Four days after her arrival at the house by the underground lake, Elise watched Erik root through the bedroom of the large room with a coffin in the very center. Anya stepped behind her and fluffed the girl's hair gently. "What are doing, Love?" Anya asked, head tipped curiously.
"I stored my cello in a very inconvenient place."
"I never knew played the cello," Anya remarked, eyeing the coffin uncomfortably. "Why did you store it?"
"I play every instrument in the orchestra and then some," Erik informed her, finally pulling out a large brown leather case. "I stored it to save space when Christine first moved in and never pulled I out again."
Anya watched him with amusion as Erik opened the case like a child opening a gift. Elise looked up at her curiously. "What's a cello?"
"It's a musical instrument. Like a large violin that stands on its end."
"It is God's greatest gift to man," Erik said simply, and Anya chuckled.
"You're not going to make me jealous of a piece of wood and strings now, are you?"
"A piece of wood and strings? Do not speak to me again until you've washed your mouth with soap!" Erik scolded, half-teasingly. "This is one of my most prized possessions."
"Elise, why don't go and practice the stretches I taught you this morning?" Anya suggested, and the girl scampered off to the parlor to practice the fluid movements the Prima Ballerina had taught her. Anya stayed behind, slipping into her fiancé's bedroom.
"Erik? Why haven't you gotten rid of the coffin yet?" Anya asked, leaning against the wall some and eyeing the casket nervously.
"The same reason you haven't gotten rid of the girl," Erik remarked, sitting with the cello between his knees and beginning to play a stunningly rich melody as though it simply flowed from his fingers.
Anya couldn't help but feel a small twinge of jealousy at the way he caressed the strings, but quickly shook it off; jealous of an instrument! Ha! "You know I've been looking for a home for her," Anya frowned.
"Not as hard as you could be."
"I'm not going to just leave the poor girl in a basket and send her down the Seine!"
"She's fed, she's clothed, she's bathed, what more do you want for a common street rat?"
"A loving home isn't too much to ask for."
"I don't see why you have to be the one to find it for her," Erik stated plainly, stopping his playing abruptly. Anya's frown deepened.
"You really don't feel a twinge of pity for her at all, do you?"
"Not in the least," Erik answered, putting the bow aside.
"I cannot believe you! I thought you of all people would be able to empathize the smallest bit with an unloved child."
Erik strode up to his fiancé challengingly. "No one shed a single tear for me, why should I be expected to feel any bit of pity for her?"
Anya gave him a disbelieving look. "I have shed tears for you, you stupid man. That's what this is about. You resent her!"
"Yes, Anya, I resent her deeply," Erik admitted with a growled. "Why should she lead any better a life than I? What has she done deserving of a better life? Is it simply because she is beautiful? Does that really make her more deserving?"
With steady hands, Anya reached her hands up to Erik's face, carefully removing his mask. Erik's entire demeanor seemed to change. Normally he was so regal, so strong… now he seemed like a self conscious child being scolded by his mother. With soft hands Anya cupped his face, and carefully she pulled his head down to meet her lips.
"I love you, Erik. And I'm sorry your life had to be so difficult. Every day I wish I could have met you ten, even fifteen years ago… But My Love, we cannot change the past. We can only put the past behind us and do our best with what we have in the moment. In the moment I have you. I am happy with that… why can't you be happy just having me?"
"I am happy having you," he promised, his breath little more than a pious whisper.
"Then why are you so resentful of a six year old girl, Erik? Why do you insist on dwelling in the past?"
"You… you would make a wonderful mother. My mother-"
"Your mother was a bitch!" Anya spat, more passionately than she had intended. "Any woman who could treat a child the way she treated you is guaranteed a place in hell's fires as far as I am concerned."
Erik opened his mouth as if to argue, and Anya kissed him to silence him. "You're an amazing man, Erik. I look forward to the day when I will be your wife."
There was a long moment of silence in which Erik held his fiancé, breathing in her smell. What a remarkable woman she was. So passionate, so loving. She had put up with all of his doubts, all of his eccentricities. She had not only tolerated them, she had loved them. It was true… he had been jealous of Elise. In some sick, oedipal way… Erik had wanted to be her. He longed for the mother Anya was to the girl she had only known for days. In a quiet moment of thought, Erik realized the only way he would ever be free of his strange jealousy. "…I want you to be the mother of my children, Anya."
Anya was so taken aback her mouth hung open for a long moment as she struggled for words. "I… You.. what?"
"Madame Anya, I'm finished," the girl called from the parlor, startling Anya from her stunned silence as she quickly handed Erik back his mask and left the room.
"That's wonderful, Elise. Why don't you help me make lunch?"
"Anya-" Erik began as Anya ushered the girl into the kitchen and began gathering vegetables. The man followed her into the kitchen once his mask was tied tightly to his face. "Anya I never wanted a child until-"
"Out," Anya snapped, pointing outside the kitchen, Erik purses his lips and obeyed. Anya set the girl to cleaning potatoes while she followed her fiancé out of the kitchen. When they were out of earshot of the girl, Erik spoke again.
"I never wanted children until I saw you mother Elise… I need you to mother my children, Anya. I want to see that glow you have when nurturing Elise light up your face with my own flesh and blood."
"Erik you know-"
"You were declared barren when you were just a girl, and doctors have been wrong before. You can be re-examined."
Anya shook her head with tears in her eyes. "Erik I slept with my husband every week for ten years, and every month for the five years following that. Only once did I conceive, right after I was married, and even then I miscarried!"
"It's no wonder, as thin and overworked as you were. When was the last time you had your monthly bleeding?"
The woman bit her lip some. "Not for years and years…"
"It's not uncommon for ballerinas to never get their monthly at all. I hear the girls here pattering about it all the time, terrified their pregnant because they have no tell-tale sign every month. Perhaps now with your injury your health will start improving. You'll put on a healthy weight, and who's to say you can't conceive?"
"So now I'm too thin?"
"Anya, don't change the subject-"
"I'm not, Erik, I simply am having a hard time believing you're lecturing me about my health when you have little more meat on your bones than a skeleton!"
"You don't want to have my child," Erik spoke with sudden realization. "It's not that you think you can't, it's that you don't want to."
"Now who's the one changing the subject?" Anya demanded bitterly.
"Do you want to be a mother or don't you?" Erik demanded so harshly Anya gaped a little looking for words.
"I… Of course I do, Erik. So much…" she said quietly, looking towards the kitchen where Elise was carefully cleaning vegetables. "But-"
"But what, Anya? I thought you would be pleased that I want a child, and now you're fighting me!"
"You wouldn't understand, Erik."
Erik glared at her some. "I think I understand perfectly. You're all talk is what you are, damning my mother to Hell when you could do no better at raising a child like me than she did."
"Don't you dare accuse me of such a thing!" Anya snapped more forcefully than Erik had expected her to. "It's just… I don't want to get my hopes up, Erik. I don't know what I would do if we made all these plans to have a baby and the baby never came. Heaven forbid I have another miscarriage! I want to be a mother almost more than anything, especially a mother to your children. I simply don't want to get hurt in the process. And I don't want you to get hurt either."
"What a strange couple we are," Erik remarked. "You had to talk me into having sex, and I'm having to talk you into having a baby."
In spite of her mood, Anya could not help but chuckle at this odd truth. Finally she took a deep breath and made her decision. "All right. I will start trying to put on weight, and I will speak to a physician. But only on two conditions."
Erik raised a brow, and Anya continued. "First, that we not sleep together again until we are wed. On the off chance I am not barren, I do not want to risk conceiving out of wedlock." In most matters, Anya was a fairly practical woman. There were certain things she held superstitions about, and the state of her baby if conceived out of wedlock was one of them.
"And the second?"
"The second is that if I do conceive, we move out of this house and into one out above ground."
The masked man opened his mouth to protest, but Anya held up her hand. "Hear me out, would you? We will stay here until I conceive, which may very well be never. But it isn't right to raise a child away from people, in artificial light. Children need friends and sunlight to grow and thrive."
"I certainly didn't."
"Don't you think you would be better off if you had all that, though? You know as well as anyone the struggles you have with people. You've only got two friends in the world, and I'm the only one of them you see regularly. And that's only because I live with you now."
Erik pursed his lips before speaking. "All right, I accept your conditions."
Anya smiled softly and moved to kiss her fiancé carefully. "It's going to be hard for me not to get my hopes up, you know."
"We'll see what the physician has to say once you're healthy," he said after kissing her back, and Anya nodded her agreement. "It's going to be hard keeping my hands off of you until we're married," Erik purred, and Anya realized they hadn't made love since just before she was kidnapped. And now they would have to wait even longer!
"We could always keep our engagement brief," Anya suggested, and Erik chuckled.
"I think I would go mad if we drew it out for long."
"When is the soonest we could reserve a priest?" She asked, and Erik considered this.
"I don't know how that works, actually," he responded honestly, following Anya back into the kitchen where she took up the knife to begin slicing vegetables for a roast.
"I could start asking when Elise and I go up and talk to another orphanage tomorrow," the woman offered.
"Wonderful. Speak to the Daroga too, to make sure he can serve as our witness."
"What does he do but fuss over you all day?" Anya teased. "I'm sure he'll be free."
Erik held her around the middle and kissed at her neck lovingly. "It's been quite a while… are you so certain about your first condition?" he purred into her neck, and Anya lifted her head for him for only a brief moment before swatting him away.
"You horrible tempter! Yes, I'm quite certain. Now if you wouldn't mind keeping your hands to yourself in front of our company? My goodness, our poor children are going to be scarred for life the way you act sometimes," she remarked quite seriously before smiling to him over her shoulder to let him know she was only teasing.
Author's Note: I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but I've been in a funk all day today so I'm probably not the best judge. I'll let you know in the next chapter if I went back and rewrote this one!