The Phantom Ascending |✔| [Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction]

Beneath the Opera House

Erik

I remained hidden deep in the catacombs long after she was gone, long after my pursuers gave up and left.

Without Christine, my home – the Paris Opera – had no hold over me anymore. After all, the world was a large place and its shadows numerous enough to accommodate my monstrous face.

And yet she touched it without flinching.

The thought burst like an angry wound in the center of my chest. I threw a nearby wooden crate against the wall and it smashed to pieces, empty, broken, like myself.

Christine... Why?

Like a cursed hero in a fairytale, I had my one chance at happiness, and I have failed. Why couldn't she love me?

I sat without moving for hours, trying to comprehend what just happened. Christine loved Raoul. Instead of killing him, I let them leave. It was over.

I loved her for so long, and I taught her to sing, but once she saw my deformed face, I had no chance to win her over. Not when my competition was that foppish nobleman. And the fact she knew I had murdered men didn't help me in her eyes, either. I laughed bitterly.

Later, returning to my ransacked lair to retrieve some of my possessions, I sang a sad goodbye to the place that had shielded me for so many years. It guarded my dreams and secrets, it allowed my shame and loneliness to echo here, far from the world.

No longer.

Now it was desecrated by the angry mob, and the opera above it burned by the fire I accidentally caused. I needed to hide elsewhere, but where?

The next time when you look into the shadows and see a patch of moving darkness, look elsewhere, for no one wishes to cross paths with the phantom of the opera.