Memories of a Broken Dream - by SacredBird

Summery: Christine thinks on the man she loves.

Rating: U.

Disclaimer: I don't own Phantom. Gaston Leroux does!

I can still feel his touch. Even now, after so long… after so much time has passed. If I concentrate hard enough, I can feel his arms around me, his breath hot against my skin as he whispers my name lovingly. His soft caresses… the look of passion in his eyes as he runs delicate fingers over my skin.

The man who I betrayed, the man who I rejected… I dream of him nightly as I lay in another man's arms. Pretending to love one man whilst wishing I was with another. I cry bitter tears into my pillow each night when my husband is asleep. One moment of weakness, of indecision, has cost me a lifetime of untold joy and love.

Will I ever learn to accept the choice I made that night? I fear that I may not. I can still hear him singing, a haunting melody which resounds in my mind. How I wish to be with him now, to hold him, to know I am safe…

But no. I am bound by this man… this man whom I chose and wed in a moment of terrified screams and tortured cries.

"Christine, Christine…" his voice is so near… so real, that for a moment I think he is next to me, and turn only to see the face of that who I hate so viciously now. How could I have ever have thought I could love this man? Perhaps I did love him once… caught up in the moment, I believed that he would be my salvation.

Once again his name sounds, somewhere close by, the other side of me now. I turn, and for a moment it seems as though he is kneeling besides me. I can see him… I can smell his comforting aftershave - I can feel him… he's there, really there besides me, sorrow in his eyes as he looks at me. I reach out to him… only for my fingers to brush against cold air. A dream then, a memory come to haunt me. I pull back my hand, bitter disappointment and longing almost choking me. I want to cry, but I cannot. All my tears have been shed. The dream will never come true… I am alone.

I must learn to accept my decision. I must learn to live with the man who I claimed to have loved. And to try to forget the man who I betrayed… the man whose soul I tore in half.

And so I turn to my husband, and whisper his name as his eyes flutter open, and his gaze locks on mine. "Erik…"