Erik was kind enough to tread carefully in the few days though at times it only served to irritate her more. She almost resented his sudden thoughtfulness - up to this point he had hardly seemed to care how his actions would affect her. His new hypersensitivity was almost too much, the way he tiptoed about their home as if only the slightest misstep would cause an upset.

She wasn't deranged, she was simply sad. At times she wished that he would reach for her hand again, that he would dare to pull her into his arms. The comfort would have been welcome but she couldn't blame him - not so terribly much.

Erik was a man who spent the majority of his life in solitude - how on Earth could she expect him to know the intricacies of comforting someone?

Yet the pitiful gaze that he fixed her with nearly drove her to madness. His guilt, his terrible sorrow. It was him that had begged for her pity, him that had sought so desperately after her compassion and now that he had it he acted as though it was more than he knew how to handle.

Perhaps that was simply what life was. Maybe that's what it was all designed to do - to drive you so fervently after something only to disappoint you when it was finally within your grasp. Sometimes she wondered if that was how he felt - terribly disappointed by the place that he had found, disappointed that his wife was not the perfect thing that he had insisted on creating in his own head.

Other times she wondered if it was simply all in her head. If she convinced herself that she wasn't enough then maybe she wouldn't have to feel so terribly guilty about her own disappointment. Maybe when she curled up alone in bed at night and drew her knees tightly against her chest she would not have to feel so terrible about the nightmares that came to her, she would not have to feel so very wrong for longing for another man when her husband sat only just beyond the wall.

She was terribly resentful - that was nothing she would ever deny. Sometimes her bitterness caught her off guard, coming at the strangest times. When his fingers would twitch at his side, when he looked at her and she thought that perhaps this was it, maybe he would finally reach out to her - and it always left her so disappointed when he sighed, turning away from her.

As much as she resented him for it she was no better - she, too, was terrified to bridge the great void that had grown between them.

In her youth she had always been so terribly afraid of falling. When faced with an edge she would back away quickly. Even simply looking up at the catwalks was sometimes enough to make her dizzy and nauseous, imagining herself up there and the terribly long fall it would be to the stage.

It was similar in a way, only this fall was far more terrifying. She could not blame him so much for the image he had built up of her when she had done the very same to him. He had promised his love so thoroughly, he had filled her head with a fairytale of this ever growing love that was far too great for her to ever comprehend. In a way she was afraid to reach out to him. As much as she feared him, as much as she had tried to hate him, his rejection would crush her.

Instead she sat mousy and proper, playing at the image that she had in her head of what a wife was. She had no experience in that category and Erik was not the easiest man to learn with. She had never had a mother to teach her of wifely things - she had never been able to see the way that a marriage worked. Her mother died just after she was born and Mamma Valerias was old and brittle by the time Christine had found herself in her company.

Even though she would never admit it out loud, Christine was just as lost as Erik was, kicking desperately in an attempt to keep her head above water.

"I took him above today," Erik said slowly over dinner one night, breaking the awkward silence carefully. "I am sure it gave Carlotta quite a fright, finding him in her dressing room."

A ghost of a smile found her at that as she imagined it - the diva returning exhausted to her dressing room, the outrageously dramatic scream she surely would have let out at her discovery.

"That is good," she said softly. "He needs help - medical attention. I have never seen him so ill."

She could feel his eyes on her - that infuriatingly calculating look that he always gave her. She hated it. Hated the way that he inspected her, hated the way that he picked her apart so carefully like some specimen under a microscope. His eyes burned her, a terribly uncomfortable hum always settled just beneath the surface of her skin when he examined her that way.

"Please don't look at me like that," she finally whispered, fixing her eyes on her plate as she blinked back her tears. "I hate it when you do."

"Like what?" he asked, sounding truly taken aback.

"Like I am… like I am some thing, like I am some puzzling object, some sort of unpredictable little experiment," she finally lifted her eyes, meeting his defiantly. "I do not like it."

He looked away from her, down at the surface of the table. "I am sorry," he said softly.

She wanted to scream, to hurt him, to fall to her knees before him and beg him for some shred of human touch, some scrap of affection.

Instead she wrapped her arms tightly around herself. "It's fine, Erik," she breathed, shaking her head. "It's all just fine."

"I don't know what to do," his words were quiet and measured, his eyes fixed stubbornly on the table. "You are so terribly sad. If I look at you it causes anger, if I reach for you you pull away. I do not know what to do, Christine."

His frustration bit through his words, weaving icily around her heart in her chest and drawing her breath out with it. Was it wrong that she felt so terribly guilty? Sometimes she wondered if she deserved this strange turmoil. She wondered if they were ever meant for happiness. Once she thought she had found hers. She found it with a man far better than she would ever be, a man who lived in light and loved selflessly.

She had never been selfless. Everything she had craved had been with herself in mind - she was so terribly selfish. Even now she was selfish, so absorbed in her own self pity that she couldn't bear to think of the pain that she caused her husband. Her husband who did love her despite her insecurities, despite her terrible selfishness, despite her vanity.

He suffered terribly, her odd husband. If only he had chosen someone else to love - someone selfless and bright, someone that could match him in mind, someone that could return the love that he so freely gave. Someone that didn't hold such unreachable expectations of him. It wasn't her. If they'd ever had any chance for happiness it surely wasn't together. The more he tried the further they drifted apart. No matter what he did she was never able to accept it - it was never good enough. Could it ever be?

"You kept your promise to me, Erik. He is alive and safe and free. Everything is fine - it will all be just fine, won't it?" she looked up at him, wondering if she should feel guilty for her lies. How could she reassure him when she felt so terribly conflicted herself?

His fingers were gripping the edge of the table tightly. "Sometimes I wonder if I should have sent you away," his voice was quiet and even on his confession. "Perhaps some dreams are better kept just as dreams. I have never felt such hopelessness."

She swallowed dryly. As she stared at his mask she imagined his face beneath it - that terrible, twisted flesh that still caused her skin to crawl at the sight of it, those terribly dry and misshapen lips twisted into a contemplative frown.

"I think it is a bit too late for regrets," she answered hollowly. She wondered if he found it reassuring at all - knowing that she would keep her promise, that she would stand at his side as his wife. He shook his head slowly, his long finger dragging along the curved edge of the table. "Do you love me at all Erik?"

At that his eyes snapped to her, suddenly serious, lacking any of the pensive thoughtfulness he had seemed so caught in only a moment before. "What kind of a question is that?"

"A serious one," she said, biting her lip. "One that deserves a serious answer."

"I love you more than even my music," he said seriously, his sad eyes finding hers. "More than anything I have left upon this Earth."

She shivered under his gaze, trying to resist the pull of his voice, that terrible power that he seemed to yield over her with only the smallest movement of the muscles in his throat. It was terribly ironic to think that she could love him if only he were his voice - that mysterious and enthralling thing he had been to her. If he had only stayed the voice; that untouchable, inhuman thing that had captivated her so thoroughly. She had loved him then. She had loved his lie so deeply, so honestly, so innocently.

He was no angel, he was no demon. He was not some mystical being sent by God to bless her - he was simply Erik. It had all been so terribly disappointing, so anticlimactic an ending to the story he had crafted so carefully just for her.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to wipe away the strange melancholia that had settled so deeply into her.

"I need you to be my husband," she said, her voice unrecognizable to her own ears.

"I am your husband," he said confusedly. "Perhaps not a good one, but I am your husband all the same."

She shook her head at that, picking at a loose string that she found on the sleeve of her dress as she attempted to avoid his eyes. "I need you to act like my husband," she said slowly, wondering how to put her thoughts into words, how to explain to him what it was that she so craved from him, how to explain the terrible loneliness that she felt.

"I don't understand," he said eventually, sounding utterly defeated.

She twisted the string around her finger, finally breaking it loose. "I am terrified," she said softly, ignoring the look that he gave her. "I am lonely, Erik. I am… lost. I do not know why it is you love me - I am terribly vain and selfish and stupid next to you - but if you do, I need you to be my husband. I can't - I can't keep doing this."

"You have never been stupid," he said disdainfully. "And if anyone is selfish in this whole mess it is me."

"You don't understand," she said, tears pricking at her eyes. "You don't understand - you can't. How could you?"

She heard the scrape of his chair against the floor, his slow footsteps as he came closer and closer, her heart racing in her chest with his slow and thoughtful approach. He knelt slowly in front of her chair keeping the careful distance between them as he looked up at her.

"I don't," he said soothingly. "I don't understand, Christine. You must tell me - you must explain it to me."

His hand was so close to hers, resting against the edge of the table. She couldn't put it into words, she couldn't explain herself when she hardly understood it herself.

Her fingers inched slowly across the table until finally, finally she pressed them over his. She heard his breath catch, she could feel his eyes on her - watching her, calculating, waiting to see what was to come. When his palm turned up under hers and his cold fingers finally wrapped around her hand she began to sob, pitching forward and pressing her face against his shoulder.

She did not mind so much when the chair lurched out from under her, when she found herself on the floor on her knees.

She supposed if she had been anywhere else, with anyone else, she would have been utterly embarrassed by her outburst. Raoul would have called her mad, would have pulled her from the floor and insisted that she was unwell.

Not Erik though. His trembling fingers simply found her hair, pulling her closer against him as he held her right there on the stone floor of the kitchen.

Erik would not call her mad. He would never dare to insinuate that she was less than of sound mind. He would never push her away and remind her that she must be proper. He wouldn't look at her like she was some wandering, lost little thing that must be coddled and lied to.

And for one long, fleeting moment as her husband held her and trembled on the terribly uncomfortable stone floor, she allowed herself to be content even as she cried.