It took me forever, but I've finally got an idea of what to do next! I'm so proud of myself.

He left her, locking the door behind him. She watched him go. She didn't want to see him after what he'd done to her, but..he asked her not to hate him. That was never a request she had ever gotten before. She would not have followed through with it though. She would hate him to the ends of the Earth, but when she looked into his eyes, they showed such desperation she could not have gone against him.

Lorna cried for few more minutes, then crawled over to the bed, leaving her eye patch behind. Heaving herself onto it, she had barely just laid her head down when sleep took her from exhaustion.

Fire. And screaming. A young Lorna ran through a house, feeling her way in smoke, her face free from any blemish. Flames flickered everywhere in sight. Every second the flames grew brighter and got closer, teasing her skin with the heat it produced.

"Lorna!" a female voice screamed, making Lorna run faster down the hall, tripping every few steps.

"No! Lorna, run away!" She ignored the voice going deeper into the flame engulfed house. She stopped at the door of her father's study, the source of the screaming. Gulping away her fear, she threw open the door. What she saw, she did not expect. She had thought that someone had snuck in and attacked her mother, but not this. Her father wouldn't do this. Not...not her father.

"Papa!" She screamed in terror at the sight before her. Her father was shoving her mother into the large fireplace in the study. Her mother had been a beautiful woman, dark blonde hair streaming down her back and deep yellow, doe eyes. But now her face was bruised and swelled, adorned with cuts and scratches. Her eyes were stark with fear and hatred for the man before her. Once Lorna made her appearance, her mother screamed for her to run and get away.

The man, on the other hand, her father, turned to meet her eyes with a wicked grin. His normally well done brown hair had fallen around his face. His clothes were disheveled and his eyes were not the ones Lorna had known for the few years of life she'd lived.

"My dearest, Lorna. Come to watch this wench suffer, my sweet daughter?" He walked toward the stricken girl, dragging his wife by the arm with him. Lorna screeched when he gripped her arm, pulling her as well to the hearth.

"Let her go, you monster!" the blonde yelled at him. She wretched her arm from his grasp and pulled Lorna to her. He smirked at them both.

"My wife. And my daughter. What a sight to behold!" He waved his arms around the room wildly. The flames continued to consume the study, surrounding the trio. He stepped toward the mother and daughter.

"Stay away from me!" Lorna screeched at him. Instantly he lost his audacious smile.

"My dear. It seems that your daughter has taken up being the same as you." He was close now, too close. Lorna's mother screamed as he jerked her away by her hair. Lorna was about to run away, but a flaming, wooden beam fell, blocking the door. She heard a gunshot, and when she turned her mother lay, dead, on the ground.

"Mother!" Lorna bawled. She glared at the man in front of her. "You monster!"

"Oh? You are my daughter," He grabbed her and yanked her to the fireplace, "So why don't you be a monster as well!"

"NO!"

Lorna flipped into a sitting position, screaming. Once realizing it was just a dream, she shoved her face into her hands, sobbing. She sat and sobbed and that's what she did for hours on end until a door slammed somewhere in the phantom's lair. Her room's door was swung open by an angry, masked man.

"Will your consistent wailing ever end, woman!?" Erik yelled, striding to the edge of the bed, "Will it?! Or must I shut you up myself!?" Lorna continued to stare at her hands, her eyes refusing to cease their tears.

"Monsieur Phantom?" Lorna asked, gradually lifting her head to grant Erik eye contact. His anger subsided only little at her grief-stricken eye, not bothering to mention that her face was bare to him. "Have you ever felt the love of a parent?"

"No, and I'm not about to tell you of my childhood life, if that's what you're leading at." Erik sat at the edge of the bed.

"You are lucky then, monsieur."

"How- How is that lucky? From what I've learned, my past was not anything of that sort."

"Because you don't know the pain of that love being ripped from you." Lorna spit out to him. "And now I am to be victim of your sick obsession of whatever it is about me!" Erik was taken aback by her words and that too familiar anger was rising up once again.

"My sick obsession then? If you are to be my victim, then you shall do whatever I ask of you." Erik spoke, slowly getting louder.

"And what shall I do for you then, master?" she spat at him, giving him a defying glare. He leaned over to her and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, speaking into her ear.

"Whatever I ask of you."

And what shall you ask of her, Erik? What indeed. That I wish I knew right now, dear reader, but I don't. Well, in days I'll figure it out.

May your feet never fall of and regrow as cactuses.