Yeah! Chapter Three. One of the longest, I think. Definitely the longest yet. (Don't worry, there's twenty.) So, forget the intro, and just read! I love this part!

Oh, yeah, I don't own any of the characters yet, don't sue me, etc.

Discovery

Time flew by for the pair, she engulfed by her studies, every day growing more steady, more sure of her voice. If it was perfection before, her song was ethereal now. He became consumed in his effort to teach her everything he knew, and in ensuring that she never realized his identity as the infamous Phantom of the Opera. In the next year that they spent together, she never saw a glimpse of him. Every day she fell more in love with the strange voice which filled her mind and unlocked hidden, dark secrets she never would have discovered on her own. And he was already lost to that pure, beautiful soul which gave him companionship after so many years of solitude. Yet, his thoughts burned with the suspicion that, though he had been so good to her, if she knew who he was, she would turn away from him. Finally, this thought began to drive him mad, and he knew he must find out if this were true.

Erik decided he would reveal himself to her. He began to make all the preparations to dampen her fears, to keep her in love with him despite his horrid face. Soon, though, his plans were foiled completely. During a routine rehearsal of "Hannibal", Erik had finally suffered enough agony at the horrid screeching of the Opera's leading soprano, La Carlotta. As she showed off, singing a high-pitched, glamorous aria, he simply cut the curtains down upon her. She narrowly escaped serious harm, but refused to sing that night in the opening show. Therefore, Madame Giry, that treacherous snake, recommended that Christine sing the part of Margarita, previously Carlotta's role. She performed as she was told, and was a phenomenal hit with the audience. Pleased with her achievement, she fled the throng of adoring fans for the tranquility of her room. Unable to contain himself any longer, Erik sang to her, his lonely song of pain, longing, and loss. Christine was at a loss for words, completely enveloped by that dark song of love. She was lost in it, bound by it, and its hypnotic beauty filled her mind.

"Where are you, my Angel?" she cried out to him. "I feel if I cannot see you, I shall die. Come to me, strange angel!"

"Look at your face in the mirror, I am there inside!" he called to her as he swung open the trap door, the mirror on hinges, through which he had watched her for so long, and ushered her inside, to the dark hallway beyond. She crossed that magical threshold, completely displaced from herself by the astonishing beauty of the black underground labyrinth. At every step, he murmured to her softly, reassurances in the oppressive darkness which threatened to steal away her soul. She knew she could no longer resist its power.

"I have brought you," Erik told her fiercely, passionately, "to the seat of sweet music's throne. Since the moment I first heard you sing, I have needed you with me, to serve me, to sing for my music."

Suddenly she stumbled in the passage of blackness, crying out and clinging to him. He gently took her into his arms, as he had ten years before, and she blinked and looked at him wondrously. "How do I know you?" she whispered, cautiously tracing a finger across his smooth, firm jaw line. "You are no angel." He shivered under he touch, which, before, he had only felt in dreams.

"You do not know me, yet you have seen me before," he told her in the tender, loving voice she had come to know this past year. "I rescued you from a dark, cold fate, when you were just a child."

Her eyes closed for a moment, as though she were searching vainly for a thought she could not find. Then, they flew open, and she gazed into his black eyes, astonished.

"The cemetery," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "My father's grave. You... you picked me up, asked my name, carried me to the Opera House, just like this. I remember, you told me your name. Erik! A name, you said, no one else knew..."

"Yes," he said. He stopped, and set her into a small boat waiting at the shore of the vast underground lake which was part of his domain. Gently, he boarded after her, and the set out for the other side, where Erik resided. Christine remained silent, too awed by the splendor of this dark new world to speak. They approached the far shore, and she finally voiced her thoughts.

"Why have you brought me here?" Oppressive silence filled the gently lit cavern, as candles flickered eerily on the walls. He did not utter a word, and she turned to look at him, standing behind her, gazing at her with longing. He picked her up again, by the waist, and set her gently on the shore.

"Christine, I love you," he said finally, baring his heart to her. "I have watched you all this time, trying to make you love me before you saw me, for I knew otherwise you would turn from me as all the rest of the world. After your performance tonight, I could not wait any longer knowing there will be many other men after your heart now. So I have brought you here to make the decision of whether you love me as well."

"Why would I not love you? You saved me, you taught me, you loved me! I've loved you, your voice, everything about you ever since you became my tutor, and how I've longed to know you. How could I not love you?"

"I feared someone would find out about us, about me instructing you, and you would discover who I am."

"Who are you, then?" she challenged, defiant. He sighed.

"I am he whom everyone fears. I am the death that stalks the halls of this opera house, and the reason why everyone fears to walk the passages in the night. I am the Phantom of the Opera." She gasped, putting a hand to her mouth to mask the sound.

"Then... you are the one who has murdered all those people?" He shook his head sadly.

"Only one. That dreadful, vile traitor Joseph Buquet. He knew too much, and I could not risk him telling the police where I am to be taken from this, the only place I have ever known as home, and to be put in a traveling circus as some kind of attraction again! God, Christine, if you only knew the cruelties of the this world! I have been hunted down, hated by all who know of my existence, even my own parents! All because of this!" he screamed, tearing the mask off his face to reveal a hideous distortion of flesh beneath, scarred and ruined, at places bared to the bone. "How am I to control the unfortunate circumstances under which I was born! It is so unfair, and you, child, will never know!"

Christine sat huddled down, sobbing quietly. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up, saying,"Look. Look, and wonder no longer why I would not show myself to you. All who see me hate me, curse me as a monster. You, too, hate me, I can see it now in your eyes." She blinked and turned away, tears still falling down her cheeks. He let her go, striding off to the other side of the room, to sit down upon one of the dark wood chairs there. "Go, then. Go, and live your normal life, with a handsome, shallow husband who will marry you not for love, but for your beauty. Do me the one last favor, though, of telling no one what you have seen here, that I may go on living in dark loneliness, and wretched peace." he cradled his head between his hands, silent tears rolling down his face.

She glanced at him in his helpless state, pity stabbing through her heart. He did not realize that, even now, love for him burned deep within her heart; but fear of that ferocious display overcame all other emotions. So she ran into the darkness, fine skirts trailing behind, leaving him to tend his broken heart, and shattered soul.