Illusions Shattered
I tell Raoul that I love him.
This is Goodbye, my eyes say.
The pain and confusion in his familiar gaze is too much to bear.
I look to the future; I make myself promise not to look back.
Rage, bitterness, loathing... all disappear, trickling out of me like blood from a wound as I stare into the distorted visage of my teacher turned tormenter, my friend turned foe, my dear Angel turned devil:
my future... my life... my death.
Pitiful creature of darkness... I sing,
What kind of life have you known?
I want to feel something, anything besides this awful, yawning emptiness—not so much a lack of feeling as a feeling itself, irresistible and consuming. I know that the frigid water is creeping up over my ankles, up to my calves, and higher... but I hardly notice. It feels like dying, this sense welling up within me—like the last shreds of consciousness clinging to a failing body when the soul has all but loosed itself from mortal coils.
It's too late for me.
There is no happy ending for Christine Daaé here.
I cannot win... and yet, I must try. For Raoul, I have to try.
God Give me courage to show you...
You are not alone.
Something warm and hard in my hand... the ring.
Raoul's ring. My ring. I put it on my finger.
I'm doing this for Raoul—and myself, too.
That's what I tell myself.
I couldn't live with myself knowing that I'd killed him—that he died because of me.
It's my last hope.
The chances—true, desperate...
But no more desperate than I.