For any of you who have read Susan Kay's Phantom and wondered how the wedding dress scene might have gone from Erik's perspective, this is just one take on how it might have come down.

Hopefully the Mature rating is sufficient. If the other M rated stories I've read here are any indication it is absolutely fine, but you never know. The original version is a bit more intense, so I tamed it a bit just to be sure.

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I thought that after five decades on this earth I knew all there was to know about wanting and self-denial. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

What possessed me to bait Christine until she agreed to wear that damnable wedding dress? True, I bought it for her. In fact, I had it tailored precisely to the measurements of her stage costumes.

Why?

I suppose, as Alexander Pope so glibly wrote in his Essay on Man… Hope really does spring eternal in the human breast. In some bright corner of my black heart, there are dreams of Christine wearing that dress the day I make her my wife.

Of course, this is a distant and unrealizable prayer. In my mind I know this. That field will always lie fallow. There were…are… too many obstacles, all of which begin and end with my hideous countenance.

These are reasons that my mind understands when the sun rules the sky, but at night, when the moon reigns, rational thought vanishes and I am haunted by dreams of Christine and that cursed gown.

Just the memory of that moment threatens my sanity even now. Hearing her breathless entreaty – my name falling from her lips – and turning to see her standing there, a vision in white promises... Somehow I managed to push from my mind the fact that I'd only just convinced her it was no more than a costume; a simple stage prop to help her feel the part she was to sing.

In that heartbeat I couldn't move. I couldn't even draw breath. The Aïda score slipped from my fingers. The pages scattered across the floor and I scarcely noticed. There was but one thought in my head - the symbol of Christine standing there in that dress.

As I stood there frozen, helpless as a moth hypnotized by a candle flame, she knelt to collect the music. Such a ridiculous menial task for a bride to perform and almost shattered the illusion my mind had suddenly manufactured, that she was there to promise me forever. Or, as in the scene we were about to perform, to die with me there in the tomb of my own creation.

I remember shouting at her, demanding she leave the score where it lay on the damp stone floor. Suddenly all that mattered was hearing her silvery voice, the entwining harmonies we could create.

I told her we would proceed without instrumental accompaniment, which no doubt surprised her. The truth was, in that moment I no more could have played an instrument than I could have flown from the parapet of the opera house.

I knew I was abandoning reason, and that I needed to break that connection by casting my gaze elsewhere. It was no use. Looking away from her was unthinkable.

The first lines were mine, but my befuddled brain couldn't even summon the words Radames' was to say. The lines were gone from my recollection. I – who had never forgotten anything I'd ever learnt.

My skin suddenly felt too tight for my body. The simmering desire I always feel in Christine's presence had turned into a clawing beast and the creature was threatening to shred me from the inside!

I should have sent her away at once.

I did not.

Annoyed with myself, I demanded she begin in the middle of the scene, from Aida's recitation. A dreadfully cruel thing to do, giving her no note for pitch, but I simply couldn't move to do anything else.

Those dark eyes looked at me as if I'd lost my mind. Indeed, I had.

I shouted at her to begin and something in my demeanor must have warned her it wasn't safe to protest. She started, her voice betraying none of her nervousness.

"My heart foreseeing your condemnation, into this tomb I made my way by stealth…"

As I heard those words, I prayed that she could mean them – that the rest of the world could go to Hades and she would stay here with me.

"…and here, far from every human gaze, in your arms I wished to die."

Silence descended. I realized on some level that she waited for me to give Radames' reply. I still could not. All of my senses were filled with Christine and I fought the overwhelming urge to take her in my arms.

My agony of my desire had grown past endurance. This juvenile longing had gone on long enough. I had to feel her body pressed against mine!

With this hunger driving me, I did the unthinkable. I stepped towards her.

Her eyes widened, flickered with the wariness of a doe sensing a hunter.

It was the hint of fear in her gaze that finally overpowered my longing and restored the strength, the sanity, I needed.

I turned away from her to stare blindly into the dark, panting as if I'd just run down to the lair from the very rooftops of the opera house. My traitorous arms that only moments before had been so desperate to hold her were suddenly wrapped around myself as tight as I could manage. It was as if I could lock them there with physical strength even as desire continued to mock my self-control.

Desperately I ordered her back to her room.

She didn't go! Instead, I heard her step towards me, muttering words of concern for my health! My health!!! Indeed, if a man could die of unrequited lust, then I was surely dying!

The genuine concern in her voice, the caring, was almost my undoing. Perhaps her hand was outstretched even now, ready to touch my shoulder with compassion. The violence of my need clawed through me again. Oh God! Just one touch! One blessed touch. Compassion, freely given from the hand of my beloved. I would take the memory of it to my grave!

No!

On some level I knew if Christine touched me now it wouldn't be enough. I was already trembling at the mere thought. My body was on fire. No, I wouldn't be able to keep myself from taking her.

Just the thought of it in those brief seconds was enough to make my body throb in response to the vision, as if begging me to make it happen.

I scrambled for what remained of my sanity. Using every ounce of the discipline I had nurtured over my lifetime, I struggled to keep my voice even. Once more I tried to reason with her, telling her again to return to her room.

And again the foolish girl did not heed my words! I swear, in those seconds I almost rationalized the act I was so desperate to perform!

Whatever would've come after would not have been my fault. I told her to leave and she wouldn't go!

Damn her! Damn her and her naiveté! Her childish concern for my welfare –

All I could imagine was the act of possessing her and she wanted to comfort me like a child cradles a doll! It was maddening enough to cause me to throw caution to the wind and damn the consequences.

In that moment I would have willingly given anything I possessed, anything – if only she were not innocent of the ways of the flesh. I needed her to know, to understand, the demons that were riding me; to know that they were beyond my control, that desire was fast overpowering my resolve.

I needed her to understand!

I couldn't look at her. I'm sure any hint of concern in her eyes would have snapped the gossamer thread by which my control now hung. She had to leave now!

Abandoning all pretense of civility I shouted at her, under the influence of the ruthless creature chewing my insides. I swore and cursed her innocence, bemoaned her ignorance of my suffering. How could she not know the pit of torment she'd cast me into?

When my tirade ended I stood here, helpless as the heat of my lust reduced me to ashes in front of her very eyes. How could the source of my misery not know?

Perhaps the command that she bolt her door against me is what finally penetrated her ignorance.

With desperate relief I heard her feet striking the stone as she fled at a run. Her retreating sobs echoed across the water.

I wanted to cry myself, to cry as I hadn't since old Javier used to beat me. Only the desire still coursing through my veins and the fury of being denied prevented it. Even now raw anger warred with the unexpected wave of self-pity that threatened to drown me.

It was the anger which wrested the upper hand. Without a thought to the victory I'd just won I turned and flung myself after her. How dare she leave me here to burn in this agony of her creation!

Mindless, I arrived at her door only moments after she slammed it shut. My hand was outstretched to the handle when I heard the bolts slide into place.

That was the first time in my adult life I've ever thanked the God in Heaven for anything. Thank God I heard those bolts catch!

Christine had done as I commanded and barred the door. It is the only thing that saved her. I shuddered even as I heard the scrape of each lock slide home under her hand.

I could have asked her, no, begged her, to open that door. She had always done what I asked. I know I could have persuaded her to let me in. An entreaty in her angel's voice… yes, she would have obeyed.

Still, there must have yet been some stroke of light hidden in the depths of my soul. I stood there, hands braced against her door, shaking like an addict in the throes of withdrawal. Hunger consumed me as it lit every nerve in my body to painful awareness. I stood there cursing my own nobility…whatever decency I had somehow managed to acquire in the course of my ill-used life.

I couldn't bring myself to commit that ultimate act of betrayal and call out to her. I couldn't deceive her further, couldn't play the lamb. The red haze of madness receded even though the physical desire did not. It was enough to restore my equilibrium. I would trouble her no more tonight.

The awareness of what I'd almost done flooded through me; the shame was crushing in its intensity. I turned to go, but my legs lost their strength and I slid silently to the floor, the coolness of the rock wall at my back. My eyes burned as I tasted salt on my lips and I knew the tears had finally come. I longed to sob, to howl with sorrow and remorse. Christine's nearness was all that prevented it. I drew my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, turning my face into the silk sleeve of my shirt. Silent sobs shook through me, wracking my body with their violence.

Whether a few minutes or an hour passed I could not say. All I know is that when I came back to myself my sanity was coupled with an awareness of the physical desire that was yet unsatisfied. Apparently my body was unaware of the depths of my remorse.

After 50 years alone, wrestling with my needs in solitude I knew I could have easily dismissed this physical desire. Almost of its own volition my hand moved to the first button on my trousers, then stilled. I just couldn't bring myself to give in, to allow myself the callow physical release my body craved.

I deserved this physical punishment for the sin I'd come so very close to committing. There was now no doubt in my mind that had Christine not left when she did I would have taken her innocence, and any protest she might have made be damned!

….and it would have ensured that my dream of Christine's fear turning to love could never, ever come true. The death of that hope would have been the greatest blow of all, far worse than any unsatisfied physical desire. She would never have been able to forgive me. Not that it would have mattered, because I never would have forgiven myself.

Curse me! Damn this hated face! Tonight it truly had turned me into the one thing I'd fought against all my life. I had become the animal so many perceived me to be.

I felt sick at the knowledge. In that moment I wanted to die.

I leapt to my feet and ran from her door as if all the minions of hell pursued me.

I'm sure they did.

I fled into the arms of the only thing that had ever given me respite. I took no time to light fresh candles in my bedchamber. The few that flickered and guttered from that morning were enough.

There, wrapped in the comforting, familiar embrace of the darkness, I poured out everything that warred within me…the heartache, the lust, the fury…my sorrow and my shame… all of it went into my music. It flowed from my fingertips to the organ keys, through the chambers and out the pipes before echoing across the entire level of the underground lake.

This was the music I'd never before allowed Christine to hear. The rawness of it, the violence, the passion and pain, I'd always felt were too coarse for her sensibilities.

Tonight she would hear. Tonight I prayed she would understand.