Hello my dears! I'm sorry it's been so long since I've updated. School has kept me very busy.

Lady-Mariam: I am glad you are happy. I thought most people would be. You loved Erik dwelling in self-pity? Why? It might be short-lived, it might not. You'll have to see. Okay, let me explain this. Right now, Camillé is 24, and he is three years older than she is, making him 27. So, for the purposes of this story, for now, he is 27 years old.

Nibblesfan: You'll have to wait and see. But yeah, nothing's ever easy with Camillé. At least she'll keep him on his toes!

gogo2625: You love it! That makes me happy!

Keep reviewing! I love hearing what you all think! Please keep asking questions, and I will keep answering! I hope I won't be this long between chapters again. Good news, though, I've got Winter Break after next week, so I should be able to update more!

I'm listening to Pirates of the Caribbean and it's making me jumpy. Yikes. Davy Jones' and the Kraken. Eep.

Recap: She smiled up at him. "Mon amour (My love), I think I can do that."

Chapter Thirteen: Trust

He grinned as he spun her around again and held her in his arms. She leaned against him for a moment, then looked up into his face. They began leaning in again, and finally, their lips touched. Camillé felt a blissful peace as she ran her hands up to his shoulders and kissed him softly. Erik grasped her waist in his hands and pulled her closer yet, wanting this single moment to never end. All their love culminated in this one kiss, and he knew now that she loved him entirely. Her kiss said all the words that she might never say.

The kiss deepened, and they pulled each other closer still. He loved her more than anything, and she returned the sentiments in kind. Erik wanted to hold her here forever. Then his mind was taken away from the kiss and Camillé by one simple occurrence. His mask began to slip upwards. Forced to break the kiss, he reached up to pull it back down, but stopped when he felt Camillé's fingers on his. He looked into her eyes, and saw her silent plea to him to trust her.

She knew that this was going to be hard. They had only just found that they loved each other, and this would be the last thing that he wanted. Yet… she wanted to see what he looked like, free of his mask. It was the only thing really keeping them apart. She knew that if he asked anything, she would tell him. All he had to do was ask. So, silently, she asked him to let her remove his mask. The look in his eyes told her that he was hesitant. He didn't want to risk losing her now.

She breathed slowly and deeply. "Erik, je t'aime (I love you). It does not matter to me what you think lies beneath this mask. It is you that I love, and therefore I love all of you. Erik, please… trust me."

"Camillé, you do not know what lies behind the mask… I cannot lose you. I do not want to lose the woman I love," he pleaded, "You mean everything to me. And you will leave me if you see what is behind this mask."

"No, Erik, I will not. Never could I leave you. Finally, I am home, Erik, and I would not leave you if offered the world in exchange. Nothing behind that mask could ward me away from you if it tried," she told him, smiling slightly, "You have my love and will have it forever."

He looked into her eyes for a moment, presumably looking for the lie in her words. Slowly, as if it was painful, he lowered his hands and closed his eyes. The uncovered half of his face grimaced, waiting for her to react with a scream and leave him. Tenderly, she pulled away the mask and put it in her right hand.

The flesh on the right side of his face was red and enflamed, as if it had been burnt. The natural contours of his face were bumped and ridged, giving it an appearance like blistered skin. Yet she reflected that it was not as horrible as he made it seem. Yes, it was deformed, and yes, it was quite different from the other side, but it was only different. It was not world-ending as he had made it seem. Her thumb reached up and grazed across his forehead, then cheekbone, and down to his jaw. His blue eyes opened in surprise and he tried to back away, but she set the mask down on the organ and kept his head there with her other hand.

"Now you see," he said, his voice sounding broken.

She nodded, a gentle smile on her face. "Now I see," she repeated, "the face of the man I love in its entirety."

Their eyes met, hers full of understanding and love, his of grief and disbelief. She leaned up and kissed him softly, as if she felt him the most beautiful creature in the world. His eyes widened as he realized that she truly meant it. Slowly, his hands fell to her waist and held her gently. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she pulled him close. When she broke the kiss, she grinned at him.

"Tu es très loufoque (You are very silly), Erik," she told him, and he gave her a surprised look, "Your face is nothing as bad as you made it seem. In all honesty," she mentioned, "I have seen worse."

He looked at her in skepticism as she pulled herself out of his arms and led him into a dance to imaginary music. "Now you are simply denying its hideousness. I doubt that you have seen anything as bad as this."

She sighed and looked at the ceiling as he took the lead and they danced around her desk and his organ. "I know that for you, it is hard to believe, but trust me, your face is not as bad as you think it is, and I have seen worse."

He took the opportunity to quirk his eyebrow at her and pull her up to his chest.

"What could possibly be worse than this?"

She broke from his hold and stepped away. He smoothly spun her around and pulled her back into his arms. They stepped together in time for a moment before she caved to his gaze and answered.

"Many things… none of which I wish to remember."

He stopped their dance and looked down at her with a curious face. "Such as?"

Another sigh filled her lungs. "Torture. Having a knife taken to you. Cut, bruised, sliced, shaved of flesh… I have seen worse. Your face, compared to some of the things I have seen, is a welcome respite," she told him, and he saw in her eyes that she was not lying.

"Where have you seen such things, mon cœur (my heart)? Where have you been?" he asked, concerned about her.

She took a deep breath. "In the wrong place at the wrong time."

He gave her a look which spoke volumes. It told her that now that she had seen his face, she had to tell him. She smiled nervously and nodded, dragging him by the hand towards her bedroom. Camillé sat cross-legged on the swan bed and Erik sat beside her against the head. She turned herself to face him and saw that he had the same expression as before. In an attempt to avoid his eyes, she looked down at their hands, turning his over and playing with it gently.

This was not an event she wanted to share with him. But yet… he had trusted her. Perhaps it was time to trust him with some little fact about Wolfe. Why the man had deserved to die when she had killed him. It wasn't a pleasant memory, but there were very few memories she had of Wolfe that were pleasant. Most of them were his bringing her into the world that she had lived in for so long. It had been years since then. Since he had introduced her to the real world. The twisted, perverted, sick side of the world she'd been innocently living in for so long. He had changed her life that night, and opened her eyes to the world she hadn't wanted to see.

If only it had been Wolfe who made her who she was. But no… that was someone else. Someone far closer to her. Someone only she knew.

"It was six years ago. I was only eighteen at the time," she began, after many minutes of silence, "but I thought that I had matured far beyond what any girl my age would ever grow to. This was before all of my worse assignments and before… my first murder. Anyway, I was spending my time with the guild – I'd moved to Angleterre six months before. They thought I was quite useful. I was small, quick, and agile, able to get in and out of hard-to-get places faster than anyone else. It was around the middle of summer when they asked me to help them with my first major… assignment really is the only word for it – my first major assignment. I was asked by Wolfe to help him track down a group that had been known for their less-than-lacking-finesse methods of taking hostages," she explained, letting out a breathy laugh, "Not that Wolfe was any better than they were."

Erik let her fall silent for a moment before he asked, "What happened?"

"Well, I took him up on his offer. We were getting paid a fair amount for this, I thought it would be worth it. I didn't understand why everyone thought Wolfe was so horrible for taking me on this mission. I understand now. When we finally tracked them down, they were working in a warehouse by the ports on the edge of the Thames. God… that place was the closest I have ever come to understanding Hell. There were people all over the place, in separate… cages, and they had them divided up by family – I think it was just to add to their torture. In the back there was a torture chamber, only it was open to the rest of the warehouse so everyone could clearly hear them scream. It was bad enough seeing the people they had tortured.

"They were cut up and bruised to the point that if we had known them, we probably wouldn't have recognized them. Some of them were missing body parts, like ears and fingers. One of the men we passed had one of his eyes gouged out. It smelled horrible, I remember I was constantly gagging. But if that wasn't bad enough, fate made it worse. We had snuck in during one of their torture sessions. We had to wait until they had dispersed to take them out… so we had to watch.

"Erik… it was horrible. They had a woman in a metal chair. Her dress was ripped and she was crying. I could see that they had whipped her at some point, like a lot of the people there. Oh god… what he was doing to her… it was horrific. And he laughed, Erik. The torturer laughed. No matter how long it's been, I can still see that woman's face and hear her screams as he cut into her with that jagged knife. I can hear the man's sick laughter and his expression of glee when she screamed… I can even see the face of her husband as he begged them to let her go. I wish they had let her go, Erik. I wish they had."

His eyes were full of a shocked pity as he pulled her into his arms and let her lay there with her head on his chest for a moment. "Camillé… mon cœur, why did he do this to you? Why? Why were you there?"

She took a shuddering breath. "Because Wolfe thought it was time for me to grow up."

He pushed her away from him just enough so he could see her face. "How could something like that help you to grow up? It would destroy most."

"I had only been doing thieving. Some jobs here and there inside houses and shops. If I hadn't have knocked him out that one day, I think he might have left me alone. I'd been with them for six months, Erik. Obviously the four months he spent training me added up for something. I guess he thought it was time for me to see the real world I was living in. To prove that I was ready to be in it."

There was a moment's silence. "And he brought you along on this mission to give you a chance to prove that you were."

"He did. I could not truly prove myself then, though. That was just the beginning. It was later that I finally proved myself," she said in a quiet voice.

Erik pulled her close again and held her there. "What did you do?"

She froze and pulled away from him completely. "Can we talk about this at a later time? Please?"

"Of course," he breathed.

She had shared this with him, but he could tell from the look in her eyes that something more had happened that he had yet for her to tell him. As much as he wanted to know, he knew that the subject of Wolfe was one of the most tender for her. Something was blocking her from being comfortable with the subject of her old colleague. Perhaps something he had done to her? No, that didn't seem right. Something he had forced her to do. That had to be it. He had forced her to do something that had changed her. More than just this showing her the dark side of the world, it had truly changed her. Made her into the person that he had seen the first time he ever laid eyes on her.

Something that had turned her into a murderer.

What do you all think about this dive into Camillé's past?

Keep reviewing! Any questions, comments, concerns? Want to rant about the fact that Camillé is still keeping things from Erik?

- Emmy