Say You'll Share With Me | Phantom Oneshots

POTOber Day 13 - Past the Point of No Return

day 13 prompts: removing the mask/innocence lost/Aminta 

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It all happened so quickly. It wasn't supposed to end this way, or so Christine had thought. She had never been informed of a plan to kill the Phantom, only to capture and arrest him during the performance of Don Juan Triumphant. That was the only reason why she had agreed to the scheme in the first place; she was to perform alongside Piangi, get through the opera and the Phantom would be captured and arrested and that would be that. She would be free of him forever, she and Raoul could go on with their lives, just like her fiancé had promised.

Then why wasn't that how it went? The Phantom had been performing alongside her all of a sudden during their major duet in the opera, almost trying to pull her offstage before she pulled the hood of his cowl off. Then, of all things he could have done, he tried to propose. Taken Raoul's words of love, made them his own, and slipped his ring onto her finger. That wasn't the plan, and she couldn't understand why no one had rushed onstage to arrest him, given that he was in a perfect position. So she had acted on impulse, wanting to move things along, and had reached up to pull his mask off.

She hadn't expected it to end the way it had. All she could remember was her stomach filling with dread when she heard his shocked, angry outcry, only for that to be sharply cut off by a gasp. She was vaguely aware of a cry escaping her as well as she watched him collapse, then looked down at herself, at the blood spattered across the front of the beautiful peach-coloured dress that she knew he had designed and sewn himself.

He couldn't die, she told herself as she dropped to her knees beside him and lifted his head into her lap, looking down at him and seeing the panic, the regret, the pain written all over his face.

He can't die, she thought as she hunched herself over his body when the police ran over, shoved Raoul away when he tried to pull them apart.

He can't, she insisted to herself as she listened to him frantically apologizing to her, for everything he'd done.

"Forgive me," she heard him whisper, and she simply nodded and set a hand to the marred side of his face as she watched his eyelids starting to grow heavy, his weight in her arms starting to grow more noticeable as he slipped away. "Please, Angel."

"Of course," she whispered in response, ignoring the tears spilling down her face and the warm feeling of his blood soaking through her dress. "Forgive me too."

A weak smile. "There is nothing I have to forgive you for."

She could have argued that point for the rest of her life, knowing that his death would be on her hands. She had killed an angel. That was simply unforgivable.