A/N: This is a continuation of Chapter two. Please refer to the previous chapter for other Notes/Prima Donna. Haha, just kidding. Threw a curve to see if you were still awake! Anyway, enjoy.
As they faced each other, the room crackled electric with intensity. Christine, stubborn as ever, faced Erik with no intention of backing down from her stance, and the only thing betraying this strength was the trickle of tears streaming down her porcelain cheeks. Erik faced her, not looking outwardly swayed or sympathetic, and the mask seemed as cold and forbidding as ever.
"Love, Christine? Love? And what is it, pray tell me, that you know of love? Please, enlighten me. Of course, I must admit, if what you've shown me so far is what you call love, I don't think I'm strong enough a man to handle it!" Christine stood still, never wavering. She repeated simply,
"I love you, Erik." The man advanced on her menacingly until he stood right above her, and she could feel his breath on her face. Now, Erik was very quiet and calm, his words punctuated by his seductive, threatening intensity.
"But you see, Christine, I have no way of ascertaining the truth of your statement. If you indeed do love me, as you so vehemently have verbally expressed," Here, Erik paused to sneer before continuing on, "don't you think you might have done a better job at showing it? Christine, my dear, it took me these two long years to overcome the near fatal blow you dealt me! No," he said, placing one long, skeleton-like finger over her perfectly shaped lips, "you will let me finish this. I need to say it, or I may never be whole again. I loved you with an unnatural strength, that I cannot deny. I'm certain that the intensity of it must have frightened you, innocent creature that you are." Christine flushed crimson, but he held her fast. It was obvious to both of them that his words were a little too close to home.
"But I couldn't control it any more than I can control the need to compose, the need to build things with my hands, the need to breathe! I offered you everything I had, Christine, everything, but it wasn't enough for you. You didn't like the packaging, and you wanted to run away with your Vicomte in shining armor. Well, I might have had a hope of dealing with that, Christine, but damnit! WHY couldn't you have stayed gone?!" At this point, Christine was sobbing silently, but she didn't move. She thought that she detected a mad glint of something in his mismatched eyes, but Christine was horrified to see that Erik, too, was crying, because she didn't think that she could bear it. That she was the cause of those tears, that anguish, was even worse.
"How could I have stayed away from you, Erik? How when I-"
"If you that you love me again, Christine," Erik said in a dangerously soft tone, "I'm afraid that I can't return." He left then, and Christine crumpled to the floor in tears. She was so upset and absorbed in their argument that she didn't even think to realize that Erik had left through the door in her dressing room instead of the mirror...
