Happy Halloween! Here's another one of those chapters that took forever to be posted! Sorry to have left you all on one of those lovely cliffhangers, but you can blame my job, and school, and all of those fantastic things that everyone absolutely loves. This chapter in particular also took a lot of editing, careful pondering, etc. despite it being one of the top chapters of all time I've been eager to write - for years actually! So I'm anxious to know what you'll all think of it!

I'm happy to see that you guys over all seemed to like Clare ring - I was surprised by how many liked it, actually. Thank you for those who reviewed. If it weren't for you, this story probably wouldn't be on fanfic at all.

This chapter is named after Blinding by Florence and the Machine. I do not own the Phantom of the Opera, nor any of Florence and the Machine's work! I only own my OC's - especially Clare.

Enjoy!

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"You will not like the answer." He accused confidently. I felt as if my heart had sank to my stomach. What on earth could he have possibly done? I couldn't imagine him doing anything bad. He seemed as perfect as an angel to me. Had I over looked something? Fear, and premature disgust began to swirl in me, dreading the idea of him having worn a perfect facade this whole time.

No, this is Erik we're talking about. He's the most gentlest man you know. He's nothing like his doppelgänger.

Perhaps he was exaggerating. It was most likely something I would be disappointed in at the most, but surely not horrified. However, as he continued, the weight in the pit of my stomach grew.

"I am no better than a thief." He admitted, ashamed. "But you must understand - no one in the right would would ever dare consider hiring a man with a deformity such as mine. Because of my deformity, I have been robbed of living a normal life. I have lived underneath this opera house for most of my life, and I needed to figure how to get my hands on money and necessities somehow." Remorse was etched on his face, and I wondered if this was the first time he had ever been open to anyone about his past before. Was this the first time these words left his lips? I could feel that with each word, he was stripping himself layers of secrets - ones I never knew existed. "That is the reason why I terrorize the opera house - to scare the managers, and force them to succumb into giving me a salary." My heart felt to have slowed to a stop in my chest. Erik was right; I didn't like his answer at all. "Antoinette, however, also helps me tremendously with acquiring my necessities."

I found myself narrowing my eyes at him. "Why must you terrorize the opera house if this Antoinette is willing to help provide necessities?" My words felt as if they dripped with venom.

"I must repay her somehow. And in order to do that, I must acquire money."

"How much are you paid?" I was genuinely curious, but I could feel more irritation rising. He paused, looking like a discouraged boy who hastily searched for a way out. "Per month?" I added in warily. My words sounded demanding, pressing mercilessly for the truth.

"20,000 francs."

I felt my eyes widen, and my breath hitch in my throat. I was no expert in calculating the difference between American and French currency as well as the value of francs from this time, but I knew it was an immense amount. I suppose his true flaw is greed.

"Erik!" I scolded, truly appalled. He nearly winced. "That is ridiculous!" At this, he tried to counter back.

"I write operas for them!" He retaliated defensively. "And that comes with a price. It is only fair that they pay me for the music I write."

"Yeah, against their will." I scoffed, heat flaring in me. I couldn't believe that such deeds had been done by Erik. Such revolting tendencies of his - ones I had never known of. I felt deceived, even though I wasn't the one he had wronged. I felt pity for the poor managers of the opera house.

So that's why he haunts the opera house. It's not for Christine. It never was - it was for money.

A humorless laugh briefly left his lips. "Well, they certainly don't complain, because they are entirely aware that they would be no where without my influence." Disgust hit me. I felt as if I were talking to someone else entirely. Certainly not my fiancé.

"Is that arrogance I sense?" At this, his haughtiness melted away, and he nearly winced by my blunt judgement. He casted his gaze aside, truly looking regretful for foolishly allowing thoughts to run unfiltered. "Thought so." I shot back.

I would've understood if he was proud of the music he wrote. With the stacks of music sheets I had seen in his lair, it was no doubt that he worked diligently on them. He had every right to be proud of his hard work. However, apparently he was also very conceited when it came to his music. "You don't need nearly as much as that. It's ridiculous, Erik. Ridiculous." I felt as if I were scolding a child. What else did I need to know about? What more had he been hiding from me? It sickened me that I never truly knew my own damn fiancé. It sickened me how stupid I and been not to get to know him better before.

"You said you terrorize them?" I couldn't imagine him doing such a sadistic thing. "How so?" I relentlessly pressed. I was practically interrogating him at this point. The air felt suffocatingly hot, but I felt as if I pulsed with the heat that surrounded me. "Do you threaten their lives?" With the money they threw at him, he must've done more than just threaten them. Although I had been steaming angrily, a new emotion seeped in. What was I felt? Anguish? Denial? "You wouldn't willingly take their life, would you?"

At this, he tensed, a new emotion filling his eyes. His face paled, and I waited for him to reassure that he would never such a wicked deed. However, the reassurance never arrived.

Realization seeped in as revulsion took hold, becoming the weight in my stomach. I felt stunned, as I looked at him, my eyes searching for the truth.

"Erik?" I asked softly. This can't be real. He would never do that. "You wouldn't. . .Hurt anyone. . .Would you?" I could see now the way his chest rose and fell with his breaths.

"Clare. . ." He tried to reason. I felt a pang in my heart; or perhaps what I felt was a sensation of it plummeting to the ground. "I. . .I. . ." He reached out, as if to gently touch my face. Before his fingers could graze my cheek, I abruptly stood from the swan bed.

This can't be.

My heart pounded, horrified of the new information of him I was discovering. Horrified that such a gentleman had been violent to others before. The trepidation of merely being in his presence was overwhelming. I suddenly felt that I couldn't be far enough away from him, and I found myself backing further away from him.

Horror gripped me as reality dawned on me - truly dawned on me. A very frightening, bleak reality. And in that moment, as old, almost untouched events and details that I myself had written in those letters, I fully recalled some of the horrors that had lurked; horrors that just now fully resurfaced in my mind. I couldn't remember the events themselves, but I remembered reading the details that I had once years ago jotted down. How could I have forgotten the very repulsive things that my eyes drank in? And most of all, how had I forgiven him of such sins? And as if for the very first time that I had been within Erik's seemingly nonthreatening presence, I truly realized that I had been in love with a murderer.

I stared at him wide eyed, his image now different to me. It felt as if all of this had been a mere facade, as the vision of my hopeful future morphed into a sullen, unfulfilled and hollowed out dream. A dream that was once bright and radiated with splendor, now drained of it's color, growing gray and lifeless. I suddenly felt terribly out of place, as if I had not truly known Erik, nor myself as well. I felt as if I didn't know anything anymore.

What kind of girl was I to have been alright with such crimes? Apparently a foolish girl. A girl who must have dreamed of such a man to simply change for her.

In his eyes, I could see his heart breaking, and it made my gut wrench in disgust. My feelings felt twisted. My heart broke to see such distress in his eyes, yet I could not bear with the reality that he had murdered and manipulated others. This should not have been a shock to me - the signs had been there. Had I merely been looking the other way this entire time? Erik had even told me of some of his various deeds such as tricking Christine. So why did this all just now come as a surprise to me?

My heart was racing - I no longer knew what to do. Would my dreams forever belong to Erik? Would I, every night, be trapped here? In a strange dream world of a shadow soaked lair with murky water, foreboding music and a mysterious masked man? Would I, for the rest of my life, belong to a man who I truly did not know, by every nightfall until dawn? Would every arrival be greeted by the Phantom? Would I be caressed by a murderer every night in my dreams? Chills ran through my body when I remembered the feeling of his lips on mine, and how affectionately he had kissed my neck when I accepted to marry him. On impulse, my hand flinched to my neck in shock, recalling how wonderful his velvety soft lips felt on my skin. I realized that my neck alone was most likely the only one he had ever touched affectionately. All others had been harshly greeted by his touch with the frightening intention to kill. It made tears well in my eyes. How many people had he killed?

Would Erik ever set me free if I wished to leave? I feared that he would not. He had chased me down before in a desperate attempt to persuade me when I could not remember him. Hell, even in my time, he haunted me. He would always be there. This was my life now. I would always belong to him.

What was to happen to me? If I were bound to a murderer, would I be forced to adapt to his way of living - adapt to murder? A lump welled in my throat. I did not wish to hurt anyone. A Bonnie and Clyde relationship was the last thing I wanted. I did not desire to be held within the arms of a murderer. Would he one day turn on me? Would I end up becoming one of his many victims? To my compete and utter horror, I regretted to admit to myself that I was afraid of him. The man that I had fallen in love with more than once.

I felt like I had to run - to flee from the room. From this nightmare. But I new that there was no where to run, when he inhabited my dreams, and his even more frightening doppelgänger lurked in my time. He probably stood over me as I slept, while I internally drowned in the revulsion that was taking over me. I felt myself breaking out into a cold sweat when I realized just how trapped I truly was.

Get ahold of yourself.

Erik had always been incredibly gentle and patient with me. In my mind, he had practically been the definition of a gentleman. How could someone that I had completely trusted and felt security from, have such a dark secret? Had he changed his ways?

Don't be ridiculous. Another side of me defended. I no longer knew how I felt about the news. I wasn't sure what I thought of it. Disgust, I was certain of. But could such actions be redeemable? All I knew was I needed time to think and clear my mind that whirled with hysteria. I felt the over whelming urge to free myself from this room that now felt suffocatingly hot with tension, even if I was shivering uncontrollably now. He stared at me with heartbroken and pleading blue eyes.

"Clare, please. . ." He stood up, wanting to reason with me. But the space between us felt too close, even thought I was backing away towards the other side of the room by now.

"No, I need time." I cut off in a wavering tone that I could not steady. "I. . .I just need to think."

As I backed further away from him, the atmosphere around me felt to have changed. It morphed instantly, yet slowed my cognitive state as if my consciousness had been submerged under water, and I was swimming, fighting to break through the surface to clear my mind. It reminded me of when I was little and visited the dentist to have a cavity filled, and how the laughing gas made it difficult for me to tell any distinct differences between reality and fantasy. Even when I was fully aware of where I was and what was truly occurring, underneath the smothering haze of nitrous oxide, logic became bent somehow. Even the simplest things were looked at different, and I wondered whether they were merely imagined instead.

I wanted to lay down and sleep away the nausea I could feel in my stomach. I wanted to wake up and find that what Erik had just revealed was merely just a silly thing my mind had dreamed of. I wanted to wake up in Erik's arms, relieved to find that it was just a nightmare, and to find myself safe from his doppelgänger.

This cannot be real.

A new sensation then came over me. A startling one. While my eyes were searching for the nearest exist, my eyes flew down to my wrists when I felt Erik's hands on them. However, what horrified me was there were no hands trying to stop me. The only thing that touched my wrists were the bandages Erik had tied around them earlier. My head whirled around, and I saw Erik right where I had last seen him. The only difference was his eyes were growing darker, and his chest rose and fell from his shallow breaths. With the space between us, it was impossible for him to have touched me. The nausea twisted deeper in my stomach like a knife.

I felt his hands on me. He wasn't here, but I knew that it was him. Strange how in my time, I could feel any contact from Erik - from my fiancé, whenever he touched me. I never thought that it would happen here as well. I always thought of Erik's time as a safe haven. But apparently there was no escaping the sensations of others hands, or their voice that teased my ear. Except their voice never seeped through the air beside me. Instead, it was as if their voice was circuited straight to me, and fed directly to my brain.

I wanted it to leave me alone. Were my two lives running together? Were voices of those around me bleeding and leaking into my reality? Was what I felt now, what Erik's doppelgänger was doing to me at this exact moment? Could he enter other worlds like how Erik could? Could he see what was occurring between us right now?

I wondered to my horror, if this was what being schizophrenic was like. Perhaps those who were bombarded with voices were merely time travelers, unable to pick a reality, or escape from one. I was sure I would go entirely mad if this continued. Perhaps sooner or later I would be a mental patient, locked away, reduced to insanity; only able to vaguely detect what was occurring in one life, before slipping back into a reality that was imaginary to others; my mind over loaded as it registered many different versions of my lives that meshed together all at once. The idea of it made me tremble.

I clamped my eyes shut, trying to get rid of the overwhelming senses that felt as if it would overload my mind with hysteria. My link to reality felt to have dwindled. A heavy blanket of weakness weighed upon me, and I suddenly felt incapable of being able to even stand the air around me - it was as if time recognized that I did not belong here, and it realized its grave mistake of placing me here before Erik. I felt rooted in my spot, and my suddenly weak muscles made me feel that gravity would pull on me until I collapsed. The aroma of candles no longer swam in the air. I couldn't identify the smell of the room. I sensed it's foreign scent, but I couldn't place where I had smelled it before.

"Clare!"

When I felt the sensation of my body shifting back, my eyes snapped open, and I was shocked to see Erik's features looming before mine. My heart felt to have stopped in my chest when sudden realization hit me. A soft surface caressed my body, but it was not the swan bed. The familiar face I saw was not the same Erik I had just been in the same room with. The walls of this room were far too smooth to be the cavern walls of his lair. His image became more crisp, and I gasped when I realized where I was; when danger truly dawned on me. I was no longer in Erik's time. Instead, I had been forced back to my time, rooted there, where I would soon face my fate.

I abruptly moved towards the open space beside myself on the wide bed, scrambling to reach the edge of it. Thoughts darted through my mind like whirling bullets. Part of me wildly wondered if the bastard had harmed me, and I dreaded to gaze down and see a gruesome sight. I felt that even if he had left my body bloody and disheveled, that my petrified soul would have still somehow found a way to drive my broken body away from him.

Through the mists of terror, I faintly registered in my mind that I had remembered successfully for once. I remembered Erik. The man from my dreams. The murderer who had always awaited for me in his time. I vaguely, almost wordlessly in my mind, wondered how or why I managed to remember, but the thought was only there for a fraction of a second; the concern shoved to the back of my mind like a piece of paper stuffed to the bottom of a child's backpack, left to be retrieved later.

"Clare!"

I ran for the nearest door, my heart skipping, fearing he was right at my heels. My mind wickedly imagined him grabbing my hair harshly, or plunging a knife into my back. I grabbed the handle and tore the door open, ready for my escape as I planned to run through the dark house. However, to my horror and dismay, I was standing before a bathroom. As soon as I realized that I hadn't chosen the right door, my head whirled around, seeing the bastard was advancing towards me. He stood in the way of my exist that was on the opposite side of the room. I would never be able to reach the right door with him in the way. For a split second my mind urged me to fight him, but his towering form silenced any bravery that could have lingered in me. My legs indecisively drove myself into the bathroom, my mind obsessively praying that there would be a window to escape from.

I tugged the door shut, fearful of a hand stopping it. I hastily locked it before I could feel a force pulling the door back, and my heart hammered painfully in my chest. It felt as if my heart would burst from my chest, and my throat was dry as I struggled to catch my breath; each breath feeling like a knife to my chest. My eyes scavenged the room for a window, and I wanted to scream when there was not one in sight. I was as good as dead.

I paced in circles, the tile floor feeling cool against my bare feet. My body trembled with sobs. I couldn't think of another time when I had felt as torn as I did now. I felt disgusted in the fact that I almost wanted to run back into my Erik's arms that made me feel secure - the arms of a murderer. Surely I had lost it by now. But hell, at least my Erik had never tried to kidnap or harm me. It was only a matter of time now. Before either hunger drove me from this confining room or the doppelgänger decided to fetch me himself. By now, would my Erik have already told Mina and Veronica of what had occurred? Nausea twisted in my stomach. I didn't want him near my friends. I didn't want to be trapped here, and instinctually, I felt the aching need to curl up and sleep away this nightmare. The idea of surrendering to sleep and crossing timelines to be with my mysterious fiancé, filled me with apprehension. Picking the lesser of evils seemed impossible. In Erik's time, there were no signs of violence. However, awake here, I was at least aware of what was occurring. Part of me would have rather childishly closed my eyes, and tried to tell myself that ignorance was bliss until I truly believed it.

I raked my fingers through my hair, wishing the mental trauma would dissipate from my throbbing head. I wondered what fate had in store for me as I gazed down at the sparkling sapphire ring on my finger.

. . .

I bet you guys all hate me now. This chapter was a hell of a wild ride for me to write! But it's also been one that I've been wanting to write for the longest time, so once it was here, I wasn't sure where to start. I had written bits and pieces of this chapter before though, but not the entire thing.

So many conflicting thoughts for Clare! This chapter feels over the top dramatic for me, but being in Clare's shoes, I'd be freaking the hell out too. Anyways, what do you guys think is going to happen to Clare? How do you think Erik is reacting now that Clare has abruptly gone back to her own time, and during the worst possible moment as well? Let me know through your reviews!

I'm still onboard with receiving feedback and critique from you guys - as long as it's done nicely! But this is one of the only ways for me to improve as a writer, so if there's any strange writing patterns that you detect from me, let me know if you think there's room for improvement.

Thank you for reading! Please review!