Seal My Fate•Phantom of the Opera Fanfiction

Epilogue

This is it!

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Christine

The cemetery was foggy again—almost raining, not quite—like the sky shared my determination to hold the tears back. My long black hair and matching dress stayed perfectly dry, but I could feel the water in every breath I took, drowning me. I figured it was the air's way of reminding me that I should be dead, not Erik. The sky was dark as ever, and the trees seemed to whimper with us as the stones smirked knowingly at the helpless figures beneath them and at every shadow that passed over them.

Two months.

Two months, and so much had changed—first of all, Meg was married—and the opera house looked the same, but it had lost a fundamental part of its life; what was the fun in an opera house that wasn't haunted? And what was the purpose of living in one when I didn't have my Angel?

I knew I was being rather silly. After all, I'd gone more than two months without him before, hadn't I? But this time was different.

January, I'd told myself, he'll return in January. How I'd known it would be in January, I couldn't remember, but nevertheless I'd known he would return.

Not anymore. This time it was permanent. January would come and go, and I would still be here; alone, helpless, and hopeless.

Madame Giry had set up a few flowers for anyone to place on Erik's grave, since we didn't expect most of them to have a clue what they were doing. Oh, but poor Madame Giry—she hadn't even recovered from the first stage of grieving her husband, I could only imagine how horrible it was for her to lose someone who was like a son to her.

"Christine," she muttered, "take a flower."

I shook my head, gesturing to the bouquet Meg had been so kind as to hold for me while I adjusted my gloves. Taking them back from her with a tender smile, I gently picked at the petals of the blood-red and black roses, taking special care to make their shape perfect. After what he had done for me, I wanted to give him only the best.

There was a surprising number of people here for whatever resemblance of a funeral this was. Of course, Mme Giry, Meg, and I were here, but there were also some others: Cécile Jammes had shown up—with a substantial amount of guilt for helping Eve with her scheme, though we all knew that she had played no intentional part in that—along with a few other chorus girls, some members of the orchestra—some of whom claimed to have heard Erik commend their work—and even M. Reyer had shown up briefly, though he couldn't stay the whole time.

None of them—not even one—were there for the mystery of the "opera ghost," though they knew full well that this was him; they were here to pay respects to a man who had once lived and now no longer did—a man who had spent his entire life on a grueling journey to a destination where most people were born.

Raoul had not come, but that seemed to be less out of bitterness and more out of respect. He had insisted that a funeral was to be attended by loved ones—those who had loved him and those he had loved—and that it would be disrespectful to come to a funeral when he fit into neither category.

Eve Laurent was also absent, and for good reason. The prison guards would not have been very trusting had she asked to attend the funeral of a man she hated, alongside the woman she had attempted to murder.

I stepped toward the place where my Angel had been buried, allowing the breeze to blow through my skirt. The stone was almost completely bare—there were no dates, no special quotes, just two simple words:

Erik Destler.

It was not out of malice or hostility that it was so simple—in fact, the presence of a stone at all, let alone a marked one, was "more than he ever would have wished for," as Mme Giry put it—but, for his own sake, we felt it was best that the general public not know that this stone marked the grave of the infamous Phantom of the Opera.

"Hey," I whispered, "I know you can't hear me, but... I want to make sure you know how much I love you."

I wiped the tears from my cheeks, letting the liquid soak into the fabric of the gloves. It's okay, I reminded myself, it's okay.

"I just," I coughed as an effort to control my breathing—silent tears were acceptable, for now, but I couldn't bear to start sobbing in front of everyone. "I don't think you knew... how much you meant to me. I don't know if I made that clear enough, and... I'm sorry," I whispered.

I remembered every word he had said to me in those last moments, but one thing seemed to stick with me more than the rest: "Shhh. It's okay, Christine. It's okay." The memory of those words had come to me so many times in the past two months that I had started to believe that he hadn't said them just to comfort me in the moment—that they were meant for me now.

I still couldn't believe that he had willingly done this for me. Not only was I unworthy of such a sacrifice, but Erik was the last person I expected to give his life for someone else.

Perhaps that was what he meant by "I did it;" that he had finally succeeded in doing something good, something that most people would not be willing to do. Perhaps this was, after all, a happy ending—just as he had said.

Because didn't want to be a famous musician, he didn't want to be a feared villain, he didn't want to be worshipped, all he wanted was to be human—to prove to the world, as well as to himself, that he was just an ordinary man—that he wasn't a monster, that he was capable of good.

Still, I couldn't stop myself from wondering what he would have been doing now if he had just let them kill me. Would that have given him a chance to write another opera? Would it have allowed him to find someone else? Would it have given him a second chance, a chance to start over, learning from his mistakes and taking another try at being human? Or would it have completely destroyed him?

Would he have wanted this? Would he have wanted me to be here, two months later, still just as torn up as I had been the moment he'd left me? If those commands he had so harshly given me meant anything, then no, he wouldn't have. But how could I just forget? Even if he wanted me to, I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Certainly I would recover eventually, right? I had to. I knew I did. After what he had done for me, I knew I couldn't let him down. If he wanted me to recover, I would recover, no matter what it took.

Because he could have escaped. He could have left me there, run somewhere else, and started over; he could have become an ordinary, if not respected, member of society. In fact, I'd expected him to do exactly that—I probably would have. He could have had everything he had ever wanted—and so much more. But he had cared more about me.

For me, he had given it all away, which was perhaps one of the greatest acts of good—of humanity.

He'd been given a choice: he could escape and live the life he had always wanted to, or he could save me. He'd chosen to save me. He'd chosen to sacrifice everything he'd ever hoped for, everything he'd ever worked for, for me. There had been a shining victory waiting just around the corner for him, and he'd laid it down for me. He had chosen to lose.

But in losing, he'd won.

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And we're done! Wow, that happened so quickly, I'm shocked.

Well, I guess there's nothing more to say. I hope everyone has a nice life.