Eventually, while visiting Christine in her dressing room one night after a performance, Erik works up the nerve to propose. Christine accepts, and they have only a short engagement before the big day.
How many times has she dreamt of this? Nights, mornings, rehearsals, lessons, walks. Too many times to count, to ever begin to guess at. She has often wondered how she would feel when the moment came, and now the moment has come and for all the times she has wondered at it this feels like a dream. Is she certain she is awake? Is she certain this is real? For all she knows she might have collapsed on the stage, or be hallucinating.
Erik does not turn around, maintains that piece of tradition even if nothing else about them is traditional. But Farhad looks. Farhad looks back at her, and gives her a barely perceptible nod, and Mamma is smiling at her even with her handkerchief clutched in her hand, and Sorelli in front of her has already reached the altar, and this is real, it is.
Papa would be proud. He told her to be happy, to find someone she could love, and she did, though sometimes she thinks it's more that Erik found her. Erik found her, heard her by chance, and her heart is so full with all she feels she could never speak it to him, never hope to.
She is trembling, fine tremors running over her skin but it is not from cold. Not at all from cold.
Papa would like Erik. For all of Erik's oddities she has no doubt of that. A musician, an artist so in tune with melody that she thinks it must flow in his blood. Papa would be so happy that it is Erik, would welcome him without a single doubt so long as he makes her happy. And he does. Oh, he does.
Only a few more steps and she will be beside her fiancé. Fiancé. Soon her husband. She will stand there, and the priest will say his words, and they will take their vows, and Erik will be crying and trying to fight it as he slips the ring onto her finger, and then he will kiss her. And she will hug him, just hold him for a long time. And they will walk away, arm in arm, husband and wife, and she will cease to be Mademoiselle Christine Daaé, will instead be Madame Christine Delacroix.
Did her mother have these trembling, twisting nerves when she married Papa?
Did Mamma have them when she married the Professor?
She has no doubt that marrying Erik is the right thing to do. She wants to marry him with every fibre of her being, wants to pledge herself to him and hold him for the rest of their lives. But these nerves, these awful fluttering nerves.
No wonder she couldn't sleep last night.
No wonder she couldn't eat this morning.
Only a couple of steps left.
She swallows, and curls her fingers tight around the roses she carries, and now, now at last Erik turns, just slightly. Just enough for him to catch her eye. And even though he is not wearing his mask, even though he stands exposed before God, before the priest, before these people who are the closest in the world to them, he smiles, ever so slightly.
And Christine's heart soars, and she is there.