Love Revived

Chapter XV

"W-what?" I stuttered as Erik looked at me with pale, horrified eyes.

With a start, he groped the bed for his clothes and found them gone, just as mine were.

"I must be dreaming," Erik muttered. He looked right at me and found my engagement ring clutched to the sheets adhering to my decency.

"I fear you aren't," I replied.

Erik looked like he was to be sick, and I wanted so badly to be able to help him.

"What do you find you're remembering? Do you remember Coney?"

Erik looked up and sneered, jumping from the bed as he pulled covers with him, leaving me exposed to the harsh coldness.

"Erik," I whined, but he stuck out his hand, leaving me to clutch to a pillow for warmth and decency.

"You aren't real, this is a figment of my imagination, and I'm going to wake up soon." Erik shut his eyes and began to mumble over and over, "She's dead, I'm dreaming, she's dead, I'm dreaming."

It was a horrible sight to watch as he tortured himself with the images in his mind. To be frank, I hadn't expected this reaction, I expected him to be upset, irate even as I looked at him with sad, pleading eyes.

"Erik, I love you, please stop this. It happened to all of us... To Meg, Madame Giry, Raoul... We all knew. We were simply trying to prolong your knowledge knowing you'd overreact such as you find yourself doing."

Erik looked at me, as I brazenly walked up to him and placed my bare body right in front of him.

"I still love you," I muttered, stroking his unmasked features.

Reaching up a considerable distance, I kissed his lips and pulled him into me. He dropped the covers with reluctance and wrapped his arms around my waist, pushing us together in his need to make sure I really existed. I could tell he wanted nothing more than to take me again, experience both under our belts this time from years ago that we both remembered.

"Do you forgive me for not telling you? For changing fate?" I asked through stray tears, each and every one betraying how I felt. I felt wonderful, every moment I spent with him, but I wanted him to not be mad at me.

"I would let the world crumble around us for a bitter taste of your love, for there is little you could do that I would not forgive you for," Erik muttered, slowly into my ear, driving me mad.

Meg was right, at least. The words couldn't express how I felt, and the way I was holding onto him and sobbing wasn't even as emotional as I truly felt to be. Erik grabbed me and hugged me to him, re-adjusting his arms tighter and tighter as I begged for his closeness. Just as the night we now all remember.

"Oh my god, Christine, I can't believe it. I cannot believe that you are here, and you are safe... You are alive."

I sniffled, nuzzling into Erik's neck, "I am, I truly find myself here and alive."

"And we find ourselves engaged," Erik decided to mention, disbelief still coercing through his mind, I assumed.

"Well, I surmise being engaged and making love are a far better combination than simply being thrust into love and pain."

Erik nodded as he laid us back down in the bed, returning the covers over us so we were not exposed to the catacomb's cold air.

"You really love me," he muttered, staring at me as if I would dissolve into thin air.

"I have been trying to make up for the time lost as I live again our story. It was torture to tell Raoul I shan't ever love him, but it was true. I think it was true the first time, yet I failed to believe it."

Erik pulled me close as the covers were finally settled to his liking and kissed the top of my head, "Even when I was naïve to our past, our real past, I doubted your reality."

I giggled and placed a kiss to his chest, causing him to chuckle.

"Do you miss Gustave?" He asked, just as Raoul had when he had attained his memory.

"Yes, but are you forgetting what today was in the past?"

"I seem to be."

"Today was so very conveinently when we concieved him."

Erik chuckled, probably thinking I had planned this very event.... and maybe I had, but even if so, I would never regret creating our child. I didn't in the first place, despite him not being Raoul's.

"I think that the removal of time and the keeping of memories that has occurred is possibly one of the few things I have been thankful for."

I looked at Erik in a strange way, wondering why on earth he would say such a thing? Before he had so many things to be thankful for, and now he has even more so, for I doubt that he regrets the life I have created for us.

"I love you," I muttered as my thoughts slipped away, sleep coming over my body as the staying up to watch him took effect.

"I love you, Christine. Rest." He kissed the top of my head and began to sing, lulling me right there into a dreamless world of bliss.

His words that he sang were so changed, even his voice, as he remembered what had happened to us both... the torture and the pain... all of it had happened. Now we all knew it did as well, and there was little I could do or say in the matter. I wished, often enough, that I didn't remember some things like the abuse Raoul distributed, or the pain leaving Erik - and him leaving I - caused. There was no retribution for what occurred now, no sanctifying bliss to fall into Erik's ignorant arms. And his voice showed that he lost his ignorance, there was far more hurt, far more pain than before. Little did I know that when I was younger, but now I hated the knowledge. I hated knowing I had hurt him once, and that Erik knew I hurt him. I think I felt guilty for the pain. I felt guilty, but so did Erik. I knew so. I guess we would just have to live through the guilt together.