A little one shot for you all. I am sorry I don't update regularly, 'Road to Redemption' is currently on hiatus for now. As usual I do not own any of the characters and all rights go to Gaston Leroux etc... Hope you enjoy!

"Why are you acting so odd?" Erik asked suddenly one evening, watching as his wife sat in her seat staring blankly in to the fire. Her hand was resting on her stomach which she kept rubbing so he assumed she had a stomach ache. It would explain her languished form and her tired, pallid face. Christine blinked back at him, as if she couldn't quite process what he had just asked.

"Pardon…?"

"You're not yourself. I was just wondering if there was something on your mind that you would like to discuss."

"I was just thinking if… If you'd ever be interested in having children." Erik, whilst surprised by the question, continued to read his book as if he had never asked a question in the first place. Quite plainly, he replied "We have had this discussion before, Christine."

"Yes but in small details and before we were married." He looked up at this.

"Marriage makes a difference?" Her smile was one of disbelief as she nodded to his question.

"Well yes… Of course it does."

"How so?" Erik closed the book and placed it on his lap, his fingers caressing the leather cover. Christine bunched up her hands in agitation, trying to think of answer before she shrugged.

"It just does." Unsatisfied with her answer, he picked up the book and resumed reading, his eyes trailing lazily over the pages.

"As I have said, children are perplexing little humans who cry, moan, waste time and make a mess. I have never really been that interested in them. As for my own offspring should that day ever come, God help them. I know this is not what you want to hear, Christine, but it is for the best unless you'd like little… monsters, running around your feet." When she did not reply, he looked up from his book and was startled to see that she was silently crying, her face a picture of crestfallen emotion.

"What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?" Erik asked in perplexity as he, once more, placed his book back on to his lap. She was acting so… Odd. And she kept crying, not to mention the sickness nearly every single morning which he fretted over so much that he almost brought himself into a fit. When she stopped being sick, he had never felt so relieved in his life. Little did he know that his wife had started to throw up in private, when he wasn't near her or when he was making a lot of noise on his piano. But, back to the matter as to why his wife was looking at him in utter despair.

"Are you serious?" She cried, standing up in one fluid motion.

"Of course I am; you know I don't joke."

"You really think so little of children, even if they were your own?" Christine asked, incensed.

"Especially if they were my own." Her face flushed and her eyes hardened and Erik looked at her fearfully, not quite used to this new side she kept showing him.

"Well then, if you want to know why I am acting so odd, why don't you use that clever little brain of yours? Think about it Erik, I am tired all the time, I am sick every morning, I have put on more weight and have an intense craving for pizza all the time!" Erik stared at her blankly, the cogs whirring away in his brain as he added it all together but he still could not understand her crankiness. Noticing this, she threw up her hands in frustration, "You know for someone as clever as you, you are still incredibly dense. I am pregnant Erik, with your child!" The air in the room seemed to dissipate there and then, replaced with an equally pregnant tension that engulfed the flushed pair. Christine had never witnessed someone loose colour in their face so quickly (it had been one of their agreements that Erik wasn't to his mask around the house) and believed that he would have collapsed there and then if he had not been sitting in the chair!

"Could you repeat that, please?" He asked in a strangled voice, despair evident in his eyes as he stared at his wife's stomach in horror. Suddenly feeling self-conscious about it, she pulled up a blanket and wrapped it around her form, trying to hide the slight bump that had already formed.

"I am pregnant, Erik."

"But we used protection, we made sure this was preventable." Erik spluttered, gripping the ends of the chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

"It is what it is, Erik. I am so sorry that I've burdened you with this awful news but you're going to have to deal with it. You're going to be a father and that is that." She muttered quietly, tears gathering in her eyes from the dismay her husband had showed at something she had been looking forward to all of her life. Not wanting to hear more from his lips, she fled the room and went into their bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her. Erik opened his mouth to let out a strangled scream but no sound came out. Instead he gawped at the fire, fingernails digging into the fabric beneath him as he felt the world crumble around him. His worst fears had come true and he was going to have little demon spawn of his own and worst of all, he was putting Christine through it all. Oh, poor Christine, who had wanted to be a mother so desperately and was now being forced to carry offspring of his… This wretched, deformed man who was full of sin and had already tainted Christine enough as it was. He dragged his hands over his face over and over again, forcing himself to feel the papery texture of one side and the smoothness of the over, engraving the image of an infant's face with his own on his mind. The image made him feel ill, if he couldn't even look into a mirror without disgust then how could he look at his own offspring? Hands shaking, he reached for his phone and clicked on the one contact he knew he would be able to discuss this with and waited impatiently for them to answer.

"Yes? What do you want now?" The voice finally crackled from the other side and Erik sighed with relief.

"Nadir, it's me."

"Yes I am fully aware of that, Erik, your name does come up on my screen when you ring me."

"It could have very well been Christine!" He replied indignantly, then felt a tinge of shame at the mention of her name and how he reacted.

"She has her own phone to call me on if she needs to. What do you need?" His voice asked tiredly. A lifetime of Erik had aged him considerably.

"Your help." Erik could barely bite out the words.

"Pardon?" Nadir asked, equally baffled with his request.

"Look Nadir, I am in a situation and I don't know what to do."

"The great Erik Chevalier is in a situation and he needs my help? My, you really must be in a conundrum." Tired of this tattle, Erik let out a short, impatient breath and let the words roll thickly off his tongue.

"Christine is pregnant and I don't know what to do." There was a short silence on the other side before Nadir let out a heavy breath he didn't realise he had been holding.

"Oh… Boy…"

"Exactly. Nadir… I don't know what to do! I can't be a father!" Erik cried desperately, getting up to pace towards the window which overlooked the quite suburban road. The blinds were cracked open slightly and let in the slightest glimmer of light so that the people outside could not look in.

"Well… Why not?"

"Because you know me very well as a person and I am not capable of looking after someone who depends on me so much!" He barked out, bringing a hand to his temple as he felt a headache gather.

"But… You managed to that for Christine. She depended on you all those years ago and you gave her everything you had! Now look at you, seriously in love and happily married." Erik looked towards her door and sighed.

"I don't think the happy applies to us at the moment."

"What happened?" Erik sighed and walked towards the kitchen, pulling out a glass for water as his throat had suddenly got incredibly dry.

"She asked me my view on children, I told her that I thought they were annoying little creatures, she got upset and told me she was pregnant and I… Didn't react the way I should've."

"I am confused, I must admit, for I thought you liked children?" Erik was torn. In truth, he did like them, had always liked them but the thought of his own? It filled him with dread.

"I am not a suitable role model for them, Nadir." Nadir scoffed on the other side.

"Hang on… So, all that play, that laughter, that teaching to my little Amir was nothing, was it? Did you not bring ceaseless joy to my boy? Did you not teach him how to create, learn history and the arts? What is was to be a human?" He demanded down the phone and Erik swallowed.

"Of course not! But Amir was different-"

"No he wasn't; he was just like any other little boy! Erik, please, I know why you're truly afraid. You're afraid the child will come out looking like you, aren't you?" There it was. The truth that had been the leading centre of his fear of his own children and he bowed his head in sickening fear.

"I am terrified." He finally admitted in a quiet whisper and Nadir sighed down the phone.

"This is something you must talk to Christine about so that she understands the true essence of your reluctance to have children. She is no doubt very upset that you reacted so badly when we both know that she has wanted a child of her own for a very long time! Come on, Erik, you're better than this." Erik groaned, rolling his head on his neck before allowing his eyes to settle on their bedroom door once more.

"I shall go talk to her then. Thank you, Nadir." Before he could hang up though, Nadir stopped him urgently.

"Hang on, don't go yet!"

"What? Why not?"

"Because I need to say… Erik, you'd be a wonderful father. You were wonderful with my son, and you'd be wonderful with your own. Its appearance should not matter at all. You're twice the human your mother ever was." Erik had never heard such kind words come from his friend's mouth and he felt himself blush at the flattery.

"Thank you Nadir." He said in a choked voice before clearing his throat with a cough.

"Good luck." Then silence. Erik placed the phone on the counter, cracked his knuckles in agitation and slowly made his way towards the door. His hand rested on the doorknob and it was ice cold beneath his touch, no doubt as equal as the iciness he would be met with when he went into the room.

"Christine, may I come in?" He asked tentatively but when he heard no reply, he twisted the knob and let himself in anyway. What he was met with broke his heart, as his wife sat in the velvet armchair by the window that overlooked their beautiful, well-kept garden, weeping silently to herself. Her arms rested protectively over her stomach and she did not even look to meet his gaze as he entered the room. He did not go closer to her, instead he took a seat on the end of the bed, watching as his wife could barely restrain the tears that fell from her eyes. Where to begin?

"Christine… What I said about children… It's not entirely true."

"Are you just saying that to make me feel better?" She whispered angrily, pressing the heel of her hand to her eye to stop them flowing even more.

"No. I said it before because I thought it would put you off the idea of children. I had hoped that if I was vehemently against the idea, we would never have to go through it. But things don't always work out."

"What are you getting at, Erik?" He sighed and looked at the back of her head, knowing fully well that she could feel his gaze bore down on her.

"Did you know that Nadir had a child?" Christine's attention was piqued as she tilted her head to the side.

"No… I did not." The tears seemed to cease and she readjusted herself so that her gaze rested on him over her shoulder, "How come I never knew about that?"

"Because he died several years before I ever met you and it's not something that we liked to discuss. But he was a lovely child. He would have been twenty this year had he lived."

"How did he… die?" Erik sucked in a wavering breath, fraught images of Amir flickering across his mind.

"Amir was diagnosed with stage three cancer when he was nine. It didn't stop him from being such a lovely child, so full of life even he did feel terrible most of the time. I loved him dearly and when he died… I knew I could never live with that pain again should it ever happen to me! I was even hopeful then that one day I'd have a family but the more I thought of it, the more my demons twisted my mind and put me against the idea of having children completely." He rubbed his hands over his face, elbows resting on his knees as he pressed the heels of his hands in to his eyes. "But there is more to it. Christine, the reason I don't want children is because I am terrified that the child would end up looking like me. And that is something that I would never be able to forgive myself for." He didn't even watch to see her reaction, instead stared at a spot on the ground. He felt the mattress sag next to him as she sat down and felt her hand rest over his hand, but he still did not look at her.

"That's truly what you're afraid of? That the child will look like you?"

"You have no idea the fear and the… shame that that brings me. If I can barely look at myself in the mirror without feeling repulsed, then how on earth would I be able to look at my own child?" Christine said nothing, the only noise in the room being the wind that whistled through hidden cracks in the ceiling. When Erik felt his hand being pulled, he did not question it, only allowed Christine lead him away to wherever she was headed. He was not expecting her to take him to her walk in wardrobe which contained the only mirror in the house and he physically balked, restraining against her pull.

"Christine, what are you doing?"

"I need to show you something." She opened the shuttered doors, flicked on the light switch and took Erik around the corner. It wasn't very big inside but it was enough for Christine and she loved having a floor length mirror that reflected the light even more. She pulled Erik in front of the mirror and he looked away, avoiding his reflection as if it were the plague. "Please, don't." Christine went to stand behind him, threading her arms around his stomach that tensed underneath her touch before running her hands up to his chest.

"Look into the mirror, love. I want you to tell me what you see." She said soothingly.

"I am not playing this game!" Erik barked back, but calmed immediately when she placed a gentle kiss on the top of his spine.

"Please, love. Just look." It took him a while but he acquiesced and grimaced in disgust when he saw his reflection. It looked worse than it ever had done, his skin pale and taught in places, it didn't take him long to look away.

"I see an ugly, disgusting man who has corrupted you and has already probably corrupted the little being inside of you." He spat out moodily, clenching his long fingers into tight fists. Christine poked her head out from behind him and snuggled under his arm, pulling it over her shoulder so that she could rest her head on his chest.

"That's funny because I don't see that at all." She murmured, threading her fingers through his own. "I see a wonderful, beautiful man who gave me everything I could ever ask for. I see a man who has suffered so much hardship and yet finds the love inside him to share it with me, someone who doesn't deserve as much as she has been given. I see the man I fell in love with and the face that I adore because it makes you who you are." She then stepped in front of him and took his face into her hands, placing kisses against his deformity. "I love every ridge, every bump, every blemish, I love your lips, I love your eyes." Christine then placed a firm kiss against his lips, trying to ignore the saltiness that lingered from his tears that he hadn't realised he had begun to cry, "And my god Erik, if our child does inherit your looks then I will know I have been truly blessed because I have two beautiful humans in my life. I will have a child that reminds me of my husband who I love beyond belief, who I will love utterly even if there were the slightest blemish and I will teach our child that they shouldn't have to hate who they are because of how they appear. Just as I am now telling you that your appearance doesn't make you some evil, corrupted 'monster' as you called yourself all those years ago. It makes you, you! And that is someone who is very beautiful." Erik choked on a sob, trying desperately to keep back the tears and failed miserably as his knees buckled and fell to the floor, crying into his hands. Her hands found the back of his head and stroked his soft hair until he ceased to cry, then did something remarkable. He placed his hands on her hips and brought his lips to her stomach, kissing it gently as if it were the most delicate surface of all.

"I swear, I will love this child and protect it with my life, Christine. Even if it does look like me. I will love them fiercely and will never let them doubt themselves." Christine smiled a watery smile and bent down to meet him, capturing his lips on her own.

"I know you will. That is what makes you beautiful."