A/N: Written for an anonymous Tumblr prompt reading "Christine is no angel. She's never been the goddess Erik proclaims that she is. She can, however, try and be his light when it seems there's no more."

There are several things which prove his hypothesis that Christine Daaé is actually an angel. He has made an itemised list, which he occasionally recites to himself as he composes. He has not written this list down, because he does not need to. It is inscribed upon his heart and his brain, and it would take a force stronger than death to make him forget it.

1. She inspires some of the finest music he has ever composed.

2. She looks past his face.

3. She loves him.

4. Surely the angels in Heaven cannot sing better than her. (He is well aware that he has had a hand in this one, but his efforts would all have come to nought if the voice had not already been there, merely unrefined.)

5. She loves him.

6. He has not felt the killing urge since she kissed him.

7. He has cast aside his morphine forever in order that she will not fear for his life.

8. She loves him.

9. He has not terrorised the Opéra since she first kissed him, for fear of incurring her wrath. (Surely someone as beautiful as she is capable of a terrible fury, and he has no desire to call that down upon himself.)

10. He has never had the pleasure to meet someone as gentle or as kind.

11. Her touch is capable of relieving every nightmare, every ache, every black mood.

12. She. Loves. Him.

13. She is not afraid that he will contaminate her by simply touching her.

14. She makes the sweetest noises when she sleeps, her head on his chest and an arm around his waist.

15. He is 110% certain that should he ever be in danger she would call down the wrath of every Nordic warrior to protect him, to keep him safe and well. The blood of thousands, valiant men and women all, courses through her veins along with the magic of that Northern World, and all of it is at her fingertips should it ever be needed.

16. She has nursed him through migraines, her voice and touch endlessly soothing, and through days where he was too weak to leave their bed thanks to his own heart betraying him, and never once has she complained.

17. She is going to marry him as soon as he has the arrangements all worked out.

18. She loves him.

19. She loves him.

20. She loves him.

Yes, he will grant that he is perhaps somewhat biased. But Christine Daaé is an angel, a goddess, the most perfect woman to ever live, and no one will ever convince him that it is not the divine that loves him.

Christine Daaé is not an angel. The woman herself knows this, and never for a moment has she let her fiancé's fervour on the subject try to convince her otherwise. She is simply a woman. She has her flaws. She is not perfect. She has made a list of reasons to disprove his own list. (She knows he has a list. He has whispered it on a number of occasions while dozing in her arms. One would think that a man with a past such as his would have long-since trained himself out of sleep-talking.)

1. A true angel would not have removed his mask against his will. She very nearly killed him, and as far as she is concerned it is the greatest of all of her sins.

2. An angel would not have forced him to give up his morphine. Well, it's not that she forced him so much as he came to the decision himself because of her distaste for it, and the withdrawal also very nearly killed him. (Nadir nursed him through it at Erik's own request, and even now refuses to speak of the night that he lay unconscious and feverish and briefly forgot to breathe.)

3. His face is really not the issue that he has always been led to believe that it is. It has character, and it does not define him. Men have come back from war worse, and others have had worse disfigurement from smallpox. At least he has his sight.

4. The music has always lived inside of him; it was simply a matter of finding the right notes.

5. While her voice may have had some ability, it was he who polished it and so her singing certainly does not elevate her to angelic levels.

6. It is inherently blasphemous to consider her, a mere mortal, an angel.

7. An angel would not partake of the…activities which she does outside of marriage.

8. She led on both Erik and Raoul in her attempt to figure out her precise feelings, and very nearly got Raoul killed for love of her.

9. She has lied and she has plotted.

10. She has harboured inappropriate feelings towards other women.

11. She is too selfish to ever want to live in a world without him in it.

No, Christine Daaé is no angel. But she cannot deny that she has been good for Erik, and so she will continue to love him and do her best to keep him well, and help him to stay on the path of righteousness until the day she dies.

Besides, she rather thinks that he might die if she ever took her love away from him. And she would certainly not be an angel then.