I meant to get this finished in time for day 18 of Potober 2021, with the prompts "Your Fears Are Far Behind You," rescue/ protection/ the rooftop, but clearly that didn't happen. This is a bit of a prelude to a series I've been working on that'll turn into a rewrite of LND, so there will be more to come! Title from The Mighty Echo by The Family Crest.

"Ah, it's you," was the first thing the Opera Ghost said when Meg found him. He was standing atop the roof, and he'd barely needed to look over his shoulder to see that the soft velvet footsteps approaching from behind belonged to the daughter of his box keeper. She approached and stood at a distance, likely for her own safety, and he only took a moment to confirm that she was alone before looking back out over the city. Streetlamps were being lit, and as darkness descended it seemed as though the stars were spread out beneath them. He wondered why he'd stopped travelling up here, when he'd gotten too busy to appreciate the sight. Paris was really quite beautiful.

"Christine's safe," she said, and he went very still. "And so's the Vicomte." He could see them in his mind's eye, her wedding dress in tatters around her as she half carried him out to the boat, a cruel necklace of bruises around his throat as he gasped for breath. He would not remember her tears, nor her sacrifice. He did not deserve that.

"So this is the final act," he said. "Are the rest behind you?"

"I can handle you by myself," she said, tilting her chin up. Confidence, once again unsurprising. He'd seen her on stage, watched her progress through the ranks of the ballet rats, seen her face down crowds and patrons on and off stage. Yet he wondered how much of it was courage and how much was bravado.

"Little Meg Giry, ready to capture the feared Opera Ghost," he said, almost a chuckle if his chest weren't so hollow. "Your pride shouldn't let you turn down an army. I'm a dangerous man." "I let them do as they please," she said. "They were determined to explore the cellars."

"And you chose the roof?"

"I thought, if I were the Opera Ghost, where would people least expect to find me?" A clever insight, one that nearly won an acknowledgement from him, but he managed to restrain himself. She was not here to lord her success over him, and the thought of the mob ransacking what little remained of his home was enough to wipe away any trace of admiration he might have had. "I'm afraid I will not permit myself that final indignity of capture," he warned her. "Do not force my hand." His bloodstained hand, and although he'd never manage to escape his guilt he didn't want to add her to his list of casualties. He was not yet depraved enough to enjoy hurting young women, and her mother had always been useful.

"I'm not here to turn you in," Meg said. At this he turned slightly so his better half was facing her, almost anticipating her expression to crack into a smile as she delivered the punchline. What reason did she have for sparing him from the police? What possible motive would allow her to overlook his crimes?

"No?" he asked, forcing his voice to remain light. "Then perhaps you've a pistol? Revenge for yourself, or for… for her?" He cursed himself for the crack in his voice at the end, unable to even come close to speaking her name. It was fitting, that even his most treasured instrument would betray him after what he'd done to her.

"She gave no information to them," Meg said. "I think she'd rather forget the whole affair." "Quite kind," he said. "But we both know there can be no mercy." It was oddly easy to turn to face her fully, show her the monster she'd overlooked. He was no longer wearing his mask, and to her credit she only paled for a moment before steeling herself and continuing to speak. Where once he might have been touched he now felt distant and surreal, as though he'd dreamed up the entire encounter. Maybe he had, having been beaten into unconsciousness after being caught by the mob. If there was any hope in the world he'd wake up the day before his premiere and be able to avoid the disaster altogether, but he knew there'd be no such mercy.

"Piagni is dead," she said, and he was almost more surprised that the news managed to shock him for a moment before he schooled his expression into indifference. "You didn't know?"

"I didn't… I intended only to replace him. I'd forgotten… although I suppose that makes it worse, does it not?" He chuckled darkly as she remained silent. "And he wouldn't have been the first. I've killed before, little Giry."

"I know," she said. "And the killing must stop."

"On that we are agreed," he said. He gave her a solemn nod and then turned, facing the city once again. "The mob has likely reached my house by now. Pity: I would have preferred the lake. There'd have been a chance of partial decomposition before discovery. But I suppose the matter won't concern me for much longer." He stepped up towards the edge of the roof, and Meg gave a sharp intake of breath as she realized what was about to happen.

"Don't," she said, her voice shaking. He didn't move, more from morbid curiosity than any real desire to listen. "This doesn't need to end this way."

"What do you know of this tale?" he asked, and the beautiful numbness his heart had been wrapped in began to dissipate as he spoke. "Have you lived decades being hated and despised? Have you faced danger at every turn? Have you been trapped as a monster? This is by far the most pleasant way for this story to end." The best option he had left, although it would have been a better story if he'd done it years ago, if he'd withered away underneath the Opera without ever meeting her, if he'd been smothered after he'd taken his first breath. He was too selfish to face the mob and feel himself be torn apart, and too weak to face the endless years that stretched out ahead of him like a living grave. At least this way he'd go with the memory of her compassion, and with the delusion that for a brief moment he'd been loved.

"Do you think she would have wanted this?" Meg asked, and he flinched as though she'd struck him through the heart. She would not have, he knew that, but she was too kindhearted for her own good. Her own self sacrifice was insufficient reason to continue plaguing her with his presence, especially given the risk of his greed and hunger rearing its ugly head again.

"What is that to me," he said, his tone dull and prompting no response.

"You gave your life to her," she said anyways, and he wondered if being flayed would be less painful than this. He'd underestimated her, a little ballerina with a mind like a scalpel, methodically pulling apart his heart with every word. But perhaps it was a task easily done, the shattered organ torn from his chest with her departure and too broken to be worth protecting any longer. What did this pain matter when he would be ending it very soon?

"She didn't want it," he replied. That desperate speech, the ring and the kneeling, so very pathetic as she'd reached out to expose him. She'd wanted him dead then, baring the target to the snipers, and he was disappointed they'd missed. Although at the time he'd been busy ensuring they wouldn't take a single shot, holding his love captive as a bullet shield. He was really quite the romantic, was it any wonder that she'd run from him as soon as he'd let her?

"She didn't want the proposal," Meg agreed, a wince in her voice as she likely remembered the shameful scene. She would have been watching from the wings; he'd been too mad to notice any but Christine on the stage, and he idly wondered if Meg was here because didn't have a chance to see before remembering that he'd bared his face to her just a few moments ago. "But that doesn't mean that you're free to throw yourself away. You have a duty."

"A duty," he echoed, the words seeming almost comical. The only duty he had was to stop himself before more horror began, before he began to break even further and become a more detestable menace. She didn't hate him yet, and this was the best way to keep it that way.

"A duty," Meg agreed. "I read your music, you know." And of course she did, she'd been performing in his own bloody opera, but that sentence carried enough for him to be seized with a sudden fear. To the right eyes Don Juan was the story of his soul, of the loss of innocence at the seduction of power, of the dance between love and horror that he'd forever walked. He'd assumed the vast majority of the cast would fail to see the underlying messages, and had hoped that Christine would care enough to look deeper. It was humiliating to be revealed to Meg instead.

"I offer no excuses," he said, and she scoffed.

"Do I seem like I'm here for excuses?" she said. "Even among the personal overtures it's a work of genius, even I can recognize that. Are you willing to doom your music too?" Don Juan would never be performed again, a realization that brought him a pang of grief. The crimes of its creator were now too bound up in it, and it would never be heard in its entirety as long as Paris remembered the Opera Ghost. But even still, by living he was not improving the situation.

"You assume I have other works to write," he said. "Perhaps that was my magnum opus. I cannot be the one to resurrect it."

"I know you have more to write," she said confidently. "Don Juan did not speak of a man who'd let Christine go. And yet here we are."

She was correct. Don Juan was a dark seducer, who possessed the very souls of the women he preyed upon. He'd broken from that character and broken himself in the process, but he was glad that Christine did not meet Amnita's tragic fate.

The faintest strain of a melody echoed through his mind, the start of a new song that had potential to grow into something more, the seed of his experiences, and he viciously shoved it away. But perhaps Meg had heard it too, for her voice was soft and pleading as she asked "wouldn't you like to be heard?"

All his life he'd wanted to be heard. He wanted his music to speak where he could not, and used it to beg for others to see the man trapped inside the monster. Despite the recent revelation that there was no man, that he was tainted all the way through and could no longer blame it on just his face, there was still a desperate part of him that yearned to create beauty. Even though he would never be lovely his music was his opposite, a tool powerful enough to both create and sustain love. Once he'd dreamed it had the power to make himself lovable as well, but even with that gone he yearned to continue to pour himself into his art. Could he really justify abandoning music, his greatest lover and most steadfast friend, when she was not yet finished with him?

Meg cleared her throat and he turned to see her holding out his mask. "I can help," she offered. "We wouldn't be able to stay here, but we can find somewhere to bring your music." And he saw it in her eyes, that same hunger for beauty. To both create and absorb it, to become a vessel for art itself and be seen as such. He wasn't a fool; it was likely she and her mother would seek employment elsewhere to escape the current reputation of the Paris Opera, a venture that a skilled musician could be an asset in. And if she needed to get rid of him it wouldn't take much more than an accusation within the earshot of the local authorities. She had the advantage, but she also had a plan and a vision where he was, for once in his life, entirely bereft.

He cast one more look over the rooftop edge, feeling that strange pull in his chest towards the pavement below. He would not be missed or mourned, and he quite likely would be doing everyone a favor. And he'd no longer be haunted by his memories of her, of all the ways she'd succeeded and every way he'd failed her. Yet he could still hear the music, and he could always return here. A rooftop would always be ready to welcome him, and it wasn't as if he had anything more to lose in this one last term in service to Music.

He reached out and took the mask from her, and felt the strangest flicker of hope at the spark of triumph in Meg's eyes.