Ta ta - Surprise! New story! This story will continue, once my previous one is completed. I hope you will like this one as well, even though it starts out a bit depressing. I am looking forward to hearing from all of you what you think about it!

Now, without further ado, let's get to the story, but please keep in mind, that nothing has changed, I still don't own anything or anybody...

Chapter 1 – Over

"It's over now!" Erik cried, tears streaming down his naked face. "Over, over, over!" That was all he could think about, for he had truly lost everything. There was now nothing left for him on this godforsaken planet. His whole world had finally crumbled, and now it was all over: his hopes, his dreams, his chance at happiness, his friendship with Christine, his music, his life. One night had ended it all. One night had taken away what little light there had been in his miserable existence, and all that remained now was night: eternal darkness, cold and lonely, and the realization that his Christine hated him, despised him, thought him capable of taking her against her will.

Erik groaned. He would never forget her words, those cruel words that she had spit at him tonight. In his mind Christine would forever repeat all those angry, hateful things she had said to him.

"Am I now to be prey to your lust for flesh?" he heard Christine scream at him again one moment, the next moment he thought she hissed at him again, "it's in your soul, that the true distortion lies!" Then she would accuse him, "Angel of Music, you deceived me!" or tell him openly how much she hated him. "The tears I might have shed for your dark fate, grow cold and turn to tears of HATE!"

Oh, it was truly all over. Her false friend she had called him, thus making it clear, that even their shared past was now tainted in her mind. She would not even be able to look back with fond memories at all those years they had spent together, their music lessons, their former friendship. He had destroyed even that for her – and for himself. For he knew now without a doubt that the only emotions she would ever feel when being reminded of him would be disgust and contempt.

"But she kissed you," a small voice within himself tried to remind him. Erik sneered. "Not out of her own free will," he was convinced. "Because I did exactly what she expected me to do, I forced her, not physically, but by threatening that boy of hers. And she could not have made it more clear how utterly disgusted she was by her act." He laughed at himself. "What had she said, before coming on to me and kissing me? God give me courage! That's what she said! She prayed for courage, so that she could fight off her disgust long enough to kiss me! No, she did not do it out of kindness, or even out of pity, she only did it because it was the only way to save that boy's life. Under normal circumstances, she would never have dreamed of touching her lips to mine! She could not even have stomached the thought of doing so, for even under these dire circumstances, she needed help from above, she needed her God to give her courage, so that she would be able to go through with it! I am that despicable to her, that disgusting, that loathsome!"

He groaned again. "Over," he repeated. "It's over now. Everything is over now." And in a way he even understood why it was over. Why the girl who had admired her Angel of Music had grown to hate and despise him so. Why she thought his soul was distorted and called him a false friend. Oh, he understood only too well, how he had managed to kill every last trace of friendship and warm feelings within her, but it was too late now. For even if he changed, if he tried from now on to be the kind of man she could have liked, at least as a friend, she would never believe that he had changed so completely, and she would never be able to overcome her hatred. Not after all he had done to her and to this... ridiculous boy of hers.

It was truly over. Not just Christine, his whole life lay in shambles. His home, his hideaway, was gone, the Opéra Populaire was going up in flames, he had nowhere to go, nothing to live for, no purpose, nothing.

"I should have just stayed in my lair and waited for the mob to kill me," Erik thought, but for some reason he did not turn back to face the mob and meet his end. He kept running. He had no idea where he was running, or even why he was running from the mob, when the fate that awaited him at the hands of the angry people could in no way be worse than what he was going through at the moment. He just kept running.

In his mind Christine once again screamed at him. "Tears of hate!" she told him, pointing at the tears that were running down her lovely cheeks. "False friend!" she hollered at him angrily. "It's in your soul that the true distortion lies!" Erik put his hands on his ears, as if that way he could stop the screaming, as if in doing so he could ban those horrible memories from his mind forever.

"Oh Christine, forgive me, forgive me!" he cried. "I understand, truly, now I understand, why you are so mad at me. If only I could go back in time, if only I could do things right this time, if only I had not hurt you so badly by threatening to kill the man that you love!" But he knew that this was not possible. Christine had seen him at his worst and there was now nothing in this world he could do to make her forget that and forgive him for his sins.

"Over!" Erik wailed again, realizing that despite everything he had suffered in his life so far, despite everything he had gone through, he had never felt so hurt. This was by far the worst. Never before had he been so utterly hopeless, so utterly depressed, so – empty. As if all life had left him, as if he were nothing but a walking shell, a shadow of his former self.

He continued running, not paying attention to the heat and the smoke, not even realizing that once or twice he came perilously close to walking into one of his own traps. He had no idea where he was going, nor did he waste one single thought on what he would do now. It did not really matter, there was no future for him anyway, he could just as well stop running, but something made him go on. It was as if he were running on automatic.

Erik finally reached an exit and left the burning building. The cold night air hit his face at the same time as the glare from the raging fire, but he ignored them. None of that mattered, none of that made a difference to his failed existence. "Hate," he mumbled, "disgust, that's what she feels for me now." And he shuddered as his mind once again repeated every single angry word Christine had yelled at him that night.

Erik kept running. He had to get away – away from this place where his life had fallen apart, away from these hurtful memories, away from the pain, the hurt and cold that he felt enveloping his broken heart. Away from the voices in his mind that kept screaming at him. "False friend! You deceived me! It's in your soul that the true distortion lies! Tears of hate! Hate! Hate!"

Erik groaned. There really was no point in running. He would never get that voice and those words out of his mind. Those had caused him more pain than the most vicious beatings at the hands of his gypsy master way back in his youth. Those beatings had left ugly scars as well, but they had only hurt his body. Christine's words had hurt his soul. They had inflicted wounds that would never heal. His soul would now bleed forever.

"Over!" Erik sobbed. He felt exhausted, drop-dead tired, but his feet kept running. He did not care, where they carried him, he did not even bother to check his bearings. It did not really matter, where he would be ending up. One place was as good or bad as the other. Truth be told, he did not really want to go anywhere. All he wanted was to drop down and die. But somehow his feet kept running, on and on, as if they had a place in mind, as if they knew of a destination that he needed to reach.

Finally Erik arrived in front of a building, and without consciously thinking about it, he entered and ran up two flights of stairs. With a loud thud he finally collapsed against the door to an apartment. Everything went black and the voices in his mind finally went silent.

Erik did not notice that an inhabitant of the apartment in front of which he had collapsed came out to see what had caused the noise. He did not hear that person calling for another one, he did not feel two men lifting him up and carrying him inside, and he did not see their worried looks as they realized the condition he was in. Darkness had finally claimed him and had put his troubled mind at peace – at least for the moment.

Xxxx

Inside the apartment, Nadir frowned at Erik. "He is burning up," he informed his loyal manservant Darius. "His forehead is boiling hot and he is sweating profusely. I have no idea what could have caused this condition."

"Can we help him?" Darius asked nervously. "This looks to me as if he would need a doctor, ..."

Nadir sadly shook his head. "We cannot call for a doctor, Darius," he reminded his servant. "You know pretty well that that would mean they would arrest him. Even though he killed that man, Buquet, in self-defense, nobody will believe him, especially since that Vicomte seems to see him as his personal nemesis after what has happened at the masquerade. No, we cannot do that, we cannot deliver him into the hands of the authorities. We have to try and do our best to help him. It's his best chance at survival."

Darius nodded. He understood. But he wished things were different. He wished his master's friend would be able to live a normal life, that he would not have to hide in shadows because of his deformed face. He wished that poor sick man could get the treatment and the medical attention he needed.

It was a long night for the two men. They were taking turns at their sick friend's bedside, trying their best to lower his body temperature, or at the very least to keep his fever from rising even higher. They could not replace the wet rags, that they had soaked in ice-water fast enough. They had wrapped Erik's whole body in ice-cold wet rags, they were putting little ice-cubes on his chest, but all they managed to do was to keep his temperature from going up even further.

At one point, their patient became delirious. He seemed to relive some traumatic experience once again. "Over," he repeated endlessly. "It's over now... everything is over now. Oh Christine, forgive, forgive! Noooo!" Then he began to sob. "False friend," he whimpered, "you deceived me. Tears of hate! It's in your soul, that the true distortion lies!"

"Hate!" the sick man raged. "Hate and disgust, and fear that I might rape her. That's all she feels for me."

Nadir and Darius looked at each other. What could have caused such deep despair, such utter hopelessness?

"Something terrible must have happened," Nadir sadly commented. He had a feeling, he knew what it was. He had been extremely concerned when he had noticed that his friend's feelings for his pupil and protégée, the beautiful young ballerina and singer Christine Daaé had changed from fatherly/friendly into something deeper and stronger. He had feared then that disaster was about to happen, for he knew how the world in general reacted to Erik's deformed features. How could Erik expect a woman, a member of the fairer sex, to be able to endure such a beastly sight? No, not only to endure it, to look upon it with love, to be able to look beyond the grim exterior and discover the man behind it. True, Christine already knew Erik, after all those years he had taught her, she must have got an idea of his true personality, his caring, loving, softer side. And she did harbor certain romantic feelings for her Angel. But did that mean, that she would be able to accept Erik, once she knew the truth? She was still so young, so immature, learning the true nature of the entity she perceived to be a beautiful angel, would certainly be a shock for her.

As it turned out, Nadir had been right about this and Christine's first encounter with her Angel had ended badly. Erik had not given up, though, especially since a young suitor had presented himself in the person of the Vicomte de Chagny, by whom Erik had felt threatened. The fear of losing his beloved to this other man, had then driven Erik to more and more extreme measures. Nadir shuddered as he remembered the incident during opening night of "Il Muto", and especially the scandal Erik had caused at the masquerade ball on New Year's Eve.

And last night had been the much anticipated premiere of Erik's opera "Don Juan Triumphant". Nadir knew that Erik had planned something special for that night, some desperate last attempt to win Christine's affections. He also knew that Erik had feared – or probably known – that the Vicomte was planning something as well. Erik had therefore warned Nadir to stay away from the Opéra Populaire, he had hinted at the possibility of things getting a bit ugly, and maybe even dangerous during the performance. "I will feel calmer, if at least I do not have to worry about your safety," Erik had cryptically told him.

Nadir had followed this advice and stayed away, but now he had a feeling as if it might have been better to attend that performance, to be there, to maybe be able to do something that would have prevented whatever catastrophe must have happened, for it was beginning to dawn on him that Erik's illness was not caused by a virus or by exposure to extreme cold, but by some traumatic event. His friend's fever was a nervous one, and from the words Erik spoke in his delirium, it was not hard to guess that Christine was somehow involved in what ever had hit Erik.

Nadir cursed under his breath. He should have seen this coming. Heck, in a way he had seen this coming. The Daaé-woman was almost twenty years Erik's junior, pretty and talented, she had her whole life in front of her. Why would she want to tie herself to somebody like Erik, who could only give her a life in the shadows, who would never be able to walk with her in the sunshine, to be at her side during an opening night party, who she could never introduce to her colleagues as her husband. It could not have worked. It had been so obvious. Why, oh why had Erik not seen it? Or rather, why had Erik chosen to ignore those facts? And why on earth had he himself not tried harder to dissuade Erik from pursuing that girl, to make him understand that all he could hope for was her friendship, and that he should try his best not to lose that as well?

"Oh Erik," Nadir sighed, "why did it have to come to that? Why did you not listen to reason?" But he knew the answer: Love. Erik's love and desire for that girl was what had caused this disaster. The final realization that she could never return his feelings must have sent Erik overboard and caused his raging fever.

But how had this happened? What exactly had transpired between these two last night – during the performance? Before it? During the interval? Nadir had no idea.

When Darius brought in the morning newspaper, Nadir's eyes widened in shock. Right there, on the front page, was a huge picture of the Opéra Populaire – burning up. And above the picture there was a headline in large, bold letters, reading "Madman Sets Opéra on Fire and Abducts Soprano".

"Oh no," he groaned, then he began to read. His heart went out to his sick friend as he read that there had been plans to ambush the "Phantom" and get him caught, but that despite all these precautions and a house full of gendarmes, said Phantom had still managed to appear on stage and sing a mesmerizingly sensual duet with the prima donna, Mademoiselle Christine Daaé, who must at one point have guessed who he was, for she ripped off his mask and exposed his ugly, deformed face to all the attendees, but when the gendarmes had moved in to pry her away from the fiend and arrest the latter, the Phantom had somehow crashed the huge chandelier into the audience, thus starting the fire that was still not quite under control, and during the ensuing chaos had managed to disappear with the girl. Several people, including the Vicomte de Chagny, had gone in search of them, but while the young soprano had been safely returned to the care of her foster mother, one Madame Antoinette Giry, there had been no trace of the monster. One ballerina had supposedly found one of his masks in the cellars of the building, but that was it.

Nadir sighed. What a story! He still had no idea, how the girl had gotten away, and what exactly had happened between her and Erik, but it was obvious that last night had been a culmination of sorts, a decisive moment, and obviously things had not gotten well for his friend. It seemed as if Erik would now have to come to terms with the fact that he had lost the girl for good.