Christine stood on stage and waited for her cue with the rest of the ballet girls. Her eyes kept wandering to Box Five. Was he there? Was he watching? Her mind, too, wandered to earlier that moring and what she had done to him.

Erik was indeed in Box Five, watching the rehearsal and frowning. He caught sight of Christine and frowned harder, reaching a hand up to feel that his mask was still on. He quickly looked away.

Would she tell people now? Tell them of the horrifically disfigured Opera Ghost who was only a man? Would she shudder and cringe as she told them about how she stole the mask right off the beast's face, only to find that he only had half of a face?

Their lessons were over for good now, certainly. There was no way she would come back to him. He resolutley pushed away all thoughts of whether or not he would want to continue lessons with her if she did come back, because he knew that was not a situation he would ever find himself in.

He stared at the figures on stage, trying hard to purge from his mind the image of her face when she had seen him. She had turned so pale, and she had been shaking so hard after she had turned away. She couldn't even bear to look at him as she had run from the room - really, he was quite lucky that she hadn't taken the mask with her when she left. He touched the mask again. She had said that she was sorry - yes, sorry that she had seen the true face of the monster who had pretened to be her angel.

Every so often he noticed that she'd look over to where he sat, and it filled him with dread and a strange longing. He knew that she couldn't see him, of course, and perhaps that was why she was looking. Was it morbid fascination that caused to glance at his box so? Terror, perhaps? He sighed. For that matter, what had brought him here? There was nothing for him here anymore. No student to keep an eye on, not even a production to give notes to the managers about, for he surely couldn't keep up the ghost act much longer.

Perhaps it was a farewell that brought him here. One final show to watch on the stage of the Opera Populaire before he left it forever. There would be other buildings to haunt. There would have to be.

The rehearsal went well, and he mused on how good a show it was going to be. What a shame he would not be able to see it finished, but he was already creating an itinerary in his head. There was nothing tying him to France anymore, but he had been so many places already - and while he had enjoyed aspects of each place he had visited and lived, many of them where filled with bad memories. He would go to America, maybe. He had never been there before. New York, perhaps. He had heard interesting things about it.

He watched as the performers trickled off stage and the lights were dimmed. He lingered to savor the last moments spent there. Carlotta left the stage first. He wouldn't miss her. He looked back at Christine, who happened to be looking up at him. He would miss her, he thought. Miss what they had before he stepped through her mirror and ruined it all.

"Christine, the rest of the girls are going out to dinner at that new place just around the corner! Come with us!" Meg tugged at her hand, drawing her attention away from Box Five.

She frowned.

"Not tonight, Meg. I think I want to stay just a little longer and practice on my own."

Meg's face fell.

"Are you sure? You've been so distracted all night... Don't you think a break might help?"

Christine shook her head.

"It's because I've been distracted that I need to work for longer," she explained.

"Well, alright... But if you change your mind, you know where to find us!"

Her friend left and Christine looked back at Box Five again.

She went through the motions of practicing the steps from the ballet number, casting little looks his way every now and then.

Soon she was the only one left in the auditorium. She stopped dancing and simply stood.

His heart was pounding in his chest. He should leave, he told himself, but her gaze pinned him there like a butterfly to a board.

She sighed deeply and her eyes slid closed before she began to sing. It was a song from the show they had just been rehearsing, Carlotta's song, actually - but when she sang those very same notes Erik's heart soared in a way it never did when Carlotta sang.

His grip on the armrests of his seat relaxed as he listened to those beautiful notes pour forth, the tension in his body leaving. Travel plans no longer mattered in that moment - all that existed was Christine and music, and that was enough.

Her song ended and she opened her eyes, looking expectantly in his direction.

He tilted his head as he watched her. She was waiting. Waiting for him?

She grew slightly nervous. What if he wasn't there? What if she was simply staring at empty box seats?

He held his breath. What was he supposed to say? What did she want from him?

Hesitantly, she started another of Carlotta's songs from the show - this one a duet. Her voice wavered a little, and she was nearing the part where the male voice was supposed to join her. She took a step closer to the side of the stage, nearer to Box Five.

There was no one else around to hear them, Erik thought to himself. And even if there was, he was leaving soon anyway so it didn't matter.

Without missing his cue, he joined his voice with hers.

Her face lit up and her voice grew stronger.

Her original plan had been to coax him into speaking to her by trying to get him to comment on her singing, but when that hadn't worked, her last resort had been the duet - after all, he had never denied her in the past when she had asked him to sing for her. She had butterflies in her stomach at the sound of his golden voice filling the theater and wrapping around her own crystalline tones. She loved singing, and she had loved singing for her Angel, but what she had always loved the most was singing with her Angel, and she was happily surprised to find that that very same pleasure extended to singing with Erik even though he was only a man.

Erik was unable to take his eyes off her as she stood there in the low light of the stage, her hands clasped to her heart as she sang, staring up at the space where he was. If he was to leave France tomorrow and never see her again, then he wanted to remember her just like this. She looked almost... happy. She deserved to be happy.

Their song reached its conclusion and the last echoes of that strange, sweet sound faded off of the walls.

A cloud of desperation passed over her countenance - she was afraid that he would leave now that the song was over.

"Erik, I'm so sorry for how I treated you this morning," she pleaded. "I was perfectly beastly to you, and I'm so ashamed."

Erik stayed silent.

"I thought," she hesitated, biting her lip as she searched for the words to explain. "I thought your mask was just another way you were trying to trick me. I never thought that perhaps there was some other reason. I didn't mean to expose your face like that and upset you."

Silence.

"Are you alright?" she asked. "I never even went back to check on you, that was terrible of me."

Erik didn't know how to respond. He had promised not to lie, and he was loath to break a promise to Christine, but he also didn't want to burden her with the amount of hurt she had caused him.

"Your singing was lovely, Christine," he finally settled on saying around the lump in his throat. "You'll surely be prima donna one day."

Her brow knit at the tone of his voice and how he had avoided her question.

"Of course I will, on a day brought here all the faster thanks to your continued help in the future, yes?"

"I'm sure you'll make it there all on your own," his voice was cold, but it had be or else he feared he'd break down into tears again.

"So you're leaving me, then?"

"Perhaps. There are too many bad memories in Paris, now."

now

Christine frowned.

"Because of me," she said softly. It wasn't a question.

She lifted her eyes once more to inky blackness that was Box Five.

"I almost left because of you, you know," she told him. "I thought I had lost everything, but I found I was wrong. There was still so much for me here - hopes and dreams and goals - I just couldn't see them at the time. Perhaps- perhaps it's similar for you, too."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"What hope is there for someone like me? What could I ever hope to accomplish, looking as I do?"

Her words pained him for many reasons, not the least being finding out that she had nearly left on account of him.

"It's never wrong to hope," she repeated the words Raoul had told her not that long ago. "And I'll tell you what you can accomplish if you stay here, you'll have crafted the finest voice in all of Paris."

"Are you certain you can stand knowing that your angel wasn't even a man, but only a monster?" his voice was tinged with bitterness but her words about hope set his heart racing - it was as if she'd heard his very thoughts about giving up on hope.

She flinched and shook her head.

"Don't talk about yourself like that."

"Well it's the truth, isn't it?" he goaded her. "You saw for yourself. You went running from the room in fear of me, not able to even look at me."

He paused, the memory still fresh and painful, but he bit back any hint of tears.

"I am a monster, and you are frightened of me," the words carried more of an accusation than he had intended.

She nervously picked at her fingernails, glancing away. She wanted honesty from him always, and she knew that meant that it was only fair that she be entirely honest with him as well.

"Your face frightened me," she said softly, but just loud enough for him to hear. "But you do not frighten me, Erik."

She looked at where his voice was coming from, her gaze certain.

"You are not your face," she said simply.

Any response his surprised mind could have come up with was choked in his throat, his tongue seemingly to have forgotten how to move.

you are not your face

How many times had he so desperately told himself those very same words, hoping that they could possibly be true? Words he had never heard before from another soul, words that seemed to be proven false by every person who had ever seen his face - nearly every person, that is. She had seen his face, and she had run, yes - but then she came back, expected him to still teach her, and she still treated him like the man he feared he wasn't. No one had ever come back to him after seeing that ghastly sight, or if they did, it had been to drive him away with violence, because only a wicked creature could possibly look like that.

With that simple sentence, those five solitary words she had spoken so genuinely, Erik knew he could never leave the opera house and set out into the world all alone.

Fate had linked him to Christine Daaé forever.