So, there it is, the next chapter of my new story. Thank you all for reading, for putting on alert or adding to favorites, and very special thanks to all of you who have already reviewed this new story! I hope you all will like it just as much as my previous ones1

Well, I know you are all worried about Erik, but we have to see first, how Christine reacts, once she will wake up. Next chapter we will see, if Nadir and Darius can save Erik's life, I promise! (Ha, ha, as if I would ever kill him!)

Anyway, here is the new chapter, and please keep in mind, that these characters and situations do not belong to me, but to people like Leroux, ALW, Kay, etc.

Chapter 3 – Talking

Nadir resignedly closed his eyes. "I am sorry," he told Mme. Giry. "I should not have asked. You are of course right. We have to consider the girl's feelings. She is a victim as well, and an innocent one, at that, something that in all honesty cannot be said about Erik. I therefore won't keep you any longer. Your charge probably needs you just as much now as Erik needs me."

Mme. Giry nodded. "I am sorry, too," she admitted. "That I could not help you. I just hope Erik will be strong enough to deal with …. her rejection." She sighed, remembering that Erik might not even live long enough to come to terms with this development. "Will you,..." she asked hesitantly. "Will you... keep me informed? Let me know how... when...?"

"Yes," Nadir promised. He understood very well, how torn the woman in front of him was, how much she wanted to be able to keep both her protégés out of harm's way, and how hard it was for her to take sides. "I will give you notice of any changes in his condition." He took Mme. Giry's hand in both of his and looked her in the eyes. "But you, will you also promise that you inform me, if you do learn anything from Mademoiselle Christine? No, ..." he added, anticipating any objections from her. "I did not mean that you should question her, bother her in any way, but just in case... I mean, it is possible that she might mention something or other, even without being prompted to do so?"

Mme. Giry nodded. "I can promise you that. In case she reveals anything of what happened last night of her own free will, I will send word to you and we can meet again and discuss it." She hesitated. "Erik once gave me your address, Monsieur," she confessed, "but I fear I might have misplaced it."

Nadir smiled at her warmly. "Thank you for your willingness to help," he said, pulling out a notebook and a pen. He quickly wrote his name and address down, tore out the page and handed it to Mme. Giry. "This is where you can reach me, if you have anything to tell me. Now I think we both should go home and attend to our charges."

Xxxx

When Mme. Giry returned home, she found Christine awake. "Maman will soon be back," she heard Meg's cheerful voice the moment she entered the house. "Just sit down and relax, Christine. I'll make you some breakfast. You'll see, the world will look much brighter on a full stomach!"

Mme. Giry quickly joined the two girls in the parlor. Christine looked drawn and haggard. Despite the long sleep, there were dark rings around her eyes and she nervously played with the sash of the robe she had borrowed from Meg. It broke Mme. Giry's heart to see her like that, but she forced herself to smile.

"Look who is awake!" she cheerfully greeted Christine. "I bet you will be hungry now, after having slept so long!"

Christine looked down. She did not feel hungry in the least. "It was horrible," she whispered, shuddering slightly.

Mme. Giry suppressed a sigh. Whatever had happened the previous night must truly have been traumatic for having affected both her protégés so badly. While Christine did not seem physically harmed like Erik, it was obvious, that she, too, had come away with emotional scars.

"You should not let this bother you so much," she tried to comfort Christine. "It is over. You are safe now and all will be fine eventually. Don't dwell on these unpleasant memories. Think about the future! Your fiancé, the Vicomte, will stop by this afternoon, to check on you, and he hopes to set a date for your wedding..."

Christine nodded absentmindedly. "Raoul,..." she whispered. She knew she should be grateful to have such a loving, caring fiancé, who despite great personal risk had not shied away from going after her, from facing the dangerous, deranged man that had abducted her. And yet...

Her emotions were in turmoil. Her Angel. She did not know anymore, what to think of him. She had feared him, yes, after he had killed Buquet, and once she knew what he looked like, but... She also had not wanted him dead. She had felt so bad about acting as bait to capture him. Despite everything Raoul had said to her in order to convince her to go along with his plan, she had had her misgivings. It did not feel right. No matter how badly this man had betrayed and deceived her, paying him back the same way, by betraying and deceiving him, had somehow felt wrong.

And then... when he had joined her on stage and they had sung together... Christine almost smiled at that memory. There was nobody else in the entire world who could sing like him, who could convey so many emotions through song – and nobody else, whose voice blended so perfectly with hers, who inspired her to such all-time high artistic achievements. She had not thought about his crimes at that moment, had just relished this feeling of utter bliss, the ultimate triumph of music, when their voices had joined together at the climax of their duet.

She had still been absorbed in her music, when he had begun to beg for her love once more. She had been confused, she had at first not understood what was happening, then she had remembered where they were, Raoul's plan, the fact that it was a criminal holding her in his arms, and she had panicked. She had no idea why she had ripped off his mask, it must have been one of these instinctive, impulsive actions, but the next thing she remembered were screams. A savage roar from the man, whose face she had exposed to the audience and gasps of horror from all of them, once they realized the extent of his deformity.

"It was my fault," Christine wailed at the memory of how hurt his expressive eyes had looked at her, before he grabbed her and jumped with her through a trapdoor. Oh, he had raged at her like a madman and savagely pulled her along, but was his reaction really so surprising? Christine could understand only too well, how he must have felt. He had offered her his heart on a silver platter, and instead of just kindly letting him down, she had humiliated him in front of the entire audience – and in doing so, endangered his life as well, by making sure every last one of the gendarmes present understood he was the one they were trying to capture.

"Don't for a moment think that anything that happened yesterday was even remotely your fault," Mme. Giry's voice interrupted Christine's thinking. "Everybody is responsible for their own actions, and it was his decision, and his alone, to perform with you, to abduct you, to set the house on fire."

"But it was my fault!" Christine exclaimed. "I should never have agreed to play Aminta, to act as bait in order to lure him out of hiding."

Mme. Giry grasped Christine's hand and squeezed it comfortingly. "I did not particularly like this plan either," she confessed. "But something needed to be done to stop him. He had become dangerous. Think of Buquet. To capture him and bring him to justice was the right decision."

Christine shook her head. "No, no!" she cried. "That was so awfully wrong! He needed something different. He needed help. People that would be there for him." She stared at Mme. Giry, her eyes wide open with utter horror. "Do you know that not even his own mother loved him?" she shrieked. "I never knew. He told me last night. She covered his face with a mask before she even dressed her newborn son! Imagine that! A tiny little baby, and instead of taking proper care of him and wrapping him in protective clothes, she put some covering on his face! He could have suffocated! He never knew anything but rejection! Can you imagine what kind of life he must have lived, never being shown acceptance, never being shown kindness?"

Mme. Giry patted Christine's back. "Now, now, calm down, my dear," she tried to sooth the young woman. "That was not your fault. And we cannot change it anyway. This also happened long ago..."

"But don't you see?" Christine wailed. "I am in no way better than her! He had been nothing but kind to me, had taught me to sing – for free – had been my friend and confidant for years, ever since my dear papa died, and I... I chose to betray him, to act as bait!"

"Shh..." Mme. Giry once again tried to calm her. "That is completely different. While he was an innocent little baby when his mother treated him so poorly, he is an adult, fully responsible for his actions, now, and I am sure he knew what he did when he killed Buquet, in order to create the disaster beyond our imagination that he had promised the managers should his orders not be obeyed. He is dangerous now, Christine. You... We... could not let him stalk the Opéra Populaire and let him continue to kill people any longer. You did nothing wrong, when you helped the authorities. Don't blame yourself like that!"

"All he wanted was my love!" Christine continued. "Is it so much to ask to be loved? Doesn't everybody want that? And I denied him that... "

"That is not your fault either," Mme. Giry continued. "You cannot force your heart one way or the other. We cannot choose who we fall in love with. It is tragic, that his heart decided on you, while you fell in love with the Vicomte, your childhood friend, but once again, there is nothing you could have done to change things."

"I was so cruel to him!" Christine sobbed. "At first I was so furious about everything, I told him things that I probably do not even mean, and when Raoul came... it was so terrible! My nerves were on edge... I... I could not think clearly... I... " She could not continue, as heavy sobs were shaking her body.

"Don't think about it anymore," Mme. Giry made yet another effort to calm down the hysterically crying girl. "It is over now. You are save, and I am sure he will not bother you anymore." She suppressed a sigh at the thought that at this very moment Erik might already be dead. No, if she had understood that Persian gentleman correctly, there was no danger of Erik ever interfering with Christine's life again. The man was in no condition of doing so, and even if he survived, his depression would keep him from making another attempt at winning Christine.

"He is so lonely," Christine continued. "All he wanted was love, and I... and I..." Oh, how brokenhearted he had been when she had gone back to give him the ring! She had almost wanted to hug him and kiss him and tell him that she would never leave him again. "I broke him," she whispered. "Oh, Madame Giry, why could I not accept him right away, when he told me the truth about himself, when he showed me his home, when I saw his face for the first time? I had always wished so much that my Angel were real, that I could meet him and show him my love, and when he did... I... I simply couldn't! None of those things might have happened, if I had given him what he wanted, my love! Buquet, the masquerade, last night... it would never have happened if I..."

Mme. Giry sighed. "Stop thinking that way, Christine!" she admonished her foster daughter. "I just told you that it is not your fault that you do not love him. Also, keep in mind, that he is not the first man ever to be rejected by the woman of his dreams. There have been thousands of others before and there will be thousands of others after him that go through that very same experience. If others can deal with it, so should he. And if he cannot, that, once again, is not your fault!"

Christine nodded. "I know," she whispered. "But still..." She once again remembered his sad, sad eyes, when she had put the ring into his hand, closing his fingers around the piece of jewelry. And she remembered touching her lips to his earlier, in an attempt to free Raoul, her fiancé, her future husband, the man that she... She paused for a moment. Why had she kissed her Angel? She could not really say so herself. He certainly had not asked any signs of affection from her, just her promise to stay with him. But she had gone one step further, had actually kissed him, even twice. Why had she done that?

"Maybe if I had given him a chance,..." Christine mumbled, remembering how it had felt to kiss him. It had been so very different from the kisses she had shared with Raoul. She might even have gotten used to kissing her Angel. It definitely had not been unpleasant, not at all disgusting, as one might think considering his deformed face and malformed lips. No, it had been... almost exhilarating, and she had felt a strange warmth spread inside her. If he had asked her to go through with her promise, she probably would not have minded too much.

"That's utter nonsense," Mme. Giry interrupted Christine's thoughts. "You would have made both of you unhappy with such an attempt, for you could not have forced your heart. You would always have been pining for what you have given up, the Vicomte's love, and he would have known that you were secretly thinking of another man. It would not have worked that way. And the Vicomte would have been just as miserable as the two of you. So, maybe, now your so-called Angel has to suffer, but if you had lied to him, pretended to love him, all three of you would have been unhappy. Wouldn't you agree that it is better that just one person suffers instead of three?"

"Maybe." Christine did not sound convinced at all. Would it have been so hard to love that lonely man, who worshipped the ground she walked on? Would it really have been so impossible to get used to such wonderful kisses as the two she had shared with him?

Her eyes suddenly widened. She just remembered the loud voices she and Raoul had heard on their way out of the cellars. An angry mob had been searching for the Phantom, her Angel, ready to kill him. And the building had been on fire, about to collapse. True, that might not have been too much of a problem for the cellars, but still... what if the house collapsed on top of her Angel and blocked all his exit ways? What if something had happened to him last night? What if he was dead now, and she would never get a chance to see him again, to ask his forgiveness?

"Is he...?" she hesitantly began to ask. "I mean... do you know...?" She could not finish the question, for fear of what the answer might be.

Mme. Giry bit her lips. She was most definitely not going to tell Christine that Erik was at death's door. The girl was obviously disturbed enough by everything she had gone through. She seemed to blame herself for each and everything that had happened recently and if she learned about her Angel's current condition, there was no way of telling, how this would affect her emotionally. There was therefore only one answer she could give.

"I do not know," she lied, then added, "according to the morning papers, there is no trace of him."

"So he is safe?" Christine asked, her voice full of hope.

Mme. Giry shrugged. "I honestly don't know," she said, somewhat ambiguously, praying that Erik would indeed be safe. Safe and well, at least with time.

"Could... could it mean that he perished in the fire?" Christine asked nervously. "That he was not found, because he died in the flames?"

Mme. Giry smiled. "I don't think so, Christine," she said. "He knew that house well enough, I don't think he would have somehow gotten surrounded by flames with no way out..."

Christine eyed her suspiciously. Something in the way Mme. Giry had spoken, the inflection of her voice or some other detail, had given her the impression that the older woman knew more than she let on.

"You know that he did get out," Christine said, and the way Mme. Giry squirmed almost imperceptibly, confirmed her suspicion. "There is something you know about my Angel, that you do not tell me!" she accused her foster mother.

"He is not going to bother you ever again," Mme. Giry once again tried to reassure Christine. "That much I know for sure. Other than that, I really cannot tell you anything. That's all I know."

Christine nodded. That was not what she had wanted to hear. Needed to hear. She needed to hear that he was fine, unharmed. That he might forgive her one day, that she might even be able to meet him again and tell him herself, how sorry she was for everything that had gone wrong between them. How much she truly appreciated their time together, even though he had been nothing but a disembodied voice to her for many years, how much she loved his music, that she did not mind his face anymore and that she could even get used to his temper, now that she knew how devoid of love his whole life must have been and understood better, why he could get so angry so easily. And maybe, just maybe, if she could win his forgiveness that way, he would kiss her once again...