This is one shot based in the Leroux Phantom of the Opera universe. It is what I thik may have happened in the part that Gaston leroux never tells us, when Christine Daae returns to Erik to place the ring upon his finger.

My inspiration for this is a beautiful song by Sarah McLachlan, entitled Angel or Arms of the Angel. All credit for that song goes to her and not me.

I do not own the Phantom of the Opera. If I said I did, people would say I was mad. And I am not. Honestly.

Arms of the Angel

The air is thick with frost, even so many metres below the surface of the earth. The winter has as larger grip here as it does in the world above; as if with him the otherworldliness of this place has died, to become a place little different to any other.

I step forward a little, taking care not to snag my dress on the sharp stones that jut from the walls. This world has lost its light. Or has it lost its powerful darkness? I have long since forgotten how to differentiate the two.

You're in the arms of the Angel...

I know this spot. This was where he first held me in his arms, those long skeletal arms that I shall not forget. And he was trembling, as if afraid he may drop me and I would shatter like a porcelain doll. And in his arms I lay, struggling slightly, my attempts thwarted by my drugged state. To this day I cannot fathom what he used to put me in such a condition; was it chemicals, drugs, or merely his presence that hypnotised me so?

Faraway, from here...

And so I was taken, to the world of darkness and light, of Angels and Demons, of heaven and hell, of music and screams of rage. And he…he was always there, forever watching, never quite gaining the confidence to reach out and touch me. I know that he wanted to, but there was always a barrier. A barrier that could not be crossed.

That is world I can never forget, a world that will always be the one thing I remember when someone speaks of heaven, or of hell. No, not the one thing. If the words heaven or hell cross someone's lips, I shall think of the ruler of this world. The ghostly king who was seen by none but me; oh, there were rumours aplenty, but no one really knew.

No, we didn't know. We knew nothing of the ghost who was a man…of this man who was a ghost.

From this dark cold hotel room…

Raoul is up there, waiting for me. He still feels we should not have come here…I know he still feels some jealousy. He could not stand it when I kissed the weeping Angel on the forehead…indeed, at that moment he feared it would send him wild. But it did not. I knew it would not.

Paris holds many memories for the both of us. Many memories my husband, as loving and caring as he is, would like to remain as memories that are locked away. There is some jealousy in him that is stirred when I speak of my Angel…oh, he knows I cannot love the poor, unhappy man who dwelt in these caves as I love him, and yet he fears the Angel's influence.

And the endlessness that you fear…

Oh, but I do not want to forget! If I forget, then the happy tears in the eyes of the Angel will be for nothing! He wants me to remember him, remember him with something resembling love, and I can do that. I fear the day when I will no longer look back in the past and single this chapter out…that is why I so fear having children, that perhaps in some way this shall betray the Angel. The memory of the birth may have more strength and power than the memory of a single kiss upon the forehead.

You are pulled from the wreckage

Of your silent reverie…

As I walked away from the past and into the future, that night the Angel released us, I felt something inside me shatter. As fearful as I was of his power, as much as he invoked terror, and hatred, and many other emotions I cannot name, I was walking away from something I had believed in. The Angel was my father, and he was gone. I would not see him again.

He was a dying man when I left him, left him to rot in this watery hell. But I could not return; I was pulled from among the pieces of my shattered childhood, my shattered beliefs, my shattered images, and tenderly rebuilt. The people around me love me, Raoul loves me, any children we have will love me…I could not return to this place to have my ideals shattered once more. I could not break again…

But oh, my heart is now once again in pieces as I see him, propped against the wall. He went waiting for me, waiting for me to fulfil the promise. Oh, I did promise. He told me I was a good girl, that he believed in me, that he trusted I would return on this hour, when I read the notice in the newspaper.

You're in the arms of the angel…

I kneel down beside him, my poor Angel. He has discarded his mask…he knows that soon he will join the ranks of the normal, as all men are ugly in death. Oh, but he was not ugly as he cried tears of happiness that night, when I had done little more than kiss his forehead. Brightened with such humanity, such emotion, he was the very essence of beauty.

I slowly pull the ring from my finger, watching the gold band glint in the light of the single candle that I hold. Lifting his cold hand, I slip the ring gently on his long, skeletal finger, just I was instructed to all those weeks ago. I expect him to stir, to sing, anything, but he remains where he is. My eyes fill with tears…even the man whose hands smelt of death had life in him, life that has been extinguished.

I remember his arms around me, carrying me on the back of that beautiful white horse…terrifying, powerful, yet strangely comforting. Comforting in a way that I cannot describe even now. I look down at him, my poor unhappy Erik, lying as dead as my poor mother, and my father, and I feel that need to be comforted. I want to feel the strange, curious safety of the Angel's arms. He is not my Angel, but how I want him to be!

May you find, some comfort there…

And so I stretch myself out beside him, as I would never dare do if he were alive, and rest my head on his bony shoulder. I had thought him cold when he was alive, but in death he is like ice. I shiver, wanting to leave this frosty place, and yet at the same time reluctant to leave the odd embrace I find myself in. Something inside tells me he cannot be dead, that he cannot have left this earth and ascended to the heaven I believe him to be in (or the hell that he has been sent to. If that is the case, I find God truly merciless, that He has it in Him to banish an Angel!).

I must know if he is dead. This is trickery, I can feel it! He is not dead, he simply wishes for me to believe that he is! That is why I do not feel strange lying in his arms, as if he were not dead! I reach up to his face, my fingers lingering on his cheekbone, to the hollowness around his eyes. I raise his eyelid…

There is nothing of the intelligence I knew. Nothing of the passion, the cruelty, and the sadness hidden deep down. There is no life. No life at all. Not even a single sign of it.

I almost laugh…

I am lying in the arms of a dead man. A dead Angel.