Standard Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera owns me, not the other way around.

Author's Note(s): Because you all have read and reviewed so fast (18 readers and 4 reviewers in under 30 minutes!) you are getting a two for one special. Enjoy!


Though he was almost halfway to the Opera, he was not in actuality so far away from where she sat pondering. He had paused in a small alcove outside an abandoned storefront to catch his breath. Though the shadows here were not dark enough to hide within, they sufficed to calm him slightly, and with his face to the windows he was reasonably certain, no one on the street could see the mask or the hideousness that lie beneath it. He studied the lock on the abandoned storefront as he considered his options.

If she had been here, perhaps she would have threaded her arm through his and insisted he keep walking. Somehow, it would be possible then. Was it because no one would attack him with a lady willingly on his arm? Or was it something else? None of it made rational sense, but before he could think it through further, a hand touched his shoulder and he startled so much that he literally jumped and knocked into the person who had touched him.

With his head bent he cast a glance out of the corner of an eye in the direction of the touch and saw only an old woman, shabbily dressed and holding out her hands. Was she begging? Of him? If she'd said a word he hadn't noticed, deep in his thoughts as he was. He glanced at his reflection in the storefront and understood that viewing him from behind she had mistaken him for some noble—or at least bourgeois—type, and in what proved to be a wild fit of courage, had dared to touch him. Ordinarily, he would have thrown her off with a fierce failing of an arm and a growl, but this was broad daylight on a Paris street, and he had just been mistaken for a gentleman. He searched his pockets and withdrew and handful of coins. With a smirk beneath the mask he considered that the average so-called gentleman of Paris would not have endured the touch of this beggar and that he would perhaps make less of a scene, it would be more believable, it would be less conspicuous to simply be cruel with her, but he simply couldn't.

He pressed the coins into her hand and refused to look at her as she stood at his side, thanking him, counting the coins, then repeating her thanks more loudly, calling him a good man and calling upon the Lord to bless him. Oh, the irony, he thought as he dug in his pockets again for something with which to pick the lock upon the door. Here she stood calling him a good man, while here he stood about the break the law. And there she stood reciting blessings over a supposed demon. As soon as she stepped away he quickly opened the lock, slipped inside, closed the door behind him, found the darkest corner and slid slowly to the ground with a sigh of relief.


Elizabeth, in a state of something nearing despair had made her way to the Opera and into the underground passageway on the rotunda side, through which they had come with the carriage that night. She did not stop to consider why Erik had left the house or how Erik had worked up the courage to pass through the streets in the daylight. She only hoped that she would find him within the confines of the Opera—and well. She found a lantern by the door and reasoned that if he had come this way, the lantern would be gone, for he would have taken it with him. She went beneath anyway, for she couldn't take the chance that there had been two, or that he had gone below in darkness, knowing the passages so well.

She, of course, did not know them well. There was a steep foreboding staircase she had taken twice and never again since. There was the frequently used Rue Scribe passage, and this one upon which she descended now. Surely, there were countless others, and she could not search them all. She shouldn't need to, for she fully expected he would be at the house on the lake, perhaps composing after all these long weeks away.

One can only begin to imagine the depth of her disappointment when she arrived and called his name. Only the empty echo of her own voice responded to her, and as she walked through the home, she found it dusty and untouched since the days she had returned hastily to obtain clothing for Erik and found only formal attire in a closet that looked like that of a mortician.

Elizabeth recollected: That had been the morning after he had offered her all his treasure. She had called him a treasure himself, and he had clung to her crying. Perhaps she should have said more. The day she'd last been here was the same day she realized he'd fallen ill. She'd shaken him to get him up, questioned him, relentlessly and left him alone to go to Christine. She felt a stab of regret. Oh Erik! She'd noticed the wheezing that morning, heard the terrible crackling sound in his lungs, but she had done nothing until hours later. If she'd acted sooner... If she'd warned him what she might have to do... For that night she'd returned to find him far worse. He was delirious and dreaming. She should have done something about the fever first, but she was too concerned about the fluid in his lungs. Maybe her emotion had gotten the better of her. Maybe she'd pounded too hard. He was so very thin, after all. She'd surely hurt him. She remembered the dream he'd told her and she felt ill again recalling it. Oh, Erik... She desperately wished to hold him as she'd never before wished to hold anyone. In the Louis-Philippe room she sunk onto the bed that he hadn't even realized she'd shared with him the night he'd cried himself to sleep in her arms. She wrapped her arms around one of the pillows and cried.


She was still crying when at last she left the Opera to go to Mamma Valerius's apartment. She would perhaps talk to Christine, but ultimately, her goal was to determine how to contact Raoul, for though he hated Erik, she knew him to be a good man and she expected he could be of some help.

The sun was just beginning to set when she deposited her lantern at the entrance to the passage on the rotunda side, and it was fully dark by the time she arrived at the flat. Fortunately, Raoul was still there. Unfortunately, he and Christine were embroiled in a terrible argument, which they tactfully put on hold when Elizabeth arrived. As far as Elizabeth could tell, the argument was about Erik, and she hated that she had to bring him up yet again.

"Missing? From where?" That was Raoul who couldn't understand how Elizabeth could possibly have discovered Erik was missing unless she'd gone looking for him, and why would she have done that if Christine had just seen him yesterday. Then Elizabeth watched as his countenance changed and he realized just why she'd needed to leave the hotel, where Erik had been all this time. But with Christine in the room, Christine who did not know that the little house in fact belonged to Raoul, he said nothing but expressed his distaste with his brows alone. His look was not altogether lost on Elizabeth.

"Why, he's upset then? He said no?" That was Christine. Elizabeth almost couldn't stand to be in the room with her. She was fortunate in that regard anyway. Neither of them had seen him nor had any idea where he might be if she had already checked the Opera. Christine looked most confused, for she still did not realize that Erik had lived anywhere other than the Opera despite what she had seen in the hotel that night. She simply could not get her mind around the concept. Raoul was leaving to return to the estate then, as Christine always insisted, lest anyone reach any improprietous conclusions, and as both he and Elizabeth exited the door unescorted he softly whispered "Ask the Persian" before he departed.


It was very late when Elizabeth rang at the Persian's flat, and she apologized profusely. Darius had departed or retired for the evening—the Persian never could quite remember which after that evening—but he did note that twice the woman had appeared and twice it had occurred when Darius was not there to vouch for her existence. Surely his mind deceived him.

She was dressed exactly as before. Her attire was funerary. Her demeanor, somewhat desperate. Erik was missing.

The Persian was very suspicious. Last time he had seen this woman, if he had seen her at all, he had simply asked him for Erik's name. She'd acted uninvolved, didn't claim to know Erik, only mentioned that she'd heard that the blame had been lain upon him. Now, suddenly he was missing and she was concerned? He remembered Erik's words a few nights ago, seemingly a joke at the time, but now suddenly ringing true: Daroga, in a strange sort of irony, it is the woman who keeps me captive this time. Could it somehow be true? What could this woman possibly want with Erik? If she was really there at all, it could only be bad for Erik. If she was not, she was surely a manifestation of his guilt at having written out Erik's story and offered it to the police. This was perhaps his chance at redemption.

He claimed ignorance, but she did not believe him. She mentioned that Erik had come only a few days ago to retrieve his belongings and the Persian shivered. I must go before she discovers my absence and comes to retrieve me, Erik had said. He showed her out without another word, or tried to anyway. She protested all the way to the door but he insisted.

"Madam," he told her, "Erik may have done many deplorable things in his past, and he may not deserve anyone's forgiveness, but I will not turn him over to you when he has made it quite plain to me that you have been holding him against his will. I now insist that you leave here at once. I will not threaten you with the police for the fact that you are a lady and also because if I were to accuse you of abduction, I should have to say whom it was you had taken, and I have always kept Erik's secrets. Now if you please. Leave here. At once. I will not give you what you demand." He stood, pointing at the door.

There were many arguments Elizabeth could have made in response, such as that a man such as Erik was far too cunning to ever be "abducted" by anyone, let alone she, but she was so utterly wounded by his words that she allowed herself to be shown out without the grace of a reply. She stood outside the door, stunned. Erik had said those things? Erik, whom Christine had described as so desperate for affection? Erik whom she had found dying and nursed to health—twice! Erik, who had sobbed the story of his mother onto her shoulder and wept into her bosom at the thought of Christine's hysteria? Erik, who had dreamed she walked through fire and thought, "I am saved at last!" at the sight of her. Erik, who had made her promise to never under any circumstances not touch him.

But he was also Erik who had dragged her by the hair, Erik who had bound her, Erik who had become suddenly distant, Erik who thought she had beaten him, Erik who thought Freud was full of nonsense, and Erik, who hated himself so much he could not even be grateful she had saved his life (twice!). He was Erik who still went on his knees before Christine, and Erik who had saved broken memories of Christine. Erik, who would not share those memories with her. Erik who had always trembled and pushed her away. She slowly realized that though she had first tried only to help him and later found herself (albeit very strangely) attracted to him, he did not see the situation in the same way. He was not grateful to her, nor did he return her feelings. Still standing outside the Persian's door, she wept openly.

I'm a prisoner then, he'd said the night she found him in the hotel hallway and urged him back to the room. It would be best if I went alone, he'd said the night he went to visit the Persian. If this man was an old friend of his, why did he not want to introduce him to her, whom he'd called friend for over two months now? One possible answer was that he was, for all his frightening countenance, too polite to say how he really felt. More likely, she worried, was that she had used the power of suggestion improperly, preventing him from expressing his distaste plainly. Again, she rebuked herself. It would be best to return to Germany and forget all her grand plans for the future. And she would, soon enough. First she should perhaps complete what she had started; perhaps in that way she could repay Erik the harm she had done. Then the journey to England. Purely for curiosity, though. She would observe only. Then to Germany, and she would defer to Wilhelm entirely. Her heart sank at the prospect, but it was, perhaps, her only prospect now that she doubted herself so heavily. Or should she? Erik was a man. It was too late for him. Children however were quite a different story.

She pulled herself together, dried her tears and made her way back to the house Raoul had purchased for the purpose of eloping with Christine. Perhaps she had, at least, done some small good for her, though she quickly reminded herself that had it not been for her insistence Erik go above, Christine never would have been so alarmed; thus, it was all her own fault anyway. She began crying again and cried herself to sleep for the second night in a row over Erik.


Erik, meanwhile, was not content to wait simply for darkness. He waited until the hour became so that he was sure all respectable people would be at home in their beds, then he opened the door, crept out and carefully relocked the door behind him. A carriage for hire trotted by, and he hailed it tiredly, paying with the money that remained in his pocket and reassuring himself that it was enough to quiet any questions that might have been asked without. The driver scarcely looked at him anyway—drivers hardly ever did, he thought recalling his near-death visit to the Persian months earlier. If ever there had ever been a night that a driver might have refused a passenger, that should have been it. As it was, he reached the Opera without mishap both then and tonight.

When he reached home, he marveled that he had made the majority of the journey—or at least half of it—in broad daylight without anyone accosting him and without giving in too terribly to feelings of panic. Perhaps this was a dream, unless it was more of Elizabeth's trickery. It was ironic that she was so impressed with his sleight of hand, yet she performed a magic of her own that he had not until just now paused to consider. He let himself in hastily and, suddenly realizing that in spite of having complained repeatedly about living underground, he had been homesick all along without being fully aware. He fairly ran through the passageway and when he arrived at the house on the lake he threw himself upon the organ with a passion and a fury that far surpassed any playing he had done when he suffered at the hands of Christine.


BleedingHeartConservative's Final Thought: So Erik is not the only one wildly misinterpreting everything, eh? This is one of my beliefs about life—we seem to never really understand one another, do we?

Stuff to think about: So, Erik made it to the Opera safely... It still doesn't tell you what Elizabeth is planning or why the mysterious young law student? But considering what she's learned from the Persian, what will she do now?

Shameless Begging for reviews: Oh, please, please, please review me!!