sense into her.
She slapped his hands away, "You don't believe me, Raoul. How can you still not, after all you've seen!? After..." She swallowed, felt nausea roiling in her stomach as an image of Buquet's corpse swung like a large pendulum over the stage.
Her angel had done that. Her angel was a murderer, had placed a noose around Joseph Buquet's neck, and sent him flying over the edge.
For the first time, the fact that her angel was a physical being, a real living breathing person that had all the capability to sin and lie and lust and rage and do violence, truly sunk in.
The sickening realization left her stunned, breathless as the weight of this knowledge bore down on her like a five ton anvil. Woke her from the hypnotic daze that had served as a veil over her eyes since she met her Angel of Music. A veil that had not lifted even after that night. A surreal night of music, of enchantment, of gentle hands that literally blinded her with a silk scarf, of a liberating glee as she entrusted all of herself to her angel, allowed him to sweep her around and around the endless depths of the darkness she'd been led to.
He was her Angel of Music, had been for so long she could safely say she knew him as well as she knew herself. But that murderer that had killed Buquet on her behalf, the psychotic blackmailer that extorted money with no remorse...he was a complete stranger to her.
"My God, who is this man?" Christine breathed out, perhaps directed towards the God she'd just instinctually called for, because whoever this murderer was, he was certainly no angel. Perhaps an Angel of Death, but not Christine's angel.
"My God, who is this man?!" Raoul's parroted words snapped her from her daze. "This mask of death." And that's when the answer came. This stranger was the Phantom. Her Angel of Music and the Phantom were one and the same. Two sides of the same coin.
She could feel the heat of the Phantom's eyes burning a hole in her back. Of course he was here, where else would he be if not with her.
"I can't escape from him..." Christine whispered, and never has truer words been spoken. "And in this labyrinth, where night is blind, the Phantom of the Opera is here...inside my mind."
"I've told you already, Christine," Raoul grabbed her by the arms again, turned her his way, as dictating as always, even when they'd been children. "there IS NO Phantom of the Opera!"
HIs insistence on denial was grating on her already shot nerves, and all of the pent up frustration and whirlwind of emotions broke through the dam she'd been trying to keep up for so long. "Raoul, I've seen him!"
Seen him for what he truly was. A monster, more devil than man.
"Can I ever forget the sight?"
Eyes blazing with fury, his scarred face marred with it, twisting into a horrible visage as he screamed at her.
"So distorted...deformed...it was hardly a face in that darkness."
"Sing for me."
"But his voice filled my spirit with a strange, sweet sound." Her angel. "In that night, there was music in my mind. And through music, my soul began to soar!"
"And you'll live, as you've never lived before."
"And I heard, as I'd never heard before."
"What you heard, was a dream, and nothing more," Raoul said, with a sympathetic and sad shake of his head.
"Yet, in his eyes..." This loathsome gargoyle, who burns in Hell. "all the sadness of the world."
"Those pleading eyes, that both threaten," But secretly, yearns for heaven. Secretly. "and adore."
"Christine," Raoul murmured once more, the sympathy from before turning to pity, tipped her over the proverbial edge, and before she could stop them, the tears fell. She buried her face into her hands, wanting the comfort of the darkness to take her again, but it never came; elusive as the Phantom himself.
How could her Angel do this to her!? How could he lie to her all these years, hide behind the facade of this saint and use her in such a way. Betray her, and have the audacity to lay claim over her soul still. She was right. She couldn't escape him. She never will. He was as much bound to her as she had been to his angelic influence.
"No more talk of darkness. Forget those wide eyed fears" Raoul's words were soft, reassuring, an anchor in the maelstrom of her mind. "I'm here, nothing can harm you."
She lifted her gaze up from the darkness to meet the light in Raoul's eyes, understood now why she brought Raoul with her to the roof. Something in her knew of the chain that connected the Phantom to Christine. And that same part of her knew exactly how that chain could be broken.
This was the right thing to do, she thought as she wove her fingers into Raoul's waiting hand, let him pull her up.
"Say you love me." A request, a bold statement to the silence of the night and all those that lurked within it.
"You know I do."
Goodbye, angel, she sent through the fraying connection that had always allowed her to sense him, and waded into the sturdy strength of Raoul's arms. Felt the metal of Raoul's ring burning the skin of her finger as he slipped it on.
Numb. Erik had never felt such a thing affect him so utterly and completely without the aid of his morphine.
Like the ghost he was, he faded into the infinite depths of the darkness in the night. Barely felt the chill of the air around him because the chill in his heart was so much deeper. "That's all I ask of you." Christine's words were as sharp as a knife's tip, plunging into his breast over and over again with each syllable.
Unable to think clearly over the roar in his ears, Erik's legs and rote memory brought him back into the soothing warmth of his opera house, where he traversed the flies until he could resume his original position from before he'd been so rudely interrupted by that bastard Buquet.
"I know now why you're so familiar, freak. You were in Persia! You're that disgusting toy for the crazy bitch, aren't you? Well, guess what, freak? She wants her toy back!"
From his spot high over the heads of the audience, Erik was given a 180 degree view of the stage and the opera house, could watch unobstructed the impressive sight of thousands of people standing on their feet, paying their respects to the cast as they gave their final bow.
And yet, Erik's elbows planted on the railing as he watched the proceedings from afar - alone, always alone - he was deaf to it all, swarmed by memories of long past, the recollection of all of his deeds, good and bad.
Christine. His crowning achievement. His most disastrous failure.
He'd planted the seeds of his influence before he'd even known he'd done so. And, oblivious, he'd cultivated it, watched it - her - grow from a bud into the flower she was now, under the guise of her angel.
Raoul De Chagny. The sight of him in Erik's box, for once, didn't send him into a blind rage. The ring he'd given Christine, De Chagny had had it on him. Which meant that he'd been expecting to propose at sometime in the future. Perhaps it had always been inevitable that she'd be De Chagny's, and even a man as foolish and soft as this fop, could see it just as much as Erik could.
The Vicomte would be good for Christine. She needed stability in her life, and in Raoul De Chagny, she'll have it. She deserved happiness, and Raoul De Chagny could give her that. Her voice...
As she sailed out to the stage, to the cheers and cries of the adoring crowd, Erik knew that her voice would be treasured from now on.
This was Erik's dream for her. All that he'd wanted for his angel, she now had. He'd provided for Christine as much as she could - physically, metaphorically, spiritually - and like that night all those years ago, when he'd been reborn, baptized in blood, he let her go, assured now of her security.
In the blurred vision of the stage his tear-filled eyes provided, he watched her take a bow, cradling a bouquet of roses to her breast like a babe. Later, he'd berate himself for losing such a sense of his surroundings, allowed his emotions to push his usually hyper-aware notice of everything that went on around him enough for someone to sneak up on him.
The knife that touched itself to the skin of his neck sent him flying back into reality, and he turned just in time to dodge the needle's point glinting in the dim light of the chandelier.
Something overhead caught Christine's eye as she straightened from another bow. She looked up for the briefest of moments, frowned when she saw the two dark figures near the ceiling, legs and arms trapping each other, tangled together as if they were engaged in a dance.
One pushed the other away, the faint outline of two men emerging into a stand slowly. The pair shadows faced off against one another, and as Christine watched, one raised an arm, its outline intersected with the lines holding the chandelier, and then it came down like an axe.
The ropes fell away like wriggling snakes, and as Christine watched, like a member of the audience would watch a play on stage, the other figure lunged forwards for the rope.
Too late, something in Christine's mind whispered to her.
The chandelier tipped forwards, suspended now only by the one remaining rope on its opposite side. That too gave way, unable to hold the weight of the massive light fixture by itself, and as Christine watched with a worryingly detached attention, the two ton mass of metal and fire came crashing down on the heads of the people below.
What became of the two figures, Christine didn't know. One moment, she was standing on the stage, her ears filled with the screams and cries of the survivors, her vision blinded by blood. The next, she was sitting in her dressing room, Raoul shouting her name into her face.
All she could think, as she stared at Raoul's wide, terrified eyes, was 'Who were those two men?'. One was the Phantom, she was sure of it. But was he the one that cut the ropes? Or was he the one that had so desperately clawed at the air in an attempt to grab the ropes, foolishly believing he was able to hold the weight of the chandelier himself.
The one that had been set upon by the other man once the chandelier fell.
