Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is property of Gaston Leroux's descendants, Susan Kay, and many others. This was written for entertainment purposes only, and no profit was made.

I should tell you first that I would have done anything for him. Erik was the first person to make me feel anything since the long, dark years after my father's death. He was like the light streaming in through the treetops in spring in a thawing wasteland, nourishing the seedling of my soul. He saved me.

"What should I call you, angel?" I felt almost flirtatious, trying everything to glean the secrets of his identity from him, to make him show himself from wherever he was hiding.

"Call me Erik, Christine." His voice was low and soothing with a hint of amusement. It seemed the most beautiful name I had heard, and I doubted my girlish inflections could do it justice.

It seemed conceivable that he'd read my diary, lying prominently on the desk near my notepaper. How else could he know so much about me? Regardless, he was intensely fascinating and immensely talented, and I couldn't deny that he'd convinced me he was an angel. Erik was absolutely gentlemanly with a singing voice like no other, a soaring voice fit for the kingdom of heaven. And who wouldn't want to believe him? I let myself be seduced, and I won't deny for a minute that I did enjoy the process... but in a naive way at the time.

I held his long, suede gloved fingers for the first time when he pulled me though my own dressing room mirror. It spun, creating a kaleidoscopic pattern on the walls from the candlelight. I pretended for a moment that I was a pivot on a carousel, the world spinning around me, myself still yet whirling. We entered into blackness, only broken by a dim lantern, and I knew we were going below. "Why are we here?" I asked, excited yet afraid, and he turned to face me. His eyes glistened golden in the darkness, and I was transfixed by them.

"We're going to a sanctuary of music, somewhere where no one can interrupt us."

Somehow, that explanation was enough. His gaze convinced me to follow; his hand squeezed mine reassuringly, promising adventure. I admit I hoped for romance. What girl doesn't?

We crossed a lake in a little boat, and he sung me Italian songs and told me about the gondolas there. He described Venice so well that I imagined a soft breeze in my hair and almost thought I heard birds chirping in between the soft, rhythmic splashing made by the oars. He was wonderful at creating illusions.

I was growing cold on the lake but was almost disappointed when we entered a rock wall into a perfectly normal sitting room lined with row after row of musty leather-bound books. I suppose I expected a castle, not a quaint cottage, after the moat in the midst of all that mysterious stone and darkness. The warmth and brightness assaulted my body at first. After I removed Erik's sweet-smelling heavy cloak, I remembered that I was only wearing my nightgown, which simply wasn't suitable for the company of a man. I turned away modestly. He gently led me from behind into a room accessible from what looked like a solid wall. "All of this is yours."

It was a beautiful bedroom bigger than my dressing room, and to me, it was suitable for a royal wife. The gold-embroidered hangings on the bed were exquisitely ornate, and a large open closet revealed fashionable gowns all tailored to fit me. I turned to thank him, but he was gone. It was best that I was properly dressed to meet my angel for the first time anyway.

I picked a lavender dress with lace across the bodice and was pleased to find perfume and powder on a mahogany desk along with some writing paper so expensive that it felt like satin. It was quite a dowry, more gifts than my father ever could provide. I felt guilty at the expense but touched that Erik had made such preparations for my arrival. It was like he planned that I'd stay forever. I closed my eyes in a girlish thrill, took a deep breath with a wide smile and pressed my hands together ladylike in front of me so I wouldn't fidget. Now I was ready.

He wasn't in the drawing room waiting for me. My smile faltered, but I replaced it instantly, curious to see more of the secret home anyway. A low thrumming became a loud crescendo and I found my way to its source. I was unable to enter the room. Yes, it was a quaint cottage, but this corner of it revealed a disturbed mind.

The walls and floor were as black as possible for indoors, an attempt at echoing the cavernous void of the cellars. One entire high wall was concealed by a pipe organ that seemed ripped from a place of worship. It highly contrasted with the morbid setting, but it was fit for an angel. Yet just across from it, from the myriad sheaves of music stacked neatly up to my own height was a polished black, empty coffin. The lining was brilliant red silk with a small matching pillow. What sort of game was this? I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by what I saw when Erik turned from his organ bench to face me.

He was wearing an unblemished evening suit with shining shoes, looking his very best as if he were to leave to view the opera above. He was tall and thinner than I imagined him with alabaster hands mapped with river-like distended blue veins with that seemed untouched by the sun. But what I noticed first was that his entire face was covered with a black silk mask that matched his neatly-tied hair.

"Has someone died?" I asked politely and a bit waveringly, knowing that there wouldn't be a funeral viewing in such an isolated home.

It seemed that he frowned below the mask. "Not at all. Why do you ask?" I realized then that the coffin was perfectly normal to him. Even more disturbing was that I hadn't seen another bedroom yet, and across this room was a wardrobe displaying his fine suits. He clearly slept here.

I'd always thought that Erik had a secret. I'd assumed that he hadn't shown himself because he was shy or planning to surprise me. The darkest secret I could have imagined was that he was perhaps married. While sinful, it was not frightening.

Now, it seemed he was mad. I never knew anyone who was mad before.

Either he was blind to me, or I hid my thoughts better than I thought because he gestured for me to approach and bid me to sing with him. I asked him directly about his mask, and he said it was to represent the part of Othello, and I was to be Desdemona. I tried to put away my suspicions and reminded myself that he was a theatrical type: after all, he did live in the Opera, just as I lived in my dressing room! I pleaded to see his face immediately because the mask even made his eyes dark and unreadable. He laughed and asked if I would love him more if I saw it, or if my previous pledges were untrue. "You've said yourself that love is blind... I promised you a lesson, so sing!"

As I sang of my loyalty and love and he shouted my betrayal, I felt a transformation within me. I'd never felt such passion. The final fog of grief lifted from me, and my heart pounded with rapture at the sound of his singing and his nearness. At that moment, I became completely his, and I had to know him completely. A compulsion too intense to fight gripped me, and I snatched away his mask.

My lungs failed, and my heart skipped with a burning pain as I choked. I had never, ever suspected this. His face was like an old dead thing, mottled, bleached skin on a skull with sunken, unnaturally amber eyes and an absent nose, merely a small bit of skin over a deep socket. I didn't register the cry of shock and pain from his crooked lips before I turned away. I cried to Jesus, my father, to anyone that when I opened my eyes, the visage would be gone and my illusions of my angel would be repaired. My cries weren't heard.

His thin eyelids flared red, and he grabbed my neck in an instant, squeezing then throwing me across the room as if I weighed no more than a child. "Get away from me!" he had shrieked. I'd never heard such rage before. I wondered if my neck was meant to be broken and imagined myself dead and alone in the cellars where no one would ever find me, and my hysteria climaxed.

I screamed and cowered in the corner, covering my head and crying to wake up from the nightmare. I sensed him coming closer and pressed myself against the unyielding wall and heavy coffin as hard as I could, wishing only to compress myself into invisibility. It couldn't be real. I'd never seen anything like this, like a demon in a horrible story come alive.

He was pulling me closer to him by my hair and laughed, quiet but unhinged. "You wanted to see? Look at me! You can't hide! You can cover my face, Mother, but it's not gone! Have you forgotten? It doesn't come off!"

He grabbed my hand with his cold hard fingers and crushed my fingernails into his thin skin. They ripped into his face, and I sobbed as my fingers became warm and wet. I screamed again and tried to pull away, squeezing my eyes tighter, but I was still too close to the walls, boxed in between stone and death.

I'm certain I heard him cry when my hair ripped, and I realized he'd called me his mother. I doubted he even knew what was happening. I rubbed my throat, choked down my panic and pain and tried to decide what to do. I had to stay calm if I wanted to escape.

He let me go, and I heard his voice recede from me. "You've ruined it all," he whimpered, sounding so young and forlorn that I almost forgot his fury. "Now you can never leave."

I begged his forgiveness and promised to belong to him forever. I told him his genius outweighed any blemish, and I told him I'd end his suffering. It was all lies then, empty oaths of love. I begged because I wanted to live and I wanted to be freed. He told me he'd always loved me and that he'd die without me. He forgave me but kept me captive.

Later, I burned his mask and pretended to hide my revulsion when I looked upon him. As the days passed, the most noticeable part of his face gradually became the four trailing marks whose color matched the blood under my fingernails. I thought I'd never forgive his violence and deception, but I soon realized that it all made sense. He would be forever shunned because of his deformities, and he had never known love. I became fixated on his mother and how I'd never act like her, the person who first hid his face and set him upon this dark path. I saw the thick white scars all over his body that were a horror far beyond how he was born. It made so much sense that I was not shocked later when he told me that I really should fear him, describing to me his murders when he tried to kill my fiance along with his only friend. The world made him what he was, and it could be no other way. I could only try to bring a spark of joy into the abyss in which he lived. I could never have made it sunlit.

So, my dear daughter, now you know about your father. Would I have changed anything? Could I deny such shattered genius and unfaltering loyalty love? He would have killed for me, and I could do no less for him. No, I wouldn't have changed a bit. I only wish you could have met him, to see him unmasked through my eyes.

A/N: Yes, Erik's this violent in Leroux and Kay, so I don't want to hear about that. I wish I'd thought of the fingernail part, but that was Leroux. I hope you enjoyed the story!