There will be probably 3 chapters that will coincide, this being the first one. When I started writing Kire over a decade ago, I had these next few chapters planned out but no real place to put them, so I'm excited to finally write them! :) Also, if you've followed other stories you know that Kire basically thinks Alex can do absolutely no wrong. He definitely saw those early years through rose-colored glasses because Alex is an inquisitive little monster (and honestly just about my favorite character to write).

Thanks for reading, reviewing, and catching errors!

Chapter 52

"If he burns himself once, he will learn to leave the lamp alone," Madeline argued as I sat in the study with Alex on my lap.

Hours of fruitlessly toiling over an opera that refused to be written with an infant who had decided to incessantly fuss left me quite irritated. My upstairs bedroom had been humid and stifling hot for the majority of the day, and against my better judgment, I retreated to the study, opened all of the windows on the main floor, and hoped to spark my creativity at last.

"I will not allow Alexandre to burn himself," I said gruffly.

Madeline insisted on standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips as she looked at me down her nose. She would stand there for hours, I knew, exhaling hard and shifting her weight the moment I put the pen to paper.

"Then he will never learn."

Meg squeezed past her mother and brought me a cup of tea, which she wordlessly placed out of my reach as well as Alex, who had made it a habit of grabbing everything-even when I thought it was far from his small hands.

"That' is how Meg learned," Madeline pointed out. "Isn't that right?"

Meg froze and stared wide-eyed at her mother, appearing mildly horrified to be included in the conversation. "I-I don't know."

Madeline looked somewhat satisfied by her daughter's answer. "See? Burned herself once and does not even remember it. And look at her? She's fine."

Meg immediately excused herself from the room and scurried into the hall, which hardly seemed to qualify as fine. A leaf could have fallen from a tree and I suspected she would run screaming in fright.

"Are you in need of something, Madame?" I asked once Madeline returned to merely staring at me from the doorway. With a sigh, I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped the left side of my face.

"It's very hot in here."

"I hadn't noticed," I said under my breath.

Alex slid off my lap and onto the rug beneath my desk in search of a toy he had dropped. He picked up the toy train and proceeded to slam it on the floor while yelling at the same time.

"Why don't you remove the mask and allow your skin to-"

"No," I said before she finished. I glanced from her to Alex, who had his back to me.

"You are concerned with what he will think?" Madeline asked. She tilted her head to the side. "He is an infant. He will not notice."

I ignored her words and focused my attention on Alex as he entertained himself with putting dents in the floor. He noticed everything around him, which seemed quite extraordinary given that he was only nine months old. Of course, I had nothing to base my assumptions off of considering I had never held or interacted with a child until Alex became mine, but with me as his father and Christine as his mother, I knew he was quite intelligent.

"He is your son," Madeline continued. "If he sees you now, when he is older-"

"I said no," I growled.

Madeline continued to stand her ground. "It hurts, does it not?" she asked. "Keeping the wounds covered day and night?"

I made no reply. She was correct, however, as I had normally removed the mask when no one was around to allow my skin to breathe. With Alex always at my side, I kept my face constantly covered for his sake, and with the heat and humidity on the rise over the last week, the disfigurement became inflamed and uncomfortable.

While Alex slept in his crib beside my bed, I walked down the stairs into the water closet and pumped cool water into my cupped hands and splashed both sides of my face. Where the mask rubbed against my nose and cheek the wounds bled, but still I dried my face and kept the injuries covered the moment I exited the water closet.

For days the wounds had throbbed endlessly, and I was reminded of one of the gypsy women in the traveling fair-a fortune teller-who swore there was a nest of bees beneath my ruined flesh. She had wanted my cheek cut open and for the bees to be released. They were venomous, she said, and once the wound was opened she had said I would no longer be cursed by the Devil. Of course, a child no longer cursed by the Devil was not a lucrative attraction, and so Garouche had refused. If he had shown me any mercy at all, I suppose that was the extent of it.

Given how the wounds stung for days on end, it felt as though there were truly bees beneath my skin. The only consolation I had with constantly donning the mask was that it prevented me from scratching at the disfigurement.

"He will love you no matter what," Madeline said. "He is your-"

"One more word," I said as I shot up out of my chair and slammed my hands on the desk.

Alex threw the train against the side of the desk and grunted as though imitating my outburst.

At last Madeline shook her head. "He will know one day. You cannot keep it secret forever and I sincerely fear you will make it worse," she said before she turned and walked down the hall.

I sat heavily in my chair and looked down at Alex, who had decided to run the train over my foot and up my leg. I hated to think of of him growing up and realizing his father was born a monster. Already he seemed to be acutely aware that I was different than Madeline and Meg. Whenever Madeline took Alex into the kitchen with her, I watched from the doorway as he grabbed and kissed her face or pulled Meg's hair and cupped her cheeks in his hands. He enjoyed caressing their faces and looking in their eyes as he sat on their laps.

When he attempted to touch my face, I turned away instinctively or distracted him with a different activity. He would look at me, his gaze pulled from the exposed side of my face to the masked, and I knew he realized there was something amiss.

He would know one day, just as Madeline had said, and eventually he would become distant. Perhaps he would burst into my bedroom and see me unmasked by accident. Perhaps he would dare me to show him my face in the heat of an argument when he was much older. Whatever the case, I had no desire to rush the inevitable.

Alex jarred me from my thoughts as he grabbed a hold of my pant leg, which was his signal to be picked up once more. I placed him on my knee and he ran the train along the desk and over my unfinished music. Sly as a fox, he stretched the length of his body over my work and toward the cup of tea Meg had left.

I could feel his heart beating beneath my palm against his chest. With my other hand against his back, I lifted him up and sat him on the floor with his train on one side of him and a dozen other toys scattered on the rug before him.

"I have work to finish," I explained.

Alex looked up at me, his arms outstretched as he requested I pick him up once more.

"Play," I suggested. "You have more than enough toys to entertain yourself for a moment."

He grabbed a fistful of my pant leg and tugged, his face twisted in frustration as he began begging, "Da, da, da da. En haut! En haut!."

"I will not pick you up," I said, fully prepared to reason with someone who had a very limited vocabulary given his age.

"En haut!" he insisted as he bounced furiously on the floor.

"Play," I said without looking at him as I pretended to focus on my music. With the way he fussed, there was no possible way I would achieve writing a single note.

"I will take him," Meg offered.

Her sudden and silent appearance startled me as well as Alex, who immediately stopped pulling on my pant leg and looked around the corner of the desk to see Meg. He squealed in delight, which he always did whenever she was near.

I put forth no argument and motioned for her to pick him up, which she did immediately and placed him on her hip. Once he had a more aerial view of his toys scattered everywhere, he began screaming to be put down again.

"Alex, we are going to take a walk and sing a song. Would you like that?" Meg cooed as she walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Apparently he did not like either as he screamed as though he was being murdered for a full eighteen minutes while Meg walked him through the house. I could barely hear her singing over his incessant wails, and with a sigh of disgust I threw my pen on the desk and cradled my head in my hands. When Meg at last brought Alex back into the study, they were both red-faced.

"I've attempted to settle him down for an hour," she meekly stated.

Hardly, I wanted to say, though I knew from listening to him scream endlessly that it had felt more like an hour than a mere eighteen minutes.

"I think he wants you," Meg added politely as she started to hand him back to me.

"Very well," I said as he settled onto my lap only to once again reach across the desk, this time successfully grabbing the cup of tea, which he proceeded to dump onto the desk.

Meg screeched in horror and snatched up the tea cup while I grabbed my music with my free hand and attempted to allow the tea to drip onto the rug rather than ruin my work. Alex, frustrated by his adventure being thwarted, managed to divert our attention from the spilled tea as he slammed his head into the desk.

The sound of his head colliding with cherrywood prickled the hairs on my arms and caused Meg to jump back. For a long moment neither of us dared to move.

When Alex did not cry out, Meg and I exchanged looks before turning our attention back to Alex, who sat perched on my knee. My eyes widened in horror as a small trickle of blood made its way down his forehead. Within seconds it quickly turned into a steady stream that collected on his eyebrows and traveled down the bridge of his nose.

His chest heaved, his eyes blinking rapidly as he realized the error of his ways, however he did not seem to fully realize what was wrong until Meg inhaled sharply and I cursed under my breath. Slowly he looked from me to Meg, who had started to cry, and, seeing her emotional state, his face crumpled.

Suddenly I was surrounded by two individuals pitifully weeping inconsolably.

"For God's sake, why are you crying?" I snapped at Meg.

"I don't know," she said as she cried considerably harder. She placed the empty tea cup on the edge of the desk and sucked in an uneven breath.

I had no idea what to do as Meg stood before me with her face buried in her hands and Alex began screaming as he looked at her.

"Well, stop at once," I demanded.

This did absolutely nothing at all to rectify the situation.

"Meg?" Madeline called from down the hall. "What is wrong?"

I fought the urge to roll my eyes as Madeline was the last person I wanted within the room, but naturally she hurried in and paused once she saw Alexandre on my knee with what appeared as a mortal wound in the center of his forehead.

Immediately Madeline looked to Meg and asked what she had done to Alex, which only made her daughter cry harder-if that was in fact possible.

"He did this to himself," I said as I attempted to place the corner of my handkerchief against his head. He pulled away, kicking and screaming to the point where I thought he would hit his head again.

Meg managed to dry her tears, and once she composed herself, she held onto Alex's arms and steadied him while I stopped the bleeding. Several hiccups escaped from her, and I eyed her briefly as she looked away, unsure of what had made her so distraught.

With the blood cleared, I examined my son's swollen forehead while Meg held him steady. The wound itself was minor, and I knew injuries to the head often seemed worse than they were despite how Alex continued to carry on as though he were dying. After months with him in my care, I had learned a great deal about the dramatics of infants and I knew for certain he was destined for a great stage career if he continued with his feigned hysteria.

"What did he do?" Madeline asked once Alex stopped screaming. She stared at my dripping wet compositions plastered to the desk and the cup of tea on its side.

I had a feeling she could put the pieces together herself, but I sighed and explained what had transpired. She shook her head and frowned but did not comment-at least not while she stood in the room. I fully expected Madeline to whisper her grievances to her daughter in the kitchen.

"Did he burn himself?" Madeline asked. She held her hand to her heart and looked mortified at the notion despite earlier in the night insisting I allow Alex to burn himself on a lamp so that he would stop reaching for them.

"Absolutely not," I said.

"Of course not," Meg said at the same time.

Meg and I once again exchanged looks before she turned her face away and quietly apologized. Her meek nature was exhausting at times.

"He needs a playmate," Madeline stated. "That would keep him out of trouble."

Meg, who remained beside me, gasped. Alex took her sound of surprise as an invitation to climb back into her arms.

I furrowed my brow and stared at Madeline. "Indeed, Madame."

"There is a young family moving in behind us," she clarified. "They have a baby as well, and she cannot be more than a few months older than Alexandre. Perhaps if you introduced yourself to the husband-"

"I have no interest in such things."

"This would benefit Alex," she reasoned.

For months Madeline had suggested I take Alex for walks in his carriage down to the park, but given how fresh the Opera House disaster was in not only my mind but most of Paris, I did not leave my home during daylight, and nighttime excursions did not seem appropriate for an infant. Several times I overheard Madeline complain to Meg that I needed out of the house, out of my house. She truly tried my patience.

"Then you take him," I said without meeting her eye.

Madeline straightened her back. "I will invite them to supper one evening."

My jaw twitched, but I would be damned if she gained the upper hand in an exchange of words. "Do as you wish."

Meg looked from me to her mother, her face drained of color and eyes wide. She looked like a porcelain doll with her large blue eyes, blonde hair, and fair complexion.

Madeline shook her head and stormed out of the room, leaving Meg awkwardly standing beside me with Alex in her arms. She made every attempt to ignore him pulling her hair as she stood frozen in place.

"I will take him," I offered.

Meg managed to pry Alex's fist open and unwind her hair from his grasp before she handed him back to me. "I will find something to help keeping the bruising minimal and bring back towels to clean up the mess," she quietly replied as she turned toward the door. She paused abruptly before exiting and looked at me from over her shoulder as she grasped the doorframe. "And thank you."

"For what?" I asked as I peeled sheets of paper apart and attempted to decipher the blur of ink destroyed by tea. Truly my career as a composer would not survive an infant.

"For defending me when Mother thought I injured your son."

My brow furrowed, but I failed to look up before she skittered from the room and down the hall. I sighed to myself and shook my head. Of course she would thank me and then bolt from the room before I could respond.

"You're welcome, you timid little mouse of a girl," I said under my breath.

Meg peered into the room again. She met my eye, offered a close-lipped smile, and disappeared once again.