She told him stories, stories about angels, about musicians and magicians and daring escapes and friendship. So many stories, over the years, and he always thought that she got them out of books, or made them up to entertain him. And entertain him they did. Oh, how he loved those stories. He wrote them down, many of them, drew pictures to go along with the words, and when he was older and able to compose, sometimes he would compose to the memories of those stories in his mind, weaving the music to fit.
He never dreamed that they were real, had been real, once.
The realisation of the truth struck him, late one night as he read through the old letters (for what must surely be the hundredth time) that the Persian man – Monsieur Khan – sent to his mother. Traces of the words felt familiar, and it was only as he studied them on the page that he realised why. His mother, his poor, dear, late mother, told him these very stories when he was a little boy.
Charles cannot help the ache in his heart at the thought. His mother wanted him to know about Erik, she wanted him to know, and she told him about him in the only way she knew how, and tears burn his eyes, but he does not blink them away. Oh, if he could go back. If he could go back, and talk to her, and ask her about him—He can see the tears that would spring to her eyes, can picture them and the way she would twist her handkerchief into knots, and he would hug her, and fight his own tears then so as not to hurt her more, but he cannot fight them now.
He hides the letters away after that, for weeks. Tries not to think about them or his mother or father, both fathers, both loved and longed for in different ways, and tries to focus instead on his music, on being le Fantôme, but his thoughts drift back, ever drift back, to her and to them, and the pain in his heart demands that he pull those letters out, re-consult them, and learn the address of the Monsieur Khan that sent them.
It takes Charles days, several long days, before he can work up the nerve to go to the address, to discover if this Monsieur Khan even still lives there, but he does in the end, and he composes himself, dresses in his finest clothes – his own, not the ones pulled from his fath—Erik's old wardrobe – and sets out.
He is not certain what he expected of Monsieur Khan, or of his manservant, Darius, but he is certain that being greeted with a soft smile and gentle eyes is not it. Monsieur Khan—Nadir is an old man now, but his grip is still firm when he takes Charles' hand and squeezes it. "You are very much like your father," he murmurs, "or how, he might have been, though there is something of your mother in you too." Charles' heart twists at the very words as they echo in his brain, very much like your father, your father, very much like. Is that a good thing, or a bad thing? Or does it only make it more difficult for Raou—his other father. He swallows the lump in his throat, and nods, asking the very question that has plagued him for so long.
"What were they like?" And it is as easy as that to talk to him, to hear about Erik from the lips of his friend, and they talk a long time, Darius bringing them tea, the same lemon tea his mother always drank when she had that sad, distant look in her eyes, and it is sometime after nightfall when Charles looks up from his tea to see that it has grown very late indeed.
"They loved each other dearly," Nadir says, rising to shake Charles' hand once more as he prepares to take his leave, "more, perhaps, than was truly wise, on either side. But I think it was a comfort to him, that she was there at the end, and I think—I think he would have been proud, to have a son like you." The words pierce Charles' heart, make tears prickle his eyes, and he nods, barely able to speak and Nadir smiles softly at him again, and murmurs, "Go well." After, Charles is not certain whether he imagined the tears that shone in his jade eyes too.
But that night, tucked up beneath the Garnier in the lake house that once was his father's, he is able to sleep peacefully for the first time in a long time, his dreams free of the ghosts that have haunted them. And when he wakes he knows, with bone-deep certainty, that it is time to think about going home. Back to England, back to Raoul, back to the man who might not truly be his father, but has been his father in every way that matters.
And his thinks, privately, that Erik would be happy to know that.
