A group of men filed into the witness room, speaking quietly to each other about nothing in particular. Just small talk. There was an edge of embarrassed discomfort lying just beneath the surface of their casual words; none of them wanted to admit that they didn't really want to see an execution.

Their attempts at cavalier worldliness stopped at one thing anyway: each of them removed his hat as he entered the room.

Christine slipped in behind the witnesses and newspapermen, and shouldered her way to the front. She stared into the glass. Reflected in the window into the San Quentin death chamber, her face looked pale and drawn. The small witness room was hot, and so full of people that Christine could hardly breathe, but she made herself stay— she had promised Raoul.

They had been loading his stretcher into the ambulance that night when he reached out for her. "Hey...Christine…" he had whispered, like his throat was full of blood.

Her own throat full of something else, she had responded. "Yes, Raoul?"

"When I get off the trolley, at the end of the line, will you be there?"

She stared at him, and felt her eyes brim with tears, and hated herself for it. As though she hadn't cried enough in her life already.

"You understand?" He had asked.

"Sure." Christine nodded. "Sure, I'll be there if you want me to."

And now, here she was.

On the other side of the glass, the guards were bringing Raoul in. Before looking up to meet his eyes, Christine pulled her pocketbook out of the purse slung over her shoulder, and held it behind her back, so she could make fists around it without her old friend seeing. Then she looked up.

They had shaved Raoul's head at some point, and that plus the harsh lighting within the chamber made his eyes look hauntingly large and blue. The skin beneath his eyes was stained with gray shadows, as though he hadn't slept at all in the month of time between the verdict and today. Christine wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't.

He nodded when he saw her, and gave a little half-empty smile as he was pushed down into the chair.

Christine's knuckles went white around the pocketbook.

In the end, it didn't take very long at all. The guards strapped Raoul's arms and legs down into the restraints, and filed out. One of them paused by the chamber's exit to turn the great metal wheel that sealed off the chamber's door. It made a horrible grinding noise as it tightened, and Christine wasn't the only one who flinched at the sound. Somewhere out in the hall, the acid was being mixed and poured into the pipes, but Christine didn't break eye contact with Raoul for long enough to see it done. As the witnesses shuffled, and some of the reporters took out pads of paper to take notes, a cloud of what looked like pale, billowing steam rose up from the chamber's floor, soon passing between Raoul's eyes and Christine's.

She didn't make herself keep watching after that. When she was seventeen, Christine Daaé had sat by her father's bedside and heard him cough out his last breaths. She knew there was no closure in seeing death.

After a moment, a guard spoke, startling everybody in the now-silent room; they had all fallen quiet when they heard the gas start hissing in. "Right. That's all, gentlemen— lady." The guard said. "Vacate the chamber, please."

The reporters and witnesses filed out, and Christine went with them. She didn't let herself look back.

Just as she reached the door out of the prison, Christine stopped, and found herself reaching into her pocket. Until her fingers touched the hard corner of a cigarette case, she didn't remember what she was looking for.

She pulled the cigarette case out, flipped the lid up—

and stopped.

Damn.

Christine didn't have a match. Of course she didn't.

She widened her eyes and blinked rapidly, unwilling to go to teary pieces in the middle of a fucking prison corridor. She shoved the cigarette case back into her pocket. Her breath shook, but she was composed enough to nod at the guards by the time she reached the exit.

The prison doors opened wide, and Christine Daaé walked out, into the sunlight that hurt her smarting eyes.

End.

AN: Wow. Okay. Sorry about that ending. I can't believe this story is done, you know? I know it isn't that long, but this is the longest fic I've ever successfully finished. Thank you so much for all of your reviews, and for giving TSS such nice attention. Tbh, that's what motivated me. Anyway. Thanks!