A/N Thank you The Whisper. You're awesome! I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Phantom of the Opera

Man or Monster?

Over the course of the next weeks I talked to Erik everyday. I would go to the piano room after Ballet rehearsals, and we would talk or he would listen to me compose. At first, this made me self conscious, but as I became used to his presence I came to value his opinion to the point that I did not mind his hearing me, even in my more frustrated moments. I believed him to be a composer as well. His advice was always that of a master musician and composer, and he seemed to appreciate how much it meant that I had grown comfortable with his presence as I worked.

Occasionally I would talk to him after dinner as well. In general, however, the later evenings he spent with Christine. I still suffered slight pangs of envy, but I had largely accepted the fact that I would never be as important to him as Christine. I recalled the old fable about the dog that dropped his bone in the lake because he tried to grab his reflection's bone, which he thought was bigger than his own. I refused to think of Erik as a bone, and still less would I think of myself as a dog, but the lesson remained. I would not lose what I had with Erik because I vainly grasped after more than he could give.

The opera I was working on began to take marvelous shape. I had taken my inspiration from the Russian tale Poor Lisa. I had always liked the story. It was simple: A beautiful, innocent Russian peasant girl, Lisa, makes a living for herself and her aged mother by making shirts, knitting socks, and picking flowers to sell in the city. One day she meets a rich young man. He is captivated by Lisa and buys all her wares. Soon he meets her everyday and an innocent romance blossoms. He becomes like a son to Lisa's mother, and tells Lisa that one day they will marry. One night their innocent hugs and kisses take a turn to the passionate, and Lisa, as the author delicately puts it, 'gives up her innocence.'

After that it is all downhill. The young man begins to lose interest in Lisa. He goes on a short tour of duty in the army, and while he is gone the family loses their fortune. Lisa is ignorant of this. She worries about her love all the time he is away, praying for his safety. One day she meets him in the street of the city where she again sells wares. She is thrilled to see him, but reproaches him for not letting her know he had returned. He is awkward, and distant. He finally tells her that he married an heiress to save his family's fortune. He then gives her a bag of gold and sends her away. Lisa realizes she has been treated as a favorite whore, and cannot live with herself. She gives the money to a trusted neighbor to give to her mother and drowns herself. The young man is sorry to hear of her death, but recovers immediately and enjoys the rest of the party he was attending when he heard the news.

I don't know why I found the story so engaging. It was depressing, and very similar to dozens of other morality tales, but it was poignant. I was able to fully use my love of haunting melodies and Russian sounds. It was a depressing story, but somehow I found writing the otherworldly music glorious. I was especially proud of Lisa's theme. The first time it is heard it is a simple melody, almost Celtic. By the end, however, as Lisa stands on the bank of the river in tears, unable to accept her fall from grace, I was able to orchestrate the piece in an entirely different way. What was a simple, beautiful melody becomes a tragic dirge-like piece. I was quite pleased with the way the music developed with Lisa. I felt sure it pulled the listener right along with it.

When I first explained the libretto to Erik, he scoffed and recommended I hire a librettist. I ignored him for the rest of the afternoon. I liked my libretto. After a few days of listening to the glorious pieces that could never really go with any other libretto, he actually apologized. I was stunned: an apology from Erik! I voiced my forgiveness right away.

"I like the fact that you are honest with me," I said, "do not change. It's just that, in this case, I knew I was right!"

"And you criticize me for arrogance!" How was it that his voice was beautiful even while he was muttering?

I laughed, "I suppose arrogance is something of the artists' prerogative!"

"I shall remind you of that the next time you think I am being arrogant."

I nearly told him that I would not criticize him for his arrogance if he would show me some of his work. We had been through all that before, however. One day I had asked him if he would sing something he had written. I longed to hear him sing from the moment I first heard him speak, and I was sure that anything he had written would be fantastic. He had bluntly refused. It seemed that his music was much too personal for him to share with anyone but Christine. This knowledge did not help me gain mastery over my envy, but Erik was so emphatic that I had not brought it up again.

In fact there were several topics that I had brought up once but never again due to Erik's reaction. Among these was the subject of courting Christine. I had brought it up briefly and he had closed the topic just as speedily. Today, however, I was determined to raise it again. Erik had made no progress with Christine, whereas the Vicomte had progressed in leaps and bounds. I did not believe Christine to be his mistress, but I felt sure that their relationship would progress to something more permanent soon. Christine had told me that she and Raoul had been childhood friends. I had a difficult time imagining that a Vicomte would ever marry an opera singer (and not even a famous one at that), but that seemed to be the direction their relationship was taking. I felt sure that if Erik did not do something soon, it would be too late.

I felt a little guilty. The prospect of him being too late to win Christine should have filled me with nothing but a solicitous desire to be of aid. Instead it filled me with a hope, which I knew to be futile. "If he does not get Christine," I told myself firmly, "it does not mean he will magically love you. It would destroy him to lose her. It would in no way aid your cause." Despite my firmness during the day, I found it heard to keep these thoughts in mind when I was with him in the evenings. Whenever I managed to make him laugh (something he did not do very often and I gather he did even less before our friendship) or when he would compliment a part of my work, even when he would share some slight information about himself, I would feel that treacherous hope rise in me that maybe one day he could love me. If felt I could be happy even with just a fraction of the passion he felt for Christine.

I shook aside my selfish thoughts and took a deep breath.

"How have things been coming with Christine?"

"Why do insist on inquiring about things you have no right to know?"

"I know I do not have a right to know anything about your romantic dealings, but believe it or not I want to see you happy. It is clear that Christine is being wooed, but not by you."

"Would you be silent!"

I was shocked: never had I heard ugliness in his voice as I did now. I think he must have realized how hideous he sounded for his next words almost gentle.

"I know you are trying to fulfill what you see as your duty as my friend. Having never had a friend before (well maybe one, but that is inconsequential) I do appreciate it. But I would appreciate it even more if you would not mention that particular topic."

"I will drop it, but not until after I've had my say. You are setting yourself up to be miserable. You are setting Christine up to be miserable. She has incredibly deep feelings for you, and yet, because you will not do things in a remotely normal manner she has allowed herself to develop feelings for a man whom, I'm convinced, she would not give a second thought to were she confident and comfortable in your love. You must, for your sake and for hers, approach her openly, court her properly."

"You know I cannot do that," he barked.

"I know that your…unique position at this opera makes it harder for you, but it does not make it impossible. I am not asking to suddenly be a social butterfly courting everyone at the opera, just Christine, and she already knows your situation anyway."

"She knows more of my 'situation' than you do, so shut up!"

I was hurt, both that he would speak to me in such a way and that, after all our conversations, he still maintained that Christine knew him infinitely better than I did. I decided to ignore his rude 'shut up' and address the first part of his response.

"Well since she knows your situation so very well, you have nothing to fear in approaching her openly and honestly!"

"It is because she knows my situation that I cannot approach her as an ordinary man."

"Erik, you are an ordinary man. I am sorry to disappoint you, but so it is. You are an ordinary, musical extortionist! Admittedly that is an uncommon sort of man, but you as a man are simply an ordinary man, and it is your conceit that makes you want to believe otherwise!"

"I have been accused of many things, but never conceit. I am a monster and I know it."

"You are not a monster. I have already told you: if you are so dissatisfied with yourself, turn away from crime. You do not have to be as you are."

"Yes I do. My 'crimes,' as you call them, have nothing to do with the fact that I am a monster. I am that is what nature cruelly meant me to be."

I sighed. We were back on familiar ground. When I expressed my discontent for being judged on what I am (i.e. a woman), Erik had wholeheartedly identified with me. Not, of course, about being a woman, but about being unable to fix what it was that kept you from success. I knew once we got on this topic it usually ended with both of us angry and nothing helped. I was determined not to let the conversation follow this course.

"Erik, I will not go over this ground again. I just want to suggest that you either begin to woo Christine in a way she can understand, or you accustom yourself to the idea of her with another man."

"It will never come to that. I will not allow it!"

I was truly scared by the conviction in his voice. I remembered an incident, weeks ago, when Christine told me that she was afraid of what Erik was capable of. For the first time I shared that fear.

"Erik," I said slowly, "if she chooses to go with another man, you will have to let her go."

"I will never let her go! She belongs to me!"

"She could belong to you. If you approach her honorably, then she could choose to be yours; but the choice must be hers, or else it is no victory for you."

"But I love her!"

This phrase broke out in a voice strained with tears. My heart felt like it would burst. I want to go to him, to hold him, to make the hurt go away. My heart also broke for myself. There was no room to ever love another in the heartbroken voice he had used. I was determined not to indulge my own grief, not yet anyway. I was also determined to continue to be a voice of reason, for in this matter Erik did not use his own.

"Erik," I said quietly, "if you really love her, you may have to let her go."

"I will never do that."

"Well then, perhaps you are right; maybe you are a monster."

I was not prepared for what happened next. I had turned away from the wall. I was not sure if he had a hidden spy hole to see through, but I did not want to face him whether he could see me or not. Thus, I nearly fainted from the shock when a pair of hands roughly grabbed me and spun me around. I found myself face to face with Erik. I do not know how he entered the room, but I was sure it was him, even though I had never seen him before. This face matched the voice I knew as Erik. It was the beautiful, finely chiseled face of a Greek god: strong, powerful, there was a latent kindness too I was sure, but it was right now masked in rage. He wore a physical mask as well. It was closely fitted to his face and glaring white in contrast to the darkness that was the rest of him. There, I thought, was the part of his face that matched the sensual mystery in his voice.

I saw all this in a moment. While I examined him, he had shoved me against a wall and began shouting at me. I was too dazed and startled to discern what he was saying at first. Soon I realized he was merely going on about how he was not a monster in his treatment of Christine. He claimed that she was his last hold on humanity. He was a monster in ways he could not help, and how dared I imply otherwise.

When he had quite finished his shouting, I simply gazed at him for a moment, and then said, "We prove ourselves to be man or monster by our actions and nothing else. If you behave as a man, you are a man; if you behave as a monster, you are a monster; the choice is yours."

"Forgive me my dear," this was spat out in a way that made it clear he neither sought nor desired forgiveness, "but I was never given the luxury of a choice!"

"Everyone has a choice! You simply need to be brave enough to choose properly; and it is in choosing properly that we are human!"

At this he let out a primal growl. He released one of my arms but only long enough to tear off his mask. I was ashamed of myself for flinching slightly at what was beneath it, but it was quite hideous. I remembered Joseph Buquet, one of the stage hands, saying that the Phantom did not have a nose. I had discredited his and all other accounts of what the Opera Ghost looked like, but he was half right. Half of Erik's nose looked as though it had simply shriveled out of existence. The whole sight was rendered even more pitiable based on the contrast it served to the other side of his face, which was, literally, perfect. On looking at the effect of his whole face taken together, I realized that the deformed half served merely to make the perfect side look even better by comparison.

I looked him in the eyes (I nearly forgot what I was going to say because of his beautifully intense blue-green eyes) and said, "Your face in no way exempts you from the human duty of making good choices."

My answer did not sit very well with him. He let out another roar and gave me a shake that caused my head to hit against the wall. Now I was angry too, so his next words did not fall on a particularly sympathetic listener.

"Look at me! I am half man, half beast. That makes me a monster. I can never approach Christine in a normal way for she has seen what you now see."

"Well if you were as awful to her when you showed her your face as you are to me now, it is no wonder you have almost certainly ruined your chances with her!"

At this his hand moved its vice-like grip from my shoulder to my throat. He began to squeeze. Now I was overcome with terror. I could see no recognition in his eyes, and, for the first time in a long time, I remembered that he did not seem entirely sane.

Panic overtook me, and that primal urge of self-preservation gained control over my movements. I kneed him hard squarely between his legs. He gasped, and let go of me as he doubled over in pain. I darted past him as soon as I was at liberty, and did not stop running until I had locked myself in my room. I then threw myself on my bed and sobbed.