Hey everyone! Thank you so much for your kind reviews! Without further ado, my next two chapters. Let's see how our favorite couple will do this time... Enjoy and please review! -x- Lotte.

Another week passed and he seemed to have disappeared once again from her sight. She hated herself for having forced his hand as she did. That kiss, though heartfelt, must have hit him completely off balance. She should have known enough of his unstable character to realise he would not take well to such changes. She left him, chose another over him, and now she had just waltzed back into his life and...what exactly? Had he not warned her she could expect nothing more than his friendship? But then, their solitary whispers at the Basilica, their night at the Opera...had she been so wrong in her judgment? Were it merely moments of checking his strength?

She wanted to escape outside, let her mind wander but could not. It was pouring with rain this day. Céline was in a foul mood, being kept in and pouting at everything. Finally Christine had sent her to her room.

"If you cannot behave a sweet girl, you will sit and pout by yourself." She had sternly looked at Nicole. "No games, no stories, Nicole!"

She realised she was being harsh on the girl, and was probably taking out some of her own frustrations on her, but she could not help it. It was all his fault! Angry and irritated, she wandered through the Palazzo, until she reached the library. A book, she thought, might help her lift her weariness. She walked in without thinking, only to find...Erik. Seated by the fire, brandy at hand, looking up from his book annoyed to be disturbed from his reading. She flushed in embarrassment, about to turn and run, when she realised this might give her an opportunity to talk to him. Where to start then? He still didn't move, just looking at her, searching her face in his all too familiar way.

"Can we talk?" Without a word he closed his book, inviting her to a chair opposite of him. She sat and realised how comfortable the fire felt.

"Why am I here?" He blinked, not exactly sure how to respond.

"Perhaps you should ask Madame Giry that question."

"She did not send me here, you offered to bring me here."

"From what I understood, your obsessive husband had just died, leaving you with no house, no title and a very pretty daughter he did not desire thus had not provided for, to wander the cemetary in search of ghosts from the past to come to your aid. Or...death to come get you, for that matter." It hurt her to hear his sneering sarcasm.

"I had betrayed you, left with another. You had no obligation whatsoever to me. I dare say your life would have remained much more peaceful had I died right there." She knew he would not share her thoughts, but continued.

"Something made you undertake that long journey to the place you hated most, to save a silly chorus girl from her mad wanderings to bring her home to a place long awaiting her...THAT is what I ask. Why?"

She knew she had driven him in a corner, forcing him to a confession. But she would not remain in his house for eternity, wondering each day about his feelings. Good or bad, she had to know.

He rose from his chair, restlessly pacing the room, feeling the strains of her question. There was no way to escape, he himself had invited her to this conversation!

"What would you like to hear then, Madame? How I went mad with grief that night? How I plotted to kill him a thousand times in thought, to regain what I believed to be mine? How I fled to places darker than your deepest nightmares? However you have been begging for death, Christine I assure you it wasn't even close to my desire for it!"

Christine had gone pale. She knew she had forced this upon herself, that she had to hear this, but she had no idea how deep his rage would lie and his anger could probably be heard throughout the Palazzo.

"I was lucky to be found in my wanderings, helped back towards a path of redemption. I took my journey here and managed to return to a life of rest and reconciliation. The construction of the Basilica is my treaty with God. I repent for my sins, he offers me salvation from my nightmares." He fell silent for a moment, as if that realisation gave him peace of mind.

"But then that night, that awful night that Madame's cursed letter arrived, claiming you to be beyond salvation or hope. I told you Christine, I had tried to warn you. You frightened away from the darkness, lured into the light by your pretty Vicomte, offering you everything a girl could possibly dream of. I've seen it happen before, and too often Heaven turned to Hell. You followed the light until it blinded you...and I hated you for it. I...pitied you for it..." His voice died away and she noticed he was crying now, talking more to himself than to her.

Her eyes were dazed, her throat thick with grief. How he had suffered for her!

"I...loved my husband. I did. I vowed to be true and loyal to him to the end of our days together, and I was. I cared for him...and our child. I joined him at balls and assemblies, gave tea parties and everything lovely and noble. I gave up my music for him. And still it was not enough. He had tried to free me of you, save me from darkness and shower me in light. Little could he have known that he himself would be haunted by memories of you. The other man in my life. He felt he possessed my body...but not my soul. For it lay in my music, your music...the songs that abandoned me the day I was ordered to leave you. And it killed him. It killed him slowly, bit by bit, that he would never have the whole of me. An orphan turned chorus girl, shaped into a diva. How he tried to replace the singer for a Comtesse, but he failed. How he tried to have an heir for his title and please his family, trying to show them he had not been mistaking in choosing me for his wife, but he failed. I betrayed you by turning from you, and I betrayed Raoul by coming with him, by entering his life. I have send you both to your ruin..."

There she was again, his Christine. The perfectly polished image of the Comtesse de Chagny had disappeared and had left him with his pupil, his angel...and he suddenly realised that in his need for self-pity he had never given thought to her pain. Assuming her to be perfectly happy with her perfectly polished husband in their perfectly polished life. Only now to realise he had sent her off to be locked in a golden cage, one that had contained no music. He stroke a dark curl from her face, then a tear from her cheek.

"If you had stayed that night...it would have been the ruin of us both. I tried to shape a chorus girl into a diva, MY diva..But you were still a child. Innocent to the ways of the world and not prepared for what my world would bring you. Trust me when I say that you would not have been able to fight my demons. In between of my many sins I suppose I still thank myself for letting you leave. But you have not left my thoughts since then for a day. How I have tried to fight you, hate you, forget you, but it would not do. All the days of my life have been, and will be, spent in search of your love..."

His fit of jealousy suddenly regained its grip remembering her departure. "...only now to find you again to realise I shall for ever more be condemned to serve as a replacement to your dead husband!"

Suddenly he felt her arms flung around his neck, her warm body against his own, shaking with tears.

"You shall never be Raoul de Chagny's replacement..."

He closed his eyes, his fears had been correct. Her stay here had not made her forget him...

"...for in his best of attempts he could not even come close to being the man you are."

He looked up at her, only to find the purest of despair and love in her eyes.

"The man I love...so dearly!"

She kissed him again, and again, and this time he let her. Thus they stood, shedding their tears in silence. The absolution they had both been seeking, had finally come.