The priest is staring at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. How has it come to this? A gentle squeeze of my hand makes me look over at Raoul. I love him. I always have, but standing here at the altar in the middle of a wedding mass… my wedding, I longed to be elsewhere. I did not feel God's blessing in this. This felt wrong.
"What is it?" Raoul's eyes question me.
He had not seen the newspaper that morning with its simple announcement.
Erik is dead.
My poor Erik! How could I marry Raoul when this final task lay before me? It would be a betrayal of everything my teacher had given me, a betrayal of his feelings for me, and ultimately a betrayal of my feelings for him.
Blinking back my tears, I smile sadly at my dear boy. Returning the pressure to his hand briefly, I turn away without answering the priest and leave the small chapel. My grief overwhelms me as I walk past the carriage that would have taken us to our small home by the sea. Erik is dead. Steadily I walk on until I reach the train station. Raoul did not follow me. Perhaps he had seen this morning's news as well. It would be like him to not tell me.
Three days upon the train and I am still in my wedding dress when it reaches Paris. I am still in my wedding dress as I slip past the gates of the river entrance into my angel's lair. It is dark, but easily I find my way. How often had I roamed these caverns with him? I breathe in the damp air and sigh as my body relaxes. I am home.
My old room is exactly as I left it and I rapidly locate a candle. My clothes remain in the closet. Before I go to him, I refresh myself in the small bathroom adjoined to my room and change from one wedding gown to another. I had dreamed of marrying a handsome young Vicomte. Instead, I shall marry a corpse. This feels right. This is where I belong.
How could I have convinced myself that I did not love him? I could not see my love past my childish fear and the adoration of a pretty and familiar face. I had clung to my childhood and memories of my father far too desperately. I eagerly grasped the hope that the Voice was the angel my father promised, and when I lost that hope I clung to Raoul. He was all that I had left of childish hopes and dreams.
Erik is dead and I find that he was my hope in reality. How would things have transpired if Raoul had not returned? Perhaps Erik would still be my living angel. What would I give to have the Voice speak to me once more, even after the terror he reined upon me?
I raise my candle before me as I approach the coffin. There is a man inside, arms folded across his chest as my poor, sad Erik once slept. A trick of the candle-light makes me notice false details. The graceful long fingers that wrought ethereal music from any instrument do not seem quite long enough resting over his heart. Indeed, the corpse is tall and unnaturally thin, but not quite as tall or thin as my memory recalls. It wears a mask and my hands tremble as I reach for it.
Hope flares in the core of my soul. The face is gaunt and sunken in. It is a true death's head, but not the hellish visage of my Erik. Even in death, I would recognize every detail of his face. How often had I stood beside this box watching him sleep, afraid to wake him, terrified of seeing his death's head become animate? Even in the candle-light, I am positive that it is not him and the breath held in my lungs rushes out on a sigh. Erik lives.
Swiftly, I blow out my candle and begin searching the darkness.
"I know you are here," I call. "Open your eyes so I may find you."
Silence greets my cry. Maybe I am wrong. The body in the coffin may belong to my Erik and I simply refuse to accept it. It is proof of my love, hanging onto fragile hope.
I am alone in the darkness with a corpse but I am not afraid. I ceased to fear the darkness long ago, but the silence suffocates me.
"Don't leave me alone in this world without music," I plead, a sob escaping my throat. "I will not give my ring to this stranger!"
Long, bony fingers close about my shoulders, the chill of them biting through the thin lace of my sleeves. Tears flow freely now as the Voice speaks heaven into my eagerly attentive ears.
"My clever Christine," he whispers as his arms wrap around me, holding me close.
I do not ask him who the thing in the coffin was. I do not care. All I want is the coldness of his body pressed to the warmth of mine. I stand in his embrace and I cry. How could I have convinced myself that I would ever be free of him?
"My living husband," I sigh, hugging his arms tighter against me.
He replies, "My living wife."
In his presence, I cannot stop myself from opening my voice to song. I choose The Wedding-night Song from Romeo and Juliet. I remember the night that he came to my dressing room singing it. Raoul had been in the room and had seen me disappear through the mirror. That was a lifetime ago and I am no longer that Christine. I am nothing without my Erik. He may be only a man, but he will always be my Angel and my Voice.
Fate links thee to me forever and a day
His heavenly voice joins mine.
No stranger marriage ever occurred than ours, with a corpse, God, and Satan as our witnesses. Music is the holy priest that binds us together.
I turn in his arms, wrapping my own about his neck. He leans down to press the dead flesh stretched over his mouth to my forehead but I tilt my face to meet his lips with mine. He smells of death, but he is my life, trembling in my embrace.
He slides down my body to his knees before me, clinging to my skirts; sobbing his love for me.
"I only wished for you to love your poor Erik," he cries. "How can you bear to give me your lips?"
"I love you, and I am yours," I respond passionately and fall to the floor with him.
Begging for his forgiveness, I tell him that I allowed my heart to confuse me. I confess that Raoul keeps that fragile organ, but Erik is loved by my immortal soul. Standing in the church with Raoul, it was my soul to which God spoke.
Erik says that God has shown him mercy at last.
We sing and I rise to my feet, taking his fragile seeming fingers of ice into mine. Not only do I give him my lips but my body as well. Upon the couch in my small bedroom, his touch cools my heated flesh while I warm his body and spirit. Tonight we live and die in each other's arms. Tomorrow we will leave this spectral existence behind the scenes of the Opera. We will leave Paris for an uncertain future as husband and wife.
All the uncaring and harsh world needs to know is that Erik is dead, and with him dies Christine Daae.