Christine had arrived too early. Or rather, Erik had underestimated how long it would take him to die. She was not surprised; the deaths that had permeated Erik's life were violent. Even when drawn out, deaths of those sort had a fairly quick conclusion. Long, lingering deaths - the human body slowly betraying its inhabitant and shutting down - were her province. Yes, she understood how breath could linger in a body, how a beating heart could soldier onward, while all else refused to work.

When she first found him in the bedroom he had one reserved for her use, she had thought he was further along in the process than he was. He had dispensed with his mask, and his face looked even more dead than usual, having gone from its typical pallor to gray. Then, he had opened those strange eyes of his, and weakly reached a hand toward her. "Christine! You came." His voice was weak and raspy, and it startled her to hear such a sound issuing from him.

"Of course I came," she replied, grasping his cold, sweaty hand without hesitation. Her squeamishness and his skittishness had disappeared with a kiss on the forehead.

He seemed so lucid that she was glad Raoul had decided to wait in a different room. Once Erik were sleeping, she would slip out and let Raoul know that this could take some time.

She made circles on the back of Erik's hand with her thumb while he studied her face in silence. It was just as much a nervous twitch as an attempt to soothe him.

"My dear?" Erik spoke at last.

"Yes?"

"Why do you have so many eyes?"

Knowing better than to question a dying man's delusion, or to burst into tears in front of him, she simply answered that she did not know.

His eyes closed again, and he was soon sleeping restlessly.

Once his hand went completely slack in hers, she slipped out and found Raoul reading one of Erik's books.

He looked up at her, and she understood his question before he spoke.

"This could be at least a few days." She twisted her hands together and looked down at them. "I think I should stay with him, but I will need help, and we must check on Mamma periodically." She glanced at Raoul's face, hoping he would not be angry or annoyed.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I told you that I did not hate him anymore; that does not mean that I feel obligated to take care of him."

Christine understood his position. It was too much to ask, but she could not do this alone. "You do not have to sit with him. I would never ask that of you, but I can't completely care for him by myself. Help me, please. Bring me the supplies I need, help me change his bedding and that sort of thing, and you can mostly stay with Mamma. If I could do it all alone, I would, but really Raoul, I can't. And there's no one else to ask. The Persian has already done so much for us, I would not ask him to do more."

"We could simply wait a few days, and come back. You promised him you'd see him buried; you do not owe him anything else."

She took a deep breath, trying to keep her frustration in check. "You know it was hard enough waiting until he sent for me, knowing there was no one to care for him when he would need it more than ever. He thought he would be dead by now, but he isn't, and now that I've come, I will not leave him to die a lingering death alone. That would be cruel."

"Philippe died in complete terror with only his murderer for company." The acidity in his voice troubled her.

She sat beside him on the sofa, and gently lifted the book from his hands, setting it aside before snaking her arms around him. Erik had said Philippe's death was an accident, but Raoul did not to believe him. For her part, she wished to believe Erik, but knew she could not do so with any certainty.

"Why did I ever tell him anything?" Raoul despaired. "I never should have said a word about any of it to him."

Christine kissed his cheek. They had been over this before, and nothing she said ever stopped him from placing the blame on his own shoulders. She understood, for though she had not said it to him, she constantly played out in her mind all the things she might have done differently to prevent the entire tragedy from occurring in the first place. She hoped that once this last part of the whole sad affair was over, that little by little, the guilt would lessen its grip.

"Please?" She begged. "I know I am asking more than I should, but please don't leave me to do this on my own. My mind is made up, and you will not change it. Please?"

"I'm not happy about this, Christine," he replied.

She turned his face toward hers and kissed his lips. This was one favor she knew she could never repay.

Raoul did not linger in the house on the lake. Every day he helped her with the tasks she could not do alone, admonished her for not sleeping, kissed her, and then left. He always tried to avoid looking at Erik's face, but more than once she caught him studying Erik's monstrous visage with what she imagined was the same reluctant fascination she felt. Poor Erik, she thought. Though he lay dying, he was still an object of curiosity, even to those who knew better.

Erik never approached lucidity again. He tossed and sweated profusely, and babbled incoherently. Christine was never certain if he knew she were there or not, because so little of what he said made any sort of sense. His words were a mix of languages, but she suspected that even if she were fluent in all of them, she still would have been at a loss.

The worst incident occurred when Raoul was present, and the two of them were attempting to change the bedding without disturbing Erik too much. His eyes flew open, and he began pleading with some unseen person between Raoul and Christine in some language she could not place. He suddenly switched to French, and began repeating in a weak voice, "Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me."

"No one will hurt you," Christine said gently, but to no avail. She tried to wipe his dripping forehead, but he flinched from the contact, and the begging continued, becoming more and more frantic. She glanced at Raoul, whose face had drained of color.

"No one is going to hurt you, Erik," he echoed, but in a much firmer tone than Christine had managed. Erik settled down after that.

Before Raoul left that day, he gathered Christine in his arms as he always did, only this time he was trembling ever so slightly.

"How do you stand it?" he asked.

"He's usually not so bad," she replied.

"Do you think..." he took a deep breath, "Do you think it would be kinder if -"

"No," she cut him off. "I know what you're thinking, and yes, I have thought it would be easier on all three of us, but we cannot do that. It's wrong."

"You wouldn't need to be here; I would make it quick. He wouldn't suffer."

"No!" she repeated.

He nodded, "It was only a thought." She knew those sorts of thoughts too well, and she knew they sprang from a place of compassion, even if executing them would be a horrible sin. How simple it would have been, how merciful, if she could just have held a pillow over his face for a few minutes.

That outburst was the final time Erik spoke. He still whimpered and moaned occasionally, and it pained her to hear it. Though she was certain he would not wake, she could not bring herself to sleep. She did not want him to die with no one in the room. Confident that wherever he was now, he was never fully coming back, she began to speak the words that had been playing through her mind for weeks.

"There are so many things I wish I could have said while you were aware, but I was too afraid of your reaction, too afraid of you. Still, I need to say them, so I will. Why did you lie to me? Why did you take advantage of my faith, and my trust, and my love for my father? Do you have any idea what you've done to me? How much, and how deeply you hurt me? I trust Raoul because I knew him long before this, but I don't know that I'll ever be able to trust humanity as a whole again. That is your doing. Maybe it was a lesson I needed to learn, but not the way you taught it. I would have spoken to you, you know, if you'd just approached me as a man. If you had simply offered me lessons, and I'd heard your voice, I would have accepted. If you had told me the reason for the mask, I would have understood why you lived like you did, and I would have left it alone. I am not perfect, but I am not a mean-spirited person. If you'd just given me a chance, I think we could have been true friends. How differently this might have ended... I never would have made you a good wife, I am not saying that, but perhaps we wouldn't be here now. Maybe it wouldn't have spun out of control. Every cruel and violent act you committed because of me - it all could have been avoided. I think, perhaps, you could not help yourself. That is what I tell myself, that you were too mad to fully comprehend your own actions, that it was not entirely your fault. I need to believe that. Even after I found out the truth about you, even though you terrified me, I still cared about you. I didn't want to hurt you. Why do you think I tried to find a way to say goodbye? I had to attempt to minimize the damage. I loved you too much to leave you with nothing. After everything you did to me, I still hated the idea of causing you pain. I'm here now, and believe me, it would have been far easier if Raoul and I had simply left. If that isn't some sort of love, I'm not sure what is. Yes, Erik, despite everything, I love you for yourself, but I could never tell you. You never let us be what we should have been to each other when I'd never said it; what would you have done if I had? I imagine I'd be locked up somewhere with only you for company, and God only knows what you would have done to Raoul. Why couldn't you have let us be what we were? Why couldn't you just let me love you in my own way? You had a portion of what you'd always wanted, but you were too blind to see it; I'm sorry it wasn't enough. Why couldn't you have tried to let it be enough? I'm sorry you never had a chance to be happy, but I promise, once this is done, I will be happy enough for the both of us."

A soft pressure on her shoulder made her jump.

"How long were you there?" she inquired, willing her heartbeat to slow down.

"Long enough," Raoul replied.

"You weren't meant to hear any of that."

When he said nothing, she turned in her chair to face him, but could not bring herself to actually look at him, for fear of what expression his face might hold. "Are you angry?"

"No..." He knelt before her, grasping her hands, and pressing kisses to her fingers.

"You understand?" She hazarded a glance towards his eyes, afraid of what she might see in them.

There was no anger there, though she thought she may have detected some of the old jealousy. "Not entirely... I always suspected there was more to your feelings where he was concerned than you would admit to me."

"I don't understand it entirely; I should hate him after everything," she said. "You must believe me, you were never in competition for my affections. They are two very separate loves; I could never love anyone else as I love you." The tears she had been holding back for days finally began to escape. "I'm so tired, Raoul. I'm sorry. I'm just so tired."

"Why don't you lie down?" he suggested. "I'll sit with him."

She let Raoul carry her to the sofa. She nearly fell asleep on his shoulder during the brief walk. As soon she lay down, she fell into a fitful sleep that only lasted a few hours. When she woke, she found Raoul in her usual place at Erik's bedside. To both her relief and dismay, she could still detect the faint rise and fall of Erik's chest.

"How much longer will this be?" she said more to herself than to her husband.

"I don't know, but other than to check on Mamma and get things we may need, I'm not leaving you here alone again. That was selfish of me."

"No. It was selfish of me to ask for your help." She slipped an arm around his shoulders as he drew her into his lap. Her free hand found Erik's lifeless one. As uncomfortable as it was for the both of them, she couldn't say how long they sat like that, clinging to each other.

Two days later, the breath finally left Erik's body. Christine was by his side, and Raoul by hers - both of them precisely where they belonged.

Note: Without getting too personal, I'll say that I've been through a lot lately. Everything is fine now, but the deep recesses of my brain have yet to recognize that fact. Regaining my concentration is proving difficult. Anyway, thank you for bearing with me as I write one-shots in an attempt to get it back.