Author's Note: I've been incredibly stuck with this for an incredibly long time. I'm thinking of rewriting a lot of the chapters and trying to figure out where I got stuck. As it stands, I'm not sure I can end this the way I planned. I'm sorry it's been so terribly long since I've updated. It's not that I've forgotten this story at all. I think about it nearly every day. I just am not sure where to go from here. So, for now, this might be the final chapter. There are no guarantees, however! Thank you all for continuing to read and for sticking around for such a long haul. I adore you.

Chapter 36: Almost

Standing alone, perched dangerously on the precipice of the rocky shore, he waited. His eyes were mostly unfocused. His mind was mostly free of thought. All that mattered at the moment was the rushing ocean breeze hitting against his bare face, the sweeping crash of wave upon wave hitting the sand, the feel of salty whispers of drifting sea mist lingering on his ruined face.

Time did not matter. It would never matter if he did not allow it too. In fact, he was fairly certain that, if he was able to withstand the pressure and torment, nothing would ever matter again. His past was nothing now. He did not feel anything. His life before the Opera Populaire did not matter. Nor did his dangerous dance with Christine. The years that had passed between those days and this were intermittently long. It was easy, now, to lose sight of it all. Least of all, he was certain, Elodie would not matter. Not for any real fault, simply because he could not bear to think of her. She was some strange creature he could not comprehend, some tormented soul wreaking havoc on herself and the world around her. Her destruction was inevitable and he could not be there to witness it. He was no savior.

Somewhere, far away, he knew that she would be sitting in a high-backed chair. Her tiny hands would be clasped in her lap and a sickly smile would be plastered across her gaunt face. She would look like a deaths head and act like the proper lady of society that she was meant to be. Her tainted hopes would parish as she delivered lines and expectations to demanding ears. She would die in that world and he would die in his own. It was the un-twistable path of fate.

Perhaps at one point it had been possible that they could have created some sort of solitary world, hidden from prying eyes and hated looks. They might have been able to cast aside fictitious characters, egos and forced personas to reveal the very core of their souls. They might have been able to be happy. Erik brought a trembling hand to his face and ran a hand over his eyes. He swallowed hard, his throat aching with a despicable wail.

Such possibilities had passed with the blink of an eye. Neither had realized and neither had tried to grab out for it. Now they were far too removed. She had shown herself prey to her world, unwilling to indulge herself in the simplest of acts, being free. He, too, may have been guilty of a similar crime but he had always known his life was meant to be lonely, barren of company and love.

He thought back to that night, so long ago, when he had spotted her impossible skeletal figure testing out the boundaries of earth and water. He vividly remembered her falling form crashing into the beach. He recalled the impossible feeling that her body and soul were only further devastated to learn that she had to keep on living. He had known then, surely, that she was a fragile, broken thing, striving to be released from a life of pain.

He closed his eyes and threw his head back, letting the climbing moon embrace his scarred features. The image of her twinkling eyes as she smiled in her slowly recovering face, with slightly colored cheeks that had been sunken not too long before. He could almost hear her reciting a sonnet in the rushes of water and wind; hear her trembling voice declaring that she loved him. He could feel the agony that had coursed through him when he was certain she had died. There would be no escape of Elodie.

The devastation of her life would be forever pressed into his unconsciousness.