Chapter 9

.. And turn around.

"No." I state with a shake of my head. My friends are shocked.

"Wh- why?" Carlotta sputters, hanging from Raoul's side.

"Because… because I think I have to do this myself."

"And why is that?" Raoul asks, the first thing he's said in ages.

"Because it's the way it has to be."

"Why?" Nadir asks, a slight whine to his voice. I lace my fingers together briefly, wondering how I can explain.

"Because that's the story it needs to be. I… I'm so grateful for everything you've all done for me, or for yourselves but also benefitted me.. I know you, Nadir, still want to cross words with Erik, and I know, Carlotta and Raoul, that you just want to see it through at this point, but I really think that.. it won't be a story with a happy ending if we all go through to the finale, you know? I can't explain why I feel that way, but I know for certain that Erik and I have to meet, have to.. fight it out one last time, but do you guys?"
"So you would fight him alone?" Carlotta spits, furious. "That will make our 'story' a good one?"

"Yes." I nod. "I'm sorry, I know this sounds crazy, but I really think it has to be just me and him.." They look at me blankly.

"Look. I know that if you guys go, he'll feel attacked, outnumbered maybe. He's scared, he's hurt, I don't know what about, but I know he trusts me in some weird fundamental way and I think that if I go alone…"

"You stand a chance of ending this without a literal fight." Nadir reasons.

"Yes. But if you come with… nothing I say will matter, because you being there makes it less.. personal.. between us. Does that make sense?" I ask them. If I sound absolutely nutty, I'll give in to all three of them, but if there is any room I'm right, I won't relent. Nadir seems to have already accepted my decision, and Carlotta is the first to sigh. She shares a look with Raoul and Nadir, and then looks down in defeat.

"If that is how it must be…" She sighs, but then looks up with a bit of hope. "But should you need us.." She offers, hand reaching out slightly.

"Yes, should you need us, we'll be here." Nadir continues, willing to accept this condition.

"Right here, waiting." Raoul concludes, smiling sadly. I feel ready to cry again, grateful for these wonderful friends.

"Thank you. I won't forget you, no matter what happens. Ever." I turn to take the stairs, but I hesitate. I turn around and hug them all in the best group hug I can pull together. "I love you all. I will see you again, I swear it." With a final squeeze, I release, them, and turn and run up the stairs into the darkest void I have ever known. The door seals shut behind me, and in this emptiness where only touch informs me of my way even my memories of light seem dim and vague. Eventually I no longer feel the steps rise, as though I were walking up the most natural incline. Then even that fades, and the ground underneath is smooth and as flat as can be. The light has not changed, but even so I feel strangely aware of myself in this space.

I walk forward, there's nowhere else to go. As I do, a dim light comes awake above me. I turn around, and there are mirrors on swivels everywhere. I turn around again, and it's the same. It's as if I were always in this room. This room, which seems infinite and infinitely filled with mirrors, lit only by that poor and yellowed light that has no source.

"Come out, Erik. I've come for my violin, and you can't hide from me." I know he's here, somehow. I can.. feel it in my heart. He's nearby, and so is my violin. Absentmindedly, or so I hope I appear, I push on a mirror's edge, and it goes spinning. I watch it, mildly mesmerized by the way the environment seems to twist as it goes round and round, slight swooshes catching the air. As the mirror turns round the last time, slowing to a halt, Erik appears. He stands tall, glowering down at me, wearing an outfit that screams 'murder'. The red leathery material is so deep and slick that he may well have just risen from a pool of blood. I am momentarily disgruntled by this, but I am not afraid. I match his glare with my own.

"Why must we play this game?" He suddenly asks, a moment of staring suddenly a conversation out loud.

"You chose to play." I sound accusatory, but it's true.

"No, no.." He shakes his head, almost numbly. "We used to be.. there was a time when.. you always want to remember the wrong stories."

"Remembering my father is hardly a misstep, Erik. He's important to me, how dare you-" He slams a hand on the mirror from the other side, stopping me.

"No!" He snarls, his mask's magical porcelain curling up around his nose. I return to heartlessly glaring.

"I want my violin, Erik. The game's not over yet." He hisses at this, but I hold my ground.

"If you want it, you shall have to pry it away from me." With that, he raises it to his chin, and starts a chilling song that sounds like torturous, venomous heartbreak. Erik dissolves in the mirror, and all the mirrors in the room start spinning, all too fast. I see Erik appear and disappear in some of them, but he's there and gone within a single rotation, his image a mere flicker.

"Down once more to the dungeon of my black despair, down we plunge to the prison of my mind!" He sings, but I don't understand how he's trapped here, when it's his kingdom, his land and all under his power. The music swells and I feel a call to join it, but that is a kind of temptation I have to fight, because giving in would mean surrender, and I have already decided I will not lose, not here.

Furious at this seeming impossible puzzle, the insanely spinning mirrors and half-life images of Erik taunting me, full of rage himself, I do something I've never done before. I break something.

Yes! I grab the edge of a mirror as it swings around, the edge biting into my hands, and I pull, the swivel at the base breaking easily with the disrupted momentum of the spin. It crashes but I don't wait to watch it shatter, I pull down another and another and just when I go to topple one more, Erik appears with in, and his image stays even as the mirror continues to whirl.

"What on earth are you doing? This isn't how it's supposed to go!" He shouts, but I pay the words no mind. Barely thinking, I run straight in, the mirror somehow non-physical as I pass through its edges.

I tackle Erik, grabbing after the violin. I feel the force of the mirrors we're inside, but we fall out in our mad scramble to keep or obtain possession of the instrument. We step out of the one and into another, getting dizzier each time we pass from one revolving mirror world to another. Finally, I grab something, anything, desperate to try to wrangle him into giving it up, and I pull. The object comes loose easily and I fly backwards, the smooth shape clutched in my hands. I fall out of the mirror entirely, harshly landing on my back.

The mirrors shatter as I hear Erik yell inhumanly. The sound resonates in my skull and the pressure is such that I have no wonder that glass cannot stand it. I can barely recognize the sound for all the force affecting me. The glass falls down around me, and I scream shortly as I feel pieces the size of confetti strips hitting me, though relatively harmlessly. What's a few mild scratches to the injuries I've faced already today?

I pull myself to a sitting position, blink the glass away from my eyes carefully but quickly, then look down at my hands to see what's upset him so. It's his mask. Erik's mask. The magic mask he wears as a face because.. because…?

I look to Erik instinctively, his shadowy form just across from me, hiding unsuccessfully behind the empty frames of the now-destroyed mirrors. He shudders, shakes and nearly falls to his knees, his awkwardly and far too long legs, and screams again, the metal frames bending and warping this time. I feel my insides twist with anxiety. The very world seems to shake. As his scream dies a low rumble seems to form in its place, and then that falls away into a laugh, a terrible and hollow laugh.

"So, this is what you wanted to see?" He rasps, shaking. I cannot see more than his silhouette, the dim light somehow dimmer. His very form seems.. unhinged. He's too big. Was he always that thin, that tall? Were his hands so long and crooked? Slowly, he turns, and his golden orange eyes glow from the dark. My head starts to hurt. "Why, Christine? Why?" This time, I see the barest hint of movement where his lips should be, but I only see a glint of.. of teeth, acting as lips should act. I see now, the gaping hole of his nose, edges skeletal, how his mouth is a row of teeth, catlike, thin and angular, how the barest hint of normal mouth at the edge of these is turned down in a grimace that pulls his face awkwardly. His skin seems like porcelain, or clay, charcoal gray and cracked about the nose and eyes, and yet still skin, still flesh and muscle.

And then I remember.

I remember the fairy in the garden who taught me to sing, who told me stories, who comforted me in the wake of nightmares. I clutch my head from the new wave of old memories, locked away so long ago and again and again until they were buried in dreams and nightmares both.

"Erik?" I sputter, breathless, tears dropping hard and fast as soon as they form.

"NO!" He roars, that terrible maw twisting in rage. The splinters of glass around us explode, and the atmosphere seems to rumble and shake with his fury.

"Erik, what did you do?!" I yell back. I- I know him! I've always known him- and yet?

"You outgrew me! Your fairy wasn't enough anymore and you just had to see, didn't you?!" He accuses me, prowling forward on all fours like an animal until he's close enough to grab me by the wrists, mask held between us. His fingers are so long that they wrap nearly twice around my wrists, the grip mechanical and perfect; inescapable. "And then I wasn't good enough at all, Christine, wasn't I? Your fairy wasn't pretty and that just would do, would it? And you looked at me with those horrified, disgusted eyes, Christine, and I couldn't bear it! You begged, you begged and you wished so desperately for me to undo it!" He flings my arms away, sending me backwards on the ground. My back stings from the harsh landing and the now sand-fine layer of glass. He stands up, backs away. "So I did. I undid it all."

"That's not what I… That's not what I meant." I realize. I remember.. I was twelve, I think, and I only wanted to see what my fairy looked like and when.. when he looked so hurt, so upset, so betrayed, I wished that I could undo that pain but he..

"To hell with what you meant, Christine. None of that matters.. because you belong to me.. you are mine, Christine." He turns back on my, desperation and surety conflicting in his eyes, held tight by possession only.

"No, I'm-"

"But you are, because I love you, and I need you and there is nothing you can do to leave without my permission. You are magic and you are music and you belong here and you will love me… you are the only one who can." His voice is back to whispering, but I hear it clearly as though I spoke the words myself, even above the shaking of the air.

"You're wrong! On all accounts you are wrong, Erik! I am no one's but my own! I am human and a child and I cannot love someone who lies and cheats and steals from the one he claims to adore so much! You could be loved!" I yell, and I stand. I throw the mask to the ground. I think we're both done with masks. "You brought me here, expecting me to fail and fall right in your arms, but I made it, despite all your cruelties!" Erik steps back as I approach. For something, someone so big, he is very afraid of a little girl. Even so his mouth twists in disgust.

"Cruelties? I have been generous! I have done all that you asked! Everything! Your memories, unwanted, undone! A chance to earn them back, granted! Time and space reordered time and again! Even now as you repeat yourself, baring the monster you don't want, I allow it because it's what you want!" He sneers. "I am exhausted from performing to your very whims, Christine." He looks it too, exhausted and terrified. "What now, do you want, Christine, so that I can do that too?" He is… pathetic. He is tired and scared and he wants this done. No matter what his face looks like, terrifying and inhuman, I know those eyes.

"I want to remember this time. You want to undo it again, but this is not a pity. This is respect. I cared about you once, I could again, but not if you keep cheating. Not if you keep taking under the guise of giving."

"I will not allow it! In no kingdom of mine will this face be known to anyone!" The world cracks around us, as if he would break it apart in tandem with himself. The words I know I need to speak rise in me. I steady myself and step forward. Erik steps back, clutching the violin.

"Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Fairy City. For my-"

"Please, think of it, you could rule here, rule music here, your birthright-"

"-will is as strong as yours, and my-"

"-it could be beautiful here with you as its queen, as my queen, only-"

"-kingdom is as great." The cracks grow, white, blinding light piercing in and highlighting every deformity. The glass shimmers on the ground, spins and twirls in unfelt winds.

"-let me rule you, let me take away those thought that harm you, and you can stay, stay and be mine and young forever, please, please, Christine. Be mine as I would be yours, perfect and whole and endless and unseen.." He whines, and he continues, but it is as if I cannot hear him beneath the thundering of my own small voice.

"You have no power over me."

The world shatters and Erik seems to fall back into space. I feel like space is tearing in two, he on one side and I on another. I start to fall up, glass dancing around me as it rises but I know, like I know anything about Erik, that he is falling into death, just as I would fall up into life. Below, I see darkness, only darkness and despair that he willingly throws himself into, and above I can see my room, the house, my home. I could let this play out, could let Erik submit himself to death and go back to my own life, but… something in me begs me to stay, and I know that it's the part of me that my father raised. Always kind.

"Erik!" I reach forward, to his arms stretched out as he falls, to clutch at the violin. It barely holds, being pulled in two directions, but Erik lets go of the neck, and I barely catch his sleeve with my other hand. This stuns him out of his mindless stare.

He yanks away, but I hold tight. He growls, and I feel as though our respective gravities intensify. Still, I do not let go.

"Go! Forget about me again, be happy in that human world with your dead father and empty house!" He roars, terrible teeth parting. His eyes scream hurt.

"No! You deserve to live, Erik! I remember! I remember you told me nobody loved you so you made your own kingdom, but that didn't fix anything, did it? Because you hide! That's all you do is hide, hide and hurt others before they can hurt you, but it doesn't have to be that way! You can be loved, you can be good, you deserve to be loved!" I pull, hard, until I can wrap my arms around him, and I hold tight. We go spinning, the strange, opposite polarities twisting around us.

"I remember when we were little and I loved you and I thought you were an angel and the image of goodness and, and I know you could find that again. I don't.. I can't forgive you quickly, but I want what we used to be.. friends." Slowly, I feel him relax, and his arms fall across my back, gently.

"How?" His voice is so small, like when we were young.

"How.. how what?" I ask, turning to see him, but he's looking away, and all I can see is his chin, the collar of his cape obscuring the rest.

"How can you even tolerate this? Touching .. me? I am.."
"You were my friend, once, Erik. It doesn't matter what you look like. Only what you do, and what you mean. I don't care that you're not 'pretty'. It's your actions I take offense at."

"So, then, how in that case can you say that I should live? I could just.. fall away, and this kingdom would crumble away and all that would be left is the infinite pit… We could all just fall away.."

"For the same reasons. You were good once. You can be good again." I whisper. "You deserve to live, to try again. I.. I know you've been hurting, that's why you've done all you have, and that doesn't excuse it, but.. I, at least, am willing to offer a second chance."

"You are always kind.."

"As I was taught. As I believe." I murmur. He is quiet, his heartbeat erratic. I can feel it in my hands, pressed against his shoulders.

"You've been wronged in your life nearly as much as I, how can you do it?"

"There's so much bitterness and sorrow in the world as it is.. why would I ever want to add to it? It's well enough to be angry or sad or scared.. but these things have their purpose and their time and place. Their usefulness only lasts so long and.. while it's hard to get past them, we have to. We have to. The world would be too dark if that's all we felt."

"I do not know how.. how to move past this. I.. I hurt. I hurt and I hurt you and I-" He curls around me, enormous but gentle now, though he starts to shake.

"Hush. I know." I hold him tighter. "I forgive you. Mostly. Some things will take longer than others, but I understand. I do. I made the same mistake." I whisper. For a long moment, we simply breathe in the darkness, still being pulled in opposite directions, though only gently. We hang in equilibrium, supporting each other.

"..what now?" Erik asks firsts. "I'd rather you forgot about.. this. It keeps happening.. I cannot bear it again."

"Again? How many times have we fought like this?" I pull away to look at him, and while he only moves his eyes away, I know he wishes he could hide.

"Like this? Never quite like this. I have tried many times over the years to reconnect with the same result. The mystery of the fae behind the façade always.. always gets to you." His voice is a tired bitterness.

"Not this time. It was an accident."

"What was different this time?"

"I realized.. I knew who you were underneath. Underneath the real mask, that is. That you were just hurt and felt broken so you hide and hurt others. Everyone wears masks, Erik. Everyone has something they want to hide. But eventually you can't. And you don't, not to the people who really care. They'll understand, or try to."

"No one cares, if anyone ever did. I was born from malice and fury, Christine.." I can feel us sink under the weight of his despair. I see his tired eyes trying to close, those long lashes fluttering wearily.

"You needn't hide from me, Erik. Whatever else, I do care." I wish I could give him my will to live, to grow, to better. If I am magic, why can't I do this? I remember the life of torment he has described to me, time and again, and I wish I could ease that suffering; it does nothing to wish. Even so, I feel him shudder, a sob rising out of him.

"You are always kind, Christine."

He cranes his neck to look at me, and for a moment his golden yellow eyes meet mine, gratitude and heartache both visible there, but then he is somehow gone, the spinning through emptiness stops, and I feel ground beneath my feet. I am still in a void of darkness, or, rather, back in that original, infinite dark stairwell. I no longer feel that well of empty void and death, nor that doorway to home. I sigh. Erik is fine, I can feel it. So I start to climb again, but the tension that filled this space before is gone. I navigate the stairs much easier, this time. I step up, and there are no more stairs, and a light blooms, creating a world around me.

It's like entering an entirely different dimension, where the night is both the sky and the earth, all encompassing. The stairs have led me to a platform made of the same reddish brown stone of the early parts of the labyrinth, but it's shaped like the top of a tower. There are trees in here, however they are dead and wiry, their branches running off into the air above for what seems like forever.

Erik is sitting, almost drenched in his cloak, by a part of the tower that's missing its parapet. I walk over, slowly. His hair is back, and I figure that the mask is as well. He's human height again, instead of nine feet tall, or so he appears as I approach. He is no longer the color of ashes or the texture of dolls or teacups, no longer a mere skeletal mass. Yes, the mask is back, I see as he turns ever so slightly towards me, then away again. His slightly elongated ears hide the edge of the mask.

"Erik?"

"Forgive me for sending you away so abruptly, I needed a moment."

"I understand." I hold the violin, almost forgotten, to my chest. For a moment there is impossible but peaceful quiet, but Erik stands, his cape rustling.

"So.. you've completed all your quests. You've retrieved your memories, all of them, and the violin. You bested the labyrinth, bested me, and to top it all off, you saved this kingdom from a swift and sure demise.. What now, Christine Daae?"

"I think I should go home." I say, nearly without thinking. But it's true. All of this was to go home victorious, wasn't it? Well, victorious I am, though I feel a little hollow.

"Ah." He laughs, trying to be earnest. "Of course, home. Where is home, Christine? It could be here, couldn't it?" Finally he turns fully. His clothes are much simpler now. A white shirt, dark pants, tall boots, typical cape. I think for a moment He still wants me to stay, but I know now that he won't try to force me. He couldn't if he tried, but he won't do even that.

"Home is where Meg and Mrs. Giry are.. the world where my mother and father are buried, the world where our house stands and I go to school and grow up. This.. as wonderful and magical and mystical as it all is.. this isn't my home."

"But it could be." Erik almost pleads. And I see it, there in my mind, how this kingdom could blossom if I so much as stayed, let alone.. anything else.

"But it isn't." He blinks. A pause, and he sighs.

"Of course. Yes. So, then, home you shall go. Memories and violin and all." He waves a hand to the side, and a mirror appears, but the image changes from reflection to the inside of my room at the Girys' house. I step close to it, amazed. So easy. I half expected another quest. "I must warn you, though.." He hesitates. There it is.

"What? Another quest? A riddle, perhaps?"
"No, no. We are beyond that.. It's just that- well, you see…. Ah.." He pauses, losing his composure with nerves or, no, sadness? "There.. there are rules. Any fae kingdom.. you may enter it once, and you may leave it once. There is no second adventure." This hits me hard when it finally dawns on me what it means.

"If I go home I can't even visit? But, but I've made friends here, I promised I'd see them again, I…"

"I know you did. But those are the rules, and not even you or I can change them. So unless home can be here…" He gestures to the world around us, the stars practically singing for me to stay. But I can't stay. My life, whatever it turns out to be, isn't here. I can feel that much in my heart. Erik knows it too, I can see it in his eyes that he's lost his fight. ".. you have to go. I understand."

"Can.. Can I say goodbye, at least?" I feel sick, close to crying again. Erik nods.

"Of course. Take as long as you need." Noiselessly, he waves a hand over the mirror and it turns into an image of the throne room, where Carlotta, Raoul, and Nadir still wait. Carlotta is pacing anxiously, almost furiously. Raoul sits and stares at the wall that hides the stairway. Nadir sits on some steps that separate the main floor from a balcony, staring at the reflection in his sword. "Guys?" I nearly cry. They all turn at my voice. I must be positioned over the throne, in the painting that hung there.

"Christine!" They all cry out, leaping to their feet and coming toward me, or my image anyway.

"Did you kick his sorry ass?!" Carlotta asks the loudest. I giggle.

"I guess you could say that. Everything is fine. I.. I won. I got the violin and nobody got hurt. Well.. physically." I show off the violin with a little wave.

"So I'll get my stern talking-to with Phantom?" Nadir asks, eagerly smirking, tail faintly wagging.

"Indeed." I nod.

"Christine will come back now?" Raoul asks, and that's where my smile fades, and a few more tears drop down my cheeks. "Christine?"

"Christine, what is going on?" Carlotta demands, albeit softly for her normal tone. I suppose she's concerned. "Is everything well? You won, what is the matter? Are you hurt? We will be right there!" Carlotta starts to fly, but I shake my head before she can get far.

"I'm fine! I am. I.. I did.. I won." I nod. "And now I have to go home. I can't.. leave my life behind. I need to go home and grow up and, and.. and that means I can't come back." They gasp. "It's not that I don't love you guys, you, you're all the best friends anyone could hope for, and I'd do anything for any of you-"

"So stay!" Carlotta asks, hands on the painting, visible in my mirror as though she were on the other side of a sheet of glass. "If you do anything for us, stay! That's all any of us would ask, ever!"

"I can't."

"Why not?" She demands. She's furious and desperate.

"I.. I have people who care about me waiting for me, and I can't let them think I abandoned them-"

"So you abandon us instead?! Do we not care enough?" Carlotta pounds.

"No! You'll know I'm okay! If I stay here they'll never know, and.. and this isn't my home… I don't want to leave you, but I.. I can't lie to myself. Never again. I need to grow up and learn, and be around humans and do silly human things.. I don't belong here, as much as I belong with you. I can't explain it.."

"Then don't, and stay!" Carlotta insists. I swear I can see tears in her eyes and it tears me apart. I shake my head.

"This is goodbye.."

"There is no goodbye!" She yells, and Nadir gently puts his hands on her shoulders, shaking his head softly.

"If the good lady says she must, then she must. How would you wish to be in an alien world where nothing was what you expect and there was no one like you in all the world? No, she must go, though we don't have to like it, not one bit." Nadir consoles her, but she doesn't stop staring at me, demanding.

"I'm sorry-" I try to start.

"I don't believe it, I refuse to accept it!" Carlotta shrills. Erik, just beyond their sight, seems to quiver. He must feel my heartache. I feel the need to end this, or they will succeed in keeping me here. I may have eaten the fruit, but I can't be Persephone. I have to go.

"I've.. I've got to go. I'll always love you, all of you, and everything we did. I will never, ever, in all my life, forget you." I start to cry harder, sniffling.

"Goodbye, Lady Christine. I wish you all the best in your life." Nadir bows deeply, ears dropped, single eye glistening.

"Goodbye, Christine." Raoul whines.

"This is not goodbye, there is no goodbye.." Carlotta mumbles. I shake my head. I place my hand on the mirror where hers is.

"Goodbye.." She starts to pull back, but the image fades, and I pull my hand back, frightened. But I only see my bedroom again, ready for me.

"You could stay for a little while, you know.. Leave later.." Erik suggests.

"And leave my family to worry for however long I choose to stay? No.. I'd never be happy knowing that I hurt them like that."

"We could write them a letter.." He half-heartedly suggests, a sad laugh in the words.

"A letter?"

"You're right, of course. You must go. Life will not wait for you.." He gestures to the mirror. I look between it and him for a moment.

"I think you're forgetting something."

"What?" He looks perplexed, and then I hug him.

"We have to say goodbye, too. A-and- and since I can't hug them, you'll have to do it for me. Please apologize to them a-and be friends with them and be a good and kind ruler, like I know you can be, and I know you'll be loved." I bury my face in his vested shoulder, almost scared to leave.

"I… I don't know what to say. I always thought that when you finally came I would.. I would keep you forever. I never thought.. that there would be a goodbye. You could live forever, you know. One day you'd be powerful enough to slip between worlds without rules or restrictions. You could be and go anywhere with your dearly beloved friends, you could-" He speaks, just barely a head taller than me now, his voice so close and soft and inviting.

"I know. Maybe in another world, another life, we end up together.. but here, now, this me has to leave. So.. so say goodbye, and good luck, and I'll miss you."

"Goodbye. Good luck. I will miss you, Christine."

"And you as well, Erik. Be good." I whisper, and finally pull away. "Be good." I repeat, meeting his eyes. He's so weary, so tired, so ready and unprepared to say goodbye. It keeps sinking in that this is it, this is the last time we'll be face to face, or face to mask, or whatever, ever again. This is the end.

Suddenly it's unbearable to think about and I do what I think I've been aching to do this whole time. My arms shoot out, grabbing him by the wrist with my free hand as he had earlier held mine, and I pull him down and I kiss him.

I have never kissed before, and I was certain I would miss, but my lips land firmly on his. It's strange, for his upper lip is but a mask, and his lower is a glimmer, an illusion, but it, he feels solid. But the feeling beyond the sensory is beyond imagining. I feel as though I am tasting spice and magic, and my heart skips like a child through rain, so delighted and invincible. I let go of his wrist and put my hands on the cheeks of his mask, and open my eyes. I was hardly aware that I'd closed them.

Erik draws back a bit, tears streaking down his marble-esque mask. His pointed ears are red, tilted ever so slightly down. Shock? Sorrow? What is he feeling?

Slowly he dips back down, gently brushing our lips together. I close my eyes and close the gap. I feel his arms wrap so mildly, so lightly around me. I almost want him to hold me forever; would it be so bad to stay? But the images and the names and the voices of everyone waiting for me flash like thunder in my mind. I remain pressed against him a moment longer, and let the music that can only form when we are together play around us. I can hear it; the stars sing, the trees dance, the castle itself sparkles with delight. What a force we could be.. In another time, in another place, I am both weak enough and strong enough to stay. But here…

I finally pull away, Erik letting go at my slightest push. I brush the long side-locks of his hair out of his face.

"It's time to go, isn't it?" He asks, but he knows. He knows. I can only nod. He sighs, and takes my free back in his. "Then I will hold on as long as I can." I nod again, then turn, placing my hand with the violin against the mirror. Like water, it envelopes my hand and the instrument. I turn my head to face Erik.

"Promise you'll never stop trying. Before I go, you have to promise to try, to be good, and to never stop."

"By those very sacred kisses, I do solemnly promise." I nod, and then again.

"Okay, then. Goodbye." I sink my hand further into the mirror, stepping back and letting it swallow me. As it covers my face, Erik becomes an almost indistinct blur, but his hand is still firm in mine, and he doesn't let go until the mirror's edge is to my wrist. Even then, he lets his fingers drag across mine.

"Goodbye, Christine. I wish I had done better." I hear him whisper, and then I see and hear and feel nothing.

It's like blinking. I don't feel anything, and suddenly I'm in my room, violin and bow in hand, hands and feet scraped, clothes and hair a mess. I turn around slowly in my room, and it's almost surreal. I almost never expected to realistically get home. I find the open case for the violin on the bed, so I gently tuck it away, apologizing for the abuse it may or may not have sustained from the adventure. Then I sit at the stool of my mirror, and stare inside, hoping for a sign from the other side. But all I see is me.

For a moment, I doubt this decision. Was it really the right thing to do to abandon my friends, despite my reasons? What if I hate my life here? I will die one day here; what if I realize then that this was not a life worth living? What if the right decision was to stay? It's too late now. I have to live with this decision now, and my life can only be what I make it.

I head to the bathroom down the hall, and clean my hands and feet. They sting, but they let me know that what I experienced is real. Damn me for doubting everything, but at least I have these reminders, brutal though they are. As I finish draining away the dirt and dried blood, I hear the front door open, and a flurry of chatter comes inside. I sigh. I missed them. I hope they aren't upset at me being gone a whole, ah, what, day and a half? I certainly don't know how to explain where I've been.

I trot down the stairs, eager to apologize, but I stop when I notice that Meg and her mother are in the clothes they were wearing to the performance last night- that is, the night I wished away my memories. Has Erik undone the day that followed so that there are no consequences? And I am startled again when I see someone new with them. Someone ginger and chubby who has a dog and a shrill but pleasant voice.