AN - Another Chapter. Hurray! I have nothing to say!

Chapter Eleven: Dying

Wishing I could
hear your voice again . . .
knowing that I
never would . . .

Heaven is a magical place, one full of love and peace.

No longer did I fear the decisions that had plagued my mind my whole life, no longer was I weighed down by my love or fear. For love is an overrated emotion, I found in arriving here.

There is something better than love. Yes, something more pure and warm than love. Something leaving us in a suspended state of content fulfillment, much like a final release during a session of lovemaking. Then double that pleasure and add more clarity, peace and blind faith. There is no word in the all spectrums of human language for it. French, English, German...

Nothing could describe this wondrous and magical peace.

If I could describe the luxurious and glorious feeling that enwrapped my brain, I would suggest that the most earthly thing I had ever done that could compare to this was sing with Erik. Perhaps when I finally stopped fighting the fear and allowed the music to ride me, like a wave of bliss that did not cease, but continued in rolls of blind feeling. My voice would detach from my body and entwined with Erik's in complete harmonious sanctity.

Erik, the angel of music and my appointed guardian, He was soon to be mine, I realized as I felt myself float towards majestic lights with a longing heart.

"Christine..." I heard a familiar voice call out to awaken all my senses.

I could smell, taste feel and see this wondrous voice, but, I did not need to hear it or any of those things to know it was my fathers. Suddenly I was drifting farther and farther away from those very gates...

"It is not time... not yet..." I could hear my father say, as I felt as if I were being dropped back to earth.

"Soon... but not yet..." I heard.

( ' ) '
-

I remember
there was mist .
swirling mist.

Christine awoke with a sudden jolt, her body engrossed in a fierce pain.

"ERIK!" She screamed upon arrival from her dreams. She looked down at her hands to see them trembling in fear and agony. She felt as if she was on fire, aching from years of exertion. All she could think of doing was resting, but fear kept her breathing hard and wide-awake. As she looked around the unfamiliar room, she realized she did not know where she was, or what she was doing...

All she could remember was her father, and going to the Paris opera house in search of a home, a place to belong. That is where she met her angel of music, Erik.

She knew something was missing, something very, very important, and try as she might, she just couldn't place what was gone. Sleep hung around her like a dark shroud, mocking her to surrender.

Slowly she looked over to the door that was open, leading to the hallway, only to see the figure of a man standing there. A broken and discouraged man, one who's face looked as if she had cut his heart into a thousand pieces and scattered them on the floor as rose pedals to satisfy a hobby or obsession.

A face of a man she did not know.

( ' ) '
-

Think of me,
think of me waking,
silent and resigned.
Imagine me,
trying too hard to put you
from my mind.

"She has amnesia, Monsieur..." The doctor said to the Vicomte who was leaning against the mantel to the fireplace that he kept his brandy, which he was drinking an awful lot of these days.

"Amnesia, right... the question is sir, was this really the wretched aftermath of her terrible labour and illness, or does she choose not to remember?" Raoul said feeling bile rise from his stomach.

He had not hated anything for almost a year now; the exit of the Phantom of the opera had helped him quell his fears. However, he had a new rival, the Phantom of Christine's mind...

A force that, even he, could not stop, kill, hurt or compete with. In death, Erik had secured a place in Christine's heart, and it was to his dismay that it would always be that way. At first, he thought he had won Christine, only to find her slip away from him in front of his very eyes. Mistakes had been made on both their parts, giving him time to wonder if he had made the right choices.

Was he wrong to hide her pregnancy from her? Was he wrong to go above her head and make her no longer sing while she was expecting? Was it cruel of him to take her to the opera to see Carlotta sing her favourite opera?

Whatever Raoul did, he didn't know how he could fix the changes that had taken place.

"Are you that selfish monsieur?" The doctor awoke him from his bitter rage.

"Excuse me?" Raoul said turning to find an angry and twisted face of the doctor who had always been so kind to him.

"Your wife has been on the very brink of death and returned to you and is expected to make a full recovery. You have a beautiful little girl upstairs in a room right beside hers. Both were expected to die, and yet you find that even though you have been blessed with the gift of two lives, you have the right to be angry that she cannot remember you? And worse yet, of a medical problem, not of her OWN FREE WILL?" The Doctor boomed in a threatening voice that took Raoul back.

Shame and grief washed over his mind as he absorbed what the man in front of him was saying.

Christine might of screamed out for Erik, but if she couldn't remember him, then maybe she couldn't remember why she chose him over the terrible and murderous monster that had captured her.

"I... I beg your pardon doctor, you are right, I am, I should have seen this from her eyes." Raoul said walking with a heavy heart to flop down in a chair beside the hearth.

"It is not I who you should be begging pardon from good Vicomte, but the woman upstairs who does not recognize or understand where she is..." The Doctor said quietly and excused himself.

( ' ) '
-

Angel, my soul was weak -
forgive me . .

Erik watched as the Doctor left the house, wrapping his cloak tightly around his throat, as if to ward off the cold, tiresome night. He has examined her and left, that must mean the medicines I provided Christine with worked.

Slowly he walked a few feet to the left so he could peer into Christine's old room. He saw her stir and roll over in her sleep. Erik finally let go of the breath he had been holding for almost six hours.

She would live, she would live and everything would be fine. Nothing ill would behold her and she could go on living a normal peaceful life as a wife and now a mother.

As relief swept through his body, he realized how exhausted his old body was and before he knew it, he had fallen asleep on angel's cove.

( ' ) '
-

The world forgot him,
but I never can . . .
For in this darkness
I have seen him again . . .

"Danielle, little Danielle had a pretty pair of shoes..." Christine hummed softly to the two-week-old child. She is finally asleep, Christine realized as she lowered the tiny infant down into the cradle. Gently she rocked it back and forth, dreading going down to sit with Raoul.

Her amnesia didn't last long, before Raoul even began to start to tell the tragic and wretched tale of their past that they did not want to relived, she knew. She knew that she had betrayed herself, she knew she had betrayed her beloved, she knew she had betrayed her angel. It was then that the immense feeling of shame and guilt washed over her, in realization that she had wanted Erik, and screamed and begged and called for her husband's rival. She vaguely remembered telling him to get away from her in her native tongue, cursing and thrashing and wishing only her angel of music would save her from the agony.

She knew she had almost died, because more than once she had felt him there with her, heard and saw him beside her. She had not been afraid of her Erik, her love, a spectre, ghost, figment, phantom of her soul, heart and mind.

When she came to know what she had down she want to curl up in a little ball, and seriously contemplated if dying would of been better, at least then Raoul could not have heard the blasphemous treason her heart had preformed. Why? Why must everything be so bloody complicated? She asked herself. It was suppose to end! I was suppose to leave it all behind me! they both begged me too! Why can I not fulfill my promise to both of my lovers?

For a moment, as Raoul continued at the very beginning of their ill-fated love, she thought of continuing to portray she did not remember, at least then she would not need to fear his sadness and grief.

However, her treacherous heart betrayed her once more, she begged him to stop, and he knew that she remembered. She looked into his eyes, allowing her pity and her fear to enter them. She saw something die in Raoul's eyes, something she had not expected. She was sure he knew now that those memories that he had been forever trying to rid her mind of were not there because she couldn't shake away the horrors, but because she longed to relive them with every fiber of her being. He did not know that for them both, she just wanted to be able to walk down the path of memory lane, without tripping on broken dreams, covered in thorns.