This is a little one shot, part of a series of them that I'm doing from Erik's point of view. Technically the copy right ran out on Leroux's so while I don't own Phantom of the Opera, anyone who wants to stake a claim on Erik can go ahead ^^
I couldn't ask her, I could not ask her to remain with me. It was not rejection that I feared, the screaming and shrieks of "No!" that any sane woman—ah, let me rephrase that—any woman, mad or no, would reply with. My angel though, she was not merely a woman, and she was so entwined in my pathetic wandering through the abyss that there wasn't a possibility she's tell me no.
Don't you see? If I asked her she would stay, stay with me as my wife—my own wife. And that was what I couldn't abide. Not, of course because I didn't want her with me—God, that was all I wanted, I could die, happily, peacefully, if she was willing to just be standing in the room near me. No matter how my darkest dreams envisioned her in lace, or (damn me to hell, I am a wretch) nothing at all, her hair covering her chest as if she was a siren in body just as she was in voice, no matter how often that image rose in the back of my mind amid morphine clouds, I would never subject her to the horrors of having Death as her bedfellow. To have a murderer's hands touch her pure, cream colored skin would be sin enough, to have them…violate her in such a way would be unforgivable—not only in the final Judgment but also by myself. Just to have her as a permanent fixture here was a dream I didn't dare hold too long or too seriously, lest it break like the fragile thing it was.
She was too good, too pure, my Christine, my beautiful Christine, she would never say no to such a creature. I wouldn't want her to; I'd let her go, let her voice fall out of use entirely, let her forget her angel of music, as long as she is alive. Alive and happy. It would kill me to see her wither away down here, a rose without the sunlight.
Now and then I would open the covering on that dress I had gotten for her, ordered it for her exact measures I took from her costumes, chose the pattern specifically to flatter her already perfect form; I would add pearls here, or change some edging there, until it became her, as with the ring…I must be a masochist. I carry it, here in pocket just inside my jacket every time I know I will be near her, as if I was some sort of young jack with a sweetheart waiting for the right moment to fall down on one knee and if ever I had felt pain, it was the white hot circle of simple gold; so many nights I longed to take her hand to lead her down, instead of merely being beside her, staying close in case she were to fall in the dark, and in that darkness slip the little ring on her delicate hand.
These spin through my mind every night before I see her for our lesson. I adjust my mask, straighten my cravat, make sure that there's no dust on me from the tunnels and open the mirror.