~ White Lily, Blue Ribbon ~

"THEY WHAT!"

The Phantom had been sitting at his organ when Evie told him of the manager's decision. Now he was standing, gloved fists shaking in anger. Evie herself was backed against the wall, cheeks ashen in the face of his fury.

"I'm- not the lead s-soprano any more." she stuttered, looking at her shoes. He only stared at her for a moment or two in mute rage. Then whirled around, his arm sweeping though several glass vases, sending them crashing to the floor. Evie flinched, averting her face. He took a moment or two to catch his breath and suppress his anger, hand on the organ to steady himself.

"Fools!" he roared, banging both fists against the wood. "You are the only soprano in this pathetic little Opera House with the ability-"

"Phantom, please." her quiet whimper cut off his torrent of anger so completely it left him a little stunned. There were frightened tears running down her face. He slowly turned back to her, lowering his fists. "D-don't shout... Please." she whispered.

"Evie..." his voice was strained, "This is an injustice..."

"It's alright, really it is." she pleaded, shaking her head. "I never wanted to be the lead anyway, but..." she took a deep shuddering breath, looking up and wiping the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve. "This doesn't mean I can't have lessons any more, does it?" her voice trembled and his face softened.

Evie. It never failed to surprise him, she never failed to throw him off-balance. Evie, who feared he would leave her...

"Of course not." he breathed and slowly walked over to her. He rested a hand on her shoulder. "You may come here until you no longer wish it." She wound her arms tight around his waist, burying her face in his shirt as if she wanted to hide her face from him. He ran a gloved hand over her hair, words stuck in his throat.

However it eventually came to him, what he wanted to say, and he leant down, far enough to whisper in her ear. "... My name is- ...Erik."

xXx

Now that Evie was no longer required for rehearsals, having been removed from the position of lead soprano, she had a lot of free time. Whilst it was true that to let her continue, knowing now the identity of her tutor was out of the question, rehearsals keenly felt her absence. They had two options at that point in time; train another young girl to sing, or have Victoria take over. At present, they were desperately trying the first option, and it was not going as well as one would hope.

The poor thing tried her best, knowing everyone's hopes were pinned on her, but that didn't stop people exchanging long-suffering glances when her back was turned. It didn't help that the lead tenor was aging rapidly either, and was considering retirement. It was speculated he only hung around because he felt guilty about adding to the opera house's troubles.

Evie, by contrast, was having a grand old time. She spent the majority of her days now holed away in the Phantom's tower, methodically going through all the sheet music he kept in his trunks, picking it out on the piano. Sometimes Erik would play it with her, but often Evie would arrive while the Phantom was out, and he would return to find her at the piano, already surrounded by various sheets of music he had written over the course of his life- it was always his music, never by anyone else. (She had confided in him not long after the opening night that it was by imagining she was singing his music, she was able to summon the emotion he had been after for so long.)

One such day he arrived home to find her curled up in her nest, prepared to scold him for being later than usual. She stopped, however, when she noticed what had brought with him; In his arms was a bouquet of white calla lilies. Her face lit up in delight and curiosity.

"Not roses?" she inquired. On the visible half of his face there was a mysterious little smile.

"Not today." he eventually said, hanging up his cape. "I thought it was time for something new."

"After all this time?" she murmured for no reason in particular. Still, she scrambled to her feet, straightening her dress and then pattered over to him, taking the bunch of flowers from his arms. She started sifting through the room to find a suitable vase, as he went to the organ and sat down. She found one, a blue ceramic one, underneath a stack of papers. He frowned slightly- he didn't like that vase- but when she placed the flowers in it he had to admit they complimented each other in quite a charming fashion. He smiled- the girl had an artist's eye.

She set the vase on the little table in front of his mirrors in silence. Then a strange change came over her, as she arranged them. Her muscles stiffened and it felt as if she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. "Lilies mean death, you know." she said, her tone falsely light and casual. "I don't know why. They don't have thorns like roses do. They don't make you bleed..." She ran a finger along the stem of one. "And when they die, rose petals shrivel and fall out. Make a mess all over the place. But lilies just stay. Only look like they've been burnt at the edges..."

The Phantom stared at her, puzzled by her words. She'd never had a problem with roses before now... but he couldn't help but feel that wasn't what this was about. There was another layer of meaning underneath it. He was saved the effort of puzzling it out when she turned around and delivered the one line perfectly crafted to ruin his evening.

"Erik... may I see your face?"

He instinctively flinched at her words and his hand went protectively to his mask. "No."

"May I please?"

"No."

Her eyes filled with tears. "stop that." he said. He knew perfectly well that she had been trained to cry at the drop of a hat. She scowled, and was silent for a long time.
"What are you so afraid of?" her voice was low and insidious.

And suddenly the only thing the Phantom could see was the look on Christine's face when she had ripped his mask from him. Her eyes filled with terror and repulsion. Stranger than you dreamt it... can you even bear to look? He didn't think he could handle it if Evie was driven away as well. Not after all this time and effort...

And yet, the angry, determined look in her eyes said that keeping her in the dark would have exactly the same effect.

And so it was that the Phantom of the Opera found himself slowly, hesitantly lifting the white mask from his face.

Then it was off.

He waited for the familiar gasp, the involuntary step away, even aversion of the eyes, but it never came. In fact, a completely different expression currently graced the little girl's face.

Disappointment?

He frowned in confusion, hand automatically going to his face. It felt the same. At his expression, Evie covered her mouth with her hand, making a stifled squeaking noise. She was laughing?

"What?"

"Oh Erik." she sighed. "I thought it was going to be so much worse."

"-Worse?" he looked in one of his cracked mirrors- his face certainly hadn't changed. He looked back at Evie, perplexed, "How- ...Could it be worse?" He stammered, his mind numb in surprise.

"Oh. Lots of ways." she said, coming over to sit at the foot of his stool and shrugging. "Well at first I was imagining horrible boils, or warts or something." she began explaining, "but then I though maybe you'd been in a horrible fight and it was covered in scars, or maybe part of your nose was missing or something. And then I had this brilliant idea that maybe your skin had melted off and the tendons and bones were visible from underneath. So you see this," she gestured to his disfigurement, "is really just a bad sunburn compared to what I had imagined."

He stared at her, dumbstruck, for quite a long while. "You are... and incredibly strange child." he said and she looked a little taken aback. "Despite all this you weren't afraid at all?" she frowned in confusion.

"Should I have been? You didn't seem to mean me any harm..."

"But every other person ever to have seen this face has been terrified." His world no longer made sense. That clear line which had defined him for so long was now blurry, and he didn't quite know what to do.

"Really?" She replied, "How disappointing. Don't the French have any stomach for the gruesome?" she playfully shoved his knee. He absently noticed she had no qualm in touching him. "I've been sneaking penny dreadfuls out of the kitchens since I could read. Bas used to get them for us. Mother doesn't like me reading them..." he was vaguely aware she was teasing him, but it didn't really bother him- he hardly noticed at all.

""You imagined me as some incredibly hideous monster." he said, still in shock. "and you weren't at all afraid?" she looked so fragile. How could so such a tiny creature be so brave?

"Monster?" Evie repeated. There was a long silence, before she laughed, all of a sudden bitter. "No." her expression turned dark as she looked out the clock face, into the square below. There was another long pause, before she started to speak again. "A monster is someone who deceives you. Someone beautiful and good on the outside, who turns on you the moment no one is around to see. And it's alright because its good for you. And she knows what's good for you, because she's beautiful and good. They don't write about that kind of monster in books."

"Evie..." he said, at a loss for words. He ran a hand through her thick raven hair. At last he spoke when he finally felt he could trust his voice. "Shall we- shall we begin with scales?"

xXx

The Phantom was trying to squeeze through a particularly tight passage in the walls of the opera house one day, when he first heard the voices. He stopped, frowning when he first heard the word 'Evelyn' issuing from somewhere nearby and remained stock still, ears pricked for anything more.

The muted sound of voices led him a couple paces away to where he found a dusty old grate in the floor. From his position it appeared he had a birds eye view of Moretti's main office. Delighted at his discovery and curious as to why he hadn't found it before, he peered into the room beyond to see Moretti, the Maestro and Victoria all crowded around the desk, having what appeared to be a heated discussion.

"The answer is staring us in the face!" the Maestro said. "We have him in the palm of our hand as long as Evelyn is still learning from him! She knows his secrets! She knows where he hides! Think of it- to be finally rid of him!" The Phantom didn't like this. He didn't like this at all.

Not that Evie would ever betray him. She barely left his side, these days. But the conspiring reminded him forcefully of his last days at the Opera Populaire; something he didn't really like being reminded of. It set him on edge. Made him suspicious and distrustful.

"You're playing in dangerous waters here, old man." he whispered to himself. Moretti was talking now.

"Yes but you have to admit the news of an 'Opera Ghost' is generating a lot of interest. Revenue since the ball has increased by almost double-"

"God damn it Moretti!" the Maestro cried, slamming his fists on the table, "there will still be intrigue after we have caught him! We could devise stunts of our own. Stunts-" he continued, "that don't involve people dying." Moretti was silent for a moment, before he murmured something that the Phantom couldn't quite make out.

"Oh I think she will." said Victoria suddenly, who up until then had been uncharacteristically quiet. "I have some leverage, you might say. Something to offer her in exchange."
"What?" asked the two men in unison. The phantom could almost hear the smirk in her voice
"The boy stage hand. Sebastian."

xXx

It was a couple days later that the Phantom saw Evie for the last time.

She was sitting at his organ, sheet music scattered around her. His music. She could never betray him. It made him smile as he took off his cape, just having arrived back from running an errand- he was nearly out of oil for his lamps.

The smile slid from his face, however, when he heard what she sang. "Past all thought of right or wrong. One final question; How long should we two wait before we're one?"

The sound of her voice singing those words filled him with an inexplicable burning anger. She should not have found that music. How dare she sing that song! That song that had meant to him so much pain? He felt betrayed; that she should be exposed to that side of him that he was most ashamed of. It infuriated him.

He moved towards the organ and she paused when he approached, looking up and smiling in greeting. He slammed the lid of the organ closed. She jumped in her seat and stared at him in utter shock. He was leaning against the organ, his eyes closed and his face stony. She was silent, alarmed and even frightened by his sudden change. When he finally spoke his voice was soft; controlled.

"You will never play, or sing that song."

"But-"

"Never." his tone was a little more harsh. Evie frowned, her expression indignant.

"Why not?" she shot. He felt his face burn. She didn't understand it at all.

"It is... inappropriate for a child of your age." he finally said, voice shaking from the effort it took to remain calm. Evie, stubborn as she was, was not making that easy. She narrowed her eyes

"There's more to it than that, isn't there." she said darkly, scrutinising his face. He remained silent so as not to shout, turning his back on her. Evie wasn't to be deterred. "It was her, wasn't it. The girl in Paris. The one you ran away from."

"Do not talk about what you do not understand." he snapped, voice rising in volume. Evie raised her own voice to match. She was sick of him keeping secrets, especially when she didn't keep any from him.

"It bothers you to hear me sing it because it reminds you of her, doesn't it!"

"I said-"

"That's what it says on the music here!" she threw the red-bound score at his feet in anger. "Christine Daee! So when were you going to tell me about her, huh? Were you? I bet-"

Crash.

In a split second the back of his fist connected with the side of her face, sending her crashing into the mirrors. A couple fragments broke off and fell on her, cutting her hands when she used them to cover her face.

For a long time he only stood there, fists still shaking in righteous rage. She lowered her shaking hands and looked at him from where she had landed on the floor, tear-filled eyes wide in fear- That fear that he was so used to by now, but that Evie had never shown. Until now.

"Get out." he whispered, turning his back on her. After a moment he heard the trap-door slam behind him. It took all his self control not to put his fist through the clock face.

He should have known. He should never have taken her in. He had known it would end like this. And now the three conspirators had all that they needed to sniff him out. After a scene like that, Evie would no doubt betray him in a heart beat. The thought made him blind with fury. After all he had done for her! And all because of that one, damned piece of music that had ruined everything last time. He picked up the offending score and threw it into a corner of the room.

He didn't know how Evie had found it, or where it had even been. He didn't know how long it would take for her to turn him in, how long he had to clear out before they set the dogs on him. There was one thing he did know, however.

She would not be back.

A/N: I think insidious is my new favourite word.

Also, Evie's reaction to the Phantom's face in this fic is dedicated to all the hard-core Phantom fans who were disappointed in the movie's watered-down portrayal of Erik's disfigurement. The 'bad sunburn' line was directly taken from them, actually. I personally don't mind the movie's portrayal- keeping it schmick and sexy never goes down badly- but for those of you who did, this one is for you =P

Uhhh... I think thats all my comments for this chapter. I'd sure be interested in hearing yours though. *rim-shot* =D

Lots of love,
CANDY