Danielle whirled around, the sudden movement sending her various layers of clothing spinning after her. "Who? Who is there! Answer me!" she screamed, eyes wide in panic and terror.

"Your angel! You must know me, you must!" the agonized voice cried again. "Come to your senses, how can it be that you cannot remember me!" the disembodied voice cracked with raw emotion and undisguised anguish.

"I call no man angel!" Danielle cried, voice trembling and unsure. "I cannot even see you! How am I to know you when I cannot even see your face?" In despair, Danielle stood in the middle of the grand entryway, back to the door, eyes frantically searching the shadows for the source of the voice.

"No, no, you shall never see my face!" the voice rose to a fever pitch. "No man shall see my face! I am shadow, I am darkness, and I am Angel. Know me as such!" The voice was angry now, angrier than Danielle had ever heard anything be in her entire life.

"No, monsieur!" Danielle backed away from the directed she believed the voice to be coming from, eyes searching the shadows frantically and hands raised in a gesture of acquiescence. "Do what you please with your face, if you do not wish for me to see it then I shall not."

There was silence for a moment, Danielle's compliance seeming to have quelled his fury for the time being. The voice was sad again. "Why do you back away from me? Do you not know me?"

Danielle shook her head, shaking and terrified. "I swear monsieur; I do not know you by name, though I know you have spoken to me before."

A shadow to the left of Danielle shifted, and her panicked glance flew there in an instant. Light glinted of an object in the darkness, and then the shadow was still. "But that's impossible. Are you ill? My dear, of course we have conversed before… I have spoken to you almost every night for the last six years."

Danielle's face turned a ghastly shade of white. She took a few steps backwards on legs as wobbly as a newborn calf's, the room spinning around her. She could only barely hear the voice calling to her, over and over again, his words melting like butter and flowing together unrecognizably. The strength of the frightened girl failed her, and a warm, welcoming darkness cradled her senses.

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The world swam before half-open eyes, and colours ran together in a wonderful dance of awakening known only to those recovering from illness. Danielle blinked slowly, trying to clear her muddled vision. She realized very quickly that she was no longer on the floor of the opera house foyer, but somewhere very different -- and very much warmer. Extravagant red blankets covered her small body, the outline of her legs making small mountains in the rich fabric. Danielle wiggled her toes, reluctant to leave the heat of the covers, and closed her eyes again with a sleepy sigh. The world could wait, she had a terrible headache.

"Come 'round, you must wake up some time."

Danielle stifled an annoyed groan. Her head hurt her so badly, and even the stranger's honey-smooth voice was like a knife through her skull. "Please…" she whimpered, and rolled over to face away from the stranger. The blackness behind her eyes felt warm and inviting, and her head pounded so badly…

"You cannot sleep any longer. Obey your angel -- Awaken." The voice was slightly gruffer now, possibly with annoyance. Danielle chose to ignore it once more, and shut her eyes.

"No!" the voice growled, and a strong hand took her by the shoulder. "You must not sleep any more."

Shocked awake by the strength of the grip and the anger in the once-gentle voice, Danielle twisted her head towards the speaker. What she saw captivated her. Iron-grey hair lay in disarray over the man's head, and into his eyes – soft grey irises that flickered with inner sadness. His mouth was twisted into something that resembled both a smile and a grimace, and the right half of his smile seemed to dissolve into a twisting mass of red flesh. But it was the white leather mask that hid the right side of that face from prying eyes that held her gaze. The steely eye that stared back at her from its white cave widened in surprise, and possibly in fear.

"So tha's why you wouldn't let me see yer face…" Daniele mumbled drowsily, reaching out with one hand to touch the cool white of the leather, too disoriented to realize the brashness of such an action.

The stranger reached out his hand and caught her small one in it. "No." he said vehemently. The sadness had been sapped out of grey eyes, and coldness had replaced it. "If you look upon your Angel, he will leave you for sure."

Confused and too sleepy to comprehend much of what the masked stranger was saying, Danielle only nodded.

"You hit your head rather sharply on the marble. I am sorry, dear child, my intent was not to frighten you." All the anger had left the stranger, and the look in his eyes was some of sorrowful remorse.

"S'kay." Danielle slurred, really wishing he'd leave her alone and let her sleep some more. "I'm not holdn' it 'gainst you." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "I'm just… so tired…" she yawned, eyes watering, and pulled the covers up tighter around her shoulders.

Before she could fall completely asleep, however, a cup of steaming hot liquid was shoved rather ingloriously under her nose. "Drink this." The masked man said again, tones clipped and terse.

"You're so grumpy." Danielle mumbled crossly, and sitting up slowly, took the proffered cup in trembling hands. Taking a small sip, she was delighted to find that the steaming liquid it contained was raspberry tea – a favorite recipe of her mothers. Despite her best wishes, she could feel herself waking up bit by bit.

"You will return to the ballet dormitories as quickly as possible, I do not wish to incur the wrath of Madame Giry for kidnapping one of her rats. You should be home by nightfall." The stranger was no longer facing her, and his words resounded oddly in the oddly shaped… cave?

Completely awakened, she became more aware of her surroundings. The bed she was laying on was rich and warm, the frame shaped in the elegant curve of a swan. The room they were in did appear to be an underground chamber, but oddly enough did not seem dark and foreboding. There was a kind of a golden light bathing the room, similar to the light on the Parisian streets but darker, older, and maybe a little colder still. Golden candelabras lined the room, some lit, some not. Their flickering shadows danced over the uneven walls, spots of which were covered in drawings of various places in the opera house. Shadows licked at the bottom of the long cape the stranger was wearing, giving him the appearance of being a shade himself. He was tall, and muscular, and looked from the back to be like any other normal man. But Danielle knew that the front held a shock of white that contrasted strangely against the deep blackness of the rest of the stranger, which set him apart from the rest of humanity. A sharp stab of pity flooded her heart, and Danielle opened her mouth to speak to the stranger, perhaps to say something comforting. But the words died in her throat, for just then the stranger turned around and his icy gaze caught hers and froze it.

He didn't say a word, but then again, he didn't have to. In three short strides he crossed the room and sat down at an organ, and began to play. She had never heard anything like it before in the span of her 12 years. The notes seemed to form a life and corporeal form of their own, and danced windingly in the space over her head. She barely noticed when the strangers own voice joined the dance until the song reached it crescendo. His voice once again possessed the honeylike quality it had the first time he had spoken to her, it hypnotized her, drawing her closer towards it source and yet at the same time pushing her further and further away. Danielle felt herself falling back into her dreamless sleep, and she was powerless to resist the call of the cool darkness. The cup slipped from her numbed fingers, and shattered on the floor.

The masked stranger crossed the room quickly, and knelt beside the sleeping girl, ignoring the mess of shards and sticky tea on the ground. He gently picked her up, cradling her small body in his strong arms. She seemed so fragile, so vulnerable – were all children this way? He silently cursed fate for not allowing him the chance to discover the answer for himself. She should be his daughter; he should have a lovely wife who resembled her. This child should have been born of his love. Something nagged the back of his crowded mind, but he pushed it away once more and buried it. No, fate had made him a monster, and monsters did not love, or have wives and certainly not children. Holding this fragile girl was as close as he would ever get to cradling his own child. Tears threatened the corners of his eyes, and he willed them away out of hardened habit. Monsters had no feelings, monsters cannot cry. As the man and girl neared the massive underground lake beneath the opera house, an overwhelming sense of loss filled the masked man. Gently placing the sleeping girl in the bottom of a gondola that was tethered to the embankment, he stepped in behind her and reached for the pole that would propel the boat away from his home. He thought for a moment he would throw the pole in the water, and keep the girl with him forever. But reason won out once more, and he pushed the boat away from the shoreline. She would resent him forever if he removed her from the light, and the precious boy she was so fond of in the world above. He did not want the little girl to hate him. Despite his best efforts, a tear escaped and made a solitary track down his face. Everyone else had hated him, why should this girl be any different? Kneeling down carefully in the bottom of the boat, he stroked her hair lightly with his gloved hand. The turmoil in the back of his head exploded, and it took all his effort to push reality away. She was not his; she could never be his little girl.

"Good-by, Christine."

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Author's note: poor, confused Phantom. :( Hope yall are enjoying this so far, and that it was worth the wait :P feel free to leave me a review with questions, Ill do my best to awnser them. Heck, feel free to leave a review, period. ;) once again, I dont own POTO or any of the cannon charecters therein, so please dont sue me, I will cry.