A quick cool down. Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience. Thank you, Sannikex, for putting up with all the horrid, empty writing I made you read.

Epilogue: Ring around the Rosie

♫

Adelita Rapone

Eleven years have passed since my father died. I live near Verona in Italy with Giuseppe's family. They have grown wealthy enough by breeding racehorses and cattle. It is a beautiful place with a beautiful language; a language meant for the opera I no longer associate with. It is not the same without Papa. I have a son, Erik, and a daughter, Rose. After Rose was born, I was declared quite recovered from my disease. I wish father could have been there that day—that one most of all. I often write to Caroline. She lives just outside Paris, where she teaches singing.

January of this year 1905, I was visiting her. One day the newspaper informed us that Christine Daaé had died. That brought us little grief, as neither of us knew her except through hearsay. I knew that I would have to do something for Papa. I knew what; I knew where his garden was. Also in the paper was the advertisement for the auction of the contents of the Opera Populaire on February first.

On February first, I went to the alley that led to my father's rose garden. I hadn't been here in twelve years. The roses were still there. They had grown wild and unhealthy in his absence, though I had never known him to tend to them. I felt his absence. The air was still, silent, and dead. I cut one and left hastily. The silence was oppressive. I went to the Opera Populaire, but left in tears before the auction. The silence was even more oppressive in there. It gave me a headache. The Opera had needed the Music of the Night. I had never realized how much I had needed it.

I went slowly to the Rue Scribe graveyard. My father was there, near the Daaé mausoleum, next to Meg. Christine was at the foot of the mausoleum steps. I went to her stone and put the rose down. I had tied her ring, which I had worn since Papa gave it to me, to the rose with a black ribbon.

"I never met you, Christine. I'm sorry. He did think of you. All the time, he thought of you." I stared at the little portrait carved on the stone, trying to imagine it real and sixteen. I sighed and left, running a hand over my father's stone as I passed it.

♫

Raoul, Vincomte de Chagny

I rode in the carriage as it bounced up and down, the music box plinking cheerfully in my lap. I found myself wondering yet again what had become of that Phantom. He must have died, or they wouldn't have been able to bring up the music box. The Opera Populaire had seemed very dead. Yet, it didn't seem like him to die, and there had been whispers of him when I listened hard enough.

The carriage stopped, and I got out. I walked slowly to the Daaé mausoleum. Christine was right in front of it. There was a little patch of red against the off-white of gravestone and the white of snow. It was a rose. Christine's ring—my ­ring, that the Phantom had stolen—was tied to the rose with a black ribbon. I didn't touch it; just put the music box next to it.

On my way out, I noticed something. A gravestone nearby said:

Erik

1860-1894

PTO

A mask of yellowed ivory hung on it.

I looked back at the rose, then back at the gravestone. Who, then, had put the rose there?

I shrugged. Let the Phantom keep his secrets. I had taken enough.

FINIR

♫

Adieu, adieu, parting is such sweet sorrow.