A/N: Hooray that Phantom is finallyout on DVD! I now have my own copy! Also, if anyone has a favorite other Phantom movie or book that they suggest, please tell me. I need something to fight the boredom of my final month in school!

Miss Cleo: I am taking French and Calculus, Monday and Tuesday. It could get ugly. Needless to say, I have spent all this miserable weekend conjugating french verbs and memorizing formulas for integration and differentiation.

Jaini Kenobi, Call Me Camille, Forensic Photographer711: I am glad the slight fluffiness was appreciated, because I must admit that I prefer writing the cute romantic stuff to the mundane details of everyday life; alas, it would be entirely weird to have a story with nothing but fluff.

Et-spiritus-sancti: Hey, give credit where credit is due. Cool name. Anyway, glad you like the story, and I will try to keep writing. Just promise not to kill me if the chapters are a little shorter, or spaced farther apart.

He wished her eyes would tell him more, but they were too clouded with worry for him to analyze what she was really thinking. As she ran around getting everything he needed, he realized that his face was completely uncovered, and that she had not even batted an eyelash at it. Her tolerance was truly exceptional.

He saw her run her hand down her face, regret and pain written across her features, and prayed that she wasn't hurt. If Leon wasn't already dead, Erik would have killed him in a far more painful way, just because of Remy's expression as her hands fingered the faded line on her cheekbone. He had the sneaking suspicion that Leon, or one of the men in his employ, had treated her more brutally than she had admitted. It would be just like her to gloss over anything that she considered too messy to tell him. Strange that he now felt comfortable enough in his knowledge of her to make such a generalization.

He felt a little guilty by thinking that, and was shocked by his own passing sense of annoyance with her. It wasn't as though he hadn't done the same thing; he had only given her the outline of his life story, and left her to fill in the rest. He wanted to say something, but didn't have the words to fill the emptiness in her gaze, so he contented himself with asking her if she was alright. She replied almost flippantly, admonishing him to worry about himself and about he mess in his proverbial living room. Of course, she couldn't just say exactly what she was thinking about, no one could. It was always easier to talk about something that meant nothing than something that really matters.

She was worried about the bodies. She began to talk about how they would start to smell soon, but she didn't know what to do with them, or how to move them there. He probably should have been insulted by her immediate conclusion that he would know exactly what to do with corpses, but he was suitably impressed by her practicality in dealing with the situation.

"You're going to want to dump them in the river."

She looked at him scathingly. "I hope you're about to tell me that you have a brilliant idea for their transportation."

"The boat. This lake is fed by the Seine. If you take the boat, and load the bodies onto it, the water is shallow enough that you can actually just walk alongside it and guide it through all the way to the river. It should be relatively easy. If you go through the grate, there is a tunnel to the far left. I suggest you take a lantern, as there isn't any natural light. Follow it for about half a mile, and it will open into a sewer. This will lead you to a sheltered spot under a bridge, where you can put some holes in the boat to sink it, and push it out to the river. Plenty of bodies turn up on those banks all the time, no one will even bother to investigate." She nodded in understanding, her face turning an interesting shade of green. "If you like, it can wait until I can do it myself, but by then..."

"The bodies will have begun to stink." She stood up briskly and rubbed her hands together nervously. "No, I can do it."

"Are you sure?" There were certain things that weren't polite to ask a lady to do, and he was fairly sure this was one of them.

"Are you impugning my ability to finish what I started? I killed them, it is only fair that I should dispose of them."

The way she lifted her chin and straightened her thin shoulders was both amusing and endearing, and he had seen that flash in her eyes before, so he knew better than to pose any further objections. He was also strangely relieved, perhaps because he was tired of death. He had seen death, and brought death, and cleaned up after it, and now he wanted nothing more to do with it. He would kill again if necessary, but he prayed that such a necessity would never arise. Better to distance himself from the monster he knew he had in him.

I had never felt so sick in my entire life. Even my unfortunate experience with a bottle of cheap wine at the age of fourteen was compared to this. That had been purely physical illness. This was disgusting and disturbing on more than one level; my heart and mind objected as much as my stomach.

Here I was, dragging dead bodies-of men that I had killed, no less-into an ugly boat adorned with fake human skulls, preparing to sink them in the river. I hoped my mother was too occupied with happiness in heaven to see her daughter now; she was a practical woman, but she would have cried to see me. Unless she would have been proud of me for taking my life back. The problem was, I felt both pride in setting myself and Erik free, and guilt for the lives I had taken. What if they had families somewhere? Little girls who would never see their fathers again?

Any little girls these men had were better off without fathers, my more practical side told me. The world will be a better place with them gone. No one needs thugs-for-hire hanging around mucking up the world. Too bad I still felt terrible. In addition, I was afraid that if I stopped feeling bad, then I was nothing but a cold-hearted murderer. And then I felt worse. Trying to focus on what they did to Erik, I gave one last tug, and the body of the second lackey fell into the little boat. Only Leon left now.

Dragging what was left of him across the stone floor, I felt no more pity, no more remorse. I knew him for the monster he was, and I knew that he deserved death. After all, I wasn't trying to be his judge; I was just speeding his meeting with God. And I was sure God would agree with my logic.

I wasn't sure exactly how I managed to get three full grown dead men into the boat, but I did, and was perversely proud of myself when I tied them loosely into place. I collected a lantern to attach to the front of the boot, and changed into the oversize boots that I had worn upon my arrival here. It wasn't as though I had any great attachment to them, and the thought of trudging through a sewer in dainty slippers made me want to just forget the whole endeavor. With a final check on Erik, who was now fast asleep, I stepped into the murky water, and was on my way.

Erik awoke from an uneasy sleep to find Remy gone. The disgusting purple tonic had done its work, and left him with a only a very dull pain, and the feeling that he could sleep forever. Or just until Remy returned. He was worried about her, wandering through dark sewer tunnels by herself, but she was a capable woman, and it wasn't as if his worrying could do anything to hep her.

He closed his eyes with a sigh, ready to sink back into sleep, when footsteps made him sit upright. They were coming from the door of the mirrored room; soft, careful footsteps. He reached to the bedside table next to him for the knife Remy had placed there 'just in case,' and tucked it under the blankets so that he appeared unarmed.

As the footsteps drew nearer, his muscles tensed in preparation; they were near the organ now, and would soon find him.

Then he heard a familiar voice call his name, and he let the knife fall to the floor.

A/N: I wonder who that could be? Anyone care to take a guess? Lollipops for everyone who gets it right!