Would Christine Daee call herself lucky? Well, all things considered at present, she supposed to herself that from the perspective of a regular Opera Populaire employee of any sorts, she would be seen as very lucky. Of course she would be - she had gone from a promising ballet rat who hardly caught eyes amidst all the other pretty ballerinas, to somebody whose voice was praised and deemed one belonging to an angel and, as everybody at the Opera was well aware, if it wasn't for La Carlotta's volatility and mood swings, she could even have become the Prima Donna.

She had received flowers, she had been lavished with attention and gifts, she had crowds waiting for her at the Opera doors, and she had gained attention of Raoul, the handsome Vicomte, patron of the Opera Populaire and… her childhood sweetheart.

And with all that considered, it wouldn't do, wouldn't even be proper to admit that Christine didn't feel lucky because of all of that at all. Yes, it was… nice, if that's what the word for it was. But she couldn't help thinking to herself, imagining what it would be like if everything had just gone on like it had done before the fame and glory, because then, she would still have her angel of music.

In sleep he sang to her. In her dreams he came. And she had seen him - not an angel, but a man - and met him in her dressing room mirror.

And perhaps everything could have gone on very well, if she hadn't pulled the Opera Ghost's mask from his face as he sat at his pipe organs.

What followed made her question everything she knew. His violent outburst, his words, his curses, the way his hand had shaken as he shadowed the mangled side of his face, his mismatched eyes flashing with rage so volcanic she was convinced that she had been deceived, for this had been no angel. This had been a creature of darkness, perhaps even the devil himself.

And if she didn't know what a beautiful soul he had, what he was able of producing when he sat himself at his organs and sang in his golden voice as deep and potent as every drop of water in the oceans combined, if he hadn't spent the last five years of her life being the only true friend she had in the Opera, singing her to sleep when she cried, teaching her to sing as she expected the angel of music to do, she would have never gone back to him again, for he was the Opera Ghost and a had hands which killed.

But against everything, he was her angel of music, she told herself whenever she thought about him - which was a lot more than propriety permitted - and did she have the right to simply cast him away, after all he had done for her? They shared a bond so knotted and complex that not even this sudden gong to her reality could sever it completely. And this reality was different to whatever castle she had built in her naive mind, but one thing about it was certain - her angel of music was a man who was broken, and casting him away would only make him more so and it would be a move of pushing him to succumb to his darkness.

Would that be an action worthy of her? Would that be an action that God would approve of?

No, it wouldn't, she knew, but it was such a dangerous story she was progressing that she was certain it could almost weigh as much as suicide.

And would Christine call herself lucky under these circumstances? No. Heavens, she would not.

If Christine was good at one thing, she thought before she met the Phantom of the Opera, it was soothing flames within other people. Her nature was not a volatile one in any respect. In fact, it was the opposite - she never remembered shouting back when people argued with her. She had always managed to somehow wind down any sparks and rage by one way or another. Meg had once told her that it was near to impossible to shout at her for good reason, which was near to none (she had said) and to simply be horrible without conscience, well, it took the character of a certain Prima Donna to do that.

But whenever Christine was with him - with Erik, her ange - she never soothed any flames. No, she seemed to be the sole purpose of his violent outbursts and the catalyst to the explosion of his volatile nature.

Despite the gaping cracks in the foundation of their complex and rather rickety relationship, she continued to attend his lessons and he continued to teach her, and they both pretended best they could that there was absolutely nothing wrong and nothing wedged between them, him in his cold and capricious way, her in her silence and obedience and demeanour that should have belonged to a child, not a woman completely responsible for her own actions.

And though the aforementioned sounded ridiculous - it was, but Christine had gotten so used to the absurdity of her situation she never really thought it as such anymore - it got even more ridiculous, because her ange, the Opera Ghost who stamped his letters in crimson ink and created skulls to seal his threateningly polite letters, who for many was the very reason why they never left the safety of their dormitories after dark, was in love with her to the point of madness.

So was Christine lucky? Ah, bother with stupid questions and pretences aimed at the jealous of the opera. No, she wasn't, because she feared the man like a real angel, but who hadn't come from above.

She wondered if he knew it, if he could tell. Her face must have shown him, her inclination to flinching whenever he came near her or made any sudden movements, and yet if this saddened him, she didn't know. All too often all she could see in his eyes - in the green one concealed by his white mask and the blue on the smooth side of his face - was anger and bitterness and things which came along with living in the darkness of the catacombs.

Yet he came for her every day on the stroke of four in the afternoon, right after her ballet practice ended, and she would walk towards the dressing room with her muscles constricting as though they were the ones holding breath, not her lungs, pausing only to respire when she was sure of the click of the lock and she had drawn the key away.

Then, he would speak her name, they would exchange a strange greeting, always bordering on cold civility and some sort of strange ledge of being slightly glad to see one another, and he would lead her down to his home in the catacombs, rowing her in the gondola with never a word, then helping her out and teaching her how to sing.

They never spoke a word above anything which didn't regard their music. It was a language in itself, and when they partook in it, they forgot their cracks and instability and wove their souls into one for a few blissful moments, before it was time for Christine to go back.

But today, it was different, because when Christine clicked the lock shut with her key, he wasn't a tall, ominous looming shadow in his black cape and white mask, with his terrible, capable hands gloved in black leather.

He was simply not there at all.

Christine knew it at an instant. She didn't even need to call out to check, but she did so anyway.

"Maestro?"

When silence answered her, her brows furrowed slightly in a frown, because he always came. Perhaps he was late, but that was impossible because he was always clinical in his approach to punctuality and order. She was the one who was reprimanded for not keeping to his preferred routine, the other way around being completely out of the question. She called again, though with a slightly softer edge to her tone which she hadn't intended, daring to call his name, as though that would somehow summon him.

"Erik?"

Still, no answer. He really was not there.

After waiting for another fifteen minutes, Christine was unsure of what to do. To leave and then have him appear after, and then having to stand and listen to him grinding his teeth together and raising his head whilst he taught her his music - for the next couple of days, mind, for things like this were seldom resolved straight away and often required many layered apologies on her part - or to stay and wait patiently, finding something useful to do.

The latter was the wiser choice, and that is what she did. She sat herself upon her stool and started fiddling with the ribbons and lace on the table.

The red roses he had left her had been tied with a black ribbon. Christine wouldn't admit this aloud, but she had always felt a warm glow when she found one waiting for her. Well, before she found out what his hands and rage were capable of.

Now, as she smoothed the ribbons, she kept glancing at the mirror for some sign of his appearance, though he was always as invisible behind it as he was behind one of the walls. Another ten minutes ticked by, then another, and another; he was forty-five minutes late.

And perhaps if their relationship was any different, Christine would have retained this to tease him with later. The day in which the Opera Ghost was late.

But their relationship wasn't an easy one. Christine didn't even know what it was, and after another few moments of consideration she decided to leave it under the teacher, student label.

She sighed and looked at the glass, and for the first time during her time spent waiting, she felt a pang of unease. What if something had happened to him?

But that thought was almost as absurd as their relationship. Nothing happened to the Opera Ghost. Nothing happened to her angel of music. He was omniscient, he knew everything about Opera Populaire, every passage, every crevice. Accidents strayed from him like bats from light.

And yet, he wasn't there.

Christine rose, placing the ribbon she had been smoothing to the side. He is just a man, she told herself as she approached the mirror, bad things can happen to men.

She went right up to the mirror, then with some hesitance placed her knuckles to its surface in a gentle knock.

"Erik?" she whispered, then cleared her throat and called a little louder, "Ange!"

When no answer came, she sucked in a breath and grasped the edge of the mirror, even though she knew it couldn't come undone without the lever being pulled upon the other side, and the motion was futile-

The mirror budged. Christine's eyebrows shot up, because this was all very strange. The Phantom leaving a lever undone? It could not be. He was always so careful, so scrupulous in each action and move, hark, even each movement was precise as far as it concerned him, each sweep of his cape and each inclination of his head was never a degree off-course.

And so Christine slid the mirror open, because her heart started to clamour and her mind started painting strange scenarios in which he was no longer in her life, in which the Opera Ghost's demise was announced in the papers after he had been found with his neck broken in one of the corridors, perhaps slipped during some unfortunate accident, lying alone and quite gone and with his soul still black.

Silence, she told herself. Panic or any sort of unsolicited trajectories of thought shouldn't have been allowed in her mind. She was a grown woman, not a child, for heaven's sake, and should know better than to be hysterical for a man she barely even knew.

The mirror provided enough of a gap for her to slip inside, into the dark passageway leading down to the Opera Ghost's kingdom, but Christine did not dare to enter, even though she had been the one to open it wide, at least not straight away.

She tried calling again, but his name simply echoed down the passage and bounced around the cold stone until it was nothing but a lisp.

She didn't have to go too far. She would just reach the end of the corridor, call his name again, then turn back and slide the mirror shut. So she made to execute her plan; she took one step into the mirror, paused, then looked at the door she had locked. She had locked it, didn't she?

Christine hesitated, then saw the key on the table. With an internal nod, she turned to descend into the dimly-lit darkness, when she almost had a heart attack, because she set her eyes on his silhouette, like a real phantom there in the darkness.

She only gasped silently, her voice temporarily taken, then breathed out a sigh and let go of the mirror, slightly guiltily.

"Christine?"

Perhaps Erik had wanted his voice to be as stern as it usually had been, and Christine wouldn't have picked up on his slight hoarseness if he hadn't stepped into the light enough for her to see the exposed part of his face well.

She paused, her heart giving a strange flip, because his eyes were raw and red as though he had wept.

They looked at one another. Christine tried to take her eyes off his face but found that she couldn't; Erik fixed his mismatched eyes onto her with something like displeasure on the features she could see.

She wouldn't have usually asked him anything, for he hated questions, like the calm waters hated to be disturbed by pebbles thrown at its surface, but she had waited almost an hour for him and her heart was still thumping after he made her jump.

"Maestro," she managed, softly, "what happened?"

His mouth pursed in displeasure. Perhaps he didn't want to be reminded of the reason why he was late, or perhaps he just really hated being associated with any sort of untied ends.

She felt the urge to explain, her eyes still on his countenance. "Your face."

Perhaps she shouldn't have been so blunt, given present circumstances. A slight sneer appeared on his lips.

"My face, Christine?" There was a slight scoff to his tone. "Isn't that the heart of the problem?"

"No," Christine retreated out of the mirror, back into the lit room, feeling his temper stirring. "I meant here." She pointed to her right side, the reflection of Erik's unmasked face. "You look…"

She searched for words. When none came for a few moments, her teacher simply shook his head.

"Come," he said instead. "Enough time has already been wasted. And if you get any ideas of exploring the underground, again," he added, when the mirror had been slid shut and he began to lead her forward, "unless you would like to disappear forever and your corpse to be found a few decades after you do so in one of the many pits there are here, leave the mirror alone."

Christine felt a poke of indignation at his words.

"I didn't want to explore the underground. I wanted to call you. I thought…"

Erik's step faltered slightly in its rhythm as she dithered whether to tell him or not.

"I thought something had happened."

That was as far as she was willing to go, in admitting - both to herself and to him - that she cared enough to risk looking for him after strange irregularities in his behaviour.

Erik slowed. She watched him turn, his eyes glinting in the light the torch he held provided.

"Unnecessarily."

"Then what detained you?"

He watched her without speaking. Again, Christine looked at the right side of his face, noting the strange hoarseness to his voice which was never there.

And was she mistaken, as she looked at a slight drop of sweat snaking down the left side of his face?

"Teacher?" she whispered, abandoning plans of feigning she wasn't disconcerted.

"Let's go," was all he said in an airy tone, and perhaps he would have even been convincing if at that moment he hadn't turned and dropped the torch he was holding.

Christine jumped back as it rolled to the side, making irregularities in the light upon the walls, then jumped forward before her mind could evaluate her muscles' request and took him under one arm as he swayed with one hand splayed across the wall for support.

"Erik, Erik," she breathed, as she clutched on the arm hidden beneath the heavy layers of black cloak, "you're unwell."

"I'm very well, Christine," he muttered, his eyes closed. "This is nothing to even begin taking into consideration-"

He gave a yelp which sounded like he had been prodded with a sharp edge as Christine pressed a hand to the exposed part of his face to check for a fever, making both of them jump.

He shot backwards, his back against the wall, panting, as Christine's eyes widened and she stumbled a few steps for distance along with him.

"I'm so sorry!" She searched him in panic. "Did I hurt you?"

It took him a while to respond, to Christine's steadily-growing unease. After a moment he straightened, placed two fingers to the temple she had touched and drew in a shaky breath.

"You could never hurt me. Not with your hands," he added in an undertone, his voice lined with bitterness.

Christine decided to dwell on it later. "Then why-?"

"I've grown rather… unaccustomed to touch," he admitted with some impatience, then bent and picked up the torch off the floor. "Forgive me if I frightened you."

"You're frightening me now," she said, as she looked upon her angel of music, with a hoarseness to his voice and his usually taught shoulders sunken as though he had an impossible weight upon them, as his lingering fingers at his head. "I need to know what the matter is. Your forehead was hot, you have a fever."

When he didn't deny it, she pressed on. "You have a fever, Erik, you are sick. You shouldn't give me a lesson today-"

"Nonsense. My fingers can move upon instrument keys just fine."

"And your head?" she replied, looking pointedly at him. "You look as though you need to lie down and rest."

He turned his face towards her, and she saw darkness of anger in his eyes, which almost made her stumble back again.

"The Opera Ghost doesn't need rest, nor your sympathy," he said coldly. "Now, Miss Daae. Your performances were very good the past couple of weeks, but it wouldn't do to forsake your lessons just because life is going your way."

Christine pressed her lips together and didn't reply, though she knew her eyes conveyed exactly what she felt upon the matter. She wasn't using this as an excuse not to sing, which they both knew was absurd to even assume, but she felt a spike of anger at the way he pushed her away.

He regarded her with ice in his eyes, then turned and moved forward.

Still, Christine watched him, as she followed him, as he helped her into the gondola and they glided to his home over the glassy lake. She watched the silent darkness, she remembered his cry when she had touched his forehead and she felt her anger ebbing away.

When they were both in their usual positions, her standing to the side of his pipe organ, him sitting upon the stool with his cape off and a mask beneath his white one, she took a deep breath and on a fleeting surge of good will, tried to lighten the atmosphere.

"Have you done anything interesting today, Maestro?"

The look she received was enough to kill the atmosphere and her intentions.

"Oh, plenty," Erik said with half a mirthless smirk. "I went on a little treasure hunt for pleasure and found a chest of jewels and gold. Pity I don't have anybody to share it with."

For a man who was supposedly in love with her enough to build a mannequin of her in a wedding dress - which she had asked him to discard quite some time ago and he had obeyed - he was terribly capricious.

Yet, even though there was something she didn't understand in his eyes, like she didn't understand the darkness and its ability to rupture happiness and sanity, she could see the sadness of the world in his mismatched orbs, woven of a lifetime spent in despair and isolation.

"Forgive me," she said instead, treading carefully. "I dislike the cold between us. I would much rather it was gone. Much rather if it was… if it was like it used to be."

His hands had been poised over the keys, possibly about to start, but then he lowered them so suddenly there was a disharmonious burst of notes and Christine jumped, startled, and flushed.

"Oh, yes. You would much rather that I was the invisible being with a voice in the shadows," he bit, his temper obviously clawing itself out of the prison he held it in. "How lovely that would have been. You could have just had the music, not the monster to whom it belongs to. And we both would have won - we both would have had something we wanted."

Christine opened her mouth to say something reassuring, but found she couldn't even if she had found any words, because he started playing something as low and fast and violent as the smouldering coals in his eyes, his hands thunking against the keys and filling the area with bursts of violent shreds of anger.

Christine waited for him to finish, her hands clenched together and trembling, but he didn't finish; his musical outburst got louder and louder, his jaw clenched so tight that something stood out on the visible part of his forehead and the tendons in his gloveless hands came up like reversed canyons on the expanses of his hands.

She shut her eyes tight as the crescendo of fire got louder - it rammed down her ears and into her mind, bringing thoughts of violent darkness and gritted teeth and constricted muscles.

Perhaps if it was anybody else playing, it would have had less of an impact upon her, but this was Erik, her angel of music, who could turn his emotions and thoughts into liquid sound for others to drink and see exactly what he wanted them to.

"Erik," she whimpered, her hands at her ears. "Erik, please stop."

With a final slam, he shot up and rounded on her, filled with rage so violent that she dropped her hands and shuffled back.

"Ha! Now you cower in fear before my malformations?" he cried, towering over her, "Now you cower at what you see? Shouldn't you have been so predictable the first time you came down here? Shouldn't you have kept your hands away from this?"
He struck the cheek of his white mask twice, making a papery sound that grated against her nerves more than it out to. Christine was silent, blinking fast, the tears forming at the corners of her eyes threatening to escape and show, her hands trembling.

"Now you shake! Now you tremble! Damn you, Christine!" he hollered in his hoarse voice, his own arms shaking through the unstoppable volcanic force running through his tendons and arteries. "Damn your curiosity! Damn your foolishness! You uncovered the creature, the monster, and now you fear to face the consequences! There are no pretty angels here, here there is only darkness!"

Tears escaped down her face and traced the shape of her jaw as she gazed at him. A flicker of guilt revealing the chasms of despair beneath his mask stirred as they did so, but then, they only fuelled his rage more.

He gave a cry of fury, grabbed her hand and yanked it upwards so that she stumbled forward.

"Look at your angel of music, Christine!" he roared, her hand in an iron grip around her wrist. "Take off this mask as you did before! See what you unleashed upon both of us!"

When she didn't move to do so, he gave another cry and hit the masked side of his face with her hand. "Tear it off, damn you! Look at the monster! Look at ME!"

"Please," she begged instead, cringing away from his clutch, though unable to try and tug her hand out of it. "Please, Erik, you're hurting me."

He didn't hear her.

"Take it off! Look at me!" He took her hand in his other one and tried to form it into a claw, dragging it down the masked side of his face. "Rip it away!"

"Ange," she cried, her voice broken, "ange, you're hurting me!"

That seemed to jar him. He looked at her as though she had plunged a red-hot poker into his chest, his eyes wide and fixed onto the wrist he was bruising with his hand, then yanked his hand free of her and stumbled back.

He was so shaken that he tripped right onto his stool and crashed onto his instrument; it emitted a dissonant cry of pain as scores and notes went flying and the keys were buried under his weight.

Christine bit back a sob, for the silent which followed was heavy and crushed like stone.

Erik remained there for another stunned moment, then began to clumsily rise off the instrument, his eyes fixed onto the floor. Embarrassment, guilt lined his features, so deep that he turned his face completely and wouldn't look at her. Christine almost missed the tears glistening in his eyes as he stood in the corner with his head bent, his arms fixed so tightly at his sides they seemed brittle.

The silence was only broken by the slight lisping of the candles and their torn breaths, as they stood a distance from one another.

Christine took a deep breath, then wiped her tears away. She realised, as she watched him, that it wasn't her he was so angry at but at himself, that he couldn't suppress his temper, that he was so troubled and shattered and he had no hope at all of becoming something different; something different to the terrible Opera Ghost, whom all, including himself, were convinced that he was. He had no hope that he would be able to become something that she would want, something acceptable, something which fit into the puzzle of the daylight at least a little bit.

But he wasn't a ghost. He wasn't a phantom. He was Erik, he was just a man; he was her angel of music.

Christine steadied her breathing, because one of them had to be the one to stop this madness and she wasn't exactly the one trembling with self-loathing at the moment.

"Erik…"

He didn't move. One hand went up to clamp his mouth as he shook, but he couldn't stifle his sobs completely, as much as he endeavoured to. She knew he was shaken to the core, and the fever she had felt burning on his forehead wasn't doing anything to help. She recalled how pathetic she had felt, when she had caught a chill and had a fever. At least then she had had Madame Giry and Meg to hold her hand and murmur soothing words to her, but Erik was alone and had been alone for as long as he existed.

A few seconds later, he gave another shaky sob, then turned and lowered himself onto his organ stool without his usual grace, his head bowed and shoulders slumped.

Christine breathed out on a sigh, "Ange-"

"No," he countered hoarsely. "Don't call me that. It's a brand of my lies and futile hopes. A result of a series of wrong decisions and failures on my part. A trail of spectacular failures."

His words crumbled and trailed off into silence. Christine steeled herself, then approached him.

"And yet you provided me with comfort so many times through your voice and words," she said softly, then dared to extend a hand to place on his shoulder, still very wary of how he had jumped at contact before. "You filled me with something warm and golden. You filled me with-"

She lay her hand on his shoulder with the gentleness of a frond of a plant unfurling to catch the first rays of sunlight in the morning, then braced herself; but he merely sucked in a breath at her contact, speaking to her of disbelief and wonder through that action alone.

"You filled me with your music, ange."

She took this moment to put her other hand on his shoulder, then lean forward until the bottom part of her face was pressed to the material of his collar and her hands had been placed over his chest. She felt him shudder beneath her and lean slightly back, so that there was no space between her own chest and his.

"Oh, Christine," she heard him breathe in reply, but then his voice sharpened again. "You know not what you do by giving me this. I am undeserving of your embrace in every respect."

She smiled into the fabric of his coat.

"...Do you want me to let go?"

"Heavens, no," he choked out and one his hands came up and hovered by her cheek, as though he wanted to caress her curls and trace the outline of her face, but then he let it drop again. "No, and yet… I cannot bear this."

He slowly took her hands and gently unfastened them from around his neck, then made to stand so that she had to take a step back.

She looked into his eyes, one shrouded in the shadows of his white mask, the other bearing itself into her, blue in colour, though a warmer blue than hers was, his pale skin heavily contrasted by the black of his wig.

"You were right," he said with an attempt at an apathetic voice as he drew himself to his full height, though its slight trembling ruined his desired effect. "You shouldn't have come down here tonight. I am not myself."

He took a step forward, then seemed to reflect and a dry smile turned one corner of his lips upwards.

"No. That's not true. I am myself. I'm so horribly and terribly myself that I question why I took you down here tonight, when I knew this could happen."

He looked at her - his hand went to the side of him to lean on a chair for support - and sought her eyes.

"I was so careful before in hiding this from you," he began softly, "I painted the darkness with stars and moons so that you wouldn't notice just how black and cold it was. I gave you the music of the night…"

His voice became strangled again, possibly at the memory of something reminiscing joy and hope being so suddenly stripped from him as she tore the mask away from his face, in her damned curiosity.

Christine hung her head, feeling sorry, so awfully sorry that things had turned out as they had.

He ran a hand down the unmasked side of his face. "The only thing I have to offer out of this pitiful existence of mine… And yet now you see in full. Mon petite."

He turned to her, and she saw a tear running over the smooth skin of his face.

"I don't want to hurt you," he breathed, his voice laced with so much pain and regret and guilt that Christine felt her heart twist into two. "I don't want to hurt any part of you. I want you to have everything you could ever want, I want your laughter and smiles to bless the world like pearls and make your heart beat so deeply that you will never fear death… and yet I am only poison to you, both inside and out."

"No," she said firmly, her eyebrows bent at the weight of his words and her heartache. "No, you are not. You're saying terrible things which do not align with reality, Erik, and do you know why?"

He gave a muted sigh. "You will tell me even if I protest."

Her face softened as she looked at the way his shoulders sagged and knees buckled and he unconsciously held the furniture for support.

"Because, ange, you are unwell," she told him. "Your forehead is riddled with fever. You are tired and you need somebody to take care of you while you rest."

A flicker of disbelief, then hope set his eyes alight, but it was swiftly quenched as his eyes trained onto hers. "You wouldn't touch a gargoyle and soil your beautiful fingers, Christine."

She stared up at him. Did she dare take off his mask? Did she dare risk unleashing what she had heard ripping from the instrument a few moments before once more?

But if she didn't he would never believe her, if she protested against his callous claims against himself. If she didn't, he would only live off empty, hollow dreams that perhaps one day, she would learn to love him, and when she left him to the night to carry on her life up above, pain and despair would eat at his insides and drive him to insanity.

"You are far from a gargoyle," she said, taking steps towards him, noticing how he braced himself as her presence grew closer. "You are my teacher. You are a man, Erik. You're hardly a monster."

"I don't believe you," he uttered, looking down at her with some sort of deeply-rooted fear of his heart being crumbled once more.

Christine relaxed her face and tried to make it into something warm and reassuring.

"You wanted me to take off your mask. You wanted to see me fear your face."

"Such events are inevitable."

"But…" She lowered her voice. "I do not fear your face."

He kept silent. She noted how his breathing stopped altogether, as he held it in trepidation for what was about to happen.

Christine brought her fingers up slowly, until they were almost at his face. A whimper was drawn from his throat as she traced the outline of his mask, just grazing his skin with the tip of her index finger.

"The face is yours," she breathed. "It's not a gargoyles', nor a devil's. It's your face and you should not be ashamed of it."

His face hardened in an instant as he pulled his head back from her fingers. "You make the bane of my existence so trivial with your words, Christine. It almost makes me think it doesn't matter," he snapped, jerking his face to the side.

But she didn't flee from his rejection, though many things within her called for her to do so. She just held her breath and pressed on.

"It doesn't matter to me."

She brought her other hand up to the right side of his face, just touching the part of his jaw which connected it to his head, then turned his face so that his eyes were forced to look upon her.

His tears wet her fingers as she cupped the side of his face and searched his eyes for his consent, cold and startling to her skin, but she didn't flinch.

"Let me show you," she whispered. "Let me show you that you have nothing to fear from me."

"Christine," he moaned, as his body shook with sobs, then lowered his voice to a mere rustle and leaned into her hand as he whimpered. His cheek was warm and flushed more than she had ever seen it. "Forgive me. Forgive your ange."

She smiled. "I already have," she said, then slowly unpeeled the mask from his face.

His eyes were fixed onto hers, searching for something which would confirm his deepest fears, searching for hidden loathing, hidden disgust, everything he knew from the people who had looked upon his poor, misshapen face before.

But Christine didn't give it to him. She let her eyes trace over his face, over his lashless eye with no eyebrow arching over it, at the way his lips swelled and were pulled to the left, at the way his tears lingered in the imperfections in his cheek and made it sparkle, then dropped his mask and cupped his face in both her hands, smoothing his tears away with her thumbs.

"There," she said, "Is my ange assured?"

He closed his eyes and nodded slowly.

"Please don't let go of me," he whispered, bringing a hand up to clasp one of hers. "Please let us stand here for a while longer."

Christine was sorry she couldn't see his facial expression as she buried herself into his chest. He froze, as she took her hands away from his face and snaked them around him and held him tight, wanting to transfer as much warmth and compassion to him as humanely possible and not having enough medium to do it through.

"You can embrace me too," she said into the material of his chest, then moved so that he could hear her more clearly, "don't fear that I'll flinch."

When he didn't move, she reached for his arms, then pulled them around her, fastened them, then resumed hugging him. She heard his breathing rolling through his chest, the thump of his heart against her temple, and was amazed at how safe and warm his grasp was, how she had never felt so wanted and so valued, so adored through every gesture, word and thought.

"Christine," Erik breathed, "I love you. I wish to never let you go."

She shifted so that she could look him in the face, and saw every mark of confirmation of his words in his mismatched eyes, as they bore into her and set something alight within her chest.

"I don't want to let you go either."

Something of a moan of pain moved through his chest.

"Don't say things like that, I beg of you. Don't speak just to appease me."

"There you go again, saying things which aren't true," she replied, raising her eyebrows in a playful admonishment. "I already told you it's the fever. Come, we need to quell it. You need to rest."

"No, I don't. I don't," came the desperate reply, and Christine was pressed to him firmly again, trapped completely in his arms and loving every second of it. "I'm perfectly content just as we are right now."

She hesitated, then sighed and said, "There's no reason why this can't happen again once you're resting, you know, ange?"

He started crying again, pressing his lower face into her hair and smoothing the curls upon the back of her neck, sending a thrill down her.

"Very well," he managed. "I will rest."

"Good."

"And you will…" he breathed out a sigh, "You will take care of me?"

"For as long as you're not perfectly well."

He cradled her in his arms and planted a kiss on the crown of her head.

"But they will miss you, in the world of day."

"They can wait," she replied firmly, and she meant every word of it. She softened her voice as she drew away from him, and smiled. "Come, ange. You've taken care of me every day, up until now. Now let me take care of you."

And he smiled, his anger gone completely, only honest warmth and gratitude as he gazed down at her as though she was the only thing that mattered.

"My beautiful angel," he murmured, tracing the shape of her face with two fingers. "My Christine. My goddess. My love."

She took his fingers and planted two kisses upon them, and then she took his arm and led him to his room to let him know that he was not alone in the dark, for as long as she breathed too.