By the time they were pulling up to the house, Christine was buzzing with excitement. She kept peering out the window of the carriage, her face set determinedly, trying to catch a glimpse of it even though Erik kept telling her they weren't close enough to be able to see it yet.

When she was a small girl, she had dreamed of one day having a lavish flat of her own, four whole rooms. As a child, it had seemed an extravagant and gaudy hope, one unlikely to come true.

Now she had house of her own, with eighteen rooms, and a husband to share it with.

When the carriage rolled to a stop, she didn't even wait for Erik for help her down, instead jumping out by herself. Her eyes bright and her breath fast, she stared past the little wrought iron fence around the property, past the still growing garden scape that lined the cobblestone pathway, up at the three-story house that had been built just for her.

It was magnificent.

She hardly noticed as Erik paid the driver, giving him instructions to wait an hour for them and then take them to the opera house. She certainly didn't notice as he pulled the little glass bottle of his heart pills from his pocket, swallowing one as a precaution with his back turned to her to ensure she wouldn't see.

"What do you think?" he smiled as he turned to her at last.

He had the slightest anxiety that perhaps the style wouldn't be to her tastes, but those eased as soon as she looked up at him.

"I scarcely have words, Erik," she breathed.

He chuckled, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders.

She reached a hand forward to open the gate, but he stopped her.

"Christine, wait-" he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Let me carry you?"

"Oh!"

He wanted to carry her over the threshold, just like in all the stories? She thought her heart might burst with love for this man.

"Of course!" she held her arms out to him.

He eagerly picked her up, an arm around her back and arm under her knees, hoisting her up and holding her close to his chest. He carried her in this fashion through the gate and up the walkway.

"I had roses planted," he said, just slightly out of breath as he nodded towards the bushes that lines their path. "But you can have something else planted if you wish."

"I love roses," she sighed, twisting to look at them without letting go of him.

They were not yet in bloom.

"What color?" she asked.

"White," he smiled.

She said nothing, leaning her head against his neck and secretly smiling.

She looked up again, though, as they neared the front door. There was a large marble triangle above the door - Christine recalled Erik had called this a pediment - and on this pediment there was a relief carving. As they got closer, she could see the design was that of a bird - a nightingale - and a rose. The birds wings were spread as though in flight, and the rose leaned towards him, as though drawn inexplicably towards her lover, and all around the edges of the pediment was a woven design of smaller roses and tiny wings - perhaps small nightingale wings, or perhaps little angel wings.

The sight took her breath away, and in an instant she knew that Erik had carved this himself.

He fished a key out of his breast pocket with some difficultly, but refused to set Christine down until after he had unlocked the door and carried her over the threshold of the house. Once inside, he set her carefully to the ground, then pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.

"Welcome home, Christine Travers," he murmured, and hugged her tightly.

He had fantasized about living out this moment with her just as often as he had about having erotic moments with her. But while the joys of the flesh could be purchased if one paid enough, there was no sum of money that could buy this moment - to stand in his house with his wife who loved him as they were about to start their life together. While he had assumed there might have been the smallest possibility of enticing her to share his bed at some point, this was the thing he truly thought could never happen - that she would share her life with him.

And yet - here they were.

He shed a tear or two as they stood there, the embrace lingering for a long moment. She pulled back a little after a moment and beamed up at him as though he were everything that was good in the world.

"Welcome home, Erik."

She took a step away from him and tugged on his hand.

"Now come on! I want to see our house!" she grinned.

She was already mostly familiar with the layout from looking at the blueprint, but it felt so different to look at it on paper than it did to walk through it. They walked through the entire thing, Erik pointing out key features here and there. He gave suggestions of what he thought should go where and how it should be furnished, as though he could direct how she decorated the house in the same fashion he had directed her career.

He showed her his personal bedroom, and she noted that there were no windows in it. She narrowed her eyes at it, thinking that he would probably bring that awful coffin in here. He showed her her own private room which he promised would belong to her alone, and she was pleased with the large window with a generous view of the garden in the backyard.

Her favorite room - and she had a feeling it was his too, despite his calculated nonchalance in how he presented it to her - was the shared bedroom.

Respectable married couples had private bedrooms, such as he had built, and yet he'd also included this scandalous and presumptive room. It made her smile to think of it, every time. She wondered how often they'd actually use their private rooms, anyway.

"You should always be allowed your privacy, my dear," he fidgeted with his cravat as he explained. "And there will be times I wish to be alone as well... This room here is for... Well, you know- to share, of course... If you wish... To spend the night... With me."

She watched with a wry grin as he tried to explain the obvious function of a shared bedroom and shook her head in wonder at the fact that this awkward stuttering was capable of coming from the same man who just this morning had looked to be a hair's breadth away from having his way with her three times over.

"And what's this room again, Erik?" she asked innocently, trying to ignore her own pink cheeks over the bedroom affair and pointing to the room just across from her personal bedroom.

Erik became quiet.

"That is your room to do with as you wish," he told her.

"Oh? Like?"

He shrugged uncomfortably.

"Anything. You could put books it, or vases of flowers... Or things you make."

Things she made - well, that was a way of putting if it.

She turned to him and hugged him.

"The blueprint said nursery," she reminded him gently.

"It can be anything you wish it to be," he insisted stiffly.

"What if I wish it to be a nursery?" she murmured.

He was a quiet a long moment.

"I thought you wished to sing," he said finally.

"Well I already have a singing room, Erik!" she huffed.

He pushed her back to look her in the eye, and she shyly met his gaze.

"You named the room that," she said in a small voice. "Doesn't that mean you'd like it, too?"

"Some fantasies," he said carefully. "Are better left as fantasies and not brought into being."

She nodded, not wanting to push him.

"Let's go look at the garden?" she suggested, and the dark look left his face as his smile returned.

"Of course."

The garden was in its infancy, barely growing and recently planted. Still, everywhere she looked she saw the hidden potential for blooms and bushes and she couldn't wait to tend to them, to nurture them, to watch them grow into something beautiful just like her relationship with Erik had.

"You can hire a gardener, too, if you wish," he told her. "And a housekeeper as well. I only ask that they keep their visits to less than once a week and are strictly punctual to avoid surprises."

She spent the next handful of days feeling exhausted - exhausted, and over-the-moon with sheer joy. There were items to pack and secretly move from the underground house to the sun-lit house, Erik's appointments to be kept with Bernard, Christine's appointments to be kept with the stage, furniture being delivered to the new house, and even more furniture to be bought and placed. Through it all, they kept the room at the hotel as a sort of headquarters, at least until the new house was ready to move into.

Even with so much else to focus on, she found Erik - and, to her own surprise, and a lesser degree, herself - still managed to be consumed entirely with yet another thing.

Not even their task of moving seemed to deter him, so singly focused was he on this. While Christine tended to prefer saving such affections for until they reached the hotel, Erik had no such reservations, as she swiftly found out.

To his credit, she thought wryly, at least he generally waited until they were alone.

She liked to think that she knew how he felt - she was not unaffected his presence, certainly, she merely had better self control - but she also knew that while she had had a relationship with Raoul in the past, Erik had been entirely alone and also had lived many long years before she was even born.

It was easy, surprisingly easy, to fall into the role of a married woman, but it was also easy to be surprised at how often Erik wished to remind her of this fact.

It was the first trip underground that they had been able to make sense being wed. They had things to sort and pack, having to decide what to bring with them and what to leave in what they were jokingly calling their "work home". She really had only intended a quick kiss to his cheek as she had leaned over him, finding the sight of him absorbed in his architectural files too precious. She had went on her way to finish disposing of the perishable foods that had rotted in the kitchen during their absence, but Erik had sprung up and followed her, turning her around and pulling her to him, kissing her on the mouth.

"Erik!" she laughed, and wrinkled her nose, wiggling out of his grip.

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, turning to walk to the kitchen while he followed closely behind, still holding her hand.

"Christine..." he purred, wrapping his arms around her from behind. "Shall we take this to your bedroom, my dear?"

She squirmed a little, embarrassed.

"I'd rather not, not in there, at least..."

"Somewhere else?" he paused.

"Anywhere else, honestly," she leaned back against him.

"Not in the only bed in the entire house?" he nuzzled against her neck. "Why ever not?"

Her cheeks turned red.

"Because, Erik... It's- it's your mother's bed."

"And?"

Her brow furrowed.

"And?" she squeaked.

"Well what's that have to do with it?"

"I don't want to- to think of her while we make love... It's bad enough as it is!"

"What do you mean?" he tilted his head, curious.

"You know what I mean, Erik," her face was burning. "I- I look like her... Quite a lot. And to be in her bed... With you. Like that..."

Erik was quiet a moment, thinking.

"Christine, I- forgive me, my dear, but I truly don't see the issue."

A look of faint horror passed over her face.

"Erik!" she wiggled out of his arms, wrinkling her nose.

"I didn't say I was insisting on it, Christine," he let her go, his voice a little pained. "I just wanted to understand your mind."

She gave him a stern look, one she instantly regretted when she realized his own mother probably often gave him the same glare. She sighed, crossing her arms.

"I won't even go in the Louis-Philippe room if you don't wish me to," he offered gently, trying to make it up to her.

He hesitantly approached her once more. Women could be so odd, really, full of strange thoughts he couldn't understand at all. But he knew he didn't have to understand Christine's mind to respect her wishes, and if she didn't want to do something he wasn't going to press the issue. He stretched his arms out, inviting, offering, and she closed the distance between them. He pressed a kiss to the side of her cheek as he held her.

"Anywhere but your room, my dear?" he asked, his breath tickling her neck.

She nodded, her cheeks pink.

"We could go in my own room perhaps..." he nuzzled his mask against her ear. "I think you'll find the lining of my coffin much softer than you're expecting."

Christine jabbed her elbow into his ribs.

"I am no longer in the mood," she declared dryly.

He let go of her and cleared his throat, sheepishly straightening his sleeves and his waistcoat. He tried to busy himself by helping her with sorting household objects, blessedly letting the subject drop.

She almost never refused him, but she had noticed with great relief that he always listened to her when she did.

Eventually he forgot his amorous intentions as he became absorbed in his task of preparing to move everything he needed for his work to the new house. It would have been an easier task, he supposed, if he had lived a more orderly life. Currently his papers and notes and design ideas were scattered about and squirreled away here and there. He gathered them all together from various areas of the house and brought them into his work room, where he intended on packing them all together.

Christine had somehow found her way into the room, though what, exactly, she was doing in there he hadn't a clue. He paused on his way to the room, pulling a rolled up paper out of a tall vase where it was hidden.

"I love you Erik!" Christine said in a cutesy voice that floated out to him.

Oh, was she talking to him? He smiled as he approached his work room, but his smile froze when he saw what she doing.

"I love you Christine! Mmm, mmm, mmm!" she made little smacking noises with her lips.

Sound effects, it appeared, for the little dolls she had found in the opera house model that he had insisted was not a dollhouse - sound effects for the actions she was making them undertake. At the moment, she was pressing the faces of tiny Christine and tiny Erik together and making them vigorously kiss. A doll in each hand, she turned them this way and that, their mouths meeting again and again as she held the around the legs.

"Christine?" his brow knit. "What the devil are you doing?"

"It's okay, Erik!" she called out joyfully as she held the dolls up and pointed to their little wedding rings. "Look, they're married, too!"

Erik stared, befuddled, as she made the dolls kiss again, and then turned and left after dropping all the papers in pile on the table, deciding to forget what he'd just seen.

Moving was unfortunately a project that lasted longer than either one expected. Erik had offered to do most of the work himself, to allow her to focus more on her singing if she wished, but she had insisted on helping him pack and move various items from the underground. He was glad of her company, of course, thought he did feel that the work went slower with her stopping to ask him about the history of each item that caught her eye.

"That's from a museum in Italy, my dear."

She looked at him curiously.

"Well how did it end up in your house now, instead of the museum?"

He shrugged innocently.

"I imagine it ended up in my house in quite the same manner it ended up in the museum, really."

She sighed and placed the small statue back on its pedestal. There was still so much she didn't know about this man who was now her husband, but she looked forward to discovering all of his secrets and stories.

Well, almost all of them - it was the discovery in the closet that she thought she could have done without knowing.

She'd passed by that little closet numerous times before - she'd even asked him once what was inside, why it was kept locked.

"What's in here, Erik?" she had asked.

"Nothing at all, sweet girl," he had put his arm around her shoulder and ushered her away from it. "Nothing important."

But today the closet was unlocked, and she thought nothing of opening it up to see what was inside.

Erik, who had been sitting on the floor and wrapping small breakables for transport, suddenly saw where she was going and hastily scrambled off the floor.

"Christine," he supplied with a hint of panic in his voice. "I've got that closet covered, you needn't worry over it."

She swung the door open. There were mannequins inside. That wasn't so odd - she knew that he was quite good at sewing, that he both mended and altered his own clothing in addition to creating some of them. Of course he would need mannequins to hold the fabric in its proper shape. She pulled a few of them out, and in the back of the closet she came face to face with herself.

She stared at it a long moment as she heard Erik grip the doorframe behind her. She dragged the Christine mannequin out into the light to get a better look at it.

"That's- that's me," she said evenly, but without understanding.

She looked to Erik for an explanation, but he was merely staring at the two of them together, his mouth hanging open as though he himself was just as surprised to find the second Christine as the real Christine was.

Erik felt like he was watching the scene from outside of himself. But perhaps he wasn't too damned by the revelation - Christine was an innocent young woman, surely her pure mind would not take her to the places that Erik's awful mind had gone - perhaps it wouldn't even occur to her, those kinds of things that he thought about.

She turned back to mannequin, chewing her lip and narrowing her eyes at it. It had a long, blonde wig, and carefully painted facial features. It wore a dress of light blue lace over white fabric. She realized with a flush that the dress would likely fit her - this Christine had been carved and molded to match its real-life counterpart with stunning accuracy. She frowned, wondering just how accurate it really was.

She bunched up the skirt in her hand and pulled it up around the mannequin's waist. Erik turned away, speechless, his face bright red. She raised an eyebrow and breathed a little sigh of relief - it was just wire skeleton underneath. Although, she thought wryly, that didn't necessarily mean it hadn't been used in other scenarios. The little doll of her had been flattering and adorable - this felt a little different.

"Erik what the devil do you have this thing for?"

"Dresses!" he choked out. "Dresses for you, Christine!"

He wrung his hands nervously. He hadn't done anything bad with it... Well, he hadn't done anything very bad with it. And it really was for making dresses! That's how it had started out, at least.

"How long have you had it?" she couldn't take her eyes off of it.

"A few years," he said distantly.

She pressed her lips into a flat line and looked at him, at how his shoulders hunched and his brow looked sweaty and his hands pulled and twisted at each other. That was an awful lot of shame for just dresses.

She left the mannequin propped against the wall, and made her way to him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"Isn't it much better to have me in your arms instead?" she asked.

His own arms encircled her as he breathed a sigh of relief.

"So much better," he said on an exhale.

He felt he could weep at how understanding and nonjudgmental his dear little wife was being.

She stayed there in the embrace for a long moment, trying to fully wrap her head around the idea of what she had just found.

At last she pulled back just slightly, just enough to look him in the eye and notice the guilt that lingered there.

"I think we can leave her here, though, yes?" she arched an eyebrow at him.

"Yes, absolutely!" he quickly agreed.

The mannequin was returned to the closet once more and locked away, out of sight yet not quite out of mind for a little while still. A woman is not apt to simply forget finding out that her teacher-turned-husband had been keeping an exact replica of her for years. But he was exceedingly embarrassed over it, so she had the prudence to not bring it up.

At last moving and shopping and arranging was done, and they checked out of the hotel for good. It felt bittersweet, to her especially, to leave this place. They each took one last look at the room before they left it.

This was were they'd gotten married, where they'd had such important conversations, where they'd enjoyed so many wonderful moments together, and it made her heart twist to leave it.

"I hope whoever has this room next finds just as much happiness as we did," she said wistfully.

"I hope whoever has this room next cleans off the couch before sitting on it, considering what we did on it."

"Erik!" she shrieked.

They closed the door on the room, and a little while later they opened the door to their new house, and to a new chapter in their life together.