A/N: Sorry about the long update. Please forgive me. Pretty please!

Now what?

Leon was dead, but now I had three bodies that would need to be removed and hidden so that they didn't stink up the cave as they decomposed. Erik was looking worse by the moment, and I knew I had to disinfect and bandage his wounds soon, but all I wanted to do was collapse into his arms and cry.

I was on the verge of cursing God for the life I had been given, when Erik's groan of pain pulled me back to reality. I may be tired and scared, but at least I wasn't lying bloody and broken on the ground.

I knelt on the ground and placed one hand against his face, and took one of his hands in my other. His face was cold and dripping with sweat, and his hand was limp and clammy. I had to get him off the floor and into bed so that I could tend to his injuries, but there was no way that I could lift him.

"Erik, listen to me." His eyelids fluttered open and he looked at me groggily. "You need to stand up now. Do you understand me? You can't stay like this." He nodded slowly, and I held onto his arm. "Come on, I'll help you, just lean on me."

He struggled to his feet, his breathe coming in uneven gasps as he stood upright, his weight mostly against the wall. We stayed like that for a few moments while he recovered enough consciousness to begin walking.

For the next fifteen minutes, we progressed slowly to the room above the stairs, the one I had stayed in. He would walk a few short steps, then stop and steady himself before continuing. I hated seeing the pained look on his face, the one that hinted quietly that he might have preferred to just stay where he was and let life slip away from him, but I kept whispering encouraging words into his ear, until we finally made our way up the damn stairs and he dropped with a groan onto the red velvet blankets.

"Erik?"

He had tried to keep awake for her, so that she wouldn't be alone, but the effort was to much for him. He heard her say his name, sounding a little panic stricken, and wanted to comfort her, to tell her that he would be fine, but he didn't even have the strength to speak. Not to mention he wasn't even sure of his own survival. He liked to think of himself as a strong man, but there is only so much blood one can loose before just giving up.

As soon as I established that Erik was no longer conscious, I ran down to the main room and searched frantically for bandages, trying to ignore the corpses that littered the cave. Searching the room with the bathtub, I found a small cabinet with clean rags, alcohol, and some strangely colored bottles. I swept everything into a small basket and returned to Erik.

His breathing had slowed to what I hoped was a normal rather than unhealthy rate, and I was left with the task of cleaning and bandaging his injuries. That would mean removing most of his clothing. The well-bred lady in me squirmed at the idea, the pragmatic in me told me that it must be done, no matter how uncomfortable it made me, and some small voice told me that I shouldn't be such a ninny about when my ultimate goal was marriage and all that presumably came with it. I felt a blush rise to my cheeks. Thank God Erik wasn't awake.

I ended up needing to cut his shirt completely off him with a knife, but used more discretion when I found his leg wound, just cutting around the area of his injury to avoid exposing more than I wished to see.

I nearly cried when I saw all his wounds; two broken fingers, a gunshot through the outer edge of his thigh, one cut in his shoulder, and another three in various places on his torso. All the cuts were also burned shut, so they wouldn't require bandaging, but I knew I should clean them anyway. I also needed to push his fingers back into place, but I thought the gunshot wound should take precedence.

I found a small surgical blade in the basket of supplies, and rubbed it with alcohol to sterilize it. Taking a deep breath, I washed off the surrounding blood to find the entry point, and made a deep incision around it. It was bloody work, digging the bullet out, and I had to stop every few minutes to push back my rising nausea.

Finally, I extracted the small round bullet and dropped it on the floor. I cleaned the wound with more alcohol, and bandaged it tightly. I tended the other cuts and burns next, washing each one, and bandaging those that weren't closed with burns.

His fingers were last, and I took great care resetting them; there was nothing I would hate more than to forever ruin his ability to play the organ. Well, that and losing him altogether.

I was exhausted by the time I finished, and my shirt was covered in blood. I didn't know whether I wanted to cry, bathe, sleep, or all three. I settled for changing my clothing, and removing the bloodied blankets from the bed, as I imagined they would be uncomfortable, especially once the blood dried. I covered Erik's sleeping form with his cloak, so that he wouldn't catch cold, and went to the bath room to get clean.

I tried not to look at Leon's body as I walked past it, but I caught a glimpse of his horrible face, still fixed in an expression of shock and disgust. I could not believe that he was dead; my nightmare was over. I was free of the man who had hunted me for the amusement it brought him, the man who had turned my life from dull and monotonous to complete agony in the space of a single conversation.

Then why was I not happy? Well, probably because I honestly had no idea what to do now. All my thoughts had been so focused on escaping Leon, and telling Erik that I loved him that I had no idea what to do now that Leon was dead and Erik was in no state to hear or understand my declarations of undying love.

Furthermore, with reality so harshly intruding upon my pleasant daydreams, I now was plagued by the thought that Erik might not be receptive to my affection having just been tortured by my ex-fiance. What if he was just sick of my whole drama and wanted nothing more than to be done with me?

I could drive myself insane thinking like that, and I would not give into self-doubt and worry. I had to keep up hope, or I wouldn't be able to deal with the rest of the obstacles that lay in my way, namely, the three corpses. Some part of me wanted to just roll them into the lake so that I wouldn't have to look at them, but it appeared to be Erik's main source of water, and dumping bodies into it would be utterly disgusting. I would have to wait for him to wake up so that I could ask his advice, as I lacked experience in disposing of dead bodies.

Trying to drown my thoughts with activity, I returned to Erik to see if he might need any more tending to. I had no such luck; he was sleeping calmly with regular, even breathing and no sign of blood seeping through bandages or any other urgent calamities.

Overwhelmed by a need to be close to him, I sat on the edge of his bed and brushed the scraggly hair out of his face. Even asleep, he did not possess that strange innocence that colors even the most hardened of faces. He looked tense, as if awaiting the next blow life would deal him, and his hand protectively, though not effectively, covered the marred side of his face. I touched the smooth skin, then moved his hand away and brushed my fingers down the thin, reddish skin that covered the right side of his face. He shuddered in his sleep, and my protective nature and possibly irrational need for closeness took over.

Trying not to wake him, I lay down softly next to him, so that my body was pressed gently to his. I tucked one arm under me, and placed the other protectively over his arm. Then I lay my head on his chest, and where the quiet rise and fall of his breathe lulled me to sleep at last.