A/N: I'm late, I'm late for a very important date! I'm working 12 hour shifts for the next seven days. This will impact uploads. After that all should be back to normal. I'm still catching up on review replies. Thank you all for being patient!

Scars.

He was made up of them from head to toe. She would have been hard pressed to find a single inch of cool skin that was not mapped with them. They criss-crossed and webbed, deep and long, short and thin.

She traced them with her fingertips in the early morning quiet. Though she could not quite read it, she could feel his life written plainly beneath the pads of her fingers in the braille of his skin.

To her surprise he was receptive to her silent curiosity. He made no argument as the tip of her finger traced one of the raised marks that began at his shoulder and disappeared beneath her own arm.

"Erik?" she whispered as she traced the mark back up to where it began.

"Hm?"

She bit her lip, laying her palm flat against the raised line. "How long have we been married?"

He was silent for a long while and she sighed, her thumb finding a new mark to memorize. This one was short and fat, laying in the space just between his third and fourth rib.

"It doesn't matter, not really," she offered eventually, her fingers walking their way up until they found a single round scar on his shoulder. "I was only curious."

His hand found hers in the darkness, pressing her pointer finger gently into the dimple of the scar. "That one was your boy," he offered quietly, the words accompanied by just the faintest hint of a laugh. "He is a poor marksman."

She wasn't sure whether he meant to inspire sympathy or shock with his quiet statement. She found neither. Perhaps, if this had only been a short month ago, she would have. Now, though, nothing she learned of him could shock her much. "He was a sailor, not a soldier," she murmured.

His hand slipped from hers and his lips pressed thoughtfully into her hair. "It depends on how you choose to count it," he answered.

"What?"

"Our marriage," he answered simply, his eyes trained on her hand as she sought out yet another mark to trace. "If you are to believe the papers then it was two months longer. If it was the Scorpion, it was a few days longer. If it was the night that you signed the papers it has only been nearly eight months."

Eight months. She wasn't sure whether it seemed too long or too short. Her finger found another long, thin scar that stretched along his side and disappeared from her reach behind his back. "What about this one?"

His eyes traced the gentle path her fingers followed. "If I remembered every mark I would have room for nothing else in my head," he answered slowly. "Likely a whip," he added as though it were an afterthought. "Most shaped that way were."

"Show me one that you remember," she murmured softly, glancing up at him.

He hesitated but eventually he relented, his hand covering hers as he drew it down to his side, just over his hip. "I remember this one," he admitted quietly, dragging her fingers slowly along its jagged edge.

"Why?"

"It was the first time I honestly believed I was going to die," he answered, pulling her fingers along it again. "As it turns out, one can lose a remarkable amount of blood without succumbing."

It was a long scar. Unlike the others it had sharp edges, something more akin to tearing than a slice. "What happened?"

"A mugging, believe it or not," he answered with a low laugh. "Or, I suppose it would have been a mugging had I anything to give. It is a funny game in the lower reaches of the streets; men with nothing trying to steal from others with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. I was young and foolish and afraid."

"How old were you?" she asked, tucking her head in the space between his shoulder and throat.

"Honestly? I haven't the slightest idea," he admitted, his free hand pulling her hair back. "Young. Very young."

The prospect of young Erik was an odd one. It was never a thought that had truly crossed her mind but once it was there it was hard to leave behind. He had begun just the same as anyone else; a wriggling, crying, helpless little infant. At some point he hadn't had the scar that she now felt beneath the pads of her fingers. He had been a child once. He had been innocent and naive and afraid just like anyone else. "Did you love her?" she asked, her lips brushing against his shoulder with her question.

"Love who?"

"Your mother," she answered, her fingers still tracing along the jagged scar despite the fact that his hand had slipped away.

He was silent in his thoughtfulness, burying his lips in her hair. "I did," he admitted eventually.

"Even though she was so very cold and cruel?"

"She did the best that she could, I think, considering the circumstances," he said slowly, thoughtfully. "I think - I think that she tried to love me. She may well have found a way to had I been dumb as well as ugly. I terrified her. She hadn't the slightest idea of what to do with someone like me. I can't blame her, not really. Most don't. And I was certainly not the most agreeable child."

Her fingers walked from scar to scar, tracing shapes in the points like constellations in the stars. "Do you think she missed you?"

"No," he sighed, staring up at the dull ceiling. "I daresay she would have been relieved."

She chewed her lip silently as she contemplated him. He was not mad, not really. Once she thought he was - surely only a madman was capable of the atrocities he had committed, of the terrible acts of violence played out by his hand, of the complete lack of compassion that he had seemed to have. He wasn't a madman at all, though. He was just as human as anyone else, just as sane when it came down to it. He was completely capable of rational thoughts; of guilt and regret, compassion and love. It made her terribly sad to think of what could have been had his life only played out slightly differently.

"Imagine it," he murmured thoughtfully, seemingly lost in his own musings. "You've a handsome husband and a fine home, a child on the way. He died, shortly before I was born, but she was hopeful. She still had the child, at least. Imagine it, looking down only to find this face staring back at you. It's a wonder she didn't kill me just then."

"You don't hate her." It wasn't a question, it was a mere observation breathed against the cool skin of his throat.

"I did, for a very long time," he said, looking down at her carefully. "But I am old, Christine, and you have made me soft. She did the very best that she could. She gave me books and music and on holidays, so long as I behaved, she would even bring chocolate home with her from church. When I broke the mirror of her vanity she did not scold me - she picked the glass from my skin and told me a fairytale about monsters that hid in mirrors to frighten naughty children. She tried, Christine, and I cannot hate her so very much for that."

Perspective was an odd thing to have. His thoughtfulness was inspiring and she found herself looking back on her own life - her naivety, her childishness. She did not regret it. There was not much at all that she could honestly admit to regretting. Hurting him, maybe. If she had it all to do over again, knowing what she did now, there were certainly things she would change. She would not have torn his mask away to start with. She would not have whispered the terribly cruel words that she had to Raoul. She would not have been so very afraid. "How old are you?"

His thumb traced along her upper arm, slow and languid. "I may have been able to answer that once," he said slowly. "I haven't the slightest idea, Christine. I've lost many years to opium and morphine; entire chapters of my life have played out in a foggy haze. I am old. Far too old to be a proper husband to you I am sure."

She let two fingers rest against his throat, feeling his slow pulse. "Was there ever someone else?"

"That I loved?" he asked, the words tangible under the tips of her fingers. She nodded against him. "No," he answered softly. "Not that I truly loved."

"Yet you are thinking of someone," she observed thoughtfully. "Will you tell me about her?"

He swallowed, his thumb continuing it's careful tracing of her arm. "A little gypsy girl," he answered far more easily than she had expected him to. "I was very young and so was she. She was a marvelous dancer. I did not love her, it was only infatuation, but I thought that I may have at the time."

She smiled gently. "And you are quite certain that you're not just infatuated with me?"

"Absolutely certain," he answered good naturedly. "I am quite certain that I love you, Christine."

She hummed deep in her throat. "Ah, but can you really be sure? How can one truly know?"

He shifted, pulling himself onto his side as he stared at her intensely, his fingers pulling her hair back as he gazed into her eyes. "You have changed me, Christine," he said slowly, his thumb brushing over her cheek. "That is a feat far too big for anything but love. I think, sometimes, that God must not hate me so very much if He led me to you."

"God doesn't hate, Erik. People do."

"Do you think so?" he was looking at her so carefully, searching her face but what for she wasn't quite sure. When she finally nodded, he sighed. "Do you believe in forgiveness, Christine?"

"I do," she answered softly. "I believe in repentance too."

"So you think there is hope - even for someone like me."

"Even for you, Erik," she answered quietly, trying desperately to see him through the darkness.

"I used to not believe that," he said slowly. "But I think - I think that if you could manage to love me then perhaps nothing is truly impossible. Is that foolish?"

"Not at all." There was something in his eyes that she didn't quite recognize, something quiet and thoughtful, subdued and yet so very intense at the same time.

"I have been praying," he whispered his confession as though it would sound absurd if he spoke it any louder. "I haven't prayed since I was a child but lately - lately it has just seemed the thing to do. I feel a fool but still… perhaps there is something to it."

She couldn't help the hope that fluttered in her chest with his quiet confession. "If I could forgive you then I'm sure that God can," she said.

"Do you, Christine?" His question sounded so very important carried on the serious timbre of his voice. "Do you forgive me?"

"I do," she answered just as seriously.

"After all that I've put you through? All of the lies and schemes, all of the horror and threats? You can truly forgive it?"

She found his hand on her cheek, slowly pulling it down until she could press her lips to the center of his cold palm. "I forgive you," she said with as much conviction as she could manage. "I forgive you everything. Do you forgive me?"

"You've nothing to be forgiven for," he answered quietly, pulling her close against him. "I love you, Christine."

"And I love you," she whispered.

His lips pressed to her forehead as he fell into a quiet thoughtfulness. She did not bother to ask what it was that he thought of - she did not ask after the scars that her fingers found on his back or of what it was that he prayed for. She did not recount their sins in her head. Instead she laid silently in his arms, her fingers trailing through the thin hair at the nape of his neck as she realized, for the first time, that maybe this was what happiness was.