An update at last! I promise, this story will get finished if it kills me. Once I've completed the final chapters, I'm going to take Bluecean's great suggestion and re-post Rogo's original beginning to this story, so that the entire narrative is united. It will mean this story gets deleted, but then re-posted swiftly all together as a great big beautiful new and complete story (finally!)

I digress. Please enjoy some absurdly long-awaited secret sharing.

Manon's breathing slowed, and after a moment she pivoted her head slightly, lips moving in a bittersweet smile against his skin.

"Charles told me you had a voice that could make heaven weep."

Erik gave a sad smile of his own.

"Men and angels both, my dear. Did you also know that it was I who destroyed this opera house?"

She drew back and they regarded one another. He was gazing at her with an unsmiling expression, but he didn't look angry either. Just deadly serious. Something fearful began to pound within her

"None of us is innocent, chérie."

These words rang through her, piercing to the core. They were permission she didn't know she'd needed, resonance she'd waited for until this chilly moment curled in his arms in a lake with their faces inches apart. His eyes contained boundless beauty and sadness. Even the smooth, familiar mask, somehow dear to her, reflected the solitude of past sins.

Manon couldn't say anything. Couldn't even breathe.

Trust, which despite herself had so tenaciously rooted in her gut, swelled up in her chest and she couldn't stop the words that suddenly burst from her.

"I'm a murderer."

"So am I, chérie."

"I killed three men"

"I've lost count."

"I don't regret it"

"Did they deserve it?"

"Absolutely"

"Then you shouldn't."

Manon was reeling. Her mind felt strangely disengaged from her mouth, and it occurred to her, with a horrified fascination, that even she didn't know what she would say to him. She was listening to herself speak as much as he was.

"Tell me about them," Erik murmured quietly.

And all at once, she did.

"Have you ever heard of les dévalorisés, Erik?"

An errant puzzle piece clattered into place in his brain. He was amazed it hadn't occurred to him sooner.

His home was isolated from normal society, it was true, but even he read the papers from time to time and had overheard bits of news and gossip from operagoers. Who could have remained ignorant of the criminal gang of rogue gendarmes who ran their corner of society with such a brutal grip that even the normal gendarmerie gave them a wide berth?

Decades and decades ago, in the years following the revolution, Paris had been gripped by La Terreur. It was before Erik's time, but fresh enough that everyone knew and lived with its legacy in one way or other. It had been a time in which anyone Robespierre or his radical cohort considered "enemies of the revolution" – that is to say, clerics, nobles, political dissidents, anyone they disliked – were put to the guillotine. Though is lasted only a few short years, La Terreur had succeeded in forever changing the face of Paris' political and social milieu. Even a breath of suspicion or accusation was tantamount to a death sentence, and aristocratic families with centuries-old lineages were either obliterated or stripped of their advantages until they were as low as the poorest laborers.

Les dévalorisés were the heirs to this wreckage, men whose ruined families had survived only to forever stew for generations in bitterness over their diminishment.

Their sons and grandsons had created an association of sorts within the gendarmerie. Their campaign to regain their former titles, a fool's errand to begin with, had ultimately devolved and now amounted to nothing more than a reign of theft and brutality woven into deep corners of the city. Not even the leading men of the broader ranks of Paris' policiers wanted to touch them.

Erik raised his hands to lift her chin as gently as he could, and she raised shuttered eyes to meet his. "Your father, Edward Moreau, is Capitaine des Gendarmes Dévalorisés." It was a statement, not a question.

Manon nodded, eyes closing, breath whooshing out of her.

They lay quiet for a moment, little sounds of the grotto humming around them. Faint watery echoes, a soft trickle. His arms remained banded around Manon and they stayed pressed quietly together in the cold water.

Manon's words continued. "They have influence like you wouldn't believe, Erik. My brother Charles was the unwilling heir to it all. Yes, Charles, your violinist!" she reassured his raised brow. "Though wrapped in it since a teenager, he never quite had a taste for beating gypsies and torching Jewish shops like the rest of them. Playing at the opera was his escape and learning from him was mine."

"He must have played beautifully."

"He did." Manon cracked a watery smile, which swiftly twisted into an expression of agony. Her words began to tumble even faster, her thoughts coming out disjointed. "He shouldn't have died! He should have just left them, we could have escaped together to Lyon, there was no need to confront them for me. Stupid, stupid man! And I was a stupid girl…so stupid…"

"You were there?"

"I was there. I wasn't supposed to be, but I was. If I had just listened, if I hadn't given them an excuse. It should have been me, Erik" she finished ferociously.

"He saved you."

"Our father couldn't bear to kill him. Killing me instead would have been an acceptable punishment for his desertion. By the time I looked up, Charles was… gone"

"How did you escape?"

"God knows. I just ran. But I had money, and train tickets. The three of us had been making our plans for Lyon for weeks before it all went to hell…"

Erik blinked. Three of us? But Manon didn't appear to realize what she had said. She continued to describe her flight to Lyon, the weeks of numbness, the single-minded fury that followed and drove her to the underbelly of the city to learn how to defend herself, how to fight, how to kill.

"Who taught you?"

"Does it matter? I learned, and I learned well. All that then remained was to find him again. I did, and just weeks later, I found myself breaking into the Palais Garnier."

"And into my quiet life."

"You'll think me bloodthirsty, mad." An edge of fear was creeping into her pale, passionate face. "Yet how could I have done otherwise, Erik?" She returned her eyes to his, fearful of her own openness, desperate for affirmation.

"I had nothing left, you see." She gave a desolate half-shrug and stared at him, awaiting conviction.

Erik's eyes bored into her and he lifted his hands to grip her face, bringing it a breath away from his own.

"You ask me to judge you, Manon? The mad, bloodthirsty ghost of the opera house?"

A quiet stream of tears began to course down her face and over his fingers. She had had her revenge, more bitter than sweet, and found no more relief in it than the countless before her had.

"What is to be forgiven, my dear? Devotion to a brother? Hatred of a cruel father?" He felt a great and terrible emotion rising in him, fury mixed with an incredible tenderness. "Or the desperation of losing everything?"

He released a shaking hand to stroke her damp hair back from her face, then drew her head towards him, pressed a trembling, openmouthed kiss to her temple, and breathed, "I forgive you."

Manon's face ground against his as a keening wail broke from her. She clung to his neck as her cry rose and rose, an arpeggio of grief. After an age it finally diminished, and her arms released their grip. Erik waited, permitting the silence to cradle them.

Finally he drew back and gazed at her once more.

"Thank you, Manon. You have told me much. More than I had hoped for. More than I deserve." He let his hand to drift down her cheek, along the side of her throat and gently brushed her collarbone.

"Not all, perhaps..." She stilled as he continued and his fingers drifted lower to brush, as lightly as moth's wings, over the fleur de lis etched into her skin there. Never discussed, never acknowledged.

He drew close to her ear again, whispering now. "But you still hold the power of your own secrets, chérie. Not all stories must be told."

Manon vaulted from his arms. She fled for the shoreline, struggling through the shallows with her chemise tangling around her. Erik stared after her, an ache in his breast, unsurprised yet taken aback all the same. She finally reached the edge and began to stumble towards the bedchamber.

"Manon!"

Perhaps it was because she in fact had no place to go, or perhaps it was because of the plea in his voice, but she stopped and turned.

Erik didn't have a plan. He approached her slowly, staring, saw her shallow breathing and shivering tension. On an impulse he pulled her robe from the nearby chaise and held it out to her.

She stared at him unmoving and so he draped it around her shoulders. He remained at arm's length but left his hands gripping her shoulders with a nameless desperation, lost in her fragile, turbulent gaze that roved tremulously over his face.

Without a word she closed the gap between them, lifted her face to his, and kissed him.

Erik didn't move a muscle as his senses were flooded. Soft, fragrant mouth, icy trickle of water, a storm of warmth rising from within. For an moment of agonizing sweetness, Manon kissed him.

After an infinite heartbeat she released him. She stared, and he stared. A fathomless tide swelled in his chest as she turned to cross the few steps to the bedchamber, pulled the curtain to swing down behind her, and disappeared.