I really enjoyed writing this chapter! And it has been a long time coming. Apologies for that. As per my other story update I have been SO busy with design work and my music; I have been in the studio and as any musicians out there know, it is both time consuming and exhausting... but fun :). AND i got an internship. SO, YAY. Thank you for the kind reviews! They have been very helpful and motivational. Let me know what you think as always :)

Phanty belongs to Leroux and Lloyd Weber.

Erik

I poured a glass of Merlot and walked over to my organ; stepping over pieces of what were once much loved artworks, items of furniture, god knows what else. I sat down at my organ. The glass was used; they all were. My home had been in disrepair since the night Christine had left and it appeared that I had destroyed all but one glass in my rampage. I did not bother to wash it. It had become something of a habit over the past few weeks. Not something to be proud of but I suppose that it is something else to add to that list. My clothes were disheveled, as was I. My usually pristine appearance had been sullied by my own carelessness but what did it matter? Who was there to judge me; to see me?

At least one good thing had come of this. I had had time to concentrate on my music. I had begun to compose a new opera; something unlike anything I had ever done or even heard. I would... coerce the company into performing it, and perhaps I would even cast myself as the lead! Imagine that! I laughed to myself and was about to take a sip of the burgundy miracle elixir and lose myself once more when I heard a bell; my alarm.

I scratched my unshaven chin, perplexed. That particular bell had been for my water catchment trap. Who could it be? My eyes widened as the worst possible answer to that question flooded my thoughts. I dropped my wine glass and the liquid covered my leg and the piano bench beneath it but I hardly noticed.

Christine.

What if it was Christine?

I picked up my sword from where it lay discarded on the ground, in case it was someone else. Taking nothing else, I rushed from my home and hastily made my way to where I hoped I would not find Christine. I would never be able to forgive myself. With each passing second I became increasingly aware that Christine had triggered the alarm. The only other person who knew their way in was Madame Giry, and she would not make such a mistake. I ran through the caverns, praying to a higher power that she would be alright; that I would get there in time. Finally I reached the edge of the water to see the wrought-iron gate slowly lowering with Christine underneath it.

What was she doing here!?

Her head was still above water.

Thank god.

"Erik!" She called. I felt my chest tighten as she looked at me with those eyes; a mixture of relief and desperation. They beckoned me to help her; to save her. What if I could not?

Knowing that there was no time to spare I threw my sword down and began to pull at the lever next to me.

It did not abate. The gate was lowering still.

"Erik." She called once more.

I felt my heart beating faster than it ever had. I pulled with all my might and when I saw her head submerge I became violent with desperation.

One breath.

One breath was all it took for her lungs to be filled with water and would be the end. She would drown. A few seconds was all I had.

Hold on, Christine.

With all my might I pulled at the iron lever. The seconds that passed felt like an eternity until finally to my utter, heart-wrenching relief, the gate began to rise.

Yes. Yes.

The gate rose but Christine did not surface.

No.

As soon as the gap was large enough for me to enter the chilling body of water, I slid in and emerged with a seemingly lifeless Christine.

"Christine!" I called, trying to shake her as I pulled her from the depths. I pulled her out of the water and lay her on the cold, stone floor. I could not help but feel a terrible sense of helplessness at the sight of her before me. Her skin was pale. She was still. She was not breathing.

"Christine!" I called, kneeling down next to her and shaking; the shakes becoming more violent as she refused to wake. "Christine... Please wake. Please." I began to cry into her soaked hair. I had to calm myself. I had to focus. I had only seconds left. There had to be something that could be done. I thought back to the many books I had read over the years. I wracked my brain for information that might save her.

Suddenly, I remembered something. I began attempting to blow air into her lungs. I had read about a procedure at length; very experimental in nature but one that might save her. I had never had any real world practice but I didn't have a choice. I had to do whatever I could; there was no one else. I held her head back and placed my lips upon her own; my harried, desperate mind allowing me a brief memory of the last time our lips had touched as I did so.

"Christine, why would you do this? Why?" I looked up, figuratively addressing the heavens or whatever the equivalent for someone like me would likely be. "Why would you do this to me? Have I not suffered enough?!"

Just when I thought that I might lose myself in grief and anxiety, she began coughing up water.

"Christine!" I called, immediately pulling her into an embrace before she could even open her eyes. I don't know whether it was an act purely out of reflex or something else but she clung to me then and I realized how much I had missed her, and how grateful I was that she was alive. "Thank you. Thank you." I cried into her hair, not exactly sure who I was thanking. Even if she did not wish to be around me, she was still in this world and that was more important. "Why did you come, Christine! You could have been killed!" I could feel her warm breath on the right side of my face when moments before I could not.

My face...

My hand flew to my cheek and it took but a second for me to realize that I had lost my mask and wig somewhere in the water. The last thing she needed after the scare she had had was to see my ghastly face staring down at her. Gently laying her back down on the stone floor, I jumped back into the water to retrieve these most precious items and thankfully I managed to pull myself back out of the water and replace them before she could open her eyes.

When she did, all the animosity I had harboured over the weeks threatened to melt away. Her eyes were just how I had remembered them; clear, sparkling, innocent... She was alive and I did not care about anything else. But I could not give in... not after how we had left things. She was alive, and I was ecstatic but there was a reason she had come, there was a reason she had stayed away. She had asked me to return her to the surface because she did not trust me... I had spent weeks agonizing over the fact and now that she was here in front of me, the pain was excruciating.

"Erik..?" She called, sitting up slightly. It took everything I had not to rush to her side.

"Yes. I am here. Are you alright now?" I asked, still standing on the edge of the water.

"Yes." She said. She reached out to me with her small, exhausted arms; beckoning my embrace, my touch... beckoning me of all things. "Please, come to me." I wanted to resist, I wanted to keep hold of my stoic disposition and stay well away from her but I could see that she was visibly shaking. Slowly I walked over to her, still dripping myself and sat down. Immediately she wrapped her arms around me and without thinking, I did the same.

"Thank you." She said. "I... I had missed you..."

How dare she say that to me now? Had she any idea the pain it caused? I cleared my throat audibly.

"When you are strong enough to walk, let me know. I am sure that you wish to return to the surface right away, but I will need to change first, as should you..." I had to take her to my home. As much as she would dread it, I had to for the sake of her health and mine. "In fact, we should go now. It will help you to get warm." Better to get it over with. The sooner she was well, the sooner she could leave; return to her world.

She agreed and during the short walk to my home she improved greatly, much to my relief. Much of it was in knee deep water but she did not complain. We did not speak for the duration. I wondered why she had come but dared not voice my concerns, not yet. She had probably come out of pity, or to see whether I was still alive... had we not met under such desperate circumstances I would not have spoken to her at all. As we got to the shore of my home, I set her down on a large, padded chair I usually used specifically for reading and stood up.

"I will make you some tea in order to keep you warm." I said sternly and turned towards the kitchen. It was then that she spoke.

"You told me that you would be watching down on me, always." She said icily. I turned to face her. How dare she speak to me in such an accusatory way after what I had been through over the past weeks? I could not believe what I was hearing.

"What sort of Angel are you?" She added. My eyes widened.

"I just saved your life, Christine."

"I'm not talking about tonight."

Was she talking about the weeks between our last meeting and now? The weeks I had spent in agonizing solitude?

Christine

I found myself furious with him. I had almost died trying to see him and he didn't appear to be in the least bit glad to see me. "You told me that you would be watching down on me, always. What sort of angel are you?" His eyes widened and they took on a frightening glow as he walked back towards me.

"I am no angel Christine! I am but the devil, him self! Don't you find that more apt? I do!"

"This isn't you..." I said.

"Who am I? Do you have the slightest idea? No. You do not."

"You are Erik, remember? Like you said... you... were still the same person." Ever since we had parted I had been thinking on the words we had last exchanged. I regretted what I had said and I was sure that he felt the same. Yes, he had murdered and I was horrified by the fact but his words; his pleas had been eating away at me for weeks.

He had every right to be short with me but he had turned into someone else; The Phantom. This was the last thing that I wanted. I had hoped that by likening him to 'The Angel' once more I would remind him of how we used to be. I was wrong. It had done the opposite.

"Erik..." He exhaled deeply and turned away from me. "Erik is just... another name. Just a dream I was living for a time..."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, reaching out to touch his arm. He jerked away from my touch and took a step back. He stood with his fists clenched, looking toward the lake. "Erik, I came back because..."

"It does not matter why you came." He said; his voice dark.

"Yes, it does! Why won't you listen to me?"

"Where did you go!? I called for you, for weeks I tried to find you but you would not show yourself to me. Why?"

"How quickly you forget, Christine. You ordered me away..."His voice broke on the last few words. "Do you remember? You asked me to take you to the surface! You begged me! It broke my heart!" He yelled, now only inches from me. He sighed. "I kept away because you asked me to..." He turned and walked away, still soaked and leaving a trail of water in his wake. He walked into a room next to where I remembered the kitchen to be and closed the door.

"But why did you just go missing?" I yelled, standing up and walking to his room. A childish question, I knew that. But his evasiveness was infuriating. "You just left me!" Without thinking I pushed open his door. Immediately his hand flew to his face and he turned his back to me. Hastily replacing his mask before I could glimpse what lay beneath it. I was frozen; in shock at what I saw. Evidently I had caught him changing. He was wearing a dry pair of trousers and had just removed his soaked shirt. Part of me regretted what I had done but part of me did not... It wasn't the fact that I had never seen a man in such a state; it was more the shock of who it was that I was seeing. In spite of my ordeal I felt my cheeks redden at what was before me as I took it all in. Erik spun around as soon as I had entered.

"Do I possess no rights to privacy anymore?" He asked, snatching a crisp, white shirt from within his cupboard. "It seems like every other day I am receiving unexpected visitors." Was he talking about Madame Giry? Was he talking about... me? Even after how I had left him, part of me had expected him to be happy to see me. The man I had come to know would never have been so abrupt with me, so rude. Still, in spite of the fact that he had admonished my doing so, I stared. I could not help it. As he turned back around and I was faced with his back once, my eyes were met with what appeared to be scarring; abstract patterns, white in color tracing over the expanse of his back.

They had to be scars... but there were so many.

"Erik... Your back. It's..."

"It is nothing. You should not have seen it." He pulled his shirt around his shoulders and walked towards me. I could not begin to process what I had seen before he spoke again. "You should not have seen me at all. You should not have come." He pushed past me and walked out of the bedroom.

"I should not have come?" I challenged, rushing past him and standing before him. "Why did you save me if I should not have come?" He sighed and began fastening the buttons on his shirt.

"I do not wish for you to come to harm, Christine." His eyes softened. "I would never want that."

"Well what do you want?" I asked. He looked up and held my gaze with that fierce intensity I had remembered... I had missed. "Do you have any clue at all?"

"I know what I want. That much I have made clear." He stepped closer to me, perhaps intentionally intimidating me with his proximity. "Do you know what you want?"

I looked down. I did know. I knew but i was afraid to admit it...

"I... thought I knew."

Erik scoffed and he lifted his gaze.

"Like I said. You should not have come. You should change out of those clothes before you become Ill. I will return you to the surface..." His eyes narrowed. "Where you so wish to be; where you know that you belong." He made to push past me.

"Wait..." I said, placing a hand on his chest before he could take a step. As our flesh made contact we looked at one another and I felt him inhale sharply. His eyes softened once more and for a moment I saw the Erik I had known months ago. He froze where he was. Perhaps he did not want to disturb my hand where it lay, lest I remove it. After a moment of silence, he spoke and when he did his voice was no longer harsh and commanding. It was the opposite; soft and apprehensive, almost painful in its sincerity. I studied his face as I had so yearned to for the past few weeks. He hadn't been sleeping, there was evidence of that. He also looked as though he hadn't groomed himself in some time and he had become noticeably thinner. I knew that it was partly my doing, and I hated myself for it but I had to remind myself that I had left for a reason. I was not completely at fault.

"Why... are you here?" He asked, looking down at my hand in disbelief. "Why are you doing this to me..?" I searched his eyes.

"Doing..?"

"Are you oblivious to your affect on me? Do you know how much it pains me just to look at you? And... to know that I... can't." He moved to touch my face but pulled his hand away at the last second; his clenched fist falling to his side.

"I... I just wanted to see you." I stammered.

Erik scoffed again before smiling faintly. Still not meeting my gaze, he lifted his hand up to where mine was and began tracing my fingers apprehensively, gently; delicately. As if he was afraid that in some way he would damage me if he committed too much to the touch. As if he was a danger to me.

That was exactly how I had acted when I had last seen him.

Perhaps he was a danger to me. That was why I had left, wasn't it? But as I looked in his eyes, I saw a different person. Erik was back. I was beginning to see that Erik and The Phantom were two separate people, or at least in his mind. Perhaps that was his coping mechanism... Perhaps he detached from himself from time to time. Perhaps that was how gotten through the tribulations of his life up until now.

"Why did you want to see me?" He asked, finally meeting my gaze.

Why did I want to see him? Over the past few weeks I had become increasingly certain of my feelings for the man, but conflicted in having them. Now that he was here before me, I could not lie. I could not lie to myself or him. I did not understand my feelings but I could no longer deny their presence.

"Because..." I looked down. "I love you."

Let me know what you think! :)

I hope that I'm keeping everyone in character!