Phantom of the Opera Loneliness Comes Naturally

**Loneliness Comes Naturally**

**(Originally titled, "Two Kisses... One For Now, and One To Save.")  
Songfic written around Clocks by Coldplay**

The cave echoed with loneliness, with lost voices. The glimmering rocks moved in the light of the glassy lake, casting strange movements across his pale face, his mask... and across the trails of tears slowly making their way down his face. His mask lay forgotten in a shadowy corner. He couldn't stop replaying it in his mind; Christine dropping her ring into the palm of his hand, walking slowly away, choking back sobs as she stepped into the boat. He was torturing himself with her beautiful image, her angelic voice whispering to him. Her lips upon his own.

_Lights go out and I can't be saved  
Tides that I tried to swim against  
Have brought me down upon my knees  
Oh I beg, I beg and plead  
Singing_

He pulled open a drawer of his bureau, the bottom one, and pulled out a pile of papers, some yellow with age. Spreading them across his desk, he flipped through the beautiful, if somewhat childish, drawings, sketches of carefully sculpted buildings from his childhood mind. They were elaborate, special; like a palace in the middle of a desert, they positively dwarfed the plain architecture of the Parisian streets. He moved a sketch of a museum aside and stopped cold.

_  
Come out of things unsaid  
Shoot an apple off my head  
And a trouble that can't be named  
A tiger's waiting to be tamed _

_Singing  
You are  
You are_

It was... her. Madeleine. His mother. At first glance, he believed it to be Christine. As he peered more closely at it, he saw the difference, the slight variation in the face shape, the age difference. His mother's soft face, with cold eyes, eyes that never thawed in his presence. He thought to rip it to shreds, to take out his pain on her pretty form, but he held himself back, content with merely tracing the outline of her face. He could take the beatings, the isolation from the rest of the world he so desperately wished to see, even when she showed him the mirror. The magic mirror that made a terrifying monster appear. He had spent ages trying to break the secret of the mirror, to make a mirror that only showed him nice things. Later, he learned it was his own face. He could even forgive her for that. But the one thing Erik could never forgive her for...

_Confusion that never stops  
The closing walls and ticking clocks  
Gonna come back and take you home  
I could not stop, that you now know  
Singing come out upon my seas  
Curse missed opportunities  
Am I a part of the cure  
Or am I part of the disease_

He saw himself twisting a napkin around his bony finger, stumbling across his words. His mother's impatience to get back to making the cake as pretty as she could, as if to distract herself from the small wraith standing in her kitchen. He heard himself meekly asking her if he could have two presents, and losing his words once more as she impatiently berated him for not speaking. He saw himself cowering as she sobbed, refusing the one thing- well, two things - he wanted most. _'Two kisses... one for now, and one to save.' _

_And nothing else compares  
And nothing else compares  
And nothing else compares  
And nothing else compares_

_You are, you are_

_Home, home where I wanted to go  
Home, home where I wanted to go_

He cried out, enraged, and crumpled her drawing in his fist, chucking it at the wall. It fell harmlessly to the floor. Dropping to his knees, he buried his face in his cloak. Christine had given him what he wanted most. Love. And then she left him to suffer, waiting patiently like a dog for her to return to him. His face crumpled as he beat his fists on the floor in what he would later recall was a very childish way. Sobbing into his cloak, he shoved the papers back into the drawer and locked it, tossing the key into the lake. He heard it's small splash and glanced across the lake, seeing torchlight appear around the curved stone wall. His rage had subsided. He made no move to wipe the tears from his face.

He turned to leave, to destroy his home before the angry mob could touch any of his precious possessions. He picked up an ornate candlestick and held it for a moment, feeling it's weight in his hands. Grabbing it like a bat and bracing himself, he slammed the candelstick into a mirror. Shards of glass flew everywhere. He felt a few graze his face, but ignored them. He continued to smash every mirror he found. The ground was littered with glass when he finally dropped the candlestick, breathing heavily. He ripped the beautiful black gossamer curtain from his bed, the one he had lowered on Christine's sleeping form as his mind had begun frantically imagining a perfect life for them in the lowest level of the opera house.  
He made to throw his endless scores of music into the flames of the black candles surrounding him, but he stopped. Dropping them onto the floor among the glass, letting them scatter, he thought it best to leave them to be found by the mob; or to be destroyed by the very opera house that they were written in. Pulling back a red velvet curtain, he made to leave, the golden tassel brushing his face; and he saw it.

Lying there on the floor, the crumpled piece of paper, abandoned. Carefully, almost lovingly unfolding it, he marveled at how much his mother, the one person he had really grown to despise, so resembled the one person who had ever shown him true love. It was a cruel irony. He smoothed it out, and placed it in his pocket next to his wristwatch. He set off down one of his secret passageways, the splashes of the mob barreling into the water of the lake echoing in the narrow passageway. As he moved swiftly through the passage, he knew where he was going. He had made no plan to return there ever again; yet he moved quickly, anticipating what he would find there, the thought fresh in his mind.

Boscherville.

_Home, home where I wanted to go (you are)  
Home, home where I wanted to go (you are)_

_Home._

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Hey! This is a one-shot songfic I wrote for a challenge on a different site. Hope you liked it!

C

03/11/06 (When I checked)- new review! Yay!

**asingledarkcrimsonrose: **wo! that was good. and the song really went with it. Well, off to read those new Harry Potter ones you told me about.

_Thanks, G! _

**erik's-white-rose**: very good! i really enjoyed it and i like your writing style. bravo! --briana--

_Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thank you so much for reviewing!_


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Phantom of the Opera, Angst