A/N: Wow thanks for the reviews! I'm still not sure where this will go in regards to the relationship, I am toying with two endings and am debating posting them both (when it comes around) as alternatives, meaning the reader can choose the ending they prefer!

Hope this chapter is ok… I'll try to update again soon.

Xx

"Love is something eternal, The aspect may change, But not the essence." - Vincent Van Gogh

Chapter 27- Cat and Mouse.

It had taken a while for her sobs to subside, he sang softly, almost whispering until her eyes closed and he heard her breathing even out in the stillness of the evening. Carefully he moved her off him and laid her gently onto his cloak before laying his jacket over her and sitting against the tree. He watched her in silence and noted then way the pink of the setting sun highlighted her features, making her look like a piece of art any painter would be proud of.

He rubbed his throat gently, it was sore from the singing, his body wasn't used to it anymore. He recalled… paper faces on parade… he remembered, the last time he had sung… hide your face… it had been years ago… so the world will never find you. He had let her leave, let her go with him. He had watched her row away in his boat, out of his lair and slowly but surely, out of his life.

He remembered it so well, it was so vivid in his mind, everything about it. The candles lighting his home, the water so still and calm but so cold around him. Christine was young and beautiful with so much life ahead of her, all the potential in the world to be whatever she wanted to be. He hadn't thought at first that what she would want to be was Raoul's wife, it had taken him a while to realise it.

The night on the roof had almost killed him, almost shattered him as he watched them declaring their love for each other… he would protect her…

He would protect her, be her guide, from me, he thought.

It rang in his mind and his head screamed, his heart screamed. His body shuddered with his memories, as they flooded his thoughts and he remembered the sight of her lips resting on Raoul's. He had never felt pain like it. It felt like someone had punched him in the chest, his heart had literally stopped beating, what was left of it was crumbling in his body as he stood their in the cold.

Somehow Don Juan Triumphant had made him live, had kept him going through the next 6 months but it had been torture. He had piled his thoughts, feelings and memories into that piece. All of the emotion and the tension he had ever felt when he looked at her came in abundance as it poured onto the pages. He had stopped watching her, how could he bear it, knowing that she was in love with someone else and that she had barely given him a thought.

Fear was never what he had wanted from Christine, he had only ever wanted her love. Her understanding and the realisation that he longed for her every day. She feared him yet she had nothing to fear, not from him because he was the one person of the earth simply didn't have the ability to hurt her.

But Raoul.

He had left her to him, let her leave with him.

He had spared Raoul's life and allowed the boy to be free to marry the one woman that Erik truly loved. The only woman Erik had ever loved.

How could he not want to touch her, how could anyone not want to touch her?

He freed her because her mercy kiss had both liberated him and trapped him. He knew that he was capable of feeling love and that someone could possibly love him in return but he also knew that she was better off with Raoul.

In his heart he knew that Raoul would never love her with the passion or the awe that he did, but his head had told him that her life would never be fulfilled in the cellar of that opera house.

He realised, through his madness, that she could never be his wife, his true partner in everything. And so he told them to leave, to go and to forget him and never to return. Oh and how it had crushed him, it had devastated him, destroyed his soul and spirit.

He had cried, laid on the floor listening to the sounds of the mob growing louder and louder, descending to his lair and to his madness. When he finally came around the mob were close and he had been forced to leave his home with a little help from Antoinette Giry. The whole event had stayed with him for years and it took him so long to feel like he had gotten over it.

And as he sat there watching Christine sleep for the second time that day he realised that he would never truly be over it, he would never forget it.

Thomas stood by Paul at the side of the carriage, neither of them really recognising where they were but knowing they were on the right trail. Paul glanced at his friend and nodded towards the foot prints on the floor, one large set and one small.

They hopped back into the carriage and were away again.

The men moved his body out of the cage and dumped it into the back of the truck. It had been lying there for over a day and they were concerned that it would begin to smell.

They needed to find a way of disposing of it, now.

Jennifer stood with Meg at the edge of a dusty and long road, up ahead was Paul's carriage and they were determined to stay with them but they knew they had to be careful.

Jennifer sighed in the knowledge that Paul would be angry but they had wanted to help, they wanted to find Christine.

Meg was also very evasive about her reasons for coming. There was more to it than helping Christine, she saw it in her eyes when she spoke. What it was though, she didn't know and didn't care to ask.

Onward.