The Angel's Finale
The stone was cold beneath his body. He was prostrate on the floor, placed within a puddle of his own tiny tears. She was gone; she had left; she would never return. She and her Vicomte were safely tucked away on a train to the Northlands by now; never again would that sweet voice grace his ears, light up these chambers and bring life and love and happiness to his own dark world.
He longed only to hear that voice. In her presence, his breath was sucked from his lungs; faced with an eternity of emptiness, an eternity without her, there was no breath to be sucked. His eyes shut, and behind those lids he found paradise. Her curls, falling across his hand and tickling that icy flesh. Her sweet hands, pressed against his neck. Her lips, soft and gentle and flawless, touching against his forehead. Her eyes, peering steadily into his own. Her voice, dragging him towards ecstasy even when merely spoken and when ravaged by emotion, as she spoke her gentle thanks, and her devastating goodbyes.
His eyes opened, to find only impassive stone. His own mind was a storm of raging seas, his soul still enraptured by the idea of her and thus distracted from the madness and the death that was consuming him. He would never touch her again, never hear her again, never see her again, never know her again. The thought was too much to bear, and yet he repeated it to himself again and again, in hopes of remembering, in hopes of impressing upon himself the reality of the situation. He longed for death, longed for the perfect release that would finally come for him.
Would her memories haunt him in the afterlife? Would he become a true phantom, and haunt the bowels of the opera and continue to cause trouble for the managers? Would his soul endlessly roam the depths of solitude, condemned to a conscious eternity without her? Would he traverse the silent streets of Paris, more unseen now than ever before, and be forced to watch the world move by in happy generations, and forever be without her, without love, without joy?
Or would he pass into blissful nothingness, and know nothing, and feel nothing, and become nothing?
He longed for both at times, but in truth more for the former than the latter. With the latter, he escaped pain—but with the former, he at least knew her still. He did not wish to forget her, though he did wish to forget the pain. The pain was nearly too much to bear, but he did not wish for emptiness. Thought was important to him, was revered as something to be forever held dear; without thought, without the memory of her face—her hair—her skin—her voice—he would hate himself more than ever he could while alive.
He wondered, then, over the centuries of haunting the opera, if her memory would fade. Would her face become only a pale smear? Would her hair lose its shape and definition, and become only a blob of color crowing that blotch? Would his ears forget her voice, forget its clarity and its purity and its perfection? Would he lose her then, just as he would lose her in the nothingness? He believed, now, that he could never forget her, but always one forgets. It is only a matter of time. Of what as a child he swore never to forget, he could now only manage the most vague of recollections, and he had only lived one lifetime—not even a full one.
In eternity, he would have millions of lifetimes. How could he keep all of those tiny details close to him? To write it down would be pointless; it would age and crumble and be destroyed. In the event of a fire or a flood, it would be gone in moments. Perhaps every detail could be revisited whenever the mind found a quiet moment, but how long before the mind could not quite recall, even though it had recalled only hours before?
How long, before he lost her in memory as he had in body?
His lips parted, but her name would not come. His throat was too raw, his tongue too dry, his body too tired. Death would come soon; only a day or two remained, before he would begin the inevitable rush towards the answers to all of his questions. Again he tried, and again he failed; and then, upon the third attempt, he managed the tiniest of breaths:
"Christine..."
He could almost hear her voice echo his name in return. "Erik...!"
Those eyelids slipped shut again, as he imagined that note of sound over and over again. Any sound she had made was acceptable for recall; he wished only for the sound of her voice.
The voice of Christine Daaé—the voice that made angels weep... Its sound was that which lulled him into his final sleep.