A/N: Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted on time, haha. I'm so glad I have more time to write now, and I hope you enjoy these last few chapters as much as I've enjoyed writing them. The end is near (; This chapter may come across as a little dramatic or unrealistic, but it was by far the only method I could think of so that Erik would not be a murderer, and yet there would be reason enough for him to go on stage as Don Juan.
la la la le: Cliffies are the worst, haha!
FALLING-ANGEL24: Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoy the story (:
TierneyMcDonald: Oh dear, I hope that reaction was a good one, haha! Maybe you'll get your lucky break with this chapter?
Masked Man 2: As usual, I'm so glad you enjoy the updates! I really liked writing that chapter, because writing about Madame Giry and Erik's interactions never fail to make me feel all mushy inside... though the mushy feels in that chapter are perhaps a bad omen of what is to come... in this new update.
Lydia the tygeropean: Thank you (:
E-man-dy-S: Oops, I think you'll see for yourself when you read this chapter haha.
Horseland123: Haha well, you'll see. Erik's not on the doorstep to death anytime soon, though.
TheBlackCardinal: Haha thank you for staying through all 50-odd chapters! I hope you've enjoyed the story so far though (: I didn't imagine this story to turn out so long when I first started writing it, that's for sure!
Thank you for all new favs/follows -hugs-
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Chapter 53: The Performance Itself
Paris, 1899
This was it.
The moment.
The time they had all been waiting for. The vicomte de Chagny. Christine. The Phantom of the Opera. Madame Giry. Amélie. The managers. The daroga.
For all sorts of different reasons, with the hopes of different outcomes, but nevertheless, the moment had arrived.
Christine sat in her dressing room, powdering her nose and rearranging her curls. She adjusted the puffed sleeves of her maid costume, and checked that the laces of her boots were tied up.
"So this is to be the moment," a voice said from behind her. She turned.
"Oh, Angel," she smiled, "yes."
"Are you excited, Christine?" He asked solemnly.
She nodded eagerly. He tilted his head curiously.
"If by any chance we do not succeed tonight, Christine… you are to deny all connections to me, is that clear?"
"What? What are you saying, Angel? We will succeed, no, we must succeed. Nothing will go wrong."
The corners of his lips quirked upward slightly. "Ever the optimist, Christine. Very well. But let us assume, then, that something could go wrong. If that happens…"
"You will be my teacher, still," she said staunchly. "Angel, I have made too many mistakes, let you down too many times. I will not add this to the list. Besides, nothing will go wrong."
The moment the words left her mouth, the door swung open without warning. "Christine Daae, what in the world are you still doing here?" A grumpy voice groused out, before the portly figure of Piangi entered the room.
Christine froze.
Piangi took one look at the two occupants in the room. The soprano sitting at her dressing table, looking very much like she had seen a ghost, and the man standing next to her, dressed in black and with a hat tipped over his face.
He opened his mouth to scream, and the next thing Christine knew, Piangi was crumpled on the floor, with her Angel standing over him. There had been no scream uttered from Piangi's mouth. Christine pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle her own scream.
"What happened?" She whispered, making her way gingerly over. "Is he… dead?"
"He's been knocked out," her Angel said grimly. At her aghast expression, he sighed. "Do not worry, I merely tapped on my knowledge of pressure points. He felt no pain, and will awake soon enough."
Christine stared dumbly at the prone figure on the floor. "What shall we do with him? But more importantly… who will sing the part of Don Juan now? Oh Angel… you should not have…"
"We had no choice," her Angel said. "He could have exposed us all."
"Oh!" She suddenly exclaimed, her eyes shining. "You could sing it, Angel. You could!"
He looked at her as though she was mad. "Pardon?"
No, no, no. There are so many ways this could go wrongly.
"Think of it! This is your opportunity, Angel… wouldn't you like to sing on the stage where your first opera debuts?" She clasped her eyes together. "It could work! We have no other choice! Please, Angel, someone else could come any moment."
Erik knew they had no other choice. He grimaced. Mentally, he cursed the overweight Piangi and his inopportune entrance. He bent down and, with much effort, removed Don Juan's robe from Piangi, quickly pulling it over himself.
Between teacher and student, they managed to stuff Piangi into one of the armoires in Christine's dressing room, leaving the door slightly ajar so the man could breathe.
Mere moments after they had stepped back from the armoire, the door burst open again and this time, an irritated stagehand looked in.
"Senor! There you are! You were supposed to fetch Mademoiselle Daae and make your way to the stage to await your entrance! The curtains are almost up!"
Silently, Erik nodded, following the stagehand out of the room, with the hood of the cloak pulled low to hide his face.
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Christine swallowed nervously. The time for her entrance had come, and she was to enter in the role of Aminta, the maid who would be seduced by Don Juan. She smoothed her sweaty palms over skirt and skipped onto the stage, mimicking a carefree maid.
From backstage, Erik stood with clammy palms. For once, the Opera Ghost had clammy palms. He could have laughed at the ridiculous thought.
He should not have—could not—no—there were so many risks—he would be discovered and—how could he do this? Erik clenched his fists as his mind swirled with overwhelming thoughts. Think, Erik, think.
And yet, there was no way to back out of this. As the opening chords of the song began, and the time for Erik's entrance drew closer and closer yet, Erik knew. There was no backing out, no other way to do this. The stage was set, the game had been played.
There was no going back.
For this was it.
The Point of No Return.
Erik stepped out onto the stage and sang.
As his voice filled the room, murmurs of amazement started to build. The opera goers had never heard Piangi sing this way before. And when the young soprano Christine Daae opened her mouth to sing along, the audience could have sworn they'd heard the angels' song. Some lifted their lorgnettes to take a closer look at the hooded, cloaked, man, but had no idea whether it was Piangi or not. Surely, they reasoned, it could not be Piangi—for wherever had that man been hiding a voice as wondrous as this?
We've passed the Point of No Return.
As their song came to a grinding halt, Erik found himself breathing heavily. Partly out of sheer excitement, and partly because perhaps this hoax could end smoothly.
But all of a sudden, there came a loud ruckus from backstage, with screams and the sounds of objects thrown on the floor, with the stagehands' loud murmuring. Erik tensed. Next to him, Christine looked up toward her Angel with wide eyes.
"Ubaldo, Ubaldo! He's dead!" A shrill voice sounded from backstage, before Carlotta burst onto stage, her hair in a mess, her makeup smudged with tear tracks down her face, and her skirts rumpled. "He's dead! That is not my Ubaldo. That…that… is an imposter!"
She rushed forward, intending to grab Erik with her meaty hands, and he sidestepped hastily. She missed, her hands swiping into thin air, but her ring caught onto his hood and the fabric was yanked off his head, dislodging his mask slightly with the force of the motion.
"No!" Christine screamed, as Raoul jumped up from his seat in Box Five, pulled out the pistol from his holster, and shot.
The gunshot rang through the theatre and some of the audience screamed. Beside, Raoul, Firmin groaned quietly, thinking of all the scandal there would be the next day, the news that would drag the Palais Garnier's name into the mud again.
It was a deafening gunshot.
It had hit true.
Erik crumpled in pain as the bullet tore through flesh and sinew, his knees buckling. Christine shrieked and rushed to help him up, as Carlotta rounded on Erik menacingly.
"He killed my Ubaldo! This… Opera Ghost!" She shrieked for the room to hear, tottering forward unsteadily on her heels.
Erik lurched to his feet, and kicked a small trigger on the stage. The floor beneath him collapsed to reveal a trapdoor, and he fell in, Christine along with him. The trapdoor swung and snapped shut, and Carlotta shrieked, pounding on the floor and yelling for him to come back.
The last sight the audience had of the young soprano was of her shocked face as she disappeared into the floor, accompanied by her loud scream of fright.
"Get the Opera Ghost! He kidnapped Christine!" Raoul roared down to the gendarmes, and some rushed to shoot before the duo disappeared through the floor, but the fumbling hands and weak aim merely hit some of the chandeliers in the theatre, causing glass to rain down onto the audience.
And then there was pandemonium.
The opera goers were frantically rushing out of their seats to avoid the flying glass, some screaming that the ghost was back to haunt them all, and others merely seeking shelter from the loud gunshots that were echoing throughout the theatre.
The managers rushed out of the box. "Everybody, please, calm down! It was simply an accident! An accident!" They tried to run down the aisles to calm the audience down, but were merely shoved back and forth and pushed over as the stampeding crowd attempted to rush out of the theatre.
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It was dark, and she could not see anything.
"Angel?" Christine whispered. "Are you there?"
"Yes," came his pained reply.
"Where are we?"
"Trapdoor. A secret passage. Are you hurt?" He grated out, his voice so laced with pain that he could only manage fragments of sentences.
Christine felt herself for any injuries. They seemed to have landed on a lot of soft cushioning, and she would probably ache from bruises the next day, but otherwise she felt fine. "I'm not hurt, Angel. But Angel, you're hurt! We need to get you to a doctor."
"No," he said stubbornly. "You will go… back to the opera house immediately."
"I'm not leaving you! You're hurt!"
"I will be fine," he snapped. "You, on the other hand, will be needed back at the opera house. You have to go."
"What will you do?"
"I have my own plans," he said, his breathing becoming laboured. "Please. I need to show you the way out… before I lose consciousness… and we die here together."
She felt his hand grasp hers in the darkness, and the wetness on his palm made her eyes well up with tears.
It was blood.
The tinny smell of blood filled the air as he got to his feet shakily and tugged on her hand. Numbly, she followed him.
It was a long walk, and she could feel his grip weakening as they walked. He stumbled a few times, and she cried out in worry, but he grunted that he was fine, and forced her to continue walking. She could hear his breathing becoming even more erratic, as he struggled to breathe with the pain. The tears were running down her face now.
Finally, he stopped. There was a click, and then Christine felt the night air upon her face. Light from a streetlamp streamed into the secret passageway, and she blinked. They were in an alley just outside the opera house.
"Go back now," he gave her a gentle push in the direction of the opera house. "Go, and say… nothing about me. Remember, Christine. We… were not… in this together."
"Angel, no! You are hurt, you could die out here alone!" She clutched his arm.
"You promised to listen… to me… Christine." His face was contorted with pain. "Go! I have to leave… before the reporters come!"
"Angel," she sobbed. "Please, you have to stay alive. Please."
"I… have plans… Will be fine…" He started to walk off. "Go!"
She stood silently, staring at him, his once proud figure now hunched and bloody.
Suddenly he stopped and turned.
"Tell her… I love her." He choked out, before he turned and ran, half-stumbling with pain.
"Wait, Angel—who?" Christine began to ask, but he had dashed off into the darkness, quite possibly using the last strength he possessed in his body.
The night had swallowed him.
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A/N: Gee, I think I like to torture you guys with cliffies, hehe! Til the next week, and please read/review/fav/follow! It is much appreciated. xx