A/N: Hello, this story was completely and totally inspired by my favorite phantom artist on Tumblr, drawnby27emilys. All the wonderful credit for this piece should go to her since her drawing is what enabled this creation. I highly recommend you check out her Tumblr when you can, because all of her art is fantastic. This particular fic was based on her sketch 'For it was his blood on her hands'.
Christine leaned forward to stare into the mirror, expecting a plain face and a familiar pair of bright eyes to greet her. Instead, she stood deathly still as the image of a gaunt faced and bleak shell of her former self reflected back. Her new appearance should have frightened her, but she felt nothing for the sickly-looking girl in the mirror.
She turned away from the mirror sharply, suddenly quite taken aback by the biting urge to pound her fists against the glass until it broke into hundreds of tiny shards. She wondered if she was mad, like she did most days. Perhaps even as mad as the deranged, broken man that held her in his underground home and dreamed of a living wife. Erik had already lost his living wife, she thought dully, he just hadn't realized it yet.
If she truly was as mad as Erik, maybe that would explain why she let her mind slip into a haze and urge her out from her room.
She glanced at Erik's puzzled face and fidgeting hands as she shuffled into the sitting room. He looked just as disheveled as her, with his hair completely free from its usual reluctant place pushed back and his dark vest and undershirt uncharacteristically wrinkled. "Christine?" He remarked, his voice barely above a whisper. Christine's body guided her forward still, and Erik's concerned voice faded into a dull buzz in the back of her mind, like a persistent little bee.
Erik had once tempted her down below to his home with his voice. She remembered it all too well. Although he could not hear, Christine had another voice in her ear at that moment, luring her to do what it pleased.
With a sweet murmur, as divine as Erik's, the sharp blade with the odd handle called to her from its place on the mantle. She was in disbelief that Erik showed no sign of hearing the knife speak too, it was so clear in her mind.
Christine had spotted the strange knife during her first night in Erik's home. It had terrified her then, with its dark and intricately carved handle. But now as she raised to the tips of her toes and gripped her small hand around the blade's handle, it did not frighten her.
"What are you doing?"
It was bizarre, how Erik stood right beside her with his large eyes yet his voice sounded so far away. Christine let her hand hang at her side limply with the knife clasped tight as she looked between both sides of Erik's face. His masked half was cold and unfeeling, a sharp contrast to the pleading yellow eye hidden just behind the mask. His bare side looked bewildered, his thin lips pulled down into a frown as he spoke.
"Give that to me, Christine." He insisted as he reached out for her. Christine jerked back and he leaned away with his hands up. "Christine! Christine, give me the knife, just- don't be afraid, I'm not upset. Give me the knife Christine, please-" His voice shook and grew into outright pleas, and Christine felt the pull in his tone to listen as he tried to use his voice on her.
The blade felt weightless in her grasp as it began to entice her again, its voice that only she could hear whispering promises in her ear once more. She raised her hand and looked down at her body. The knife promised her freedom, an everlasting freedom with her Papa and no trace of the awful home within the cellars.
"Christine!" Erik boomed, and he sprung forward as she swung the knife down. She squeezed her eyes tight and wailed with the deepest despair from the darkest corners of her heart as Erik brought his arms around her and tried to wrestle the knife from her grip.
"Oh leave me alone, let me be! I am nothing but a dead wife!" She sobbed and flung her arms about wildly. Erik grunted as his hands snaked to her wrists and forced the blade away from her stomach.
"Let go, Christine let go!" He begged.
Her eyes flew open as the sick smell of blood came to her. The blade hovered in front of her face with a dark red streak that dripped crimson tears onto the floor. Christine gasped and released her hold on the knife as Erik snatched it away and heaved it across the room.
Her bloody hands glided up and down her body searching for a wound and she shook with quiet sobs as the frantic movement left stains of red pathways up and down her person. She did not feel mad anymore, and she wanted to be anything but a dead wife. She froze and her heart felt as if it had started beating in her throat when she heard the agonizing gasp and strained grunt behind her.
Christine brought her bloody hands closer to her face, for she had found no wound, and watched them tremble. She heard sluggish footsteps stumble behind her and the red stains on her hands seemed to burn. She knew she would not die that night, for it was his blood on her hands.
She turned around to face Erik and willed the horror not to be true. His eyes met hers and for a moment she thought he really was alright, that the blood on her was somehow another person's. "Christine?" He wheezed, and they both looked down at his large hand as it covered an oozing tear in the flesh below his ribs.
He backed away until his shoulders thudded against the wall, and as he shakily slid to the floor he left a trail of red on the wall above him. Christine dropped to the ground where she stood and buried her face in her hands, the ghastly sight too terrible to look at. She felt warm, sticky blood cling to her cheeks.
"Come here, come over here Christine." Erik called to her, his voice not nearly as stable or firm as it should be.
"Please, sit beside me darling." He sighed and Christine lowered her hands. He watched her with a clouded stare and let his head fall back to rest against the wall. "Won't you come sit with me, Christine?" He breathed as his eyes fluttered shut.
Christine crawled across the cold ground to his trembling heap on the floor. His eyes cracked open at her touch and he smiled, a sight so rare that Christine dared to hope that she was in the midst of some morbid dream. That she would wake up any moment and he would not be dying in her arms. "You are good, you are so good." He murmured against her as she brought him to her lap.
"Will you stay, just a little longer?" He suddenly pleaded with a weak rasp. "Just a while longer."
"Of course, of course Erik." She hiccupped and ran a hand through his hair. She started to apologize as the tears rolled down her face and onto Erik, but he shook his head to quiet her.
"Shhh, don't worry. Just stay with me for a little longer." He slurred. She nodded and rested against him as his breathing turned to gasps and then fell into nothing at all.