The girl had settled quietly enough that night, sleeping soundly without any moan of pain for at least two hours before he had decided that a few hours for sleep himself couldn't hurt. He'd taken to watching the girl from afar, offering things to her silently, and moving carefully, roughening his panther like grace slightly. He had found that we he moved in his easy, lengthy liquid movement, the girl became more and tended to cuddle in corners until he stopped moving. For one reason or another, the easy predator like movements frightened her. Realizing this, Erik had taken to making his movements more predictable, moving slowly and with precision so that she knew what he would do next. To his relief the girl had become less wiry around him when he made this change, and spoke short sentences from time to time. Sometimes they were simple things such as requesting a drink or food. Other times she would make little sounds, just to let him know that she was still there. However there were times when she would speak in a haunted midnight voice, stating things that he rather wished she wouldn't.

"Something happened here," her voice was black velvet, deeper and smoother than her child like voice that she normally spoke in. she stood at the rise of rocks, looking over the green lake, her chocolate brown eyes fixated on the iron gate. "Pain. It's still here. Fresh."

With that, the youth turned and walked up the stairs and entered the upstairs room. No question, no inquiries. She didn't barge, didn't ask for details, which in a way, was worse than digging into the fresh wound that lay open Erik's heart. It was a simple reminder, cold and desolate, of what had happened recently. Erik's heart wrenched at the flash memory of Christine's agony torn voice, tears choking the angel's vocals. Anger surged through him as he recalled the viscount's please for Christine to forgive him for failing her rescue.

Christine, Christine, please forgive me,

I did it all for you

and all for nothing…."

Erik fixed the Punjab lasso around Raoul's neck with a furious will. How dare he beg forgiveness of Christine! Te frivolous boy should have been begging for the Phantom's forgiveness, not otherwise such as he was! Slipping the length of rope into a square space in the iron gate to which Erik had tied Raoul, he pulled the noose snuggly around the boy's neck, listening in pleasure to his gagging response.

Erik forced his focus onto the young girl as she had walked up the few stone steps. He sighed in slight relief. He was finding that fixating his mental focus on the girl fled the memories from his mind for at least a short amount of time, and for now, it was all that he could ask for.

For the first time in days, Erik slept deeply, comfortably- well, as comfortable as one could be sleeping in an armchair. He had allowed the girl to continue to sleep in the bed and found it was best to say nothing to her unless she said something to him. But now, finally, after a week of caring for the girl, Erik found that he could no longer deny himself sleep. He had settled in a large chair that a manager of the theatre from a few years back had throw out in perfectly good condition, and Erik had gathered up for himself. The quarter hour struck softly in the back of his lair by the sounding of a small clock that Madam Giry had been kind enough to buy for him upon his request. Assuring himself that he could spare just a little bit of waking time for the comfort of black oblivion, for Margariete never woke before the toll of six o'clock in the a.m., he closed his eyes and slept.

Margariete blinked her eyes heavily in the soft orange glow of the candles set upon the candelabra frame near the red velvet clad bed in which she had fallen asleep. She stretched leisurely, enjoying the feel of the oversized cotton nightwear as it ran over her fidgeting body. Never had she felt anything so comfortingly soft upon her skin in all her short seven years. Even when she lived in a house, with a family, commodious clothes were an unheard of thing. Money for food was far more important.

The man- Erik, he had called himself- that was caring for her, had given her fresh clothing for her choosing once she had become well enough to change for herself. All the clothes had been many sizes too large, but she cared naught for it, and did not question where he had gathered the clothes from. She was not sure that she wanted to know. She had found truth to be a hurtful thing, and had discovered it far too many times in her life for her to wish to seek it out.

The sleepiness had now worn out of her deer wide eyes and she found herself well rested, although still sore, and felt rather fidgety, no longer caring to stay in the bed, no mater its cozy accommodations. Walking quietly with bare feet that made no noise in the rugged carpet lay down in the room, she made her way to the yawning entrance of the upstairs. She surveyed the small home of Erik, feeling the slight dampness in the air due to the misty lake that faced it on her skin, the candles that he kept ever lit illuminating the man that slept in a large chair in the left corner of the room, just next to his pipe organ. His masculine features on the visible left hand of his face were smooth with sleep, his lips just barley parted, his breathing easy and silent. He had rapped a silken sheet around his large frame, still clothed fully in his gentlemanly clothes. She had noticed long ago that she never saw him without such, and rarely without a coat tail jacket to top the outfit off. Despite his carefulness to remain fully dressed around her, he had shifted in his sleep, the clothes tugging across his chest, emphasizing muscles that made her slightly uncomfortable.

He seemed gentle enough towards her, but there was something predatorily dangerous about this man that wore an alluring milk white mask. As much as it may have intrigued another's curiosity, she found she had no particular draw to know what lay beneath the mask; to her it was simply part of the creature that was Erik. His strength was something that she had come to fear not because he had at any time used it against her, but because of the hands that had borne strength against her from which Erik had saved her. But something in the easy way he moved, the effortless way he had ridden the men from earth, brought to her a natural fear, and yet intruigment. But no matter how much Erik had been cautious never to touch her unnecessarily, never to draw to close to her bruised body, she found herself uncomfortable in the presence of the silky way he strode and moved about his home, which, she had appropriately named in her mind, his Lair. It had been a fitting title for the place, the definition being the home of a wild animal.

Instinct had her curling in the farthest parts of the lair when Erik moved restlessly about the cave like home, unsure of what he was about to do next, fear over riding logic that told her that he had not yet, and more likely then not, never would, hurt her in any way. She had noted that he became rather unsure of himself when he caught notice of her constant hiding, and his movements became slower and easier to see what his limbs' next destination was. She had become easier in this new Erik's company, and found herself, though never allowing him to come too close, easily moving about the lair herself, confident that she could hear Erik's movements around her.

Now she stood next his sleeping form, having softly pattered down the stone steps and to his side. Never before had she allowed herself this close to the creature that seemed to be one with the darkness, with the night. Her heart was beating in a slightly heavier and quicker fashion in her chest, and in the depths of her mid stomach, she felt a ball of tingling sensation that she always felt when she was afraid. Despite her dread that was spreading through her, she could not pull herself away. His mask shone brightly in the candle light, but she paid it no mind. His smoothly shaved cheek was what drew her attention, which seemed odd, even to her. But she couldn't resist reaching out her hand to whisper her index finger across the slightly pale skin, feeling the texture of the not yet visible beard that was just coming through the skin only for Erik to shave off. The skin was not warm beneath her fingers, but neither was it deathly cold. It was cool, kept slightly heated by the candles near him. Her finger skimmed lightly across his jaw, barley touching it from time to time but all the same following the definite line of his chin, then stopping to just barely inspect the cleft chin slightly closer. She had never been so close to a man in such gently close proximity, but his features were entirely absorbing of her interest. The dip in his chin was an utter mystery to her, a feature she had never before seen on a man, which she assumed, meant it was a rare characteristic.

The girl leaned forward shakily, her heart now racing in her chest, and her legs instinctively ready to run, but locked her eyes on the details of the contours of Erik's chin.

With a movement so quick, so easy, Margariete did not even had time to gasp, Erik had grasped her wrist roughly, knocking her away and onto the floor before leaping up from the chair disregarding his sheet and standing with his hand holding his mask securely in place. Terror rose up in Maragriete's chest and she huddled, drawing into herself as she had the first time that she had seen Erik's face floating before hers. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she gasped for air, a ball tightening in her throat, making it so utterly hard to breath. She stared up at the man that had cared for her these past days now with a fresh horror, despairing in the knowledge that, even he too, could throw her aside without a thought, or injure her farther on a whim. Had her mind not been fixed on watching his movements, she would have wondered why his hand had so desperately continued to cling to his mask.

Erik's eyes widened in realization that it had been not an intruder, or even Christine that had been so close to removing his mask, but little Margariete, who now gazed at him in utter fear. A cold agony spiraled down into his core as he looked at her just waiting for a blow from his hand that had thrown her away so violently. It was all too much like the occurrences with Christine, his flinging her away in fear that his scarring deformation would be revealed. He had been able to redeem himself just enough to gain confidence over Christine then, but now looking at Margaritete, he was not sure that forgiveness would come so easily from her. His breathing was harsh with guilt and utter disgust with himself. He looked away, letting his hand drop from his cold mask and to his side with a heavy sigh. She was only a girl, too young to understand what hid behind the mask. And it had only been in instinct that he had thrown away the hand – no, the body- that was so near to his own, so close to his secret. He turned slowly to the girl, his movements no longer requiring attention to be jagged and irregular.

Margariete looked at him with tears flooding down her young, gaunt cheeks, her healing black eyes puffy from the salty drops of water leaking from it, and making her look deformed herself, and Erik hated himself for it. He crouched low before her, meeting her eye level though his knees screamed in protest of the tight position in which he held himself. She cringed away, with a small gasp, her eyes squeezing shut for moment before opening again to stare at him in aching breaths that tore him to the quick.

"Please, Margariete," he said with a soft, shaking voice that he could not control. "I meant you no harm. I never did. I thought you were another, and instinct took over." The youth shook her head vigorously and said with a quaking voice,

"Please, don't. Don- don't touch me. Get away."

Erik's eyes welled desperately with tears themselves, but he dare not let them fall. He would not show weakness to this girl who needed a strong stone in her life where she had none before.

"Please, Margareite- Maggie..." his voice was rapturously shaking almost to a point where he could not decipher his own words. Margariete took a shuddering breath and pulled away even more, drawing back into herself all that she had revealed about herself before.

"Don't call me that! All you want is my body!" she screamed; rage seemingly fresh in her voice, though Erik painfully guessed it had been there before longing to be released. "That's all men ever want!"

The words stabbed Erik through and he nearly gagged on their meaning. Never, would he inflict such pain upon this girl that had come into his life so abruptly, and, surprising himself, he had come to care for so deeply. Yet she knew nothing else, had known nothing else.

"I would never hurt you, Margareite," he begged with a choking voice. "Have I ever laid an ill meaning hand upon you?"

The girl glared at him with shining eyes, rage shooting from them like darts into his soul.

"And yet you so easily throw me aside in instinct! How am I to know that you would not just as easily hit me when you're mad?" her voice was so childlike, her wording changing from the vocabulary of one much older than she to the child that lay within but was rarely shown. Erik looked down in silence at a loss as to what to say. Finally, he looked up at her again, shaken momentarily at the anger and bordering fear towards him that surrounded her meek body.

"I will make a pact with you," he promised in a rough, but steadier voice. "If I ever lay a hand upon you in any way but to help you, I swear to you that you may go free, without propitiation in any way, if you in return promise to stay with me and care for you until you are fully well."

The distrust in her eyes betrayed to him that she didn't believe he would follow through with his promise before she spoke her spitting words.

"I don't really have a choice do I?"

Erik's body shook in a swirl of utterly despairing emotions as he rose, watching with regret as he saw her scuttle back slightly, studying the movement of his feet, as though he might kick her. He backed away from her, his body in a submissive passion, shoulders slightly hunched, head down.

"You are free to leave when you please ma chere, but do not doubt that you are safer here then on the streets."

Moving as though his limbs were made of lead, he drug himself to his organ and sat upon the bench heavily, his hands on the wood beside him, his head heavily down as though weighted down by a ship anchor Behind him, he heard the hurried movements as margariete fled to the upstairs room, but his ears heard no trace of her tumbling into the bed, but rather picked up the sound of her small body slamming against the farthest wall, and the soft sounds of her stifled sobs of pain and fear.

I've got more but I'll but more up after I get sum reviews!
R/R PLEASE.
If you have suggestions MAKE THEM. Thanks all!