Author's Note: A big thank you to everyone who stopped and read the first chapter of this story, and who marked it for chapter alerts, and an even bigger one to those of you who left a review. Many, many thanks. For those of you who worry about starting a story that won't be finished, no fear of that happening. This story is complete. What I am doing now is going over each chapter and polishing it up, so updates will be regular. With that said, here is chapter 2.

The Way to Love
Chapter 2
Decisions

A gust of wind brought Erik to his senses. He looked around, trying to ascertain how long he had been on the roof. The sun had long since set and the clouds had gone, leaving the sky clear and cold with distant stars winking in mockery at him. Off in the distance, he heard the bells of Notre Dame tolling the hour. He counted the number of times the main bell clanged. Midnight. He looked around. Raoul and Christine were nowhere to be seen. Pragmatic enough not to wish to spend the rest of the night in the cold, Erik forced himself to move. He strained to move half-frozen limbs, clenching and unclenching his fists several times to force blood to circulate through stiff, numb fingers rather than out of anger.

Across the way, pale light outlined of the door he had exited earlier, and as he stumbled in that direction, towards the warmth of the interior of the opera house, he caught the glint of something metallic near his foot. He looked down, and saw something gold winking in the moonlight at his feet. He bent down to pick it up. It was the gold band he had given to Christine. She probably had no idea it was lost.

Erik stared at the ring, remembering the day he had given it to her. "As long as you keep it, you will be safe from all danger and Erik will be your friend," he had told her. It was meant to be a gift of friendship, but from her words tonight, she must have mistaken them for a veiled threat. He rolled the ring between his fingers. "But Erik never meant you any harm. Truly he didn't."

Since when did you start thinking of yourself in the third person?

"Who the hell are you?" Erik turned quickly, thinking someone had snuck up on him. Then he realized he was hearing his own thoughts.

Your conscience? the voice suggested sarcastically.

"I don't need a conscience."

No, of course not. You are the great Erik. You need no one, nothing. Bah, you're pathetic!

"Go away! I don't have to explain myself to you or anyone else. Just leave me alone."

Why? So you can wallow in self-pity? Besides, I like it here. Now, answer my question. You can't, can you. Then maybe I can. You started thinking of yourself in the third person when you lost your humanity, when you started putting your own lust above the needs of an innocent young woman. She knew nothing of the world, damn it! How could you have stooped so low?

Erik pleaded with himself for understanding, unable to bear the assault of his own conscience. "No" he shouted. "You're wrong. It's not like that. I…I love her."

Love? You call what you did to her love? You are a wretched creature, Erik. You abduct the young lady, you rail at her when she insists upon seeing your face, you threaten, you use your Voice to bend her will to yours. Is that what you call love? I call it manipulation.

"But…you're wrong," Erik whimpered. "I love her."

You can't admit the truth, not even to yourself. You're a fake, a charlatan. You are unworthy of love.

Dejected and defeated, Erik tucked the ring into his pocket and headed inside.

He made his way silently through the vacant opera house, knowing the layout as well as a man knows the back of his hand. If he had wanted to, he could have walked through the building with his eyes closed tight and never once bump into anything, he was that familiar with it. As he passed through one of the darkened corridors, on his way to the stairs that led to the cellars and to his house, Erik almost stumbled over a body lying on the floor.

He knelt down, wondering if someone had died. Instead of a corpse, however, he discovered it was the sleeping form of one of the stagehands, Joseph Buquet. Erik sniffed.

Pah! Drunk and passed out again. The stupid fool. Drinking will be his death one of these days!

Erik got up and shook his head slowly. Paying no further heed to Buquet, he continued down to his house by the lake, more mindless automaton than human, running on instinct.

Once inside his house, he flopped down onto the sofa. Over and over, he asked himself what it was he ever saw in Christine. What was it about her that had made him think she would be different, that she would be able to love him for himself? Was it the innocence she had brought with her when she came to the opera house? Was it because he had felt for her, a frightened little bird relegated to the chorus for more than a year, that he believed she would reciprocate those feelings? Was it her loneliness that drew him to her, the thought that because she, too, had known suffering and loss, she might understand someone like him?

Whatever it was, he had grossly misjudged the situation. She turned out to be no different from the rest, judging him by his face. In fact, from what she had been telling de Chagny earlier, her imagination must have been working extra hard, for the hideousness she had described went far beyond the facts.

Erik got up and slowly made his way to his bed, mentally chastising himself at his folly while coming to the understanding that in his own despair at ever having someone to love, he had overlooked the fact that Christine was, in many respects, gullible and naïve, unfamiliar with the ways of the world. He lay in his bed, deep in thought. He still could not believe he had permitted himself to be dragged down to such depths, that he had threatened her, a complete innocent. Perhaps if she had been older, more worldly-wise; perhaps if he had taken his time…but it was too late now. The damage was done.

The next day, Erik woke up, not knowing how he had managed to sleep. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was afternoon. Eyes fixed on the ceiling, he imagined what must have been going on upstairs. It would be a busy time above, with preparations for tonight's performance of Faust.

He went into the bathroom to wash. He looked into the mirror and assessed himself. Gazing back at him was a man in his early forties, tall and sinewy but hardly the living corpse Christine had made him out to be, and he had to wonder how she had ever come up with such an imaginative description. Taking care of himself, constantly climbing and descending numerous flights of stairs each day, routinely strolling the catwalks at night when cast and crew were gone (and sometimes during the day, just to put the scare into folks from time to time), and generally engaging in various manual activities on a regular basis, had kept him fit and trim. In fact, he knew that he was far more fit than many a man half his age, including that young de Chagny scamp. If it stopped here, Erik knew he could have competed with the best Paris could offer – and won. But then he looked up at his face. That was where the true distortion lay.

Erik removed the full-faced mask he wore even when alone in his house, and could only agree that what it covered was terrible, a deformation of misshapen flesh. The right side of his face bore the worst of the damage – a horrible landscape that was an outward manifestation of the pain in his soul. He tilted his head, noticing that on the right side, his nose appeared as if pushed in, giving the appearance of being non-existent when viewed from that side. His eyes were dark and, in the shadows, looked deep and sunken in, accentuating his lean stature.

There was a lump of flesh on his right temple, pressing against his eye. Lately it had been causing severe headaches and blurred vision that thankfully were not troubling him at the moment. He put a hand over the right side of his face and took note that exposed left side looked almost normal. Then he put his hand over the left side of his face. Staring back at him was the face out of a nightmare. He put his hand over the right side again and stared for several minutes.

Finally, an idea came to him. He went over to his desk and found a pair of scissors. Picking up the mask, he cut it in half down the middle. He tossed aside the left half, held the right side up to his face, and looked into the mirror again. He realized that, if he kept the mask a tan or flesh color, and fixed it so that it only covered the right side of his face, he could almost pass for normal.

For the next couple of hours, Erik worked hard on creating several new masks, ones that he felt would allow him to blend in with the crowd, as long as no one looked too closely.

The mantle clock struck four o'clock, and Erik's stomach rumbled. He set the aside the mask he had been working on and realized he was hungry. Not surprising, since he eaten nothing for two days. Not wanting to risk going outside just yet, he stealthily made his way to the opera house kitchens. There he helped himself to an assortment of foodstuffs, some to eat now, and a few things to take along with him so he would not have to keep coming back upstairs.

Hunger satisfied, his mind turned once again to what needed to be done. He was sure that it would be best for all involved if he never saw Christine Daaé again, and determined to make sure that she would not, accidentally or otherwise, make her way back to his house. With that in mind, he changed out the lock on the secret door on the Rue Scribe side, the door to which he had given her a key. He also deactivated the pivot mechanism on the mirror in her dressing room. No sense in making it easy for the authorities to find him, should she or the vicomte decide to expose his whereabouts.

That evening he listened as Christine called to him from her dressing room, pleading with him, assuring him that she was singing for him alone. It took every ounce of willpower to resist her siren's call, but he refused to answer her and even forewent his usual seat in Box Five. Yes, he longed to see Christine once again, to hear her crystal clear voice, but he knew there needed to be a complete break, and so he remained in his house – alone.

By the next day, Erik had made up his mind that there was no way he could stay at the opera house much longer. Sooner or later, he would run into either Christine or her boy. They, in turn, would inform the authorities of his presence. Hunting parties would be formed, scouring the building from top to bottom. Even though Erik had gone to great pains to keep his house hidden from the casual eye and had covered his tracks well, it would not be long before someone would find him, and that would never do. He also knew that each time he saw her, even if she was unaware of his presence, his heart would break again. So he decided it was time to leave not just the opera house, but France itself.

But where to go? He pulled an atlas from his bookshelf and let the pages fall open where they may. Spread out before him was a flat map of the world. He considered the several languages he was adept in – German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, English, as well as a smattering of Eastern tongues. His fingers traced the outlines of several countries as he contemplated which place had the most to offer.

Eastern Europe and the Middle East were out of the question. He had been there before and had no desire to return. He turned to the rest of Europe. The Germans were too…Germanic; the Austrians were simply more Germans, the Italians too flamboyant, the Spanish too hot blooded, and the English too cold blooded. About to give up and wondering if he should take a voyage to the North Pole, he glanced down at the newspaper he had been reading the other day. His eyes alighted on a story touting the opportunities awaiting those who were daring enough to start a new life in America. Erik picked up the paper and read the story again, and made up his mind that he would go to New York City.

Now that the decision had been made, Erik almost looked forward to starting anew. Almost, but not quite. There would always be an emptiness in his heart, but he was no longer angry with Christine, only sorry for how things had ended. Even his anger with Raoul for interfering had bled away as Erik recognized that the only person responsible for this fiasco was himself. He vowed never to trouble Christine again.

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