Wee medical emergency derailed this week's posting schedule. Hopefully not for much longer... we're almost there!

Erik had not been invited to the opening night gala of the Palais Garnier. He had not expected to be.

That had not stopped him from attending. He slipped in and out of the shadows he had helped build into the place, had listened to La Juive from his secret hideaways. The music eventually ended, but the revelries lasted far into the night. These interested him less, though he had taken a little time to walk amongst them. He was pleased to see his opera at the center of so much rejoicing. Still, he soon took the opportunity to slip away once again. He stood across the street, on the Place de l'Opera, and he looked.

He looked at the blazing light pouring out of every massive window, catching on the elaborate decoration of the exterior. The busts of the (arguably) great composers overlooked the representations of their arts like stern lovers. Above them, Harmony and Poetry stood as blazing gold sentinels in the artificially bright midnight—and highest of all stood Musagetes himself, Apollo with his gold lyre.

How to explain the feeling of seeing the Palais Garnier come truly to life for the first time? It was the long finish of an exceptional wine, the thrill of a perfectly executed roulade, the beauty of a keystone locking all its fellow voussoirs in to place.

And it belonged to Erik.

This time, he had been invited to the premier of this stage. The invitation had arrived quite recently, it's envelope bearing the direction Monsieur and Madame Rossi. The seats of the tickets were little to boast of, but he supposed any invitation was a coup for him. Still, he had not thought to go until Sauvageot's annoyance that the invitation had been extended at all compelled Erik to accept. He might even go so far as to say that he was looking forward to it.

And yet Erik already knew, as he surveyed the mostly completely Theatre des arts, that he would not recapture those heady feelings he had experienced in years past. He could not say he was proud of his work—excellence was what he expected from himself, and was therefore nothing to celebrate—but he was content with a job well done. Nor was he ashamed of the theater's workmanlike exterior. The Rouen Opera had been bringing music to the city for a century, and would continue to do so. That was a project worth the undertaking, and he was glad to have contributed something to it, even if it was simply ensuring that this box of a building did its job.

But it was not his. And no amount of lighting and music and revelry would make it so.

"I believe this is the first project I've worked on wherein we are both on schedule and on budget," his foreman, Planche, commented. "Monsieur, whatever your next contract is, I beg you keep me in mind."

Erik had agreed with a curt nod, and the foreman had walked away smiling. But it raised the question: what was his next contract? There were plenty of options. He had been approached for private residences, for city works, even for a few foreign projects. But none of them struck him as something he truly wanted to do.

It had seemed like such a normal thing to do, to use one's abilities to earn a salary. He had been doing so, in one way or another, most of his life. But there had been any number of days over the past summer when he would have preferred to devote himself to composition. Instead, he took the tram into town and… went to work. It was draining his soul, he decided, whatever he had left of one. He wanted to be done with it, not trapped for another six months—or years.

Was it possible to both retire from the world, and still touch it? It was a question that had increasingly pestered him over the last few weeks. If it was strictly a question of money, Erik was not compelled to work. The interest of what he had in banks and funds could keep him quite comfortably, never mind the other assets he had accumulated over the years. He could buy a house, live quietly off the fortune he had squirreled away, play and invent and learn as he saw fit.

It was an appealing thought: to go back to the only schedule he kept being the one he set for himself. He had set up his life in the Garnier specifically to that end, and had enjoyed those aspects of it. He hoped that at this point in his life he could claim the manners of a gentleman. Having the station of one had never been of any concern to him. He had enjoyed having well-made clothes, but did not care if he had to clean and mend them himself. He liked good food; that he cooked it himself and then washed his dishes did not bother him. Undertaking these mundane tasks had been worth the freedom it afforded him at the time.

And, yet… these last few months had taken on a different shape. Someone else washed his clothes. Someone else cooked his food. Someone else cared for his horse, and washed the floor, and disposed of the rubbish, and collected the post, and brought in flowers. And he had to confess that it was not the horrible intrusion he had thought it would be.

But just as he had not known how to replicate the freedoms granted to the Opera Ghost without also taking on its restraints, he did not know how to take what he liked of this life and leave behind what he found confining.

He could buy his house, yes. He could speak to his bankers and work out his income. He could set up his music room and his workshop, and let someone else see to the cleaning and cooking. There was simply one element that destabilized the whole idea.

He knew he could not do it alone.

He might have been able to tolerate his housekeeper, he thought. Perhaps she would have even heeded the scrawled notes he surely would have left for her, as the managers of the Garnier had once done. But his life alone would not have been quite so comfortable. He needed that bulwark between him and the people who now attended to his needs and wants, a kindly tollkeeper who made sure that everything and everyone who entered Erik's private sphere was, if not strictly to his taste, at least not a nuisance. It was in the bread and butter at breakfast and the store of sweetmeats that never seemed to run out. It was the pressed collars and mended socks. It was the open windows during the sultry evenings and bowls of roses by his shaving basin.

It was Mojgan, and that frustrated him.

And it was a frustration he could not seem to escape. As soon as he entered the foyer that evening, Mother Bidault informed him, "Madame would like you to attend to her in her chambers."

Beneath his mask, Erik's eyebrows rose. "Indeed?" But the older woman paid him little heed, already brushing Erik's overcoat with quick, efficient motions. And so without any further explanations forthcoming, he started up the stairs.

He wanted to turn away. He wanted to tell the housekeeper, Erik does not wait on Madame's whims. But even as irritation simmered in his stomach, he did not resist the interest he felt. Mojgan had popped her head in to his own rooms perhaps thrice over the last several weeks—since the incident at work—but he had never ventured into her private rooms.

He found the door ajar and the windows thrown open to let the remaining daylight in.

"Oh, Erik, good!" Mojgan was half-hidden by a deep armoire but poked her head out. He wondered if he would ever grow accustomed to hearing those words said, as if she was pleased to see him. "I wanted your help." She pulled out a dress from the armoire and draped it over the back of a chair. It was not alone: a handful of evening gowns were spread out over most of the furniture. When they had left for Rouen, most of her wardrobe had stayed behind, and, by her own choice, the formalwear was the most reduced. But it would have been hard to guess based on the current evidence.

"What do you think, Erik?" she asked, anxiously looking around the room. "The blue velvet is very pretty, but not quite in season. I think either the black lace or the gold moire, but look at this one—" she directed his attention to the bed, which showcased a exceptionally well-crafted crafted dress, "I never had a chance to wear it, and it is so lovely."

Erik blinked against the sudden onslaught of colors and fabrics. It seemed like the frustration he had felt mere moments ago was smothered by the profusion of clothes, by Mojgan biting her lip and gesturing wildly. He had followed the line of her finger as she had pointed to each dress in turn, and now rested on the final piece under debate. Garlands of silk flowers played between carefully draped claret-colored chiffon. "Yes, lovely," he replied, somewhat bewildered.

"But it's a bit de trop, isn't it?" she sighed. "And yet, it is criminal for a Worth design to stay packed away in cedars."

"This is for the premiere, correct? It may attract rather more attention than suits the occasion," he said carefully. For his part, he did not see why anything beautiful should be off-limits to a woman—but they had managed so well for so long to have everything undone by a dress a contractor probably could not have afforded to give his wife. "And the color would not be shown to best advantage in the theater's interior."

She sighed, resigned. "As I thought. It's the black, then." She walked over to the vanity and picked up the bodice of that dress, holding it up and thinking about God-alone knew what little nuances of dress women concerned themselves with.

"Also quite lovely," Erik offered.

"It will suit your superfine," she agreed. "And the only jewelry I brought appropriate for evening wear are the pearls—they're discreet enough, and probably go best with this one as it is." She started smoothing out the other gowns, preparing to repack them.

"I beg your pardon," Erik cut in, "but did you ask me up here simply to sanction your choice of evening gowns?"

"Nothing simple about it," she said, "as ridiculous as it is, I haven't had the last say in my clothes for years. Or the first say, for that matter. Not knowing anything about the venue or what you expected was quite daunting!" Now her tone was mischievous, "who is to say what might have happened if I had been left to my own devices."

Erik suspected that absolutely nothing would have changed without his so-called help. Still, he said, "Oh, I know! It would have been that red dress, with robin feathers stuck in your hair."

She laughed. "Very likely! You gentlemen have it easy in your white ties." She turned her attention to Erik for a moment, looking between him and the black dress. "Yes, I think we'll go together quite well."

"Madame, I am flattered." She smiled at him and then sighed deeply as she arranged the Worth gown in a trunk. He was caught by the sigh, and by the beautiful color of the chiffon. "I will tell you what: I will make sure to take you somewhere where you can wear your pretty dress—before it goes out of fashion." The words had tumbled out so quickly that Erik had not even had time to think them through. Fool.

"I accept!" she chirped. "Just bear in mind that fashion might change tomorrow."

A few more words were bantered between the two of them, and then Erik left her to the rearrangement of her trunks.

The frustration returned almost at once. Strange, how in faded in the light of her smile, and then came back tenfold as soon as he was out of her presence.

…and they had called him a sorcerer.

It was not that he did not like her company. Her presence had made the business of life a pleasant thing. But just was the Rouen Opera was not his, Mojgan was not his. She no more belonged to him now than she had all those years ago, sitting in her walled garden in Mazandaran with Feridoon Ali Jah. She may have brought a light, comfortable touch to his life, but it was simply kindness.

He thought he had craved kindness. Once, he had thought that if only the world held some kindness out to him, he could be happy. But now he was surrounded by it, and it was maddening. It was another dream that disappeared when he tried to touch it. Or rather, he was so sure that it would disappear that he now resisted reaching for it.

There would come a day, very soon now, when Erik would be alone again.

The thought was almost unbearable, and so he did the only thing he could think of to ease the pain of it. He shut the door to the parlor with his piano, and he did not respond when Mojgan knocked to ask if he wanted anything for dinner.

July was coming to an end.

Erik had a new routine. He dragged himself out of bed, and took the very first tram into Rouen. He stayed until the sun had almost set. He snuck into the kitchen and raided the pantry. It was increasingly common for him to find a full meal, neatly arranged and perfectly good at room temperature, waiting for him. He pointedly ignored the implications of that. He retreated to his rooms, locked his door, and composed.

Occasionally, he would cross paths with Mojgan. The worry in her eyes was almost overpowering, but he was always civil, always polite. He was busy, and he needed time to himself. She accepted this with fair enough grace. She still occasionally knocked at his door, but softly enough that he could choose to ignore it.

He usually chose to ignore it.

Mother Bidault was apparently displeased with him. She stopped having his shoes shined. Planche once drily asked if Madame had locked her door on him, but threw up his hands at Erik's withering glare.

But the music did not abandon him this time, not entirely. He knew now that she was not another opera: she was a symphony, a choral symphony. What that chorus would sing, he was not yet sure. But her opening sonata was taking shape, and there was an extended sequence that he could only call a leitmotif—he simply wasn't sure what of. She was a flirt, to be sure, but not like Don Juan. There was an almost unbearable earnestness in her character, a passion for truth that he could not understand and a hope for the future he could not relate to.

The only thing he could do was play its bits and pieces over and over again, until they coalesced into something real.

He still did not know what to call her.

After a full ten days of this had elapsed, he ran unavoidably into Mojgan. She held out his post to him.

"It's the next installment of Godfrey Morgan," she said. She might as well have been the one wearing the mask, considering how unreadable Erik found her face to be. Soft, he thought. Soft eyes and soft lips, nothing set into harsh lines for all the stark angles of her dark brows and high nose. But soft told him nothing.

All it did was undo the past week, and he felt like his heart half melted as he reached out and took the magazine from her. "I suppose I have time to read a little," he murmured. "Tonight."

She smiled, and the other half of his heart melted.

It was torture, he decided, as he read of the titular Godfrey washing ashore on some distant, deserted island. It was simply torture to live like an ordinary man with and ordinary job and wife. But, it was a torture he could bear up with until it was over—for it would end, eventually.

He started leaving his door open again, and Mojgan started wandering in as he played. She seemed to know instinctively when to be a passive audience, and when to distract him with food or humor or some other triviality.

She asked him the plaguing question one day: "what is it about?"

"I'm not sure," Erik confessed, his fingers dancing through the primary motif almost of their own volition and with an added flourish. "I think… I think it might be happiness."

But I do not know, he added silently, because it is new and strange.

August came, and Erik was too busy to be frustrated about Mojgan. (Planche once again commented, "ah, Madame must being feeling better!" And Erik had to wonder how many men found their happiness dependent on the moods of their women, for it to be such a throwaway assumption.) He was merely grateful that he had lunches packed for him, and that no matter how dusty or late he came home, he was greeted with a smile. Usually, she'd speak in French, occasionally she would lapse into Persian—but the content was always the same. Erik, good to see you. Erik, I'm glad you are home.

He would reply from time to time with a sharp, how kind of you to say so. But if she ever detected the sarcasm, she did not let on.

As the project wound down, she fairly begged him to take a few hours of refreshment. And so he found himself once again with Mojgan in the woods not too far from their chateau. It was Sunday, and they were perhaps the only ones for miles around not to be found in a church. Instead, they picnicked under the great trees, and Erik may have fallen asleep for an hour or two. He was not sure what to make of the sketch he glimpsed her Mojgan's book later that day. It was a drawing that showed him in repose, one hand tucked under his head and the other flung over his stomach, with a wisp of hair falling over his brow and the lines of his mask only visible as a slight shadowing around the eyes. She caught the patrician lines of his leather mask too well, as if they were actually the skin over his bones. He knew she had seen the reality of his face, long ago and far away. But if the drawing was anything to go by, it was not how she saw him.

It troubled him, and he would have been cold to her again if she had given him the chance. But she did not.

August would end soon, and then September—and then where would they be? But that was a thought that he could put out of his mind for hours or days at a time, especially when they would simply talk.

Erik sometimes thought that he had never talked so much in his life, not to another person. There were some topics they did not touch—after Erik's slip about sultanas, he had been careful to avoid any mention of those troubling days. He did not want to remind Mojgan of what they had been. But he spoke more of other parts of his life, the adventures she had not seen. She made him promise to teach her how to use the hollow reeds to stay swimming under water, and marveled at the quick sketches he dashed off of the irregular little islets rising like green hills out of the water in the Gulf of Tonkin.

She did the same, and he now knew the names and particular tastes of the dozen-plus nieces and nephews she had left behind in Ghazvin. He knew how she suffered in grand balls rooms, feeling undressed and barely understanding a word spoken to her, and how far back the desire to trample out of the house and into the woods went back. It was a desire much older he had suspected. As far back as childhood, she had yearned for that freedom even as she had learned to be content in the mold of perfectly responsible, perfectly respectable woman.

The adventures had been grand and exciting, she felt, but she would rather stay quiet now, quiet and free. Erik understood perfectly, and pushed aside the constant grievance, why can we not have that?

"Why can't we?" she asked, when he said those words aloud by mistake. It was a casual conversation, at the end of a perfectly fine day, as she sat next to him on the piano bench.

Erik found that his tongue tied in knots, and that serious words would not come. His mind warred with itself: he wanted to tell her that he anticipated the unhappy day they would leave Rouen. But to what end? The only thing to do would be to beg her stay with him, and that he could not do. He had done it before, with other women. Passion had overruled his good sense then, both as a young man and as an older one. But now his heart was not lost, and so his head could rule. And his head said, we will not discuss this with her.

"Why?" he replied whimsically. "Because man is mortal and no one wants to throw off those chains, for all they talk of heaven. And so, no freedom. And no quiet." He played a flourishing scale to punctuate his point.

"Pardon me, but I think I might be able to find those things in life," she said. "This seems to be a fair start."

"That is because you are not constantly running through the middle of Rouen, trying to herd contractors, surveyors, artisans, and concerned citizens," Erik said. "And so I shall have peace and quiet when I am dead."

"Shall I undertake your funeral arrangements, then?" Mojgan asked lightly. "I heard tell that you wanted to be buried in the cellars of the opera house. Very quiet there."

"Yes, I still rather think so." He was brought up short by her comment, as was so often the case these days. The profoundly serious and the profoundly frivolous had a way of cropping up in even the simplest of their conversations. "Dust to dust is so bleak—why not music to music?"

"Why, indeed," she nodded. He had to laugh at her. "What? What have I said?"

"Many people have wanted to see me dead," he said. "But few have cared what would come after."

"Well," she said slowly. "You know you can rely on me."

He was silent for a long time. She meant it, he felt. She did not realize it was temporary, but she meant it. And so he felt like he could reply, "Yes, I do."

"Still buried with Don Juan."

"Certainly. It's the only fit ending for it." There was too much of Erik in that music, and he knew it would be received with all of the animosity and misunderstanding he had endured over the years. That was not what he wanted for his old friend. "I asked Christine to come, and give me back my wedding ring - when that happens."

"Do you still want it?" Mojgan asked. Her gaze was very steady, and Erik could read nothing in her dark eyes. He had an itching suspicion that, no matter how he replied, she would see to it. Perhaps that was what she had meant—you can rely on me. Perhaps there would come a time when he could not count on her to smile at him or keep him company on the piano bench. But, perhaps, when there was no one left to Erik other than the real Angel of Death, perhaps he could rely on her. He pushed that idea aside and instead thought of the last woman who he had trusted to be there in the end. He had been wrong about that one. He was probably wrong about this, as well.

He would not ask again.

"No. Oh, no," he shook his head. "We neither of us need that."

Now there was something in her eyes. Relief? Yes, tracking down Christine would have been an uncomfortable task. Her eyes flickered down onto the piano board and rested on Erik's hand. "You could still wear a wedding ring."

He chuckled. "Your sense of humor has become increasingly perverse, my dear."

"I mean it," she said. Now she was looking at Erik's face, searching for his eyes hiding in the shadow of the mask. He could tell that she was earnest, but to what end?

He shrugged. The notes were coming again, forming themselves under his fingertips into something light and airy. "Perhaps I'll take your rubies down to the grave. I still have that ring. How will that serve?"

Her smile flickered. "It will have to do." She arose and pulled out a letter from the back pocket of her skirt. "I heard from Nadir today. He had some news that he wanted to share with you."

"Oh? And he did not think to simply write to me?"

"I've told him how busy you've been," Mojgan said. "But he says that if you want to know more to write and he will reply as best he can."

Now Erik's curiosity was piqued and he had Mojgan sit down again. Nadir had written to her in spare words about the visit of Raoul de Chagny, and that it had taken little to convince the boy that the past should be put to rest. Surely, Nadir wrote, Erik will agree.

Did Erik agree? It had been many months since he had first thought that it was for the best that Christine had left, better that she never return to discharge her promise to him. And just a moment ago, he had been content to consign Christine's promise as forgotten folly. But now, the true finish of the matter seemed so utterly anticlimactic: a few words spoken off stage between bit players.

Still, the only thing he ended up saying, somewhat satirically, was, "Erik does agree. Obviously."

Mojgan nodded and refolded the letter. "It is for the best, I suppose."

Erik grumbled a reply, and then turned to face her fully. "You, my dear, are starting to lose your subtle touch." She inquired as to his meaning, and so he continued. "You knew what the Daroga had written before starting that conversation about burials and Christine and so on. What if I had said yes, have her come? Would you have told me of the letter?"

"Of course," she said. "Though your reply did make the conversation easier." She met his glare evenly. "And, I feel obliged to point out, that you started the conversation. I merely participated."

Erik grumbled again and returned to the piano.

"Shall I reply to Nadir for you?"

"As you please."

"He's also curious about when we might return to Paris," she said. "What should I tell him?"

"The first of October," Erik replied.

"That soon!" he turned again and the faint note of alarm in her voice. "Are you sure you don't want to take a few days after the theater opens? There may yet be things for you to do. Or at least, you might want time to arrange packing up what's here in the chateau."

"I believe you to be capable of that," he said. "There are many things that need to be taken care of in Paris." He spared a glance for her. "For one, we need to finally arrange new papers of identification for you. Time enough has passed, I think, for it to be easy. It is simply for you to decide who you are to be."

She looked, if not concerned, then at least somewhat abstracted. "It is still necessary, then? I thought perhaps I could just continue on as I am. But you do not think so?"

He did not think so, but his tongue refused to form those words, as well. "My dear woman, do you intend to weary me with questions?"

She was silent for a moment, and for a moment something like hurt flickered across her face. But it was gone before Erik could be sure, and she smiled. "Apparently! But I haven't any more for the moment."

Erik's symphony decided that she was done for the evening. He pulled out the sheet music for Alkan's opus 39, and Mojgan retreated to a chair with a book. They did not speak again until it was time to bid each other goodnight.

Did anyone really think that Erik had the emotional maturity to deal with a, er, situationship like this? Because I didn't. Not yet. But he'll figure something out in the next four chapters. Probably. Unreliable narrators take it all.

Also, you better believe you could get a bustled skirt with pockets built in to it. Ladies have always wanted pockets.