This story is based upon the work of the lovely Andrew Lloyd Webber I own Nothing!
I knew that there was no way I could go through with it. It had been months since the fire had burnt down my home at the opera house. I knew who had started it and what had led him to do so. Me. He was a dark and troubled soul, and yet I couldn't stop from yearning for him, to hear the smooth seductive roar of his voice, to feel the luring, passionate sensation of his hands as they grazed my skin. I needed him. My love for him grew stronger and the fear and dread grew more powerful with each passing day. I had only a day left until I was to be married to my childhood sweetheart Raoul. I had loved him for so long and yet since my decision in the catacombs of the opera house I found myself wanting so much more than a simple and safe love. I wanted passion and devotion. I wanted to surrender to the darkness and abandon all light. I wanted to hold Erik in my arms until he felt safe once more, until he felt the love he had so been denied since birth. I needed to see him and yet I knew I couldn't.
On that catastrophic night the opera house had been sent a light a mob had gone after my beloved and God only knows what could have happened. I had nothing left of such a passionate man. Nothing. And maybe that was why I know found myself wondering down the corridors of the old, dusty, partial burnt opera house. There were cob webs everywhere and the sun was going down giving everything an eerie light to it. The mood of the entire building was frightening, yet welcoming at the same time. It felt as though it was an invitation to the darkness, to my lost love. I found the old dressing room I had used the night I had performed Don Juan Triumphant. I felt the harsh wood of the door and the smoothness of the doorknob as I twisted it. The room was dim lit by only the last remaining rays of the setting sun. I found the corpse of an old rose with a black satin ribbon tied around its neck, lying upon my old dressing table. My fingers caressed the softness and I could feel the warm tears slide down my cheeks and slip down my neck.
The air was cold and everything was still. But I didn't feel alone. Maybe it was just the atmosphere of the memories clouding the space surrounding me. I was never alone when I had been here. A phantom always lurked in the corners. A phantom, my phantom, my angel, my Erik. I fell to my knees letting the rose drop. I felt for the full length mirror upon the wall as the darkness of a moonless night engulfed me. I felt the mirror slide with a slow, smooth movement. One single candelabra sat in the tunnel lit, as if waiting for my return. It was almost as if someone was waiting for me to come and tell them my good-byes or to run back into their arms. Or it could have been a simple memorial for my love left by Madame Giry or Meg.
I stumbled my way through the tunnels until I came to his lair. His thousands of candles were lit and his sheets of music cluttered the floor. They were not finished as I had remembered them to be. They were either balled up or had lines of his music scratched out. Ink spills covered the pages. Quills broken in frustration surrounded his delicate ivory keys. His beautiful mask rested on top of his piano. I picked it up in my hands and felt my memories of him steal my breath away. This place had more meaning to me than anywhere else in my past. And now it seemed to hold more life. I rounded the corner to Erik's study. It was where I had slept in his grand bed the night I had first visited him in his domain. It was also where I had left him the day I made my choice. But I had only been a kid then and didn't know what love was. But know I knew the definition of love.
Love was Erik. It was his melodies and harmonies that floated in the air and stuck to my soul. It was the passion and devotion that crowded his heart. It was his burning need for affection that resided in his eyes. And it was the tenderness and joy I could feel every time he touched me. As I entered the room I almost fainted. For seated on his bed holding his lovely music box so close to his chest was my Erik. I could hear him sobbing but I could not see his face because it was angled away from me. I knew that he wasn't wearing his mask because it was still in my hands and my fingers grazed where it had once touched his lips. I stumbled forward. He heard me and with a sudden jerk he turned towards me. But before I could see his face a sudden gust of cold night air ran through the room and up my spine putting out every candle putting us in complete darkness.
"Christine? Can it be? The one that leave me so serene, the one that ripped me apart and could be so mean? Oh, Christine. Why?" I could feel his music in my ears and it made me tremble at the feeling of being so close. I could feel his warm breath against my cheek. And I reached out to touch him and to find nothing.
"Oh Erik. My love. The one I chose to leave. How could I ever deceive…" I stumbled forward towards the bed and found his shoulder.
"Christine…" I could hear his pain and the shyness in his voice the moment I touched him. But after a moment he relaxed and I felt him open himself up to me. He stopped trying to turn and hide from me and leaned into my touch. He was still hurt yet he engulfed with the love that radiated out of his every word. I pulled him up into my arms. And I held him so close to me that I could feel the music in his pulse. I touched his scared face and felt him on a deeper level than I had ever felt. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. It was so easy to be around him and feel his love close around me in an embrace. His beauty underneath was that of a god of not only music but pureness, love, and perfection. I knew him as though he was part of me. Our souls and futures were entwined.
"I love you Erik. You are so beautiful, so very beautiful, almost too beautiful." I sang into his ear. My lips grazed his skin and I filled with a need too urgent to deny. And he kissed me as I caressed him. It was then that the world around us fell away. No thoughts of the past or the future. No thoughts of any wedding or of Raoul. It was only us and our love, only the present.
"My Christine." His words made me melt into his arms and he held me. I kissed him with all the passion in my body. But even with all the strength in my body I couldn't even manage to show him half of the power and passion I could feel coursing through my body. And it was then that he knew what I was offering him. He picked me up in his arms and laid me on his bed. He took me and I begged him to. Again and again, there beneath the moonless sky. It was beautiful and I knew that I would be his forever. We fit together so perfectly, so effortlessly. His arms wrapped around me with such ease and it was so comforting. It was proof that we were made for one another. We were each other's first and it was then that I knew we were going to be each other's last. I loved him so much and I fell asleep in his arms knowing that in the morning when I would wake to see his face I would no longer see the disfigurement and feel horror. I would find the beauty underneath and feel a passionate devotion to this creature, this angel of the music of the night. And I would confess my love for him and see relief and joy flood into his face as he would grab me and pull me into him…
But that's not what happened.
I woke with joy thinking his arms would be around me, keeping me safe, wrapping me in a love that poor Raoul would never know or ever have for me in any life time. But instead the room was cold and empty. The first light of dawn shone through the invisible windows and reflected off of his marvelous mirrors. I wrapped myself in his sheets and went to his piano hoping to find him writing like a ferocious genius who had been reunited with his muse.
"Erik my love where are you?" The realization came crashing down on me, pushing the air out of my lungs. The horrible realization that the loneliness I felt was because Erik was nowhere to be found. He left me all alone in his dark dungeon of fear and doubt. "Erik my love how dare…you…" I fell to the floor and poured tears into my hands. Tears of lost love and loneliness, tears of anger and betrayal, tears of the lost hope and of denial. I gathered myself together and walked back to his room to grab my clothes. There on the pillow I had rested my head upon moments before, sat a single red rose with a black satin ribbon tied around its stem. A moonless sky, a new moon it should have symbolized a new start. What a pathetic fool for thinking this new start was going to be with Erik. I trudged back to my hotel to get ready for my wedding leaving behind the rose and the memory of my beautiful Erik.