Chapter Text
He woke to darkness. The mattress beneath him was used and worn, the air smelling of…him…and…her. His eyes adjust to the surroundings, to the abandoned building he’d taken shelter in with its decrepit ceiling and white walls. Somewhere in this space were his suitcases.
He’d be leaving for America with the Girys soon. The thought would normally spur him into action.
Yet the warm weight beside him keeps him there. At last, in the faint light, he looks at her. His Christine. She came to him last night, trembling but overcoming her fear. She’d unmasked him and kissed him, and then…
Disbelief sits cold in his gut, in his chest. She’d chosen him. She wanted him. She, his dove, his angel, his Christine had wanted him. She had been hesitant, but so had he. They both were inexperienced. He hoped he was gentle enough—curse him if he was not!
This morning, as always, she looks stunning. Even with her long, silky brown curls mussed on the pillow, her face relaxed in sleep, her lips pursed. The only good to emerge from his madness.
Guilt presses on him. His madness. These past few weeks his mind has been clear. The guilt of all he had done weighs on him now. He is a criminal, fit to be hunted and captured like an animal. Not fit to be this woman’s lover, much less her husband. He turns away and sits up. The thought of leaving her again rips into him, like stomping on his heart. Yet, yet…the guilt comes again. He cannot drag Christine into a life of hiding and living on the run.
He presses his fingers into his deformed face. The face of a demon, a hellion, a monster. No good woman such as her should have him. He is an aberration, fit to be hidden away, both for his hideousness and his crimes. Fear makes him shudder. She’d chosen him, but…but if she woke and reacted in horror to his face…
She’d only felt him last night. “I prefer it dark,” he’d said. Oh, the words they shared! Tender words of affection he’d only read about in books. He loved her, craved her, worshipped her. But he…he was not the right choice for her. He’d known that down in his lair beneath the Populaire. Yes, she came back, but he cannot bring himself to take her with him.
Christine deserves to shine, to have her career, to be happy. Christine deserves stability. Christine deserves everything she desires and more. He knows of her hard past, traveling with a poor musician father. Her only happy memories were of him and…and the Vicomte.
And the Angel of Music, he thinks, looking back at her. He remembers the first time he saw her, alone in the opera chapel with her face buried in her hands. He became her Angel then.
Their relationship began on a lie. He took her yearning to have her father back and twisted it, warped it so that he could have her, the lonely chorus girl. He even hated that she called him “Angel.”
Christine, my name is Erik.
No angel existed. He couldn’t make her happy, not like the Vicomte could. He could give her reminiscence of times with her father, stability, money, happiness, children…
He dresses quickly, mechanically. Then, he grabs everything and pauses just before leaving. He goes back and stands over her, over the woman who set him free from his solitude. The woman he would love until his dying breath.
“Goodbye, Christine,” he whispers, almost reaching out a shaking hand to caress her cheek one last time. No, he cannot risk waking her. She would always remain an image, always that girl behind the mirror. His beautiful doll to admire and never hold.
Without looking back, he leaves for his new life.
A/N: the lyrics to Beneath a Moonless Sky simply imply Erik left Christine out of a sense of shame—one reviewer mentions he might’ve thought he ‘defiled her’----and I wanted to give him a stronger motive for leaving, namely that he is a criminal and he is not stable enough financially to support her.