I know it's been a long while since I've posted and I'm sorry. Start of college plus my move, plus being all alone for the first time. None of that bothered my writing. But when I tried to write this chapter it always came out wrong. Stilted, hackneyed. A copy of something I'd read a million years ago and not a good copy.

So I set this story aside and wrote what came into my mind. I watched movies and played videogames and caught up with my reading of other people's stories.

Insperation struck. I don't know if this chapter is long or short compared to my others. I do not care. Because I think, I think it came out just the way it was meant to, and I am proud of it, so it is finally posted for you to enjoy. Sorry you all had to wait so very long and I hope that it was worth the wait.

WARNING:

The FADA (Fanfiction Addiction Detection Agency) has come to the conclusion that this story can be highly addicting. The Author cannot be held responsible for drops in the reader's grades due to new chapters. Large doeses of Requiem can lead to dependence. The Author is not responsible for withdrawal symptoms which can occur when author fails to update speedily enough.

The chapter title is supposed to mean (as you know I have to depend on mere translations) "I groan as one accused" or possibly "I groan, as one who is accused"

She glanced up at him again from her position by his chair. She'd read and re-read the same paragraph over and over again, at least fifty times now to say the least. Megan just couldn't bring herself to concentrate. The woman with the fan ran through Megan's head. She had Christine's perfect body, but with a larger bust like the women in the pictures in Sorelli's book. Her hair was long, past her small waist and curled ever so slightly, dark as ink with skin as pale as parchment. Sometimes she was a blond, other times she had dark skin and almond-shaped eyes.

Always though, she was always perfect. No matter how the strange woman looked she was perfect as she smiled at Erik.

She glanced at the next paragraph, trying to focus on her reading.

Erik was removing his mask for the woman, revealing a smile that reached his perfect cat-eyes. Megan's fingers dug into the pages of the book and a low growl stirred in her throat. She looked up at him, his mask reflecting in the firelight.

What did he see in that woman.

The woman was clinging to Erik now, and whispering his name over and over in a thousand different voices. Different voices because Megan could not decide what a perfect woman would sound like. She was bedecked in jewels and she was like the women who sat in the audience of the Opera, she knew she was perfect.

Megan hated her.

Erik stirred in his chair and closed his book with a soft thud. He glanced down at the young woman beside him and was surprised to she she was nearly tearing her book to pieces and glaring at the floor with enough vehemence in her eyes to burn a hole in the carpet.

"Megan." She didn't stir. He called her again and still no response. His hand settled on her shoulder and she started, her book clattering to the floor and she herself flying forward with a yelp.

"I apologize, you were deeper in thought than I realized." He said staring at her as she stood. After dinner the night prior he had known something was wrong, though she would not speak to him about whatever it was that tormented her thoughts. Megan stared first at him and then back at the flames.

"What was her name?" Megan had little imagination, after picturing her looks and voice she could think of no name for the woman with the fan who had accompanied him on so many outings. Erik had only left his realm once or twice for her.

The question caught Erik off guard, not that everything else she did was perfectly reasonable. He wondered what it was Megan was getting at with such strange questions.

"Her name." Megan asked again, though the words held no trace of a question. "The name of the woman who lost the fan." The name of the woman who is better than me. Megan didn't look at him, she was staring at the flames, dancing better than she ever could. She wondered at them, while she listened to Erik not answering her.

"Megan---" He started, and she could tell by the way he exhaled her name that he was getting frustrated with her, and if she were anyone else she would be terrified. To frustrate him was to invite Death, and not a quick death at that. Still though, she was stubborn little Megan Giry.

"I just want to know her name and then I won't ask anymore questions. I promise." Hollow words to both present but she said them anyway. She glanced at Erik through strands of hair, looking--just for a moment--beautiful. Caught in the firelight, sad, pained, angry, all the things that Megan never seemed to let free.

"Why do you care?" He asked standing. Settling his book into the seat he once occupied and coming up behind her, standing just out of her sight. He had to admit, he was curious what had drawn Meg to poke her nose into his personal life when normally she was the first to accept that he didn't want to remember.

She didn't turn to face him, she didn't move other than a stiffening of her back and shoulders. She was fighting herself over something...

"Because I care." She said softly, a hushed whisper. He sighed and shook his head, drawing into her line of vision.

"How childish of an answer." He told her, clucking his tongue in a disapproving manner. She sighed, heavily, and her hands thumped against her thighs as though she were a mother frustrated with a child.

"I care what her name was because..." She took a deep breath, her chest lifting as she drew in more air than her small frame could handle, and held the breath. Her eyes closed and her face puckered, and then she went limp, the breath gusting free and her eyes looked at him with such sadness as he had never seen before. "Because I care about you." She said finally.

Erik stumbled backwards as though her words had physically struck him, but he quickly assured himself that she meant it as a child saying she cared about a playmate or an abandoned animal.

"You don't know what you're talking about." He said, and for the anger he felt at her prying he found himself answering her question just the same, an action he couldn't wholly explain to himself.

He walked back to his chair to retrieve his forgotten book and heard Megan take a shaking breath and shift away from him. Maybe she had finally realized that for all her pretending she was just a child. She had to be a child if she thought she cared for him, it was a dream because he'd treated her like an adult. He should have known better than to let someone so close as that.

"I do though." She whispered. Just needing to hear herself say it, not really intending for Erik to hear her. He did though, that much was evident when he whipped around to face her, his cape swirling about him, making him look like some terrifying nightmare.

"You know nothing about me or the world. I will not sit here and listen to you spout these lies, these stories. I am the Phantom of the Opera a twisted gargoyle that even an angel could not love. You think yourself better, more capable than she? You're a fool, a stupid little girl if you think that pity you feel welling up deep within you--" He drew so close that she could feel his breath fanning out over her face. His hands curled around her shoulders, pinning her there, not that she would have run if she had the chance. "--You think that pity is love, that I would want such an emotion thrust upon me?" He shouted. His words filling her head and making her teeth rattle he spoke with such force.

Hr pushed her backwards and she stumbled, catching hard the edge of the desk, something she had always wondered how he gained. The corner dug first into the palm of her hand as she tried to catch herself and then her shoulder as she slipped forward, her knees shaking.

She jerked her head backwards, a stab of pain and heat rushing through her neck, desperate not to hit her head on that hard, unforgiving corner. She left a bloody smear on the floor where her hands hit and then scrambled to her feet and to stand. Erik stood at an opposite end of the room. He tore off his mask and it clattered to the floor between them and for a moment Megan was sure it would shatter.

It did not.

"I am a hideous, twisted monster of a man at least twenty years your senior. You're a child," he spat the word, "a foolish child with her whole life before her, you will find a man when you cannot dance anymore and you will marry and have too many fat babies and life live wishing you had been more. You are a Creature of Light. You think you could face this look every morning as you wake to the sound of a clock, no birdsong, no sunrise? Could you face this monster at night when he approached you in the dim light of the bedroom, ready to spend a night with his lover?"

Even holding back tears and shaking as hard as she was Megan managed to blush to her ears at that thought. Sor--her--book came to mind.

Silence filled every corner of the room and all she could hear was her strangled breathing as she tried with all her might not to cry.

"Get out."

It was so soft that at first Megan thought she had imagined it in her fear of what Erik would do to her.

"Get out." The sound was louder and it felt to Megan as though a knife had chosen to pierce her flesh and bury deep in her heart.

"Leave! Begone with you! You are not welcome here anymore! I owe no more debts to you. I have been kind enough up until this point. Leave or find yourself at the end of my Lasso." He shouted. His voice changing with each word from bellowing to dangerously soft. She shuddered, more from holding back tears than anything else and then knelt to pick up the mask he had thrown at her.

She lifted it with reverence, as though it were the Shroud of Turin. She brushed her fingers over it and then took a step forward, followed by another, until she stood before him. She blinked for a moment, trying to capture and save the image of his face and his eyes in her mind. A feeble attempt at a futile task.

No words could capture the strange feeling which welled in her at the sight of his face, nor the beauty and magisty of his eyes. No mere words no matter how flowery or how descriptive they were could ever capture Erik on paper. How then, could she capture his look in her mind if all she had learned from were books.

She held the mask out to him and he did not take it so she left it on the desk she had fallen against.

"I never thought you a monster. Not once in all you did. Until just now. I did not want to be here because you owed me a debt. I would have freed you long ago from that obligration."

It would have been more meaningful if she had pronounced "obligation" correctly but she did not know she had misspoke and other things weighed more heavily on Erik's mind than the need to correct her.

She left as silently as a ghost, and unlike Christine, she looked back before she left his home. A single glance with tear-filled green eyes at him over a thin shoulder. Long moments after she was gone Erik, The Phantom of the Opera, glanced at the mask. There was a smear of blood that stuck out against the white.

He looked into the fire then.

He was a monster. And it was for more than hiding in shadows and skulking about in Box Five.

Megan ran as soon as she was out of Erik's sight, forgetting that had he listened he could have heard her trampling feet easily enough. She burst out of his realm and into her own. Though she would have left all this behind in a heartbeat if he had asked her.

She was startled to realize that when she did but the Prima Ballerina had been right. She could dance anywhere, but she could only be with Erik in the World Below. So she ran, and as she exploded into the dying sunlight and the biting wind she began to sob. She cried all the way home, with her cheeks burning and her lungs aching and her hand bleeding.

She exploded into the small home and slammed the door by falling back against it. She had strength left only to cry with. She collapsed into a sitting position. Her mother had come home that day while Megan was at the Opera House. She could put up with those infernal doctors no more and the smell of medicine and clean only reminded her of what she could not afford for her husband.

At first she had thought someone broke into their home--Meg entered with such a ruckus--but when she saw her daughter her heart trembled in her breast and she went to sit beside the younger woman.

Madam Giry may have never been a doting parent nor one particularly likely to comfort a child with soft words and hugs. Her daughter never minded and even understood. Ballerina's got hurt so often even when they did things right that she couldn't come crying to her mother every time she was hurt if she really wanted to succeed.

Still, it was comforting and wonderful when spindly arms wrapped around her heaving shoulders and softly Madam Giry began to comfort her hurting daughter.

As she cried Megan felt certain she would cry forever, that there would always be more left within her and no matter how long or hard she cried it would always be festering within her and hurting. A fact which angered a small part of her, for she could not cry gracefully like some of the girls she knew. As she sobbed—hot burning tears that reminded her constantly of what happened and what wounds lay open within her—Megan's face turned bright red as though the hot tears were truly burning her. Her eyes became puffy and her nose ran more than she would have thought possible. But through the tears and the screaming, yelping, coughing sobs, Madam Giry was there with a handful of plain cotton handkerchiefs and soft, nonsensical words.

And, as all who suffer know, eventually the hot tears stopped and she managed a slight degree of silence, broken only by soft whimpers or sniffles. Cool, quiet tears fell from her puffy, red eyes then. Tears which seemed to say, 'It still hurts, but you'll live.' Megan was still leaned against her mother; both of them still huddled against the door where Meg had fallen after her mad dash home. Madam Giry had never been one for comforting, when Megan cried as a child for her hurting toes or scraped her knees somehow Madam Giry would pat her head or clean the blood but she wouldn't comfort the child, it just was not her way. Meg did not blame her for that, she understood it even.

And for all the times she had cried herself to sleep trying to be quiet so as not to wake her mother, Meg was grateful, just so long as this time, in this moment, her mother was there with maternal comfort. "Maman…" Megan started, her throat tight and her voice a mere croak. Madam Giry offered a sad smile and kissed Megan's burning forehead. Burning for the same reason her flesh was alight with bright red splotches.

"It's alright mon petite." The hardened old woman whispered, smiling sadly at her daughter and brushing sweaty strands of hair off the small forehead. "I understand." Megan looked surprised, wondering in her hazy, aching mind if her mother really understood.

After all, as a child Mama had known every secret and rumor. No misdeed could escape her attention and if Megan did something wrong, Madam Giry would know. It was always better to confess around her because she would offer some reprieve if you confessed whatever sins you had.

"I do not know it all, I do know that some man broke your heart, and I know it hurts now but I hope you realize now that it is fine to wait for your Emperor, he will come, the Phantom has promised." Megan dissolved into sobs again, though they did not hold a candle to the great heaving things which had shook her body to bits before.

Until her mother had said the words Megan had not thought she cried for anything more than Erik had hurt her. But with those fateful words Megan realized he had shattered her heart. She had offered him the tiny, fragile thing and he had crushed it into the thick carpet she loved so much.

The hurt in her heart was far worse than the one in her hand.

Then came the fear, the fear that all children have that first time their heart is shattered, the fear that the pieces will never ever come together ever again.

Megan had not realized until that moment that she had suffered a rejection. She had been focused on so many other things that it had not occurred to her that she had offered Erik herself and he had refused.

She dissolved into tears and broken sobs again.

It was an eternity later that she quieted, nothing wet left within her, no strength left with which to cry. Her mother stood, and silently went to cook dinner while Megan moved to sit at the small table they had. And in the silence of her mind a plan was forming. She was not like other women. For she had only recitals and try-outs to liken her rejection to, she had no childhood romance with a little boy who pulled her hair. So Erik's rejection and her subsequent hurt did not mean the world was over, it meant that she was not good enough. So she would go back, she would study him again, find out the part she had to fill—be it Christine's or the woman with the fan's—and she would fill it, she had time.

She knew people saw her as a child but she knew she was more adult than they all gave her credit for, she knew her heart and she knew her shortcomings. She knew that she loved Erik with that forever sort of love that Raoul and Christine had. She also knew that love wasn't like it was in the Operas, it did not overcome all obstacles and no matter how much she loved Erik he would never feel the same about her. So, though her tears seemed to say she would never get over the hurt, she planned. She decided that she would love Erik, because that was all she could do, and she would love him even though he didn't love her. She would learn to treasure precious moments and she would try to show him that she loved him as much as he had loved Christine. Maybe, if nothing else, he would let her stay with him, at his side when she could spare the time.

Her mother helped her into the bedroom and allowed her—just for tonight—to sleep in the lumpy bed.

Rowensage: You should know I will always continue this. This story is a part of me now, a large part of my life. And sometimes like I did I may need to set it aside, I will always come back to it. If for no other reason than I love my fans and friends here so much.

Alexis: I am glad you like this story so much. I am sorry to hear about your own experiences with love such as this though. But I must say if you've lived it and feel I write it well, it is a large compliment indeed.

Liriel-eris: Again, no matter how many times I hear it I still love assurance that not only is Meg a good character--which I worried about, these days mary-sue or not it seems any character you create from your own head is labled a Mary-Sue--but that Erik is writen well. He's so complex and difficult to write and we all love him so that I almost hate writing him. I'm always scared I won't get that special...Erik-ness.

Wandering Child24: I am not going to say anything about further chapters for fear of spoiling it for you. But I will say this. I do not consider this chapter to be the "confession chapter". Either way there is a lot more to come and people are very fickle things, especially our dear Erik.

I Love Gerry: Yeah the Masons are trey awesome. Like I said that had little to do with the actual story but it was more a mini-tribute to my Grandfather. Glad you like my characterizations as well, I'm sure you can all tell by now--and are sick of hearing it--I'm always worried that I don't do that well, or that I go overboard explaining the characters and their actions to people.

VictorianDream: I am touched by your kind words and I hope this chapter lives up to the standard I have set.

MelodysSong: Hey, maybe she get's paid in food, you never know. Heh. I am just kidding around, mostly because on reading your review I imagined at the end of her performance instead of throwing roses the audience throwing rolls. Heh.

Darth: Bah you've caught me in logic again. I don't speak german so I have to just trust what meager translations I can find. My version said "three Maidens" so that's what I put.

I do make note of the things you tell me though and as I go through fixing and altering past chapters--mostly as a means to get over writer's block--I fix a lot of what you point out. I probably should have stayed serious. But I read way, way too much Douglas Adams. So sometimes that style of writing slips in. I'll change it though in my perusing of the past chapters. You're right.

phicaddictedpriatephantomprsnya and Anime Queen46: I love that my updates bring as much joy to people as when I find updates on stories I think to be a hundred million times better than anything I could ever write.

So as usual guys you know I am addicted to reviews and I love them with an unholy passion. So drop me one, or maybe three. I love them all.