Just a quick little thanks to E.M.K.81, spinworld, Phangirl1983, and Barboss'sApples. You guys are the super troopers of reviewers, and that makes my day. :) And now, at last, the Phantom of the Opera is here...

It was seldom indeed that Erik felt let down by his own talents, but he thought he might now have just cause for complaint on that score.

For as long as he could remember, he had been called a playfellow of death. Killer. Corpse. Ghost. What else could you call a man with a skeleton face?

He had thought it right to dabble in death, given his natural inclination towards it. How could it not be his calling? Oh, music had ever been his life, but in his youth he had always seen death as his destiny. He had cultivated talents to match his professed profession. He knew a dozen ways to kill a man—a hundred ways to nearly kill a man.

And so he had thought, foolishly, that death would simply come for him when asked for. Some said death was the only reliable thing in life—and they had had such a long history together, after all. Why shouldn't Death come politely and on time, like an old friend? But Erik had never had the luxury of relying on anyone, or anything.

He sat in the shattered midst of his torture chamber. Alive.

Alive.

His blood painted edges of the broken glass, enough blood to fill a man's body.

The skin on his wounded arms and hands and feet said, we have closed over worse.

He could not remember the last food or drink he had partaken of.

His stomach said, we have seen longer famines.

His heart had stopped. He knew it had stopped, once, a hundred times.

It beat now, and said, I have been torn to shreds and drowned in blood. I have survived. Erik will survive. You will survive.

And so, entirely against his will, Erik was alive.

His body betrayed him. Death betrayed him. Christine—

—was innocent.

Oh, her name burned his tongue and her voice branded his heart. But that was not her fault. Now was it?

He sat up. He pushed himself first to his knees, and then to his feet. He stepped. He stepped again. He stepped out of the destroyed room of mirrors found his way into his parlor. He knocked the ostrich egg off the mantle as he passed by. He saw her everywhere. He ate. He cleaned himself. He bound his wounds. He looked through his poisons and put them away. He dressed. He looked for his favorite mask and remembered that he had burnt it, oh, ages ago. No. No, she had burned the mask. One of so many pitch-perfect lies, so many consummate acting choices.

Show me your face without fear.

It was funny how, preoccupied as Erik was by her immaculate voice, he failed to notice what a wonderful actress Christine was. He should have known when he coached her through Marguerite. Angels might have sat enraptured by her voice, but he thought it might have been her eyes that ensnared the audience.

If I tremble, it is because of your genius.

She could have been the genius of her generation. They could have built something that outlasted them both. Her name could have been immortal. Erik would have seen to it, if only he had been allowed to be at her side. At her side, as she had promised.

I will come back.

It had been three days since Erik had posted his precious box of mementos to the Daroga, had destroyed his room of mirrors in a fit of rage and despair unlike anything he had succumbed to these last twenty years, and laid down to die.

Those three days seemed to hold an eternity between them, both in the moment and in memory. Yet the newspaper before him simply read December 7th, 1881. He thumbed through its pages without interest. Headlines had no meaning while his mind was riddled with her. He thought back over how long it had been since Christine had left, how long he had trained her, how long that he had even known her. The answers to all of those questions were as shockingly short as three days had been. In less than half a year, he had remade his entire life around her. In less than half a week, it was unmade.

He found that he could not blame her deception. Looking back, Erik did not know how he had mistaken a desperate ploy for her to win her freedom and safety as an act of love. After all, 'desperate ploy' was something he had pulled out many, many times in his life. He supposed it was his own blind perspective. He had not meant her any harm, so why should she have felt like she was in harm's way?

But she had felt herself in danger, and had used every skill at her command to stay safe. He understood, utterly and terribly.

He found his anger—that well of rage that drove him and that he had long thought inexhaustible—had run dry. And yet, he was alive. Something must have fueled his body against his soul. But what? And how to harness it? How to go on?

In the end, it was very simple. Just as at the first, he merely stood. He let his feet take him to the necessary places and his hands grasp the needed things. He took hold of the broom and dustpan from his storage room, and he swept the shards of double-sided mirror into neat piles. He bent and picked up the pages of Don Juan Triumphant that had strayed from their fellows. He aired out the cellar, still wet and filled with ruined gunpowder. Where had he even found so much gunpowder? And when? And why?

The thought trickled in that he should simply pack his valuables and leave. His kingdom was in ruins. His palace was no longer his haven. He had nothing left at the Garnier. Why did that all seem so familiar?

Another page of Don Juan's score caught his attention, and he moved to grab it. He knew each line intimately, and a brief glance was all that was needed to fill his mind with the music. It could not have been more real if he had stood conducting it before a full orchestra.

"I should have known you were not dead."

The words came to Erik as though he was asleep. The siren had said nothing of a visitor. But he trusted his ears, and turned.

The Daroga stood and the entrance of the room. He was holding his hand up, and one might have believed he was simply rubbing away a headache. Erik had certainly seen him do so many times before. But he knew the posture, the meaning of the bent elbow and raised hand. It meant, I do not trust you.

Erik wanted to tell him that he had nothing in his pockets, no lasso secreted in this room of horrors. He wanted to tell him that, even if he had had a length of catgut in his very hand, he would not have wanted to use it. But he was tired, and frustrated. Nadir should have known, anyway.

The Daroga took a step closer. "Well? Do have nothing to say for yourself?"

What was there possibly left to say? He turned away from the Daroga and added the loose paper in his hand to the stack he had set aside. He wondered how long it would take to put them back in order. He wondered if he should even bother.

"She is out of your reach, you know. Your Daaé girl? You will not find her."

"Good." Erik's unused voice cracked with the effort of that one word. Oh, he knew that the Daroga was wrong. Lackeys could always be bribed. Train schedules could always be dug up. Everyone lost could be found, if you had a nose for blood as strong as Erik's. But it was a reassuring thought that Christine had eluded his grasp, and that nothing he could do would ever bring her back. He did not want her back—not as something to be dragged and caged and coerced. And since that seemed to be the only way to keep her, he did not want her.

Truly.

(And if he kept on reminding himself of that fact, perhaps it would become truer still.)

Erik could feel the Daroga's stare burning into his back. He ignored it. The old man had not changed much over the years. Erik sensed the beginning of a monologue, and found it oddly comforting.

"I spent many years tracking you after you left Persia. It took me strange places, and into the company of strange people. I went to Turkey, and to Vietnam. I went to Russia, and wound my way to end up in France. I started in Paris, but I also found myself in other cities—like Rouen. I pieced together more of your history than you ever deigned to share with me. And I spoke with many. I heard of the masked man who helped so and so, and the masked man who hurt so and so." The Daroga was closer now, within an arm's reach. Erik caught the rustle of his overcoat as the Daroga lowered his arm. "Among the many facts I discovered was one that struck me as particularly strange. There are people who liked you."

Erik's breath huffed out in a sound that was not quite a laugh.

"Oh, I am not saying there were many. And, God knows, those few were scattered far and wide. But that told me something I had never really known before. Somewhere, you could have made a life for yourself."

"I?" Erik spun around and stood up to come face to face with the Daroga. He gestured sharply to his face. "I could have made a life for myself? Tell me, Daroga, do you think it pleased me to design my little lakeside cottage? Oh, it is a cozy place, to be sure. Erik's parlor is as snug as you please, and music room is splendid, and I took such care with the veranda. Did you see the reliefs on window boxes? I carved them myself." He lifted his hands to the ceiling. "How could I have been anything but pleased to build my little country retreat underground?"

The Daroga was undaunted. "I know that Charles Garnier respected your abilities. I know that ordinary men paid you to build ordinary houses before you decided to come hide here."

"And you also know," Erik said conversationally, "that the Shah of Persia once tried to gouge my eyes out."

It was Nadir's turn to not-quite laugh, and Erik wondered when his sense of humor had turned macabre. "I found out one more thing, Erik, as I… searched for you." Erik heard the word the Daroga had edited out: hunted. "I know how old you are."

What inconsequential thing to bring up! Erik wanted the mock the Daroga and his useless facts. Instead, he said: "I doubt that. There are no records at the church. No baptisms, no christenings." He had checked, oh, ages ago.

"No. But there are people. People you did not care to try to speak to, but who I did. And when you speak to enough people, and the same year is repeated time and again, well—let us say, I am fairly confident I know your exact age. But I am human, and could be wrong."

"Words, words, infinite words.

"I will not tell you, unless you ask me directly," the Daroga continued mildly. "However, I will tell you this: you are very near the age I was when first I met you. Do you know what that means?"

"That I have wasted more of my life knowing you than you have knowing me?" Erik's words seemed to roll off the Daroga, like rain on a duck. His green eyes narrowed in amusement.

"It means you are not too old to start over."

Erik did not reply. They stood facing one another for some brief interval, before the Daroga backed out of the room. He mentioned things like checking in on Erik in a day or two, or allowing Erik to come into his home. He asked if Erik needed anything, but did not wait for Erik to find his tongue enough to answer. He eventually left Erik in peace. Or, at least, alone.

He was not alone for long. Christine's voice, playing Marguerite once again, pressed against his ear.

Why are your hands red with blood? Go away—you horrify me!

Nadir was not hobbling. He was taking the stairs to his apartment at a dignified pace. He had no appointments to keep. And so, if his steps were slow, and his hand heavy on the bannister, what did it matter? He let himself in, and found Darius just entering the parlor from the other side with tea. His manservant looked like he had seen a ghost—surely, there had been no premonition of Erik's survival?

Darius exclaimed as soon as he saw Nadir, and he realized there was another visitor in the room. His mind flitted quickly to a grand carriage he had seen idling near the building that he had dismissed as unimportant, and wondered if that may have conveyed the figure sitting with her back to him.

She turned as the door closed and stood. He had no eye for women's clothing, but she seemed to him to be very fashionable. Nothing besides the deep wine color and the fine paisley lining of her caplet suggested 'Persian.' It was a wholly European look, from tall beribboned hat to the line of buttons down the tight bodice to the laced boots to the red gloves. She had lifted one of those gloved hands up, and Nadir stared at it dumbly.

"Forgive my impropriety," she said, not dropping her hand, "but I've been told I need to practice my handshake more."

He blinked. He knew he must have looked a fool, but he thought that might be excused. He was no longer a young man, and had had many shocks to his system of late. But he reached out and clasped her slim fingers for a moment, he could scarcely credit that there was warmth emanating from beneath the leather.

"So," he said at length, "you are the wife from Tehran that the new envoy handed out of a carriage and introduced to any and every one, giving all of our poor countrymen a shock."

"Yes, that would be me." They both sat back down. Darius served the tea and then stood gawking by the door. Mojgan gave him a warm smile and motioned for him to sit down. He sank into a chair at the side of the room, looking like a puppet cut from his strings. Nadir imagined he looked much the same.

"Do I want to know how you ended up here?" Nadir asked.

"Ah. It was Maryam." She sipped her tea. "She took to matchmaking. Is that enough of an explanation?"

Nadir found himself laughing. "Yes, I suppose so. You married Reza? I remember him of old. I am not surprised he has forged an unconventional path for himself—and for you." His eyes strayed from his visitor, taking in his shabby-genteel rooms. "Does he know you have come here?"

"You are not quite persona non grata at the embassy," Mojgan said matter-of-factly. The Latin phrase fell almost as easily from her lips as the Farsi. "Those who know you are embarrassed that they have not done more to be of service of you. Otherwise, you are just a name on a list of beneficiaries, neither good nor ill." She traced the same pattern around the room as Nadir had a moment ago. "It may do you well to have… a cousin looking out for your interests."

"I do not know how many will be quick to believe we are still cousins, with your remarriage."

"I say they will believe it," she declared. "Why should they not?" The Shah himself could not have issued a more authoritative fiat. Nadir observed her closely.

"How long have you… been away?"

She shrugged. "Some years. First closer to home, and then farther afield. Turkey first, and then England for a good while, and Italy until just a month ago." She took a sip of tea. "I don't know how easy it will be to go back, but I do not need to think too deeply on that just yet." She spent a moment looking at Nadir, as if trying to see her old friend in an older face. "Do I want to know how you ended up here?"

"What, do you not know?" Nadir chuckled. "I will give you a hint." He lifted a hand and covered his face.

"So, that is true," she murmured. "The Shah is not one to forget."

"No."

"Did… did you find him?"

Nadir caught Darius bowing his head respectfully. "Yes, I did." He kept an eye on Darius. "I just came from speaking with him."

"Erik? Here?" Nadir didn't have time to see how his manservant had taken the news. He was dazzled by the radiance of Mojgan's smile. She had lost all her cosmopolitan polish for moment and simply… beamed. He found it unfathomable.

"Do you not recall who Erik was? What he did?" Nadir demanded, once the stardust had gotten out of his eyes.

"Yes. When you saved my life, he took me to safety." She said this with such equanimity that Nadir nearly felt like his world had tipped on its side. For that—that!—to be someone's memory of Erik, their overriding impression! He took advantage of the kinship she had just claimed with him, and offered his most reproving glare.

"That, true. But he did much harm besides." He took a sip of his tea. "And he has continued to do so."

She looked more pensive at that. "I am sorry to hear that, at least. But I should still like to see him. We parted friends, and, God knows, we none of us have many of those to our credit."

Nadir wanted to look at this woman, so utterly self-assured and straightforward, and demand what have you done with my little Mojgan-joon? But he found that more he looked at her, the more he saw that girl he had once know. That girl with the painted eyebrows, the quiet dry humor, the composure in the face of death and dishonor. Oh, yes. There she was, in his parlor, drinking tea and eating a cookie as if they had gone back in time twenty years. Perhaps that what had actually taken Nadir by surprise—how much time had passed, and how little she had altered.

"Is he well?" she asked, and brought Nadir back to the present.

"He is Erik."

She laughed at that, and Nadir could only shake his head. "In that case, he will be pleased that I have years of piano practice at my fingertips, and am not so much of a disgrace as once I was. I may even challenge him to a duet."

"I am afraid that he is recovering from… an imbroglio."

"That is to be expected, if he is, as you say, still Erik."

Nadir thought that somewhere, his temper was fraying. Somewhere in his brain, he was composing a thorough indictment of Erik, as a man, a monster, and a maniac. He wanted to shake Mojgan from her casual complacency, to remind her that the hours whiled away at Mazandaran were made rosy with blood. But he was old now, and tired beside. Still, he could not resist some little dig—though only Erik would have fully grasped it, and he was not present to hear it. "Perhaps you are right. I was asking too much that he behave in a manner befitting his advanced age."

She shook her and smiled, and they spoke more of Nadir until the clock on the mantle chimed. Mojgan glanced at it with regret and stood. "There is a reception tonight, and you would not believe how long it takes to get into evening dress, even with an army of maids."

Nadir stood with her. She lifted up her hand again, and he held it, wishing for a moment that he might embrace her instead. Those years had passed. "I am honored by your visit, Khanum."

She laughed at that, a genuine peel of unabashed amusement. "Oh, indeed? I mean to make myself a nuisance to you, cousin. I will come again on Monday, if I may, and would be much obliged if you could persuade Erik to be there as well." Her merriment faded with Nadir's scoff, but her eyes remained bright. "I do wonder if, when a life has been so very filled as Erik's—or yours—or—" a self-deprecating smile here—"mine even… if time and advancing age means something rather different than it usually does. I wonder if perhaps the blood sometimes rushes backwards, instead of forwards, and we forget ourselves in the effort to forget time."