A/N:

Oh my goodness! I wanted to address everyone that reviewed last chapter but there were a lot more than I expected! Regardless, thank you so much to all my reviewers, long-term or new. I am so grateful for all of you, thank you thank you THANK YOU! I hope you all aren't too mad at Clarie for last chapter, I mean personally I think it would be hard not to get mad after five months.

But anyway, you guys are in luck! I had yet another snow day so early chapter!


Erik's POV:

The mask toppled to the ground with a horrible smack which only served to prove that what was happening was real. He really did just remove his mask, willingly.

But he didn't have time to think about that. Clarie had just been about to leave, and he had to do whatever he could to get her to stay. If it was only a few moments longer, it would still be worth it. He just had to stop her from leaving. Heart pounding like the rapid shots of a gun, he revealed himself even more, taking the wig from his head and showing the thin strands of hair that had grayed all too fast in his youth.

It worked, at least. Clarie did not leave. She froze and gasped, both of her hands covering her mouth. Her tear-soaked eyes seemed to dry all of a sudden, sobered by the sight of his monstrous face. What was it in her eyes? Was it fear?

Of course it's fear, he thought angrily to himself, how could she not be afraid of you? Look at yourself!

The realization hit him as a rock might have, aimed directly at the pit of his stomach. He almost wanted to double over, taken over as he was by the terrible fact. Of course she would be terrified of him. Who wouldn't be terrified, on seeing the face of Death? Deities would shield their faces because the human eye could not stand to witness their glory; he shielded his face because the human eye could not bear to see his wretchedness.

He felt utterly naked and disgusting, standing before her. How else could a rabid animal feel, standing in front of an angel?

She was frozen in that position, with her hands shaking over her covered mouth. That same expression was still fixed on her face, but as much as his mind wanted to believe that it was fear, he couldn't convince himself that it was. She didn't look scared exactly… Was it pity? No, he didn't think it was that either. She was definitely surprised, but it seemed to be surprise over the fact that he had removed his mask, not the face itself.

A sudden memory of Christine flashed across his mind. That night he had ripped his mask off in fury: the horror on her face when he did so. The way she yanked out of his grip and ran from him.

No. She has to be scared.

Erik's shoulders hunched over miserably as the fact once again settled over him. He could no longer bear to look at Clarie, at the way his terrible face was surely causing the soft lines of her face to distort with horror. He instead looked to the ground, looking and feeling like the most pitiful of dogs.

"There," he whispered painfully as tears began to fill his eyes, "Now you know me. You know what I am." It became too painful to talk, hearing himself say what he already knew was true. He stopped, and crumbled brokenly against the wall as ragged sobs escaped him.

"Now you know," he continued to whisper between tears. She was sure to leave him now. Who hadn't left him, after seeing his face?

Clarie didn't move for a minute, looking entirely unsure as to what to do. Erik closed his eyes in shame, and the tears continued to flow. What a wretched creature he was.

A gentle hand approached him, resting on his shoulder. He jolted so violently that he rammed his elbow into the wall. But it was easy to ignore the pain creeping up, when he opened his eyes and saw Clarie bent down before him. Her face was still unreadable. Or, more likely, he was just too afraid to try.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. It was all he could bring himself to say.

Clarie didn't say anything, just kept looking at him. He wanted to turn from her in shame of what he was, but he found that he couldn't. He was just as entranced by her as she had always been by him.

It was she that moved first. She moved her hand, hesitantly at first, toward him. Toward his face. Stopping halfway, she looked at Erik, as if asking for his permission. Numbed by the whole situation, he slowly nodded.

She swallowed, raising her hand again, which was trembling just a little. Just inches away from the gruesome flesh of his face, she hesitated again. Erik didn't blame her; on the contrary. He was waiting for her to change her mind, tearing her hand away, running from the room and his life forever. He had been dreaming for quite a while now, and he knew that it would soon be time for him to wake up.

Then, before Erik could even understand what was happening, the hesitation vanished from her eyes. She pursed her lips in an expression of the utmost determination, and finished eradicating the space between the two of them, laying her hand upon the deformed side of his face.

He gasped, his eyes widening to their maximum capacity. His hand instinctively flew up to grab a hold of her wrist. He was just barely able to stop himself from yanking it forcefully away from him. It was enough to startle both of them, and neither moved for a moment. Erik didn't even remove his grip from her hand, though he did manage to loosen it.

And why shouldn't he have been shocked by the touch? He couldn't remember a time where someone had touched his deformity with such…tenderness. He couldn't remember anyone ever touching his face with such care. Pictures flashed across his mind, of darker times, of times where the palm of a hand would meet his face with no other intention than to harm it.

"Devil's child, you must be!" his father would spit at him disgustedly, "I'll beat the Satan out of you yet!"

"Maman!" little Erik would scream in utter terror at the sound of his father's voice. But little solace was to be found with his mother either. She would scream, sounding just as terrified as her son felt.

"Get away from me! I told you to keep that mask on!"

"Oh, Erik."

The sound of Clarie's voice, so innocent and sad and tender, shocked Erik, differing as much as it did from the voices shouting in his head. It was contrasting enough from those appalled voices that he finally allowed himself to truly look into her eyes.

There was no fear in those sea colored eyes. None, at all. There wasn't even any pity, which he would have just barely preferred to the former emotion. Simply, it was complete and absolute sadness in them. Not the sadness she had previously felt, which had been mixed with anger; not sadness because of his tragic face; not sadness because of the awful past five months. It was none of these things, and yet all of them at once. But beyond that, she was sad for him. Not for his face, but for him himself.

And she broke down, falling against him and weeping. All he could do was stay rigid for a few seconds, unused to the added responsibility of holding someone so innocent. He felt as if he would break her if he so much as moved. It was shocking, how fast the roles had changed. How Erik had gone from comforted to comforter.

"I'm sorry, Erik," she was repeatedly mumbling into his shoulder, where she had buried her face, "I'm sorry."

Just as she had done so many times to him that night, Clarie had managed to once again stupefy him. Why on Earth would she be sorry? Erik wasn't sure what he had expected would result from his unmasking himself, but apologies were definitely not one. For a moment he wondered if she was saying it in pity for him, as one might say to a very sick person. But he knew it wasn't that either. She seemed to be truly upset with herself.

"I'm sorry," she continued to whisper, "I'm so sorry."


Clarie's POV:

It wasn't exactly his face itself that had shocked Clarie—though, she would be lying if she said it was not shocking to see for the first time. It wasn't the haunting deformity that made him look only half human. Her shock went deeper than either of those things. It was the look of complete hopelessness when he revealed himself that surprised her so.

He had been so despairing, it looked like it was all he could do to keep himself from coming apart completely. The emotions on his face were the exact definition of misery. On looking at it, Clarie immediately began to feel guilty. Not for getting angry, per say, because she knew that her anger had been justified. But she was guilty for prompting him to remove his mask, though, she admitted that she was also glad that he did.

It was his apology that had really broken her from her shock. It was because of it that she had cracked, falling into his arms where she wept. Wept for Erik. Wept for the terrible life he must have lived.

"I'm sorry," she said, because she could think of nothing else. After a few moments of this, he carefully returned her embrace.

And suddenly, everything was real again. Up until that point she had been in a daze. From the moment she saw him. The gentle feel of his thin arms around her; the lingering smell of what might have been spilled ink, upon his clothes; the slight tremor of his body that he got whenever he touched her. It all brought her back to reality. She finally realized—truly realized—that Erik, her angel of music, was alive and with her. For the first time in five months—no—for the first time since her parents died, she felt at home.

Once she was able to grasp a hold of her emotions, she drew back from Erik. Not a lot, but just enough to be able to look him in the face.

The second time seeing it was not as bad, because she couldn't care less at this point. Her gentle eyes fluttered over his face, trying to take in every detail, wanting to capture it in her mind so it would not leave.

She took in the hollow trenches of skin around his eyes, the way it caused him to indeed have an appearance similar to that of a skeleton. She saw the way his distortion twisted his face, making the skin tight and thin around it. She also noted how, while the distortion looked like it had been there from birth, there were other parts of his face that didn't: jagged scars and what appeared to be burn marks decorating both the normal and the deformed sides. Then there was the thin strands of hair that hugged his scalp, making him look years older than he was.

Erik noticed her staring, and to say he looked disheartened would have been enormously understating it.

"You're going to leave now," he said numbly.

Clarie blinked, unsure of if she heard him right. "What?" she said blankly. Surely she had heard him wrong.

"You're going to leave," he repeated, and there were tears in his eyes. "You're going to leave, just as everyone before has left."

"Erik," Clarie whispered breathlessly, "Why would I leave you?"

"You know who I am now," he answered, trying desperately to hold his tears back.

"Erik," repeated Clarie. He winced at the sound of his own name, as if she had hit him. He looked away, and she moved with him, refusing to let him pull away. "Erik," she said for a third time, this time to get him to look at her. He did, just a glance, and she continued, grabbing his hand.

"I knew you long before you took the mask off, Erik," she said honestly, and could feel the reappearance of tears in her eyes as she realized the truth of the statement. "There is nothing that they," she waved a careless hand at the door, referring to the masqueraders, "have, that I want. There is nothing for me there."

"You could be happy with them," Erik insisted, cutting in, "You could become famous. They would love you."

"But I don't love them, Erik! I love you!" And Clarie, in a moment of passion beyond what she could comprehend, threw herself against Erik and crashed her lips into his, a fiery explosion of desperation.

Erik was beyond surprised. He jolted almost violently at the kiss, and Clarie, thinking he would pull away, closed her eyes, pressing even more. He didn't pull away, but he didn't return the affectionate gesture either. His whole body was shaking tremendously, to the point where Clarie silently began to wonder if his health was entirely alright. But she didn't pull away. She couldn't. Even if she wanted to.

Eventually, she felt two shaking hands come around to touch the back of her neck. Hesitantly—oh so hesitantly—Erik let himself melt into the kiss, just a little. As if he were asking permission. Clarie felt herself nod, and he melted just a little more.

Then, with trembling hands, he gently ended their embrace, being especially careful in removing his lips from hers. Clarie opened her eyes again, her heart pounding inside of her chest.

Erik was still shaking, with a look in his face that suggested he didn't entirely believe that what had just happened was real. Clarie herself was wondering the reality of it, amazed that she had just done such a thing. She had kissed her parents before, of course. And occasionally she had received kisses on the cheek from various relatives or hopeful young men. But she had never shared a kiss with someone in that way before. She had never even considered such a thing before.

The room was deathly silent, apart from the panting breaths of Erik and the too-loud pounding of blood in Clarie's ears. Erik looked at her with a quivering lip.

And he broke down, sobbing wretchedly. He didn't explain why he was so moved by a simple kiss, and Clarie didn't ask either. He had become childlike, bringing his knees up to his chest and weeping so passionately that Clarie felt her heart break at the sight of it. She didn't move to touch him, resolving to give him a moment to let all of his emotions bleed out through the salty wetness of his tears.

"No one…No one has ever kissed me before," he murmured when he finally had enough air to do more than take in shivering breaths. "Not even my mother." Finally gathering enough courage, he dared to look at Clarie, and she could see that it took everything he had not to burst into sobs again.

Clarie brought her lips up in a smile, though she could feel them trembling as well.

"And I never thought I'd kiss again," she said.

Erik looked at her for a solid minute, and then leaned forward. And their lips met once again in the shadows of Box Five.


A/N:

So, I know the kiss was probably really obvious and probably a little cheesy—as I have said, I'm not terribly great at romance scenes—but I'm pretty proud of it haha. Getting closer to the end (*sniff*) so stay tuned for more! Thanks for reading!