Stolen

Chapter 11: Love Me, That's All I Ask of You.

A/N: Yeah, I'm tired of doing French titles. Deal with it.
Anyways, sorry this chapter took so long. Homework. That's all I have to say.
I like the way this turned out, and I really hope y'all do too. We shall have to see.. (:

Disclaimer: Phantom belongs to ALW, Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Me. Wait, no, not me, because that would defeat the purpose of a disclaimer, now wouldn't it?

"How is she?" Raoul asked in a strained, tired voice. He wore bags under his eyes and was completely exhausted. The long day was now taking it's beating on him, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep.

"She seems to be feeling quite fine, besides being very tired. I assume she didn't get much sleep over the last couple of days…" Madeline answered softly. She too was worn out after a hectic and tiring day.

Raoul nodded, wondering what exactly happened to Christine the nights she was missing. After all, she had been walking with a mysterious limp, and had seemed distant the entire carriage ride home.

"She was calling out for… for him in her sleep. She kept on calling 'Angel' and 'Erik'." Madeline informed Raoul. He was not surprised to hear this.

"Well, thank you for helping me with… everything, Madeline. You are truly a kind woman." Madeline blushed, and then quickly dashed up the stairs to join the other maids.

Raoul sighed deeply, contemplating whether he should wake Christine and tell her the news, or just wait until tomorrow.

He quietly tip-toed into the dark room and saw her lying motionless on the bed. She looked so peaceful and yet exhausted, and Raoul simply couldn't disturb her.

Tomorrow, he told himself. It will have to wait until tomorrow.

"Angel, angel, are you alright?" Christine mumbled in her sleep, yet again.

She had been tossing and turning all night, waking Raoul multiple times. He had tried to soothe her, but with no avail. Christine simply would not let her angel slip from her mind – whether she was conscious or unconscious.

By the time she sat down to eat breakfast with Raoul, she was fiddling with her fingers anxiously and biting her lip incessantly.

"Good morning, love," Raoul greeted her pleasantly, trying to forget the numerous amounts of times she had called for her angel, and not him.

Christine nodded and then looked Raoul square in the eye with a desperate, pleading stare.

"Raoul, I'm worried about him… about Erik. Did you… did you find out," she started tentatively. She was almost afraid to hear an answer, dreading the worst. But she had to know. She had to.

Raoul stopped her, and then said something so shocking that Christine almost imagined she was dreaming. He spoke so quickly and so quietly that she nearly missed what he had said.

"Christine, he's dead."

She froze.

She was stuck in a dream – no, a nightmare. It was a nightmare that she couldn't escape the second she heard Raoul's words.

No tears came. No words spluttered out of her mouth. No sudden emotions flickered across her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Raoul whispered.

Christine still hadn't let out a breath.

"I have to go."

That was all she said before she disappeared out the door.

And Raoul let her.

She took a horse – the first one that she saw in the stable, a stallion called King Capriccio.

She rode onto an overused path. She knew the way.

It wasn't even raining. No, it was ironically a beautiful day, with cool temperatures and a light breeze that blew Christine's chestnut curls behind her.

She rode through trees, so many trees, a green wall passing like a blur. Birds made music all around, tunes that symbolized the coming of spring. But the music hurt Christine's ears – everything did. The sound of her heartbeat was almost as loud as the sound of the thumping of hooves beneath her.

Christine didn't feel any tears fall, but they did. The moment they left her eyes they were swept away with the wind. She wasn't even making any sounds, yet the tears still clouded her eyes. What hurt now was her heart, and an aching pain had began to consume her.

She rode on.

He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.

Erik is dead.

They words simply didn't make sense when she thought them. She heard Raoul's voice saying them, yet the order they had been placed in didn't add up in her head. Christine even tried saying it out loud.

"Erik is dead."

But she couldn't believe herself.

The green that flew beside her turned into orange. The orange turned to red. The red was fire.

She didn't know where she was going; she was just being swallowed by the fire.

And then she stopped.

Had she told her horse to stop? Christine didn't know. But she was here. The Opera House stood in front of her in all its glory, with the same magnificence that it had always had. For some reason, she had expected it to look different, somehow. But here it was.

Here she was.

Christine felt herself tying King Capriccio up, and then she was running towards the doors.

She tripped up one step, up another, and another.

And finally, she was inside.

It was warmer inside, and she hadn't realized that she was wearing thin, short sleeves until now. Her arms were covered in goose bumps, and she rubbed them vigorously. Her hair must have looked like a rat's nest, a wreck. She must have looked like a wreck.

But none of that even help the slightest bit of importance.

She was running.

She brushed by workers putting last minute touches on the nearly fully-repaired building, her eyes straight ahead. Christine muttered apologizes as she brushed by people, who followed her with suspicious stares. A few even recognized her, but she didn't notice – she didn't care.

Her dressing room – she was in her dressing room.

It hurt even more, now; her heart.

She almost felt him with her. She could almost smell his familiar yet foreign scent. She could almost hear him; his haunting, beautiful, indescribable voice.

Almost.

The mirror was already open. It swallowed Christine as she submerged into the darkness. But the darkness didn't swallow her, this once.

She was sprinting as if death were on her heels. Her heart ached and burned like no other pain she had felt before. She took long, desperate breaths and struggled to get oxygen into her lungs. But none of this slowed Christine.

Everything around her was a blur, a dizzy, confusing blur.

Where was she?

Christine began to panic. She fought to breathe and felt her feet moving down a set of stairs, and then another. Would the stairs ever end? She could not tell what was in front of her, or behind her.

Suddenly, she collapsed.

She was on her knees.

It was there, in front of her… the lake.

There was no oar, and no boat, and no way to get across. Christine didn't consider swimming.

That was when the tears started pouring. They came spilling out of her eyes like a rainstorm, a relentless rainstorm. Sounds that resembled sobbing came from the pain in her heart, erupting from her mouth. She couldn't get a hold of herself.

Erik is dead.

Now, she believed it.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered between the uncontrollable sobs.

"You were my angel… my angel of music."

"I used to, I used to…" She stopped, trying to control what she was saying, or yelling, to be precise. She shut her eyes and squeezed them shut as hard as she could, so hard that it hurt. Christine held her breath for 30 seconds, she counted each one. Slowly, she exhaled. She could breathe again.

"I used to sing to you every night," she began, this time in control of each word that came out of her mouth.

"You were the closest thing I had to my Father, and I came to you for comfort, knowing and believing it was him who sent you… as an angel."

"I truly did believe you were an angel, Erik. Angels have many wonderful, beautiful powers. But only the Angel of Music has a voice so inhuman and pure. I knew that you had to have be an Angel of Music, my Angel of Music… It was until that night that I truly believed that."

"You took me down… down to your home, where I kneel now." Christine gazed at the lake ahead of her.

"You have such a beautiful home. But it's so… so cold down here. It's too cold. Nobody should have to live underground, not even you."

"I think it was that night, the night when I learned you weren't an angel, that you were… a man… It was that night that I felt something other than guidance and beauty of music from you. I'm not sure if it was love… no, it wasn't love… not quite." Christine let her hand fall in the water as she traced patterns in it. She closed her eyes gently, so gently that a few tears slowly ran from her eyelashes and plopped onto the floor beneath her.

"You're face never did scare me. It was your temper, your voice. It was the way you cursed me and yelled at me… the way you threw me… The way your eyes burned with fury." Christine's voice trembled at the lingering memory.

She then thought of Raoul, and how quickly she had run away from him earlier.

"I'm not sure if I can say that I love Raoul," Christine whispered so quietly, she didn't even hear herself.

"There was the pathetic puppy love when we were children, young and free. There was the light that shone from him… and you were the darkness. I was afraid of the darkness. And I convinced myself that I loved the light."

Christine didn't speak for a very long time. The only sound she heard was her slow breathing, and the faded hum of her heartbeat.

Silence echoed in her mind, and then she suddenly whispered something that she could hardly even believe she was saying.

"But I didn't love him. I never did."

A discovery so potent was occurring in Christine at this very moment. Something so overwhelming was taking place within her, something she couldn't even comprehend. But it wasn't a change. It had been there all along.

"I love you."

And then the pain in her heart was gone. It had vanished.

"Oh, Erik, I have always loved you more!" She realized, tears beginning to pour down her cheeks.

"I have been lying to myself, all of this time! What a liar I am! What a coward! I lied to you! I told you… I told you…"

"I told you that I love him more…

And I had lied."

But it's too late now, Christine realized. He's gone.

"I let you go… I let you go and now there is nothing I can do to fix it… I can't change anything. I had my chance to, and I failed… I failed to tell the truth, to myself, to you, to Raoul – to everyone!"

He's dead.

He's gone.

Killed by another man, just like that…

She had let him die without telling him.

Christine sat with her head in her hands and her heart on her sleeve as she cried. She cried with sorrow, with regret, with pain and with love.

She didn't hear someone approaching.

She did see a figure standing closely behind her.

But she heard his voice, as clear as daylight.

"Perhaps I should die more often."

This is a trick, she told herself. My ears are deceiving me.

Was he an angel? Was he an illusion? Was Christine hearing things?

Her head slowly and surreally lifted from her hands, and she turned around to the source of the voice. She expected to see nothing, to have imagined hearing his voice.

"Erik," she breathed.

"No, it cannot be," she countered herself. "I am imagining you! Leave me to my misery!" She demanded.

Erik smiled. My silly, beautiful Christine.

"Christine, I am real. I am not dead, and you are not imagining me."

"P-prove it," she whispered wide-eyed. But she already knew. She already believed him.

Erik laughed, and then Christine couldn't help but smile in spite of herself. Her tears of sorrow and pain were transformed into tears of utter joy and shock – and of love. Her tears mangled with her own laughter, and she would have appeared mad to anyone… that is, to anyone but Erik.

He helped her stand and once her feet were firmly planted on the ground, she fell into his arms. But she didn't fall from dizziness or a head rush. She fell because she wanted to. She was in the arms of her angel.

Erik was surprised at first by her sudden contact. But then, he felt her love surge through him, and for that second, he believed that she really, truly did love him more than Raoul. Yes, he had heard her say it, but he knew that she was just saying all of those things because she believed him to be dead.

Erik let himself believe this as Christine embraced him and cried into his chest. He slowly stroked her hair and let himself live in the moment for once, to take in all that was happening.

Christine's cries faded eventually, but she did not let go of Erik.

"I'm sorry," she said repeatedly. "I'm sorry. I just need you to hold me. Just to hold me…"

"Don't apologize, Christine. You have nothing to be sorry for." Erik whispered in her ear. He never wanted to let go of her.

"Do not tell me that, Erik!"

He raised an eyebrow at her voice that almost held a sort of anger in it. But it wasn't anger towards him, it was anger towards herself.

Christine lifted her head from Erik's soft chest, looking him straight in his amber eyes.

"I lied to you. I lied to myself. I told you that I loved Raoul more than you… it was a lie."

Erik was silent for a while, thoughts crowding his mind. He stared at the glassy lake, not looking Christine in the eye.

And then when he did look at her eyes, he believed her.

"You are telling the truth," He breathed.

"Yes," she agreed insistently. "I am." Her lips curved into a smile and Erik was too stunned to reply.

She loved him. She really, truly, whole-heartedly loved him.

"Perhaps I can show you that darkness is not your only future." Christine said softly.

And at this, Erik had to smile.

"Come, Christine," he said suddenly, walking towards the stone wall. He his searched the wall for a couple of seconds, until he put a bit of pressure on a rough brick. A door a couple feet away slowly fell open, revealing the boat in which Christine had traveled in with Erik long ago.

"I believe there is a guest waiting for me on the other side of the lake."

Christine silently climbed into the boat, Erik in front of her. He used the paddle to push off the shore, and they drifted downstream.

The smile from Christine's face still had not faded, and tears still skidded down her cheeks.

Erik was so shocked and ecstatic that he could hardly contain his sheer joy. He couldn't remember a single time he had felt this before – an emotion he couldn't quite put his finger on.

As he looked down upon his angel's bright eyes and smiling face, he then recognized what he was feeling at the moment, and knew she was feeling it too.

Bliss.

He almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of the situation. He, the Phantom of the Opera, the Angel of Death was actually happy for once in his lifetime! Erik would've never believed it to be possible. So strange this feeling was, so new and sudden.

He didn't realize it, but tears had begun to collect in the corners of his eyes.

Only once in Erik's life had he shed tears of joy; when his angel had kissed him in all of his flesh, unmasked and pitifully weak. But that had all ended in flames, literally.

Erik told himself as he paddled along that he couldn't get his hopes up. What if she changed her mind? It was quite possible, considering Christine's dark past with him.

But as Erik looked down at her, and she looked back, all he saw was sincere love in her eyes; a sincere love that could only mean that Christine loved him.

And he couldn't believe that she felt otherwise.

A/N: Did y'all really think I would kill Erik? Silly, silly readers. I would never do such an absurd thing.

Review, pretty please, with an Erik on top. (: