It wasn't the first time Christine had woken to a rose. Erik almost made a habit of leaving roses for her in her performing days, not to mention one particular evening when he'd covered every surface of her dressing room with deep red blooms. She had been afraid then, but she laughed now. Erik always had a way of making the smallest things monumental.

His roses were always the color of blood, and so perfumed that the scent made her dizzy if she breathed too deeply. Today was the first day she'd been gifted a pink rose- no less fragrant or beautiful, but simply…different. She recognized the breed as the belle romantica, a strain popular for its scent and symbolic meaning.

With ease that indicated the progress of her healing, she stood, stretched, and made her way to the kitchen. It was strangely quiet. The lamp batteries had been replaced, so with the newly bright light, she saw Erik was not in the room, making breakfast where he usually was. Where has he gone? Surely he returned last night. I could have sworn he was in my room for a minute…

Her question was answered as she rounded the kitchen corner and peeked into the dim alcove where the piano sat (a baby grand, since Erik never did anything small where music was concerned). There was the disheveled man slumped over the closed keyboard, head resting in his arms. His mask was crooked, revealing part of his forehead and half a deep-sunken eye. Christine smiled. He'd taken off his suit jacket, leaving only his white shirt as a barrier between a painfully thin frame and the cool air. Several handwritten pages of music, the products of his late night, were scattered on the pianoforte's lid.

She often wondered if he slept at all, but thankfully he did. Perhaps now all that sleep deprivation had caught up with him. Should I wake him so he can move to the bed? What was left of her cheeks flushed at the thought of Erik lying in the bed she'd inhabited for the past three weeks. She was small, and he was so thin they likely fit on the mattress with ease. In fact, she knew he fit, because he must have used the bed at some point before she came to reside with him. Then she shook her head- proper ladies did not pursue that train of thought. Besides, that sort of encounter (on a bed, involving the both of them) might be painful.

After some consideration, and a good deal of fond admiring, Christine opted to leave Erik at the piano and simply drape his coat around his shoulders. If he woke with his mask even a bit dislodged, it would only cause him distress, and if he was sleeping so late into the morning he was in dire need of rest. Today is the right time, she realized. Today I must ask him to remove the mask.

Hoping to ease his transition from masked to unmasked, she set about making breakfast for the both of them- a cold breakfast, because hot food required her to light the stove. In a few minutes she assembled a few slices of bread with honey, jam, and chocolate on the side. She briefly wondered where he'd acquired chocolate and chalked it up to a sweet tooth. I never knew he liked sweets. Perhaps that is why he has energy but only some flesh over his bones. She decided that if she came to prepare food regularly, she would feed Erik plenty.

The sound of plates clinking on the kitchen table roused the sleeping composer. Erik sat up all of a sudden and blinked rather owlishly. This effect was enhanced by the reflective gold color of his eyes. Christine fancied he resembled one of those snowy owls emerging after a long rest. "Good morning," she greeted politely.

His head whipped around to meet her eyes. The mask loosened a bit from the momentum, but he reflexively adjusted it. "Ah… Good morning to you, Christine." He seemed a bit at loss for words, but immediately set about looking for his jacket. Christine held back a laugh as he circled, only to discover that the garment was already about his shoulders. "I apologize- I know you require breakfast, and I was regrettably…occupied."

She laughed merrily. "Oh, Erik, you need not apologize for sleeping like a normal man! In fact, I was getting a mite worried that you never slept at all!" Before he could defend himself she continued, "Actually, I thought it would be uncomfortable to have the mask on while you sleep. You can take it off, you know. I don't mind."

Speech dwindled away from him as she gazed his way with her sweet smile. It seemed like several minutes of silence before he answered- except he didn't answer.

"I had best get to making you a proper breakfast. That cold bread will turn your stomach." He went into the kitchen himself and shooed her away. Christine sat on the settee and crossed her arms with a huff and a pout. Well, no one said this would be easy…and my cold bread and honey wouldn't turn anyone's stomach!

…

By noon, Erik had again stationed himself at the pianoforte to test chord progressions and plunk out a few phrases of melody, then scribble and repeat the process over again. Christine knew it was either entirely impossible or easy as counting to break his concentration during a bout of composing. She wagered it was the former today. To test her hypothesis, she shushed Ahmar into the alcove and watched. When the kitten mewed, Erik twitched a little, but otherwise remained unresponsive.

Satisfied that he was thoroughly distracted, she began rifling through every unexplored corner of the house. After searching the sitting room and the small dining area with no result, she put her hands on her hips and glared. She already knew he did not keep any of his things in the bedroom. Where does he keep it? He must have more than one.

Currently he wore his white mask, but she knew he had a black one, and certainly a spare. With his compulsion towards cleanliness, he probably rotated between identical masks several times per week. At last, on the verge of giving up, she thought to search the kitchen. After all, all those cupboards were space enough for several sets of clothes and toiletries. Determined, she began opening the cupboards, squinting in the dim light.

Finally, under the sink, was a crate of neatly folded clothes (mostly suits and undergarments) under which were buried, as predicted, several white masks. For a moment she considered just throwing all of them into the Seine. However, after a bit of thought she decided to proceed with her original plan. After all, she needed to make a point.

She extricated one mask from the tangle of clothes. It was big enough to cover her entire face, and even most of her mouth if she adjusted it to see through the eyeholes. Quickly, so Erik did not see, she pulled it on and tightened the strap at the back. The strap was soft, but she quickly found it rather stifling to breath through the two small holes of the sculpted nose. All the more reason to get him to take his off. Breathing like this can't be healthy.

Very quietly, she tucked the spare masks into the folds of the dressing gown she wore and replaced the clothes as they were. Then she delivered the masks to her room and placed them under the assortment of feminine underthings in the bureau, where Erik was too polite to look. He'd probably acquired them through Nadir instead of purchasing them himself.

She peeked out of the room, listening; he was still working. I wonder how long it will take him to notice? Christine was aware of the mask, annoyingly so. Despite the softness of the strap, its edges still itched against the sensitive, scabby surface of her scalp. The mask itself was hard, molded leather, and while it may have fit Erik's bone structure perfectly, it rubbed against her raw cheeks and dug under her cheekbones. She decided she would wait for him to realize, and again sat on the settee with a red-leather-bound tome of Norse mythologies.

It was coming up on a full hour when Erik finally sat away from the keys with a sigh. Christine sat very straight on the settee, reading with intent. She'd just started on a section about the goddess Freya when he plopped his bony frame down in his armchair, eyes closed from mental fatigue.

Casually, without looking up, she commented, "That sounded very nice, Erik. Are you writing another opera?"

He didn't seem to notice, being somewhat occupied with a pounding headache. "It did not sound nice, I've run through those phrases at least twenty times by now and-" At long last, he looked up, mostly out of frustration. "Christine- why the devil are you wearing my mask?"

She smiled to herself. "I look just the same as you do now, so I thought I'd better wear a mask too." There were no mirrors anywhere, but she knew terrible scarring would plague her from top to toe, even after the skin had sealed itself.

"Nonsense, you look nothing like me!" he protested. "You look alive. I consider, and have always considered, a view of your lovely face an unrivaled pleasure."

"Ah, and after my skin mends itself in all the wrong shapes, I will look dead," she pointed out, setting the book neatly in her lap. "It's terribly uncomfortable, but I suppose I shall have to grow accustomed to it in time. At any rate, molded leather eventually conforms to the skin, does it not?"

"It's not healthy for you to wear it. Your wounds are still open," he argued back. Christine almost smiled. Aggravating him was exactly what she'd aimed from the beginning. Still, she persisted.

"I don't want you to see me. No one should see my face," she replied with a stubborn pout. "Why, if someone were to catch sight of me, they'd be frightened and disgusted!" They will be- but now I am with Erik, and we need not venture out alone into society's unforgiving light. He needs to see that I am with him.

This shocked the man into sudden quiet. Without his realizing it, they had switched roles. He wished to see her face; she was like him now, and wished to hide herself. His spine dipped against the back of the chair as he slumped in defeat. With a very dry half-smile, he nodded at Christine. "My dear, in another life you might have been an indomitable lawyer."

She relented. "Now do you understand, Erik?" The dressing gown pooled against the stone floor as she knelt at his knee and grasped his long fingers with her own. "You want me to love you, and I want that as well. How can I love you when you insist on hiding yourself from me?" He was silent, but his throat bobbed with an emotion-choked swallow. "You once told me to tear away your face, and that perhaps there was a handsome man beneath the deathly mask. Whatever harms the people of the past may have inflicted, know that I will never intentionally hurt you. They did not love you as I do."

A glimmering tear flowed from one of his deep-set eyes and disappeared into the dark gap under the mask. That ribcage that housed a precious heart spasmed with sobs. Christine felt his hand grip hers for dear life.

"I am not afraid." With the hand not clasped in his, she loosened the strap of the mask she wore and lifted it away to reveal her mottled, crumbling visage.

"I- I am not a good man, Christine. I have done horrible things, things far worse that what you have witnessed since the day we met. And you will look upon me differently- you think you will not, but you will. Why should you wish to see the face of a murderer?" His eyes pleaded desperately. That piteous golden gaze wove a spell over her until she could not help but give.

"Because the man I know today is not a murderer," she quietly reasoned. Her own eyes flowed with tears of their own, but she kept steady. "I know you to be brilliant, kind, thoughtful, generous. I know you to have a heart so full of love it drove you mad." She reached up and pressed her palm over said wildly beating heart. "I know you, Erik. You can see past my faults and my woundings, even to the very heart of me. Now I want to see you."

Helpless to refuse, Erik nodded. "Then- by all means, my love, unmask me," he murmured between gasps, "but never leave me, else I die." Christine obeyed, rising slowly so as not to startle him. She sat herself in his lap and reached behind his head for the strap, never once breaking eye contact. When the strap was undone he almost turned away, but she held him with her loving touch until the mask was lowered and set aside.

Christine placed her scarred little hands on either side of his head, surveying the looks that had brought her beloved so much misery. Little scars in lines and dots peppered his thin, papery skin. He was so thin, his temples so deep and cheekbones so prominent that her fingertips almost sunk in as she traced their lines and contours. The mask gave the illusion of a nose, when in reality he had none, only a sharp end that opened into a dark nasal cavity. With some interest, she noted that his lips were thin and not very defined.

He barely breathed, barely moved as she touched her forehead to his and looked into those wet amber-flecked-gold eyes. She had wondered what it would be like to kiss him, and now she wondered no more. She pressed her lips to his and found it warm, a little dry, like any other man's would be- and yet no man had ever sparked such an intense fire in her heart.

Her kiss lasted little more than a second, for he cried in earnest now, clinging to her as more precious than life itself. "Christine, Christine, how I love you so…"

"I love you," she whispered to him, "and one day you will believe me."

He held her and cried for a long time. She repeated those words as pleas, as prayers, as promises, as comforts, until neither of them wept any longer.

…

Holding Christine, Erik found, was a most pleasurable activity. The way to enjoy his unconcealed face most effectively was to press it to the crook of her neck and feel the warmth of her through the layers of bandages. Alas, as living things they were required to move when hunger gnawed again at their innards, so he was forced to spend minutes apart from her to put together another small meal.

An air of peace prevailed in the house by the river. Throughout dinner, however, he decided the last few hours were nothing short of a miracle. There they were, sitting together with his face as bare as when he'd been born, eating together and exchanging affectionate glances like love notes.

It was almost too good to be true.

With winter coming on fast in the outside world, it was colder in the house. If I asked, would she let me hold her again, just for a few minutes? he wondered as he cleared their plates. Shuffling papers alerted him to Christine's presence in the piano alcove. Normally he'd have felt self-conscious letting her see an unfinished score, but as the new piece had barely begun and all self-consciousness had already been ripped from him, he took his time washing the dishes.

She was humming when he emerged, adorably engrossed in the drafted libretto. He recognized the love theme from Roméo et Juliette and took it as a positive sign. Would she sing love songs if she were not in love? It astounded him: she loved him! Or she was in love with him, Erik the man, not an angel or spirit. He'd have died of happiness if death were not a permanent separation from Christine.

"What do you think?"

She turned with a smile. "What do I think? You are asking a performer, maestro?"

He shrugged. For some reason he couldn't stop smiling, even though he knew he looked horrendous doing it. "Even a genius needs feedback from a fresh pair of eyes." The woman turned her eyes back to the score. "Would you sing it?"

"I'm afraid you'd be most disappointed in me. I haven't really sung in months," she admitted.

"Ah, but you can. You're simply not sure of yourself, and that is a problem easily remedied with a few exercises." Erik had drilled sight-singing into her since the beginning. The piece was well within her abilities. In his mind, it could be an opening aria in a grand three-act opera, resonating well with Christine's high coloratura and dramatic lower range. It might never be performed, but music for music's sake never hurt.

She raised a skeptical brow at him. "You would teach me again?"

"My dear, I have to, or I'd have a terribly hard time singing soprano!" Ah, it was one of the best things in the world to make Christine laugh. With a grandiose gesture and a grin, she said:

"Then let us begin!"