Seal My Fate•Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction

Chapter 21: The Point of No Return

*facepalm* Of course, the one day I forget what day it is... it's Saturday. My apologies, here ya go.

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I fiddled with the material of my skirt. This was a nervous habit of Meg's, but it seemed we had all picked it up in the past few days. Things were intense.

It was time. The cast was dressed and in their proper places (for the most part), the doors were closed—and barred—and the audience waited expectantly for the performance to begin. Ten minutes. Ten more minutes, and then I had to have everything figured out.

Quite frankly, I didn't think I could do it. Ten minutes was hardly enough time to put a well-thought-out plan into place, and I hardly even had a plan yet.

"Meg," I gulped, "we need to speak to Piangi. Now."

She didn't hesitate to follow me, and I stopped her once we were alone—truly, fully alone—in the hallways.

"What is it?" she asked me.

"Look, Meg," I panted, "if you want Piangi to live, we have no time to spare. We must warn him." Meg nodded and followed me in search of the singer.

My nervousness continued to grow beyond what I thought was possible as I considered the stakes of this endeavor. We were only human ourselves—two human beings with human limitations—but his best chance at survival was if we found him. The thought of being someone's best chance at survival was both exhilarating and terrifying.

Signor Piangi wasn't backstage with the rest of the cast. Had we been searching for anyone else, I might have been inclined to worry, but, given Piangi's character, it was more likely that he simply thought following custom was below him. He had no idea that it could cost him his life.

We rushed down hallway after hallway, finding no sign of him. Even the shadowy, near-abandoned halls of the opera house stared blankly back at us. When our search proved unproductive, we decided it would be wiser to stand backstage and wait for him to appear. If we followed the plot closely enough—a hope which, at this point, was a scarily fine thread of hope, but the only hope I had—I would see him before the incident—early enough to warn him.

I just hoped "The Phantom of the Opera wants to kill you" would be enough of an explanation to bypass his bitter feelings toward me.

My mind returned once again to Buquet's death in the movie—the scene which, somehow, I had enjoyed when it was in a movie. I disgusted myself sometimes. I retraced Erik's step, the way he had completed the task with such precision, such focus on his goal—as if it were nothing but a chore to him. Erik's simple regret of the action wouldn't erase the effects of the event, nor would it do away with the fact that he did it—for fun. It was sickening.

But I wasn't here to dwell on the past, I was here to stop it from happening again. And it seemed the only way to do that was to act like nothing was going to happen—so as not to give Erik a reason to hurry up and do it—and warn Piangi at the last minute.

"Christine, I've been thinking about what you told me," Meg said, "about... you know, your life."

"Yes?"

"Well," she mumbled at the floor, rubbing the cloth of her Spanish dress, "I was just wondering," she looked up at me, "if you could go back, would you?"

I stopped walking and leaned against a wall, taking in the cold air of the theatre.

"No."

"That's it? No?"

"Well, I mean, I was never needed there," I told her, though I was spelling it out more for myself than for her. "I didn't feel like I had much of a purpose. Most of my memories are of hurting people, it seems like that was all I was good for.