Christine slowly opened her eyes, she felt weak and weary. She felt a sense of warmness, a warmness like a cold, hard place, suddenly warm and soft. Her vision was a bit blurry and teary. She blinked a bit to clear it up. She couldn''t imagine where she was. She was lying down on a blanket, in a small stone building. She tried to sit up, although her attempts were in vain. She was too weak, and decided to roll to her side instead. She heard a loud knock and felt a sharp pain in her head as she banged her head into something smooth and wooden. She tried at use this to pull herself up. She gripped the top of the, whatever it was, and tugged herself to her feet. She almost screamed when she saw where she was, she was in a mausoleum, specifically, her father''s. She was about to go running out as fast as she could possibly go, when she remembered that she needed to hide from ever being found, or run the risk of being named a witch, so she settled herself next to her father''s coffin. She wondered who saved her. At first she was convinced that it was Raoul. He came outside the next morning looking for her, and discovered her bleeding. He brought her to a hospital, and she was alright. However, she had the nagging thought that she had ended up here, in the mausoleum. Maybe it was a stranger, or perhaps Meg, come to check up on her. But oh, why oh why had she had ended up here. ""Ugh!"" she moaned as she remembered the last time she had come near the door of the mausoleum. She started to softly sing ""Wishing you were somehow here again, wishing you were somehow near, sometimes it seemed, if I just dreamed, somehow you would be here..."" The song had deeper meaning now, she couldn''t think of why, but it so much more to her now. Perhaps she was missing Raoul, or maybe even Erik, her angel. Or maybe both. Anyway, before she could think of what she should do next, she heard a crowd of mourners outside. She peered out through the small crack between the gates, and she saw, to her amazement, that it was snowing! It had been late spring when she had beaten, had she really been in a coma for all those months? For her amusement, she watched the mourners. They were burying what seemed to be an empty coffin (it appeared to be very light, the people were carrying it with ease). The person holding the coffin was young, maybe thirty-five years old. He looked oddly familiar, his eyes, nose, posture...it was her son Gaston! Who could possibly have died? She watched as Raoul stepped forward, knelt down, and wept. She couldn''t think at all of who the person who had died was, she looked and saw everyone she knew that had been alive when she left. It started to get dark, so she went to get a match to light a lamp that she had found. As she sat watching attentively, thinking of who could''ve died, in the flickering light of the lamp, she started to count up the months she must have been gone. ""There was May, then June, and July, Oh! I missed Belle''s first birthday! Oh well, at least I can see her now. Then August, September, October, it must be November now. Lets see, that''s six months, half a year!"" She wondered then perhaps, no, it couldn''t be! ""Maybe, they have assumed me dead, and are now giving me a funeral"" However much she loathed to admit it, she knew it must be the case.
She waited for all the mourners to leave. She hoped Raoul would linger though, so she could get one last glance at him. Unfortunately, he was apparently to grief stricken, and left immediately. She suddenly remembered as she watched him leave, a song that they had sung, years prior ""Say you''ll share with me one love, one lifetime, say the word and I will follow you. Share each day with me, each night, each morning..."". She longed to run after but she knew she couldn''t. After that, another song popped into her head ""Softly, deftly, music shall caress you. Hear it, feel it, secretly possess you. Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind, in this darkness that you know you cannot fight, the darkness of the music of the night."", and she was comforted.
She started to get hungry, as it must have been quite a while since she possibly could have eaten. At two in the morning, every noise at last had ceased. She new now that she could sneak out to get some food. She gently opened and closed the gates, as to not make a sound that would wake up anybody near the cemetery. Down the stairs she went, and before she went anywhere else, she stopped at her grave. She thought it ironic that she was standing before her grave, yet she was very much alive. It read
""Christine (then an image of her underneath, and underneath the image read...) Countess de Chagny (below that) 1854-1917 (below that) Beloved wife and mother"" It was simple and sweet, she loved it, although she was still alive. After she had looked over her grave, she walked through the cemetery to the gates. The trip was peaceful. The moon was full, and the snowflakes still fell. The moonlight glanced off the snowflakes, and make small patches of light on the ground, broken only when a softly hoooing barn owl flew overhead. When she reached the gates, she walked down the road in the forest on the other side, as to hide from any human that may pass. She decided however, that it was not safe to go to Paris, as she was well known, as the countess, and as an actress (after the opera house burned down, she still acted, and at the new opera house they had built on the other side of the city, she became a prima donna. A nice, generous prima donna though. She would never forget that Italian snob, Carlotta for as long as she lived) so she was likely to be recognized anywhere she went. This wouldn''t be good at all, since they had pronounced her dead. She would very much be cast as a witch. To be safe, she walked to the nearest small town, which she could never remember the name of. She walked into their caféé, which happened to be open because it was run by a drunkard who slept all day and was drunk all night. At least that is what he said when Christine asked him why the place was open. So she ate and went back to her home in the cemetery.