A/N: He, I'm back with a new chapter. This chapter is going to be extra special as it will be written in third person, but from Erik's point of view! I think he deserves a little bit of back story as to what happened to him and his feelings towards Annika. I thank my reviewer from a bit back named katie for this, as I shot her down earlier and I think she had a valid point.

After this chapter, the normal writing format will resume, for now, please enjoy! If you like these kinds of chapters, I will do more of them, if not, let me know please!

Just as a last thing, this chapter contains a HUGE reference to a very obscure fandom that I love. If you can catch it, PM me so we can fangirl!

Chapter Nine: Eventually

My darling Annika, I would cross a sea of darkness just to-

The steady scratching of pen on paper halted suddenly as Erik growled in his throat. He picked up the thick, yellowing piece of parchment and quickly crumpled it in his pale hand. Madame Giry had always told him since he was quite young that if he felt angry or sad, that he should write down his feelings. Paper had coated the floor of his then primitive lair as he did just that. Dark words were written on all of them in a slanted scrawl that could only be achieved if one were pressing down on the paper very hard. The words themselves were dark as well, full of hate and bitterness towards his mother and step-father.

Yet, as Erik sat behind his desk on the top floor of the building in the center of Phantasma, despite all of the pain and the torture he had been through in the last seven years, he did not feel angry at his Annie. In the dim candlelight, in the long hours after the dark of night had settled over the noisy theme park, he allowed himself to remember the time he held her and told her of Persia. The look in her eyes was a well of unrecognizable emotions when he let himself look at her that day. He did not allow himself to look again.

She had said something, that much he knew, but he did not know what. He wished that he had pried just a little bit more, that he had shown her something other than coldness. But there was ice in Erik's heart. Ice from the cold treatment of others, and from the harshness of the world outside his precious Opera Populaire. If he had cared just the smallest bit for her, visibly, in a way that she could see, perhaps she might have found a way back to him.

In the candlelight, he allowed himself to love her once more, as he had when the flickering torches burned brightly in his lair, and organ music played by his muse filled the small amount of space between them.

There was an innocence to her, as she was but a child when they first met, but there was a darkness. He did not know why she suffered from voices in her head, but mockery and scoffs would not cure madness. For Annika was mad, Erik knew that, but then again, so was he. How could he possibly judge her when he was so unhinged? Perhaps they were meant to be together because of that. Still, his heart, he thought, was ugly and as twisted as his face.

To him, Annika had a lovely heart, but a bitter sort of sadness cloaked it, hiding it well and making her look as broken on the outside as on the inside when she thought that not a soul was looking. Erik was always looking.

Who would not wish to look at her? Faced with the world and a new idea, her eyes sparkled and her cheeks grew a light pink as opposed to the pallid tone that it usually took on. She would tie up her hair when she decided to play his organ, piling the river of blonde locks behind her head. She was beautiful, naturally, but more so on the inside.

She had looked at him and swallowed her scream. It broke Erik's heart. She held his hand, she wanted to touch him. Her need was physical and she enjoyed 'cuddling' as Meg has called it once or twice. It was strange and foreign to Erik, but Annika's happiness was a top priority.

He had to force himself to stop thinking such thoughts. Annika was dead. She died and she left him.

That thought alone was enough to have him crumpling up a new piece of paper, despite the lack of words. They had almost escaped, they were almost free, but she had left him, she had gone back.

In his nightmares, Erik remembered walking back to his lair after the mob had ransacked it. His heart felt far too restrained in his chest when he saw that the animals had smashed his organ to pieces. Fragments of the ivory keys were everywhere and his music was wet and ruined. For a moment, he forgot about Annika and allowed himself to grieve for his first love. Such beautiful melodies that would never be heard. They would fade with time, they would die with him.

He whipped around when he heard the sound of one of his compositions playing faintly behind him. It was just the way that she would play it, a bit too fast and over and over. It faded when he faced the entrance of his lair again.

"Annika?" He asked, receiving no reply. He tried again, this time louder, to only the sound of his voice echoing against the rock walls of the chamber. He thought, perhaps, that she had hidden in the bedroom. He turned and ran up the stairs towards the now splintered door. The room was empty and paper coated the floor. Some greedy men had obviously seen the small table with the necklace that he had given to Annika and thought of their wives. It was gone, and so was she.

As as last resort, Erik turned and took the steps two at a time to the lake shore. Nothing was there save for her dress. Erik didn't know what to think. He liked to believe that she had not be dragged screaming away from him, but he did not see any other possible way.

Madam Giry had been waiting for him when he emerged from his lair with her daughter and a boat fare to America. He wondered what he could possibly do there, what difference would it make where he went? He was the person behind the bars of the cage, staring out at the ugly people, all with holes in their heart.

Hatred was much easier to feel than grief, Erik found. As the years trickled away in a constant stream of work, work and more work, any hope that his organ player had escaped faded and died like the sound of her playing. He never played Love Never Dies again, he did not believe that anymore, but he finished the song maybe twenty times, each more sinister and bitter than the last.

Nothing felt real, however. No music he could play made him feel any of the warmth and the happiness as strongly as he felt it before. His first love was the sound that his organ made when he pressed lightly on her keys, but it seemed that he too had grown a hole in his heart that no amount of songs could fill. One after the other he wrote terrible songs for Meg and the other preforming girls to sing, he was sure Annika would hate them, but he hated them so much more.

There wasn't any happiness left, any inkling that he took pride in what he wrote. Shock factor was no longer relevant. The poor on Coney Island were desensitized to to the point of disgusting to anything particularly raunchy that would make the people of France faint dead-away. There was no fun to be had, and yet his popularity rose and rose.

One by one, he found friends in people he could trust. The first was Doctor Gangle. His face had been scarred fully from a fire in his home, but it took but a few words to usher you into the attraction he was promoting. Miss Fleck came next. The young woman was lovely to behold, but she had fallen from the aerial bar and had damaged her spine. She had a way with animals, however, and a voice that could charm anyone. Finally came Mister Squelch. His intellect knew no equal, and while his imposing form was useful with silencing enemies, his strategies were invaluable.

All had been instructed about Annika, and while Erik's hope died, he allowed himself the smallest amount to believe that she might one day return.

The Phantom sighed and picked up his pen, readying a new sheet of paper. He took a breath, and forced himself to write everything he had ever wanted to say.

Annika,

There was a moment, when your true feelings were known to me, and I was afraid to hope that you put your hand on mine. Nothing had ever felt like that to me, like your touch. You turned and looked at me, your eyes were filled with a pure, sweet sort of pain, and I was bathed in your warmth.I believed in that moment-that even for me-all things were possible.

In that warmth, in your light, I felt what it was to be beautiful.

We promised always to share the truth, always, but Annika, there was a truth beyond anything-beyond everything-I had ever known, ever dreamed. The truth of your love humbled me, silenced me, and the truth I never had the chance to share with you was that of how deeply I loved you.

I will remember…I will remember every moment; every word, every look, every touch. Our love lives; it will live forever. Nothing will destroy us. Love never dies. You are safe now.

Sleep, my love…

The Opera Ghost looked at the words on the page, but couldn't find the strength to destroy them. Madam Giry was wrong in saying that writing things would make him feel better. In fact, he felt worse, truth be told. He felt the same sort of pain that he did in his lair when the two things he loved were taken from him.

He felt such anguish, such a hurting, burning and yet quite sweet form of agony. He knew it well. He rose from the seat at his desk and folded the letter in half. He would put it in her room, where it belonged.

His feet led him to the new organ he had purchased as soon as he had enough money. She was a beauty, but did not produce the same loving sound that came with age. Erik sat down, knowing he would not hear the sound he came to know as he placed his hands in their proper spots. He pushed down on the keys, lightly at first, and then enough so that the sound rang through the room full of curious things.

It was time to finish their song, not for himself, but for her, she did not deserve the anger that he had poured into it. While Erik knew that love did die, what he had with Annika was special and it would live for as long as he allowed it to and in the light of the candles, it flourished.