phantom of the opera oneshots, originally published on AO3, FFN, and Tumblr (under the same username!)
all of my phantom oneshots will now be published here instead of in my oneshots book :)
cover by BrendaDaaeDestler!
Javert was the first and he considered that justified. The man had held him captive for almost four years when he was only a child, having just run away from his mother and who lived in a world that would never accept him because of a birth defect that no one could have predicted. Javert had abused that even more than his mother had, putting him on display and allowing him to be yelled and laughed at, to be spat on and screamed at, to have stones and rotten fruit thrown at him by onlookers. It was brutal and he hated every day of it and he wanted to escape.
The attempt that Javert had made to assault him had been the last straw, and in a ploy for self-preservation, he had grabbed his keeper's own knife and stabbed him with it. Javert was dead, Erik was free. Revenge had been exacted.
Then the shah and the khanum appeared in his life and took up Javert's mantle of making his life absolutely miserable. They still allowed him to be belittled and mocked by others in court, but they had turned him into a monster, an animal like those in the Colosseum who had to kill to survive. It became his art and he loathed them for it. How he wished he could have gotten his revenge on them too, and with the very same weapon they had put in his hand.
Joseph Buquet's death had been a mercy to everyone, himself included. The man stuck his nose where it didn't belong, harassed the ballerinas endlessly, and spread plenty of rumours about the Opera Ghost. It was certainly revenge, but Erik considered it a duty of sorts that had fallen to him to rid the Opera and the world of Buquet.
He had exacted revenge before, so why not again? This was merely a new target, a new reason for that revenge; it was to secure his love now, not his life, to get back at that insolent nobleman for stealing away his Christine. And if the Vicomte de Chagny had to pay for it with his life, then so be it. It would be no different than it was in the past.
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