Cassandra awoke in the lair. She'd so hoped that there had been an accident on stage and she'd been knocked out and dreamt the whole ordeal with Villefort. She rose slowly from the bed and staggered out into the main part of the lair. Richard Villefort sat at a big desk scribbling furiously at something before him.

"You shouldn't be up yet." He said without turning. "The toxins are still running through your body." Cassandra's voice still did not want to work and she took a series of deep breaths trying to calm herself. She had to rely on the door frame to support her wobbly legs and hold her up.

"How long have I been out?"

"An hour…maybe two. Time means nothing here Cassandra, you'll have to learn that."

"I want answers. I want them now and I want the truth." Her voice shook with the effort of her statement.

"Ah, do you promise to be calm about it?"

"Yes." He got up and held his hand out to her.

"Come, we shall go sit and discuss this like a couple of adults." He waited as she came forward slowly, still trying to work through the effects of the drug he'd injected into her body. "Come, sit down my sweet."

"I'm not 'your sweet.'" Cassandra said sitting heavily in the chair he'd directed her to.

"Of course you aren't." His voice was calm, his tone that of an indulging parent rather than a captor and a mad man. "Now, what do you want to know?"

"Who are you, really?"

"My name is Erik. Most of the world knows me as the Phantom of the Opera."

"I said I wanted the truth." She said as he handed her a glass of amber liquid. She looked at it warily.

"It's not poison, or some love draught. It's brandy, it will warm you." She took it from him carefully but didn't drink it. "And I'm telling you the truth." He said sitting in the chair opposite her. "My name is Erik. For centuries I was the Phantom of the Opera. I helped to build the original opera that stood in this place, I helped with renovations when it came time for it. I traveled the world and built great palaces for the royalty with all manners of trapdoors, secret rooms and moving walls. I was quite a commodity in my time. Richard Villefort was merely an alias. He died six years ago in Denmark. I happened to find his grave, did some research and resurrected his name."

"Why?"

"Well, if not Richard Villefort than I would have used any other alias I could have come up with…"

"Not that….." She interrupted quickly.

"Well, 'why' is a fairly ambiguous question. You'll have to be more specific." He sipped at his brandy.

"Why did you choose me?"

"Your voice is spectacular. Very little work was all it took to give you the sweetness that my dear Christine had; the strength…the passion! You were her reincarnation, body, voice and soul." Cassandra thought back to the very beginning….to seven months before, in December when he'd first come to St. Isabel's.

"When you first came to St. I's you gave us a lot of information."

"All false."

"The midnight practices were just to train my voice to sound more like hers?"

"Yes, like Christine's. You came along quite well." He grinned. "I was also trying to keep you from outside influences, your friend Mia and that fop Ryan."

"When we arrived here, you knew a lot of the streets….is it because you've seen the city change?"

"Very good…you're beginning to catch on. Yes, I grew up in this city, lived here for more than one hundred years, traveled for another hundred and returned to it. I've seen this city go from a city of pestilence and plague, to a city run by fear and the gutters run with blood. I've seen this city rise up from the ashes like a Phoenix, to become the City of Light and L'amour." He grinned wickedly. "I've seen young girls like you, little theater brats, orphaned by the world and abandoned to no one. I've taken them in and seen them run from me into the arms of other men who can show them the light of the world. I've seen you and that brat on more than one occasion."

"Brat? You mean Ryan and I?"

"Yes. Ryan. I thought about turning him in that night for drinking….knowing you both had signed those contracts. But then I knew I'd lose you as well, so there was nothing I could say or do. I watched when you returned to the hotel that night and I watched as you pulled him to you like a whore. I watched as you kissed him…" He broke off, his bright green eyes seemed distant. "I saw you invite him into your room that night."

"You were in the alley with us?"

"Yes." Cassie moved forward on the timeline. Things were beginning to make sense to her.

"When we got here, I started to see a man. Who was he in all this?"

"Ah….him…yes."

"Well?" Cassandra asked when she couldn't get an exact answer out of him.

"You've read Leroux's work. You know of the Rat catcher."

"Yes."

"That's him."

"The Rat catcher?" Cassandra didn't comprehend. "He's as old as you?"

"Well, not exactly, but his whole family has lived in the walls of this place trying to hunt me down. It's a pity to know that three generations of men lived in the walls hunting for me while I was out enjoying the world. They ceased being rat catchers and were primarily Phantom hunters. He found me wandering the corridors one night and took suspicion."

"He was in the balcony."

"Yes, he was hoping he could scare me. It almost worked but you took greater fright in him. I used it to my advantage when I drugged you and worked my way into your dreams. There was nothing he could do to stop me. And so that night with the burning body, I hoped to scare you so strongly, so deeply, that you'd be willing to believe anything I fed you."

"You were the man that grabbed me? That's why you didn't come running when I was screaming…that's why it took so long…you were trying to get out of the room…."

"Very good Cassandra." He smiled at her.

"Then he was the one that chased me from the costume loft?"

"Yes. He wanted to warn you that day…to alert you to my presence. But we couldn't have that could we."

"Why didn't Giles believe in him?"

"He didn't want to believe the Phantom existed. His father left Paris and the Opera house and went to America. His brother, Horrace Giles' uncle was left here to go mad." At Cassandra's confused look the man across from her laughed. "Mr. Giles is descended of Rat Catchers…He didn't want to believe the stories of his father were true. So he ignored it. Then that senile old fool tried to warn you again at the gala. I curtailed that though."

"You let an innocent man go to jail!"

"Preservation, dear Cassandra." He laughed. "Self preservation in it's most base form. Now, you said you'd be calm….if you cannot manage to hold your anger in check, I will drug you again." Cassandra took several deep, angry breaths. "Drink some of the brandy…I'm telling you it will help."

"Not until I get all my answers." She said quickly, lest she be distracted again. "Did you drug Mark?"

"Yes."

"Why did you drug him?"

"I was hoping to keep him docile, so I could work my way in. He was stronger than I thought…all of you were. I never expected him to make a run for the authorities, but you were just dim enough to offer up his spot to me. I never could have dreamed of a better chance to get to you."

Cassandra shook her head, shocked that she'd been so blind as to fall into his trap. She knocked back the brandy roughly and looked around her.

"Davette?"

"A pawn….she's so dense it's painful, and her voice? HA!" Villefort shook his head. "She doesn't even deserve to be cleaning an opera house much less singing in one. She wanted the same attention I doted on you, but how could I squander my gifts on a waste like that?"

"And what happens now?" Cassandra asked quietly. The man across from her got up and walked towards her slowly. His hand caressed her cheek and gently brought her eyes to look up at him.

"What happens now my dear, is that we live together forever…here." He looked into her eyes. "We shall live here and make wonderful music together; you my muse, and me the genius who will put it all together." Cassandra was going to argue, but he placed a finger to her lips and silenced her before she could say anything. "You are being rather negative, always saying and thinking 'never.' It's already happened! The forces have already been in motion. The lake will fill with water, and they will never know what to do to drain it and we can live here in peace forever….and you will love it. The peace and solitude; the darkness and quiet!" She shook her head. "Come now, I've seen you look at the moon, the way you long for darkness to come. You shall rule the dark and the night just as I have done. You will be my partner and the two of us, together, will find love in the black."

"I don't love you."

"You say that now, you will learn differently." Cassandra stood abruptly and made a move for the stairs, brushing past him. "You will learn that you were lusting after Ryan…he never truly cared for you. What I have to offer you is eternity….eternal life, love, happiness and music." Cassandra fell to her knees at the top of the stairs, the many layers of the heavy wedding gown billowing out around her. "And you're already in your gown….didn't I do a wonderful job?"

Cassandra turned tear filled eyes toward the mad man behind her. He'd been behind everything, he'd masterminded her every move and she'd been powerless to stop him. He'd run rampant in her mind and she hadn't been able to keep him from it. "What?"

"I couldn't very well have my lovely bride wearing that rag, now could I?"

"You destroyed the other gown?"

"Yes, and chose this as a suitable replacement." Cassandra turned back forward and looked out over the lair into the spider veined mirror.

"I've been here before….I've seen this before." She suddenly whispered. The Phantom's cheshire cat grin reflected a dozen times in the mirror and cut Cassandra off before she could continue.

"Oh, my pet….you've been here before. In your previous life when you were Christine Daaé you came here quite often on your own. But more recently, I brought you down here. You woke once…oh, I see you remember that." He said as her face was covered with realization.

"That was a dream!" Cassandra said, shocked. "That was a dream…it had to have been…" She thought back to Sean Connery the Ferrari driving penguin, and everyone in drag. This had been wrapped up in it all…it had been a dream!

"It was not a dream….I'm sorry I had to drug you to do it, but I didn't think you were a heavy enough sleeper to bring you here without some outside influence, I was wrong apparently. Tell me, what do you remember of it?"

"I remember waking up back there…" She turned slowly and pointed back to where she'd awoken minutes before. "I came out and sat on the stairs and saw a broken mirror." She turned back to the front and looked at the broken mirror across from her. She watched as the dozens of reflections of herself pointed back at her. "Everything was so loud! Then someone touched me and I tried to see them." Her voice was desperate to remember the bits of the dream she had mostly forgotten; this place reawakening it. "I never saw a face…YOUR FACE!" She suddenly shouted. "You kissed me." She looked up at him where he towered over her. "You pervert! I…..you carried me back to the bed but I passed back out."

"Laudanum; it sometimes has that effect on people."

"The taste of almonds…you put it in my tea!"

"Ah, so you did taste it…." He smiled. "Yes, that night I drugged you, other nights I made sure you were worked to exhaustion and watched you sleep. I love to watch you sleep…." He handed a sheaf of drawings to her and then left her to look through them. Most were of her laying peacefully in bed, sleeping soundly. "You're so peaceful, one could say 'angelic' when you sleep."

"Bastard!" Cassandra shouted as she flung the drawings away from her. She saw Villefort come up behind her in the mirror. He knelt behind her and gently placed a veil on her head and kissed her shoulder. "You look magnificent."

"Don't….Don't touch me!" Cassandra said standing and moving away from him. She went down the stairs where it was more open. She had to get away from the broken reflection of herself and away from the drawings. "I won't marry you! I'm only eighteen!"

"Christine was to marry me at sixteen, you will do so now." He said sharply, coming up behind her. Cassandra fought against him as he captured her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers forcefully. She bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood and forced him to back away. Villefort touched his fingertips to his lip and looked at the bloodstained tips. His emerald eyes seemed to burngodl then blackas he glared fire and daggers at her.

"You little bitch!" Villefort shouted as he back handed her across the room.