Seal My Fate•Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction

Chapter 22: Let It Be War Upon You All

Oh wow, we're almost done already! That's... wow.

Enjoy! :)

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Christine

The next few moments were a blur. In an instant, the audience was gone—though the performers and police were more active than ever—I was back on the ground, and the Phantom was nowhere in sight. Despite the differences in our goals, I figured that my best bet was to find Raoul and Meg—and pray they would be together.

After a few of the longest seconds of my life, I found them—and they were together, thankfully.

"Raoul!" I exclaimed, "thank goodness you're here! What's going on?"

"I don't know," he admitted, glancing around in an unsuccessful attempt to find the answer to my question.

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know," Raoul repeated.

"Then what are we going to do?"

"I," he fixed one of Meg's sleeves, "I don't know."

I hadn't expected him to be completely certain about everything, but the fact that he didn't even attempt to answer my questions was less than comforting. I found no hint at any source of the chaos—as far as I could tell, it was nothing more than pointless mass hysteria. And yet... something told me it was much, much more than that.

On the walls, "something" meant the small, near-invisible scratches in the paint. On the floor, it was the occasional drop of blood that seemed more intentional than a collision of two panicked individuals or the occasional stumbling. On the railings—the places usually occupied only by the Phantom himself... Were those footprints?

Luckily, I didn't have to figure that out, since a member of the crowd around us jumped forward and knocked me on the side of the head with a piece of metal, stopping my previous thoughts and replacing them with pure nothingness.

Meg

Christine and the man who had taken her were gone before even Raoul could stop them. I didn't catch more than a brief glimpse of his face, but I knew one thing for certain: it was not the Phantom—and, unfortunately, since this was Christine, that was bad news.

"Did you see where he took her?" Raoul asked me.

"Nothing."

"We need to find your mother," he declared.

"Why?"

Raoul sighed.

"Well, partially because she's your mother and I would feel more comfortable if you two were together. Partially because she raised Christine and she deserves to know what happened, and partially because she knows the Phantom better than anyone else and if anyone will know where he took her-"

"But he didn't take her."

"Comment ?"

"The Phantom didn't take Christine."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know," I replied, turning around to trace their steps.

It was like there weren't any steps to trace. He was here one moment and gone the next, like a phantom of his own kind. Surely there were some clues—Christine had seemed to be processing something before she was knocked out—but there was no time for careful investigation of small clues. Besides, I was nothing but an oblivious dancer.