Erik's thoughts on their wedding night, and the morning after.


His wife. She is his wife. There is a wonder in the words, a majesty that makes his heart stutter. His wife. This beautiful, sweet creature lying here in his arms in his wife.

He hardly dared believe it when she first kissed him.

He hardly dared believe it when she confessed her love to him.

He hardly dared believe it when she consented to marry him.

He hardly dared believe it yesterday when she whispered the words "I do" and bound herself to him.

But she is his wife.

Tears prickle in his eyes with the tightness of the feelings in his heart. His wife. His forever, to love, and to hold, and to be held by. And he wept last night from sheer exhaustion, overwhelmed by the weight of all that they are, and she held him and stroked his hair and kissed him, and now she sleeps tucked in against him, perfectly peaceful, as if she has always belonged there. As if they have been moulded for each other.

He draws her closer tohim , and presses his lips to her forehead, and sighs. She snuffles slightly against him, her lips twitching so that she is almost smiling in her sleep, and his heart falters at the sight of it, of the sweetness of it, the innocence. Without a doubt she is the greatest thing that has ever happened to him, and he would be a lesser man without her, and sleep tugs heavy at his eyelids, reminding him of how exhausting the last few days have been, and as they slip closed all he can think is that surely, surely she is heaven sent.


He is not the man he was, not by any stretch of the imagination. He was an assassin, a murderer, an executioner as the occasion required. Chief torture master, and so many other things. And though he has not been that man in twenty years and more, the mark of it has lingered on him, lingered in him, twisting and reminding him that he could be again, if he needed to.

Since coming back to Paris to build an opera house, he has preferred peace.

If he were not a changed man, he would not have laid low during the siege and Commune.

Still, what he once was lingered, indelibly imprinted, very nearly a brand.

But then there was Christine, and with her-with her everything changed. She has absolved him of how he was, revived him and restored him and healed the broken parts of him that music alone could not salvage. And he lies in her arms a man reborn, as innocent as a babe, undefiled and untarnished and made whole again by her. He never dreamed that such a thing could be possible, but the very first moment she smiled at him in lesson and his heart fluttered, he knew he was saved.

Her fingers are gentle playing with his ear, her breath soft against his hair as she hums a little tune - one of his own, he thinks - and he knows she does not know, cannot ever quite know, all that she has done for him, but she has done so very much, and he nuzzles into her chest and knows that he never wants her to ever let him go.