A/N: It's been a long time, friends.

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She turns around instantly, her face set as though she is assuming she can talk her way out of this rationally. "Erik, both you and Raoul were-"

I grab her with all my might so her words stop and knock her so hard against the wall that her eyes roll back for a moment and her head drops down. "Yes darling, tell me more about the delightful plans you had with Raoul. I am quite eager to hear them myself from your mouth!"

She gasps, slumping in my arms, and I drop her on the floor, looking down at her. I want to be standing over her, I want to be looking down at her, to see her on the floor where she belongs. Christine was nothing before she met me, and I can return her to nothing if I so wish!

"Erik," she said softly. "Please, I only ask you listen..."

"I have been listening. I have been listening too closely."

"No, listen to me."

"WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU?" I scream, suddenly so incensed at the idea that she is trying to speak to me rationally, after such a heartless betrayal "WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU NOW? WHY SHOULD I HAVE LISTENED TO YOU EVER?"

"You should have listened to me before!" she cried, reaching her hand out. "I tried to tell you in my dressing room! I tried-"

"YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED!"

"Erik, I told Raoul-"

"YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF ADORATION."

"Erik, please!"

I cannot even take looking at her anymore. I turn on my heel and begin to pace in front of her, with her still crumpled on the ground. In a way, it kills me that this is actually happening. This night was supposed to be the moment where she chose me, of her own free will! And now I was going to have to make her? That wasn't what I had wanted to do!

.

Ah, this is love, Erik.

.

"I only told Raoul that she he would believe me," she says all in a rush, falling over her words. "I told him after the opera, I would go to him when I was changed. I knew that I would be going with you. And I knew by the time he grew suspicious and came looking for me, I would be long gone. I thought it was a good plan. I did! And I tried to tell you about it in my dressing room!"

"Good plan, indeed!" I snarl. "And how can I really trust that perhaps you were only saying it to me in falsehood, so that you could truly run away with Raoul! That seems like the better option!"

"No, you know I had to say it!"

She is looking at me with such sincere eyes, and I hate to think that I want to believe her.

"I was coming down here with you!" she says, and her eyes fill with that inconsolable wetness that gathers and then finally drips down her cheeks, over a few minor scrapes that decorate her face. "I promise on my life. I have always wanted to be with you. Always! But you left me, and that is the only reason I was with Raoul at all, I promise!"

"You love him, because he is beautiful and because he loves you."

"No!"

"Christine, you have played with both of us! You cannot have us both! PICK ONE OR THE OTHER. IT IS VERY SIMPLE."

She suddenly seems to regain her senses a bit better after being slammed into a wall, and begins to crawl towards me with her hands out in a very placating gesture. "I only want you to understand. I led Raoul to believe an untruth to make it all much easier for me to come down here, with you. I did not want him prying. You understand this. You are smart."

"DO NOT PATRONIZE ME."

"Don't yell, Erik. I am speaking the truth."

I could care LESS if what she is saying is the truth, honestly! I hate her for being here, acting so innocent time and time again. I am half crazed with anger at myself, perhaps, for it was I who gave her all those opportunities to be with Raoul, to develop a relationship with him! As soon as I had seen him, I should have locked her down here with me.

She continues to look up at me with those eyes, and I am so damn confused about everything that I almost wish she were gone so I simply wouldn't have to deal with the frustration of it all. When I look at her, I feel all this anger and distrust that makes me want to hurt her and crush her, and yet at the same time, the physicality of it brings me to sexual thoughts, of holding her down and hurting her in different ways for me, yet at the same time, those thoughts unbearably bring me to thoughts of her sitting by me, of her laughing with me, of her singing with me and holy hell I can hardly stand it.

I think I am about to snap and as I finally move towards her to kill or or hug her, the most astounding of things happen.

There is a knock at the door.

Both of us freeze together, and in unison, turn towards the door.

I hiss like a snake. "Ah, I see. So you brought him down here with you, did you?"

I thoroughly enjoy watching Christine's face completely and utterly blanch in terror. For once, she is aware of her sins. "It wasn't like that," she whispers. "It was when I told him about you, and he insisted you were imaginary... I brought him down to prove it to you, but I knocked on the wall forever... He thought I had gone mad, knocking and yelling at a blank stone..."

"Or did he?" I ask evenly, moving towards the door with defined grace. "Because he seems to be doing the same thing, right now..."

I move closer to the door until I am right at it. And suddenly Christine lurches forward. "Don't open it!" she cries. "Forget him. Don't let him in. He doesn't belong in here!"

I laugh softly. "Did he belong here when you brought him here, last time?"

She looks up imploringly. "Please don't hold that against me," she asks.

This is getting infuriating funny to me. What had happened to our peace? The contentment we had found in each other before the arrival of Raoul de Chagny? If only he had never arrived... we could have had no problems.

"Your choice was to leave me," she said. "Your choice affected us all, as did the choices I made afterwards! But Erik... I don't love him! I love you!"

"And what if I don't love you, Christine?" I sneer. "Who will you choose then? The man who swears he will love you forever, or the one who knows he never can?"

"You," she says, without batting an eye.

I rather hate her at the moment, and I glare at her for a second before I turn away. There is a knock at the door. I must answer it.

"Erik, please..." she begs one last time.

I ignore her and I go to answer it. Not many people have knocked upon my door. I feel rather like a normal man being able to answer it. So with a great flourish, I pull upon the door, and who else, but Raoul de Chagny?

The look he gives me is one of disgust, but it is also very amusing to see the fear mingled with it.

"So you are real," he says at once, and he takes a step back away.

I laugh, very very loudly. "A conclusion I am sure you have made much earlier, my friend! May I welcome you into my home? Please please, my friend, come on inside my home! I have something very special inside here... Your future bride, perhaps?"

Christine is crying again. I am sick of her tears. Does she think I will continue to comfort her? Who has ever comforted me when I cried?

Raoul de Chagny hesitates for a moment, before he rushes over to her. And I allow it. I am a gracious host, clearly.

It no longer hurts me to see his hand upon her. There is no pain involved. You know why there is no pain? Because I have no fucking love for Christine Daae.

"Raoul," Christine says, and her voice is cold and shallow at the same time. "Raoul, there is much we must talk about."

"Indeed!" he says, and I laugh, very loudly, at his voice. They both look at me for a moment, as if I have lost my mind. Oh, I lost that a long time ago, lovers!

"Raoul-"

"We must leave."

"Why did you come down here, Raoul? How did you know this was his home? When I brought you down last time, you said I was insane for knocking on a wall of stone. You said I was crazy. You made me go to a doctor, Raoul. Why?"

"I-I thought it was false, at first," he blubbers, smoothing her hair back. "My God, your face. What happened to your face?"

This is getting to be the greatest evening of my entire life. I have honestly never been so happy. I let out an unceremonious roar of laughter, and I rip off my mask. Christine does not even stir, but Raoul de Chagny lets out a great yell and jumps back a foot, his eyes wide with horror. "Go on, ask me next!" I shout, hardly able to speak. "Ask me. Ask me what happened to my face!"

Raoul looks confused.

Christine stands up, dazedly. "No!" she yells at no one in particular. "This needs to be finished! Raoul!" She turns to him, and nearly falls over with the movement. Hmmm... perhaps I pushed her a little too hard into that wall. That seems very funny to me too. "I loved Erik before you. He was everything to me. A teacher, a mentor, a friend, a lover... yes, everything. I... fell in love with him, when I shouldn't have." She stops, and looks at me with tear-blurred eyes. "I shouldn't have," she says in a softer tone. "You were not ready to love me, Erik, and for that, I am sorry."

I stop laughing.

"But I loved you," she continues. "And I still do, nothing has changed. My love for you did not diminish at all. But... I thought... when I..." She gives her head a little shake, and tries again. "When Raoul said you were not real, I... this used to happen, Erik. When I was a girl. After my mother died, I used to think she was still there, with me. People thought I was making up stories, but I really did see her! I imagined people and places that did not exist. Raoul's family forced me to a doctor. They tried to medicate me, they wanted to send me away... my father would not hear of it. Perhaps I should have been..."

"Christine, this is nothing you have to explain to him," Raoul says in a low murmur, but she ignores him.

"I truly thought you were imagined. And that scared me, Erik! That frightened me beyond belief. And see, Raoul is not frightening at all. He is very simple. He would take care of me. And... I grew to care for him. But... not like you, Erik! Never like you."

Raoul is looking bewildered at the fact that Christine is speaking about him as though he is not there. I find that hilarious, also, but I am not laughing anymore.

"Why, Christine," I mutter quietly. "This might be the most intelligent conversation I have ever heard come out of your mouth, ever."

"Yes, I rather think so, too," she responds.

"But I suppose all our progress in the last few moments will be erased if I kill Raoul, will it not?"

"I... yes, I think so."

"This is insane," Raoul says hoarsely. "This is... crazy!"

"Rather like you made your lovely wife-to-be feel," I say happily. "Forcing her to believe she was crazy, when you knew she was not."

"I was trying to get her away from you!" he snaps. "This is pure evil! Look at you!"

.

He did it. He made reference to my face. Damn him. He spoiled my happy mood.

.

I pounce at him, and Christine screams. I pin him against the wall and slam him into the wall, the same way I did with Christine. Honestly, both of these people have ruined my life. What utter nonsense to have ever tried to associate with people. But, to be fair, Christine was mine first. My emotions are changing every second. I do not know what I feel.

"Erik, stop, stop!" Christine screams as I continue pounding his head into the wall. I stop, only to begin choking him. He rasps, and I feel Christine's tiny arms and hands beating at my back. As if that will do absolutely anything. "No! Stop choking him! Release him!"

"No choking," I agree, listening to her once again, and then, in a lovely spur of the moment idea, I grab him and hoist him outside the door. There is a lovely lake. I will drown him instead.

"This was your choice, Christine!" I remind her, as I pull him close. He is struggling now, the water splashing all around me. "You choose him, and I will quite literally blow up this entire opera house, with you both in it. Choose me, and I will only drown him. The rest can live."

She is sobbing, sobbing real tears. "Erik, Erik,"she cried, her hands outstretched. "Let Raoul go, and I will stay with you forever!"

"Yes, of course you will, because he will be dead."

"Let him live, Erik!" she suddenly commands. "He does not deserve to die. He deserves to live without me! He deserves to live, knowing he has lost. Let him live, and live with me!"

"How cruel you have suddenly become to your fiancee!"

"No, no, I am not cruel, but... I don't know what else to do!" She is crying, I am so tired of her always crying.

"You are being very inconsiderate to Raoul de Chagny!"

"I love him, I do," she gasps. "But I love you more! I want to be with you! I... feel something for you!"

I chuckle at her declarations, but my hands lessens just a little bit, and Raoul de Chagny throws his head up, panting.

"We need to discuss this, Christine," I say very seriously. "In the meantime..."

Moving at the speed of light, I drag him back into the house, dripping water everywhere. I have chains somewhere... I had always been planning to use them with Christine, but she is such a vanilla girl...

She follows, looking aghast.

.

I chain Raoul up. He stops struggling. I think he has gone into shock. I told Christine to wait in the main room, so she will not be a distraction. He is very quiet as I chain him up. I actually think he might be crying a little bit, but perhaps that is just from the lake water in which I attempted to drown him.

I return to the main room, where Christine's face is most definitely damp from crying. I have a furtive joy at seeing that, forgetting about my exhaustion with her tears. I love those tear tracks.

"Erik," she says softly.

"Christine," I reply, always the gentlemen.

There is a long silence.

"Are you going to say anything?" she asks meekly.

"Are you? Is there anything you are thinking about?"

"Yes, she replies after a moment. "I was thinking about that night... when I wanted to kill myself."

Out of my many, many nights with Christine, that is the one I like the least. The memory is still jarring to me, for many reasons. When it flickers through my mind, I see the sharp edge of those shears, the crispness of her letter; I can smell the scent she wore that night and how I could not even be man enough for her that night...

"I was remembering how I was feeling," she says very softly. She is twisting her little fingers into the lace of that dreadful costume. It is all torn and blackened from where it was scraped into the wall. "Just utter despair. I felt so stupid. Like I could not understand you, or anyone, or even myself. I thought about all the hopes my father had for me, and how I had disappointed him in all of them."

This is rather baffling to me. Those were the emotions I felt every day for forty years, and I did not try to kill myself every night.

"And when I met you, everything was better." She looks up at me, tears glistening. "I had imagined someone like you, when I was a child. How blessed I was to meet you now."

I sigh. This was very lovely talk. "You imagined someone such as me," I reply scathingly. "With this beautiful face? How honored would your father be to know you are in love with a corpse."

She shrugs. "It depends on how much the corpse loves me back."

"Not at all."

"Lies."

"I cannot take much more of this, Christine."

"You love me."

"Remember when I threw you into a wall? That doesn't seem very loving to me. Surely Raoul would never do that to you."

"No," she says. "He wouldn't. He loves me too, and I love him in a way. But he is not who I want to spend my life with."

I want to keep arguing with her. I want to. But I am tired. My sudden sap in anger has left me feeling very weak, almost dizzy. I am tired of these emotional shifts, and I am all too willing to blame Christine. I wish Raoul had not been born. I wish he had never been alive.

"You are a very unhealthy girl, Christine."

"I know."

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