"Do you love me?"

Erik blinked in the darkness, smoothing her hair slowly with his palm. It was a question she had asked before, years before, and he was pretty sure last time she asked it was the last time he heard the word come out of her mouth at all. "Of course I do," he murmured. "I tell you that all the time, kitten."

She was a heater. Her skin was warm and soft and everything that his wasn't. He traced his fingertips gently along the bare skin of her back as she shivered, curling closer against him even though he could feel goosebumps forming under his touch.

"How do you know?" she whispered.

He thought for a moment, his fingers running along the curve of her spine. "You're the only thing I live for anymore," he answered honestly. "The only thing that matters. All that brings me pleasure. If you were gone… there wouldn't be anything for me. That's how I know."

She shifted and her breath was warm against his chest, even and deep. She was silent for a long minute and for a moment, he thought that she had fallen asleep.

"I think I must love you, then," she whispered, the words strained.

It was hollow. Hearing her say it didn't bring him the joy he might've thought it would. She didn't love him. He knew that better than he knew anything. She simply didn't know how to live anymore. He pressed a long kiss to the top of her head.

"I didn't know it felt like this," she mumbled, her words only half pronounced and slurring together. "I dunno what I would do without you."

His thumb traced gently along the outline of the bruise on her cheek. He hadn't even meant to hit her. He hardly even remembered doing it. He only knew that he had. "You will never have to be without me," he promised her softly, stifling a cough.

Erik had once crushed a bird in his hand.

It was an accident. He was young when it happened. He had been somewhere he shouldn't have been and it had fallen from its nest. He couldn't remember, now, what exactly had been wrong with it. It had broken a wing or stunned itself in the fall - it didn't really matter. He couldn't remember the specifics of the incident. There were a lot of things that he couldn't remember the specifics of these days.

The point was that he hadn't meant to kill it. He had fully intended to save it, to nurse it back to health, to heal it of whatever malady had struck it down.

He couldn't remember much but he still remembered the sickening sound it's bones made when they snapped. He still remembered the horrifying twist in his stomach when he realized what he had done.

When he looked down at Christine, her warm, bare skin pressed against his, all he could think about was that bird.

If he had left it, it would have starved to death anyway. Perhaps it would have been eaten. He hadn't saved it - hadn't been capable of it - but he had been able to grant it the small mercy of a quick death.

Sometimes, he thought that was all he was capable of.


Christine never asked many questions. Things were better that way. She found that, when she finally got used to it, it was easier. Erik took care of everything. He always had, and he always would.

Something about it brought her a sort of peace.

She didn't have to think anymore. She didn't have to fuss with her hair or worry about a test. She didn't have to worry about money or dinner or whether or not he liked her. She simply had to exist. She had to sing. He worried about everything else.

It was exactly what he had promised her at the beginning of everything. That he would give her everything she needed.

Christine had never met another person that kept promises as well as he did.

"You look so pretty, kitten," he murmured gently from behind her, pulling at her curls as he twisted her hair into a style that she wouldn't have even known the name of. "Don't you agree?"

She looked at their reflection in the bathroom mirror. The lights were bright and they didn't buzz at all. Christine couldn't remember the last time he brought her to a hotel as nice as this one was.

She gave a slight nod, and his smile was small, halfway sad.

He was gentle with her. When she was quiet, when she was compliant, when she didn't ask questions. It was easy to like the Erik he was when she was the Christine he moulded her into.

Tonight, he was the composer. The one that would make his first public appearance in a decade with his pretty young wife on his arm.

She wouldn't complain about the way he fussed with her hair or the way he stared at her makeup. She wouldn't complain about the slightly too-tight red dress or the heels that she could hardly walk in. She would let him make her look perfect for everyone else just like he had made her perfect for himself.

His cold fingers lifted her chin and he stared at her closely through the mirror. "Are you unhappy?" he asked softly.

She stared at her face. He had done a good job. She couldn't even see a hint of the small yellowish bruise that hid beneath a layer of foundation. "No," she whispered.

"It's okay if you are," he said softly. "It's okay to feel things. You know that, don't you?"

She swallowed and dropped her eyes, staring at her cherry-red lips. "Do you think she'll have blonde hair like me?" she whispered.

Erik sighed, and she felt his warm breath before he pressed a kiss to her scalp. "It's unlikely," he answered eventually. "Blonde is recessive. My mother was a redhead. Her hair will likely be dark, kitten."

"Pretty, long black hair," she whispered, trying to picture her in her head. "What color will her eyes be?"

His hands dropped from her chin. He rested them on her shoulders and ran them down her upper arms. "Brown," he answered slowly. "Light brown. She'll be very beautiful, kitten. Just like you are."

She smiled softly at the thought, and she didn't resist him at all as he shuffled her out of the little bathroom.

"You'll want this," he murmured, draping the little black wrap over her shoulders. "It's a cool night."

She clutched the edges of the soft fabric. "Don't you need your notes?"

His eyes landed on the small notebook he had been scribbling in for the last few nights. "No," he answered, coaxing her toward the door. "Not tonight, kitten."


He wasn't sure why he did it.

Christine had no understanding of opera. She was lost in the language and these days, she could hardly follow the plot of a thirty minute sitcom let alone a three hour production.

But she played with the edges of her wrap and she hummed some of the melodies on the way back to the hotel, so he supposed she must have gotten at least some enjoyment out of it.

He was careful not to point her humming out. If he did, she would stop. He enjoyed listening to it, even when she missed a note or two and fumbled a melody that he was pretty sure she twisted in her own head. It was the most life he had seen in her in a long time.

She used to hum constantly. He still couldn't figure out exactly when she had stopped. He missed it.

It was a slow walk to their room. He allowed her to linger in the courtyard of their pretty hotel. He let her sniff the flowers in the little garden and run her fingers over the bark of an old tree.

She was happy, and he didn't want to cut it short. The music, the drugs, it was a cocktail enough to make her forget, just for a minute, how absolutely despondent she had decided she needed to be.

"Erik?" she asked with a breathless excitement, hanging off of his arm when she seemed to remember that he was there.

"Hm?"

"Do you think I could ever sing like that?"

Her eyes were bright. They weren't particularly clear, but they were bright. "Of course you can," he answered, finally leading her into the hotel. She leaned heavily on his arm. He was fairly sure that her shoes were hurting her feet, but she didn't make any complaints. "It's all technique. You have a beautiful, big voice and healthy lungs. You could absolutely sing opera, kitten."

"I want to sing that one piece," she said dreamily, leaning her temple against his arm and humming through the melody. She sighed. "It's really pretty. Will you teach me?"

"Take your shoes off, kitten," he said, closing the simple white door behind them. "They're going to give you calluses. Of course I will teach you. We should start with a few English pieces first, though, don't you think?"

She nodded dutifully, plopping into the overstuffed armchair by the television stand and starting to struggle with the clasps of her shoes.

When he was sure that she would be occupied for at least a few minutes, he made his way into the bathroom, closing the door and turning on the fan before he leaned over the white sink

His cough rattled him. They came in attacks now, attacks that doubled him over and left him gasping for air. At times, he had considered stealing a hit from Christine's inhaler. The only reason that he hadn't tried was that he feared it would only make it worse.

Part of him was impressed with his own deterioration. For months he had remained steady; ill, obviously, but nothing unmanageable. That no longer remained the case. Tissues were useless; instead of speckles, he would find thick clots left staining the porcelain of the sink. It had come on in a matter of days, and each that passed only left him more sure that he didn't have much time left at all. He was left believing that perhaps thinking in terms of days instead of weeks was the most responsible thing he could do.

Dramatic. Utterly dramatic. But the truth of it was, he wasn't even sure that he would make it home again if he wanted to.

He turned on the faucet and carefully washed the evidence of his illness down the drain before he finally found the strength to start in on his mask.

A quick rub of a hot washcloth over his sad excuse of his face and he slipped his usual mask on, the one that Christine still, to this day, insisted she prefered.

"I can't get it," she complained in a huff almost as soon as the bathroom door swung open.

He only sighed and knelt at her feet. He didn't mind it so much. The little buckles were delicate, the straps were thin, and it gave him something to do with his hands. He needed that desperately sometimes.

He slid the first shoe off and she sighed in relief, wiggling her toes.

He started in on the second and swallowed. "Have you enjoyed Vienna, Christine?" he asked softly.

"Mhm."

"It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Beautiful," she sighed, shifting as he tugged on her ankle. "I'd really like to come back someday."

He frowned at the strap of her shoe, finally tugging it loose. "Of course," he answered. "Any time you want, kitten."

He wasn't completely expecting it when she leaned down and kissed him.

It was true that she was more freely affectionate these days than she had been in the beginning, but it wasn't an overly common occurrence. Her kisses were more frequent just after a dose, when she felt the need to melt into anything that would hold her.

It was simply a thank you and he sighed, leaning back on his heels as he slipped the shoe from her foot. "I'm very glad that you enjoyed yourself," he said slowly. "I hope - I hope that this trip has left you with more pleasant memories than unpleasant."

"I like it here a lot," she said, pulling the fabric of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger. "But I'm ready to go home, I think. I miss our bed."

Our bed. Their house. Somewhere along the line, Christine had given up on her reluctance to address the reality that surrounded her. It had simply happened one day, like some sort of understanding clicked into place. Sometimes it was nearly like she managed to convince herself that she was truly happy, but it was a facade and it slipped randomly, leaving her laying in bed for nearly an entire day at times in a fugue state. He was reluctant to call it depression. He was more than certain that it was brought on by her circumstances rather than any sort of chemical imbalance. "We fly out first thing in the morning," he reminded her, forcing himself to his feet. "Come here, kitten. Let's get that dress off. I know it isn't comfortable."

She was warm, soft and compliant. She made no complaint, not even when he snagged the tiny hairs at the base of her neck in the teeth of the zipper. She only relaxed against him as he worked the thin sleeves down her slightly tanned arms, only let her head fall to the side as his lips grazed against her warm throat. She was putty in his hands, practically unrecognizable as the young girl that he had first met a few long years before.

She mumbled something and he paused in his mission, freeing her arms from the slightly too-tight garment. "What was that, kitten?" he asked softly.

"Will you have me tonight?" she whispered again.

It was something that hadn't changed. She never addressed it for what it actually was. It was unspoken between them. He worked gently at the bobby-pins in her hair, watching as her curls fell limply. "Perhaps," he answered slowly. "What do you want, Christine?"

She swallowed and tilted her head slightly. "When we get home will you really let me learn that song?"

He was silent as he pried the bobby-pins free from her curls. He laid the handful of pins on the bedside table and frowned at her, fluffing her curls gently. "Why do you do that?" he asked, careful to keep his question soft.

"Do what?"

His thumb dragged over her cheek slowly. Warm. She was always so warm. "Answer every question I ask with a question."

"Oh," she said softly.

There was a long beat of silence and she made no indication that she intended to elaborate. Instead she stared intently at the top button of his shirt, almost like she thought if she looked at it hard enough she could vanish into it entirely.

He simply pressed a kiss to her forehead and slid her dress down farther, letting the fabric fall unceremoniously to the floor. "I love you," he said softly.

She nodded, eyes still trained on his shirt button. "I know," she answered, the words wavering slightly.

His hands found her bare waist and he wrapped his fingers around her back. Despite his best efforts, she was remarkably thin. It was difficult to remind her to eat when he so often forgot himself. "Are you still afraid of me, Christine?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head just the slightest bit. "Only sometimes," she answered weakly.

"Right now?"

Finally she looked up at him with a slight frown. "No."

"I'm sorry," he said softly. Her eyes had dulled in the short time between their trip back to the hotel and that moment just then. She slipped so easily back into lifelessness that sometimes he wondered if the fleeting glimpses of happiness he got were nothing more than his imagination. "For everything. Everything I've done to you. I know - it isn't much, but I am sorry, Christine. There are so many things that I wish I could go back and change."

She blinked up at him and he was surprised by the tears he saw gathering in her eyes. "D'you wish you wouldn't have come and got me from the rehab?" she whispered.

He wiped at the first tear with his thumb as it spilled over. "Of course not, kitten," he answered softly. "I still want you, very much. I wouldn't trade a moment with you for anything. I'm madly, madly in love with you, just as much as I always have been. I just wish I could make you happy instead of making you cry."

Instead of her eyes, her fingers found the top button of his shirt. She rolled it nervously between her thumb and forefinger as she stared up at him. "I want you too," she mumbled weakly, her cheeks flushing pink. "Sometimes."

"It's okay to say that," he coaxed gently. "Sometimes… I know - I know that I've done some truly terrible things to you. Wanting me sometimes doesn't mean those things were okay. You know that, don't you?"

Her nod was weak, barely there, and her eyes shifted back down to the button she was rolling between her fingers.

"It isn't your fault," he said softly. He wasn't sure why he did. Talking to her was more like talking to a brick wall than anything these days. He wasn't even sure if she understood the words that he was saying. But it seemed important, more important than anything, that he at least tried. "You didn't deserve it, any of it. All of the times that I've hurt you - it isn't your fault, kitten. It was my fault. There was nothing that you could have done differently. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah," she whispered. "When we get home, will you really let me learn that song?"

Somehow he stamped down the crushing disappointment he found, running his palm over her mess of curls gently. "Of course I will," he agreed softly. "I would love to hear you sing it."

Christine lived in her own world and he found no need to break the illusion. She was as close to happy there as she would ever be; to force it anymore than he had would simply be needlessly cruel. So instead of saying anything else, instead of poking and prodding and forcing, he kissed her. And she kissed him back.

He wished, just once, that she would open up that little world that she coveted like a treasure. He wished that she would tell him what she honestly felt when his cold hands ran down her sides, when he guided her slowly and gently into the soft hotel bed.

When he took absolutely everything from her and offered so little in return.

He wished that he could turn his mind off as easily as she seemed to, that he could use the little time they had to revel in the softness of her skin and the sweetness of her sighs, that he could make himself believe that her nails digging at the old scars that ran along his back was a desire to be close instead of a simple, instinctual survival habit.

He wished desperately that he wasn't drowning in his own lungs, that he could love her, truly love her in that way that he was so yearning to be loved in instead of for the things that she provided him.

And when he pulled away, when he laid his cheek against her naked breast and cupped his palm over her stomach, he allowed himself the small luxury of imagining. Imagining just how different their lives could have been if he had simply allowed her first pregnancy to take root, if he had simply not fallen into relying on the terrible drug that had ruined and saved him.

She had a hidden strength once, and he had been sure to crush it out of her in every way that he could. He wondered if he could have truly loved the person she would have been that day without his constant interference.

"It's getting worse," she murmured as he stifled a cough, trying to swallow it back down.

"Hardly," he answered when it passed, trailing his fingers along her stomach and finding himself more surprised that she had noticed it than he was at her pointing it out.

Her fingers absently picked at his hair, and he let his eyes slip closed. "You should go to a doctor," she said softly.

Erik swallowed, laying his palm flat over her swollen womb. "Perhaps," he offered, knowing that he was far beyond any help at that point even if he did. "In a week. If it hasn't gone."

Christine seemed satisfied enough by that. Or perhaps she didn't realize that she had spoken the words aloud. It was terribly difficult to tell sometimes, but she twisted a lock of his hair around her finger gently and sighed. "I have a headache."

"Not yet, kitten," he said softly, the words a plea. "Can you wait just a little bit?"

"Yeah," she whispered. "Just a little bit."

He kept his eyes closed. He basked in the warmth of her skin and the sound of her steady breath, the warm thump of her heart under his ear, the feeling of her hand in his hair.

It was such a simple thing, and he couldn't get enough of it. For the first time, he allowed himself to wonder why it was her that he latched onto, her, of all of the women, that he had been so desperate to keep close.

She was sad. She was broken already when he stumbled upon her and Erik had always been fond of broken things. Music players, instruments, lamps. He had a certain fondness for taking a thing apart and putting it together better than before, a habit that he was sure he could blame on his sweeping experimentation with various substances in his youth.

He took her apart just fine. Putting her together again was the part that he failed at. He had always shared a strange kinship with brokenness. He was bound to kill her the moment he met her.

Part of him wanted to believe in fate, that it was all simply written in the stars and that nothing would have changed it. The other part of him realized that it was entirely him. There was no God to blame it on, no parent to deride, simply a series of unfortunate choices and an unwillingness to confront the faults that he was fully aware rested deeper than his waste of a face.

His mother had called him a sociopath in his youth. He hadn't understood what the word meant at the time, but he suddenly realized that she may have been more right than he had ever wanted to admit.

But sociopaths didn't feel regret, or guilt, and he wasn't sure what he could honestly call himself aside from a villain. There was no word to explain what had happened to his face and so he thought it wasn't beyond possibility that there was simply no word for whatever he was.

Just a terrible blight. Some disastrous mistake allowed to wreak havoc when God had dared to turn his back for a moment.

"Erik," she whispered, her voice small. "It hurts really bad."

He pressed his forehead against the crook of her neck, hesitating a moment before he forced himself to move.

If she understood what was happening, she gave no indication. She simply lifted herself to rest against the headboard, patiently waiting for him to come back and take away her discomfort. And when he knelt at her feet with the far-too-full syringe, he hesitated for the first time in his life.

"Christine," he said softly, waiting for her eyes to find him. "I love you. You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah," she agreed, scrunching up her toes in anticipation. "I know."

He had crushed a bird in his hand and he had done the same to her. When he plunged the syringe between her toes he didn't allow himself a moment to think about it, to second guess or change his mind. Steadily he pushed the plunger down, staring fully at her big toe in an attempt not to see her face.

It would be absolutely, utterly painless. It would be the best, most freeing high she had ever experienced. She wouldn't feel any pain, any panic.

Erik knew because he had experienced it once himself and he would curse whatever good-hearted Samaritan it was that decided to save his life that day until his last breath.

By the time he let himself look at her, she was unconscious. He allowed himself the luxury of climbing into the bed beside her, of pulling her into his arms. He pressed his fingers to the pulse in her throat and his lips to her forehead. When he found himself crying, he had difficulty finding any pity for himself.

He had been jotting down notes in the little notebook on the dresser across the room for the better part of a month. Names. Cities. Streets. It was the fullest confession he could ever give, rambling and incoherent as it was. He hoped that someone would actually look into it. Bodies and women, he was sure they would find a few still warm, still breathing, still waiting to go home, and suddenly he thought he might have understood what it was about Christine that appealed to him so thoroughly.

Much like him, she had no home.

He held her until her last breath and then he held her a little longer, murmuring apologies that she would never hear and wouldn't have understood if she did.

Erik had spent his life desperately seeking control in a place where he had none; his own death was steadily approaching and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to change it. He promised that he would never leave her and so, he didn't. It was a strategic and cold decision. The trip had been planned entirely around its ending.

She would never go home. He couldn't bear the thought of her rotting away in the house. No one would have found them, not for a very long time. If anyone deserved to be found, it was her. And so he had chosen a place where he knew that she would be, a place busy and thriving that couldn't afford to leave a room empty for the night.

Eventually, he forced himself to move. He forced himself to dig through her suitcase for her clean pajamas. He took the time to dress her carefully, to pull the sheets over her.

And then he was filling the syringe again, flipping the notebook open to the first page and moving it to the bedside table.

Christine Daae was a victim. She did not choose to die.

He found it fascinating that it was so important to him, in all of the careful planning, that people know that simple fact that it was the first line he jotted on the paper. Of everything flitting through his mind, that was the thing that he picked.

He was too exhausted to give it much more thought. The room was quiet, unbearably quiet, and the walls suddenly seemed too thick, too close, too white.

When he climbed into the bed and pulled her into his arms, he waited a moment for the small shiver she always gave in protest against his cold skin but it never came. It would never come again. Arms wrapped behind her back, lips pressed against her hair, he dug uncaringly under the skin of his arm with the needle, searching for his own vein and feeling nothing other than relief when he found it.

One quick, long press of his thumb against the plunger of the syringe and it was over. He didn't fight against the warmth that wrapped around him, didn't try to push back against the sudden heaviness weighing him down.

The last thought that he had was that it was a death far too good for him.