"And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!

It is perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?"

- T.S. Eliot, "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Erik's body spasmed in anguish, the talons of the bullet's mark scraping the inside of his wound, rousing him. Every single cord of vein and muscle pulsed with an angry fire, untethered and unmatched in misery. It existed as a pain that did not resound physically, but instead struck him mercilessly, thrumming against the violence that thrashed within his soul.

It was pure anguish; all of it.

Erik had believed he'd felt the depth of every form of agony in existence; be it a searing wound, the writhing twist of a muscle, or the shattering of his damaged heart. This was only one more struggle. It was always just one more. Yet his stubbornness to survive made it impossible for him to simply die. It seemed as though he were cursed to walk earth for a painful eternity.

Enough, enough…the pain, was it enough? For he still wept her name with every breath and moan. Erik drifted off into another laudenum-laced dream. A delusion, a mirage, one in which she stood before him in that white-laced dressing robe, or was it the wedding gown he had chosen for her? He could not be sure.

"Christine. . ." She was the semblance of a dream, an impossible reality. A broken and unsalvageable glass Lotus. The pieces he must, and would regather, shard by shard. To fix it all. To rebuild. For he had said and done so many abhorrent things he had not meant to do.

All in her name.

Christine.

Erik's eyes focused for the first time in hours, leaving the safety of his beloved morphine haze behind. As he scanned the room, he noticed that he was once again alone upon a wooden operating table, a scrap of a blanket draped over a large portion of his lanky, injured form. He recognized the space as the very same room in which he'd been brought back to life only hours before. Or had it been days? His recollection of events over the last sequence of hours seemed very dim now. And, as a man who knew very many things, the very concept of not knowing was alarming. For if he'd ever had anything to his advantage, other than his music, it had been his wits, his mind, his genius.

The passage of time had become elusive, and it seemed as though Christine and the Glass Lotus appeared only in fragmented dreams. A step away from his touch, but still somehow completely out of reach. The very image of Christine and her gentle, pathetic sorrow reverberated as a dark echo in his mind's eye. He winced at his remembrance of her sadness; the way he had frightened her away and sent her off for her own safety, rebuking her words of divine and sincere love in a mad gesture of saving her from the demon that he was.

A demon that she claimed to love. A barrage of images kept repeating in the haunting, endless zeotrope of his addled, scarred up mind.

A dreamscape he wished to contain and conquer.

And in the darkest chasm of his being, Erik could not find it within himself to call her declarations of love a falsity. Her eyes, and the way they'd clutched at his soul when he had fled from her, her arms that had sought him so desperately as he ran farther and farther away. . . His little soprano had shown him the truth of love and longing, to a greater depth than he had ever known. A depth he could not yet comprehend in his crippled mind, his malformed heart.

Twisted. Disfigured.

All of it. All of him.

Every single horrible choice he had made festered like his bullet wound.

He was dying in plain sight.

Yet he could not afford to dwell on the myriad mistakes he had made in his past, not if he wanted to live. For even though Christine was lost to him, he was far too stubborn to simply give up and die. Erik attempted to lift his upper body up into a sitting position, to assume some form of confidence, with long and sinewy arms splayed out behind his back to assist him in his attempt at rising from the hardness of the cot. However, the strength of the medication given to him by his rescuers had provided him a false sense of power, and an easy forgetfulness to the injury on his shoulder. It only took Erik a moment of putting his full weight on his right arm before he collapsed in surrender, back down onto the table, and an otherworldly and involuntary scream of agony escaped his lips. Damn it! He'd probably stirred the whole household, or whatever humans existed in this godforsaken place that had strangely become his safe haven.

"Hello?' His voice was raw and dry like rough sandpaper in his throat, not at all the golden melody of timbre that he normally commanded. The bullet's wound, the pulling of it from his flesh, and the fatigue of his trauma had seen to it that his voice would also need time to heal. "Hello, doctor?" He sputtered again, never having felt so helpless…

Not since he had been caged, naked, and on display at the gypsy fair, so many years ago…

That resurgence of memory nearly broke him, and an emotional anguish coursed through his blood, reminding him - in ghostlike flashbacks - of all he had lost, especially in the last handful of years…the absolute misery of gutted and wasted days. How could he know how long he had lain prone upon this makeshift hospital bed, in and out of sleep, the voices of the doctor and his assistant blurring his acute eardrums? At this point, Erik had managed to memorize every nick and groove of the dilapidated wooden planks on the ceiling. He glanced at them as they served to center him in their imperfections; the forthright but faulty geometry due to dilapidation. He winced as tears threatened the corners of his eyes, and he gulped down their saltiness in a desperate effort to hold them back. How had he arrived at this place? Every image appeared in his mind as fragmented, hazy pieces that repeated haunting and hazy images that he could not ignore. The gutter in which he had collapsed, his bleeding shoulder, Christine's promise of love and marriage.

There had been truth and love in her eyes, had there not? And in her voice?

And in his spirit?

But what could he believe now? What part of it had been real? Had Christine's confession, her devotion not been a fiction? Had the dear girl, his darling angel finally chosen to give herself to him? For every touch and word she had offered, and the compassion and honesty he had seen in her eyes and felt in her touch - down to the very marrow of his pitiful bones - had resounded with truth. But he could not decipher that now. It was far too much. Erik's life had always been a haphazard, painful, but thoroughly strategic plan. He had always served as master of his fate. He had seen to that, through every and any means necessary.

Cunning.

Genius.

Violence.

Beauty.

He had always been in control, despite his wretched face. Until now.

Until Christine.

Love. . .He could not dwell on the fevered dream of her again. Not now, for the house was beginning to stir.

Erik could hear the sound of footsteps approaching. He straightened his body as best as he could, and inhaled deeply, prepared for any presence that would grace him in his beleaguered state. He gulped down and steadied his body for the arrival of someone who had been a caretaker to him, but also still existed as a stranger.

"Erik! Oh, you've found your voice again. Wonderful!" Erik listened to the sound of hurried feet shuffling towards him across the rotted wooden floor. He blinked a few times to restore moisture to his dry eyes and prepared to meet his caretaker. He shifted his body weight to one side in an attempt to sit up and winced, but he finally managed. If Erik hated anything, other than that insufferable boy of a Viscount, it was weakness. Helplessness.

Dr. Stitch.

"Good morning, Monsieur. . .Erik?" The voice was clear and kind, welcoming even, as if one could feel welcomed on an makeshift operating table in an unknown, filth- ridden place in the back alleys of Paris. But Erik was so very thankful; grateful, even, that someone had bestowed him with care and healing.

With compassion.

It was an emotion, an understanding between individuals that Christine had shown him, taught him to feel. And in that moment, as his mismatched eyes began to focus on the human before him, Erik managed a bit of a smile. A tilt of his bloated lips shared in what he hoped was conveyed as gratitude. "Good morning, doctor," he managed to rasp, "I…I…," he swallowed. "Thank you. . ."

Doctor Stitch, red-faced with a large grin, sauntered over to the table beside Erik's cot and procured the wooden pitcher, half-full of water and poured some into the cup beside it, before handing it to his patient.

"Drink. There will be plenty of time for talk. But have some water first. You've lost a great deal of blood, sir. Water is key to your recuperation."

Erik hesitantly took the offered cup from the hearty physician, nodding slightly in a gesture of agreement. He took a long sip before handing it back to Dr. Stitch with a shaking hand.

"Thank you so very much. It's actually quite a rare thing for me to be treated with any sort of kindness, given my appearance. . ." his voice faded into the rafters of the drafty room as he uttered the last words, barely able to spin the reality of them into volume.

Dr. Stitch retrieved the cup from Erik's quaking hand and laid it back on the table, leaning closer to his patient. "Your appearance, anyone's appearance, is not the mark of one's humanity or worth, sir. It should not matter." He lightly tapped his head with a closed fist, twice.

"This is the true measure of a human's worth," The doctor paused again and splayed his palm and fingers across his chest, "And this, Erik. The heart, the soul. These are the measures of a man's worth."

A calm moment of silent introspection passed between doctor and patient, the later pondering the former's words. Doctor Stitch smiled again, as Erik closed his heavy eyes, remembering and cherishing the last moments of compassion and kindness he had been shown before arriving in this place. Christine's beseeching gaze, the rapture of her kisses, and the genuine affection from her hands, all at the sight of his tortured face. It was too fresh of a memory to even attempt to process, now that he had abandoned her to surrender himself to the misery of fate.

Oh, Christine. . .

And then, the clearest and most beautiful, singular sound in that otherwise silent darkness of a makeshift hospital room. . .

Her voice. It resonated in his head, and then sounded of something else entirely, as steady as a metronome.

Drop. . .Drop . . .Drop . . .he could hear each little sound breathing, being born, and then caving in, and his spirit did the same.

Erik's ears prickled, a new sensitivity returning. There was a gentle rain, like one just after a heavy storm, the last tendrils of soaken, spent clouds bleeding out their final drops. He heard the wisps of the weather tapping at the roof above him, each drop seemingly centering back to his present state. His new reality, drop by drop.

"How long have I been sleeping?" Erik had finally braved the question that could, and would not bear avoidance.

"It's been three days, Erik. And you've been muttering her name for all of those days. Christine, Christine, " Stitch cleared his throat and gently tapped Erik on his right hand. A mark, a check-in of assurance that his patient was cognizant and ready to speak.

"Who is Christtine, Erik? Your wife? Should I send for her?" Stitch leaned over his patient with great concern, as perhaps, a father would.

Erik could barely recall a father's concern. But he had memorized those sacred moments that were still somehow held in the landscape of his memory.

Erik found his strength in that moment and replied, "She is someone," he coughed again, and attempted to take a deep breath before continuing.

"Christine Daae is the only human in the world that has ever cared for me."