Hey everyone, thanks again for the reviews! Here's another chapter that you've all been waiting for….

Gustave's POV

Previously…..

I placed my hand over Reneasia's mouth, and crawled underneath the cart and motioned for her to hold onto the railing underneath…..I wasn't going to risk loosing my father.

Once she was situated, I did the same, and held on tightly as the cart began to move towards the opera house…..To secure the journal and letters, I placed them into my shirt and kept an eye on my friend as the bumpy ride continued towards the opera house….. When we arrived, I waited until all the men were gone, before dropping myself, and helping Reneasia off from where she was holding onto. The men were over at a side window, trying to bust their way in, but I had a quicker way.

"Come on…" I said, pulling Reneasia with me to the chapel window. I quickly snuck back through, and opened the secret passageway towards home.

"We need to warn my father…" I reminded her, as I pulled her arm.

But just as I made it to the stone passageway that my father had walked along earlier that day, I heard the sound of angry men marching their way towards my home…I wasn't about to give up on getting to my father, but I only hoped it wasn't already too late…

I pulled Reneasia with me down another path that was heading away from home, and the girl tugged at my arm.

"Gustave! You're heading in the wrong direction! Home is the other way."

"I have an idea…" I said.

When we reached the other side, there was a lever with a skull as a handle….I knew this was how my father turned on the traps within the water, and so I pulled it and a spark flew from the contraption…..

"But they're not in the water!" shouted Reneasia. "They passed it!"

"Come on, I have an idea…."

Now that the traps were on, I pulled Reneasia back down the path, and towards my home. Once we were there, I noticed that the front door was busted in, and the men were already raiding my home…..I was able to sneak in, and hide under my bed with Reneasia without being seen…..I was scared, but I had an idea, and I was hoping it would work….. It was then, that I heard a horrible scream…. I gasped, and noticed my father being brought into my room by two men. He was bleeding, and his shirt was torn in several spots with blood gushing out of him….

"Where is the will!" shouted one of the men that had my father by his shirt….

"I don't know what you're talking about…."

The man wasn't satisfied with my father's answer, and punched him in the jaw.

"Where is the will!"

"Go..go to hell!" my father shouted.

The man was anywhere from being pleased, and disappeared for a few moments. I tried to come from under the bed, but my father spotted me, and motioned me to stay where I was…..

When the man came back, he was carrying a pitchfork…..this scared me. Reneasia wanted to scream in fear, but I pushed her head down so she would have to look. I didn't know what was about to happen, but I stayed still like my father motioned…

"Ok, I'm going to ask you one last time….where is the will?"

As the moments passed, the man placed the sharpened edges of the pitch fork up to my father's chest…I knew my father didn't have my mother's will, and so quickly placed the letters down beside Reneasia, and slipped from underneath the bed to try and stop the man, but it was already too late…The man had pushed the pitchfork through my father, causing him to gasp, and fall over as soon as the man removed it from him.

I screamed….oh, how I screamed for him.

"Ah, look, the little boy…" said the man, coming to me…

"I….I know where the will is…." I lied, hoping my plan was going to work.

"Do you know? Where is it…."

The man grabbed me by my shirt, and pulled me so close to his face, that I could smell his horrible breath.

"It's in the lake….."

"The lake? You lie! You lie!"

"No, I don't….my father hid it in a chamber within the center of the lake just incase something like this would ever happen. The traps are off…This I swear to you…."

"Well then, you can go in and get it for us, now…."

"I can't swim…" I said. "And I'm the only one who knows where it is…But the traps are only going to stay off for another twenty minutes. Once they're turned back on, my mother's will is going to be swallowed up in one of the traps….."

"Thanks, and I'm sorry I must do this, but your little Raoul asked me to kill you….."

I gasped, as the man threw me up against the wall and left the room, locking the door behind him. I ran to the door, and tried to open it, but I couldn't….Reneasia came from underneath the bed, and knelt down beside my father's body, shaking him to get up… When I turned to look at him, I could see nothing but blood seeping out from underneath him…

"He needs help…" she said.

I began to smell smoke, and soon it was seeping from underneath the door…. The men had set the lair on fire!

"I need to get out of here!" I exclaimed….

I searched the room for something I could break the door down with, but there was nothing.

Reneasia then went into her hair, and took out a pin….

"Here, pick the lock…."

I snatched the pin out of her hand, and ran back over to the door and began to pick at the lock…

"It's not working…." I coughed, breathing in the smoky atmosphere.

"Concentrate, Gustave…." she cried.

I continued to pick the lock, and finally it came loose, and I was able to rush out into the hall where the fire was coming from. They had set my father's library on fire, and I had to get it under control while I could. The men had left, but I knew my plan had worked, because I could hear screaming coming from the lake….. I grabbed an empty trash pail, and ran out to the lake and filled it up with the water before bringing it back to the library and dumping it on the flames…Three times I did this, before I actually got the flames completely extinguished. The smoke had left the lair foggy, and from what I could see, the men had completely destroyed the lair…..everything was overturned, and my father's things were smashed…..I knew right then and there that we couldn't stay here…. I ran back into my room, and grabbed the letters and my mother's journal before rushing over to my father…..He was pale, and gushing blood out of every one of his wounds….I knew if I didn't get him help soon, he was going to die.

"What am I going to do?"

Reneasia patted me on the back, and helped me to my feet.

"I know someone who can help."

"Who?"

"My mother, she was a nurse for the army…just before she joined the gypsies…."

"We need to get him my room." said Reneasia. "But how?"

I thought for a few moments, and wondered what path to take…..and then out in the hall, I noticed the map laying there…the same map Raoul had given the man. I snatched it, and showed it to Reneasia.

"Where's your room?" I asked.

Reneasia glanced at the blueprint of the opera house, and then pointed to an area away from the chapel.

"Right there…" she said. "It's near the prop room….my mother and I live there…"

My fingers traced over a path that would lead us there, and once it was memorized inside my head, I put away the map, and got a hold of my father.

"Help me…" I said, trying to lift his half conscious body to his feet.

Reneasia grabbed hold of him, and we began descending down the dark path. The screams that had once been, were no more, and from the water, there was nothing left but hats and pitch forks floating atop of it…..My father's traps had done their job. At one point in the path, I glanced up, and saw the trap door I had been looking for. I clung onto it, and opened it up to find that we were in a small room…

"This is where I live…" said Reneasia.

She lead me over to a small bed, where we laid my father down, and Reneasia went to fetch her mother…..She went through a red drape, and I could hear the sound of her talking to a woman….Moments later, Reneasia emerged with a woman who looked just like her, just twice her age. She had long black hair, and blue eyes…..She was also dressed in a night gown, and looked as if she had been sleeping.

When she saw my father laying there, her hand clutched over her mouth….

"The Phantom of the Opera…"

Her eyes darted to Reneasia.

"Where did you find him?" she asked, her voice full of terror.

"Some men beat him up…..that's his son, Gustave."

The woman placed a candle down at my father's bedside to give her enough light to examine him.

"I'm going to have to call the police…..he is a wanted man."

I wasn't going to allow this to happen! If my father was taken away, what was to become of me? He was all I had left. I snatched the woman's hand from touching him, and pulled her away.

"No! he's my father!"

"Where is your mother, young man?" she asked, her voice strict and angry.

"Dead! She died, he's all I have left. If you're not going to help him, then let us leave!"

"I didn't say I wasn't going to help him….now let me work before he dies…."

I stood there at my father's side just incase the woman tried to pull anything that would harm him. She removed his shirt, and gasped at the gashes the men had made with objects along with a pitchfork…

"This doesn't look good…." she replied. "I will have to stitch him…"

Reneasia brought her mother a basin filled with water, and I watched as she cleaned his wounds softy, and pulled a strand of dark hair from her head and began to thread a needle with it…..Afterwards, she stitched him up, her eyes glaring at all the other healed scars that covered him…..

"It's hard to say whether he'll be alive by morning…" she said, dressing up his wounds. "But for now, he is asleep…."

"Thanks, we'll be leaving now…" I said, ready to get my father up.

"What are you doing? You'll kill him! He needs to lay still…."

"So what? You can call the police on him? No…..I'm taking my father and leaving here…"

Reneasia grabbed my arm to calm me down, as her mother knelt down to my side.

"You are a very brave boy, Gustave…But now you must rest. Do it for your father's sake…."

I managed to calm down, and realized that her mother was right…..moving my father was not a good idea.

"You'll sleep here tonight." she said, pulling a pillow and a few blankets out of a closet. She placed them down in the floor beside Reneasia's bed, and I was calm enough to lay down.

"Tomorrow we shall discuss what is to become of your father…."

"What is your name?" I asked.

The woman walked over to the drape, and just before bidding me goodnight, she said "Mirela."

For a while, I watched my father in the candlelight….he seemed so peaceful, yet almost dead…I hoped he would be alright though, and after a while, I took out the letters I had snatched from Raoul's room, and untied the black ribbon that was wrapped around them. From her bed, Reneasia looked over at me, and I could see her laying there awake watching every move I made.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice a whisper.

"Looking at the letters…"

"Read one…" she said.

"They're not mine, they're my father's."

"I helped you get them, and I practically died trying. Just read the first one….."

I sighed, and knew that my father probably wouldn't mind. I took the first one in my hand, to see that his name was written in the center of it. I flipped over the envelope, and pealed away the flap, and pulled out the folded letter that was inside it.

"Read it…" begged Reneasia.

And so I did.

"February 1st 1871

Erik,

There's not a day that goes by that I don't regret not meeting you at the inn on time. You do not understand the agony I must live with knowing that I had broken your fragile heart. I beg of you to write me back, and just let me know if you are still alive…..You once said that you didn't know how long you were going to live without me, but I have better news….You shall forever live on, for I have found that I am with child, your child….. Please believe me when I say that I am happy about it. Please do not be sorry for what you have done to me…..Please do not fret over the possible fact that this child might look like you. I can assure you that what ever it looks like, it shall be loved dearly by me. I have never slept with Raoul, this I assure you…. I know what happens on a wedding night, but Raoul and I have been together for almost a month now, and never had I ever given myself to him. I had even began pretending to be sick in order to prolong that horrible thing that is eventually to come…I know I cannot continue to deny him what I had given you, but the thought of throwing away what we had just makes me ill.

What I wouldn't give to make love to you again….just you forever and always. But it was last week, when I ran to the bathroom for the first time, sick in the stomach. I wasn't sure why, and just thought I had the flu, but when I went to the doctors, I found it to be something much greater. Such happiness flows through my body when I think about having your child….I didn't tell Raoul yet…how could I? If I did, he would know right away who the father is. I know in the next few weeks I shall have to surrender to his body in order to be able to protect this child that I bear. If I make love to Raoul, I know there will be no questions asked when I tell him that I am with child….. Your seed is alive within me, Erik….I want nothing more than for you to be here for this child's birth….I want you to be the first to hold this child within your arms. I would do anything in my power to find you, and when I find you, I would do nothing more than apologize for all the pain I had caused you.

Where are you now in this world? Are you happy? I'm not…. Day after day as this child grows within me, all I can think about are the what if's? What and if are two of the most horrible words that anyone could ever have come up with. Alone it is fine, but when you put what and if together, you get what if? What if I would have been on time that night? What if we were now living together? What if I married you? These are the things I think about every night, and those dreams only become worse and worse for me…..Do you hear me, Erik? Do you realize that you are going to be a father to my child? Do you realize that night of sweet passionate love making had turned out to be something more…That night we were not just consuming ourselves in love, we were creating a child…..Erik, if you're out there, please, please know that I love you…. And if you can ever forgive me, please return within the next eight months….Your child depends on it. I must go now, my love….I shall be forever more waiting for a letter, a letter from you….

Christine…"

When I stopped reading, Reneasia sighed.

"That was beautiful….."

"I never knew that my mother wrote these letters to my father….."

"She really did love him…read another."

I placed the letters back together, and bound them with the ribbon.

"Please read another….Just one more.."

I sighed, and pulled out the second letter from the bound, and began reading that one.

"March 2nd 1871

Erik,

It's been an entire month since the last time I had written a letter to you. So many things have happened in that month…A few weeks ago, I finally gave myself to Raoul, and believe me when I say that it was the most horrible experience of my life. He was nothing like you… Your touch sent my body quivering in such ecstasy, but his however, felt meaningless and awkward. Even as he made love to me, it felt nothing like the way it did when I was with you…..Even when we finished, it was nothing like our finish. Remember the first time we finished, Erik? You were leaning over me, you bare chest heaving against mine….and you cried….Your eyes were soaked with tears, tears that dripped onto me…You had this wonderful smile on your face, a smile that seemed as if I had given you the most wonderful thing in the world…..It was so beautiful, Erik. And then you pulled my body closer to yours, and you sobbed into my hair…Oh, it was perfect…It made me so happy that I cried too. And then do you remember what happened? I kissed away your tears, and we made love again…..When Raoul and I finished, he did nothing more than roll over and go to sleep….. We didn't talk, we didn't smile at one another…Oh, Erik, remember when we finished for the last time? I laid there within your arms, and we talked….we talked about so many things, even the future…. Raoul is nothing like you! He doesn't sing me to sleep, he doesn't hold me in his arms, and he leaves me alone all day long!

Never shall I ever put myself in such a situation ever again. I want nothing more than you laying beside me, Erik, and I would replace him with you in a second. I know if you were here, you wouldn't have gone any where further than your music room. I know you would want to be here for me and the growing child…Each day I sit alone in my chair, and play with a developing foot, awaiting the day when I can finally have an actual foot to play with within my fingers. I often wonder if this child will have your feet? Remember when I was laying in your arms, and I rubbed your foot? You told me how wonderful it felt, and then you cried….you cried because a woman was willingly touching you. I want that again, Erik! I want to lay beside you again….I'm sobbing terribly right now, and can no longer write. Please write me, Erik….Please let me know where you are in this world, and if you can ever forgive me…I love you….Oh, Erik…..

Christine"

I couldn't believe how much my mother loved my father…This was such a sad letter, and I could no longer look at it. I slipped it back into its rightful spot, and placed the bundle beside me…

"Gustave, another one…Oh, don't stop.."

"No, not tonight…."

"Can you read one a night then? Please?"

"These are my father's….."

Reneasia looked over at my father's body, and then back at me.

"I don't think he's going to be reading them for a long time…..Please, Gustave…Oh, please say you will…."

I sighed, and placed them at my side.

"Alright, one a night, but that's it….."

"Thanks….."

I then closed my eyes, and drifted off to sleep…hoping that my father would make a full recovery very soon…

Ok everyone, please review! More to come soon! Ideas are welcome!