Hi there! This is my first piece of phanphic, although I've already written lots of Hunchback ofNotre Dame stuff, so I'm new to neither French Romantic lit. or deformed titular characters. Anyways.

This is a piece of affectionate phandom-bashing, created on a long car trip while I was thinking about all the ludicrous things that happen in this book. It's entirely Laroux-Based, because let's face it, Laroux' original phantom did some wierd things.

Disclaimer: Erik belongs to a lot of people. Not to me. If he'd been mine, he might have been less insane. or more. You never know.

Your Face

(The Persian makes a good point)

The Persian had just finished affixing Raoul's hand to his head (for which his long, flowy golden locks came in very handy as rope) so that he wouldn't forget and let it drop again, when a trap door opened in the ceiling ahead of them and the Phantom dropped down in a swirl of black cloak. In one hand he held a sword, and in the other, a Punjab lasso- so it was a mystery how he'd been able to open the locked, expertly-hidden trapdoor with both hands full, but you couldn't question the Phantom like that. He just did shit. You didn't ask how.

"Boo!" shouted the Phantom.

They both jumped. After all, he was a Ghost.

"Ahah!" declared the Phantom, "I have you! Now, I'll kill you, and you won't be able to keep me from Christine just because I'm so dead-ass ugly!"

The Persian sighed.

"Don't try to stop me, Daroga, nobody can stop Erik! You should know by now, tortured geniuses never meet sticky ends!"

"Why does he refer to himself in third person?" whispered Raoul, into the Persian's ear.

"I'm not sure, he just does," replied the Persian, because, as has been established, you can't question the O.G. It just don't work.

Erik's eyes narrowed behind his mask. "Are you talking about Erik's face? Stop it! Stop it at once!"

This prompted another sigh from the Persian, who, as the only genuinely mature adult in the whole damn story, frequently had to say things like this. "You know, Erik," he said, patiently, "not everything is about your face."

The Phantom looked briefly stunned, and then his face-or what could be seen of it- went sour. "Of course you'd say that. You have a nose."

"Stop coveting the Persian's nose," said Raoul, "you should be coveting my nose. It's far more attractive."

Erik shook his head. "Nah, I've always been partial to Daroga's nose. It has character. You see it and you think, 'gosh, now that's a nose'."

"Both of you leave my nose out of this," snapped the Persian, "My nose is irrelevant."

"Irrelephant. Now there's a creature with a nose."

"Erik! Shut up about noses!" The Persian pinched the bridge of his own nose, then realized his mistake and quickly drew back his hand.

The Phantom sank into a cross-legged sit on the floor, pouting. "None of you could understand what it's like to be me."

"Nope!" said Raoul, cheerfully.

"I mean- sorry, Erik means-" continued the Phantom, ignoring Raoul, "that none of you could understand how it feels, wearing a mask all the time. It's very restrictive! My skin needs air, or it could get- uh- even uglier!"

"Is such a thing possible?"

The Persian shook his head. "Raoul, don't encourage him."

Erik looked up at the Persian, and tears filled his yellow eyes. "Erik just wants to be normal," he whimpered.

The Persian quietly decided that after this, he was moving to New Zealand. Erik wouldn't follow him there- capes weren't in fashion. "Erik, normal people don't kidnap Swedish singers and blackmail them into marriage. Nor do they keep torture chambers."

"They don't?"

"No," said the Persian, seriously.

"Huh. I'm never buying that decorating magazine again. Anyway, I didn't blackmail Christine-..." At the word 'Christine', he sank into a pool of bitter, dry sobs for several minutes. Both men waited patiently until he was done. Then he recovered and continued. "She was drawn to me by my freakin' awesome voice, her own naïveté and the obvious sexual tension between us!"

Raoul, who had decided to settle down in a corner and rock back and forth for a bit, wondered, does that make her a necrophile?

"I can hear your thoughts over there!" snapped Erik.

"How?"

The Persian shook his head. "You just don't learn, do you? Don't question the Phantom."

"Anyway," resumed Erik, "Christine was only repelled from Erik by Erik's funk-ugly face!"

"Again with the face. You have a real fixation, you know that?"

"Don't talk to Erik about Erik's mental state!" roared the Phantom. "Erik's bat-shit crazy insane and proud of it!"

"At least you're that self-aware," said the Persian.

There was a silence. Erik looked edgy. "I'm ugly!" he added, after a moment, just in case they hadn't gotten the message.

The Persian gave Erik's incredibly bony shoulder a gentle pat. "Yes, we know."

"Well you didn't seem to be paying it enough attention."

"I'm just saying," repeated the Persian, "it's not always about your face."

Erik stood, and gestured downward at himself. "My body, then? After all, I am kind of corpse-ish. And I don't have any body heat. Now that's just effed-up, you must admit."

"Maybe if you didn't sleep in a coffin like some kind of insane vampire," offered the Persian.

Erik stuck out his desiccated tongue at them.

"Have you retained or attempted to understand anything I've said to you?"

The Phantom shook his head. "Go away now. Erik has dancers to scare, music to compose, chandeliers to drop, creepy letters to write, and a pretty white horsey to feed."

"Wait, Erik," said the Persian, sternly.

The Phantom paused.

"Are you going to freak Christine out?"

He turned, his shoulders slumping, and he cast Daroga a guilty look. "Er. No."

"You were, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Bad."

Erik stuck out a long, bony finger at him. "You just don't trust Erik because of Erik's face!"

Aaand we're back where we started, thought the Persian. "I don't trust you because you're an utter gobsmacking loony."

"Uh-huh," said Erik, looking pleased.

"If you want me to trust you, move aboveground, into a normal house that isn't surrounded by a lake. Don't install a torture chamber. Turn your collar down. Improve your handwriting. Don't ask random strangers for 20 000 francs. Better to haunting graveyards at night with a dead man's violin, too."

"Then what do I do with my time?"

"You could join a support group," suggested the Persian. "Heck, this is Romance-era Paris! The place is lousy with crazy deformed guys who are violently in love."

"What do you know of love?" asked the Phantom, sourly.

"More than you," said Raoul, "You're a virgin."

"Yes, fop, because of my-"

"Oh for fuck's sake!" The Persian could feel the heat rising in his face. This was like talking to walls. Why did he have to be so mature and competent compared to everyone else? "Erik. Phantom. Ghosty-boy. The reason you so fail to be a hit with the ladies is not because you're an ugly little corpse, it's because you're a murderous ravening nutter who enjoys threatening young women with grasshoppers!"

"...Christine thinks I'm fascinating..." said Erik, slowly, defiantly.

"Darn it, in that case I'd better go to the North Pole," said Raoul. Everyone continued to ignore him.

"Erik," said the Persian, "I'm sorry. She's just not that into you."

"...No?" he whispered.

"No."

The Phantom looked up at him with big, sad, inexplicably glowy eyes. "...'Roga," he mewled.

"There, there." The Persian patted his shoulder again, and, gingerly, gave him a hug. It felt bony. The brim of Erik's fedora dug into his collarbone. "Nadir's here."

"Ga-a-ay," observed Raoul, and was utterly ignored.

"Better now?"

Erik's voice was muffled by the fabric of the Persian's coat. "Can I have your nose?"

"No." The Persian broke the hug, and put a hand to his neck to ensure that Erik had not lassoed him during. "So have you learned anything from our little chat?

For a moment the Phantom continued to stare into the bitter distance, on the verge of tears. He looked at Daroga like a dog pleading for a bone. "...Face?"

"No."

"Face?"

"No, Erik."

"Face."

"Wrong."

"...Face..."

"No."

Erik sighed. "No face..."

"That's right."

There was a silence. Then the Phantom brightened. "Okay. Not everything is about Erik's face," he said, steadying himself with the notion. "Erik can accept that."

The Persian was surprised. It seemed too good to be true. "You can?"

"Yes." Erik nodded, solemnly. "Erik can think of something that's not."

"Really? What?"

"Trapdoors!"

What a shitty ending. And what IS the deal behind Erik's nose-fetish? He just keeps talking about them!

Anyway. R&R please.