The Mask and Mirror

I, I looked into your eyes and saw
A world that does not exist
I looked into your eyes and saw
A world I wish I was in

I'll never find someone quite as touched as you
I'll never love someone quite the way
That I loved you

(Vast – Touched)

Chapter 28

Light slanted through the vivid stained glass, falling in jagged patches onto the cool stone floor. Walking across it had felt like walking on a bed of red-hot coals, the heat blistering his heels.

Erik was seated stiffly on one of the pews, inhaling the heavy aroma of incense. A fallen being in the house of God. He couldn't remember the last time he had been in a church, which surprised him, as he had been in much need of sanctuary over the last year. Sanctuary, yes. Not penitence, or contrition, or benediction. Not then, anyway.

Golden motes of dust swirled in and out the bars of sunlight that pierced the flagstones from the high windows. The chapel was small, barely discernable between the mosques that were far more prevalent in this country and God knows, it had taken long enough to find. Barely a dozen pews filled the narrow space, the thick air shimmering like a mirage in the intense afternoon heat that was blazing with even more ferocity outside. A Catholic church seemed strangely out of place in this land of Arabic culture, the heady passions that stirred and breathed through the colourful bazaars, the elemental spiritualism of the desert wastes.

This place made him uneasy. The statues of saints that adorned the walls seemed to be gazing down upon him, not with anger, but a kind of sorrowful disappointment. He felt himself crippled beneath the calm scrutiny of those exalted figures that had bled and blazed for Christ. Erik knew that passion, the all-consuming fire and conviction that defined one's existence, that might - if they were very, very fortunate - lead to martyrdom and peace.

He loved Christine with that same single-mindedness of purpose, that fury and idolatry that had driven him half to madness. He refused to hate her, and could not stop loving her. It was no longer an emotion, but a state of being.

They had come here, two pilgrims, one in search of absolution, and the other –?

"Perhaps an exorcism would be more appropriate," he had said, in a tone that tried to be flippant. Christine hadn't laughed.

Erik stared hard at the row of candles across the pew, tiny flames dancing. The weaving vines of flickering light were hypnotic, delirium inducing. Memories of blood and tears washed over him, blurring the edges of reality. The dark symphony of screams rang in his ears. He felt himself being pulled, spiralling down and down into the darkness, where surely so many damned souls awaited him.

The cloying air swam in the small chapel. How the ghosts danced about him! Everywhere he turned, a carnival of torture chambers, mirrors, and blood, blood, blood. Once for self-defence, once for revenge… Until the day came when he had wanted the entire world to pay. The anger and outrage had rushed through him like a raging fire and he had hated everyone - God, Christine, Nadir. He looked out on humanity and saw only despair. Erik pressed his lips tightly together, hand clenching into a fist, driving his nails into his palm in an effort to stop himself from crying out. He was consumed by his wounds. Hope dimming at every new atrocity he committed.

Was it possible his crimes were so heinous that he would be cast out from the Church, excommunicated and be told his soul was so blackened with corruption, even God himself could not hope to save it? After all, some people had to go to hell. If all souls could merely be forgiven then wouldn't everyone be guaranteed a place in heaven?

Erik shuddered. He had to stop thinking such things.

His brow was slick with sweat in the cloying heat, the drops of perspiration sliding leisurely downward beneath the mask, but his body was shivering, chilled to the bone. He had an overwhelming desire to run.

I should not be here.

Yet he was here out of love for Christine, Christine who believed in God and salvation, and who loved with all the strength in her generous heart (and could he dare hope that some of that love might one day be for him?) Everyone had abandoned him except her. She had lost almost everything - yet she stayed. He had been desperate and she had given him hope. Not of her love - oh no, that she would never give him - but she had believed in his humanity.

The pew was hard and uncomfortable after sitting for so long, and Erik shifted a little impatiently. He wondered what on earth she had to confess to keep her in there for so long. Perhaps it had something to do with last night. But God, how the time dragged! All the years of his life did not feel so long as this weary vigil.

He was starting to think he should have gone in first. But where to start? The murders, the anger, the lustful thoughts (never fully acted upon, thank God). Because he truth was - and he could hardly believe this himself - that he did repent, God help him. He actually sought forgiveness (penance, punishment) for all that he had done and for all that he had wanted to do. He needed cleansing fire, to be purified. He was an empty shell, waiting to be filled. Filled with what, though? God's grace? Forgiveness?

Forgiveness. Atonement. Absolution. The words had seemed faint and false. Especially for one such as him. And churches made him think about hell just as much as heaven. Oh, he had always believed in hell. He had just doubted that it came in the next life.

Now he wasn't so sure.

Often he had read religious texts with a purely detached, academic eye, but something about this place made it impossible not to believe in something. What would happen if he shattered the stained glass and broke the statues or spat the Communion wafer upon the ground, tasting only ashes? Would the Virgin and Child weep blood, would the ground open beneath him and cast him into damnation? What was hell, anyway? Erik thought he had had glimpses of it numerous times in his darkest moods, but was it the burning fire and brimstone of Revelations or Dante's picture of a frozen, barren place, void of warmth and light? He didn't want to consider these things or what they might mean for him. The thought of it made his head hurt.

Was it sacrilegious for his thoughts to be wandering so much? When had he started caring about such things?

His limbs were heavy, weighted as though with shackles of iron, and he thought he must be dragged down into the earth.

He had spent his entire life stumbling from one hell into another. His suffering was almost unendurable – and yet the purity, the sublime beauty of Christine holding out hope, granted him the possibility of benediction. And so he waited, in faith, love and hope. He waited in despair.

On his knees now, crushed by oppressive thoughts. No sound now but the persistent thudding of his heart. Trembling tension rippling through his muscles, stiff from their prolonged inactivity -

"Erik."

Her voice. Reverberating in the abyss of his soul.

His chest tightened in apprehension. He raised eyes of torment and sorrow to her steady gaze. He had not even heard her approach. Her pale hands were curled around the wooden back of the pew, and she was hovering over him in trepidation.

"Erik," she said. "If you cannot - if you do not wish to - I understand." In a rustle and crease of fabric, she knelt beside him, her face very close to his. "I understand," she said earnestly.

Again, doubt gnawed at him. He had too much pride for this. He would not succumb to this abject humiliation. The fire was already flickering at his heels, and staying here was merely fanning the flames -

Why did I ask this of her? I am not strong enough for this. I never deserved salvation. I never wanted it, until -

A slender, cool hand softly touched his. Erik glanced down and realised that his hands were clasped with a painful force, nails driving into the flesh (but what is flesh when it is the soul that matters?)

"This is your decision," Christine whispered, her soft voice a rush of warmth against his porcelain-concealed cheek. "Do not feel you have to do anything. Not for me." Her hand tightened on his. "You have already done more than I imagined, more than I had any right to hope…"

There was still time. Return to the house, and -

And what? Continue this shallow mockery of an existence, going nowhere, changing nothing? No.

Resignation swept over him.

His gaze fell upon the large cross that adorned the altar. Redemption was far more difficult than it would appear. His body was strained, nerves wracked with fever. His breathing slowed as he sought to calm himself.

I am not doing this because I can. I am doing it because I must.

He stood up, and it was probably the hardest thing he had ever done… harder even than letting Christine go. That almost killed me, but it seemed simple compared to this… oh God, what am I doing here? This is utter madness, yet better madness than hopelessness…

It seemed eternities passed in the time it took to cross the stretch of floor and reach those unobtrusive wooden doors. He could hear his heart beating thickly in his head as he entered the confined space of the confessional, the closeted darkness closing around him like a dream.

Help me, Christine. Help me defeat these devils, these angels.

He took an unsteady breath.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. This is… my first Confession."

Christine could not sleep. She was seated, restless and silent at the window of her room, possessed with a strange, nervous pain. The wide, gently rolling plains that were scorched white-gold by day had faded to dusky grey beneath the moon. A hushed stillness lay over everything. It was quiet, and peaceful as it ever could be here. So where did it come from, this agitated struggle of body and mind? The night dragged by, and she could only think, and think, and think.

She was stranded here, at the end of the world, and had nothing but Erik. She could not leave him, because she knew that he needed her, needed her more than anyone else ever had. The desire to see him redeemed had become a burning fire within her.

I will not abandon him to darkness and yet how can I spend my days always wondering, a thousand what ifs passing through my mind for the life of contentment that was almost mine? So I ask, I beg, I plead for something, for I cannot live like this much longer, caught between misery and hope. Yet an inescapable conviction possesses me, telling me that an ending to all this is imminent and that perhaps frightens me most of all. For I cannot see how this might come about without destroying him. And that I could not endure. Let me be destroyed, too.

The casement was thrown wide open, and Christine leaned out, breathing deeply. She could smell the earth outside, the air heavy and still. Gazing out so intensely that could almost forget her body, turning gradually numb from her unmoving position on the window ledge. The darkness was absolute. Her vision wavered, and it seemed if she closed her eyes that the desert was rushing away beneath her feet and the vast, star-studded sky fell away to become filled with roiling clouds, rain-laden and thrumming with the approach of a wild storm. And in her mind's eye, the image of a child running along a bright shoreline where the sea shone like glass and the wind-sharpened salt licked at her fingers. Oh, how vivid it was, the smell of brine, the ground sinking under her heels into a swirl of iridescent foam and plants and pebbles, and a great roaring, so loud and endless that she could lose herself in it.

Raoul! Raoul, hold my hand! The water is too deep and the ground is being pulled away beneath me!

Remember that laugh, that smile, golden as the sun?

Hold tight then, but it is only the sand! The sand in the tides. I won't let you fall. I never let you fall.

Christine opened her eyes, her gaze falling once more on the stretch of wilderness, the bewildering and vital landscape outside her window. How far she had come since those distant days. Perros was another time, another world, another life.

And what of Raoul, her companion in those childish exploits? Was he all right, was he alone, was he thinking about her at all, was he trying to find her, perhaps even now following a trail step by step, vowing never to rest and knowing no peace until he saw her once more? Or had he not cared so much as all that, waited too long and dismissed her from his life as he might cast aside any valuable trinket that he possessed, replacing it with a better and brighter substitute? No, that she would not believe. She could not. Yet if he loved her, why would he leave her so long in this way?

She loved him as she loved the laughter he brought to her childhood, as she loved the pounding seas that washed the shores of Perros, leaving everything glistening and new-born in its wake. He was her light and laughter, the companion of the days she longed to escape to, when all was simple and clear. She could recall with aching clarity those treasured moments insignificant to all but lovers. Raoul was everything she admired, everything she longed to be, those best and brightest parts of herself. Tender. Generous. Loving. Everything good and pure in this world was captured within the heavenly blue spheres of his eyes. His eyes, so beloved, the sea of her childhood reflected in those shining orbs -

Not dark. Not shadowed with fury and pain and madness and agonised longing. Yet why then was she here and not there - that former world she spent so long telling herself she wanted?

Because…

Because… because…

Erik.

Erik, who looked at her like no one else on this earth, his dark eyes filled with arcane fire. He lived beneath her skin. She didn't know herself without him. She hurt when he hurt, suffered when he suffered, and desperately wanted him to find peace. He had held her so fast and so tight she thought he would never release her. And he never will. No more than I can walk away, however much I have longed to. For I would be torn and scattered between two worlds. And I cannot, cannot bear to bring any more heartache upon myself, or him - oh, Erik! I hope I die before it comes to that!

Her old life was lost to her. She saw herself running from him, and time and time again, being pulled back. What was it? This frightening connection that kept drawing them back to each other? They were tied hopelessly to one another.

How far would she have to walk to escape him? How far until the shimmering desert flats turned to the wilds of winter and snow covered the ground once more, until she lost herself in forgetfulness?

Forget? No, no, how could she ever forget? Even now, apart from him, she could still hear those soft strains of music breathing through her soul, solemn and evocative. Running through her very blood, guiding the rhythms of her pulse.

Do you remember? Do you remember the first time you heard that voice?

The memory flashed across her mind with startling clarity. Seeing the dark, forlorn world through the eyes of a child, it seemed vast and forbidding and desolate. The walls of the Opera Populaire offered no warmth or shelter, for her illness was not of the body but of the soul. And her father - her poor, dear father - lying cold in the earth. Forever lost to her. The sorrow and loneliness she had felt as the soul and centre of her young life had been buried would not leave her. Frozen tracks leading to the cemetery and back again. She would not have gone though those months again for anything in the world. Huddled in the chapel by moonlight as the snows fell outside from the bleak sky. She had wanted them to cover her in a silent shroud, cloaking every part of her until she could no longer feel. And she had waited, cold as death.

I know you told me never to lose faith, dear father, but it has been three months now and still no word. I have waited, night after night, as you made me promise, though it is strange and frightening here… and I don't believe. I don't believe… There is no angel and the darkness fills me with dread. It is endless and will swallow me like the sea… Father! Send me an angel or I fear I shall die! My body is numb, and I shiver as though over some great precipice… and I cannot see… I cannot see…

But instead of silence, a voice, beautiful and unearthly, had whispered in answer.

Christine.

And in that one moment, the very shape of her existence had been altered. Had she been asleep her whole life before he came? How long had her soul been waiting for him? Always, always and forever. Sometimes, on those nights when her senses were shaken and she could hardly breathe for rapture, it seemed so. Her heart was dying, and he had given her faith. Filling her aching soul with holy fire. It had seemed perfect and true.

It had all been lies.

Because she knew better now. Her eyes had been opened (but only after my heart and soul). She had learnt that angels weren't gentle, beneficent creatures bestowing kind favours on fortunate mortals. No, angels were tall and proud and ruthless and terrible. Angels could fall, they could destroy and kill. The Bible spoke of angels having fallen from heaven, but never of them ascending.

Yet what he did today… what he was willing to do. She had seen the contrition in his eyes, the penitent conviction that shuddered through his large frame as he had crouched in the pews. Afterwards, he had not spoken of what transpired in the confessional and Christine had no wish to pry the information from him. She knew the sanctity preserved within those walls. All the way back he had remained silent, though not, she thought, unhappy. And now perhaps he slept in peace, while she was ill with a thousand thoughts and yearnings. Why, she thought wonderingly, I am more certain of him than I am of myself.

She could sit here no longer in agitated sleeplessness, watching the shadows moving on the walls. Her bed lay only across the room, but it could have been a thousand miles away for all the use she would have of it tonight. Her whole being was aching. She pressed a cool hand to her fevered brow.

I have prayed and dreamed myself into madness these restless nights, and still nothing, nothing, nothing. No word, no hint, when the overwhelming need for guidance devastates me. What am I supposed to do?

And, oh, Erik you are the source and centre of this pain. You say I am your salvation, your redemption, yet if that is so, then why do you leave me feeling this way, so delirious with agony and so exhausted with weeping? And how - in a hairsbreadth, in the twinkling of an eye - how quickly it can turn to a joy that defies reason.

She exhausted herself with wishing and yearning, yet did not know what it was she prayed for so fervently. Hope, fear, suspense, joy, misery passed through and through her. She had worn herself out with intense feeling. Her very soul seemed to quiver, strung tight as a violin string.

I must see him, must speak to him. I understand nothing save that I am in this state because of him. Whether it is to curse him, seek solace in his arms or fall weeping at his feet, I know that I cannot stand being this way a moment longer… His music annihilates me yet this silence is worse… I don't care whether his voice will be my downfall, my damnation… I don't care… for he is in everything anyway, and has been for as long as I can remember. My dearest pain and my agonising bliss. It is all one and the same… it is all because of him.

The door was ajar and she could see a faint glow of flickering light within, causing shadows to shiver along the floor, reaching outward, then retreating, then reaching out again. Her nightgown barely making a whisper against the stone, Christine edged forward, slipping through the narrow space the barely-opened door offered.

The first thing she became aware of was the scent; not the lingering subtle aroma of incense and leather that she always associated with Erik, but instead the fragrant currents of nocturnal air carried in through the wide-open casement. The desert night seemed to be in this very room; the coarse sands, the sun-veined earth beneath, the headiness of sweet, dusty amber and crushed spruce leaves. She could hear every sound with startling clarity, the insects outside, the faintest whisper of a dry breeze as it passed through the grasses. Close, yet somehow reaching her from a great distance.

Erik was seated at the desk, leaning over a disorder of score sheets and writing feverishly. He ran a hand through his mass of heavy black hair, and sighed in frustration, sitting back slightly. "Wrong place," he muttered to himself, and bent over the scattered papers again. His stiff cravat had been untied, hanging loosely around his collar. The partially opened shirt hung in pearlescent folds that rippled with every moment. The mask had been removed and was lying carelessly on one of the chairs, exposing his face with a startling intimacy. A couple of candles on the dresser had been lit, the pinpricks of light burning in the corners of her vision and causing a play of golden light to dance across the burnished skin of his throat and chest, shadows upon shadows.

Christine knew she should not be here, especially seeing him in what was essentially a state of undress, particularly considering she was wearing nothing but a thin shift herself. Suddenly acutely conscious of the fact, she wrapped her arms around herself at once.

Erik must have sensed the movement; he glanced up sharply and started. His hand moved instinctively towards the mask, but she said quietly, "Don't."

Without ceremony, he swept the papers to one side and stood up, facing her with an expression of searing intensity.

"Christine." His voice. Her soft lullaby, her soothing damnation. "Is something wrong?"

His black hair fell untidily across his forehead, but it was still not long enough to hide the blasted skin, scarred and discoloured, the ravaged flesh hanging in dun folds around his dark eye. Christine stared at the disfigured half of his face, thrown to disproportionate size in the long shadows, wary, savage, bestial, and realised she was entirely without fear. All she saw was the lonely soul imprisoned behind the wall of distorted flesh and marvelled that it had never seemed so visible before.

"I don't know what brought me here," she whispered.

She was dressed in a loose white nightgown that exposed the iris-like delicacy of the skin of her neck and shoulders. A silver cross hung around her neck. Dark hair spilled over her shoulders in disordered waves. At the sight of her, Erik had to remind himself to breathe. He swallowed and tore his gaze from her with an effort. Resisting her was going to be hard. She looked like an angel, Petrarch's Laura perhaps, descended from heaven in a nocturnal visitation. He didn't like to remind himself that in Petrarch's case, the visit had been a purely chaste one.

Soberly she drew nearer, though still doubtful, hesitant. Her marble face softened by the dimly glowing light. "I feel so lost, Erik."

She trembled visibly, and how fervently he wished he could take her into his arms, that he had that right. The need shuddered through him, impassioned as an unspeakable wish. He had whispered her name to the shadows night after night, been plagued with dreams of her appearing to him like this and so many other dark secrets envisioned in the nocturnal hours that she could never, never know. His dreams burning with her image. His nights torn between respite and rage. Oh, Christine.

Instead, he spoke calmly. "Lost? How so?"

"I hardly know where to begin."

His brow furrowed, doubt evident in his features. "You've been so strong through everything."

"Strong?" she echoed disbelievingly. "Erik, I'm terrified."

"Of what? Tell me."

She stared at him wide-eyed. "You really don't know?"

Erik shook his head. But he did not speak, to her relief. She did not think she could bear it if he did. Her thin shoulders sank beneath the filmy nightgown in a hopeless gesture, yet by the time the words had formed in her mind, Christine realised she felt only very calm.

"Everywhere I turn," she said reflectively, "I see your face. Your voice will haunt me until the day I die. I sometimes feel that to leave you would be to renounce my own self. Yet to stay would be losing myself entirely. I'm trapped, Erik. I'll never be free again."

Erik watched her silently, but a burning was beginning in his eyes.

"Perhaps this is my penance for leaving you."

He came swiftly towards her with surprising grace for such a large man, the movement loosening the poet's shirt from the waistband of his trousers. It hung in billowing folds, startlingly pale in contrast to the tanned skin of his chest. He looked so strong, so solid in her wavering world that she wanted nothing more than to have him hold her protectively, but had no words to speak her desire.

"You have nothing to punished for," he insisted fiercely. "Do you hear me? Nothing."

"Then why do I feel like this?"

His eyes glowed deeply in the shadow. "Because we're both the same. We cannot simply walk away, or abandon the other, even after everything. So we stay. We fight, even if it means we only tear each other apart -"

A broken whisper. "Don't."

"You have done things for me that no other on this earth has dared to. You've given me hope… meaning… a purpose."

It was too much. Hearing this praise, this gratitude, when she was the last person in world who deserved it. She looked down at her clasped hands that had begun to tremble.

"All I wanted to do was help you. Be there for you. I wanted it more than anything in the world. I've been fighting so long for you, and now… I'm just afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of you. Of me. Because it is never that simple. Not with us. Something will happen and… and it will be like this, all of this… just never happened. And I couldn't bear it. I can't bear the thought that we'll fight and lie and hurt each other again, or that I might hate you. I would rather die."

"What are you saying, Christine?"

"What is wrong with us, Erik? If I want to help you, then why do I hurt you? Why you do you hurt me?"

The corners of his grim mouth tightened imperceptibly. "Don't pretend I haven't apologised for what I've done, Christine. I have, time and time again."

She looked up at him suddenly, tearful-eyed, accusing. "Have you, Erik? Have you said, in so many words, I am sorry?"

An immense silence fell between them..

Chistine did not even know where the words had come from, but knew at once that it had been the wrong thing to say. Erik's body tensed as though struck by lightning. Hooded eyes blazed dark fire, an infernal glow like lit coals. Coupled with the cruel scars on his face it made him appear almost demonic. He rose himself up like a stalking predator, taking a couple of foreboding steps towards her, the movement unnervingly soundless for his heaviness of frame. He was angered beyond anything she had seen in a long time, not since -

"You push me too far," he said darkly. She could almost feel the vibrations in his dangerously quiet voice, low and threatening in the space between them.

"I didn't mean -" she began to say, though she had. She reached out to soothe him, to calm that ferocious unpredictably of temper, but he shook off her entreating grasp. A shudder wracked his powerful body and she could see the tightly corded muscles of his shoulders tense beneath the loose shirt.

"How much further must I abase myself before you are satisfied, Christine? What more would you have me do?"

She sighed wearily. "Please, forget it."

"No, my dear." He crossed his arms, his voice a curt command. "Enlighten me."

She shook her head and began to turn away. "If you are going to be like this -"

He did catch hold of her then, seizing her arms in a tight grasp. She stumbled slightly, her body on the verge of falling, and he steadied her roughly. Framed by the dim light, he seemed larger than she had ever seen him, larger than life itself, impossibly tall and broad-shouldered, overshadowing her slender frame with hopeless ease as he trapped her against him. His closeness radiating heat beneath the silken material.

"Everything - everything I have done has been for you." His voice was an angry growl, hot and savage against her skin.

"Everything?" Despairing fury consumed her then, fury at him for throwing her into this hopeless situation, for making her need him as she like a caged animal she fought against being in the circle of his arms, resisting what she had longed for only moments before. Unimaginable to think that last time they had been so close, he had hauled her against his body, rendering her senseless with consuming touches and searing kisses. "Renounce your life, your reputation, your happiness, your love - then speak to me of everything!"

"Ever the martyr, Christine," he sneered. His expression was cruel, mocking. His brown hands looked very large around her slender white forearms and his grip was iron. "I should have known this was just more Catholic self-flagellation," he hissed with malice.

"You didn't seem to object in the church earlier."

"A mistake, my love, and one which won't be repeated."

Christine was about to rise to the provocation when the realisation of what he had called her stilled her movements. My love. The words had left him sarcastically, in the heat of passionate anger, but still they made her shiver. Against her will, she felt the anger inside her fading.

"Look at me," she said pleadingly. "Look into my eyes, and tell me once and for all that you are sorry."

Erik stared at her with a softening in his wild eyes, though the lingering frustration remained. "Is that what you need to hear?"

She remained silent, uncertain of what he intended.

He laughed, low and bitter, and shook his head in disbelief at himself. "Christine," he said in raw tones, "I'm -"

But she placed a finger over his lips, at once contrite and remorseful. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I should never have demanded that from you."

"You were right, though," he said, and the words seemed to leave him reluctantly. "I never did apologise to you. Not really."

In a rush, she released a breath she didn't realise she had been holding. "And what I said… I know how hard this has been for you."

"Harder for you, it seems." His voice was soft.

"It was wrong of me to blame you." But those words were still not enough. Half-blindly, her shaking hands went to his face, hovering tremulously on the severe lines of his jaw. Beneath the wasted skin, she thought she felt the dampness of tears and it was this that brought the words from her trembling lips. "Erik, I would do anything for you," she said quietly. "You know that, don't you?" She lifted her entreating gaze to his. "There is nothing you cannot ask of me."

"Except that you love me."

The sheer desperation in his voice burned within her. "Erik…" She bit back the words until it hurt. She could hear her only own heartbeat, loud as thunder in the silent room.

A resigned sigh passed his lips as her hands fell away helplessly to her sides. He would always ask, and her answer would always be the same. He already had too much of her. She had given him everything. She had given up everything. She would not surrender her soul to him. She could not.

The energy had drained from her body, and now she only felt tired - terribly so. She sat down helplessly on the bed. Why is this so hard?

"So what does that leave?" Erik's voice was low.

"I don't know," she said, but she did. It feels like an ending. But she pushed that thought away. I will never abandon him while he needs me. "I just… I don't know. What we do, or where we go from here."

"It leaves tonight." Impossible to read his expression in the subtle interplay of light and shade.

Christine smiled up at him, a little sadly. "And what about tomorrow?"

He did not answer, but instead sat down beside her on her the bed. She felt a shiver of warmth at his presence. It still unsteadied her, this swift change from madness to tenderness. Who was this strange man who had hypnotised her, drawn her so entirely into his dark world? Would she ever be free of him? She had allowed herself to be drawn willingly into this prison, and it had somehow turned into a palace. She still could not see the expression on his face. If she could, perhaps the words would never have left her.

"You did an incredible thing today, Erik. I will never forget it."

Divine sound, angelic eyes. She felt herself falling away into madness, into perfect clarity. His closeness stole her breath. The expression in his deep eyes was too eloquent, the depth of emotion she glimpsed within those dark orbs almost frightening in its sheer intensity. Her slender hands began unconsciously toying with the pale material of her skirts, threading the fine satin through and through fingers that had begun to tremble.

Erik's warm hand suddenly covered her own, stilling the agitated movements. All reason seemed to abandon her in a rush at the simple touch. His hold was gentle, achingly so, yet she could not have drawn away for all the power in the world. His rough palm smoothed over her own, old scars and callouses a constant reminder of what he had endured. Her fingers instinctively entwined with his in mute sympathy.

His downcast face was thrown in shadow. She stared, mesmerised, at their intertwined hands. Her pulse was singing beneath his carefully gentle fingers. A breathless sigh escaped her parted lips. Gently, with tender fingers, he caressed the soft skin.

She trembled, unmoving, as he lifted her hand to his lips. Trance-like, his lowered gaze drank in the pale skin that had become flushed with heat. Her heart began beating hard. She could feel his warm breath, a shuddering exhalation choked with desire, and still she could not move.

When he pressed his lips to the tender skin, Christine almost cried out. She was unable to speak through emotions she could not articulate. She felt they would overrun her.

With unbearable slowness, he turned her palm upwards and she felt the sleeves of her nightgown fall back, exposing the smooth skin of her bare arms. She closed her eyes, lost in sensation.

"Erik," she breathed unsteadily. Her skin was starting to burn within his impassioned hold. He began to trail slow kisses along her wrist and down the length of her inner arm. His lips were warm, soft, languid. She felt faint with longing as he tenderly worshipped her flesh with his mouth. My God…

Breathless whispers falling on her skin, inarticulate words hoarse with need. He was leaving a searing trail of fire in every fervent touch of his lips, and her other hand reached out, shaking violently, wanting to entwine in his dark hair, hold him to her -

"Erik!" Her voice was a soft, frantic cry. It seemed to come from outside herself. "Release my hand - please!"

Startled, he raised his head. She looked away from the flash of his troubled gaze. It seared through her like an arrow.

To her surprise, he obeyed at once, letting her hand fall onto the net of silk pooled in her lap. Christine clenched it into a fist, sick with misery.

They sat in silence for some moments. She could almost imagine the beat of that fierce heart, wild enough to shatter her.

Erik's gaze was still on her like a tangible weight, grim and sullen and brooding. She wondered if, at last, he finally hated her. It would almost be easier if he did (though my heart cannot stand any more breaking). Her stricken face was downcast as she tried to suppress the tremors passing through her body. He must have felt it, sat beside her as he was, but made no more of it than if she had been seated beside a silent shadow. But she saw a large hand clench against his knee and the furiously helpless gesture only increased her sense of guilt further, if that were possible. She could endure her own pain, but what restraint was this costing him?

"Why?" he said finally. And - oh! - the mournful, terrible longing in his voice. It could have stopped her heart. At last, she raised her eyes to his awful face; yet it was the unscarred side that was somehow harder to look at. Would she ever be able to stop this unfair cruelty?

"You know why," she said quietly.

Erik's jaw clenched with such force that he wondered it did not break. The Vicomte de Chagny. That golden-haired fool. The man possessed the world and held it so lightly. All else had been powerless over them, until he came. Nothing would have taken her from him but for de Chagny.

Why? Why must he steal from me the sole thing in this world that I hold dear?

The ardent suitor had pressed on her kisses of trembling, youthful devotion, caressed her upturned face with tender fingers, gold and porcelain against rose-hued blushes. All while Erik watched in furious silence, a ghost exiled in the shadows. The two of them, so beautiful, bound together in that fierce embrace; her arms white as snow, sweet as summer. She spun, dark curls flying wildly, limpid eyes full of light and joy. She had looked so radiant, so happy. Happy - without him. The scene still tortured his dreams. Spring came into her life, and winter forever in his. . A world of light, of ribbons and lace and fragrant gardens that was forever denied him. Everything he had offered her, given her, cast aside as though it meant nothing. He felt wretched with hopelessness, crushed by a weight heavier than the earth. His agony distorting into anger. He had risen from Apollo's lyre, a brooding, murderous shadow. I swear it, that nothing, nothing will ever part us.

I would have killed him then. But her happiness - her damned happiness made me hesitate. Or perhaps revenge whispered me to wait.

Oh, he had writhed, burned, tortured, schemed for hours to find a way, any way, to drag her beneath the earth, to him once more. He had burned the Opera House but that was nothing. He would have burned the world to reach her.

Joseph Buquet, Piangi – you killed them! You killed them! And you feel nothing – you really don't care, do you?

Oh, I cared. But not enough.

Erik held himself still, perspiring, gripped with emotion.

"Can I tell you something, Erik?" Christine's soft voice startled him, dragging him away from those horrifying recollections. "Something I have told no one?"

Her fine, delicate-featured face was troubled; he could see that as clearly as he could instinctively see any emotion Christine was experiencing, for her transparent nature never concealed itself from anyone. All that she felt expressed itself in her clear eyes, where there lurked no pettiness or deception that he had witnessed with such contempt in the other girls that flitted around the Opera Populaire. Christine had always unconsciously held herself apart from such trivial behaviour; her thoughts elsewhere, always following those high and pure ideals that led her to trust others blindingly, never seeming to realise there was anything remarkable in doing so.

"You can tell me anything."

He felt her slight frame shiver. "I tried to speak in the confessional, but I couldn't find the words. And tonight, I have been unable to sleep, just thinking endlessly…" Her voice trailed off.

It struck him as faintly ironic that he was the playing the part of a confessor, especially after everything that had transpired between them. Before, it had always been her helping him, consoling him, strengthening him… and now she came to him seeking comfort and guidance. And I am the last person in the world who has the right to give it to her.

"Have you ever had a glorious dream, so beautiful and vivid that on waking, life seems pale and listless by comparison?"

"I have had little enough cause to dream, Christine."

She paled to the lips. "I had a dream that I carried in my heart for years. And I thought I was on the threshold of it becoming reality. And now it seems further away from me than ever. And I don't merely mean this distance. Before then… ever since Raoul's brother died there's been something… hardened inside him. I have tried to pretend it wasn't there. He's always been so good to me… but I couldn't help noticing it. Yet I thought - I hoped - things could be as they were. That is all I have ever wanted."

Erik hated himself for the subtle thrill that ran through him at her words. He had already guessed much of this from her intoxicated ramblings that she clearly had no recollection of, but to have her earnestly confessing it before him like this…

"Or perhaps it is not him at all, but me… perhaps I am the one who has changed." She lifted her pale face to his in a wild sort of desperation. "Is it true, Erik? Am I really changed? But then, how am I so altered?"

Her entreating gaze pierced his heart. Erik suddenly remembered how he had kissed her, hard and desperately, as though he meant to be annihilated in it, and longing struck through him so intense that he felt it as a physical pain.

He gave her no answer, though he knew perfectly well the change she spoke of. He could see it clearly even now, that first glimpse of her, distressed and forlorn in the Parisian streets as the snows fell around her. Erik shuddered at the thought of what might have come of her had he not encountered her that night. A dear, dying prisoner in that coldly magnificent mansion.

"You have never seen that house, Erik. Sometimes I feel like I am walking through an illusion. It is so perfect and pristine I feel it must melt away to mist beneath my fingers. It seems like a mirage or a fragile house of cards. I have passed months within those walls, Erik, have committed them to memory until they are as familiar as the sight of my own hands, and yet it is no good. Hours and days yet still it is not home."

"And where is home, Christine?"

Her quiet laugh echoed between them. "Do you think I would be here, if I knew the answer to that?"

He glanced at her sharply, But there was no mockery in her expression; she merely looked pale and sad.

"Forgive me, Erik. That sounded crueller than I intended. But truly, I have no idea. Home was always wherever my father was. And when he died, all sense of home died with him… I've been wandering ever since." And no one to sing me lullabies in the storm, to calm the tempestuous elements that battle against me, that beat wildly within me.

"I thought it was so perfect. That we were perfect. Yet sometimes it all seems so superficial. I feel as though I am taking part in a strange game where no one has taught me the rules. It all comes so instinctively to Raoul, he was born into it. I don't know if I'm ready to be a part of that world. I don't know if I'll ever be ready. Perhaps - oh, this is so terrible of me - but perhaps that's partly why I agreed to come with you. So I could prolong this engagement."

Erik raised his eyebrows.

Christine looked at him quickly and a flush overrode the startling whiteness in her cheeks. "I didn't mean –"

"I know what you meant. I'll try not to be offended. Continue."

But she pressed her pale hands to her forehead. "Oh God, why am I telling you this? Why am I saying this?"

Now was his chance. Now was the opportunity to seize advantage of the situation and say what he had wanted to say for years. Words were his mastery. He could paint the prospect of a life among the Parisian aristocracy in drab grey colours; cast a forbidding shadow over a future in such an existence. He could do it. Had he not been silently praying and hoping for such a moment?

What was he waiting for?

I confessed, forgive me Father for I have sinned, beyond imagining, beyond enduring… I spoke until my throat burned and I could not see the darkness for tears. I recited the Pater Nosters and knew some blessed moments of calm and release -

Had he cleansed his soul, only to blacken it once more?

Why? Why must she tell me these things?

Each revelation burned and blasted him. Temptation hovered in the shadows of his mind. Let him do it. Let the Vicomte perish from her mind once and for all.

I have it in my power to destroy the man utterly, to crush the love out of her so entirely that not even the ashes will remain.

Yet she would not love me for it. No, she would only hate me forever.

He knew in his heart that her words came from tiredness and frustration and vulnerability. If he sought to turn Christine's mind against the man she loved, she would despise him for it tomorrow. Even she would not forgive him that. Could he derive any satisfaction from her hatred and despair? Had he not destroyed her enough? He had already betrayed her trust so many times.

How could he be a demon to such an angel?

Erik could not help but observe the irony. He had been waiting for this chance, and now it was here, he did not want it. Oh, I hate him still. But I love her more.

"You are saying these things because you're tired and upset." His tone was flat and emotionless. This is necessary. I will not allow my hopes to be destroyed again. I believe it would kill me. "You will forget you ever felt this way in the morning. I think it best that you go to bed."

Christine half-turned, the shadow of a whisper. She swallowed, and looked at him, her upturned face resolute. He could see himself reflected in the dark circles of her irises

"Do you want me to leave?" Her voice was very quiet.

A wild energy shook through his frame, though he tried to hold himself still. His gaze held hers and she did not look away.

"No," he said hoarsely.

"Then I'll stay," she said, as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

"Tell me about Perros," he said.

They were lying still, shoulder to shoulder, her softness a blissful warmth at his side. The candle flame was almost extinguished, a faint quiver of incense hovering in the still air. Christine started and sighed at his voice, so close. She shifted position slightly, turning her head so she was facing him. Her cheek resting on the curve of her arm, the glimpse of her face a pale, curving shadow, achingly beautiful.

"Perros?" she repeated.

"You used to talk of it all the time when I was teaching you at the Opera. Now you never mention it. I just wondered why."

Her soft lips parted in a faint smile. "It was my favourite place in all the world."

"Was?"

She sighed, though it seemed to come more from resignation than unhappiness. "People change. Things that seemed significant in childhood pale as we grow up. And Perros was like… a fairytale."

"You don't believe in fairytales?"

He read the answer in her wistful eyes. "Not as I once did. But I will always love Perros. Even now the sea satisfies some craving in me."

"The sea is the strongest and cruellest thing we know." He could barely form the words, though he spoke truthfully. He sometimes thought it was the only thing outside his music that responded to the wild moods in his soul, filled his stormy heart with a fierce, savage delight.

"For you, perhaps. But the strongest and cruellest thing I know is you."

Before Erik could try and articulate a response, she sat upright, and his body felt bereft at the loss of her. But then she leaned over and he could almost feel her quick intake of breath, close to his face, her falling hair a dark veil between them, the loose waves becoming lost in the gossamer folds of her nightgown. She peered intently at him, almost childlike, as she sought to read his expression.

He lay still under the silent scrutiny, holding her in his gaze until his eyes burned. How strange that now the sight of her evoked worship, not desire. She seemed no longer a merely a girl but a holy vision, a part of his spiritual life, conveying a radiant separateness from the secular world and all its pains. She radiated within his inner darkness a powerful and unquenchable light.

Breath. A baptism. Memory stole over him sweetly in that soft light that seemed to blur past and present. He saw her as she once was: a pale girl in a white dress, crowned with an aureole of dark hair. She had fascinated and stirred his pity from the first: the lonely child haunted by loss, stranded in a world that was not hers. And as the years passed, the more she tried to be someone she was not and bury her fire beneath a calm, fragile exterior, she died a little more inside. But, lurking in the shadows, Erik had seen her, Christine, the true Christine; the broken girl enslaved by society, overlooked by those who were supposed to care for her, unaware of her true power. And he loved it all - the frailty and the strength, the frost and the fire. He had recognized his true soul mate and sought to bring her back to life. And she had let him. For a time. There had been a glimmer, a spark, and it set them on fire. Would he ever know such annihilating completeness again?

He closed his eyes and heard again the divine music that pierced his soul. It was filled with a beauty that transcended reason. Transcending him to a place where nothing else mattered, only the absolute intensity of every emotion that he could possibly comprehend.

You sang.

And we were… we were… wewere.

It was…

All.

With an effort, Erik heaved himself upright, resting his back against the wooden headboard. He could feel the cool air against his skin, strange, considering he had spent his nights in heat and fever (dreaming and burning of her, endlessly). He had imagined her in this room so many times; with him, beneath him as he plunged into her body, drawing her to the heights of ecstasy. But he had never imagined her just being here, trusting him entirely and knowing no fear. He barely seemed possible. She knew all the darkest, ugliest parts his soul yet stayed unconditionally by his side, believing in him, doing everything she could for him.

"From the very first moment I saw you," he said, hearing himself speak as though from a great distance, "I knew there was something different about you."

"I remember." Her voice was dreamy with recollection. "The night I heard your voice."

"No. It was before that. Before I had even thought of appearing to you. It was just another rehearsal. Nothing extraordinary. But there was something. You looked as alone as I felt. And I wanted to comfort you."

"You did. And you still are."

"Some comfort," he said, a little bitterly.

Lightly, Christine rested her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him, her bright face radiant and inspired, the clarity of spirit shining through. Her eyes the mirror of his, the same, yet a reversal. "In all my life," she said. "I have never known anyone with such a capacity for love as you."

"You told me once," he said in a low voice, "That what I felt for you wasn't love. Lust, I believe you called it, and a desire to possess."

He glimpsed the flash of remorse pass across her transparent features, and he knew then that she would have given anything to take those words back. "Erik," she said seriously. "You are full of love. That is what you are, who you are. You follow your heart in everything you do, wherever it might lead you. I realise that now. Even if you believe in nothing else. Believe that."

Erik searched her face intently. He was aware only of those great dark eyes, still a little troubled, lucent with the remnant of sadness. The last vestiges of candlelight caught within those grave depths. He could have fallen before her in adulation, yet he could not move. She leaned forward and the soft press of her lips against his scarred cheek astounded him.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"I haven't done anything."

"Yes, you have. Just being here, listening to me. It means so much."

He lay back in the sheltering darkness, and she sank down beside him in a rustle of silken fabric, the fragrant waves of her hair settling around them. Only remarkable stillness now, caught as they were between light and dark. Reverent silence filling the room. She breathed easier now, the frenetic tempo of her heart slowed to a gentle ebbing.

"Sometimes I used to think I had dreamed you into being," she murmured. So soft and close to him. A mere extension of himself. The only peace he had ever known. "You came when I needed you most. When I thought all hope had left me forever. I sometimes feel that everyone is a stranger to me but you."

"Are you real, Erik?" The brush of her soft hand across his tense brow, the scarred flesh of his face. The faintest echo of a caress. Her fingers lacing through the coarse strands of his hair. "Even now, I still feel I hardly know."

"I am as real as you, Christine."

"I think you are a ghost that will fade away by morning." Her voice was a murmur, heavy with drowsiness.

The soft exhalation of air against his skin was almost indistinguishable from his own. Warm legs tangled in his, confined still by the clinging skirts, and Erik could only long and pray that one day they might lie in such a manner with no material barriers between them. Yet still this separation, this exquisite sorrow. But he was close to her, closer than he had been even when holding her body in passion. It stirred him beyond understanding. He loved without thought, without reason. That all-encompassing ache he had endured silently for years remained undiminished. He must always see her, must always hear her voice. To have her love him was now the necessary condition of his existence.

"What now, Christine?" he whispered in demand.

There was no answer.

Erik glanced sidelong at her and saw the dark crescents of her closed lashes, startling in the paleness of her face, her hair a riotous disorder of curls spread across the coverlet. Slender fingers were caught in the folds of his shirt, a gesture both childlike and possessive that oddly touched his heart. Her pale cheek was warm against his.

Could she love him? Could she?

His hand smoothed away the errant tendrils of dark hair that clung to her forehead. Her lips moved unconsciously, as though in prayer. The lines of purity and the delicate contours of her face were still with peace, and it seemed to Erik that he would remember the sight of it always.

"Sleep Christine," he whispered.

He felt strangely purified.