It was a beautiful day in Paris, France. At least, beautiful if your definition of the word was the sun beating down onto the pavement, giving almost everyone a sunburn if they stayed outside for long periods of time without wearing sun block. (Was sun block even invented then?) The intense heat made the people who hadn't run for the cover of shade perspire like crazy. If you liked those kind of days, it was absolutely gorgeous out. Otherwise, it would be better for you to stay inside.

Alas, it was a Monday, so the people who wanted to stay home and rest had to go back to work. In other words, there were a lot of unhappy people in the opera house that day.

Joshua Eddison was one of them. But not because of the heat. He desperately wanted to see Amme Eledhwen again, but she seemed to be avoiding him.

"Hey, Amme!" He called when he reached the theatre.

"Not now, Joshua," she called back. "I'm busy!"

"Amme, I need to talk to you right now!"

"Can't it wait until lunch?" She asked crossly.

He pulled into her dressing her and shut the door.

"Joshua Eddison! Please, this is a very bad time!" She went to reopen the door.

"Just wait, Amme. I really need to talk to you." Josh said quickly. "Leave the door closed, okay?"

Amme paused. "What do you want?"

"Well, Amme," he started awkwardly. "I've been hearing a lot of things about you and…someone else."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really. Absolutely fascinating. If this is all you wanted to talk about, Joshua, I'm leaving right now."

"No, it's not all!" He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "The…someone isn't…someone I think you should…be with, Amme."

Amme snorted. "You'll have to be much clearer than that if you want me to understand you, Joshua."

"The…someone is…who people call the Phantom of the Opera."

"And you think I should leave him."

Josh nodded eagerly.

"Well, I hate to break it to you, Joshua Eddison, but it's really none of your business."

"It is my business!" Josh exploded. "He's a maniac! He's a murder! He wears a mask! Do you know what people say he looks like underneath it? Or have you seen his entire face already? You know he kills people who take it off? He deserves to be stabbed and shot and burned and drowned and…"

"Are you done yet?" Amme interrupted peevishly.

"Not really."

"Too bad," She sighed. "I'm sorry, Joshua, but I still don't see how this is any of your concern, and unless you can convince me otherwise, stay out of it!"

Josh frowned. "Amme, be reasonable. I'm just trying to help you!"

"You're sticking your nose in my business, and I don't appreciate it!"

"You're tangling yourself with a monster!"

"He is not a monster!" She gasped. "Don't you call him that!"

"I'll call him whatever I bloody well want to!"

"Back off, Joshua Eddison. I mean it, you will back off right now."

"You can't tell me what to do!" Josh yelled.

"I can tell you want to do just as much as you can tell me." Amme glared at him. "Do we understand each other?"

"I'll get you for this," he growled. "I swear I will."

"Swear whatever you want. I've had enough of this conversation." She left.

-

"…and that's when I left."

Amme finished retelling her conversation with Joshua to Erik, who looked like he was trying his hardest not to laugh.

"Do you want me to kill him for you?" He snickered.

Clearly, he failed in his goal.

"I'd rather you didn't actually," the elf replied seriously. "But if I change my mind, you'll be the first to know."

"And I'll get right on it." His face became solemn. "Do you wonder what's underneath my mask?"

"Of course, but I think I'll survive the rest of my life without knowing, if you don't want to tell me."

Erik relaxed. "Thank you. I don't want you ever to find out."

She eyed him. "But I would prefer it if you trusted me enough to tell me."

"This isn't about trust!" He said, frustrated. "It's more…me being afraid of what you'll do?"

"That's the same as trust, genius."

The human sighed and shook his head. "It's not that I don't trust you, Amme. Really. It's just…whenever people see…it, they immediately hate and despise me. I can't let that happen between us."

"It won't," Amme promised. "I'm not like other people. You should know that by now. I mean, I'm an elf! I think of things differently than humans do."

"So I've noticed," said Erik dryly.

Amme stuck her nose in the air and looked away primly.

"Alright! Alright!" Erik chuckled. He put his hand under her chin and made her turn back to him. "You don't need to be so sensitive, darling."

"I'll be as sensitive as I want," she informed him.

He kissed her lightly on the nose. "If that's what you really truly desire, then so be it." Pulling her closer, he buried his face in her hair. "I love you so much."

Amme didn't answer; she never did whenever he said things like that.

-

Joshua caught up to her the next day as she left her dressing room (Carlotta had been demoted to Amme's understudy).

"I was wondering something, Amme. How do you manage to get down into the sewers?"

"Why do you care?"

"I told you," Josh smiled. "I'm just curious."

"And why are you so curious?"

"Why aren't you answering the question?"

Amme spun around to face him. "There's a reason why the Phantom lives underneath there, and the reason is he likes to be left alone."

"But he lets you live with him." Josh countered.

"That's different! He doesn't like a lot of people always interrupting him! He's not a very social person."

"So I've noticed," he sniggered. "Social people don't wear masks and live in sewers."

"Will you just shut up about where he lives and what he wears?" Amme snapped.

"I'm oh-so sorry to annoy you, Amme, dear, but I don't think you're seeing this man very clearly."

"I have better eyesight than you."

"I have twenty-twenty vision. And I wasn't talking about sight in the literal sense."

"Then what were you talking about?" She sighed.

"Amme, the man's a monster, and…"

"No, he's not!" She interrupted. "So what if bad things have happened to him. Bad things have happened to me! Does that make me a monster?"

"Amme, it's not that bad things have happened to him! It's that he's done horrible things!"

"So have I! Am I a monster?"

Josh blinked. "No, you haven't. Not as bad as him, anyways. You've never killed anyone."

"Yes, I have! I've probably killed more people than he has!"

He thought carefully. "In that case, you probably had a much better reason to kill them than just because someone took off his mask!"

Amme took a deep breath. "Do you know that for a fact?"

"Amme…that's…"

"Do you know that for a fact?!"

He gritted his teeth together. "No."
"Then this conversation is over. Repeat, over!"

-

Amme was walking back down to meet the Phantom when she sensed she was being followed. She turned, but saw no one. Frowning, she looked over her dressing room carefully, but there was certainly nobody there.

But the feeling didn't leave.

Amme shook her head; her senses had probably become out of whack ever since Emily was murdered. That would explain why she could never sense the Phantom.

She opened the mirror and followed the road down. The Phantom had shown her which way to reach the lake until he was certain she could make it on her own. And then a few times extra, just to be sure, as he said.

"Amme!"

Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear. Or in this case, think of the Phantom, and the Phantom shall appear.

Amme grinned. "I thought we were going to meet by the lake tonight."

"I got worried." He grabbed her and swung her around.

"Put me down!" She laughed dizzily.

He set her back on the ground. "I missed you."

"I've been gone for what? Ten hours?"

"Approximately." He chuckled. "I still missed you."

Amme raised a thin eyebrow. "You are a strange man. A very, very strange man."

"Yes, I know." He looked up the path she had just come from, frowning. "Did someone follow you here?"

"I'm not sure," she looked back too. "I thought so, but my sensing has been so off lately, I was afraid I was wrong."

"I don't think so," He shifted weight from one foot to the other. "I'm getting the same feeling."

"Well," Amme frowned. "I suppose I could go back and check?"

"No, let me."

Just as he started walking back, a man leapt out of the shadows and rushed at him. Before the Phantom had a chance to swear in seven different languages and get a good grip on his lasso, the man had torn off his mask.

Erik shrieked and covered the right side of his face, but not before Amme had gotten an excellent look as to why he always kept it covered.

His skin was red, raw, and shiny, but also very thin, and seemed to cling to his bone, as if decaying slowly. His eye protruded quite a lot, but that was only to be expected because there wasn't enough flesh around it to make it appear normal.

Furiously, he took his hand away and grabbed the Punjab lasso. The other man spluttered, "It was nothing personal! Really! He promised money! More than I'd be able to make in a life…" he was cut off by the rope tightened around his neck.

"No!" Amme screamed. She took hold of the Phantom's arm and yanked hard. "Let him go! He said he was paid! It's not his fault!"

But her pleas had come too late: the man was dead.

Amme stared at the body for several seconds with wide, horrified eyes. But when they turned to the Phantom, the horror had turned to fury.

Erik, who was very busy making sure his mask was in place, didn't notice her anger until she hissed, "How could you?"

He looked up, confused. "Excuse me?"

"How could you do something like that?" She cried.

"Very easily. Do you want me to teach you how?"

Amme shuddered.

"What's wrong with you?" Erik said, exasperated. "You didn't mind when I killed Leclerc or Erland!"

"That was different!" She shot back. "This man didn't do anything to you!"

"He took off my mask. I really don't like that."

Amme gaped at him. "And that deserves death?"

"Depends on who does it."

"Well, it shouldn't! What makes this man different from whoever else took off that mask and managed to live?"

"The other person was Christine," Erik said coldly. "And she's not someone I'm going to kill anytime soon."

"Would you kill me if I took it off?" Amme challenged.

"Certainly not! But I love you, so that's different."

She took a deep breath. It didn't succeed in calming her. "He said someone had paid him to do this. Why didn't you wait to see who did that, and then kill him?"

"Because this idiot had agreed to it in the first place. He did it of his own free will, and no one made him do anything."

"Maybe he needed the money!"

"No, actually, he doesn't. Despite what you think, Amme, I do know who I just killed, and I also know he didn't need any money whatsoever. And I have a fairly good idea who paid him."

"And that makes it justified for taking someone's life?"

Erik shrugged. "Perhaps."

"You make me sick," Amme snarled. "If this is really how you treat people…it's one thing to hear about it from Joshua, it's another to see it happen."

"Is this really about what I did, or how I look?" The Phantom demanded.

"Where does your appearance fit into this?" She hissed.

"It's everything! It's why I wear a mask, why I live down here in the bloody opera house sewers in the first bloody place! It's why I killed him; so you wouldn't see it!"

"That's what you care about?" Amme said in disbelief. "That's what you blame everything on? I never would have thought you so vain before. But then again, I never would have supposed you'd do something like this before, either."

"Amme…" Erik started to say, reaching out to touch her.

Amme smacked his hand away. "I'm leaving. I'm not coming back."

"You've said that before, and look where it got you."

"That was different. I know exactly what I'm doing this time." She started to leave. Without turning around, she said, "Stay away from me, or I swear, I'll stab you."

"So if I kill someone, it's wrong, but it's fine for you to kill me? Is that it, Amme Eledhwen?" Erik shouted after her.

Amme never answered.