Disclaimer: Apart from this story, the only Phantom-related things I own are: a musical poster, a copy of Susan Kay's Phantom, a Phantom half mask, the OLC and Phantom 25 soundtracks, and the Phantom 25 DVD. That is IT.


Chapter 27: Freedom

Her freedom or her lover's life. The choice had never changed. What had changed was her. Erik's death was unimaginable. The life of a Vicomtesse was equally painful. In a flash of spontaneity, Christine realized that there has always been only one possible decision.

A mass of curls flashed before Raoul's eyes. His pistol was snatched from his belt. Christine pulled the trigger once. Her eyes squeezed shut at the harsh sound. Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. Two cries of pain accompanied the shots. Two guns clattered to the wooden floor. Two heavy thuds of falling bodies. Erik and Flavio both collapsed to the floor. Christine's sharp scream rang out.

There was a blur of confusion: what had happened? She did not shoot Erik by accident, did she? If so, then what did Flavio's bullet hit? No; she had not missed her target. Flavio's unmoving form was sprawled on the ground. A deep red stain blossomed across the front of his shirt and spread like poison.

Christine pushed away Raoul's restraining hand, loosened by surprise, and ran to her husband's side. Erik was still, his eyes closed lightly. His forehead and the left side of his face were ominously splattered with blood. The sight of his drained face and the deep red blood made Christine light-headed and almost hysterical. Her stomach felt as though it turned inside out, as the thought that Erik was dead crossed her mind. She knelt beside him, frantically stroking his face from hairline to chin. Her hands trembled violently as her fingers ghosted over his cheek.

Through lips that were quickly becoming paralyzed with fear, she managed to gasp: "Dear God – please don't be dead!" Not after everything. Not when I love you so. She anxiously shook his immobile body in hopes of arousing him.

Her shaking hand was grasped by a gentle yet steady one. Her heart dropped to her stomach and rose up to her throat in elation. "Christine." he whispered her name like it was his salvation. His voice, albeit raspy and rough, was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. Forget the inhumanly velvety tenor tones the Angel of Music possessed; they paled in comparison to Erik's hoarse voice now, this assurance that he was alive. That he had not been snatched from her.

Christine let out a shaky breath. There was suddenly too much adrenaline in her veins and she felt unsteady from it. Erik pushed himself up on his elbows and gathered her trembling form into his arms. "It's alright, love, it's alright." he coaxed.

The relief was overwhelming. She felt a desire to laugh or cry; she did not know which was stronger. Instead, she fisted her hands in Erik's lapels, brought her face level to his, and looked him in the eye. "Don't you dare die on me." She hissed fiercely.

Erik's hands, long and virtuosic, framed her face. There had never been anything more precious than that which he held in his hands. There was a glint in the grey depths of her eyes that spoke of determination and bravery, but also of desperation and worry. But most of all, there was a fierce, relentless love. "Never." he murmured in conviction.

It wasn't clear who moved first, but they collapsed into each other's embraces, clutching at the other as though their life depended on it. They savoured each other's presence, at how very real the other felt within their arms. They marveled that tonight they had not been torn apart, that they had the luxury of this fierce embrace. They relished in the blood that coursed through them, in the hearts that beat on in their unfaltering rhythms, in the fragile lives they carried.

Christine's hand went to Erik's temple. "You're bleeding so much." she whispered, her eyes wide and almost fearful, as though she was afraid even now that he would slip through her fingers.

"It takes more than a mediocre gunman like Flavio to kill me." he soothed her, brushing his lips against her brow. He stood up and offered a hand to Christine to help her up. He squeezed her hand before slipping away. In even footsteps, he crossed the distance to Flavio's side.

Erik bent down to Flavio, lowering his face to the dying man's. Blood trickled from the corner of Flavio's mouth, running from a pool that had gathered in his mouth. Erik fisted his hands into the lapels of his former friend's bloodied shirt and lifted his torso into the air. Flavio groaned weakly at the agony of the violent movement. "Feel the pain, Flavio?" Erik snarled. His eyes were a golden inferno. "That's her answer for you. She chose freedom – mine, and hers. You don't know what it means to be free. You think that love is a shackle, a deprivation of freedom. You don't understand that love is a form of freedom in itself. She freed me from my self-imposed prison, and I freed her from the confines of the society.

"She does love me. She surrendered her purity. She accepted this blood, your tainted blood, onto her clean hands. Would she have done that if she didn't love me, if she had wanted to be with the Vicomte?" he fixed his triumphant stare upon Flavio's face. "You were wrong, Flavio. You cannot break me. You cannot break us."

The light was fading from Flavio's eyes, but he fixed that dying gaze upon Erik's face. "I haven't lost." he growled savagely. Blood bubbled from his lips as he spoke. His voice was little more than a whisper, and even that was obviously toiling for his quickly diminishing strength. "One day, Erik, when you are rotting in this prison you built around yourself, you will realize that I am right."

Each breath he took grew more ragged and laborious. Each inhalation more shallow and weak. Yet he fought to stay alive, to endure the torture of a bullet in his chest, so that he could bestow his dying words. "Remember then," the blood rising from his mouth was obviously choking him, causing a torment that could be spared if he refrained from speaking. "When... when you regret... the choice which yo... you made today, that –" he inhaled painfully and his eyes squeezed shut for a moment. The effort of speaking was torturous. When he spoke again, his words were all but inaudible; Erik had to read his barely moving lips to understand. "That I... I had warned you... this... this is... y-your punish... ment..." his body convulsed in a series of spasms, violent despite his weakened and suffering state. He gasped, a final, violent, desperate attempt to live, and it abruptly ended.

Erik glowered into the blank, glazed eyes; eyes that were no longer the windows to the soul of a deranged man. A man who desperately searched for freedom, but had encaged himself all the more in his quest. In a resigned manner, Erik released his grasp on the corpse's shirt. The body dropped on the carpeted floor with a muted thud, heavy and lifeless. It was no longer Flavio Morino, the doctor from Venice. Like a machine that stopped running, its arteries no longer coursed with blood; its heart no longer pulsed in a steady rhythm; its brain no longer ticked with complex thoughts and ideas; its muscles no longer flexed in dexterous movements; its skin no longer felt the brutality of pain nor the tenderness of a fond caress. It was but an empty vessel. Something that was once alive and invaluable, now reduced to a lifeless, meaningless thing.

Erik rose and returned to where Christine stood. Her hair was in disarray. Her clothes were wrinkled. Her skin was ashen. Her eyes were hauntingly wide on her pale face. Their distinct blue-grey had never looked so watery. Erik cupped her jaw in his hand. He ran his thumb across her cheek. "It's all over." he whispered. She nodded mutely. Erik drew her into his arms. With a soft cry, she clutched him to her tightly. He pressed his lips to her forehead in a fervent kiss.

They remained like that for a moment, both of them needing the reassurance that they were alive, that they were still together. They held each other, drinking in all each other's presence, which had so very nearly been denied from them. Christine tilted her head up and sought Erik's lips with her own, moving as though they were both made of glass and the slightest force would shatter them. He obliged, kissing her with a tenderness that was more pronounced than all the passion in the world. If all their embraces, their sweet caresses, their tender looks, had failed to convince either of them that they were both alive and together, this kiss sealed their conviction that their lives were now entwined all the more, so much that they would weather any storm, together.

Raoul shifted uncomfortably at intruding on the private moment. The shuffling sound, however light, brought Erik's attention to him. The young man was standing where he had locked Christine in his grasp only moments ago, seemingly immobilized.

Erik the tender lover disappeared, replaced by the Phantom of the Opera. He regarded his former rival coldly. "Monsieur le Vicomte." He said. "Forgive me for ignoring your presence. I do not welcome intruders, you know."

Raoul stared, dumbstruck. Erik quenched the desire to strangle him in exasperation; was the fop in so much shock that the power of speech was taken from him? "I do not take kindly to men who barge in here and threaten both myself and my wife."

Raoul's eyes widened. "You're not planning to kill me, are you?" he spoke in a pathetic whimper. The naked fear in his eyes spoke that his death was a definite possibility to him.

The Phantom laughed his cold laugh, relishing in the power he held. In the end, Vicomte or not, all men were terrified of death. "No. Contrary to what you may believe, I do not wish to kill unless the situation requires it. And I hope that you have enough wits about to make sure that the situation does not require it."

Raoul swallowed. "Of course – name your price, sir."

Materialistic! Erik scoffed mentally. "My 'price', as you call it, is simple. First." The notorious Phantom commanded. "Leave England. Don't breathe a word about what happened here to anyone. A single hint, spoken in sincerity or jest; in sobriety or drunkenness; if you so much as mutter about it in your sleep, you will be sure that you will pay with your life." Raoul nodded fervently. He was not in a hurry to relive the events of this night, nor was he so willing to part with the land of the living. "Second, Christine is mine. Don't ever contend for her hand again. You are about to be married to a French woman of your own class and birth – be content with that."

Raoul paused. He had seen how Christine rushed to Erik's side when she believed he was dead. He had seen the undiluted terror as she strove to rouse him. He had seen the renewed hope when she saw that he had not been killed. He had seen their kiss, the kind that could only come from the heart. She truly did love Erik, despite what lay under that mask. Raoul may not understand it, nor was he happy with losing what was once his, but he would not hold Christine against her will.

Seeing Raoul's hesitation and mistaking it to be indecision, Christine spoke softly: "The girl who loved you was Little Lotte. Not Christine. I will never be the kind of wife you deserve. I don't belong in your world, Raoul; it would crush me. I belong with Erik – a life of music and singing, which you would deny me. Go back to Paris, marry Lady du Gaulle, and love her as you once loved me. She'll be a much better Vicomtesse for the de Chagny line, and a much more fitting wife for you than I ever can."

"Christine…" he nodded, his expression was unbelievably gentle, almost like the boy Christine met by the seaside all those years ago. "I won't deny you this happiness that you have found."

Christine gave him a small smile. "Thank you."

"And finally –" Erik continued. "When you return to Paris, tell them that the Phantom is dead. I don't care how you do it – you killed him yourself; or Christine witnessed it and told you; that he never existed except in rumours; or make up some fantastical story of your own. I must be a dead man, a legend, to all of France."

Raoul nodded a third time. " I can arrange for that, my word would be taken for granted."

"That is it, then." Erik said imperiously. "Follow through with these requests, and you can walk away with your life attached to your body."

"I will, sir." Raoul visibly relaxed, relieved that he had saved his own skin from the Phantom's wrath.

And so he left into the night, leaving behind two people who have fought for and finally received their freedom.


A/N: Crappy ending is crappy D:

I hope you like how that was resolved. As I mentioned in a couple of replies to the reviews of the previous chapter, the climax mirrors the Finale of Phantom, as Christine is presented with the same choice. Through the course of AIWIF, she has grown up, and her new maturity is manifested most potently in her decision to this situation.

There will be one more chapter after this, and then it's the end. I love all of you so, so much for reading this story, and following it, and leaving reviews. Especially those who have added me to their Favorite Authors or subscribed to me! Keep an eye out for anything else I'm going to post. I can guarantee a couple more Phantom one-shots (hint hint).

Anyways, please review! :]