Author's note: While trying to get my mind off the fact that my grandfather is dying of lung cancer, I was strangely inspired to write a POTO inspired ficlet. I decided to make it a drabble between 100-500 words, and I succeeded, and am fairly happy with it. Anyway, hope everyone enjoys and please review.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Phantom of the Opera. Although I think it's free domain, open copyright, etc. As long as it isn't a specific version other than the original novel. Which, if I had to base this on a specific version, would be what this is set in. I'm rambling. So, I don't own, please, nobody sue me. Savvy?

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She looked more like a girl than a woman when she slept. So perfect, innocent, young. Beautiful outside as well as in.

He could never hope to be worthy of her, yet he tried to. He would try to until his dying breath left him. He could not help it, he loved her too much too give her up, needed her too much. He would die without her, and though death was close to him anyway, though it would be a mercy to him and her both, he was just too selfish.

She was so lovely and innocent, full of life. She seemed to glow down there in his domain, a spark light in the dark underworld he lived in. She was so precious, but down there, she would be stifled, her light snuffed.

Which was why he would let her return to her world. To the above, to once again walk among ordinary mortals. She had to return to him, but he would let her walk in the sunlight and leave the dark every so often. He could not allow her to lose her light.

Yet he could not give her up entirely. He was now blind in the darkness he had once craved to be covered if she was not around. He could not bear the loneliness he had resigned himself to ages ago.

He needed her to stay with him. He would let her return to the above just enough to keep her happy. But he would try to make her happy as well.

She would be happy with him. She would forget what he looked like eventually. She would forget where she was, and soon see it as home. Him as husband. She would be come to be happy with home and husband. She had to.

She had seen the forbidden, and he could not let her go. She belonged to him now, and he would not let her go.