A/N…Sarrin, the first three sentences in your review of chapter 9 made me shake my head and grin.

Erik

I lean forward, listening. There is so much to be told about a person by the way the mouth is formed over the words, the unique timbre of voice, the potency as opposed to the dynamics. This child is shy even in her own presence. It is clear—she tiptoes shamefully into the climax and approaches the C as if she wants to remain inconspicuous even to the music she is creating. My fingers tighten their grip on my knees as she stupidly pauses for a shallow breath before releasing the note. The result is an insult to the sweet and pretty sound that would have been had she let it come naturally. Her strain begins to falter, and she lets the note die with a wavering, ashamed whimper. I want right now to confront her and tell her exactly what to do differently, and instruct her to sing it again under the influence of my instruction.

Idiot, I mutter. She's only a child—she's no older than seven. Can I never appreciate the beauty without first criticising the flaws? Idiot! I mutter again. That is no fault of your own with which you degrade yourself. My harsh critique of her is actually a flattery; I expect much more from her because she's given much more than I know to be natural at her age.

My sudden predicament confuses me and the intentions that brought me here. Only a quarter hour before I followed Christine to the stage, with merely the purpose of frightening her and sending her running off to her little ballet friends. In turn, they were to faithfully give her a proper background and their own embellished tales of the Opera Ghost. My unwilling servants excel in their naïve obedience. But before I could accomplish anything to my liking, she started to sing, and even now I can only listen to her. Her father was a well-known musician and singer, and she accompanied him. None of the storeys that preceded her, though, could have prepared me for this remarkable untrained talent.

The floorboards creak, and I mentally curse the stingy contractors M Lefevre employed to save his precious money, after I specifically commanded only the best for the new addition to my house. I stiffen instantly and will the dissonant wooden groan to pass so Christine will not hear it and discontinue her song. Yes, she needs years of tutoring and a certain confidence that she might never gain; but she is, somehow, different. Her voice lacks passion but is dulled with sorrow, so pitiful that it reaches my soul on several different levels. She knows pain; the death of her father at such a delicate age will scar a part of her that should never have been exposed in the first place. And in a sinister way, that appeals to me.

I do not blame myself. M Daae's death was in painful proximity regardless of my actions, and would have been far worse for her had I allowed him to live the last days of his illness. He would have forgotten her, and his last look into her eyes would have been one of distance, and solitude, and unfamiliarity. It surely would have destroyed her. I should be commended for intercepting God's cruelty and ending Gustave's life before he hurt his daughter more.

I watch. Her round brown eyes begin to fill, and the candlelight reflects from them. She sits swiftly and wraps her little arms around her legs, and buries her face into her skirt. The fragile brown curls sweep around her young frame, and her shoulders begin to heave, in a manner that should be foreign to a child so young. My hands find their way to my own cloaked shoulders, and my mind is flooded with memories of when I looked just like that—when I allowed myself to cry. I know the way tears hurt at that age, and she is experiencing true pain for the first time in her life. Why is the compassion that spurred me to relieve her father coming back to me so strongly? I do not need it now. I do not want it at all. It is of no consequence to me anymore. My fists clench at my shoulders, and I stand; my eyes do not leave her.

"Why, God," I whisper. "Why is it always children? Why me, and why her now?" My heart begins to pound, as I think of what pain He caused by making her father so sick. Her sobs reach me; even her whimpers are beautiful in her soprano timbre. How can He not hear her? She is a cherub—surely He knows that. "I will never understand You, God." My whispers become husky as tears I long ago banished begin to surface. "I will never—"

"Father!"

I bite the inside of my cheek, as the little girl's face emerges from the mess of curls about her forme, which is awkwardly fit with a worn ballet suit for her first day of practise. Is she also crying out to God? I begged when I was young, too—but years of begging gave me nothing, and all I have left is anger. My blood boils now, with this thought alone. She will have years to slowly come to this understanding. Will you never be satisfied, God?

"I don't know what to do! You said that you and God made a deal!"

Then she is not talking to God. She said "Father." She is speaking to her deceased father, like a child enticed by the supernatural realm through a séance, or something like it.

"You promised me!" Her voice breaks at the mention of the promise. "You said I could have him! You said you would send him! Over and over, you said it! Where is he, Father? Where is Lotte's Angel?"

My mind spins. The Angel of Music. But I can't. Christine speaks of him all the time, as a storeyteller, using lyrics but abandoning the melodies…what are the words? "What I love most, Lotte said, is when I am asleep in my bed, and the Angel of Music sings songs in my head." For two months, with growing conflict over my decision to discard the idea, I have listened to her speak with Madame, promising her that the Angel would come, regardless of what Madame thought; her father promised her, and her father would never lie.

"Is it because I left you, Papa? Are you breaking your promise because I broke mine? But I tried to stay! I did, but they took me from you!" She balls her fists, challenging the ceiling with a desperate and tormented face. "It is Madame's fault that I can't have the Angel, because she took me from you! And it is Raoul's fault that I can't have the Angel, because Raoul tried to make me stop believing in him!"

The illusions I had when she first arrived dare to encroach upon my thoughts, again, and again. I shake outwardly to rid myself of them inwardly, knowing that I am not in a state to make any rash decisions, as I so often do. My heart is in anguish—torn between anger and sorrow, and the compulsive Phantom will not listen to the very human and rational Erik that Madame once so wanted me to be. I try hard often…but I am not often so blasted emotional. Shut up, I command my thoughts. Shut up!

You can be her salvation, the Phantom tells me.

No, I can't, I spit back. There is no salvation for me to offer.

I haven't been this torn between myself for years—since Madame first left me.

I stare at Christine again, vaguely aware that the illusion of my hair is twisted between my fingers. She swipes frantically at her eyes, hiccupping in her sorrow, as she no doubt will for months or years until real life becomes evident and teaches her to hide. "No," I say aloud, and bite my tongue as I realise she may have heard me. But no. That cannot happen to her. Not like it has to me.

Then do not let it happen. You know you can stop it.

I want to scream my rage at the voice, but I cannot give myself away and betray him, the Phantom, in me. I shake my head furiously, trying to rid myself of the lightness. Curse the Angel of Music. I am no Angel and I will surely be damned to a hell worse than this life if I masquerade as one. It is ludicrous, besides. Ludicrous, twisted, and evil. I will not claim those titles for myself; the goodness and compassion that Madame once saw in me, that I am sure I still retain, balances out the evil of the mask. I am yet convinced that I couldn't succeed even if I wanted to. Who has ever even heard of, and who will ever even believe in…

A phantom?

I pull my mask from my face and squeeze the leather within the deadly grasp I introduced to my hands years before. I can't kill it, though, as I can so easily kill everything else. It is the mask's fault, all of it—the thing will not leave me even if I am not wearing it. The mask is the true Phantom, I have told myself over and over again. It isn't my face—my face is not the sin, according to Madame Giry. Blast, I can't stop thinking of her! It is the mask I wear to hide it. I have to believe her, but still I cannot accept myself without it. I am two separate people, but that is all I know, and only in times like these do I ever question the wisdom of it. The mask has always taunted me; its new game, now, is unacceptable as it tries to deceive and entice, telling me that pretending to be an Angel is no different than masquerading as a phantom.

Of course it is, though. Ghosts, Demons reveal themselves to mortals all the time. Angels do not, and if so, only briefly. Angels do not haunt, and do not linger, the way a phantom does. Angels do not sing audibly to the ear, but to the heart; something I am not capable of doing, unless figuratively. It is stupid, I tell myself, stupid. I lift the half-mask again to my face and press the leather into my twisted flesh until I know it is secure. I will be the Phantom and I will be Erik, and nothing else.

I won't be her Angel of Music.

"Father, I forget the words…." Her plea drifts in my direction, and I dare not let my mind wander at the irony of it. I begin to move toward the hidden door, feigning confidence in my decision.

"Angel of Music…"

I pause, one foot out the door, as the shaking voice calls to me. Calls to me? No—she calls an imaginary Angel. She didn't call to you, fool, I think at myself. Regardless of how I want—

"Lotte's Teacher…"

It's stupid. It is a stupid idea.

"Sing to me of glory."

What glory does she want? Just what did her father promise her about this Angel? I can give her glory, yes—with the talent she might bring to me, the willingness she might lay at my feet, I can move mountains. No. Of course not.

"Angel of Music, come from Heaven…"

My hands go to my ears, but neither will the mask's taunting nor the child's voice be shut away, as she hesitantly recalls the words to her father's song.

"Give me your song, Angel."

The tune is familiar to me—Gustave attempted it, and she has hummed it often without words, so often that even little Meg gallops through the halls with the song on her lips, granting it nonsensical lyrics that don't do the beautiful melody any justice. But Christine has never sung until this day.

After a moment of the empty silence of remembrance, the words her father taught her find their way back into the music from which they came.

"Heaven sent Lotte her Angel

"Lotte was granted her wings

"Heaven itself kneels to listen

"To the words she sings."

The bits and pieces I've learnt of Little Lotte and Gustave Daae over the past two months begin to weave themselves into the fabric that quilts my outrageous and brilliant imagination. I can do so much for this child, and her song is offering me a way to do it. I can save her—it's true. I can do whatever it will take to save her. I can give her back her father! And I will.

"Angel of Music, guide and guardian

"Grant to me your glory

"Angel of Music, hide no longer

"Secret and strange Angel."

Music. Christine wants music. Music is, in no plainer terms, my life. As simple and unadulterated as that. From my birth, when my mother forced a mask upon the mockery that is my face, and then my childhood, when all I owned was a burlap sack and a cloth monkey with a pair of chimes. It sustained me until Lombardi died, and it brought me salvation the moment I stepped foot in the opera house. If it is music she needs, too, for salvation, I am already her saviour.

Slowly my mind begins to grasp the idea, and though all the reason Erik invoked still fights violently against my impulsive designs, Christine's voice begins to beckon me. How she finishes her song, I don't know, not when she is hurting to such an extent. Unless she believes—if she truly believes in this Angel, I can save her. If I can take the superstitions of the ballet rats and stagehands and embody them in the forme of a ghost, I can easily influence a desperate child's belief in the impossible. All I need to do is show her that the impossible is easily achieved.

I will be her Angel of Music, and she will never fall into the blackness I so tragically call my home. I will be her Angel of Music, whether she knows it or not. She will not mourn her father, ever again. And Madeleine will be blind not to see that it is because of me.