Christine blinked a few times, not fully understanding what she was looking at.

She could feel her heartbeat in her throat as the figure - her angel? - stepped forward and into her dressing room. He was tall, a commanding presence that seemed to overwhelm and dominate everything in his vicinity. He drew closer, but she held her ground, refusing to step back or flinch. He stopped at a respectful distance away from her and gave her a moment to gather her thoughts as she stared at him blankly.

Was this her angel? But this figure was dressed all in black. Surely an angel would not wear black, that was far more fitting for a-

"It is so nice to finally meet you, Christine."

There was no mistaking that heavenly voice.

She took a deep breath.

Her angel, a man.

Finally a form to house that voice, an image to go with the sound of him.

Except-

Dull horror began to grow in the back of her mind.

"Have- have you always been a man, then?" her hands clenched in the fabric of her skirts, terrified of the answer.

Erik lowered his gaze from her eyes to the floor, slightly ashamed.

"Yes."

"Oh."

For a brief moment relief washed over her - how awful it would be if an angel had given up his immortal life merely because he thought it would please her! - and then quickly in its wake a new emotion swept through her.

She blinked once more, and then she started to cry.

Erik had been filled with such a nervous hope as he had stepped through the mirror. She had seemed almost normal at first, but her brief response to his answer had been the first clue that it was not going as he would have hoped - and then her face had crumpled and she began to cry. He stood there and watched as the tears rolled down her face, utterly shocked and at a loss for what to do. The last time he had seen her cry had been before he had become her angel, when she was mourning her father in the little chapel. It was so unexpected now, and it deeply unsettled him. Christine did not cry - not unless something was terribly wrong.

"Christine! Why are you crying?"

"You were never an angel at all," she managed to accuse through her tears.

He shifted nervously. She certainly wasn't taking it very well.

"Christine, I thought- I mean, you liked it so much in your book when- and I thought- I didn't mean to upset you, I thought you would like it, just like how you liked it in the story-"

"Because it was a story, Angel!" she cried, putting a hand over her mouth - the name felt bitter in her mouth now, but she didn't know what to call him. "Just because I like when something happens in a story, that doesn't mean I want it to happen in my life too!"

She started crying harder as more realizations began to hit her.

She had loved having an angel, loved the feeling of knowing that her papa had been looking out for her after all, that she was being watched over. It made her feel safe in a world that so unsafe, but now she no longer had that anchor to keep her steady in the turbulent waters of life. Now all she had was a man who looked to be twice her age who had spent two full years blatantly deceiving her. How often had she comforted herself with thoughts of the angel when she was sad or unwell or frightened? She would never feel that comfort again. It had all been an illusion, all of it - there was no angel who was sent to teach her to sing like one of them, no angel to keep her safe from the terrible ghost that haunted the opera house-

Oh.

Oh no.

"Are you the Opera Ghost, too?" she demanded shakily.

Erik looked struck. He wanted so desperately to look anywhere else, to deny it, but there was something about her heartbroken gaze that refused to let him look away. He nodded slowly.

She gave a mirthless laugh, wrapping her arms around herself. How could he have done this to her?

"Am I a joke to you?" she said in a pleading voice. "Is my religion a joke to you?"

He gasped.

"Christine, no! It's not like that-!"

"I gave you my mind blindly, I trusted you, and you lied to me!"

"I never meant for this," he could feel his own eyes starting to water.

He regretted many things in life, but stepping through her mirror was now at the top of the list.

She scrubbed furiously at her eyes.

"Do you know what Mamma Valerius said to me before she died?"

Erik was silent. He felt sick.

"She said, 'I can go peacefully knowing you'll be safe in the care of your angel, Christine - your angel will always be there for you'. Those were her last words to me."

Erik closed his eyes and turned away.

Christine sniffled as she thought of her poor Mamma, of the old woman's trust in Christine's angel. But now this man had made fools out of the both of them, and what had been a dear memory of her former caretaker was now forever tainted by the truth of the situation.

What would her poor Mamma say if she had known? She would have been heartbroken as well, she was certain. To Christine, losing the angel felt like losing her papa all over again.

She couldn't take it anymore. She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes and tried - and failed - to steady her breathing.

"Christine-"

She tore her hands away just in time to see the angel - no, not an angel - the man take a hesitant step towards her, a hand outstretched.

No! She didn't want him to come closer! She stumbled backwards, reaching for the door.

Erik did not think he would ever forget the sight before him - Christine with her tear-soaked face and eyes so red and sad, her mouth curved into a scowl, her whole body trembling in fear and anger - and he knew without doubt that the words she then hissed at him with such vitriol would haunt his every moment from that day forward.

"I hate you!"

She turned and slammed the door as she ran out into the hallway, making her way to the dormitory.

Erik stared at the empty space she used to occupy. For the longest moment it seemed that he had forgotten how to draw breath. Her parting words echoed in his mind over and over - I hate you. She hated him, and he couldn't blame her. He hated himself, too. How foolish he had been to think there could be acceptance - that there could be forgiveness - for one such as him.

He didn't dare to try and follow her, not after how she had pulled back from him with such revulsion. He wasn't certain how long he stood in the empty room for, staring at the door, but he knew she wasn't coming back, so eventually he turned and went back through the mirror, his footsteps numb and mechanical.

He walked through the tunnels as if in a daze. Once back in his little home on the lake he tried to find something to occupy his mind, anything to try to forget that awful scene that had unfolded because of him. But everything reminded him of Christine - the organ, the bookshelves, even a simple cup of tea.

He finally gave up and decided it was time to sleep, regardless of the hour, regardless of the fact that sleep was difficult for him to come by on the best of days. He didn't bother to change into his nightclothes, he didn't even bother to take his shoes off - he lay down in the coffin in his bedroom and stared up at the ceiling, wondering why his vision was getting blurry until he realized he was crying.

He had ruined everything. He had ruined his one chance to have someone to talk to, he had ruined the one good thing he had done with his life which was train her to sing beautifully, and most of all he was afraid that he had ruined her. She had looked so broken as she fled the room, and the only thing worse than knowing that she felt that much despair was knowing that he was the one who had caused it.

He turned to his side and wept on the purple lining of the coffin. As always, sleep refused to come.

I hate you

Christine squeezed her hands in the pillow she had buried her face into, trying to muffle her sobbing.

How could a day that started so right end up so horrible?

She didn't know how she would ever stop crying - even still her mind thought up new things that shook and upset her.

Back when she had an angel as her tutor, it had always seemed to her that she had been immensely blessed - having an angel you could hold conversations with had made her special. Not special like how Carlotta though herself special, not special like she was better than everyone else - but special like maybe she had tried to live a good life and had been rewarded for that, special as in she had suffered through a lot in her life yet even still someone was looking out for her and saw fit to bless her with something good.

But now Christine realized the truth of the matter. Her angel hadn't appeared to her because she was special or good.

He had appeared because she was stupid.

A man had watched her and listened to her when she thought she was alone, had heard her fervent prayers spoken aloud and then used that knowledge to trick her. He hadn't seen a girl who deserved to be blessed - no, he had seen a girl he realized he could deceive and manipulate.

And that was another thing - the realization that she had spent two years - two years! - unchaperoned in a room alone with a strange man. She had never really thought that simply being in a room alone with a man meant anything untoward had to happen, in fact she thought the entire idea of a chaperone was quite silly in most cases, but as her opinion on the matter was not widely held by most people she had never saw fit to mention it to anyone. So the fact remained that he knew being alone in a room with a young woman was improper, and as far as he would have known she would have thought it improper as well, yet still he lied so he could continue to carry on in such a way several times a week for endless weeks.

Did he think nothing of her reputation if someone should find out?

And although he had never stepped over any boundary of propriety while he was her angel - at least he hadn't done so yet - she knew what most men were like, particularly the ones that hung around the corners of the opera house, and most especially the ones who tried to tell sweet lies to the girls in hopes of receiving something in return for grand promises and declarations of love and copious flattery. Was that all he had been trying to do? She really had been stupid to ever think otherwise.

She wasn't able to sleep that night, instead just tossing and turning and punching her pillow, willing it to become more comfortable despite its resolute refusal to do so. She couldn't get the look on the man's face - what she could see of it under that ridiculous mask he was wearing over half his face for some reason, that is - to leave her mind, how shocked he had been when she burst into tears, the look of deep regret and anguish when she told him of Mamma Valerius. It was almost as though he truly didn't realize just how awful what he had done was until that moment. Had he honestly been expecting her to be glad when he shattered the beloved illusion she had so happily believed in for so long?

She felt a little cruel for saying that she hated him, mostly because of how those three little words had seemed to crush his very soul right before her eyes, but even though she felt guilty for it she couldn't bring herself to regret it very much - the look of pain on his face and the way he had cringed in on himself seemed to her to be a mirror of how she felt on the inside now that she knew. If he had caused her such misery and heartache, well, at least he was feeling it too.

Did she truly hate him? She couldn't say for sure. The betrayal was still too fresh, too new. She sniffled a little as she tried to think about it. All the thoughts did, however, was give her a headache, and eventually she managed to fall into a fitful sleep which was disturbed by dreams about flocks of huge black crows with glowing eyes that swarmed in her mirror before shattering the glass and causing the shards to go flying into her.

Erik stared blearily at the ceiling through the splayed fingers of his bony hand that rested on his face. The small hours of the morning were steadily growing larger, and he had run out of tears to cry.

He had been wrong about so many things. He had been wrong to pose as angel, to exploit her memories and her grief like that, even if his intentions had not been sinister. He had been so caught up in the idea of it at the time that he really hadn't thought it through. He had been wrong about how she react to finding out, but really, he should have expected it. After all, the bird in the story had truly been a bird - Erik had never been an angel. The bird had not lied. But Erik had.

But the loudest voice in his head was the one that told him he had been wrong to hope. Wrong to hope that she would be different somehow, wrong to hope that he would ever have someone who treated him as a man and not a monster (how dare a monster ever hope to be a man?), wrong to hope that he would be able to do one good thing with his life. He certainly hadn't done anything good with his life so far, what ever had made him think he could do otherwise? He was the farthest thing from angel, truly.

As he lay there and ruminate on how the sweetest, kindest young woman he had ever met now hated him - and how she had good reason to do so - Erik swore to himself that he would never hope again.