Chapter Text
Erik smoothed one palm over Christine’s wild curls, tucking them gently behind her ear as he gazed at her calm profile. She was young. Still far too young for him, all innocence, youth. Hopeful. He still saw it in her sometimes. This unending hope, like if she just kept her head down, if she just stepped in exactly the right way, everything would sort itself out. Everything would be better.
He might learn how to actually love her.
But the truth was, Erik wasn’t sure that he was capable of it. Love. That burning, breathless thing that he felt when she was out of his sight for a bit too long was the closest he suspected he would ever come. What he felt for her was not love. It couldn’t be. It was possessive. Consuming. Wounding. Love was not meant to hurt in the ways that what he felt did.
If it was love, it wouldn’t be slowly squeezing her until there was nothing left but a shell. If it was really love, he would have let her go when he realized what he was doing to her. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Thinking it and actually convincing his hand to unclasp from around her were two very different things.
If he could love her, he would. He would give anything to. And for a brief moment, when he realized that the illness burrowing deep in his lungs was there to stay, he had tried. He had gone so far as finding that boy that had loved her. He even typed up an email.
He couldn’t bring himself to send it.
The boy was married now. He had a pretty wife. They looked happy. The chubby-cheeked child plastered across their pages was handsome. They were picture perfect. Everything he had ever wanted for Christine - with Christine - and he couldn’t bring himself to send the stupid email. He couldn’t bring himself to put her through that. She had been through more than enough already.
He may not be able to love her in the ways that he should, but he knew her well. Inside and out. Christine required care. Support. She needed someone to hold her and promise not to let her go. She needed someone that actually meant it when they said that they would. A friend would not be enough. She needed someone to be her everything. Someone sturdy and steady enough to help her untwist the trauma and confusion that he had so carefully wrapped her in.
He drew his thumb thoughtfully against her cheek. She wasn’t sleeping. She was unconscious. He wasn’t sure if she even knew the difference between the two anymore. Her warm, even breath against his bony thigh was strangely soothing in a way that he wasn’t sure anything else ever could be.
Blinking, he turned his attention back to the blank notebook that rested on his knee. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to pull it out. He had never felt a need to explain himself before, to justify himself. No, that was entirely new. Strangely fitting that it would come at the end.
He flicked the pen nervously between his fingers twice, and then he jotted down the first line that came to mind.
‘Christine Daae did not choose to die. She was a victim.’
Something foreign twisted in his chest and he glanced at her again, releasing a slow breath. That was that, then. It was practical. Kind, even. Kinder than leaving her, strung out and alone and frightened. The thought didn’t really make it any easier to breathe, but he pushed on anyway. His hand trembled as he wrote the words, staring at the blank page.
‘Mid August, 1985 - Nevada’