A/N: I had to fiddle around with some chapter names, because it is late and I wanted to get this chapter onto So a couple of chapters have been fiddled with. But hopefully everything has been straightened out and my woeful lack of forethought expunged (that's a fun word, isn't it?)

Here's a little background on this chapter: The previous chapter was Christine's disillusionment. This one goes somewhat into the background I have created for poor, unhappy Erik, and is told through his point of view. I changed the title of an earlier chapter because that particular one fit this so much better- because Erik is yearning for the love that he thinks he will never in his life know. He is yearning for Christine and how he doesn't think that anything will ever be right again.

All For Thee My Heart Is Yearning

She knows. She knows now and I shall never see her again. Christine will think me the monster I am, not the man I wish so desperately to be. How could she do that to me? To take away my only barrier against the world? My prison and my safe-haven- the mask. And why did I have to react as I always do- with anger, with violence. I didn't hit her, nor hurt her, not physically in any case. But I ruined something precious. She shall never trust me again. She cannot bear the sight of me, and I don't blame her.

I just wanted to be happy. I've never been happy before, not deep down in the bone happy. At most, all I've known in my life are brief flashes of contentment. It is not the same thing. All I can say for myself is that I've lived with varying degrees of wretchedness. And yet… and yet… I was happy. She came to me with no hesitation, her eyes wide, like gems set in the alabaster of her face. When she let me touch her, take her hand; I was happy. When she touched my face, the Janus half which is normal, in that split second before she tore off the mask- I was happy. And then it all fell apart.

I should be used to this. Hasn't my life been a panorama of disappointed hopes and misery? I should have known that I wouldn't have a fairy-tale ending; that this Beast could never hope to win the Beauty. Even my mother couldn't bear the sight of me. She gave me my first mask. It wasn't much of one, but it covered the imperfection. How could I have known what she was capable of? The first five years of my life were dreadful- there are a few memories I can recall. Not many, but enough to know that she hated me. And the years after that were a nightmare.

"I had to spawn the child of the Devil on the Day of the Dead!" She would shriek, "All Hallow's Eve. The dead walk on that night, do you know, you little monster. You belong with them, not among the living!" And she would beat me. By the time I was five, she couldn't bear it any longer. There was a Gypsy fair traveling through the town. In the dark of the night, she dosed me with laudanum, and bore me away to their camp. She took gold from them and left me there. She was my mother and she sold me to become a freak! And oh, those bastards never let me forget that fact.

She told them, she told them that my birthday was on October 31. Gypsies are a superstitious lot, and they called me the Devil's Child, and the Living Corpse. On Halloween they would invite the visitors who paid to look upon the conundrum of my face to wish me "many happy returns of the day". And if I wouldn't take off the damn feed sack they had put over my head, I'd get a beating. Over and over again, my keeper would beat me, because despite everything, I was a stubborn fool. I still have the scars from the beatings. Four years I endured that particularly gruesome hell. Four years of beatings, of torture of the acutest kind. And then, freedom!

There are those who will say that freedom is given. I have not found that. Freedom must be taken, and I took it. At nine years old I took freedom with a length of rope. The man who beat me, taunted me, made my life a daily round of horror met his end at my hands, mine! I feel no remorse; all I can feel about that time is a clear, knife-edged anger. And they called me the monster. If I am a monster, then all those people- my ice-bitch mother, my sadistic keeper, and all those who watched me in my misery. All those who came to laugh and jeer and did nothing- nothing! - while I went beaten and unfed- they are just as guilty as my two jailers.

Only Giry, fifteen and pitying, ever showed me kindness. She hid me in the bowels of the Opera, and I was grateful. My own wonderland of forgotten corridors and hidden grottoes- it seemed as if it had been constructed solely for my amusement. And so I became the Opera Ghost. The Phantom. I like the term the Phantom so much better. Even those foolish little rats of the ballet would scream and twirl at the mere hint of my shadow. But this was a delightful fear, half anticipation and half apprehension- a cocktail of shivers directed at the obscure figure which represented the unknown.

But Christine never feared me. Not until this half-waking dream of a morning. And now, I shall have to return her to the surface, knowing that there is a chasm between us, unbridgeable and vast. But what else can I do? There is nothing I can say or do which will change the fact that she has seen my shameful secret, my face. She will never love me now. And if Christine Daae cannot love me, then who in this world can?

No one. Now I shall never know what it is to be loved; to have someone look upon my face and not care that I look like a monster. Would that some Medusa really existed- to turn me to stone and end my misery. Because my soul would not find the Elysian Fields, but be doomed to torment alongside Tantalus. I will be condemned to hell and there will be no respite. I still want her so! I want her to come out of that room and tell me that it doesn't matter, that she loves me anyway, that we will live happily ever after. But she won't. She is still there, cowering in that room, as I am cowering out here, just outside the door. But I must get up, because she cannot stay in there forever, and I cannot keep her here forever. Giry will be wanting her back soon, to coo and cosset. And I will be alone again, as that bitch, Mother Nature, intended. I suppose that is why they call her 'mother'. There are no miracles, only accidents of fate. And mine was decided the moment I was born. There will be no soul mate for me- I am doomed to walk alone ever more

A/N: I hope you like this. I've had a devil of a time lately getting into the character's head's but a few little gems popped out of my imagination for this one. There is a reference to the 1925 film, as well as some literary and mythological references. I also want to add that I think October 31 (Halloween) is the most appropriate day of the year for the Phantom to have his birthday. It just seems… right somehow.

Please read and review, I'm nutty about it.

Warmest Regards,

K.S.