I have dreams about the way she used to sob, the way her big, doe eyes would look at me as though I was expected to do something about it. But when I wake up, my lovely underground home is completely silent; no sounds of Christine. No sounds of music.

.

It is strange.

Last time I locked myself away from her, I was convinced it was a solid decision I was making. I was very desperate to prove that I did not love her, so anxious to reassure myself that a simple obsession was something I could break myself away from. That was a dark time in my life, filled with boiling anger and emotional complexes that I could hardly understand.

But this is very different. This is not three months of shutting myself away like a child. This is very solemn, very quiet. This will be longer than three months. This will be eons and eons of pain.

Or so I tell myself.

.

I remember the look in her eyes on that night, when I first saw her in her black nightgown, when her eyes were completely dead. I remember the fear at seeing her like that, the nausea that had overcome me when I read the goodbye note on the side of her bed. I remember how terrified I was in that moment, to realize that had I not been outside of her door, I could have lost her forever. She could have bled to death right next to me and I might not have known. I shall never forget the feelings it stirred in me that night - I shall never forget the way her eyes looked.

The way her eyes looked is how I feel right now.

.

It must have not even been a fortnight before it happens. I heard it, from the main room, while I was in my music room. Slowly, I rise, unaccustomed to this violation of my senses, strung by a lack of curiosity at what exactly this might be.

Quite sincerely, I have no idea what I was actually expecting. It is like a constant circle of pain and joy. I am beginning to think I am attracted to the pain just as much as the joy. But there she stands.

"Christine?" I say dumbly.

She smiles, almost nervously. "Hello, Erik."

I do not have the poisonous response of last time, nor the heart-stopping reaction like I did when I saw her at the costume ball. Instead, I feel rather numb, like there is little else that could happen in this disregarded world of mine that would surprise me. Perhaps a very tiny part of me was hoping she would return - but no! Releasing her was for her own good, and for mine too... for her to return brings me no joy when I begin to taste the bitter cycle starting all over again with just one look into her eyes.

Her fingers twist together in the folds of her pale pink gown, I am suddenly struck with how much older she looks. Has she has done something different with her hair... No, it's something about her eyes, I am certain.

This is unimaginable. There is no way I am to seek any comfort in her return now. I feel sick, like I am about to wake up from some strange nightmare.

"Erik?" she says softly, and there is worry in her eyes. I must look awful. I bring my hand up to my face nervously and I uncomfortably, I note the lack of mask. Of course I look awful.

I try to be normal. I try to handle this like any regular, self-respecting man would. "But..." My flawless throat dies away, and I am forced to try again. "But I... why...?"

Why did she come back?

She looks around, and she is quiet for a long moment.

Why did she come back... again?

My heart is thudding in my chest. My senses are slowly catching up to me, and I realize that she is here, she is truly, truly here! The hole inside of me is somehow closing, and I am finding it is easier to breathe than it has been, all this is gathering within me and I cannot keep my pulse from racing.

"I suppose I cannot speak for you, but I am... tired of this." She is looking down. "Why can't I just leave you? Why can we not leave each other alone?"

"Why indeed?" I blurt out without thinking, my nervousness breaking through. I cannot understand why I suddenly feel so anxious, why her sudden appearance has thrown me in such a way. Why can she not leave me alone? Why indeed?

"I can't leave," she whispers, looking distraught. "I can't leave you alone, Erik. I can't go back to the normal world, knowing that there is this one, here with you."

"You knew this world existed, even after you had made your mind up to stay in the other one," I retort coolly, unable to accept her words without lashing out in some way. "And you seem relatively at peace with your decision, as well."

"What do you want me to say?" she asks weakly, holding her hands out to me like an offering. "Only to forgive me for fearing what I do not understand?"

I laugh humorlessly at the thought of what Christine Daae does not understand. "Where is Raoul?" I ask, bitterly despising myself for not wanting to know the answer. Despising myself for so many, many things.

"He is recovering, at his parents house," she says, as if she can relax the resentment in my tone. "Why are you asking about Raoul? Why are you not asking about me?"

"You," I sigh, unable to look into her eyes. "What is there left to ask about you?"

It is happening all over again... she is going to stay, she is going to leave, I am going to kill myself from the tirades of a broken soul.

I glance up at her, to see her move slightly to the corner of the room. "Where is the picture of me?" she asks. "The one you drew? Where are my things that were here?"

"I burned it," I lie.

Her eyes question me. "I don't want to believe that."

I attempt to shrug, as if her doubtfulness does not faze me. I find it odd how uncomfortable I feel at uttering even the smallest of lies to Christine, which is extraordinarily baffling, considering the amount of times I have lied to her without a second thought.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, her knuckles white with the force she is crushing her own hands. I wonder briefly if she is as nervous as I am. Then I wonder why the hell we are nervous at all?

For a moment, I try to think of how to word what I want to say without falling into ridiculous old habits. "I am confused... as to why you are here... as to why you keep coming back."

"Because you don't love me," she says stubbornly.

"Perhaps," I say evasively.

"I want to know if you really don't love me anymore," she says suddenly, her eyes wide, her fingers finally unclenched. "Because if you really don't, I'll leave! I'll leave, I promise, and I won't come back!"

"I find this hard to believe, considering no matter what I do, I can't get rid out you!" I shoot back, unable to bite my tongue.

"You seem to try hard to get rid of me, but I never see you protesting when I come back!"

"Well, what am I doing now?"

"Confusing me!" she shouts, crossing her arms.

I try hard to glare at her, but inside, I am rather happy that we are arguing again. It seems very familiar, very comfortable. Unwittingly, my eyes travel downward just to see what she's wearing. Beneath that pink gown, I know the exact color of her skin... "I think I have been very clear," I say, shaking my head slightly to disrupt my sexualized pattern of thoughts that have no place here.

"You shoved me out the door without a goodbye," she huffs. "There was nothing clear about that."

"You are here because you are disappointed with my goodbye?" I say, rolling my eyes. "Quite honestly, I think that was the best thing I have ever done for this relationship!"

Now I am slightly angry with her, because she does not understand the enormous revelations I had upon letting her go. She does not understand the sense of accomplishment I was finally able to feel upon re-analyzing my own feelings and reasons for my actions. For once in my sorry life, I was proud of myself - for once, I felt positive that I was doing the right thing. And now she stands here, threatening all of that just by being here!

"You said you wanted me to be happy," she said quietly. "Didn't you say that, Erik?"

I pretend not to hear her. "Every second you are with me is a second that is hurting you. Didn't you say yourself, how much I destroyed you? Didn't you say that- Raoul - was the one who took care of you when I locked you out?"

"So stop locking me out!" she says.

"I can't-"

"Just stop locking me out!"

"I CAN'T!" I scream, frustrated that once again she is pushing me to this point. My hands reach up, because up until this moment, I have actually forgotten that I am not wearing a mask. I hate that this is the center of my anger, my insecurity, my sense of fault! I hate that I have done something good in my life, and yet she is here again, pushing me, prodding me, reminding me of my flaws! "Look at my face, Christine! This is the course of all my problems. This is the sole reason why I cannot love you the way you want me to! You always seem to forget that, and silly me - it causes me to forget too! I want you to be happy, Christine, I really do, and I am trying to keep you away from me so you have a chance at that!"

She stares at me for a moment, before she turns and sits on the sofa. I watch her, bemused. "Come sit by me," she gestures at once, patting the seat beside her.

I approach warily, as if it is a trap. "Why?"

She sighs. "There is nothing suspicious about sitting on a sofa, Erik."

"With you, there must be," I mutter, but I obey, helpless.

Obsession, obsession, obsession.

I can't get away from her. It is impossible to disobey a direct order from her. I am a slave, a slave to her. I cannot resist. I cannot resist. I am a slave.

She rests her head on my shoulder. Gruffly, automatically, I wrap my arm around her. She feels safe, like home. I should have known the dangers of obsessing over her from the very beginning - to be fair, I did know the dangers, and yet here I am.

"Remember how funny we were when I first started coming down here?" she asks, seemingly nonchalant about all the emotions she has just stirred in me.

"Funny?" I repeat, eyebrows raised.

"Yes, funny. So frightened of each other. So unhappy in our separate worlds."

The girl still frightens me. Has she so little sense of what terrifies me?

The air around us is silent. I hear a melody in my head, and I wish I could write it down. It sounds exactly how I feel right now, but perhaps it is a good thing I cannot keep it - I do not wish to relive this feeling. I still feel anxious and sick and now slightly exasperated.

"Your face has distorted you thinking," she says.

I let out a derisive burst of laughter. "You think?"

"Yes, based on how people have treated you in the past. But I wish you wouldn't do that with me."

I hate everything about this conversation. Everything. "What makes you different?"

"I don't know, Erik," she says. "Tell me, what does make me different? Why me?"

"Why you, what?"

"Why did you become obsessed with me?"

"I am so tired of these conversation," I say testily. "I... I can't talk about this anymore, Christine."

"Of course," she says instantly. "Of course."

I expect her to attempt to keep going, to push me in some way, but she is still on my shoulder. I cannot see her face... I wish I could see her face.

As if she can read my mind, she pulls away from me, and she kisses me, and I will never stop being surprised by the sensation of skin against mine, the disregard of the mask that I have been forced to wear my whole life. Every part of me tightens, as if this is an attack, and despite being the most unwilling I have ever been in my life, I pull away.

"Christine," I say. "Why are you really here?"

She looks up at me. "Because..." She bites her lip. "Because I love you. And... I want you to love me, too. I can't let go of you. I don't want to let go of you. You said I was unhealthy. Maybe I am. But I feel more unhealthy without you. You said you didn't want to talk about this. Let's not talk about it."

"You can't use me as a crutch," I say at once. Every time Christine tries to talk about how she feels, I see a mental image of her when she held the shears next to her, crying that no one wanted her in that lacy nightgown...

"Erik! Stop!"

"No, you stop!" I say. "Christine, I will never make you happy! I want you to be happy! Hell, why are you destroying the one good thing I've done in my life?"

She buries her head in my chest, growling. "I swear, Erik... Please. Can we stop talking?"

I silence myself. Inwardly, I am rather pleased with the way I am handling this whole conversation. I feel I have acted very well thus far... "So what, are we just going to sit here in silence forever, sweeping all the problems under the rug?"

She lifts her head up. "I think I'd like to sing."

.

Her voice is soft and light, perhaps afraid to push after weeks of not singing. I let her choose a couple of arias until I decide to start playing my own works, and she follows along cautiously, her ear adapted to my sound. As she sings, the hole in my chest seems to recede somewhat, as if her voice is actually filling me up, repairing the wounds I have inflicted upon myself.

I am a bad man, and I did not love her very well. I did not treat her well. At this point, it is practically a sin for me to allow this to continue at all. I do not want to look at her, because I do not want to see how deeply I have manifested this obsession, this subtle curiosity that allowed to me invade into her music, her life, and ultimately, her heart.

Truly, the best thing I ever did for Christine Daae was to send her away.

But maybe the best thing she ever did for me was to come back.

.

She rolls over in bed, and I have already decided that I will not disrobe her tonight, that I will make this a gentle night to spend with her, when she reaches over and peels off my mask.

"Christine," I say warningly.

"Hush, it's dark," she says carelessly. "You know, I thought when I was trying to love you, that you never spoke of the mask because you understood how little it mattered. Now I think you were really avoiding it because it was the whole problem."

"Are we going to analyze again?" I ask.

"You like that somebody cares enough to analyze," she says saintly, and I tense at her raw words. "You know how I know this, Erik? Because that is how I used to feel."

I look up at the ceiling while she talks. There are shadows created by the voluptuous curve of her curls that throw dark patterns up and down as her head slightly moves. It is mesmerizing. I am obsessed with it.

"How did I get so smart?" she giggles, and she pulls slightly at me to kiss the side of my face. There is no way I will ever get used to this feeling... this feeling of being loved...

"You are not smart," I correct at once, and she only giggles again.

.

She wakes up and she wants to listen to my music. I am a slave to her; how can I resist?

I play her vibrant chords of Bach on my violin and she sits on the floor below me, seemingly entranced, and for several glorious moments, I pretend like she is just coming down for lessons like she used to, before any of this happened, before any of us got in the way of what I wanted, what she wanted. Sometimes, I still see the gaze in her eyes that night, when her heart was hopeless and her lovely orbs filled with such a familiar despair.

I stop playing and her lovely eyes blink. "Christine," I say. "There is something wrong with me."

"There is nothing wrong with you, Erik," she replies automatically, but I am already shaking my head.

"There is. Many of the things wrong with me I share with you. Like you, I have been lonely, forgotten, despised, neglected, unloved. And I have crashed in upon myself. And so determined I was to save you from the same fate, that I have now pulled you in with me."

She is still smiling. "But I do not mind," she says, holding her hand out. "It does not feel so bad with you."

"So do you still feel neglected, unloved?" I whisper, hating myself. Hating myself in all that I am. I am a weak, weak man. I will never be enough for Christine. I will never love her right. I will never learn how to love. Every time I think there is growth between us, something happens to remind me that I am still right back at the start.

"I feel happier here than anywhere else," she replies dispassionately. "There is nothing wrong with us being together."

There is, though.

Slowly, I put my violin back up and this time choose the haunting tonality of Liszt, who writes of romance I will never understand. Her eyes goes glassy once again; she is mine for the taking.

.

We keep putting it off; avoiding the topic altogether. Instead, there is almost a lull in the way our life continues, as if nothing had broken it apart at all. She wants to sing, and I cannot stop her. I cannot stop myself, and I let her sing and it almost feels like the way the past did, when there were no feelings around and we did not argue about what it is to love or not love.

No more talking - our dialogue has become boring and repetitive. There is nothing more to be said to each other. She refuses to leave, and I refuse to kick her out. Is that love?

.

"Christine," I say. "You said you could not do to Raoul what I did to you."

She glances up from the table. "I did not want to do that, no," she says, shrugging a little bit. "But I did not... cut him off the way you did to me. We spoke of it. He knows how I feel."

"And he is obviously fine with this," I say derisively, shaking my head in disbelief. "And he will not be down here again."

Something about her gaze is very far away, as if she is not really looking at me. "No," she says certainly. "He will not be down again."

"How can you be so sure?" I persist. "There is so much you are not telling me."

"I am telling you," she says bluntly. "And I am sure."

.

I am not gentle. She is half asleep, and I shake her awake. Her large eyes stare at me questioningly, and I pull her up so I can remove her nightclothes.

Strangely, she smiles, as if this is something good and makes the work go faster. "I knew you would miss me," she says softly, opening her arms to me. "I was hoping you would break soon."

Her words are not what I want to hear, as if this must be some sort of utterable weakness, as if she were in control of this master plan. This new Christine is mature and seemingly wise, but I do not like it as much as I ought to. I want to be back in control, I want to play the music that makes her eyes go blank, I want to find the parts of her that makes her sigh my name, I want to pretend that there is no such thing as love...

She melts into me, soft, unyielding. Her eyes do not leave my face, my treacherous, unforgiving face that makes it almost impossible to believe she could ever be soft to me at all. Her eyes are totally trusting - too trusting. I do not deserve this.

"Christine," I murmur, my lips close to her ear as she shivers, her mouth slightly open in anticipation. "You could have stayed away. You could have stayed above at the opera. You could have stayed with Raoul..."

"Yes, I could have," she agrees at once.

"But... you did not."

"I did not," she repeats, the words like poetry from her little lips. I think of the time she called herself 'plain', and I could not, in this moment, think of a single thing about her that seemed even somewhat plain. I touch the corner of her eyelids with my skeletal hands, my tarnished skin looking yet even more miserable than normal next to hers. Upsettingly so, I am already aroused enough to end her foreplay, but I continue to stare at her, touch her, obsess over every single little detail that does not in the least bit seem plain...

"It is so nice to be with you again," she whispers, and her words send delicious shivers through me, and I decide that I am already much too vile a man to be forced to continue with her in this state. She doesn't seem to mind, though.

She never does.

.