A/N: *head bobbs in sea of homework and remote learning stress* Hey…I'm…alive…but my…muse…is so…weak. *sings* Why you gotta mess with my life, corona? So many fun parodies on youtube! Chris Mann has some great ones. I'm staying safe, but darnit it's inconvenient. Being creative during grad school while adjusting to online learning with assistive technology is wearing me down! But here's something finally.

I could hear Christine a couple rooms over singing a little loudly as she prepared for bed. Erik tried to gently chastise her a week or so ago for singing like that when the house was going to sleep, but she had just shattered into a pleading mess and insisted that it was for her own good, her confidence, her vocal health. But at least Erik and I knew that a few minutes after she stopped, she was asleep, and we could talk.

We were sitting on the floor atop a folded blanket. My cot liked to creak, so we moved there after the diva was silent. Well, Erik moved us. He didn't want to stop holding me even for ten seconds, and although that made me want to squeal awwwww more than anything, I just laughed teasingly at him.

"You're weird," I said.

"And something tells me you don't care if I am," he replied, guiding my head to his shoulder and kissing my cheek.

I was happy to be "observing the story" again; by day listen to the music lessons and think about all the adaptations, by night get my share of Erik. And loving Erik in secret behind Christine's back was...probably too fun. One week to go, and then the young starlet would be swept away by her hansome viscount. I wondered what would happen once Raoul came for Christine. What would it be like to be the opera ghost's phangirl? The phantom's girl instead of Christine's romantic competition?

Erik drew me from my thoughts with his soft voice. "I've brought something for you." I heard him slide thick paper from between the cot and the wall. "Here. Touch."

I took the small stack of paper and ran my fingers over the first lines of braille: my brailled music! My left index finger on the unfamiliar lyrics, my right on the familiar melody, I began to read and audit (hear the song in my head.)

"Hee-hee, I'm excited now!" I whispered. Erik waited patiently while I read through the whole of the sheet music. I could feel the huge grin and had to really keep myself from phangirl squealing. "Erik, this is so great! I love this!"

Erik helped me put the music away under my bed after I was finished looking at it. And then he pulled the covers over us and contentedly spooned me. "Before we sleep," he murmured, "could we sing just a little bit?" He was trying to persuade me...to hypnotize me and persuade me.

"Why are you changing your voice?"

"I—I thought you couldn't tell." Erik sounded sheepish and apologetic.

I twisted around to kiss his bear cheek. "It's okay. I just really like your normal voice." And I granted his request.

I woke up alone. Erik woke up before me. Normal. But I listened to the day's lessons with more melancholy than usual. There was a week left, and Erik and Christine were pushing themselves harder and harder into their rehearsal time…taking things more and more seriously. If I wasn't careful, I could convince myself that Erik was really leading a double life and fooling both me and Christine…like he wants both of us at the same time. Christine was everything that Erik dreamed about and vice versa, the perfect artistic pair, despite their relationship always being doomed. Erik said that he felt safe with me and wanted to be mine, even though I was just the phangirl unashamedly messing with his character. Erik was so good at charming...which one of his faces was the mask? Sometimes, to be honest, it could be hard to tell.

But at some point, this was going to blow up. I could feel it. Even though I am silent and respectful during lessons, it really hurts, and I have to hold myself back from running in and tearing Erik away from Christine. And every time Erik sneaks away from her to be with me, he risks getting caught and risks Christine's tantrums and risks me getting into hotter water with Christine. And this Christine is not one that you want to be in hot water with.

One week...we will survive. Right?

When the knock came with a far-too-sweet voice calling his name, Erik moaned out his preplanned line. "O, my Christine. Erik is not feeling well. Please, go enjoy your Sunday."

"Oh, Erik. Are you quite sure?" Still syrupy sweet, and now a touch pouty.

"I am. I have all that I need in here...just go, my darling." Saying those last two words was far easier through a door than to her face. "Just look over your libretto and review my notes tonight, and I will see you at half past 7 tomorrow morning."

"All right, Erik. Do get well. I'll see you tomorrow."

Tomorrow. Erik had tricked her into being gone until tomorrow. He had actually done it—sent her away! Dear God, he sent her away.

Erik pressed his ear to his bedroom door after her footsteps moved away.

A knock and Christine's voice, impatient. "Lauren!"

After a minute, the door opening. Lauren's sleep-clogged voice. "What?"

Christine, snobbishly. "Erik is not feeling well today. Don't disturb him. He must be better tomorrow so he can continue to tutor me."

Why must Christine have multiple masks to wear? Why must she be so convincing an actor when she knows she has an audience? If she knew Erik was listening now, there is no way she would be showing her true colors. But when she knows he is there, she is too good at keeping them hidden and tricking him. Erik hates how careful he must be...he so needs this day off!

Lauren. "Kay."

Erik listened to Christine's vocal exercises carry her away from the house on the lake. It sounded like there was just one pair of footsteps walking around now. Oh what Erik wouldn't give to peek out. Lauren was so much better at looking with sound...he'd just let his eyes adjust to the dark, but she could see through doors with sound. No matter. A simple throwing of his voice to his Lauren's inside doorknob: "Lauren, turn me and enter the room across the hall if the diva is aboveground."

And then he waited.

A tap on his door. The knob turned. "Lauren?" Erik asked the door. Was it really her on the other side?

The door opened, and his angel stood there.

"Lauren!" Erik swept her inside and closed the door on instinct.

She spoke squished against his silk-covered middle. "It's only been a few hours, theater geek—sorry, opera geek. Drama king. Did you miss me that much?"

"Didn't you miss me?" He led her back to his bed to hold her there.

"I always miss you. Whoa," she said suddenly, stepping away. "Don't get me sick."

"Oh. Erik faked it, silly girl. Erik tricked Christine, and Christine will not be back until tomorrow!" He reached out for her again, and this time she let him. It always felt as though something unknown became known and clicked into place when he held her.

So could he please kiss her now? He wanted to kiss her so very much…

"Really?"

"Yes! I did it for you. Well, for me too. Erik is tired. Tired of all this mask-wearing and secret-keeping. Erik just wanted to be—I mean, I just wanted to be myself with you for one day."

Lauren cut across him excitedly. "You sent Christine away all by yourself?"

"Yes...?" Now may he kiss her? Please?

"Aww. I'm so proud of you!"

Erik laughed out loud and kissed his phangirl. He could kiss her now without fearing a certain diva because that diva was far away. "You liked the picknick scene in the story from the 90s where my last name is Carriere...how about your very own picknick today? And then we can practice this afternoon. And then we can read before bed. Would you like that?"

Lauren just let out a breathy "yeah" and tried to hide her phangirl squeak. But Erik was overjoyed to hear it.

The picnic was just simple munchies like cheese and bread and wine and talking…and laughing and a lot of blushing—for me at least. (Erik could write a Shakespeare romance destined to be a chickflick if he wasn't so preoccupied with horror and death.)

We geeked out over Poe and chatted about the versions of Les Mis and Hunchback of Notre Dame I was used to: musical theater and Disney. Erik seemed dissatisfied at first, but when I fangirled about the messages and the lessons and the character arcs and emotions, he sighed and said, "It warms my cold, Gothic heart to know that what is to be treasured was not entirely lost."

"You're heart's not cold, and you know it."

"Don't tell anyone, now. Or I'll haunt you. 'I will haunt you forever, Lauren.'"

"It's freaky how you sound exactly like MaskedLion." (A/N: that's a youtuber who does dramatic reenactments of scenes from POTO, and his Lerroux ones are just chillingly good. That quote is from the unmasking scene, but he also did Erik's monologue at the end…phangirl is melting. OKI'llshutupnow.)

"Ah, yes: you'd rather I sound like…Charles Dance. Aha, she smiles at me! Or perhaps I shall sound like…Ramin? No, not the gentle Ramin…the LND unhinged Ramin! Oh, she is laughing at me now. Well. How about…"

Voice lessons with Erik were so fun! We focused a lot on breath support and diction…OK, that was probably 95 percent of the whole two hours. Half hour vocal warmups and breathing exercises, then two 45-minute blocks with a little 10-minute rest in between.

"Remember, you are an angel of music, my darling; let that flowing lyrical voice be the contrast to the sharper, dramatic mortals in the opera with their coloratura voices. Even your crescendos and decrescendos must flow seamlessly."

Erik and I alternated reading Poe poems before bed. But it seemed early to me to be going to sleep. "Erik, I don't think I'll be able to fall asleep quick," I said.

"Then I shall have to sing you to sleep!" Erik proclaimed gleefully. "You've sang before sleep, and now I shall." We got settled and my ear ended up right next to Erik's heart, which made me absurdly giddy because I would hear his singing and his heartbeat while I fell asleep! . "Any requests, my love?"

"La Vie en Rose?"

"Of course." (A/N: I tried to find the lyrics in French online but it wouldn't let me copy/paste, so please just look it up and pretend that's in here because I really should be doing homework instead of copying word-for-word and trying to figure out those crazy accent marks!)

I tried to stay awake for the whole song, but Erik was using his voice to his advantage and I was floating away quicker than I would have liked. I did feel a forhead kiss, though…I loved forehead kisses from my Erik.

And now, a time skip…because I is impatient and doesn't want to let this gather anymore dust.

Erik's been with Christine all freakin week. Nadir came by on Monday to get me and now it's opening night. Nadir was trying to keep me preoccupied, but that wasn't working. I was super nervous about sneaking up there and singing! I'd never done anything like this before! Even in church tiny solos made me nervous, and this was without a microphone in a huge theater (Erik did say he would help me via ventriloquism, but what if he was stuck in Christineland?) What if Erik falls in love with Christine on that stage for real?

I ended up voicing this last worry out loud to Nadir, but he just half-sighed, half-groaned, and said, "You're so like Erik! Have faith in him, woman. That is crucial here." I felt his hand on my shoulder and I turned in my chair towards him. He continued, Gentler, "You know, Erik sent a thank-you letter to Miss Daae and young Chagny for helping him to see real love after you finished M. Lerroux's book that second time for your Phantom essay; only then was he able to come back to you. It was Christine and Christine alone who went and played with the light and the sound."

"But what hope do I have of getting Erik back?" I asked. "Christine has been singing and smiling and flirting with him so much!"

Before Nadir could answer, Darious was in the doorway telling us it was time to hail a cab.

"We must go," Nadir said. "But one more accessory to your ensemble. Sing with this." And he slid a ring onto my left pinky finger.

In the carriage, I couldn't stop playing with my ring. "How long have you had this?"

"I found it when I came to get you, but Erik told me not to give it to you until the performance. We…we both wanted you to receive…good news with bad."

"Crap. Fine, lay it on me."

"It seems that, in an effort to gain the upper hand, Miss Daae"—he hissed the name—"has outed you as a phangirl and spun her version of your story. You know how unpredictable a fic can be when you pin anything from cannon to AU against self-awareness?"

"Yeah. It could fall apart unless you're going for satire or something. So, since Christine outed me, what happens now? I'm not really in control anymore, right?"

"To some degree. Madame Giry was only able to get me proof of this tactic yesterday. It appears that Christine did not reveal who the phangirl was, only that phans in general taint our world and should be—overcome. So: you can sing against Christine and fight for your Phantom, or you can just—let go. Go back to your real life without any of this burden. If you let go, which is really easy—you need only cast your ring into the Seine, you'll be sent back to your own reality and this world will 'right itself'."

Uneasy feeling in stomach. "Doesn't sound like you like that second option."

"Let us go and we shall be erased, and you shall have to start your story anew. Mark Character Sitting as complete and…" Nadir took a huge breath. "and move on."

"NO! So I don't write much anymore—so what? That doesn't mean I don't imagine Erik with me when I feel like escaping reality! That doesn't mean he's not holding me at night when I have a bad dream! That doesn't mean he's not singing to me when I'm scared or overwhelmed! That doesn't mean I'm not imagining him next to me when I'm trying to do a tiny songwriting music therapy project and he's the one encouraging me—"

"Wasn't that Hector from Coco encouraging you most recently?"

"NOT THE POINT!" I'm screaming now. It's my turn to take a huge breath. "I'm not leaving. This ring's staying on my finger and I'm taking my Erik back through song! I'll never not be a POTO phan!"

The carriage stopped at a perfect time: in the silence, we climbed out and started toward the opera house.

"My God. You and Erik together could tear down whole nations! I'm sure you'd rather put that emotion into singing though?"

I concentrated on making a steady rhythm with my cane instead of breaking something. "I want to keep my Erik."

Erik truly, genuinely enjoyed being Christine's teacher. It was so easy to drop into that role of Angel of Music and to let the sheer power and emotion block out all reason. Yes, Christine gave him admiration as well as pity, but it felt so much like love…can they not pretend?

Christine was standing in the mirror…how beautiful she was. That pre-performance flush to her cheeks, the excitement in her eyes.

"You'll watch my debut in its entirety, right? Even when I do not see you, you will be there?"

Erik responded without thinking. "Of course. And I'll be waiting in your dressing room afterwords."

Christine left, and Erik took his passageways to the stage, hearing the instruments tuning, seeing the set pieces, mentally mapping out every note and every move in his mind…feeling the rush of performing—was it of performaing or of Christine? Why does his role in her life have to end at vocal coach again? She makes him feel so happy.

(synopses: rich woman seduces poor artist with fame but artist must choose between a life full of riches and submission or a life of modesty and freedom of expression.)

This was it. I stood in a black dress, ring on finger, hand over heart, listening to Erik vocally climb up and up and up until he was singing in his upper register like a countertenor. When he held that E-flat 5, I closed my eyes and cued the CD which sat on a table next to me by holding my ring over it and saying softly and deliberately: "Down Once More, 'hopes are shattered'." And Erik resolved to the D that Christine sings on the word 'hate'. My pitch to take. I reached for the braille on the music stand.

Erik All I Ask Of You, Christine Point Of No Return, chorus/me Angel Of Music (A/N think final lair scene)

E "Say I love you and my life is over. Say the word and life is not my own."

C "All that you could ever dream, I have to offer: a job, a wife, and riches yet to come."

L/CH "Woe for the music, art exploited, all of a dream wasted."

C"So do you pledge your life to me, or do you leave it to the fates?"

E "Why sacrifice my art for fortune?"

E "Say no thank you and I gain my freedom; security and wealth I shall let go."

C "Fool! You'll live in poverty, be scorned and spit on. It's business here, there is no time for fun."

L/CH "Praise from the music, you, our savior. You who declare passion!"

E/R "The love that I do feel is true I know."

C "Oh, realize what you have done."

And my solo "Oh, for the music, with compassion, love is true love-selfless."

The last lines…for all of them…they were true, Erik knew. Christine wanted Erik to realize what he had done, and he had: he had felt real love by letting her go; Erik's love that he knew to be love was truer than anything he had ever felt before, and he knew that Raoul would love Christine in spite of everything because that's who Raoul was; and Lauren had sang that true love is selfless, and selfless was her love was true love.

In the throng of the after party, Erik watched as Christine and Raoul clung to the dark corners almost as tightly as they clung to one another. He remembered, once, that his phangirl had tried to read an errotic Phantom novel, and he wondered idly if that had spilt over here. Lauren had grown tired of that novel rather quickly; she had been desperate for Phantom, but realized several chapters in that horny, lust-driven characters in a world that revolved around sexual pleasure and did away with realism and nonphysical love really wasn't her thing.

Not liking what he felt watching that happy couple, Erik turned his attention to a gaggle of ballet rats, hoping to spot his Lauren nearby.

"I wonder which one of us is the phangirl?"

"Poor Christine...having a phangirl for competition."

"I don't really know why they are so bad, but if Christine didn't like them...good riddance."

"She always said that phangirls have no business being in our stories. I wonder what she did to get rid of this one?And how she even brought her here? She was always so excited to tell us that she was determined to do that one day—triumph over a phangirl that she didn't like and take back her story."

Ah, it makes sense now, Erik thought. Her goal all along was to drag Lauren here just to have her leave and all the characters to be regressed. And his Lauren wouldn't have him anymore, or Nadir, or anything. And he wouldn't have her.

But she would have her own real life.

Erik looked down when he felt a cane tap his shoe, then up, and led that opera's angel of music to a wall pivot.

Lauren never left.

Once they were inside, Lauren waggled the fingers of her left hand. "Looky what I got!" she sang. "Phangirl wins! What now Christine? Da phangirl beatcha! I WON MY STORY BACK! I'm not kicking fanfiction that easily!"

Erik pulled his arm from her grip and put it around her instead. "So Nadir did tell you?"

"Yeah. Real life's crazy, but fanfiction is my escape, and even if I'm not with you all the time, I still want you with me."

"Did Nadir tell you how to go back?"

"Yes."

"You have a real life—graduate school to focus on. You could have gone back and just kept living. And recreated me. Why did you stay if you knew?"

"I didn't want to just erase a whole world. Your whole world. I didn't want to take all this away from all of you...and I like you too much."

Oh screw it: Erik swept her feet out from under her and caught her in his arms, laughing at her shriek of surprise and laugh of delight, and kissed her hard as he carried her down. He carried her over the threshold too.

"Welcome home, my darling girl. It is my honor and delight to present you with a quiet lair, unlike the climax of many an adaptation."

"That song'll still be stuck in my head. I can't hum it though, can I?"

"You can. You took it all back. So now you could, for example with no worry, belt out something like this…"

Out of the walls came a demonic screamo voice: "DOWN ONCE MORE TO THE DUNGEONS OF MY BIG BLACK *bleep* [actuall bleep sound] DOWN WE PLUNGE TO THE PRISON OF MY MOOOOOM!" (A/N: phantom of oprah youtube poop, not mine.)

And I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants.

To the readers,

Lauren has allowed me a little piece at the end of this chapter. She thought it kind to give me this, due to my—shall we say, less-than-friendly treatment in phanfiction.

I know the Raoul is usually the butt of a joke or the villain. To that I say: who says I can't be a good guy this one time? Usually I disappear to drive the plot, so why wouldn't I take an opportunity to suddenly materialize and fix a conflict, even if it is still in a lazy, anticlimactic way?

As a Raoul trying not to go too OOC, I do love Christine And of course I was more than happy to accept her from my rival—Lerroux me was quite competitive in that way. But I will also say this: Christine is highly influenceable, and while her angel of music brings out her darker side, her childhood sweetheart can encourage the innocent and kind child in her. In this story, anyway.

To Erik: I'll get Christine's rings polished as soon as possible so the mirror light doesn't work anymore. I hope to leave you with a cordial parting of the ways and best wishes.

And now, I have the great honor of posing the next question to all of you! Our phangirl will need inspiration, so: where and what next? Erik's world? Her world? Particular characters reappearing? Particular scenarios with or without characters, cannon or original?

Apart from her schooling, there is a pleading though: a Disney Pixar movie called Coco has kept her from us for over a year. So please help us stay!

Come to think of it, perhaps we should invite Coco's characters to a story for a…"friendly" competition? I finally started writing little bits for Coco, so maybe?

Please write words in the review box!