Chapter Text
I suppose that it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that it all ended this way. I really shouldn’t be as shocked as I am, and perhaps maybe I’m not. Deep down, I knew Christine, the sweet but shallow girl she is, wouldn’t be able to reconcile the image of her perfect Angel of Music with the reality of the lonely, deformed teacher. I knew that once Raoul decided to play the gallant knight in shining armor, he would see a savage demon, not a reclusive genius. I knew that no one would be able to appreciate the beauty within his music, no matter how it was presented, be it the harsh, lustful tones of Don Juan Triumphant or the heartbreakingly tender arias that would seep through the floorboards at night when no person should be awake. I suppose what shocks me the most is how it all went so horribly wrong. Although I knew that Christine wouldn’t accept his love, that Raoul couldn’t abandon one seen as a maiden to rescue, and that the cultured masses of the Opera Populaire would never be cultured enough to acknowledge the majesty of his music, I still hoped that it would happen. I wanted him to find love, to find acceptance, to get everything that anyone else in the world would take for granted. Alas, it went so horribly wrong, so tremendously wrong.
So that is how I find myself racing through the dark tunnels beneath the opera house. I am frantically chasing after little Meg Giry, trying my best not to slip on the slick stones flying beneath my feet and avoid the various traps that her mother, Madame Giry, had warned us about. We had to make it to him in time; we had to save him from the mob. Over and over those words became my mantra as we delved deeper into the darkness. After the chaos that was the falling chandelier and fire that ensued, after the discovery of Piangi’s corpse hanging from a noose, the mob was quickly taking form under the guidance of the gendarmes when Madame Giry sent little Meg to warn him. I insisted on accompanying the ballerina, much to the madam’s displeasure. Please God; let us make it in time. No matter how fast we ran or how much distance we put between us and the mob, the acoustics of the catacombs made their devilish chants seem as though they were right behind us, spurring us forward.
“Hunt down this murderer!!”
Why? Why go through all this trouble? What was so beguiling about Christine? What made her so desirable that he would go through all this, destroying livelihoods, lives and, pray to God not, himself? Ah, but that’s part of the appeal, isn’t it? That a man would so love a woman, he would literally give everything just for her to glance at him and smile. He gave her everything; her voice, her career, her fame, his love…everything, just so she would give him the tiniest bit of love that he deserved. To be loved that deeply, Christine was a fool to not appreciate what she had. She allowed her vanity and simpleminded ideas of love to destroy the heart of a man who loved her so greatly. I have no doubt that if he had been a man without deformity that she would have fallen in love with him on sight, that she would have seen his tokens and actions of love for what they were rather than thinking them perverse.
“Arielle, I can see the lake! We have almost made it!”
At Meg’s cry, I pull myself from my thoughts to cast my eyes on the lake she spoke of. In the darkness, it doesn’t seem like much. More blackness before us that flashes silver every now and then from the gentle rolling of the waves and a little ways out, I can faintly see the outline of a large shape in the center of the rolling inky waters.
“Do you suppose that Christine and the Vicomte are still there?”
Meg shrugged her shoulders delicately, unconcerned.
“Whether they are there or not doesn’t matter.”
For all that little Meg likes to twitter about and play the fool, she is just as cunning as her stern mother. She knows that either Raoul and Christine have made their escape or he has taken Christine and fled. Either way, it doesn’t change what we still have to do. We have to be sure. We have to save him. Without a boat to make it across the murky waters, Meg and I have to skirt around the shore to find the narrow path that Madame Giry told us of. The drumming chants of the mob continue to assail us as we carefully traverse the water slickened stones and loose gravel. Even with this path, it seems like impossibility that Madame Giry would have been able to take this path by herself, or perhaps it is our own haste that makes the short sprint seem so dangerous. We have finally made our way inside his home to find that it has been destroyed. Musical sheets paper the floors, instruments and books thrown about carelessly, and glass strewn about the floor. He is nowhere to be found. Meg turns down one hall to check the rooms for any sign of him while I turn my attention to the other.
It opens into a spacious area that seemed to the most used. A beautiful pipe organ takes center stage, its keys scattered about the floor beneath it. More sheets of music are torn to shreds and smoldering in the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. Several mirrors line the walls, all with the glass broken, the shards winking in the candlelight like new fallen snow. Curious. One mirror in particular seems to be broken like the rest but a length of black velvet covers the frame. It is the corner of the cloth casually fluttering that has caught my attention. There is no breeze this far below the opera house. I grasp the cloth and pull it from the mirror, revealing yet another dark corridor that seems to continue into the underworld itself. I hesitate. I can hear Meg coming from the other side of the house, I can hear the mob, closer now that the chants that were once blocked by the walls are now muffled calls, and I know that I have to make a choice. There is no choice; not when it comes to him. Without another thought, I enter the tunnel and replace the cloth behind me. Now I must find the Phantom.