Author's Note: I can't… really take credit for what's about to happen(Okay, I can since it came from my brain, and I'm insane, but, alas!). The Christine in my head took over and I became her puppet. It is wholly… and completely, unplanned. Not even anticipated. She said "We're going there!" and…well… It happened. I've been running around and screaming myself.

Child of Dreams: :-D Yep!

MarilynKC: They will get there, but you're going to want to buckle up for this one!

imIiteraIIyspiderman: Aww, thank you! I am happy I could deliver! Hope you enjoy what's coming!

Not Alone

Across the city in an affluent neighborhood, Raoul sat in darkness. Celestial moonlight crept through cracked drapes and one of the glass-paned doors to the balcony that he left ajar. The cool night air swept in on the breeze, bringing hints of the distinct scent of smoke stacks from a distant factory that operated through the night to keep civilized life buzzing.

A half-empty tumbler was in his grasp as his hand rested upon the small table beside him. The decanter of brandy that his valet left with him was all but empty now.

He could not sleep.

Sweat soaked through his nightclothes and dampened his bedding. The breeze did little to cool him as he took a sip of the potent liquid, staring into oblivion. His mind did not register the familiar burn on his palette or the scorching in his throat. Although Raoul's stomach churned with acidic bile that the strong drink produced in his gut, it was a small price to pay for a bit of relief from a tormented mind.

Every night brought a nightmare of blood-stained deckboards on an ill-fated merchant ship. The rolls of deep ocean swells, fueled by a distant storm, were enough to cause a man with the best of sea legs to brace a hand on a rail or wall. A slip and fall that might send a sailor overboard would be a mark for death. If the waves did not swallow him into its maw, the shock of frigid waters would surely end him if they failed to snare him in a rope in time.

It was by some miracle that the ship had not overturned yet. The civilian ship was a week overdue when they got the message to keep a sharp eye on the horizon. Spotting the small vessel floating adrift well out of the normal shipping routes was not something the French Navy would ignore. Boarding might have bordered the line of too treacherous, but they were military men; men of the sea. They required far worse inclement weather to dissuade their mission.

Best to investigate it now before the storm claimed it.

Icy rain poured from the heavens, and gusts of wind turned the droplets into horizontal spikes, stringing their faces and whipping their long wool coats.

Blood smears were everywhere at varying densities— dried before the rains hit to wash it away. All the trails led to a door that brought them inside – crew cabins.

The fetid stench that lashed out at them was enough to cause all the most veteran sailors to double over and almost retch. Death. Decay. The crew were haphazardly thrown below to avoid detection. Bodies liked to float, and the attackers wanted time. It worked, as much as a fortnight bought by stuffing the crew inside. Bloating bodies and a dozen vacant, distorted faces stared back with empty eyes.

Worse yet, a private room…the merchant's family… Why did he bring his family? The wife – what remained of her – was indecent. The children? Young. The boy and girl left in a similar state. The implication was so vile that Raoul and his peers were beyond sickened.

Their deaths were equally heinous.

Pirates — at least that was what they suspected. There was little way to confirm it beyond suspicion or a living witness.

Why was the attack so grisly? Even their seasoned Captain about lost his iron stomach at the scene.

The scenes varied as they played out in his nightmare a few nights a week. Sometimes it was the boarding. Other times… the crew. The worst and most prominent of the nightmares involved the family.

It broke something inside him.

Even if the dream did not repeat the steps Raoul took in search of survivors on that ship, it had Christine. At first, dreams of her were joyous; a welcome respite from the horrors that plagued him now. Her sunny smile and bright eyes matched a cobalt sky. Laughter filled the air with a carefree childhood, then a loving embrace beneath the stars as they spun in excitement for the promise of a future filled with nothing but their love.

He could almost see her standing before the altar in a laced wedding gown, a polite smile on her lips as he put a ring on her finger, binding them in marriage.

He saw a life with her; a family— horrors long forgotten.

Until it turned…

Christine in terror, eyes pleading for freedom. A man with a distorted face holding her throat in one instance and cradling her lifeless body the next.

Chantseur.

It had to be. He felt it in his very core.

Why would no investigator or detective in this damned city take his case? Why would no one follow this man in a mask? What did he have to hide? Why would Christine stay in such company? Could she not sense the darkness that lurked beneath the façade?

Was every woman so incapable of sense and reason?

Surely, she was trapped under a madman's spell.

~x ~x ~X~ x~ x~

"I… I'm not ready," she had said.

In truth, neither was he.

Erik had pressed a kiss to her forehead at her admittance, before shifting to her side.

He wanted to love her and claim her forever, but there was relief in knowing they would have more time to enjoy each other before adding a burden, as welcomed as it may be. Why risk adding unnecessary strain so early? He was no neophyte in matters of sex and knew there were options available in preventable measures. Erik was not fond of the idea of making her douche, nor the concept of an unreliable sheathe for him, and of course, pulling out before spilling…

…which worked so very well the first time…

While Christine may love him in every sense of the word, if they proceeded with her wish for copulation and things happened like last time, Erik would always wonder if she remained with him for love or necessity.

Love, he told himself, reflecting on their earlier conversation.

They had continued their activities for a while, with Erik bringing her to bliss several times by skillful use of his hands and mouth. In turn, Christine granted him another climax with her perfect, gentle hands. Now, they relaxed in a steaming bath with a few candles scattered around on available surfaces, his enchanting Angel wrapped in his arms.

They enjoyed a comfortable silence and company, Christine's head nestled between his shoulder and chin. Her eyes were closed, wholly contented with a soft smile gracing her perfect lips.

Erik savored the moment, astonished by how his love for her grew with each day. While she rested, he admired her every detail, trying his damnedest not to think about Coney Island and what transpired there. But he did. How could he not? Christine had dreams of before, and while she might not know the full meaning of what she recalled, he did.

She loved me. She was happy…

That notion brought him a shred of peace that he lacked until now. It became the thread to stitch together a bleeding wound that he failed to realize he had until the needle pierced his skin and bound the broken flesh back together. She found belonging in my arms.

Erik pressed a kiss into the curve of her neck, sucking in a bit of her flesh between his distorted lips and tickled it with the tip of his tongue.

Christine squirmed a little, her smile growing wider on her lips as she giggled and nestled closer, her head tucking more to his chin. "That tickles."

"Is that a complaint?" he asked against her flesh.

Her smile deepened into a grin as her right hand reached up and caressed the grooves of his marred cheek, which made him press into her palm with a content sigh. "Not really."

"Good," he said before he gave a playful nip.

She writhed against him, giggling as she grasped the tub's sides to pull herself up enough to grab the semi-buoyant sponge at the other end, then flung it back over her shoulder.

Erik snatched the sponge out of the air before it could collide with his shoulder, then squeezed the waterlogged coral onto her head.

"Oh, you fiend!" she laughed, wiping away excess water that found its way into her eyes. "If you are going to be so petulant, you might as well assist in washing it."

"Petulant?" he asked in a manner of restrained mirth, though to notable failure.

"Yes! Petulant, you stubborn man!" she teased with a modicum of truth behind her words. She turned her head enough to look at him. "I expected more of the infamous Opera Ghost."

"Is that so?" he asked, fighting a smile with his brows raising. "Petulance is required of all proper Ghosts to sufficiently accomplish mischievous activities. Otherwise, all hauntings would become insufferably dull; too dull to be taken with any seriousness."

"Making excuses?"

"Hardly," he chuckled before motioning for her to lean back and submerge her tresses.

Christine shifted in the tub to oblige, the water sloshing and trusting his hands that framed her head, guiding her hair under.

Erik began threading his fingers through the chocolatey curls, massaging her scalp a bit before combing through the long strands. When he guided her head and ears above the water, he continued, "You cannot imagine how boring it was around here for me, before you came into my life. I had to amuse myself in some fashion when music was not flowing through me."

"There's a time when the music doesn't come?"

Erik nodded, although she could not see it. "Yes. It can span… years. I might have fragments of a piece or several, but it remains incoherent. Sometimes it is little more than a budding idea of something, but it lacks a direction or purpose."

"What was your longest… spell?"

"Ten years," he said as his mind drifted to Phantasma. "It became very… painful. I could compose, but it was often meaningless drivel that lacked feeling. Just noise."

"What… broke the drought?"

"You. Your voice." It was true. Hearing her sing for the first time, then the last time, breathed life back into his unmotivated existence.

Christine's head turned toward him again as he continued finger-combing her hair in gentle strokes.

"You were the rain upon my barren desert," he explained, pausing to look at his fingers and the many strands of dead hair coiled around them. "Is this… normal?"

She turned to look at his hands. "That is a bit odd."

He looked at her, almost frozen in place like he had committed some terrible miss-deed against her hair.

"Usually, there is a lot more."

His brows furrowed, taking a moment to deliberate her meaning. " More?"

"Yes."

Erik blinked several times. " How do you still have hair when you are shedding this much, and more?" If the hair in his hand could equate to what little he possessed, well…it would be easy to notice.

Christine glanced over his thin wisps and pursed her lips to bite back a smile. "It… grows back?"

Another drawn-out pause elapsed between them, though shorter than the last one as Erik's head tilted to the side and his brows slid up again. He supposed it made sense, but he never had a reason to ponder it beyond the fact that he could not grow much hair anywhere. He did have one eyebrow though, where there used to be two. "Fair enough," he admitted. His hands went below the water's surface and tried to shake the hair free. "Moving on… that stack of music you found was written with you as my muse, though I suspect, you already knew that."

"I did," she admitted, "But… I like hearing you say it." Christine turned toward him until they fully faced each other, and she watched his eyes widen at the sight of her bosom to the point of fixation.

It took a monumental effort to blink out of the sudden, mesmerizing sight of how candlelight glistened on her drenched breasts and look up at her eyes instead of that… perfect view. Swallowing the lump in his throat and fighting a distinctive rush in his groin, he said, "Every song and score that I write is made better because of you. I get to…experience feelings that everyone else takes for granted, but have been foreign to me."

"I hope that I can continue being a spring to you," she murmured, taking his fidgety hands and began pulling away the remaining threads of her hair that would not let go.

"I have little doubt of that, Christine," he murmured, watching her disentangle his fingers. "You inspire much in me, and I do not expect that to ever change."

"I'm not nearly as worldly or interesting," she lamented. "I can only offer but so much."

Erik caught her hands in a blink, making her startle before he brought one to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "Nonsense, my Angel." He pulled her closer until their chests collided and she saddled his waist. Though they were not joined in their intimacy, Christine shimmied over his sex until they reached mutual comfort and wound her arms around his neck. "You are invaluable to me, and that will never change. You might not be as 'worldly,' but you have your imagination, your books, and an untamable spirit."

"Untamable?" it came out as a meek squeak.

"Yes," he returned in a sweet whisper, his fingers brushing a damp, spiral lock of her hair back behind her ear. "You are stronger than you know." Erik's hand dropped to rest over her diaphragm. "A fire burns within your soul, and whoever attempts to douse it would be a fool."

"Is that so? Apart from Papa, I've always been told that being spirited is a poor quality to have."

"Fools."

"Oh?"

"A man who seeks the company of a spirited woman, desires the engaging quality of her wit. A man who seeks a meek woman does so to suit his fragile ego," he said, speaking from his own experience. "A controlling man who seeks to claim a spirited woman is the fool attempting to tame the sea. To win her is to break her, and to break her is to destroy her spirit, leaving an empty shell in her stead."

Christine sat back to study him with a discerning eye, her hands falling to his shoulders. "You were the fool once."

"I was," he admitted, meeting her gaze and steadfast.

The fingers of her right hand lifted to his unmarred cheek, and for the briefest moment, she saw the flash of a different Erik in the man before her, his eyes wide and glassy, almost manic. The echoes of his angry voice rang through the air like a haunting whisper.

" –either way you choose, you cannot win–!"

The ghostly visage of him and that disturbing voice vanished in a blink, and Christine gripped Erik's— serene, gentle Erik's— shoulders as a wave of dizziness crashed into her.

His eyes detected her shift, and his hands shot up and braced her sides and back, just below her shoulders.

"How… can you make such a change?" she managed to ask, still studying his face and his thin hair tamped down by the water of their soaking. It was wild, unweighted wisps just a second ago.

"You inspired me to be better."

"—tears I might have shed for your dark fate–" it was her voice this time, unbridled anger swelling in her chest. But it was not her, it was someone else, and that boiling temper swelling within was not hers either… "– grow cold and turn to tears of —!"

No! I don't hate him! I love him! her mind screamed back.

"No," she breathed, trying to ignore the images and voices in her head. "No, that doesn't make any sense. We haven't known each other long enough…"

"Do you truly believe that?" his voice was so sincere and his gaze unwavering.

But the question sent an involuntary shiver down through her being.

" I…" Christine rasped, unsure of anything anymore, not even her thoughts or… memories? Phantom images flowed across her mind's eye of Erik's home – but it was different, in disarray. Voices fraught with the rawest emotions rattled around her mind. Then there was Erik. A shy, hopeful smile tugged at his twisted lips, face wet from tears, and then the death of that hope fell with the sag of his shoulders.

She was holding a ring out to him, and his hand fell over hers.

" Christine… I love… you…" that poor Erik sang, and it broke her – the other her – deep inside.

"I need to lie down," she said, tightening her grip on sweet Erik's shoulders.

He kissed her forehead and shifted her off him.

Christine's mind was roiling, and the room spun as she struggled to piece together what had dashed across her mind's eye. It was like reliving memories, but memories that belonged to someone else. Dreams that were not dreams. She heard and sensed Erik moving about; his exit from the tepid bathwater, the plug being pulled from the drain, and quiet instructions patiently whispered to her numb form.

Calloused hands pulled her to her feet, then a plush towel snaked around her naked form. A warm robe soon followed.

"Do you need me to carry you?" Erik's voice broke through the haze.

"God give me courage…" Christine muttered aloud, unaware of Erik's gaze jerking up to hers.

"—to show you—" the other continued in her mind.

"—you are not alone…" Christine's hands framed his poor, stunned face, and claimed a kiss on those twisted lips.

The kiss switched something within her, and a wave of disjointed memories of another life that was not hers swept through her being before darkness fell.

It was a kiss that was like their very first, catching Erik off-guard and in a stunned state. Although the second kiss never came, he felt her body going slack against his and swept her up into his arms before she could fall. He debated which bed to lay her upon. If she was remembering that other life, it would be wise to place her in her own room and bed. But Erik felt drawn to the alternative.

The bed he got for them.

He carried her there with ease and set her on his side of the bed long enough to pull back the sheets for her. When he shifted her into her place, so he may forever remain between her and the door, he pulled the bulk of her hair out to the side so he might tame it before it became a knotted mess. Then, he drew up the blankets over her, brushing a hand over her cheek. " Oh…Christine," he crooned, watching her before turning to change into something more substantial than a robe.