Music of the night, part something or another: A Mothers Fear and Loathing

Willow couldn't believe that he had don't that to her. She was even singing the same song he had been! She sat in the bathroom of the Opera House and sobbed her heart out, mask clutched in one hand, her other covering her face.

Now he was going to know…

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Erik's shock slowly abated, and he was finally able to move. He looked at the place where Willow had exited and made a swift decision, turning the opposite way, fully intent on intercepting her.

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Willow finally pulled herself from the ground and made her way to the sink. She didn't look at her reflection, unable to stand the person, the THINK that stared back at her. She shuddered again, and washed her tear-streaked face, trying to washer away everything. Who she was, who she had been… She just wanted it to all go away.

Her green eyes sparkled with pain and anger as she slowly began to make her eyes drift toward the mirror… "Look at your face in the mirror…" she sang softly, tears springing once more into her eyes.

"I am there inside!" Erik's voice echoed through the bathroom, making her eyes jerk up to the mirror. Sure enough, the palest trace of her reflection showed, though to make her wanted to look away, but behind that stood Erik.

Willow had to shake herself just to not go to him. She, instead, shifted to a different part of the movie… "Angel of music, you deceived me…" she took another step back, pain and betrayal clear in her eyes. "I have you my mind blindly."

"Willow…" he began, but, caught up in her pain, she continued, brazenly flashing her face at him.

"Stranger than you dreamt it, can you even dare to look, or bare to think of me this… this…" her voice broke and she fell to the floor, bringing her hands over her face and sobbing.

Erik's heart wrenched, as he stepped through the sliding mirror, and came to stand above her. She, however, couldn't raise her head, and continued to cry.

"Willow…" he bent down so that his eyes were level with where her sobbing ones would be when she looked up. "Willow, look at me." He said softly, his hands on her shaking shoulders.

"I cant." She said, sobs subsiding, leaving her voice hollow and empty.

"Yes you can." He said, gently prying her arms apart to slowly reveal the face that she had taken such care to hide.

Her green eyes were blood shot, and stared at him as if they expected a blow, or… a cut.

All across the side of her face were thin white scars. Five in total, looking like silvery traces of tear lines running vertically down the side of her face. She looked at him now as if she expected number six.

"Willow, you're beautiful." He softly spoke, and she tried to wrench her shoulders out of his grasp, but somehow ended up encircled in his arms, her face in the crook of his neck.

"I'm so sorry…" she kept saying, as his neck became slick with her fresh tears.

"What are you sorry for," he said, stroking her hair, "I should never have taken your mask. I'm the one who should be sorry." He couldn't understand why she apologized when it was he who was the guilty part of this interaction, but he was going to find out.

She looked up at him, her green eyes two shades darker from the tears. "I was never good enough…" A small hiccup escaped her lips, and she brought her hand up to wipe the tears, and maybe hide her face once more.

"Who told you that!" he caught her hand and looked at her, his anger at whomever had scarred her physically and emotionally with such words and actions showing through clearly.

"No one… I mean…." Panic came into her eyes, as if she feared admitting anything out loud would only make the pain worse, hurt her worse. But if couldn't, because he wouldn't let it, not ever again.

"Who?" he asked her once more, the anger from his prior thoughts and questions leaking once more into that word to the extent that she began to tremble from it. He eased his hand from around her back to cup her tear-streaked cheek, and repeated, "Who told you that?" This time his voice was soft with all of the love that he felt for this woman, and it was that softness that broke down the dam of emotion that Willow had built around her heart, making a confession spill out of her trembling lips in a wash of emotion and pain.

"When I was younger, my mother wanted me to follow after her and be a good little lying lawyer. I…" her voice broke, but she took a deep breath and continued. " I wanted to sing." She touched her face softly. "She caught me five different times singing when I was supposed to be practicing some speech for law school. I finally couldn't take it… I ran, and bought my first mask at 17. I've gotten to where, if I don't see my face…" She brought her hand down, and looked past his shoulder to the mirror, "then I don't have to remember, and I don't have to know how big of a failure I was… am."

Erik's whole body wrenched with it, but she continued.

"She couldn't stand me, she said by number five, she was afraid to look at my face. She loathed me."

'This face, which earned a mother's fear and loathing…' She really did understand after all…

"Willow, she loathed something that she did. She was jealous. Your voice is amazing, and you pushing to use it," he cupped her cheek once more, "that isn't failure."

She looked form the mirror to him and gave a watery smile. "You aren't ashamed and repulsed?"

He kissed her softly, and looked at her. "Willow, I love you." He sang those words, and this time, he wasn't left. Her world shattered into a million pieces centered around those four sung words.

"I love you too." And they kissed again. When they broke apart, she smiled wickedly at him.

"What?" he asked her after a few moments.

"You know, you are still going to have to make it up to me, for pulling off my mask." She smirked sweetly at him. "I ain't just going to forgive you that easy!"

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