A/N: Oh whaaaaat? Two chapters in the same week? Perish the thought.

In all honesty, I wanted to get these two up in fairly short order, since events are being set into relatively quick motion now (as they were in the book, of course.) It's also a pretty major departure from where we were before - though not without reason. Anyway, I'll quit rambling now and just get on to the actual chapter.

Chapter 9

Claire lounged back in the claw foot tub, immersed up to her chin in steaming water, swirling rose-scented oils, and mounds of bubbles. She had maybe overdone it with the bath products, but right now she needed it. Her mind was spinning with everything that had happened, and her emotions were running high.

She had really started to like and to trust Erik, even to the point of wondering if the Leroux novel had been completely fictionalized out of a real man's life. He was moody and distant, sure - but he had also been kind, funny, and even gentle. In their time exploring his world's future, they had laughed together, dissolved into fierce discussions, and started feeling out a potential friendship.

But how could she even trust him now? Not only had he committed the egregious act of kidnapping a vulnerable young woman, he hadn't trusted Claire enough to be honest with her either. Claire kept circling back around to one thought - if he really held any value for her, or for Christine, couldn't he have asked for Claire's support and advice in how to pursue a relationship with the young soprano? The 140 year difference in the cultures aside, it wasn't as if people had changed that much when it came to matters of the heart. Surely the time they had spent watching modern movies and talking about the future in general had informed him of that.

Perhaps it was one of those Doctor Who things - a fixed point in time or whatnot. She wasn't super familiar with the idea, having only watched a few episodes at the insistence of a past girlfriend, but she gathered that the basic idea was that there were certain events that could only play out in one way, and no amount of meddling with the timeline would avert those events. Of course, that was science fiction, and this was reality - there was no real life precedent for what she was dealing with.

It did make a certain amount of sense though - it would explain why they hadn't been able to use the tunnel to get back to Claire's own time. Hell, maybe she was supposed to be here, and her presence in this time would somehow ensure that events played out as they were meant to. Would that be a paradox? By knowing the story ahead of time and trying to interfere, she would actually help set the events of the story in motion?

This wasn't helping her headache at all.

Anyway, she knew that Erik had been secretly tutoring Christine well before she arrived in this time. This raised another huge question though - if Erik had already fallen in love with Christine and planned to bring her here all along, why would he want to escape to the future? Why would he risk travelling to a completely different world when it might mean he had to leave his love behind?

The water was cooling now, and the mountains of bubbles were dissolving away into the water, leaving only an oily sheen across the surface. Claire sighed and pulled herself out of the bath, reaching for a towel. She had just entered the bedroom and begun towelling her hair dry when she heard a terrible scream and an answering roar from the other room.

Fuck.

Dropping the hair towel, she raced to the armoire, searching for something quick and easy to throw on. Even the most simple of the skirts and blouses that Erik had purchased for her were too complex to deal with quickly - but there, in the back of the wardrobe, was a basic dressing gown, little more than a bathrobe. She grabbed it, wrapped herself up as modestly as possible without the use of a mirror to guide her, and dashed into the drawing room, terrified of what she might find.

As it turned out, she was right to make such haste. Across the room, in front of the piano, was a scene straight out of a horror movie. Erik stood with his back to her with Christine on the floor in front of him, her face stricken with terror. In each hand he held one of her delicate wrists in a vice-like grip; Claire could see even from her spot next to the bedroom door that her hands were white from loss of circulation - except for the tips of her fingers, which were red with blood. Christine's? Erik's? She could not tell. And the mask - Erik's mask lay on the floor at his feet.

"ERIK!" Claire bellowed. "Let her GO! NOW!" Erik, startled by the sudden intrusion and explosion of sound, dropped Christine's hands and spun around to face her. Somehow, fueled by righteous anger, Claire managed to keep her composure as she saw Erik's face for the first time.

He looked nothing like the images of the Phantom she had come to know through pop culture. There was no twisting of flesh on one side of his face a la the musical, nor the exaggerated stretching of features as from the silent film. He looked more like a zombie or vampire - or some combination thereof. The dark shadows she had seen around his eyes previously were indeed not created by the cover of the mask, but by the natural dark hollows around his eyes themselves. Even without the mask, Claire could only just make out where his eyes sat and the golden yellow tint of his irises she had previously noticed. His skin was so ashen it was almost grey in color, and stretched tight over high, sharp cheekbones and a strong jawline, causing his cheeks to sink deep into the sides of his face. And his nose - well, he had no nose at all, as if the cartilage had simply never formed there, leaving him with a dark hole in the middle of his face.

But this was no time to gawk or sputter. Claire swept gracefully across the room, helped scoop Christine to her feet, and ushered her back into the Louis-Phillipe room, where she had to be guided to the bed. This time there were no tears, only the hushed horror that radiated from Christine and permeated the air around the two of them. She stared at her hands as if she did not know them, stunned by the blood that stained around her nails. Claire said nothing, but went to the bathroom for a washcloth and a bowl of hot water

Sitting next to her new friend, Claire took one pale hand in her own and began washing the blood away. Thankfully, it didn't seem that she had any injuries, so she assumed that the blood was Erik's - though she couldn't imagine Christine attacking him, no matter how horrified she had been.

As she started washing her other hand, a faint whisper spilled from Christine's lips. Claire paused her ministrations and looked up at the girl in front of her. Her face was still white with fear, and her eyes were dancing back and forth as if seeking desperately for some comfort in a world which had suddenly turned dark and cold, but she had definitely spoken.

"What's that, dear?" Claire asked softly.

"I… I didn't know," she whispered again, more audibly this time.

"It's okay, neither did I," Claire responded, returning to her task. "Christine, I need to know if he hurt you."

Christine scrunched up her face and shook her head. "No. Well, my wrists, a bit - but no, I don't think so."

Claire set the now-soiled washcloth on the ground and moved down to check Christine's wrists. The young woman flinched in mild pain as she gently squeezed them to check for injury, but overall they seemed okay.

"Well, I don't think anything's broken, at least," said Claire. "You might bruise a bit though, it seems like he grabbed you pretty hard. Where did all that blood come from though?"

Christine stared at her in horror. "Erik - he… he held my hands and made me claw at his face. He said-" she broke off and shook her head, swallowing hard as if to suppress a wave of nausea. "He said I should try to tear his face off, like it was another mask. Oh Claire, I am sure he will never let us go now! Not now that we know what a monster he truly is!"

Claire pulled Christine's hands together and held them gently in her own. "No, Christine - he's only a man. A man who, admittedly, has done some monstrous things in the past few days. I know you're frightened, but you need to hang on. If you lose yourself to fear, it will be that much harder to find a way out of here. Anyway, I still think we can handle this rationally - and if Erik can't deal with that now, I'll find a way to break you out of here."

As she spoke, a great anguished sound poured through the house, a long, painful lament of organ music that swam through the air around them. Claire, who had already heard some of Erik's most pained and sorrowful music, simply kept checking over Christine for any other bumps or bruises, but Christine began sobbing along with the music itself.

"Oh, goodness," she gasped. "That must be his Don Juan Triumphant. Oh, it's horrible! Beautiful, yes - but awful!" Claire nodded in faked agreement and made a mental note to never introduce Christine to Death Metal.

They then lapsed into silence for a period of time, just listening to the wailing strains of Erik's composition. As she listened, Claire realized that she could recognize some of the themes from the piece, and that it was one Erik had played several times before. She hadn't known the name of it before - though of course she recognized the title from the musical version of Phantom. Erik's original composition, however, sounded nothing like Andrew Lloyd Webber's later attempt at a recreation.

After some time, Claire looked down and realized that Christine was snoozing quietly, probably after passing out from shock and exhaustion. Gently removing her hand from Christine's she slipped back into the bathroom to fetch her first aid kit from a cabinet next to the sink, and then stole from the room, making her way across the house. The mask still lay on the ground where Christine had presumably dropped it, and where Erik had left it as he took his flight back to his own room. The door, usually closed up tightly, was ever so slightly ajar - possibly out of hope that Christine would return, or simply because he had neglected to latch it in his despair.

Claire opened the door and took her first look at the room which had so far been a mystery to her. Of course - it was decorated entirely in black, from the wall hangings to the upholstery on the furniture. The only exception were huge decorations of sheet music and a red canopy, which surrounded a coffin - clearly where Erik slept. But she wasn't here to sightsee - Claire cleared her throat to announce her presence. Slamming his hands down onto the keys, Erik spun around in a rage.

"AH!" he bellowed, "back to gawk at the monster?! Here to stare at my loathsome ugliness and sate your curiosity?! God knows Christine couldn't stop herself from ripping my mask away, I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did! I see now - you were just waiting for something like this to happen so you could see for yourself!"

Claire huffed in annoyance and rolled her eyes. "God, just - just shut up, Erik," she said as she stepped forward.

Erik rose from his seat, drawing himself up to his full height - more than a head taller than Claire. "WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

Claire stopped short and stared him down - no mean feat from a foot below him. "I said, SHUT UP!" she shouted back. "Erik. Just stop. I am in NO mood to deal with this drama. Over the past 18 hours I have had to bring Christine down from two separate panic attacks - first because you kidnapped her, and then because you terrorized her. And no, whether or not she started it by taking your mask doesn't matter - that's NOT an excuse for how you reacted. I had to sleep on the couch, I realistically only got about 5 hours of actual sleep, I haven't eaten since yesterday, and my headache - which, might I remind you, only started because you filled up the drawing room with a metric fuck-tonne of lilies - is very quickly turning into a MIGRAINE. So do yourself a favor, stop acting like the world revolves around you, and sit back down so I can make sure you're okay."

To her surprise, Erik actually did so, his rage draining from his face to be replaced with shock. Feeling her own blood pressure drop slightly, Claire grabbed a bench from in front of a nearby table and pulled it closer to the organ, setting herself up a foot or two away from him.

"Okay," she said, setting her first aid kit on her lap but not yet opening it. "This is better. Look - Christine is sleeping, unless all that shouting woke her up again. I'd rather get back to her before she wakes up, so she doesn't think I've just abandoned her - but I need to make sure you're going to be alright too."

Erik hissed. "I don't need your pity, Claire," he spat, though with less rage than before.

Claire snorted. "Please Erik, I would never insult you such. No, believe it or not, I actually care about you - even with all the monumentally terrible decisions you've made over the last day. Even if you don't care about me. And when someone I care about is hurting, I have to at least try to help, or what kind of friend would I be?"

"Now," she continued, "I'm not going to pretend that your reaction just now was justified, but I'm also not going to pretend that what Christine did wasn't a pretty cruel and shitty thing to do. She asked you about the mask, you told her no, and she went ahead and did it anyway. You have every right to be angry with her right now. But I swear to GOD, if you hurt her again-"

Erik suddenly moaned in despair, cutting Claire off. "I didn't mean to-" he stammered, burying his face in his spindly hands. "How badly hurt is she?"

"She'll be okay, Erik - her wrists will probably bruise a bit, but she'll heal. Honestly, the emotional upheaval of the last 24 hours has done more damage than anything. She needs to sleep, and she needs to be treated gently. And so," she continued, opening the first aid kit finally, "do you, I think."

Erik looked back up at her, his brow furrowed in consternation. "What could you possibly mean by that?"

Claire pulled from the kit a few alcohol wipes and antibiotic cream. "Erik," she sighed, "you reacted so badly to Christine's actions that you used her fingernails to harm yourself - and you're still bleeding. First of all, I need to make sure you don't get an infection. And second - when was the last time anyone just, well… took care of you?"

Erik stared at her, starting to shiver slightly. "Never, mademoiselle."

"Right then. That's what I'm here for at the moment." She ripped open one of the wipes and leaned forward, gently taking his chin in her hand and turning his head to see where he had injured himself. Erik froze, his eyes wide and his hands visibly trembling.

"Now this will sting a bit, but you really do need this cleaned up - hurting yourself with fingernails is a great way to give yourself an infection, especially when it's someone else's." Slowly and carefully, Claire cleaned out the wounds, first on the left and then the right temples. Erik seemed to have stopped breathing, deciding to vibrate intensely instead. After the blood was cleaned, Claire carefully applied a thin layer of antibiotic to each wound and sat back to check her work.

"There," she declared. "Congrats, you've just been the first person to be treated with modern antibiotics, about 50 odd years before they'll be properly discovered. I don't think you'll need a bandage in this case, the bleeding has stopped and they aren't that deep - just, you know, be careful?" Erik nodded incredibly stiffly, still staring at her wide-eyed.

"Good. Okay then," she said, putting the kit back together and setting it on the floor. "Look, if you were one of my girl friends, and some shitty dude had ghosted you, I'd take you out to the club and we'd go dancing all night, or we'd go get mani-pedis and shit talk our exes. Since neither of those things are an option - and I doubt you'd enjoy them much anyway - all I can really do right now is ask how you're doing, and if there's anything else I can do to help."

Erik seemed to slowly come back to himself at her question. He blinked several times, swallowed hard, and slumped ever so slightly as the tension in his shoulders and upper back released. Finally he shook his head in despair. "Why did she have to be so curious, Claire? I know that if she had never seen me, she would have come to love me in return. But now that she has seen me, if I let her go she'll never come back."

"That may be the case Erik - she's pretty hurt by all this. But you can't keep her locked up here, that's no way to get someone to love you."

Erik moaned in anguish, hiding his face in his hands again. "What else can I do, Claire? I am lost without her."

Before Claire could answer, the door to Erik's room swung open again, this time to reveal Christine standing on the threshold, silhouetted in the light from the drawing room.

"Erik?" she asked timidly, stepping inside.

"Oh, Christine…" he murmured, reaching out to her in desperation while covering his face with his other hand.

"Erik," she repeated, this time with more confidence. "Show me your face without fear - I will not run away or scream."

Christine slowly approached the two of them. Sensing she was about to become a third wheel - as frustrating as that was at such an important moment - Claire gathered her belongings and her skirts and headed toward the door. Before she left she glanced back.

"It seems the two of you need to talk - but I'll be right outside if you need a referee." So saying, she stepped out of the gloom-filled bedroom and slumped against the door as it closed behind her. She wondered, really, if anything she'd done would help in the long run.