Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of The Phantom of the Opera.

Author's note: Samantha Michaelis, newbornphanatic, chaz1997, MissJemima, RedDeathLvr, coyotegirl56, Million, thank you very much for your reviews! And thank you to everyone who added my story to Alerts and Favourites!

Newbornphanatic, I think that Gwenaëlle began falling in love with Erik practically from the beginning; she herself mentions it in several chapters and recognizes that the jealousy was the reason why she disliked Christine. But it is true that it was probably too fast for them both and it is difficult to say how it will all turn out. Thank you for your comment :)

Epilogue

My second stay with Erik was even more difficult than the first one. He was always trying to throw me out of his house, and I had to convince him more than once that I really wanted to be with him; and yet I think he did not believe me and was expecting some sort of ruse.

But apart from his lack of confidence in me, there were some other problems. I had been too worried about Erik's health to think about it before, but, once the danger was over, I couldn't help returning to that subject over and over again. Was he the kind of person Farid Mazandarani had said he was? Had he really killed people, and more than once? What I had told him about my aunt was true, I would be able to forgive him (though it cost me a lot to make that decision). But what about the others? What was that man really capable of? I tried incredibly hard to put those ideas aside, but it was beyond me. At the end, I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, I was only thinking, trying to find some reasonable justification to Erik's actions and found none. He, of course, noticed the state I was in.

"I must admit I have been expecting something like that," he said one morning, at the beginning of February. "I will attempt nothing to keep you, rest assured," he lowered his head in resignation.

"Erik, what are you talking about?"

"You understand it perfectly well."

"No, I do not."

"You are already regretting your decision to stay here with me. Don't worry, I understand. This is completely normal. As I have just said, I will not…"

"Here we go again! You and your constant, all-possessing self-pity! You are so obsessed with your own suffering that you see nothing around you!"

Erik regarded me with bewilderment – he had not been expecting that kind of reaction.

"I have something to ask you," I said, trying to appear calmer, but actually more nervous than before. "I want you to be completely honest with me. Will you promise me this?"

"If I am an honest person, which is something you clearly doubt, there is no need in promising to be honest with you. But if I am not, such a promise is utterly meaningless – if a dishonest man promises to tell the truth, he will lie twice."

He adopted that cold impassive tone I had already heard more than once. It was even worse than his outbursts of rage. On those occasions I was really afraid of him.

"Please, Erik, I need to know, is it true what your friend said about you?"

"What friend, my dear? You know perfectly well that monsters have no friends, only enemies."

"And you know perfectly well who I am talking about," I was beginning to get angry with him.

"Ah, that old daroga," he made a gesture with his hand, as though he had just remembered something. "Yes, it is true."

"What is true?" I felt my knees shaking.

"What he told you about me. I am a monster, a murderer and he is a saint (never mind that he himself had been working as a chief of police and obeying orders given by that terrible Shah-in-Shah). If it hadn't been for him, I would have killed everyone in this theatre. And, now that you finally know everything, go. Be free! You can, out of pity, live with a monster. But who can force you to live with a murderer? Go and never come back! You have already shown me enough pity!"

His last words were hardly audible because of the sobs; all his haughtiness was gone and he was again desperate and enraged. Such emotional instability in a grown-up man was something off-putting, but, at the same time, strangely endearing; he was much more genuine and sincere than the majority of people I had known.

"Erik, please, try to understand…" I took his hand.

"Lies! All lies!" he withdrew his hand from my grasp. "Now you are trying to find an excuse and leave me without any trace of remorse. It is so easy! 'I wanted to help him, but he turned out to be an awful man, a criminal.' No one will judge you, Mademoiselle, rest assured. Christine, she at least was sincere; she did not hide the fact that she wanted to leave me because she loved that boy. But you, you…" the awful sound made by a plate falling and breaking into pieces made him stop his frenetic monologue.

"This is better," I said with satisfaction; breaking a plate had not been, after all, a bad idea. "And now you will listen to me, really listen," he looked at me with bewilderment, but stopped talking. "I have no intentions whatsoever of leaving you, and I am not looking for any kind of excuse. All I want is the truth."

"And if you don't like that truth, what will you do?" he was so desperate that I became overwhelmed with pity, but I had to remain firm.

"I will stay with you, no matter what you say."

I felt terrible lying to him, but I couldn't find any other way to answer his question. It did matter to me what he was going to say and I knew that I would never be able to stay with a man who committed any kind of atrocities. But I couldn't find courage to tell him that.

"Please forgive me!" he knelt down and I felt even worse, seeing that he had believed me. "Will Gwenaëlle forgive her crazy Erik? He should have known she would never abandon him. Never, never!"

He began covering my dress with kisses and I had to literally force him to get up. Was he really that desperate not to lose me?

"Erik will tell Gwenaëlle everything if she wants him to. Every detail of his monstrous life. Because she promised she would never abandon him, didn't she?" he looked me in the eyes and I averted my gaze; his golden eyes were incredibly piercing, they seemed to look right through my soul."

"Yes, Erik, I did."

"I have nothing to fear then," he said and I understood that I had misjudged him – he did not believe me.

He told me everything, nevertheless. As I had already heard about his early years at his parents' home and his travels, he concentrated on his life in Persia and the things he had had to do at the Shah-in-Shah's Court. He also told how he had become the Opera Ghost and about the torture chamber and Joseph Buquet's death.

"Will you leave right now?" he asked once his tale was finished.

"What?" I was still too immersed in what I had just heard to understand what he truly meant.

"It is obvious that you are going to leave. If I were in your place, I would leave, too. One must be mad to stay with someone like me," his sudden and unexpected calmness was even more terrifying than his anger.

"As I have already told you, I am not leaving you; but you must give me some time."

"You are returning home then," that time there was sarcasm in his voice. "And you want me to believe you will come back? I can be everything you wish, Mademoiselle, but I am not stupid."

"I will stay here, in your house. Just let me to be on my own for a while."

I went straight to my room, without waiting for his answer, and locked the door, not because I was afraid of him (by then I was more than sure that Erik would never harm me), but because I had to think and did not want to be interrupted.

I would lie if I said I wasn't terrified by what I had heard. Farid had been right then (though, as Erik had rightly pointed out, he was far from perfect himself). The worst of all was the fact that Erik wasn't particularly full of remorse. Or maybe he was? He seemed upset by what he had to tell me. In any case, I noticed that he wasn't proud of his actions. He did not enjoy killing people, just did it when it was necessary. I was myself appalled by the way I had phrased it. Necessary? How could a murder be necessary? Staying with Erik definitely went against all my moral principles.

But, on the other hand, there were many people out there who did things much worse than Erik. Besides, those people he had killed were going to die anyway because they had been condemned to death. He had actually been some kind of executioner. But did all that really justify him? And what about the poor Joseph Buquet? And Christine Daaé? He had abducted her. Had he really loved her? More than he would ever be able to love me? I stopped my pacing and pulled my hair in frustration – it wasn't what I should been thinking about!

I spent some awful minutes trying to have some kind of reasonable internal dialogue with myself and failing miserably. At the end, I was so exhausted that I lay on my bed and fell asleep.

I got up with a start. How much time had I been sleeping? And what if Erik had done something to himself? I should have never left him. I ran out of my room, to the musical chamber, and stopped dead; he was sitting at the organ and had just begun playing it. I had never heard something like that in my entire life. I, as Erik had said to me more than once, was rather ignorant in anything related to music, but even I immediately understood that it was unique, something between music and a heart-wrenching moan. It expressed the state he was in better than any words.

I approached him and put my hand on his shoulder. He gave a start and stopped playing, without turning to look at me.

"So, when are you leaving?" the silence must have been unbearable for him and he was forced to talk.

"Right now," I answered without hesitation and he let escape a strange sound, a mixture of a sob and a sigh. "We are leaving right now and we are going for a walk. I have already spent over a month here and I desperately need some fresh air. When we come back, we will think about finding a new place to live."

"A new place?" that time he did not understand me; or was it too good to be true and he was afraid of believing me?

"Yes," I answered nonchalantly. "I hope you are not going to force me to spend the rest of my life inside this grave. No matter how much I like the darkness and the mysteriousness of this place, I am getting tired of it. I wouldn't like to sound like a boring person, but I am afraid I need something a little more conventional to be living in."

"Gwenaëlle, I…" he made an attempt of kneeling down, but that time I did not allow it.

"Erik, stop. Never do it again."

That evening we went for a walk and when we came back, I began thinking about what to do next. Erik was too exhilarated, too mad of joy to help me with that. He ran to his organ and began playing some incredibly fast, almost crazy, melody, which probably expressed his extreme happiness.

To go with Erik to my aunt's house was out of question (not because I was ashamed of him, but I wasn't going to bring a man with me to the house where my uncle was living). I hardly had any money, but it should be enough to rent a small flat in the outskirts of Paris. Besides, Erik certainly had some money as well; although I began to regret that he had returned those forty-thousand francs to the directors (he had told me about many things he had done as the Opera Ghost, including the monthly visits to his "banker").

When I thought everything out, I approached Erik, who had already stopped playing and was sitting at the organ, exhausted (the music had worn him out completely, for he had put his whole being into it). I sat down on his lap and sensed him tensing immediately. Then I embraced him and he visibly relaxed.

I don't know how much time we spent like that, embraced. Then I took his mask off and, surprisingly, he did not protest. We were both completely happy.

I knew that my life with Erik would be difficult, probably extremely difficult. I also couldn't hide from myself the fact that I was still quite uneasy about the things he had told me of his past (and the shadow of my aunt's death still hanged over me); but for me, Erik's positive qualities overweighed the negative ones, and I did not care about what people might think about us. Also, I knew that such moments of happiness would be worth it all.

END

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