The sound of the intrusive buzzer before the barred doors open, revealing the gaunt figure, lifting his dark head.

Beyond the plastic painted stones of the hall, the chorus of hell muffledly heralded Erik's return. After a moment he started down the hall, so well-trod he was surprised there wasn't a divot on the floor from all his past travels. Behind him, the officers who had patted him down and removed his mask kept their eyes steadfastly forward. In this cesspool of hatred and crime, he was the worst thing they'd seen, even dressed in his first-date finery.

They stopped before a row of doors with large white numbers stamped on the thick grey metal. Erik was led to number 11. He murmured a 'thank you' and stepped inside the little room, bisected by bulletproof glass, a desk through it armed with a chair and corded black phone. Sliding into the seat, Erik's breath caught. For the second time in ten years, he stared into his clear reflection.

Who was that, that well dressed, ugly man? The tamed monster? Was that sorrow or rage etched into every feature? It felt like anger-he had begun to reconcile this hot burning thing as opposed to the icy rage he had nurtured for so long. It turned his grey skin pink and made his gold eyes black as night.

He must look. He must stare at himself until he saw who he was staring back. Until that gaze was as familiar as hatred.

The warden of the women's prison had offered him an interview room 'like old times' when he and Nadir had grilled and wheeled and dealed with the lesser Nasheeds. It had come with the promise of a broken security camera.

But with Christine's phone heavy in his pocket, he had refused. There was life outside these walls, his life. A life on hold, a long inhale of clean new air waiting for the exhale of relief, the breath out before the first steps on a new journey. And he would suffocate if he did not move forward; if he held that cleansing air inside with the contamination and darkness.

He hadn't known where he was going when he called that cab yesterday, waiting on the corner while the house slept. He wanted to go back to the opera, he wanted to get on a plane and never come back. He wanted to crawl into bed with Christine and hear her heartbeat. He wanted to go to the precinct and slam Esther's head against the wall until white fragments of her skull swam in blood like stars in the night sky. Instead, the old instincts had returned, and he told his driver to go to Franklin Lakes.

He went home.

Technically it was his home. Another trophy in his settlement. He had been full of odd demands at the time and his lawyer was too drunk on inky bloodlust in the heat of the court battle, the judge too disgusted with it all to think of denying him his petty civil torments. In the dead of night, the dawn barely a thought, he had picked the lock on the door of the Nasheed McMansion. The keys were somewhere in Jules' house, wherever he kept Erik's tax papers, as a reminder to add it to his yearly declarations. As the door swung open, he wondered if the man ever used the house. For anyone else, it would be a gaudy, but nicely built and free place to spend an anniversary, if one didn't need electricity or water.

But it was still his home. It was something Nadir couldn't understand, something he couldn't really tell Christine. He hated the Nasheeds, and thinking of his time in this house made his hands shake and his body lock. But it had been his home, where he slept and ate if they let him. Where he had grown up, spent countless days and nights, found his place in the dynamics of the family; even if it was just as the living washing machine it was still a place and still his.

They had been his.

And the Nasheeds had been people. That was the hardest concept of all to reconcile. When Nadir had ripped them to shreds in reports and interviews, when Christine shook with rage at the very thought of them, Erik could not explain to their justified hatred that they had been just as normal as they were. They were not vile villains of operas, always cackling with mad desire. He was not one of them, but he had been apart of the household, and while the favored whipping boy, they were not always ruthless. At best most days they were cool, but no more. He was common like the old coffee maker or good broom. They would tell him what to do and spare him a glance, and that was all most of the time.

It was the banal conversations that cut deepest when he remembered them. The times madar asked him where he put the good plates, or how much longer for the chicken to broil, did he finish the laundry yet-the conversations that ended with nothing more than an acknowledgment twisted so painfully. Because there had been hope in those quiet exchanges. Hope that one day he would be so ingrained in their family he would become worthy of their name. Of a seat at their table.

He'd have done anything for a kind word, a smile or soft touch from any of them-and in the end, he did. The random and mistaken smirks, accidental 'thank you's he had carried in his heart for months after they were long made up for with beatings and screaming. The times they caught him laughing at some joke or story, or smiling as he was swept up in the excitement of a birthday or engagement and they did not rebuke him had been held in his heart as precious as Reza's gurgles, or Christine's touch. He had wanted so desperately to be apart of them, to be loved by them: his family.

He had loved them with the blind ignorant affection of a child.

He had hung his jacket on the coat tree, the cloth smudging the thick layer of dust that clung to it. He remembered all the parties, birthdays and holidays he had stood beside the pole acting as extra arms; a useful tool utterly ignored.

To be fair, the finely carved wood was better looking.

He took off his gloves and moved to the windows, ripping back the curtains. Dust danced in the street lights peeking through the glass, illuminating the large white cloth-covered figures dotted through the rooms. Then, like a grim magician, Erik began ripping back the cloth masks, tugging at the fabric of time in each room.

Here in the living room. It could be seen from the kitchen, a spot where he had watched with longing. Where madar and her little family had gathered, talking and laughing, praising and singing some times. Jokes and stories about school or the old country exchanged like the gifts opened at the Christmas time they weren't supposed to celebrate. It had looked so happy, and he had joined as much as he could. He listened and stifled his smiles and laughs into his arm. But he was never to enter unless he had to weave between the crush of bodies on holidays and birthdays and whenever someone wanted to show off, holding plates of food and drink or a rag to clean.

He stood by the fire, starring into the cleaned out pit where the logs once rested. He remembered how the flames had been so hot, so hot against his clammy white skin as Uncle Adam had pulled the clothes off him, how the grate had burned his hip when he backed away from the end of Adam's cigar held to his eye. "Sing you little shit, and show them." Then the marble against his temple when madar threw him against the mantel for pissing in fear.

Erik turned on his heel and returned to 'his' room in the house: the kitchen. His lips curled at the state of the place. Covered with dust, the sink scratched and unpolished, some of the drawers handles hanging by a single screw. Probably from the violent handling of the raid, and no more Erik to fix them. He placed his finger against one such molded handle and pushed. It swung twice and fell off completely with a sad clink on the floor.

To the sink now, placing his hands on the edge. He didn't feel the eery sensation that often came to him when he and Giovanni entered abandoned buildings and churches ripe for the remodeling: that sense of never being alone, like joining a congregation of ghosts, still there and at the same time forever gone.

No, this felt different: as if for the first time in his terrible existence he was totally and utterly alone; separate and apart from this congregation of specters, even abandoned by his own ghosts. His mind quiet, a primed audience for the play of memory to share its story on the stage of his consciousness.

The curtain rises with his head, staring at his masked reflection in the window above the faucet. Higher now-when had this sink gotten so low? He remembered the struggles of going on his toes to reach down in it-his whole arm blotchy and irritated from the exposure to constant soapy water. But he did remember growing taller than it-he had been bending when madar tried to drown him in the water he used to soak the pots for huffing in some random spark of frustration. He had been a teenager by then, ruled by hormones.

A teenager, because he had grown, all long limbs and questions and cracking voice. Even in his cage, he had the worries of growing up: would he ever sing again? Would he grow as tall as Bin Nasheed? Would he be able to go outside when he was full-grown? What would he do when madar died for surely she would since they all grew old? Concerns and questions of an adolescent.

Of a growing boy, of a teenager, of a human.

He left the kitchen and wandered the house, feeling his throat close. Erik stood at the top of the stairs to the basement. Careful down the rickety steps Bin Nasheed always talked about but never intended to fix. Passed the shelves now empty of cleaning supplies and broken toys, passed the impressions of lighter colored cement where the washer and dryer had been. Stopping now before the door...his door.

The door to the little closet in the basement.

He hadn't slept in here since he cut Uncle Adam. He had been taken to the garage and beaten left to shiver in his own blood, listening as Ester tearfully told the truth, told them how Erik saved her. He had loved her then, loved her like a sister and a goddess all in one. How stupid children are...

Child.

For all the times he shied from the fact, pulling away violently and tearfully from the reality, too afraid of what it would mean, he approached it now with all the reverence of a mourner approaching a casket; he approaching the closet. Mute sorrow and solemn silence.

He stared at the door, taller than it now. The room was so small when he opened the door to peer inside. He couldn't fit now even if he ducked and hunched. He had collected spare rags for years to make a bed: out-grown shirts and ripped sheets and curtains, discarded and stained table cloths and pillows the dogs had ripped up. And under it all the books he snuck away and read by a penlight he had figured out how to fix. But even seeing the little scratches of his feeble abc's on the walls made his stomach twist so violently that he had to close the door again.

He had been a child, a baby once like Reza had been. A squalling ugly little thing, delicate to hold. A creature that needed so innocently, not asking to be here, but saddled with the responsibility of a life anyway. And his mother had sold him, and knew what was going to happen to this baby she had held inside her body for months. And every human hand that had passed him along, trembling and crying to m...to Yasmin had known it. Had looked at him, a little child, and chose to forget his humanity, like passing along a glass bottle until the touches on top of touches made it lose its shine.

It had been evil.

He was evil too, wasn't he? But what had done to him had been evil.

How did it equate? Were they made of the same stuff? Could he look at a boy he did not know and do what had been done unto him? He had survived, why couldn't another? He did not even factor in what followed; the torture, the hurt, the darkness and the seduction of power. Just the simple evil of turning away, as they all had done when he was sold, or beaten, or starved or any number of things that still sank into his heart like teeth and made it beat a harder.

Could he have done it? Continued as the Phantom, accepted Esther's plan and become one of them. One of the spectators, who had paid for his ticket and now must endure the uglier part of the show?

Who was he, this nameless man?

The final act of memory began-The little Tamil girl that had caused so much rage in the family. A small little thing, crying over the body of Amir, staring up at his killer. She offered no resistance, perhaps she wanted to die with him? He could do that, and send them off together, away from this hell. It would be better than whatever followed.

Then she shifted and he saw it: the baby. The baby she held, the delicate little thing, as delicate as his mother. The child who would never truly understand what had been sacrificed for him, to spare him a life of evil, to give him life at all. Amir hadn't done it to prove something, some masculine defiance, selfish desire for this girl. He had done it to protect his child-given up his life for theirs.

And he had fallen to his knees, cut down by the image of this Madonna and Child. No notion came to him about how easy it would be to stop both of their screamings. No thoughts within his head but thoughts of horror, nothing within his heart but remorse. "I didn't know! I didn't know!"

Erik's hands fisted. Erik's hands slammed hard into the wood of the door, once, and then again. And in his head, Erik's voice rang clear. I could never do it.

He would never be one of them. He could never look at a new life and want to destroy, he would never see the pain of innocents and feel joy. He was not a Nasheed, he was not the Phantom.

He was a man, a man who had covered himself in the furs of evil to survive the bloodthirsty pack. And even if it had become as familiar as his own flesh it had been an actor's costume. A pantomime mask they had foisted upon him as a child.

An innocent child.

A child they had stolen and abused. A child they had tortured, not an evil thing tolerated and allowed to live and given only what it deserved. That had not been his birthright-they had taken his life from him, his future from him, his very identity from him. All of them. Knuckles against the door, pounding, pounding until the brittle wood gave way and a bleeding fist burst through the stubborn barrier that had once kept him locked inside as the concept finally settled in his heart: until he finally felt the idea as real as the pain blossoming in his fist.

It wasn't fair! It wasn't right! It's not fair!

The evil belonged to them, the pain belonged to them, the darkness and the fear-it was theirs.

He wanted his life back, he wanted the future he could have had. He wanted the laughter with Rookheeya free of its sarcastic edge, he wanted the quiet moments with Nadir washed clean of doubt. He wanted every milestone he shared with Christine back and free to love and live-he wanted his music without the sorrow that weighed every bow stroke.

He wanted the life that was his by right, and he wanted to be free of Nasheed. Erik loved them no more.

In the present once more, sitting before the glass, waiting. After all, every kill he had reported to her-and the Phantom had lay waste to the Nasheeds. Now all that was left was to make one final review.

He pulled out Christine's phone and Nasheed's ring from his pocket. They both caught the sickening yellow light dully on their reflective surfaces. Christine's phone was the only thing to register what he had as a face, and the lock screen came alive. Seven missed calls from Miss Giry, two from Nadir. He swiped away the notifications as he heard the buzz of the door on the other side of the glass opening.

Even shaking with rage, he kept his eyes submissively down. Never to look her in the eye until she spoke first. It was a habit that came on so naturally, he did not even think about the servitude in it. But there was fear there too. There was no Christine to lead him, no Nadir to buffer him back onto the right path. This was totally his alone-every choice made now was his to own.

He chose to look her in the face.

And his breath caught. Yasmin was still wondrously beautiful, with her carefully arched nose, her wide cat eyes, and perfectly small and shaped mouth. But now her luscious hair had rivers of white trickling through the inky darkness, wrapped up high on her head. The lines of her mouth were deeper, firmer as she scowled at him in that tanned round face, still desperately clinging to its youthful fullness. She shifted in her chair, sitting taller, lifting her chin and brow, sizing him up as she always did. Assessing him. She tried to fold her arms, but the cuffs stopped her.

Erik snatched up the phone, holding it to his ear, a million words on the tip of his tongue but nothing came forth, not even the scathing report about Esther and the rest of her family. Neither a villainous gloat nor a heroic speech tumbled forth.

Yasmin picked up her own receiver, and Erik heard her breath in his ear.

"Well? What do you want, thing?"

And then Erik exhaled. When had he forgotten that the Phantom and Yasmin had shared the same voice?

"Are you senile now? Stupid? Speak!"

Erik remained silent, felt tears crowd when he failed to blink as the final scale fell from his eyes. The Phantom had never been his creation. Not his protection to the evil they put on him, not his wolf's skin, not his act of vengeance. That voice that hated and berated, kept him alive only to live long enough to wish for death had always been Yasmin. He had not become the monster-since his purchase, he had always been a slave to it. He pressed the phone to his shoulder, looking down as if the acknowledgment weighed on his head.

In his lap, the phone recognized his face once more. The photo on the lock screen was of Christine and him: Erik pressing a kiss to her round cheek, she giggling as she kept one arm around his shoulders, the other holding out the phone for the shot. He could see their little studio in the background, his violin leaning against the computer, her bridal doll on the shelf above the monitor along with a few of Reza's toys.

What am I doing here?

This voice wasn't a voice at all. It was half words, half feeling, small like a child. What am I doing here Erik thought to himself. What was left for him here? Picking across the trappings of his old life, what did he hope to salvage?

Distantly, he heard Yasmin's voice muffled against his shoulder. He lifted his eyes to the glass. His faint reflection side by side with Yasmin's face, hers steadily growing more irritated...and unable to do anything about it. She wore the silver bracelets of her own servitude: to pride and wrath, to evil and greed and hatred. Yasmin was beautiful, and confident and never once doubted herself-everything he had wanted and craved and tried to imitate. And he had almost shared her fate.

She was the slave here; she would never be free. And he-And Erik…

He lifted the phone to his ear again. "What do you want," she continued. "Come to show me how ugly you've become in your old age?"

The insult washed over him, as forceful as a summer breeze. Was that all? Was that the only thing she held superior to him? Ugly, yes he was ugly. He was so monstrously ugly. But that was the only thing creature-like about him. And Yasmin, so pretty, a china doll of a woman… Erik wet his lips and leaned close, close to his own visage in the glass and his gaze never wavered.

"You're still so beautiful. And you're in here. And I...am leaving."

The clang of the receiver in its cradle was overly loud. Perhaps it rang in his ears because the jingle of Yasmin's cuffs and her shouting through the glass was totally muffled to him-as if it came from very far away. A lifetime away.

Erik stood and straightened his shirt before shrugging on his suit jacket. He thought he heard the officers come in to take Yasmin away as he picked lint off his sleeve waiting for his own door to open.

Out into the bright light of the hall, Erik nodded to the officer and returned back up the corridor without any direction. He collected his coat and mask and signed out. Dawn had long passed on the outside, and they were well into midday. Erik wished he had thought to bring sunglasses as his eyes adjusted.

A little over a half an hour and his feet brought him to the Raritan River. There was no ceremony as he flung Bin Nasheed's ring. It winked bring in the sunlight, a goodbye before diving into the deep rushes of the water. Erik watched the river for a very long time, and felt nothing for it, for what had happened, and what was lost.

Taking Christine's phone, he ordered a cab finally ready to return home.

Christine didn't know where she was at first. She smelled a strong cologne and felt too hot. Shifting, she realized the hard surface under her cheek was a body. She had fallen asleep against Nadir in the aftermath of the muscle relaxer, and in her tossing and turning, had managed to mummify herself in the throw blanket. Outside the window, the sun was taking its last bow, and twilight was upon them.

She sat up, extracting her body from the microfiber tomb, and twisted to peer into the kitchen. She could smell the cooking already. But Charles and Meg had left hours ago, to check on the opera house and go to work. And Nadir was here, grunting as she shifted on the couch. Which meant…

Flinging off the blankets, she scurried into the kitchen, her warm feet sticking to the tile of the floor. Christine knew who it was before she even crossed the threshold. Erik stood at the sink, staring into the water tumbling from the faucet. On the island, a pot was placed, soup already simmering inside. It took a minute for him to turn, maskless, towards her.

He hesitated, holding one of the dishes they had dumped in the sink to wash later. Placing it down he dried his hands and edged closer to her. "I'm sorry," he said immediately. "I know you were worried, I know you were trying to call. I should have...I needed to…." Erik swallowed. "I know you're mad."

Christine was mad? Even she didn't know. All she knew was the smell of summer air and that stuck to him and his clothes as she ran to him. All she knew was the familiar dip of his waist were her arms fit against him. He'd come back to her, he hadn't lied. He'd come back, despite all the reasons not to. She had not lost him to despair and fear and rage. He chose to come home, to her, to his life, to their future. Erik had fought whatever demons drove him from her side, and been victorious all on his own.

And if he was here, then somehow, impossibly, it would all be okay. Because everything they had fought and argued and begged for had been real, and worth it; not left to flicker, crushed under the chandelier.

His arms clutched her tightly, his mouth pressed into her curls. Inhaling her scent, and revealing in her warm body-so much warmer than the hate he had clasped for so many years. Erik breathed deep, filling himself up with her and his new life and there was no sting of doubt.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm not mad."

Erik leaned back to look her in the face. "Christine, you're a horrible liar."

She laughed, an explosion of sound that blasted her fear apart. "I'm irritated. Don't ever run off like that again. But I'm not mad. You came back to me."

"I told you." He began the task of wiping away her tears. "You will never be free of your Erik."

"Where did you go?" That came from the doorway. Nadir leaned heavily against it, and Christine saw the years etched into his drawn face, the hesitation that anything might send Erik running again. He looked straight into Erik's face and did not flinch.

"I went to Yasmin."

Both lover and friend froze. "Yasmin," Christine breathed.

Nadir cautiously entered the room, like stepping into the pen of a growling lion. "Why?"

"I…Erik…" He looked between them, stumbling his letters like a child learning their first snatches of language. "I had to...I had to say goodbye." He fought for an expedient way to tell them what he had accepted, how he had to exercise her from him and draw her influence like poison from a wound. How he stood here now, a little weary and faint from the blood loss, but better for it. "I…"

Nadir came close. He didn't need any more explanation; he really didn't care. Erik saw the relief in his eyes that there would be no frantic search this time, no abandoned belongings left to be put in the attic. "And did you? Say goodbye."

Erik tightened his hold on Christine. "...As much as that goodbye was worth. Have they charged Esther yet?"

"I don't know. I haven't checked in."

"We won't do it again." There was a firmness in her voice, the kind Christine had only heard in lessons, never in defense of himself. "I won't put Christine through that. Erik will not let them take more of your life, Khan. She will try to rat out her family, like everyone before her, for leniency."

"With her accomplice rolling on her, it'd have to be good information to get her out of life."

"She's a Nasheed," Erik said and felt no stab of betrayal. It was a fact. Esther was a Nasheed and all that came with it. Erik could not betray a family that was never his. "She'll find something, or her lawyers will. She'll angle for a deal, and it will begin again. She needs to go away for the maximum time. She needs to be an example."

"I can talk to the DA."

"If need be, I will accompany you."

At this, Nadir peered into Erik's steady gaze, and couldn't find fear in his friend's eyes, nor icy hatred. Only cool resolve, and maybe something that looked like peace. No, the cycle would not start again, no more vengeance and blood lust, hatred and vitriol. Simply justice, what of it they could get.

Khan nodded and reached out. His palm was wide and warm on Erik's shoulder that no longer felt so boney, and found it hard to swallow.

"Tears? Erik is sorry for worrying you as well, old man," Erik said with a little smile.

"Who said I was worried about you?"

"I could hear the tuning fork humming from across the state."

Before Nadir could form a flippant reply, Christine grabbed Nadir's shirt and pulled him into the circle of her arms, too. There was still so much to do and endure, but for now, they were all here, impossibly alive miraculously together.

The Khans stayed like that for a long while, quiet in the middle of their kitchen, all three grateful to be home once more.