Fluff... FLUFF! O.o Ok, that can't be ignored...

To all fluff-lovers: no offense meant, but this story isn't suppose to be fluffy. My phic 'Trust' is fine pink fluff, but this here ain't. All fluff in this story is an accident or absolutely unavoidable because love is a central theme.

I did some re-reading and de-fluffed Carla's psycho-dispos. Where once was definite fluff are now nice twisted thoughts and feelings. Me loves it:D

And now a chapter about the terrible meaning of the word 'silence'...

-Chapter Eleven – Death-

"Oh gosh!" she buries her face in her pillow when Erik is gone again. "Why did he do this to me! And what the hell was it anyway?"

He turned a harmless pop song into an SM anthem of life and death, and Carla nearly didn't recognize her own voice, that was electrified and frighteningly strong in the fit of mortal fear that Erik forced upon her with velvet gloves.

"Couldn't he just warn me? But he didn't warn me either when he seemed to be about to crash me into the wall. You see, he's regardless, Carla. He cuts you and then he is sweet again and says sorry. Or not even that..." Slowly she sits up "And this hell of a tuition concept let you overcome your fears, Christine? Surely just because your sanity didn't survive it... And your body...?" she frowns "Did... did... he kill you? Or did you kill yourself?... What happened on your last day?... If I could find your room... How would Erik reproduce a house? Symmetrical... that would mean..." she stares at the wall behind her bed "That would mean the door is somewhere here..."

But although Carla knows how Erik hides his secret doors, she can't find it - if it's there at all.

"So I have to ask him or sneak into his room while he's at your grave..." she mumbles, crawling under her blanket.

No five minutes later she is already asleep.

"What time is it?" she asks yawning, when she meets Erik in the library some time later.

"Half past five pm."

"Oh, I thought I had slept longer..."

"Do you feel well again?" his eyes show concern and a trace of remorse.

"I don't know... I..." she shrugs. Since she woke up, she feels a strange calmness in her. It is as if her involountary flirt with a violent death, the minutes in wich she so clearly knew that she is mortal while at the same time her voice was stronger than ever before, had made it clear to her that one can only fly when he gives up all footing. Stop thinking. Trust. "Will you tell me the next chapter now?"

Erik sighs.

"I fear the next chapter is the last. Are you sure you want to hear it now?"

"Oh, quite sure... And... if it's the last one you could tell it to me in... in Christine's room...?" she suggests.

"No." Erik answers, his voice soft but steady "Her room is opened only once every four months and I will not change that habit for you. It will remain closed for another six weeks."

He falls silent and Carla can tell by his posture that every second in Christine's room is a torture for him.

"I can go there alone, if you..."

"No. Just accept it, Carla. And don't try to find the door. There is only one key and that is hidden in a place that no ignorant will ever find, not even by chance."

"Ok. I'm... sorry that I mentioned it." she gives in. Surely it's better this way. She has never been in a room where someone was killed or committed suicide and the only puddles of blood she has ever seen were in the TV; who knows how she would react... "But you will tell me the last chapter, won't you?"

When Christine returns to her flat in order to organize the dissolution of her household, she finds a letter. And this occursed piece of paper tells her that Raoul de Chagny is hurt and irritated by the behaviour of his beloved, but very willing to hear her explanation and forgive her when he is back in Paris after the end of his education in two weeks. The letter says that he loves her.

They meet secretly, they engage secretly, but Raoul gets several acute fits of jealousy because he is unwilling or unable to understand what binds his lovely fiancée to the ugly monster that inhabits the cellars of the Paris Opera House.

One day they have another argument about it in front of the Opera, from which Christine tries to flee by hiding on the Opera roof. On their way up, the shouting couple passes a corner that contains more than only a shadow...

Concerned about Christine's wellbeing, her Angel follows them.

"You don't even wear the ring!"

"Oh yes, I do!" she frees herself from his grip and pulls at the chain with the medaillon around her neck. "It is in there! And I explained to you more than once why it is necessary that I hide it!"

"Oh, right. Your monstrous voice teacher will punish us for it." Raoul sneers.

"Don't you dare to speak of him like that!" Christine yells at him.

"It's been five weeks now, Christine, five weeks, and still you play this masquerade and let him compromise you!"

Christine's small foot hits the wall and she gestures helplessly into the gray sky.

"You will not even try to understand it, will you?" Then she lets her hands fall down again and hides her face in them, no longer furious but sad and disappointed "Not even for the love of me will you try to understand it..."

Raoul sighs, his own anger tamed by her sudden change of expression.

"All I do is for the love of you, Christine. Don't you see that? I witness the change your friend has caused in you and I can't help being deeply concerned. Not two months ago you couldn't bring it over yourself to sing Cherubino and now..."

"So that's the reason of your jealousy?" she spits "You can't bear that someone other than you showed me how to overcome my fear?"

"No, Christine, no. But you sang the 'Queen of the Night' as if one hint of imperfection would kill you and the whole audience..."

"I am still practicing. I will become more relaxed in time."

"Christine..." gently Raoul takes her hands in his. "My love, I fear for you, don't you understand that? You are behaving so strange since you are under the influence of this new teacher. I look at you and can't find the Christine I know, the Christine I grew up with. It's such a severe change..."

"Well." she slowly withdraws her hands and turns her back on him to stare into nothingness "Perhaps I am no longer the Christine that you know. Perhaps I died and was reborn... I died in his voice, again and again, to become what I truely am..."

"Don't talk like that, please!" Raoul seems to be frightened by her oddly calm words "You always were what you truely are. Look at me, Christine..." her grabs her shoulder and turns her back to him "Look at me! You have to wake up from this hypnosis. Come back to me!"

"I'm wide awake, Raoul." she whispers dreamily.

"No, you're not!" the fear in his voice sounds shrill and he shakes her roughly "This monster has you in it's grip, don't you see that? Wake up, Christine! Face it! You have to rip lose! Let us run away together, let us hide somewhere he will never find us."

"He is no monster, Raoul..." she seems to be close to fading " I won't betray him like that... I am all he wants..."

"And you are all I want, too! Now, it's in your hands! What is it that you want?"

"I don't want to lose one of you..."

Raoul closes his eyes for a moment.

"You can not avoid that, Christine." he then sighs with resignation "I will leave Paris and never return. Come with me or stay with Erik."

"No, Raoul!" Christine sobs, suddenly panicking and clawing into his jacket "Don't force me to do this! Please! Don't..."

"I will not sit around and watch you being destroyed by a creature that claims to help you. Now decide, Christine. Decide if you want to stay here or if you love me."

"This is not fair, Raoul! I can't just..."

"You can, Christine. And you will! Come with me, we can be out of Paris in three hours..."

"But I can't leave him without a word of goodbye..."

"You'll have to. Don't you understand that he will not let you go again once he knows what we're planning?"

"I will go back to him to explain and to say goodbye, Raoul!" she hisses, her old contrariness beating down all other feelings again "You can force me to decide but that's all."

"And he can force you to stay with him! Stop being so naive and trusting! He's a murderer, you told me yourself! He's capable of things I couldn't even imagine! If you go back to him it means that I'll leave Paris alone!"

For a moment there seems to be utter silence in her. But then she gives in to her fiancé.

On their way down, the couple passes another dark corridor. Suddenly a long, skeletal hand shoots out of the blackness and gets a hold of Christine.

The door her Angel uses for this instinctive abduction is one of the long disused, so it doesn't close right behind them and Raoul can take up a desperate pursuit. Had he been alone it would have been no problem for the Angel to outrun the Vicomte and keep the mechanisms and trapdoors secret, but although Christine follows him nearly willingly she slows him down. Only one door is left between them and the Angel's house when Raoul finally loses their trace.

Too angry to even yell at her, the Angel throws Christine to the floor of his room.

"You are engaged to the Vicomte for five weeks and now you want to leave me without a word of goodbye?" he hisses.

Christine curls up herself and puts her arms around her head in a desperate attempt to save herself from the burning rage of her tutor.

"Forgive me, Angel! Forgive me!"

"You promised me your heart was mine! Mine alone! And you betrayed me! Why, Christine? Why? Didn't I respect all your wishes? Didn't I treat you like the precious being that you are?"

"You never did me wrong, Angel, never. But... I... I can't help loving him! I tried so hard to be yours entirely, so hard, but... I can't, I... Forgive me, Angel..."

When he says nothing for a while, Christine dares to look up. Her eyes meet the gaze of her Angel who has soundlessly cowered down beside her, so that she recoils.

"You don't know how much I love you, Christine."he whispers sadly.

"I wish I could stay, my Angel, but I love Raoul. And to leave you is the one condition of this love."

He jumps up and turns his back on her.

"You give in to conditions?" His voice is acid.

"I give in to my heart... God, my life is destroying itself!" she then cries out "It's dissolving to ashes before my very eyes and there is nothing I can do about it!... Let me go, Angel. Please, let me go..."

There is a long silence, disturbed only by Christine's sobs.

"You have to come back to bury me." her Angel finally gives in "That's the other condition of this love. Come back here in three days and bury me..."

"I will come back, my Angel, I promise."

When she is gone, he falls to his knees, crying helplessly like a child.

"Angel?" Calling softly, Christine opens the door to his room. She knows it's stupid to call him. She knows he's dead. But she doesn't want to accept it.

"Angel?" On she searches, until she finds him, sitting upright on the bed in her room.

Petrified she stands on the threshold, new tears burning in her eyes, while he gets to his feet.

"Christine..." His voice sends a visible shiver through her body. "Forgive me. I will not let you go again."

"You're alive..." she sobs softly.

"I couldn't do it, Christine. I love you too much."

"You're alive!" a cry full of relief. She seems to fly the few meters that part her from her Angel and embraces him like she would never let go again.

There is a moment of completeness, a moment when the world around them crumbles and dissolves, when nothing counts, nothing exists but Erik and Christine. And in this moment she takes off his mask, to kiss his forehead, his temples, his cheeks, until her lips finally merge with his and let him know what felicity feels like.

But then a terrible bang rips the air apart and Christine's knees bend, a veil going down in front of her wide eyes. Another bang, a sharp pain in the Angel's shoulder. Unbelievingly he looks to the door, where Raoul stands, a smoking revolver in his hand, the mouth in his white face opened to a silent cry of sheer anguish. He fires again but this time misses his target.

When the Angel comes at him and pushes him violently against the wall, the momentum crushes Raoul's skull.

Silence is all that follows. Silence and a terrible numbness that causes him to stagger when he moves over to where his love lies in a gruesome red lake. A total absence of hope.

Her eyes are still open. Her hand is still warm. But when he rests his head on her chest, there, too, is silence. Her heart under the bloody fabric of her dress isn't beating anymore.

"Christine... is... dead..." he seems to choke on these words that leave his mouth for the first time.

Carla wipes her tears from her cheeks, then she lays her hand on his and presses it gently. He doesn't withdraw, he doesn't comment, he just beholds the light of the fire on her pale skin.

"Christine is dead..." he softly repeats. "She is dead..."