It was an odd thing to have - freedom, that is. A strangely bittersweet discovery. There was something in it that she found she couldn't live without - and yet it also broke her slowly, the days seeming to drag and blur.
She was finally safe, and she found she only hated it more with every passing moment.
And to her surprise, she found that she missed him.
It was nothing she would ever admit to her husband - her poor husband, who began with her so young and aged so quickly for his worry of her. She did love her husband - she loved him dearly. She loved him for his sweetness, she loved him for his protection, for his simple devotion to her. And alongside her love for him, she resented him.
Not through any fault of his own, of course. Raoul was a good man; a kind husband. It was Christine herself who was broken.
She found that for everything she loved in him, she also hated.
She did not resent him, she reasoned. She only resented the things he was not - the things he would never be. She resented him for his control; if only once she could see him rise in passion she would be satisfied. She resented him for his absence of music. He never forbid her from it - instead he encouraged her rather often to sing. It had always seemed a strange thing - but he knew, she thought, that she would be nothing if not for music. And so he allowed her that simple solace. And she found she even resented him for that.
It was an odd thing, being allowed to come and go from their home with ease. And when she had mentioned it to her husband he had only sighed.
"He is dead, Christine," he had murmured to her. "He is dead and you've nothing to fear anymore."
She wondered often what he had thought in his final moments - if he had hated her nearly as much as she found she hated herself. It had begun slowly, as most things do. A passing thought, the faintest scent of a rose, a vaguely familiar melody and memories would flood back to her, images playing behind her eyes on a constantly rotating stage.
During the daylight hours they were easy to distract herself from, but at night they floated to her as easily as the nighttime breeze.
And she missed him; her terrible, broken angel.
She still had the last rose he had given to her, sheltered away between the only other remnants of him that she had - a small, leather-bound sketchbook. It was filled with drawings, ranging from picturesque landscapes and gothic castles to sketches of her, simple things that sat like moments captured in time by a flashbulb. One of her on the stage, doing a pirouette. One of her sitting in his large arm chair with a book spread open on her lap. The only common theme in them was the soft smile that he had painted upon her lips. And it was between the pages of this book that her last rose sat, the petals dried and preserved.
She did not cry; only once had she cried for memories of him. It was on her wedding night. Raoul had held her close against him, trying so hard to comfort her - as he always did, dear as he was - but she found it only distressed her all the more.
But since that night, she had not cried again for her angel. He would not want her to, she thought, and she hardly deserved to mourn his loss when she had only been so wicked to him.
And how much she wished she could change it all.
In the second month of her marriage Christine found herself asking her husband for a separate bedroom; and as a good man, a true gentleman, he had granted it to her.
She was going mad, she thought. But there was a sweetness about the madness - something tempting and bordering on relief.
She found herself splitting her weeks - four nights a week to her living, gentle, sweet husband; three nights a week she spent alone in her chamber, dedicating herself to a dead man again and again.
Those nights she found herself at peace, humming the melodies her angel had sprung into life and pouring over the pages of his sketchbook, running her fingers over the sharp lines and carefully tended art.
It was during the third month of her marriage that she found herself speaking to him out loud.
It was in the fourth month that she found herself distressed by his lack of answer.
It was at the beginning of the fifth month that she grew hysterical.
She would sit at the window of her bedchamber and stare out at the shadows that played upon the yard.
"I'm sorry," she would say to the calm night. "I never told you that I loved you - and I did, I think."
Only the breeze would answer her, sometimes the hoot of an owl. But she never heard his voice call back to her desperate pleas.
"I - I keep waiting, but you do not come. I fear I have gone rather mad, but I am sorry, Erik. I am sorry for wronging you, for leaving you. And I miss you terribly - please, only to see you once more would set my mind at ease."
The stillness of the night would remain unbroken. "Why did you leave me?" She would breathe.
There was no answer.
It was on the second week of the fifth month of her marriage that she found herself climbing into her husbands bed, wrapping her arms around him and burrowing close against his side, giving him quite a fright.
She cried but he did not question her, simply pulling her closer against his side and pressing his lips gently to her forehead, good man that he was.
"Erik is dead," she said simply, throwing herself into even deeper hysteria.
Her husband shushed her gently. "He has been dead for months," he offered in what she was sure was meant to be reassurance. "He cannot hurt you anymore - you've nothing to fear, Christine."
She only cried harder at that and he pulled her against him, cradling her gently until her tears finally began to run dry.
"You miss him," he said quietly. It was not said in anger, nor was his tone one of accusation, it was a simple statement of fact that hung heavy in the air.
And slowly she nodded against him.
"And you loved him," he said in the same strange way, prompting another nod. He simply sighed. "It is not so wrong, you know, to miss him."
She took in a shuddering breath at that. "It doesn't seem real," she breathed. "He can't be dead."
He pressed his lips to her forehead for a long while, and finally gave a small hum. "He loved you," he said quietly.
"I loved him too, I think," she confessed, her voice hoarse and cracking on the words.
"He wanted you to be happy," Raoul said quietly. "That's why he let you go."
"Do you think he hated me? When he died?" Her voice was small and far-away.
He huffed at that and turned on his side in the bed. He gently brushed away her tears with his thumbs as he looked into her eyes. "No," he said confidently. "I do not think he was capable of hating you - I truly believe you could have stabbed him and set his home aflame and still he would have loved you."
She huffed out half a laugh at that.
He was propping himself up on his elbow, his cheek resting against his palm as he looked at her carefully. "Do you need to go back?" He finally asked in a most serious voice.
She was nodding and he sighed and gave her a tight smile. "Then I will take you back," he promised.
And it was on the first week of the sixth month of her marriage that her husband held true to his promise, diving back into the bowels of the opera house at her side.
He illuminated the path with a lantern and allowed her to lead the way, far more confident in her knowledge of the labyrinth than his own. And when they came upon the calm shores of the little lake Christine was wrapping her arms around herself.
"If you want to turn back we can," he said after a moment of stillness.
She only shook her head and sighed. "I need this, I think."
And he was nodding, settling her in the strange boat that was tied upon the shore and rowing inexpertly across it.
His jerky rowing was distracting to Christine - only yet another difference between her husband and her angel. Her angel had been so confident and so full of strength - but even so, he never would have allowed her to return to his rivals home.
It was with a terrible pain that she realized everything looked exactly as it had when last she left - the piano bench even remained tipped on its side. It had been overturned in their confrontation and neither had stopped to right it. Pages of music littered the floor and Christine choked on a sob as she remembered how angry and desperate she had been - the way she had swiped the music from its stand in a desperate attempt to hurt him.
She found herself falling to her knees, gathering the music and desperately trying to put it back in order.
"I was a fool," she whispered to the echoing stone walls. The only sounds she could hear were the steady "drip-drip-drip" of moisture from the ceiling of the catacombs and the beat of her own heart, her pulse rushing far too loudly through her own ears.
Raoul remained just on the shore, and she was grateful to find that he stood turned away from her, allowing her her private grief. He had no place here, not in this world that had belonged only to music and Erik, and he seemed to accept the fact with grace.
He didn't even turn to her when she righted the piano bench and sat at it, not even as she feebly attempted to pluck her way through the music.
It ended in a frustrated cry as she let her palms crash against the keys, coaxing forth the most dissonate and unpleasant sound she had ever heard the instrument emit.
Her hands flew first to her ears and then to her eyes as she sobbed in frustration. "I can't play it!" She cried.
It was only then that her husband dared to tread into the strange world. She felt him as he sat carefully on the bench beside her.
"Erik is dead, and he took music with him!" She cried.
Raoul simply wrapped one arm around her and carefully pulled her against his side.
"You can play it," he said carefully.
She shook her head. "I can't," she insisted hysterically. "I hurt him so badly, and I will never hear his music again."
"You will," he said softly. "You will bring it home with you, and you will learn it and you will play it as often as you please."
Her breath caught in her throat. "You would let me play his music?"
He sighed and nodded. "I would let you play his music," he answered carefully. "But only if you wanted to."
"Why?" She whispered breathlessly.
He seemed to be caught in thought for a moment before he answered. "Because I love you," he said thoughtfully. "And you loved him. It is not a fair thing to ask of you - to forget him. I cannot expect that of you. I want you to be happy Christine. And if his music makes you happy then who am I to take that from you?"
She found she could only wrap her arms around him and press her face into his throat. "I do love you Raoul," she murmured.
"I know," he said quietly, stroking her hair.
She took a deep breath against him. "Can we go home now?" And her voice was quiet and shy, but he nodded.
"We can go home now," he said quietly.
Christine spoke of her angel often after that and Raoul, good husband that he was, always allowed her to, holding her close as she would whisper the tales that he had told her, listening as she spoke of magic and music.
Halfway through the second year of her marriage, Christine bore a son, aptly named Charles, the name that rightfully belonged to her Erik. Her husband had never asked her where the name came from - he knew, she thought, and avoided the conversation because it was far easier to pretend he didn't know.
And by the end of the second year of her marriage she had mastered all five pieces of music that she had stolen from her Angel's tomb, even managing to bring her husband to tears with it.
Her son was raised with love and care, and on stories spun by a man he would never know. And in the end, Christine could admit that she was finally happy - for though Erik had died, he lived on around her, in her mind, in her stories and the music that they had shared.