A little story revolving around the Phandom's favorite Mother to hate. Leroux and Kay inspired little ficlet. I anticipate two chapters, maybe three if inspiration is strong. Review if you enjoy!

I spend too many nights thinking about my lost child. How I could have done things differently. It's odd, even now, for me to think of him as my child when he was with me I tried to deny it. He was mine only for eight years, but these past 30 make me regret how I broke him.

How he broke me.

It was supposed to be different. I was going to start treating him like the mother he needed, but I never got the chance.

Earlier this morning, I was dusting on top of one of my old oak cabinets, furniture inherited from my parents' early demise.

Everyone always left me too early. Them, Charles, Erik...

But that's when I found his early primary book. His poor scribbled letters of a brilliant child. I stepped down from the chair I was on, running my fingers over the cover. I placed it on the table and continued my work, not allowing the memories to flood over me.

Now the memories burst in a tidal wave and spill out of my eyes.

He was so young... and I was so cruel.

Erik had to have been about 3 years old, not quite 4, (maybe even two, I'm not sure. Birthdays were something I hadn't wished to celebrate with him.) when I decided to teach him how to write. Yes, he must have been that young because the poor fool would still try to seek some comfort from me. I was always too afraid to give it to him.

He loved his alphabet song. He loved any song, in fact, that I could teach him. I remember that was the first song he learned and I had only had to sing it three times before he knew the melody. Four times and he knew the letters.

I had picked up the primary book, similar to the one I had as a child, in the local store. It was a simple lined paper book, with big enough spaces for a child, in their messy scrawl, could learn the letters. Further back in the book, the spaces and ruled lines grew smaller and tighter together, until they eventually were gone and you were expected to write neatly without their aide.

I suffered from the stares and whispers of the shopkeepers and others in the village. Oh, I hated going out.

"Well I heard she cheated on her husband and so God decided to punish her with the-"
"No!"
"Oui! It's true!"
"Poor Madeleine, I don't know what I'd do in her situation. So terrible-"

My muscles tightened, my teeth clenched, and I looked straight ahead, pretending to ignore the whispers and hushed voices that incessantly followed me wherever I went. My outings were less and less frequent and placed me in terrible moods.

Erik knew this when I came back home and slammed the door. He had been playing on the rug downstairs with Sasha. The dog licked at his mask, giving him a slobbery kiss, the only creature to do so, and he giggled his delight. But when my stormy mood settled in the room, the tinkling of bells that was his mellifluous laugh silenced. His large, yellow eyes stared up at me from behind the mask, suddenly sullen.

"Get off the floor, Erik!" I barked, "And come here!"

The precious child obeyed, scrambling to his feet and following behind me like a little duckling.

"What do you have, Maman?"

Lord knows I didn't deserve to be called that.

"It's something for you." I was removing my bonnet and rolling up my sleeves to prepare for this new task at hand. I didn't know how he would take to writing and studying. But it was worth trying.

Erik sat in a chair too big for him, the only chairs I had, his little legs dangling away from the ground. His hands were placed on the table and he stared at them for a moment before his eyes, slowly moved to my face.

"Something... for me?" His childhood innocence stabbed me in the heart.

"Yes. We're going to start your new lessons," I told him curtly, suddenly irritated he was so astonished for school lessons. I hated school lessons when I was a child and I was preparing for the fight.

"Oh! More music?" A smile so big, it hid under most of his mask spread on his face.

"No."

His shoulders drooped slightly and he turned his head to stare back at his hands on the table and he slowly nodded.

"Yes, Maman."

His disappointment effected me in a way that I was unaccustomed to. Perhaps, this eerily genius child of mine would like lessons? I shouldn't assume a fight.

"Erik, I want you to sing your alphabet song."

His face lit up once more and in perfect pitch, sang his little song. It was creepy how such a childish song, with no great melody, and is most often heard with the grating notes of children just learning its meaning, was so lovely coming from him.

I plopped the book in front of him.

"You are now going to write the alphabet."

With a pencil in hand, and in the gentlest voice possible, I told him how to draw it. "This is what the letter A looks like. We draw it like this. Up, down, across. " He stared intently at my hand in motion, soaking up all the information I was giving him. "Now you try," I offered him the pencil.

Erik, with a small smile on his face from my gentle voice, reached out to grab the pencil. He grabbed it with his left hand. I smacked the pencil out from his left hand.

"No, Erik!" I told him sternly, the look of betrayal on his masked face. "You mustn't use your left hand! Always your right!"

He gazed down at his supinating palms and frowned. "But-"

"NO." I shoved the pencil in his right and pointed at the book. "Now write!"

The cloth mask scrunched against his face as he furrowed his brow in concentration, mimicking what I had done precisely, but his lines were not fluid. They were scribbly and terrible. "Smoother Erik," I told him, already losing my patience. He was barely no longer a toddler, learning how to write, and I couldn't find the patience to teach him!

His frown deepened as he tried it again and again. I was still dissatisfied with the result. His left hand twitched with restlessness as it splayed on the paper, trying to keep it taught and flat, while his right hand clumsily wiggled out letters all the way to Z. We must have sat there for about three hours. He whined and moaned his frustration until, too annoyed with his complaining, I slapped him across the cheek. His protests were but quiet whimpers or an exhalation of breath after that.

I tried to remind myself he was only a child.

But I had no patience for children, even when I was one.

"You are going to practice your letters at least 5 times a day until they look like mine. Do you understand Erik?"

"...I'll have to do this again?" He asked of me in horror. He held his aching wrist in his left hand.

I was tidying up the papers off of the table to start preparing supper. I looked at him coldly.

"Every day until you get it right."

His face scrunched up in an unreadable expression that, for the first time, I almost wished the mask was off so I could know what he was trying to emote.

Almost.

The horrors underneath the mask were enough to make me not do it.

He grabbed his pencil, the guide I had written, and his primary book and darted up to his room without another word.

I was going to shout at him that he had to remain seated until I had excused him, but it had been a trying day for the both of us. I let this indiscretion slip.

I shouldn't have.