Thank you convoitez (if that's spelt right its probably on accident) and Katherine Silverhair... love getting new readers... and Sephira, its after the previously chronicled events (that sounded pompous, didn't it?:) She's gotten married to Raoul, and it could either be years after or a few months, either one. Though I like to think of Christine looking back on those times after several years have passed... makes it more poignant, somehow. Anyway, here's the next chapter, enjoy!

Second Thoughts

"— If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?"

A very long time ago, Raoul had asked her that. She had answered quickly in her terror of losing him ("Oh my betrothed, if I did not love you—") without giving adequate though to the question he had put to her.

She had seen him without the mask.

She knew him to the depths of his soul.

His eyes burned into her as he looked at her, left marks upon her skin that, she was sure, would be visible to everyone. When he touched her, as he rarely dared to do, she shivered away like a mirage.

Dynamic was one word that came to mind when she thought of him.

Insane, unfortunately, was another.

Now, on final reflection, she found she did not mind so much his disfigured face quite so much as his disfigured mind. She was fiercely proud of this.

"I did not reject him because he was imperfect!" she once railed at a calm evening sky. For days after her wedding to Raoul she felt as though God were looking rather disapprovingly over her shoulder.

"You rejected my child, my musical genius, left him to rot and disintegrate into dust down below in that cellar, that cold, cold cellar, that dungeon of hate, that cathedral of despair, that altar to all that is unholy—"

"He chose to kill," she whispered to herself, seeking to reassure her own mind. She lied, and she knew it. He had chosen nothing. Fate had conspired against him, hell was thrust upon him—

Poor Erik! Poor Erik!

Her mind resounded with it, like a bell struck.

Poor Erik! The poor, left, lost, alone, piteous, abject, unfortunate, miserable, damaged, deranged, maligned, maleficent, malevolent, demonic, angelic, spiteful, solitary, betrayed Erik!

If he had been handsome, would she not love him?

That question was not entirely fair, for she found, on reflection, that she did love him. She loved his dark soul, and the abject terror in his eyes. His pride. His subsequent fall.

If he had been handsome, would she have loved him— enough?

Ah, there was the crux of the matter. What was enough, anyway? Enough to save him from his deeds, from his punishment that was due, from himself? Enough to leave her life behind and live with him forever, existing and dying below the Opera Populaire (dying probably of influenza, or cold, that cellar was so damp)?

She did not know.

That was what drove her crazy, that she did not know.

She found out, in the course of a lifetime well and truly spent, what regret was. It was a longing to go back and try another option, take another choice, test out the alternatives. A wish to experiment with fate— I wonder what would happen if—?

If he had been handsome enough, or if she had been strong enough.

A lifetime spent with Erik, as compared to a lifetime spent with Raoul.

The two of them alone forever, as compared to the children and grandchildren that followed her around incessantly, demanding her attention.

An angel of music as compared to a husband that stifled her talent, requesting her to be quiet, as he had a headache.

The grass is always greener, Christine, she told herself. Always.

Still she regretted, and it haunted her to the day of her death.

Erik, on the other hand, had spent so much of his life haunted by everything, that he committed suicide soon after she left him and thus was saved from a lifetime of doubt and defeat.