A/N: Short chapter, sorry! There were some technical difficulties as I was recovering this. A few people said the story was familiar: yes, it was posted before, under my sister's username (I had been suspended from FF dot net for a month, but don't get me started on that, my ranting is not pretty). I took it down to post it on my account, and that's when the disk I had it saved on got corrupted out of the blue, and I lost the story. However, I found the edited-for-content version I had saved on my father's computer, and managed to reconstruct some of the more interesting parts, as well as re-editing and re-writing. So basically what you're getting is the new and hopefully improved version of a story I wrote five months ago.

Three

For some moments Christine stood dumbfounded, staring at the grate that covered the entrance to Erik's lair. It was made of iron, cold, moss-covered, implacable— she could not believe that it now stood between her and her means of escape.

"Erik—"

He turned back to her, joy shining brightly and strangely from his eyes, from his face. "Yes, yes, my dear, now the world can go to hang! You were all the world to me, all that was worth living for. I could not shut it out, I could not shut it out, as long as you were still out there, there had to be a way— a way for you to return. But now you are here. Now I need no longer care about the rest of the earth."

"But, Erik! I did not come to stay!"

She could tell at once that this bluntness was the wrong tone to take, for the joy dissipated in an instant and his eyes turned dark and stormy.

"You came back to me," he repeated stubbornly. "You left your lover, your perfect man, left him without your presence— as I have been without—"

"I had to find out the truth," she said. "This was forced upon me."

He reacted with anger.

"Forced? Forced are you, now? Forced to travel to the bowels of the earth to find the carcass of the man who taught you to sing, who freed your voice and gave you wings? Christine, you are mistaken. You would not have come back if you did not want to." He stalked over to her and bent his tall, painfully thin frame over her small one, looking in her eyes. "You used to call me your angel, Christine—"

"No," she whispered. "You used to call me your angel. We cannot both be angels, Erik."

Slowly he straightened and backed away from her.

"You have come back to me," he said quietly. "And I know what is in your heart. I know why you are here. I know you, Christine, and I tell you, you would not have come if you did not want to."

With a quick movement and a strength born of rage, he ripped the lever from the wall. There was a groan of tortured metal, matching the groan of pent-up grief that escaped from his lips. He turned back to her, wielding the lever like a sword between them.

"I will give you time, of course," he said. "Time for you to realize all this on your own. You always were just the tiniest bit slow, Christine. But fear not— for now we have all the time in the world."

Christine bit back a sob as she looked at the man in front of her. Even in the throes of his madness she had loved him before, when he was her Angel of Music. This man before her now was entirely different— no longer a creature of nights lit by fire, now a creature of nights that were cold and starless, a creature of dust, a creation of architecture that was ready to fall apart but could not seem to gather the last bit of energy necessary. And yet he still stood between her and her way out.

Well.

With a great effort, she steadied her breathing.

She could stay, for a while.

She would find a way out, there must be other means of egress in this labyrinth, but for now—

She would stay here with her Erik and try to make up for what she'd done.

Abandonment. There was no other word for it.

Her regret of this was what kept her from losing it right then and there, from flying at Erik in a frenzy of rage and claustrophobia and demanding he show her the sun at once.

Instead, she gulped and moved towards him.

He looked at her, and for a moment she almost believed that he was as nervous as she.

"Will you play for me?" she asked quietly.