Christine furrowed her brow, unlocked the door, and opened it with an air of expectation. When her eyes finally registered what they were seeing, she whirled on Erik.

"What is all this?" Her face and voice were a perfect jumble of conflicting emotions. Immediately, her eyes were caught by dozens of paintings – all of her. There was one for every year of her life since she had come to the Opera Populaire. Those that depicted the youngest Christine were rudimentary and two dimensional. They almost all depicted her father smiling benevolently in the background. The sight of his lean Scandinavian face nearly brought tears to her eyes. As she aged, the paintings also matured in style and sophistication. She recognized the moments Erik had captured – a rehearsal here, a birthday party there. Her eyes were caught and held by a nearly life-sized portrait in her Masquerade costume. The detail was exquisite; it was very much like looking in a mirror.

Next, she noticed the roses. Dried roses of every color hung upside down from the ceiling. There must be hundreds, she thought. Hundreds of dead roses. Why? And then she focused on the shelves. At first, she could not comprehend what she was seeing. There were stacks and stacks of bundles of paper filling the shelves. A moment's scrutiny revealed that the 'paper' was money. Without looking at the denominations, Christine guessed there was more than enough here for a small family to live lavishly for at least a lifetime.

She dragged her eyes back to Erik, who stood smiling warmly beside her. "Where did this come from?"

"Since I was seventeen – I suppose that would be eight years now – I've been collecting a salary of sorts from the managers. I improve their ticket sales and they give me a percentage of their profits. I don't know why I began asking for a salary. It just seemed…the thing to do, I suppose. Normal men earn incomes for their work, or am I wrong? I have never had a need for money, so I have simply set it aside. I've never even counted it."

"Then we are not lost. Erik, we'll be fine anywhere we go." She was smiling as broadly as he, now. "The…the paintings are beautiful – but why are they all of me?"

Erik looked down. His mask covered the hot flush that rose to his cheeks. "Once I had seen you, I never saw another thing beautiful enough to warrant the effort."

"And the roses?"

"For years I dreamed of giving them to you. After lessons, when you had lifted my spirit with your voice and your sweet presence, I often wished to give you a rose. I always brought one with me, but I never could bring myself to reveal that I was no angel. But they were your roses, Christine, and I could never throw them away." He walked into the room and touched one of the roses with a gentle finger. "This is not what I brought you here to show you. Here…" he shifted a nearby pile of money as casually as if it had been a pile of dirty laundry. The leather-bound notebook beneath, he lifted as gently as a newborn child. "this is my greatest treasure." In trembling hands, he proffered the volume to Christine, who took it from him with a questioning look.

"May I open it?" This was the score he had been working on for so long. Curiosity burned in her thoughts, but she made no moves without his consent. Intuitively, she knew she was literally holding his heart in her hands.

He shook his head and took her hand. "Come with me." He led her to the organ and started the steam engine. This would be the last time he stoked the little bellows, the last time he would sit down to the organ he had constructed with so much care. Christine sympathetically watched him linger over every motion. It was hard to imagine the Phantom of the Opera without his Opera. How strange it would be to see him in the sunlight! Once she had craved the sight, but now she wondered if the gentle lantern-light did not suit him better.

"The score, please?" He had taken his place at the keyboard, staring down at it expressionlessly.

Christine untied the silk cord, opened the leather binder, then fussily set the composition on the rack. Her eyes widened as they roved across the first movement. The music leapt from the page, playing thunderously in her mind before his fingers ever touched the keyboard.

Erik turned to her and smiled. He saw her expression and knew that she was already under the spell of his greatest work. Without the smallest twinge of self-consciousness, the Angel of Music removed his hat, mask, and cloak. He would need freedom of movement to play perfectly.

"I finished this only last night. You will not, I think, need any rehearsal. My Angel knew her part long before it was written." He set the stops deftly. A deep breath later, his fingers descended on the keys, and the world folded in around them.

The first notes were clear, light, and high. It was the Voice of young Christine, singing her first audition before the managers. Erik had never forgotten how those crystalline notes had captured him and held him in awe. His opera was a thinly veiled telling of his own love story. In it, an angel in the guise of a human woman must save a lost soul otherwise doomed to Hell. With his incredible range and perfect vocal flexibility, Erik sang every part to perfection. Every part but Christine's. Even during composition, he had not dared to let her words touch his lips.

Christine felt herself slip inexorably into the dream Erik had created. This music was pure and unfettered; it usurped her rational mind, forcing her to operate purely on emotion. He was correct in assuming that she would know her part without rehearsal. The words and notes were natural and right. Any other singer would have struggled with the simplest aria; Christine sang each as easily as speaking. The music caught her tightly in the fantasy – she was an angel. She was his Angel. With love and tenderness, she rescued Erik from the darkness which threatened to consume him. The story neared its end. Erik took his hands from the keys and sat back. The page in the composition book was blank, but their music continued.

He stood and joined her where she stood, singing in a delirium. Their voices rose together, perfectly entwined, perfectly complimenting one another in harmony and ardor. The words were not written anywhere – they simply came, as natural and sweet as honey. After awhile, words gave way to wordless vocalization as the two musicians spoke to each other in a language closer to the heart than Italian or French.

The space between them shrank, though it seemed that neither of them moved. On a cloud, her arms floated up to twine around his waist and neck as her song drifted into a peaceful silence. His song continued, strengthening and deepening. He still sang of love, but now there was a satiny darkness that beckoned and whispered of pleasures more earthy and less ethereal. His voice was not that of the Opera Ghost, or the Angel of Music, or even of the sweet, shy Erik she had come to love. It was the voice of the man he could have been; it was the voice of the man he would be now that he was free of his past and his self-loathing - now that he was loved.

Her rational mind threw forth a single giddy thought –Oh my, I'm being seduced! ­– and she succumbed.

Erik brought his lips to hers as his final note echoed around them. His subterranean wonderland was their church. His music was their wedding ceremony. Their soaring voices spoke vows more sacred than any ritual. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the parlor where he tenderly set her down on the soft, thick rug in front of the fireplace without breaking their embrace.

As he carried her, she was unbuttoning his shirt, unmindful of how "improper" it was that she should undress him. She understood as well as he did that they were married now in the church that mattered most to both of them. His hands were on the laces of her bodice when he paused with a hint of trepidation.

"This is forever, Christine. Are you sure I am the man you want?"

She just nodded and slid his shirt from his shoulders. He was a man nurtured entirely on the melodramatic romance of opera and symphony music. She could not possibly hope that his sweet romanticism would survive the realities of married life; she would have to bask in his poetic tenderness while it lasted.

"My Angel," she murmured, and quelled any further discussion by stopping his mouth with hers.