Christine slipped from the bed, pulling on her discarded dress, not bothering with her underpinnings and sincher. Leaving the bedroom she listened in the quiet house for any sound of Erik. There was none. The house was silent. It was some ungodly early hour of the morning and everyone, meaning Meg and her mother, were still peacefully asleep. More so they were peacefully unaware of what had happened while they slept.

Her friend and her mother figure were unaware that each step she took was full of pain from where she and Erik had been joined together. It pained her worst than her first split had even hurt. They were as dumb to what had happened as Christine was dumb to where Erik had gone. She hadn't expected him to be gone when she awoke. That didn't seem like him at all.

Biting her lip as she turned back towards his room, she fought back the tears that threatened to stream down her cheeks. She thought everything was perfect when she drifted to sleep and now something felt amiss.

~o~

Christine snuck down the steps at the sign of the first light streaming in through the boarded windows, making quick work of the noisy stairs and hiding herself in the library. If she was lucky Madame Giry would believe that she had spent her evening in there and not making love to Erik.

Would he show up for breakfast? He'd never come back after the first time she realised he was gone. He hadn't even left a note and he was a note leaving sort of man.

Christine was sore and she was tired, she had puffy eyes from crying herself back to sleep and she knew that beneath her dress she was bruised from places he had held tightly to her. Even her lips felt swollen from all of their kissing.

She spotted Fantomina still lying by the chair where she had left it yesterday. Was she any better than the woman in that book now? She wasn't married, not really. Not that any priest or judge was aware of. She was no better than the ballerinas she had listened to talking about who they had laid with. They talked about being left after their "services" night after night. Was that what Erik looked at it like? Had he finally had the privilege to be with someone and now he was ready to move on with his life?

Christine shoved Fantomina back onto the bookcase where she had taken it from and sought out a new book to pass the hours with. She chose Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress from the shelf and began reading it. Again her choice seemed to mirror reality in some sick and twisted way. The woman in the story was abandoned by her husband and she is forced to live a life a prostitute. The woman becomes quite the girl with a marriages and proposals and secret trysts with men that help her to accumulate the wealth to buy her freedom from prostitution. She even has several children from all of her sexual freedom, as she puts it.

Christine felt her heart leap in fear at the possibility of having a child growing with in her without having even thought of that possibility. Surely Erik wouldn't leave her if she was going to swell with his child. Would he?

~o~

Erik had returned to the Populaire ruins do his thinking, letting the atmosphere of his old home soothe his fear and trepidation. What exactly had he done? He had promised himself that he would show restraint and wait. Wait for what? The marriage that he knew was never going to actually come or for Christine to tire with his waiting game and leave, not because she loved Raoul but, because she was tired of being pushed away.

He had been abandoned as a child. Given to cruel and violent Gypsies to do with what they wanted. Which was beat, mock, torture, and maim to boy worse than he was already cursed with. What could Christine expect from someone who was incapable of understanding commitment and care?

He hated leaving her lying in his crimson stained bed, warm and comfortable and bathed in the beautiful afterglow of their night. That was no way to leave the woman that he claimed he loved. But he couldn't stay there right then. He had to be free. He couldn't let sleeping with Christine bind him and confuse him anymore than it already was.

Erik could hardly bear being around himself, looking at his own reflection, or suffering through his own thoughts so why did his beautiful Christine want to be with him? Was that why he chose to let his guard down and claim her like some foul, primal, beast? If he chose or she chose to let the fop have her, he would have her body but Erik would always have that moment they shared together. The moment where it was only him and him alone that made Christine a woman. She was no longer an innocent child; he had taken that from her in one passionate, all consuming, moment.

What had he done? He wasn't capable of loving her like she loved him. He hardly knew the difference between love and lust. He was passionate about her voice, their music, her beauty. He was passionate about cruelty, murdering, maiming. How could he learn to love? That wasn't love that was passion. That was his masculine essence that was damned to kill life claiming the beautiful soprano out of jealousy, rage, and lust. He had murdered her innocence not because he loved her but because he could.

His Christine.

How could he face her? How could he return to that abandoned derelict and dilapidated building and explain to her, as privately as he could, that he had made a mistake. Apologise from taking her virginity and promise he would let her leave if she wanted to and if she didn't he would vanish for good like he should have in the first place.

No. He made it sound like he had raped her when he thought of it like that. He was ruthless but not that ruthless. She had kissed him back, she had touched him back, she had stoked his eternal flame. He'd pushed her away when she tried to persuade him with her woman's body. Her girl's body that was burning to become a woman. She had given and he had taken. Simple as that.

But how would he say it to her? What exactly did he need to say to her? Did he lie just to push her way? Tell the truth when he didn't know it yet?

Love and hate, as she had said were one in the same. If he ever learned how to love and not to hate would it come too late? After all if you put the words together, late, is in the centre.