AN: Ahh! I forgot, when I posted this morning, to officially dedicate this chapter to my wonderful Melody's Song, without whose brilliance this post would be but a pale shadow of itself. A thousand snogs, dear!

Erik

I heard her voice in my head, as sweet and pure as the first time I had ever heard her sing, but with the richer, fuller sound that I had given her. So much of what was in that voice I had never meant for her to know; I could hear the shadows that lifted her notes into their resonating clarity, because they were shadows she carried for me. The rose who had known sorrow but never rage learned the blood-red fire of her own hatred at my hands. We had hardly begun to understand each other before we had to hate or die, because as long as we lived in opposing worlds we could not bear to love.

Music passed from my heart to the page in the quick movement of my pen across the score, but I hardly saw it. I was hearing the past, listening to the last truly innocent words Christine had sung, back before we had plunged into the nightmare of our passion.

"Who was that shape in the shadows?

Whose was the face in the mask. . ."

Then rage, swift and untamed and terrifying even to me, had roared into my veins. How could she betray me so willfully? She had damned herself and me to a circle of pain neither of us was strong enough to break, all for the sake of a woman's curiosity. Swift quiet steps had crept up behind me, and a foreign warmth more intoxicating than any drug had brushed along my cheek before with a ripping of our lives the heat was gone, and my mask with it, and I stood exposed as the lying demon I was—

That same warmth stroked down the left half of my face, still powerful, still compelling, and its deceptive tenderness sparked the fires of my anger into new life. Before she could tear off my mask again, I twisted to snag my right arm around Christine's waist and yanked her toward me, spinning her around and knocking her back into the organ with a crash. The double keyboards jangled as her head and back hit them, echoing my fury, and I snaked one hand around her neck. My other arm wrapped around her in a tight, rough grip, crushing her delicate frame against me; I glared down into her eyes, inches from mine. "Listen to me, you vicious little-"

She was shaking in my arms. Her eyes were wide, frightened, the edges tightening with the pain she was undoubtedly in.

I realized, horrified, that I wasn't even wearing my mask. I had not worn it in the two weeks since our wedding.

I whispered "Christine," softening my hold on her. Burning with self-loathing, I tore my hand away from her throat and instead used it to gently lift her head, cradling her in my arms. "Oh, Christine," I groaned.

"Erik, what—" she closed her eyes, briefly freeing me from her fear, and my chest tightened as two tears slipped out from under the lids. She hated crying. "What's wrong, why did you—what did I do?" she began, and then at the last question her eyes snapped open. They were no longer filled with fear, but I wasn't certain that the dawning realization in them was an improvement.

"I'm sorry," I begged softly. We had never talked about the night she first saw my face; like too many other painful things, we simply pretended that it had never happened. "Please, Christine, I'm so sorry," I lifted her up gently until I was holding her against my chest.

Apologizing to her was easier, now, than it used to be. I never had said the words "I'm sorry" to Christine before she came to live with me, even though I had so much to beg her forgiveness for, but tonight they came to my lips almost naturally.

She winced as I lifted my fingers into her hair, and I swore softly as I jerked my hand away. Standing as carefully as I could, I carried her into the music room and gently laid her on face down on the couch. "Let me see," I pleaded when she moved away from my fingers at her neck.

"It hurts."

My eyes closed. "I know, Christine, but I can't help if you won't let me." We were silent for a moment, then I felt her nod under my fingertips.

She would not have a concussion, I discovered, and her head wasn't bleeding from hitting the organ's top keyboard. Quickly, dispassionately, I undid her gown and corset to look at her back where it had smacked into the lower row of keys. It was bruising, but there was no other damage, and I immediately redid her corset—albeit much, much more loosely. When I finished with the top button of her gown, the quiet around us became intolerable. Christine had whimpered, a little, and each tiny moan of pain from her broke my heart, but now she was still.

"You will have a headache," I finally murmured, standing. "You'll need tea."

I had only crossed half the room when her voice stopped me. "Erik."

I looked back over my shoulder. Christine had turned her head to look at me; her face was half buried in the cushions, giving her pale white skin an eerie similarity to one of my masks. "Yes?"

"Are we going to talk about it," she asked, her voice unnervingly calm, "or are you going to fix me tea, burn what you were working on, and make us both believe this never happened?"

I wondered when she found the ashes of the work I had been composing the last time I harmed her.

Not meeting her eyes, I simply said, "You need tea."

"No." The emotion that had been missing from Christine's tone rang into that one word. "I am not going to drink anything until you come back here and we talk, Erik. I won't." I looked away from her. "You don't think I can out-wait you, but I can. I've learned a lot in the last year, my love." I did not move. "Erik, please."

Swiftly, I returned to her and knelt by the couch, firmly taking her chin into my fingers. "What do you want me to say, Christine? That I'm sorry? I am. I always will be, for this and everything else. Do you want me to beg your forgiveness?" My voice softened. "Do you want me to be your willing slave? Ask it of me, and it is yours."

"You don't need my forgiveness, Erik. It was an accident."

My jaw clenched, and I forced myself to let go of her. "It was nothing of the sort."

"Yes, it was." She sat up, keeping her eyes on mine. "You were not with me in that room, Erik. You were with a foolish child—"

"And that makes throwing her against the organ hard enough to bruise better?"

Christine covered my mouth with her hand. "A foolish child," she repeated firmly, "who betrayed your trust more deeply than anyone else ever has."

I glanced down, trying not to voice the question in my mind, but when I looked back at her it slipped out of me in cool tones. "If you were standing on that bridge now, would you do it again?"

She drew back from me, startled, but I saw the answer in her eyes.

I stood. "I'm going to get you tea."

"Erik!" This time, I ignored her. Only when Christine grabbed my arm did I stop; she should be lying down, not chasing after me. "Don't I even get a chance to answer?"

Picking her up, I carried her back to the couch. "I know your answer."

"Then at least let me explain why." She grasped the loose collar of my shirt as I set her down, but I pulled away.

"Don't, Christine. Just don't."

"Erik, please don't do this to me." Christine's voice was small and young and I could no more resist her than I could turn back the last half hour. Carefully I gathered her back into my arms, minding her bruises, and settled down onto the couch. She curled so perfectly into me; every time I held her, I was astonished anew at how well we fit together.

Christine did not speak. I watched as she traced her hand from my elbow to my fingertips, her touch briefly resting against the single clear diamond imbedded in my wedding band. I held my tongue; she was the one who wanted to talk.

"I had to, Erik."

My eyes snapped back to her, but she wasn't looking at me; Christine was running her fingers across mine.

"Surely you know that by now," she continued when I didn't answer. "I realized it the moment you stepped out from behind the curtain. You didn't care about the police or the guns or the law, so I had to."

I touched her jaw, lifting her face up to meet my gaze. "And I knew," Christine said lowly, "that you might hate me forever." I closed my eyes, and her voice grew stronger. "I had already experienced your hatred; it scarred me, but I could live with it. I could not live knowing that you died because you were too blind to see the hangman's noose surrounding that stage."

Christine

He buried his face into my shoulder and was still. I tangled my fingers in his hair, holding Erik closely against me and ignoring the twinge from my bruised back. "Do you understand now?" I whispered against his ear. "I had no other choice."

"I love you."

I smiled slowly. "I know."

"Do you? Can you?" He pulled back to look at me, and any remaining shock or anger at his rough treatment of me dissolved before the tears in his eyes. Erik moved his hand down my back, skimming feather-light over the bruised area. "When I do this to you, how can you believe that I love you?"

"Erik-"

His eyes narrowed. "Don't placate me, Christine." The tears had spilled down his cheeks but they did not ease the iron of his gaze. I did not—could not—answer, and he sighed, the lines in his face gentling as he looked away from me. "Every time I sit at the piano, I see the fear in your eyes that night. Why do you think Don Juan was composed at the organ? I couldn't write it here, to the memory of shouting at you."

I took his face between my hands, turning his face back to mine. "And now? Will you avoid the organ as well?" Erik's eyes closed again; he dropped his forehead to the hollow of my throat.

"I don't necessarily agree that taking my mask off was the best solution you could have found," he muttered, disregarding my question.

He was teasing me. About Don Juan. I pressed a small smile into his hair. "I wouldn't have had to come up with anything if you had simply waited until after the performance to abduct me."

A quiet chuckle was the only response he gave me.

Erik leaned back into the couch, pulling me with him until I was carefully held against his chest. I smiled again as his lips touched my temple, but as a minute of silence passed and another began, he still did not speak. I hesitated a moment longer, then murmured, "You didn't answer my question."

"Must I?"

I lifted my head to look at him. "I would rather you did." Erik stared into my eyes. "Please, Erik. If you had thrown me harder—if my blood had stained the keys—I would still want you to compose."

His jaw tightened at the image I had created, and he took a moment to answer. In a tone that was almost even, Erik replied, "I don't drag you up to the roof. Allow me to handle this as I choose."

I winced. The roof.

Erik's hands cupped my face; he kissed my cheek and pulled me back down to rest my head on his shoulder. "I win," he said dryly, but there was no triumph in his voice.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

He tilted my chin up, forcing me to look at him, and his eyes were gentle. "We both made mistakes. I frightened you, and he never would." I could almost see him swallow the words that boy.

"Erik, do you still think—"

"Yes?"

I looked down at my hand lying against his shirt. Lifting it up, I touched my mouth briefly to my wedding ring. "You know I'll never leave you, don't you?"

When I finally looked back at him, he smiled, a slow, warm grin that sparked butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Tightening his arm around me, Erik closed the distance between us and fitted his mouth over mine in a shatteringly deep kiss.

Author's Note: We're pretending that "Stranger Than You Dreamt It" happened in the music room, with the piano, not at the organ (since I said that Christine had only been in Erik's room once).