Wow um, I am really really sorry about how long it's been since I posted. I've been abroad this semester and had a lot less time on my hands than usual, but I probably should have warned yall about that ahead of time. Just to be fair, I have no good guess on when I'll be able to post the next chapter, sorry. However I am determined to finish this story at some point, and wouldn't blame anyone if they just waited to read until it was complete cause that might be less frustrating. If you're still reading after this long of a gap since the last chapter you're a super star!

Chapter 20

When Erik used to tell Christine that he wouldn't wish his music on her, that he kept it from her for her own good, she had been perplexed. But now that her days were consumed with rehearsing for his great and terrible opera, she feared that she understood all too well. Christine had always preferred her music and her fiction to have a little darkness to it. Even when she was little she would beg for the kind of bedtime stories that made it hard for sleep to come. But singing Erik's work was like being trapped in the most grim and gothic tale imaginable with no respite. The notes lingered long after she was done for the day, often seeping into her dreams, and she wondered if Erik really saw himself the way he had written the male lead, as the most wicked thing in a world full of cruelty and despair. That thought hurt almost as much as the realization that he no longer wanted to shield her from that world. He must have known how his music would affect her all of those times he had warned her away, but now it seemed he hated her enough to purposefully fling it into her path. Her eyes began to look a bit crazed in the mirror, framed by dark circles more often than not, and Raoul couldn't help but notice.

"You know it doesn't have to be perfect. Or good, even," he pointed out one night when she was supposed to be finished rehearsing. But instead of relaxing after work like an emotionally stable person, Christine was still curled up with her copy of the score, circling places she often made mistakes and humming them over and over, cursing every time she got it wrong. "The point is just to get him to the performance. It doesn't matter if you perform his bullshit well." Christine looked up from the music for what felt like the first time in hours.

"You want me to phone it in?" She asked, disbelieving. "Just go on stage knowing I'll make mistakes? Or what? Pre record and lipsync?" Her nose wrinkled at the very idea.

"Sure," Raoul shrugged. "Why not?"

"Because this is a challenge," she huffed, smacking the score for emphasis. "He thinks he can break me, with his depressing music, or make me come crawling back to lessons with all this technique he knows I haven't mastered yet. If I fuck up on stage then he wins."

"Christine," Raoul said slowly, rubbing his eyes. "I mean this in the most loving way possible, but who the hell cares? No one's gonna notice mistakes in a piece of music they've never heard before. As long as he goes to prison where he belongs why does the rest of it matter?"

"By 'the rest of it' do you mean my career?" She snapped, standing abruptly. Raoul sighed,

"I mean there are more important things than getting every riff right or whatever you're working on tonight. I hate to see you stressing out for no reason." She clutched the score close to herself, even though it was the real source of the issue.

"If you think my singing is so trivial then I can do it somewhere else."

"Babe, that's not-" Raoul began, but Christine shook her head.

"It's fine. I know I'm getting kind of intense about this but it's what I need to do to keep myself together. I'll go obsess at home." Raoul protested, but once Christine had decided to leave it was hard for anyone to convince her to stay.

She found herself walking out of rehearsals a lot these days too. Erik's notes had requested the front man of an obscure Indie band named Jax to play the male lead. While Jax had the closest mixture of raw edge and booming power in his voice to what the part of "Death" required, what Erik couldn't have known was that he was profoundly lazy and incapable of taking anything seriously. Weeks into rehearsals he still didn't know most of his lyrics, and he spent more time whining or making jokes about the score than actually trying. He would say things like,

"Chrissy you're gonna go grey worrying all the time" if she tried to get him to focus on anything challenging, at which point she would have to excuse herself to vent her frustration in private. She knew Erik would be furious at the blasé way Jax was approaching the demanding part, at the way no one but her seemed to think it was important for "Death and the Maiden" to be a well executed production, but Raoul was right. The music wasn't supposed to be her first priority either. And she was still determined to catch Erik, although it was hard to think about what might happen after. Some childish part of her thought that giving Erik an unforgettable performance of his work would somehow make up for her betrayal, but of course that was idiotic. Erik had backed her into a corner, given her no viable option besides taking action against him, but staying calm while a detective gave her a briefing about what to expect on opening night was still one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do.

"It seems likely the suspect will reveal himself in some grandiose fashion, but if not we'll need you to identify him. Do you think you can do that, even if he's wearing a mask?" The cop peered at her doubtfully, and it was obvious that the whole situation seemed a little ridiculous to him. Christine thought he probably wouldn't even be here if Raoul's family was less rich and powerful.

"Yes. If he shows up I'll know," she said, not bothering to add that Erik could be visible and gone in a flash, that he was probably smarter than all of the officers on this case put together. The policeman wouldn't have believed her anyway.

"And if we need to get guns on him you need to get yourself out of the line of fire. Identify him and then hit the floor, you understand?" Christine nodded but couldn't help saying,

"You won't really shoot him will you? Just for being at the performance? I mean, it is his work, if he shows up it might not be to do anything illegal." Her voice petered out as she saw the looks both Raoul and the policeman were giving her.

"Young lady, the two of you have given us to believe that we are dealing with a dangerous criminal. But if this is just some show biz drama taken too far that you're wasting the NYPD's time with-"

"He is dangerous," Raoul interjected quickly, cutting across Christine, who had also opened her mouth to reply. "He tried to kill me, not to mention all the violent threats he made publicly at the Halloween party." Later, when they were alone, Raoul said, "You know its hard enough getting anyone to take this seriously without you asking them to take it easy on the man who's threatening our lives."

"Sorry," Christine said, feeling the tears that never seemed very far away these days begin to well in her eyes. "I forgot you're the only person this is hard for."

"I know he manipulated you, that you still think you care for him in some way. But trust me babe, once he's in jail you'll see that it's absolutely where he belongs." Christine shook her head. She knew that Raoul thought talking about Erik like he was some sort of traumatic event would help her, but it invariably made her feel worse.

"You don't know everything Raoul," was all she could manage in a small voice, but she was no longer sure that she knew anything. Maybe Raoul was right, maybe she should stick to her gut wrench reaction at the beach and never look back. If she was going to help take down Erik either way, there was no point in tearing herself apart over it. But she couldn't stop. It wasn't only his music that haunted her dreams now. It was often his eyes too, and sometimes his voice, speaking to her so softly that she could never remember the words by the time she woke.

But whether she liked it or not, the date of the first, and most likely only, performance of "Death and The Maiden" was upon her much sooner than she expected. And somehow she was backstage alone one more time. She was wrapped in sheer red fabric, designed to flutter in the wind and slide off her shoulders and reveal a slit up to her thigh at the slightest movement. Her lips were painted the same scarlet, her skin covered in a powder that made it shimmer slightly, her eyelashes fake and huge, her hair sculpted into perfect ringlets. And for once, she was eerily calm. Maybe the difference was that this time she was absolutely sure something terrible would happen. Either the police would be successful in capturing Erik, or they wouldn't but he would know that she had tried, and either way her life would never be the same. There was nothing left to do but let it happen. She surveyed the contents of her vanity, and it felt a bit like she was dreaming. Front and center were Erik's soup card, and the program for this performance, which only credited an "Anonymous Composer." She could fix that, at least. She dug around in her purse for a pen and crossed out the bland attribution, replacing it with the word Erik, underlined three times for good measure. She would miss him. Here, in the last few moments in which she got to be herself rather than her performing persona, she could admit it. She already did miss him terribly. Maybe one day he would understand why she had done this. Maybe they could-she shook her head firmly. There was no happy ending for them, and no room for softness. It was time for her to remember what she had learned over and over since her father died. No one was going to look out for her, to ensure her survival, but herself. She met her eyes in the mirror, and watched as they became icy and predatory.

She swept onstage as a flash of crimson and for a moment she had to remind herself that at this point in the narrative she was meant to be innocent. She thought the character of the maiden, carefree and dreamy, would have been much easier to connect to last year, before she had ever met Erik or been on any stage at all. Now she was busy scanning the blurred audience for a flash of black porcelain, and waiting to catch a darting figure in the wings, but Erik gave no sign of his presence. And try as she might, even now she could not help being swept away by his music. Before she knew it she really was the maiden, unwittingly seduced by a charming prince who was actually death in disguise, and as the score began to twist into something darker she followed it, her voice going husky and full of desire. Jax had been a good choice, she decided, as she whirled around him and slid up against him in the risqué blocking they had practiced. He was capable of being charismatic and sinister when he chose, and it seemed like here in front of an audience he actually did care enough to try. In fact, he was absolutely creepy when he reentered stage as death revealed in his true form, swathed head to toe in a tattered black robe. It didn't escape Christine for a moment that the handsome man in a fine suit was the disguise for the character Erik had based loosely on himself, and the faceless monster was his true form. But regardless of symbolism, the end was in sight, and strangely nothing awful had happened yet. All that was left was death's musical entrance, the maiden's whirl of surprise and horror, and then the most demented and blatantly sexual duet Christine had ever heard. And really, Jax was outdoing himself as he slunk around her while she finished her phrase, pretending not to have seen him yet. He began to sing, perfectly on time, perfectly in pitch, and Christine's surprise and horror were not feigned at all. Because she knew that voice, knew it like icy fingers running down her spine, like a sigh in the night she would deny the next day, like something searing in her lungs that made her voice do things that frightened her. And when she turned to face the hooded figure she could not keep her knees from trembling for a moment, because she knew exactly who she was dealing with.