He loved her.

The story is incomplete in many aspects. Some might seem obvious, some not so much. I don't expect you to know the whole story. I don't want you to know the whole story.

Just know that he loved her.

Christine Daae was not entirely the blameless innocent she was written to be. I know this without having to have been there.

"Christine, I love you."

"I love you, Raoul."

"Christine, you know I will give you everything. Everything. Just tell me you love me."

"I love you, Erik."

Maybe I should tell you about one evening that are not mentioned in any of the records. An evening that may never have happened, but I am sure it did.

There was music playing, but he couldn't be sure he was playing it. He couldn't feel his hands.

He could only feel her presence.

She was sitting close to him, her leg just brushing his.

It was a month after the incident with the face. Even though she had told him she didn't care about his face, he still wore a mask. He wasn't stupid. He knew she would care. She, who was so beautiful, could not bear to be with someone so ugly.

So he wore the mask. He wanted to pretend, also. Pretend he was worthy of her. Pretend she loved him.

But she did love him.

She did. She told him she did. More than once.

He wasn't sure if he was playing anymore. All he knew was that she was close to him.

Almost absentmindedly her hand touched his arm, and started a journey towards his back, which she stroked.

Absentmindedly, might I add?

However, the shock of the contact hit him, and stayed, while something else made an appearance too.

Happiness.

That was it.

For that moment, Erik was happy.

He knew, of course. He wasn't blind. He had seen her with him. But when he confronted her she said he was just a friend, that he meant nothing more, and that she didn't love him. Then, when he didn't believe her, she hugged him and told him that he was the only man she wanted.

And he chose to believe her.

She manipulated his love on many occasions. She lied to him. She tricked him. And yet she kept coming to see him. She would come to his house by the lake, and she would let him hold her and kiss her and tell her he loved her, and beg her to promise him to remain his and not to leave him, and she always promised.

Always.

And, did you know that after she married Raul, after our story ended, she was not exactly faithful? That she would sometimes disappear?

But Raoulet let slide.

Because he loved her... of course, he wasn't happy all the time. They didn't have the happiest of marriages. Christine Daae often wondered if it was the Phantom that forced her onto aoul, as the only means of escape.

And she spent the rest of her life with him.

Because she loved him…

Didn't she?