Ok, this is a new story…. What if the final lair scene happened differently? What if during Don Juan Triumphant, Erik nor Christine had not shown up, and the Chandelier had not come down? What will happen when the police still come barging in? Will eventually turn into a LND alternate story…. So please review.

Christine's POV

I knelt there in the opera house chapel, my body trembling with fear…. I was dressed in my costume for my performance tonight in Erik's opera. I was so scared…. I didn't want to sing, but Raoul, he was making me…. What lover makes their future wife participate in something that would threaten their life? What did Raoul think I was? A guinea pig? Bait? Andre and Firmin wanted Erik caught, and out of their lives for good, and were using me to get him… I heard foot steps behind me, only to see Raoul walking in. No doubt he wanted to make sure I was still here and not running away in fear….

"It's show time, Christine…"

I had loved this boy ever since I was a child, but what he was doing to me now…. Oh, this wasn't my Raoul, the Raoul I knew…. He was treating me like nothing more than a slab of bait to catch the Phantom of the Opera; a man who was condemned to walk the earth alone… a man who only killed out of protection for himself and me.

"I… I can't do this Raoul…please…" I begged him, shedding a few tears as I did so.

He touched my shoulder, and turned me around to face him…. He tried to calm me down by singing ever so softly to me, but his voice wasn't anywhere as soothing as my angel's….

"You said yourself…he was nothing but a man…

Yet while he lives he will haunt us till we're dead…"

Raoul was talking nonsense… Erik would never hurt me in anyway. He cared for me like a lover cares for their wife….and yet, I was not. He would never put me in harms way like Raoul was doing now. Raoul was lying!

"Twisted every way what answer can I give?

Am I to risk myself to get the chance to live?

Can I betray the man who once inspired my voice?"

I paused, and crashed my face into my hands…. But then Raoul began to sing again. His voice was angry and strict…not soft like it had once been.

"He kills without a thought

He murders all that's good..

Christine you can't refuse…"

I turned to him, and filled in the rest for him.

"And yet I wish I could

Oh god- If I agree what horrors wait for me?

In this, the Phantom's opera…"

"Get him out of your head, and be on that stage in five minutes…. We have a demon to trap!"

Raoul had frightened me… He was angry at what I had said, and stormed off, leaving me alone in the chapel. I poured my heart and soul into my hands, drowning out the horrible thoughts of what might happen if I deny Raoul… But then again, what would happen to Erik? What would happen to my sweet angel of music if he appeared during my performance… Napoleon's whole army was going to be there waiting for him with guns loaded and ready to fire….. I had to warn him…. I knew I only had a few minutes before Raoul was going to be back to drag me on stage… My angel was not as Raoul said he was. The angel I knew was a lonely man who loved me eternally…. He would never do harm to me no matter what, I knew this. I gathered to my feet, and carried my green skirts as I slipped through the corridors and down the cold moist stairs to reach Erik's lair… When I reached the misty lake, I heard the pounding of the Erik's organ… He had once played beautiful symphonies upon those ivory keys, but now the music was anything but beautiful… It was angry and full of hatred. The gondola was no where to be seen, but I couldn't turn back now… I had come so far as to just turn around and go back up to the opera house.

I removed my ballet slippers, and carried them as I stepped into the cold waters of the lake… I shivered as I continued to walk the distance I had once traveled in with Erik steering the gondola. The water came up to my knees, and I could feel them starting to go completely numb by the time I reached the candlelight of his lair….. I pressed myself against the iron gate that encaged his lair from any harm, and shivered…..

My presence sent an alarm off within the lair, and Erik's angry music immediately stopped and moments later I saw him appear over the stairway that led to his bedroom; a place I was solemnly forbidden to enter… When he realized it was me at the other end of the gate, he gasped, and hurried to lift the it….. My angel didn't hesitate on hurrying into the freezing water, and rushed over to me… I collapsed into his strong yet skeletal arms, shivering from how cold the water was…

"Christine, my dear…. You should not have come. Look at you, you're freezing…"

His velvety voice warned me about catching pneumonia as he assisted me to the Louis-Philippe room, a room which had become my own chambers….

"You should have stayed away…" he growled. "You should have just stayed up there where it's safe.."

My angel wrapped a blanket around my shivering body, and rubbed the warmth against me.

"Erik, I had to come. I had to warn you…"

His white mask glowed within the dim candlelight, and his golden eyes were lit with anticipation….

"Warn Erik about what?"

"There's an army of police waiting for you. They are waiting for you to show yourself at tonight's performance…"

My angel crossed his arms, and looked down at me with a face filled with such hurt.

"Why? Why would you come warn your poor Erik about this? You could be free from me? isn't that what you want? To be free from this disgusting face? To be free from this angel who burns in hell!"

Erik tossed over my nightstand while in such a rage, causing me to gasp and cower into the thick blanket that was wrapped around me….

He then dropped to his knees in one swift motion, and began pouring his tears into his boney skeletal hands….

"Nobody loves poor Erik…. His own mother couldn't even share one kind word or kiss to her own flesh and blood."

I couldn't help but shed a few tears upon hearing this…. Just the sight of him on his knees was enough to make me cry…

"You would leave Erik forever." he sobbed. "You would leave him to be alone for the rest of his lonely lived life… Erik only ever wishes for a living wife….She could do anything she wants with poor Erik…."

As my Erik continued to cry, I slowly reached over and touched his shoulder. He gasped at the only contact I had ever made with him, as if no one had ever touched him before….

"You willingly dare to touch Erik's monstrous body?…."

"You never disgust me, Erik…. Never for one moment does your body ever disgust me…"

His shoulder was bony and cold, but I never recoiled from it… God only knew what would happen if I did.

Erik let out a whimpering cry as he stood to his feet, and turned away to the only mirror I had hanging within my room.

"You must return now….. Erik cannot bear to see Christine showing a monster pity."

I didn't want to return. Raoul was waiting for me to sing on stage to lure Erik into his death… I couldn't, and I wouldn't.

"Angel, I do not want you to die…. I will not return to the world above to see you taken down by those horrible men…"

I saw Erik squeeze his fists in such anger before smashing the mirror into a million pieces, the shards cutting away at his yellowish hand… I cowered back to the bed, and watched as he ran his bleeding hands into the dark strands he had on his head….

"But Christine does not understand!" he cried. "Erik is dying! His heart is bleeding for the only woman he has ever loved…. For Erik knows that she cannot love him back… She only pities the monster who has taught her to sing like an angel…"

I knelt down to his side, and placed my hand nervously to his icy cheek….. He gasped at the warm sensation, and lifted his trembling bloody hand to mine, but dared not to touch it….

"Please don't leave your poor Erik…." he cried. "Stay with him forever…."

I didn't answer him… How could I? Did I still possibly love Raoul? I tore a piece of my skirt off, and gently took his hands in mine, and bound them tightly to stop the bleeding….and then…. And then I did something I had no idea why I did it…. I pressed his bony, cold and slender fingers to my lips, and pressed a simple kiss to each of them. Why had I done such a thing? Perhaps it was to kiss away any pain he was feeling from the glass….. My father had done the same when I was hurt…. But why was I doing it now? Erik sighed orgasmically as my soft warm lips met with his flesh…. Had he never had something like this done to him before?

His trembling hands lifted themselves bravely, and placed themselves into my dark curls…. His fingers twisted around their warmth, and once more he gasped.

"Erik has never felt a woman's hair before…. Women never dare come close to him…"

I had never known about the simplicities in life that Erik never had. He needed me more than ever… He only wanted things every other man could have… And who was I to deny him such things? In my heart I knew there was love for him, but what about Raoul? Could I love Erik wholly? There had only been one other time I had seen his face, and I had screamed… God, I had screamed into his face like some rabid animal…. I needed to know… I needed to know if I could love him….

His eyes were closed, taking in the feeling of his slender fingers intertwining within my curls… This was my chance… I slowly lifted my fingers to his mask, and pulled it away before he could stop me….

I opened my eyes, and gazed upon his face, biting down on my lip to drown out the screams that wanted to come…. His face was entirely twisted, there were high ridges and discolored bumps surrounded by blue and purple veins… His nose, there was no nose.. Only two holes where one should have been… And on the side of his head was a misshapen hole, with part of his skull exposing itself…. Erik's eyes were full of tears, and I knew it was because of the way my face looked… But it wasn't his face that I loved, it was him… He was no different with the mask on or off… What I loved was inside him… He closed his eyes, awaiting the scream that would pierce his infected ear drums, but that scream never came…. Soon, I no longer needed to bite my lip, because I no longer had the urgency to scream….

Instead, I crashed my lips up against his malformed ones, and kissed him….. His arms extended towards my back, and he gasped as if heaven was upon him… His lips were frozen, and did not move to mesh with mine. He wouldn't kiss me…. Perhaps it was because he didn't know how to…

I drew my eyes to meet his, and placed my hand back on his malformed cheek….

"Kiss me…" I breathlessly gasped.

"Erik does not know how to kiss a woman…." he cried. "Erik has never kissed anything before…"

I boosted myself up to my knees, and replaced my lips back to his…. Suddenly his lips began to twitch slowly, and soon, they were meshing with mine…. Erik was kissing me… He was mimicking my every move. I expected to hate any sort of intimacy with Erik, but that was hardly the case. His kisses were better than the ones Raoul had given me, and I wanted more…. I bravely darted my tongue into his Antarctic mouth, and moaned for the first time….

"Oh, Christine…." was the soft gasp that escaped his lips as our tongues twisted with one another.

I loved this man…. I loved him more than Raoul… Never wanting to stop kissing him was enough to explain it. I broke away to notice his chest was heaving….. For the first time, I saw him smile… Erik had never smiled at me…. And I believed it to be the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

"Erik…."

"Y…Yes Christine?"

I smiled at his nervousness, and opened my mouth to say the three words I knew I could now say to him..

"I…I..Lo.."

But I never got to finish the sentence, for Erik's alarm went off causing him to dart to his feet… Someone was coming into the lair… I thought it to be the Persian perhaps, but that was hardly the case…. I heard the sounds of an angry mob getting closer….

Erik grabbed me, and pushed me under the bed.

"Erik demands that you stay put…" he replied, grabbing his lasso…

He was about to leave the Louis-Philippe room, when Raoul suddenly appeared at the doorway, blocking Erik's path… But that's not all, behind him were at least five police men…

"Going somewhere, demon?"

Erik gripped the lasso in his hand, and took a step backwards…

"Afraid are we? I'm only going to ask you once… Where is Christine?"

"I haven't seen her…" was all Erik said…

"You lie…. I last saw her in the chapel… No body else has seen her… So where is she?"

"I don't know…"

And it was then that Raoul pulled out a metal pipe from behind him, and held it firmly within his hands…

"It's alright… I'll get down to why I came here anyway…"

"What are you going to do? Arrest Erik?" Erik laughed.

Raoul laughed.

"Arrest you? No, we came to kill you…."

I wanted to gasp, but placed my hand over my mouth to keep quiet. The men came walking into the Louis-Philippe room carrying blunt objects… Oh, god, where were their guns? Had they really come to torture my angel?

A police man charged towards Erik, who wrapped his lasso around the man's neck, pulling it tight… but as he was doing so, Raoul violently hit Erik over the head with the pipe, causing him to drop to his knees….

"Like I've said before… put a bullet through him, and he'll bleed like any other man. This is no ghost…."

From on the floor, Erik opened his eyes, and looked at me… My eyes were full of tears, but what could I do?

All the men, including Raoul ganged up on my poor Erik, and began bashing him with the objects…. Raoul continued to hit Erik in the face with the pipe… I wanted to scream, how badly I wanted to scream, but if I did, there was no saving Erik once Raoul was gone…. Soon everything had stopped, and my Erik was left hardly breathing, and bleeding all over the floor….

Raoul dropped the pipe, and it made a loud clunk on the floor, causing me to flinch…

"Let's finish the job…"

My poor Erik was drug out of the room by his legs, and I watched as he disappeared…. I came out from hiding underneath the bed, only to spot the men throwing Erik into the misty lake…

"And now he can live in the waters he had crossed to call this place home…" growled Raoul from the shore, watching Erik's lifeless body slowly drift into the water…

"What about Ms. Daae?" asked one of the men.

"She's obviously not here…. Let's go up to her dressing room. She's probably hiding."

I waited until Raoul and the men were truly gone, before rushing into the water, and pulling Erik's body out of it…. He was hardly breathing, and shivering tremendously….His head was bleeding, and to make matters worse, he could hardly stand up on his own…. I drug him up the stairs to the only place that was strictly forbidden to me in his lair, and pushed open the door…. I was now in his room, but this…. This was no bedroom… There was a piano on one side of the room, and on the other, a coffin…. I gasped, and looked inside of it to notice that it was lined with thick bedding and covers… My angel's flesh was turning a light blue color, and trembling with every fiber within him…. I tore off his black jacket, and undid the buttons of his white shirt… Only when I rolled it off his shoulders, I noticed his chest, shoulders and arms were covered in hideous scars… There wasn't a single part of him that was left unscathed…. I put this aside me, and pulled his soaking wet trousers off of him, leaving him dressed in nothing but his skivvies… I placed his broken shaking body down into the bedding of his coffin and wrapped every blanket I could find around his cold body… His body had been terribly bruised from how many bashes it had taken…. But Raoul made sure that his face wasn't left alone…. Both of his eyes were swollen, and looked terribly painful….. On top of that, his jaw had been busted up…. I moved as quickly as possible, and rummaged through his medicine cabinet, luckily to find a half filled bottle of brandy….. I folded a wash cloth, and soaked it in the brandy before brining it back out and placing it across both of his eyes….. His shivering had stopped, and I heard a slight grown emerge from his throat after placing the cloth over his eyes…

I stood over him for a while, rubbing his fingers with my own….I knew he would live, but in order to do so, we would have to move quickly…. But for the time being, I knew where I needed to be…. Surely if Raoul couldn't find me above ground, he was going to come back down here…. I fluffed Erik's pillow behind his swollen head one last time, and pressed my lips gently against his.

"I need to go up above, but only for a short time…. Get some rest, and I promise I'll come back…"

I needed to go back upstairs to prove that I had been hiding….and once proven safe with Raoul, I would return to my angel, and leave Paris forever…Oh, Erik….I promise to come back…. I promise you…

And so the adventure begins!

Ok, please let me know what you think… Thanks again everyone! More to come soon!