I think it’s getting to the point where I can be myself again
It’s getting to the point where we have almost made amends
I think it’s getting to the point that is the hardest part …
It you call, I will answer
And if you fall, I’ll pick you up
But if you court this disaster, I’ll point you home …

Erik stared in disbelief – though the intervening weeks had plagued him with dreams and senseless hope, he knew that Christine had gone that night forever. There was no reason to expect her to return. And yet here she stood, no signs of fear in her poised form. It was the first time since they had innocently enjoyed each other’s company as maestro and ingenue that she had come into his presence without trembling. The only trace of emotion he could discern was a tired redness about her eyes; had she been weeping? It did not signify, for whether or not she had been weeping she was beautiful … and how like the first time he had stood near enough her to touch, as he watched through the benevolent barrier of her mirror, which kindly concealed his undeserving figure all while permitting him to bask in all her loveliness! She had tears in her eyes then, too – tears for her beloved Father, long dead. Perhaps that explained her tears now: perhaps she had looked to him too for that paternal guidance, and sorrowed to see him thus in his grave in the bowels of the theatre, from which he had not stirred since her final departure.

And still she was here! The wedding invitation she held in her hand was forgotten for the moment, for all of their surroundings and Time itself had stood still at the words she had just spoken.

"I would rather not bring the news of a wedding, Erik," she had said to him, her voice so even and resolute as to set his foolish heart to clamoring once again with its ludicrous hope. "I would rather you ask me to stay with you."

With a sigh, he drew a hand across his forehead. "You mustn’t say that."

"Why not?" she objected, a little too quickly. To his ear, her words betrayed a retreat to old petulance that caused a shift in his mood as well; suddenly all his anger rushed back to him in a wave that could not be blocked.

"Christine," he breathed through clenched teeth, "I cannot keep acting out these scenes with you. You knew how I felt the night you left – and you left. And I have tried to go on … I have tried to rebuild my life. And you know, Christine – I have done well! I have made such progress! Look at me – look at my hands, they hardly tremble as I speak to you! Can you imagine? After so little time, I have started to become myself again!"

She was weeping outright now, clearly hurt by his sharp words. "Erik," she replied, her voice strangled. "Erik, why are you acting this way? When I have come back to tell you that I love you … why are you doing this?"

He let his hands, which he had held out to her a moment before, drop uselessly to his sides. As suddenly as his anger had flared, it was gone – for how could he ever remain angry with her? "Forgive me," he whispered, shaking his lowered head. "I don’t suppose I really know what I am saying. But at the same time, Christine," he continued, raising his eyes to hers, "I don’t believe you can know what I have been through! You simply left – and I was left with the shattered pieces of my heart, my life – and my sanity too. It has been so hard to even reach this point, Christine. To stand here and converse with you – as if it is perfectly natural? I am shocked I have managed to hold myself together thus far. So do not speak to me of love … I cannot bear it. You have come here to deliver the invitation you promised me, I believe – and I thank you for that; you are too kind."

He looked away again, not wanting her to see the tears that threatened to gather. After a pause, he continued, "Perhaps we can make some kind of amends if it would please you, for as broken as I feel now I would still do anything for you. If you ever needed me, I would be there instantly. But tomorrow you are to marry the Vicomte, and I am compelled to send you away again ... so do not speak to me of love. Do not court that disaster."

Christine felt as though she were strangling, listening to him speak. She had come here with a heart that had been in a cage for weeks, but was suddenly set free with the remembrance of an obligation. She had promised Erik a wedding invitation, and the memory of that promise had breathed life into her when she was nearly suffocating for want of what to do. But now it seemed he would snuff out her last gasping attempt to set things right …

The time since her last performance at the Opera had passed excruciatingly for Christine. Raoul had busied himself with preparations for a wedding to which she had never consented, so much so that he never even noticed her lack of enthusiasm. But such was the nature of her confusion that she was never able to stop him, never able to precisely define the sensation that opened up like a well inside her heart and drew her downwards into despair.

The week of the wedding arrived, and for the first time since that last night at the Opera, Raoul had tried to pull her into his arms. She had recoiled, wrapped her own arms around herself and wept. She could not find the words to articulate a reason why his touch repulsed her now, but she felt as much like a prisoner as Raoul turned on his heel and stormed out of her room, slamming the door behind him. Surely it was only another infantile tantrum – he was spoiled and prone to them – but in Christine’s mind these actions cast him as a jailer. But how could she escape the cage of lace and wedding bands she had allowed to be built around her?

The answer, when it came, seemed too simple: she would go back to Erik.

The promised invitation was all she thought necessary for an excuse; but Raoul, of course, was livid. "Don’t you dare set foot outside of this house!" he shouted down the stairs at her. "You will never be permitted back inside it if you go to him now!" Despite the sentiments intended in these remarks, Christine had tripped lightly down the stairs, her cloak billowing behind her. She cared little for the right to return to Raoul’s house. She wanted only to return to Erik’s.

She had remembered the sweet offers Erik had made to her in the depths of her misery, intended to tantalize and make her smile; she remembered the innocence and awkwardness and yet the ever-present drama in his declaration of love; she remembered the heat that had consumed her in an otherwise dismal, chilling basement while he was there to give her wings. These memories had drawn her back to the Opera and away from the insipid vows made her daily by the foolish young Vicomte, empty promises of unswerving devotion and future happiness. Erik had never promised these things – it would have been a waste of words better spent in song. There was never any need for these promises. With Erik there was never any doubt of his affection.

So how could she bear his pointing her home to Raoul, telling her that was where she belonged and where she ought to go? How could he bring himself to say that any talk of mending their bond would be fruitless?

"How can you call what is between us a disaster, Erik?" she asked, her thoughts finally breaking through the surface. "In these past weeks I have come to know that there is nothing more right. The disaster would be our separation …" He turned his face away, but she took a bold step forward and found the strength to brush his sleeve with outstretched fingers. "The true crime would be the murder of the love you once pledged to me by my own foolishness and lack of wits."

He still would not turn to her. "You left with him."

Unable to simply absorb such a blow, she bristled. "I had no choice, Erik – you sent me away. You gave me to him as if I were a toy you were tired of … and I was so undone by all that had happened that night that I was powerless to protest. But this is not why I have come here." Carefully she stepped around to face him, deliberately grasped his wrist and peered into his face until he lifted his eyes to meet hers. "I did not come here to argue over misunderstandings, or rehearse any of our past. Those scenes play over in my head enough." A flutter of his eyes and a change in their expression gave Christine to know her words had hit home.

She loosed her grip on his wrist enough that her fingers slipped down over the back of his hand; the slope of his skin guided them to find a place to nestle in his palm. Softly, she continued. "I did not come here to exhume our mistakes, Erik, or to debate which of us was the more wronged. I came to see what could be done about mending those mistakes and healing those wrongs." With all the strength she could exert, she pressed her free hand to his, capturing it between hers. "Do you think you were alone in your feelings these past weeks? Do you think I only think about you when we are in the same room? I have missed you, Erik! I have regretted leaving and wished to be allowed to come home."

"Home," he echoed, and she could hear a note of bitterness in that one word. "You have not always thought of this place as home, Christine. And there have been times when you have been selfish, when you have looked to me to heal your hurts without the tiniest attentions to my own. How am I to receive you now, when you want to put aside old injuries – when you have assailed me with my own misdeeds but never permitted me to accuse you in turn?"

These words stung her like cold water; she released her hold on him. "I don’t understand..."

His patience spiraling out of control, he finally allowed himself to ask the questions that had burned in his mind since the first moment he had beheld her standing in his home … "Are you here because you have to be, Christine? Has the Vicomte turned you out? Are you alone and friendless in the world, and have you returned to Erik because you know he could never refuse you? There was a time, I think, when you believed it fair and right to take what you could from me and run … my lessons, my inspiration … my very heart, which you tore out when you left …"

At a loss for a more genteel response, Christine stamped her foot against the hard floor. "Damn it, Erik! Must this be about me and my mistakes – though I regret them with all my strength? Can it not be about us and the future we can build if you will give me the chance to prove how desperately I want it?"

Such strength of speech from her was unusual and startling to him, and he found himself at a loss. How he wanted to grab hold of her words and ascend on their intoxicating beauty out of the darkness where he had wallowed since she went away! But how could he revive his trust in her when he had shrouded it in a crumpled white veil and buried it deep within his bitter soul the night she had left with the Vicomte?

He found himself speaking simply to fill the space between them. "Christine, you know that I cannot help but forgive you … Even if you never felt regret I could never do anything but love you … and I will always be that Angel should you need him, your protector should you require it … but I cannot … I do not know how to give you what you are asking for …"

She saw her chance in what she could see of his face, and read it in his voice. He wanted her to stay as much as she wanted him to ask her to; but he was proud, and afraid, and so many hundreds of times more naïve than she … It was all she needed to know.

She came so close to him that it did not matter if he took her in his arms. "Nor do I know exactly what I am asking," she whispered, spilling her breath across his exposed skin and with it all the intoxicating sensations he had only ever been able to describe as Christine.

Against his lips she formed the words, "But we can learn together …"

The kiss seemed to stop his heart, hold his breath, and when it was over he was dizzy and weeping. Unable to keep himself from touching her any longer, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close; he no longer worried whether she would break. It was clear that she was strong enough.

He wept like a child, burying his face in her hair and murmuring through his tears, "Christine … how I wanted you to come back … but oh, Christine, if you ever leave me again … I cannot bear to lose you again, my love … and I don’t know what I would do …"

He sobbed until she feared he would choke, and worrying the mask might smother him she worked at its ties until they loosened and the gleaming white leather slipped away. The sensation of her lips against the roughness of his right cheek soon slowed his labored breathing, though, and the expression in her lovely eyes chased the tears from his mismatched ones. "I love you, Erik," she murmured, relaxing into his arms again. "And I shall prove it to you as many ways as I can … as many ways as you will let me."

The weight of her head on his shoulder and the smoothness of her hair against his unmasked cheek were enough.