A/N: Whew! I'm back from my one week trip overseas, and I'm exhausted but happy from all the travelling. I managed to get a little wifi connection on my phone and I read all your reviews during my trip, which made me feel even happier. Thank you all for writing reviews!

Savannah White: It is definitely happening! Unfortunately, Erik does react rather poorly...

Masked Man 2: Thank you! I'm so glad you liked the way I wrote the scene. The two girls are definitely going to meet (though not accidentally), but I'm still thinking about the whole getting sick thing... it was an idea for me (following the movie where Raoul injures Erik) but we will see how it goes eventually!

ADemigodPhangirl: Eh? I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the fop. but yes definitely the sooner Buquet is gone the better! Haha.

Aria: Hello! Haven't seen you around in a while. Amelie will definitely be having some words with her about her reaction! It's time for the naive child to wake up from her childish dreams -evil grin-

Nikki1991: I know, if I had been Christine I would have been like 'ok what the heck who is this guy' instead of mindlessly following him around!

Phantomgirl: I'm so glad you like the story so far! Check back every Monday (:

Phantom queen: The next chapter is uppppp! (: Enjoy!

Lydia the tygeropean: She sure is going to regret! Well I'll think of a way to off Buquet, never fear!

shade: I update every Monday, but I'm really happy that you are enjoying the story!

Wild Concerto: I specialize in cliffies, heh heh heh. I presumed Erik would react much the same way (think horror and shock and dramatic reactions) even if there was no romantic intentions toward Christine, except there would be none of the "fear can turn to love" stuff.

Thank you lover's dream & SeverusSaidAlways for the favs/follows! Much appreciated.

And now, onward with the story! This week's title comes from a song that I like a lot.

Chapter 33: Everybody has a Dark Side

Paris, 1896

As the mask fell away from his face, Erik knew something was wrong. He turned quickly, trying to clap one hand to his face, but he was too slow. No!

He faced the person behind him, her eyes wide open with shock, but it was too late, for she had seen him. In that instant between his unmasking and his instinctive reaction to cover his face, she had seen everything.

Christine.

Her mouth opened and gaped in a silent scream, and her arm dropped to her side, her grip loose on his mask.

He reached out for the mask, desperate to retrieve it, desperate to cover his face once more, and wanting nothing more than to stop the horrified expression on her face.

The same horror he had seen on so many other's faces.

It was the shock, mostly. The abject astonishment at the juxtaposition of his face. The crushed expectation that the other half of his face would look just like the uncovered side. It was the shock that undid them, the shock that put the horror in their faces.

And then after the shock dissipated, it would be replaced by scorn, by jeers, by laughter. 'That poor boy, so cursed with the mark of the devil', spoken with no real pity, followed by raucous laughter, or more shrieks from the timid.

He did not want to see that on Christine's face. He did not want to see her look down on him, or laugh at him, or be scared of him.

As he reached out for the mask, she finally shrieked, and jerked back, as though she thought that he had been reaching for her instead. She stumbled backward, picked up her skirts and ran for the door.

No! The passageways around his house were filled with traps; if she managed to make it out of one of the doorways, she could be injured badly. "Christine, no!", he bellowed, but he was only answered by her high pitched shriek.

He dashed out of the room after her, running awkwardly, with one hand clapped over the deformed side of his face. He found her in the main area of his house, looking around wildly, her hands clutching onto his mask still. When she saw him, she began to back away shakily.

"Christine, Christine, please," he beseeched, not sure himself what exactly he was pleading for. "Calm down."

"Who are you?" Christine said, her voice growing alarmingly high in pitch. "Who are you exactly?"

"I am your teacher, Christine," he said, moving slowly toward her, intending to get his mask back. "Christine… I will not harm you."

"Stay away!" She shrieked, flinging out an arm, as though to ward him off. The mask flew from her grip, and skidded across the floor. She stumbled into a music stand, causing it to fall, and his precious scores to fly about the room in disarray. He let out a growl of horror, moving forward to retrieve his scores, but she screamed, and he realized he had uncovered his face in the process.

It was the look of abject terror on her face that hurt the most. The look that told him that she had thought he would harm her, simply because he looked different.

Monster. Freak of nature. Creature. Ugly.

Demon spawn. Child of the devil.

Living corpse.

No, no! Block out those memories. Stop.

He crouched on the floor, hunching so that his face would be mostly hidden from her. He could not see the mask from where he was; perhaps it had slid across the floor somewhere. Gingerly, he picked up the scores nearest to him. Do not look at her. Do not think of the past. His shoulders shook and he felt bile rise up his throat.

Watching him with wary eyes, Christine huddled against the wall that she had backed up against, making soft noises. She looked frightened.

Frightened of me.

Will this never end?

XXXXX

Amélie had just reached one of the doors to Erik's house when she heard a very distinctly feminine shriek, high pitched and frightened. She had come down to Erik's house because Christine had disappeared after the final production of Hannibal, and nobody could find her anywhere. When Meg had piped up suddenly that Christine had often talked about how she would meet her mysterious teacher after the performance, Amélie knew at once that Christine was with Erik, but she had to make sure.

Hurriedly, she fumbled with the catch on the door, and threw it open, to reveal Erik, kneeling on the floor, his broad shoulders hunched inward, and shaking slightly, his fingers trembling yet desperately snatching up music scores from the floor.

"Erik!" She rushed to his side, where he knelt on the floor, his body turned awkwardly in an attempt to hide his face. "Erik, what's going on?"

He did not say anything, merely growled, and hunched into himself even more. Amélie heard a whimper coming from the other end of the room, and she looked around, scanning the place wildly. There were music scores scattered all around the floor, and a few candelabras had been overturned, with wax dripping off the candles onto the floor. There, amidst the mess, she found Christine.

The girl in question was backed up against a wall, a crumpled heap on the floor, as though she were trying to put as much distance between her and Erik as possible, and her fists were clenched tightly. Her hair was messy, and her face was pale and distraught. When she noticed Amélie, her eyes widened, and her mouth gaped open in shock.

"You—you! Amélie?" She sounded slightly hysterical. "Are you his accomplice?"

Erik made a strangled noise, growling again, and made as though he were about to leap up to defend Amélie. But Christine gave another small shriek, and he turned away again.

Amélie felt a strange fury rising within her. Erik did not deserve to have to turn his face away in shame, not in front of anybody. For all those years that he had been locked up in a cage in a gypsy camp, he had tried his best to hide his face from the world, the one that had ridiculed him, and scorned him, and sneered at him. Amélie knew that with every one of Christine's shrieks, Erik would remember even more clearly the sting of the whip on his back, the horror on the audience's faces, and the jeering laughs.

Her heart hurt for him. She knew that he must have felt all the more worse because it was Christine, the student he had put everything into nurturing, the young songbird who had given his music hope once more. A stinging ball of anger settled itself deep within her stomach.

When she spoke, her voice was cold, colder than Christine had ever heard her speak before.

"Accomplice? An accomplice to what, may I ask?"

"To… to… lying to me!" Christine cast her gaze around wildly, trying to look anywhere but toward Erik. "He… I never knew my teacher was the Opera Ghost. He… pretended to be an angel! He is a madman! A… a monster!" Christine cried out, her hands fisting in the folds of her dressing gown spasmodically, but it felt as though she were grasping at straws, trying to find some fault to blame Erik for. Erik stiffened, a look that was both bitter and sad crossing his face.

And all of a sudden, Amélie had an uncontrollable urge to slap some sense into the girl who was leaning against the wall, shaking hysterically. She stormed up to her, and gave her a good shake, holding onto her shoulders firmly.

"Christine Daae, you foolish, foolish girl," she hissed. "You will never, not once, in my presence, call your teacher a monster ever again. Do you hear me? You have no right! The man you call a monster—he taught you tirelessly for months so that you could stand on the stage and sing, like you always wanted to. Oh, do not tell me you believed that he was an angel all along; you are neither a child nor stupid. You knew, and you went along with his charade willingly! A monster? How dare you!"

"Amélie, you're hurting her," Erik's voice was a low whisper, and Amélie could hear the pain in his voice.

"She needs some sense knocked into her head, Erik!" Amélie snapped. "She does not know how many nights you spent, trying to devise a way for her to take Carlotta's place in the final production, and she does not know how hard you worked to teach her all that you knew! You, a monster? I think not! If she truly thinks that, then she is the real monster here."

She spotted Erik's mask lying askew on the ground, and picked it up, walking back to him. He reached out for it, eager to put it back on, to conceal his face in shame once again, but Amélie was having none of that. She was tired from dancing in Hannibal, from having to search the whole opera house for Christine, from the pain she felt for Erik, and she was at the end of a very short fuse. She grabbed his hand, and forced him to stand, uncovering his face.

He made a very anguished noise, and attempted to turn away once more, but she held his arm firmly.

"Amélie, what are you doing?", he rasped. "Give me back my mask at once!"

"No, Erik. No more hiding!"

When Amélie had made Erik stand, exposing his face, Christine had looked away, unwilling to set her gaze upon his face. Her face was now turned away grimly.

Amélie addressed her once more. "Look at him, Christine. The man you see standing before you is your teacher, Christine, and you respected him as you would any other teacher. Why should the fact that he has a scarred and disfigured face change any of that? Can you deny the hard work he put into teaching you? You foolish child! Would you push aside your beloved teacher just because you fear his face? You have no idea how happy he was to have discovered you, to find out that you were so talented. He was so excited to teach you, to nurture your talent. Can you deny the respect you felt for his talent, for his ambition, his passion?"

She did not respond at first, but then after what felt like an eternity, Christine shook her head slowly, tears running down her cheeks in streaks. She gradually turned her face back in Erik's direction, inch by inch, and then she hesitatingly looked Erik square in the eye. To her credit, she only flinched a little, but there was a lot less horror in her face now. Amélie closed her eyes in frustration and yet relief. If Christine had begun another crying fit, Amélie might have lost all control of her sanity.

"Oh, Christine," Erik whispered sadly. "It was never my intention to scare you. You do not have to look upon the hideous face of your teacher any longer. You are free to leave, to never see me again."

Christine opened her mouth, but no words came out. She blinked a few times, and tried again. "I… I'm sorry. Angel, I—"

"You should be," said Amélie, warningly. "But you should know that I would never forgive you if this happens again. You should go back to the opera house now; there are people looking for you frantically."

"Amélie, my mask." Erik prodded her with his elbow. Amélie made a very disgruntled noise, and turned to him.

She raised a hand, and smoothed back the hair that had fallen over his face in the turmoil. He looked at her, his eyes limpid pools of sadness, and yet… relief? They were slightly moist with the sheen of tears, and then he attempted a shaky smile at her. Amélie felt her eyes well up with tears all of a sudden, the fatigue from the previous night's performance and her agitation from moments before finally accumulating and spilling over. Oh, Erik.

He looked aghast at her tears. "Amélie, what's wrong?"

She wiped away the tears with the back of her hands quickly. "It's nothing."

She pressed her hand gently to the twisted side of his face, feeling the bumpy flesh. Then she slowly helped him fit the mask back over his face again. She lingered for a few moments, letting her hand remain on his face.

"Come, we must return," she sighed and turned to Christine, beckoning with a hand. "There are people in the opera house who are anxiously waiting your return."

Christine stood, but did not take a step forward. She looked as though she were gathering up all the dredges of her courage to speak. She spoke haltingly, but clearly. "Wait… I… Angel… will we still continue to have lessons? Will I see you again? We… we still have a goal to reach."

Her question was directed toward Erik, and Amélie heard the palpable relief in his voice when he said yes to her. She nodded approvingly, grudgingly, at Christine, and then turned to lead her out of Erik's house back to the surface of the Palais Garnier.

XXXXX

As Amélie walked with Christine through the dark tunnels leading back to the opera house, Christine spoke hesitantly.

"Amélie… I was… wrong. Will you forgive me?"

"It is not my forgiveness you should seek; rather it is your teacher's forgiveness that you should be begging for," said Amélie bitterly. "That you should call him a monster, you of all people! You know nothing about him, nothing about his life. You judged too quickly."

"I… acted too rashly. I was afraid." Christine whispered.

"Afraid?" Amélie sighed. "Yes, well, I cannot deny you that reaction. But Christine, fear is not an excuse."

"No," Christine agreed. "It is not an excuse. Still, I was afraid. I… I did not expect my teacher to be the fearsome Opera Ghost, that is all. I did not expect to see what I saw beneath the mask. I was shocked. I acted instinctively. It was fear that drove my reaction."

"As your teacher, he never gave you cause to fear him, Christine. Do not label the man with the image of a terrifying spectre simply because it is what he appears as most often. Could you not look beyond the surface, to recognize your teacher?"

"I'm sorry—but nothing I say will take back my actions. I… I regret the way I acted. I behaved like a foolish child. I should not have done so."

Her mouth spoke those words, but Amélie could still see the fear in her eyes, still see the hesitancy. She knew that it would not take a simple scolding from her to erase all of Christine's fears. And Christine's fears were not unfounded—while Amélie knew the Opera Ghost as simply Erik, most of the opera house knew him as the mysterious spectre who played harsh tricks on Carlotta, and caused trouble for many of her rehearsals unfailingly. His name was used as a threat on the younger ballet rats to coerce them into practicing, for goodness's sake. Amélie could only hope that Christine would put aside her image of the Opera Ghost to accept Erik as her teacher once more.

"Very well. We shall not speak of this matter any further. Remember, when we reach the opera house, you are to tell no one about the real identity of your teacher. After all, you are his willing student. If you do, then nothing will be able to save all of us."

A/N: As usual, please read/review/fav/follow! It means the world to me (: Have a good week ahead. xx hazel