A/N - Those of you who have read the novel will notice that I've dropped the mirrored room scene as a setting for Erik and Christine's first meeting; this is because other people have written it so beautifully, and I just found it impossible to write in that setting (for the ultimate rewriting, I can only point you in the direction of Crysania's beautiful version: )

Narsil: Oh no, Madame Giry did tell him ... we just skipped forward in the narrative. His finding out about Pierre was the catalyst which brought him to send for Christine; and sometime, probably next chapter, they're going to have to discuss it ...

T'eyla Minh: Ouch! Don't poke me! More meanness to Erik ensues, I'm afraid ...

Huggles and thanks to all those who reviewed! Love you all :)

Father Joe smiled and dismissed the small dark-haired American maid. She left the sitting room quietly, closing the door behind her. He glanced out of the window, and sat down in the chair, taking out a book he had been reading.

He looked up as there came a knock on the door, and Christine nervously poked her head around the door.

"Father ..." she greeted him nervously.

He stood up and closed his book, gesturing for her to come in.

"What can I do for you, Madame Christine?" he asked.

She came shyly into the room and stood still for a few moments, looking around. Father Joe waited.

Finally she turned to him with a strange light of resolution in her eyes.

"Father," she said. "Do you remember, when you first came to us, that I told you I had not been entirely honest in my confession - that there were things in my past I was not yet ready to tell?"

Father Joe nodded assent. He had been expecting this ever since the arrival of the hand-written manuscript which had affected Christine badly enough to bring them across the Atlantic.

"I remember."

Christine nodded restlessly. "But now, I am ready." She sat down, her face pale but determined. "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

Father Joe sat down opposite her and made the sign of the cross. "Tell me of your sin, my child."

Christine stood up again and began restlessly to pace the room. "It was thirteen years ago," she began, twisting her hands together. She looked up suddenly. "Do you remember what I told you of the Phantom of the Opera?"

Father Joe nodded.

Christine gave a little distracted half-smile. "What I told you was a fairly incomplete version, but I daresay Meg was only too happy to fill you in on the details."

Father Joe bowed his head in abashed assent, and Christine laughed. "Never mind, Father ... it doesn't matter. She will not have told you anything that I would not have wished her to."

She resumed her pacing. "I was not entirely honest with you then," Christine continued. "I did not tell you of the circumstances which led to the birth of my son. You see ... Raoul is not Pierre's father."

Father Joe kept his face impassive, despite his surprise. This was not what he had been expecting ...

"How can you be so sure, child?" he asked gently.

"Raoul is ... unable to have children," Christine replied, flushing slightly. "A shooting accident when he was young has prevented him from ever ..." She coloured. "He is unable to sire children," she repeated.

Father Joe nodded again, and motioned for her to sit down.

"Am I to take it then that the Opera Ghost - Erik? - is Pierre's father?"

Christine looked away, colouring deeply.

"Yes," she said, very quietly. "It was late one night, after a performance; Erik had taken me out for dinner and then for a walk in the park in the moonlight." She looked up, suddenly animated. "You must understand how much this meant, Father," she said earnestly, leaning forward a little in her chair and pressing his hand. "Erik was always ... so uncomfortable around people ... it meant so much that he was willing to brave that for me.

"We returned home very late - I was accustomed to stay in his house during the run of a performance, you see ... it was easier and more pleasant for both of us than my having to return to a cold flat would have been. In my own separate bedroom," she added hastily, seeing the look on Father Joe's face. "It was always very proper." Once again, colour flooded her cheeks. "Until that night," she whispered, looking down at her hands.

There was a long pause, in which the only sound was the tortuously slow tick of the grandfather clock in the hall.

Christine cleared her throat and continued. "It was very late, but I just wasn't tired - I think I was still a bit overexcited from the success of the performance. And Erik, well -" she gave a short laugh, "- I don't think Erik ever slept while I was in the house." She cleared her throat again. "So we stayed up, and talked ... played a game of chess ... he wouldn't allow me to sing, he didn't want my voice put under any extra strain, but he played for me, and then -" she stopped abruptly, silence rising up and filling the room.

Father Joe gently reached out and took one of Christine's hands, enclosing it in both of his.

She looked up into his face. "He did not force me," she said in a very clear, quiet little voice. "He did not force me, and he did not take advantage of me." She sighed and tangled a fist in her hair. "I thought that ... that because he loved me so, and I him, that God would forgive ... that He would understand." She shook her head fiercely and looked up into Father Joe's face. "But I know now that I was wrong. It was a sin." She stood up and walked away from Father Joe. "Raoul knew all about it when I agreed to marry him," she said quietly. "He would not stand by and see me dishonoured, even though I so thoroughly deserved it." She sighed. "He has never mentioned it since; he looks upon Pierre quite as his own. He ... he did not know Erik as I did. He could never have understood."

There fell a silence, and Christine broke it by a nervous little strained laugh. "So, there you have it," she said with an attempt at flippancy. "My full and true confession."

"Forgive me, child ..." Father Joe leaned forward in his chair and took Christine's hands again. "You speak very well of him. Was there never any plan that the two of you should be married?"

"Oh ..." Christine looked up, suddenly looking confused. "No ... I ..." She sighed. "I did believe, at that time, that marriage would be the natural course we would follow. But ..." she stopped abruptly.

"But?" prompted Father Joe gently.

Christine stood up stiffly and crossed the room, standing with her back to the priest for what seemed like a very long time. When she finally turned back to him, he was distressed to see her face tear-streaked.

"But he never asked me," she said, very quietly.

When Christine and Father Joe left the room separately half an hour later, they both went straight to their respective bedrooms to think.

Father Joe was deeply troubled by all that Christine had told him; not, of course, by the sin itself, a sin of which he had absolved numerous women of all ranks before, but rather by the implications it held for their presence here in America, and the repercussions that presence might have for Raoul and Christine's marriage.

The automatic way in which Christine had referred to the Opera Ghost's house as "home", the natural ease with which she had spoken of love for him, disconcerted Father Joe; this was not the claustrophobic relationship of suppressed terror and manipulation that Raoul had privately described to him when he had first entered the de Chagny employ.

"She's still a little shaken," he had explained. "We don't speak of it; I think it makes it easier on her if we're all rather more careful about what we say than we might usually be."

He had looked with earnest gravity into the priest's eyes. "I love my wife very much, Father," he said quietly. "All I want is for her to be happy."

The intensity of Raoul's devotion to Christine was what had originally endeared them to Father Joe so deeply. He had always privately worried that Christine did not adore her husband as he so obviously adored her, but never until now, when he understood the full depth of their relationship, had he truly feared for their marriage.

But now ... now he was afraid.

Afraid that the lure of the mysterious shadow of thirteen years ago could once again draw Christine away from the law of God and her love for her family.

Christine collapsed onto her bed and closed her eyes, fighting to draw breath and retain her composure. The recitation of what had occurred on that one fateful night under the Opera had awakened memories she had thought buried forever, and aroused feelings she had never thought to feel again.

How could she ever have described that night with justice? The softness of the candlelight, the gentleness of Erik's touch, the slow beauty of the music spilling from his hands, the absolute feeling of security and peace in the dim, warmly-lit tableau of her bedroom with the scent of candle wax and sandalwood soothing around her ... never before had she felt like that, with anybody.

Never before, and never since.

Christine laid a hand against her heart in an effort to stop it thumping, forcing herself to draw slow, deep breaths, tangling her other hand in her hair.

She started up as a cursory knock came on her door and Meg breezed in, bearing an armful of dresses, her curly blonde hair escaping from its pins and forming a halo around her head as usual.

"It's so lovely out there," she said happily. "I've just been out walking in Central Park, it's a beautiful park really, all trees and grass and fresh air, and it's so lovely and warm. What do you say we go out together at some time when you don't have other plans made for you, get a bit of colour back into your cheeks?"

Christine pressed a hand to her face. "Do I look so awful?" she asked.

Meg laughed and deposited the dresses on the bed. "Oh, don't be silly, not awful at all! You're just still a little pale ... I daresay it's from that appalling voyage."

She laid the dresses carefully over the back of a chair, one by one. "Which do you want for this afternoon?" she asked cheerfully. "I was thinking the blue, but ..."

"This afternoon?"

Meg looked up in surprise. "Rehearsal, Christine. You've to be there in, oh, about an hour ... I was just wondering what you wanted to wear." She sat down on the bed next to Christine, looking closely at her. "Are you sure you're all right, Christine?"

"Of course." Christine forced a smile. "I'd just forgotten that I had a rehearsal." She sighed and pulled a handful of hair up away from her neck. "Goodness, I'm a mess." She looked away from the mirror to see Meg still watching her with furrowed eyebrows, and forced herself to walk jauntily over to the chair where Meg had laid out her dresses. "Now ... what was it you were saying about the blue?"

~ Three hours later ~

Christine sank down into an overstuffed armchair and released her hair from its pins; it had been a hard rehearsal, and her head was aching mercilessly, as it did so often these days. She closed her eyes and massaged her temples in a vain effort to make her head stop pounding, and failing utterly.

She sat there, her eyes closed, for a long time, remembering other places and other people. A dressing room much like this ...

Slowly, her hand groping automatically for the dresser to support herself, she rose and crossed the room to sit in the small hard-backed chair in front of her vanity. Studying herself in the mirror, she sighed and absently reached for a pot of face cream. She was thirty two this year, and if she was honest, she had to admit that she looked every day of it today. Deep circles shadowed her eyes, testimony to her regular sleepless nights, and she looked pale, even behind the expensive make-up Meg insisted on applying every morning.

The faintest rustle behind her made her turn, without much energy; she was too tired to give much consideration to a stray mouse or badly-balanced prop.

Then her eyes met his, dark and unfathomable, and for a moment everything clicked into focus, cruelly clear, the colours too bright, the lines too sharp, the expression in his eyes bringing her to her knees ...

And then everything went black.

Erik stared at her for a moment, shock, contrition and utter misery etched on his face, before finally kneeling beside her and lifting her into his arms for the first time in thirteen years.

Christine awoke sometime later to the light of a single candle casting strange, flickering shadows on the walls.

She lay there in silence for a few moments as her mind slowly registered her surroundings; she became aware of a blanket tucked around her and the softness of a couch underneath her. She sat up slowly, her mind whirling; she vaguely remembered Erik's arms around her and his voice coaxing her back to consciousness.

She felt a glass of something being pressed into her hands; she took it unquestioningly, taking a sip and wincing at the sharp taste.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice faintly hoarse.

"Brandy."

His voice revived her as no alcohol could have done; suddenly she was keenly awake, the brandy bitter in her mouth, every nerve in her body at once acutely aware of how near he was to her.

Thirteen years ...

"I had rather hoped that after thirteen years, you might have got over fainting at the sight of me," he said finally. He paused, and she sensed that in the dim light he was looking at her, his gaze softening. He turned away, and the moment was lost. "Evidently not."

Unsure of what reply she could make, she turned to look around. "Where are we?" she asked suddenly.

"Your dressing room." He laughed softly. "It has a certain irony, I suppose ... my apologies, there isn't a suitable mirror ... I suppose I should have commissioned one, had I thought of it."

Christine glanced at him. She could tell that beneath his flippant facade, he was actually very nervous, and she felt her heart go out to him. She had forgotten how it felt to be so close to him ...

As if sensing and becoming uncomfortable under her scrutiny, he turned away from her and crossed the room to stand at the window.

"How do you feel?" he asked without turning to look at her.

"I'm fine," she said. "It was just a surprise ..."

"It's that damn corset," he said abruptly. "You're laced into it so tightly that you can barely breathe. God alone knows how you manage to sing with it that tight ..."

Christine flushed and looked away.

"It was just a surprise," she repeated softly.

She could sense him drawing his courage together as he repeated her words, very softly, surprisingly gently. "A surprise?"

"I ... I thought ..."

"That I was dead?" He laughed softly, and she heard him settle into a chair opposite the couch. "Now, Christine, what sort of ghost would I be if I allowed myself to do a thing like that?"

She smiled ever so faintly, but her silence evidently disconcerted him. He rose from his chair and lit another candle, lifting some of the oppressive darkness.

There was a short pause, in which Erik struggled with his courage.

"Then ..." He cleared his throat. "You didn't recognise the music?"

Christine stared at him blankly, and he retreated into a darker part of the room, trying to quell his disappointment. "I thought you might have done."

"Erik, I ..."

"Of course not," he interrupted, ashamed of himself for entertaining such infantile hopes. "I know you would not have come if you had."

Christine felt a wave of pity at his ever-present self-doubt, and without thinking she rose from the couch and moved to stand beside him.

"Oh, no! I would ... I mean ... I ..." She coloured in embarrassment, and Erik's heart wrenched within him as he thought desperately how lovely she was, and how he longed to take her into his arms again.

"Of course I recognised it," she said at last, overcoming her confusion to look him in the face for the first time. "How could I not have?"

Suddenly realising just how very close she was standing to him, and no longer able to bear such proximity with equanimity, Erik crossed the room under the pretence of lighting another oil lamp, before realising that the extra light made the room uncomfortably bright and extinguishing the flame.

Christine stayed where she was, recognising Erik's discomfort at her nearness.

"It's beautiful," she said, very softly. "I meant it when I told the press that it was the music that had brought me here."

She saw Erik's shoulders stiffen and hesitated, wondering if she had upset him. Back in Paris, so many years ago, she had been accustomed to spend hours analysing every nuance of her behaviour in order to determine what she had said or done to distress him, and usually failing to find the answer; his moods were so utterly incomprehensible.

"Yes, well ..." In the dim candlelight, she saw him turn his back to her, rigid with tension. "It's passable."

She laughed involuntarily in spite of the tension tangible in the air between them.

"Only passable?!"

She saw Erik flinch at the sound of her voice, and her smile faded. Crossing the room with light tread, still a little unsteady, she reached out and took his hand, feeling him stiffen as she did so.

"It's beautiful," she said quietly, sincerity in her voice, looking earnestly up into his face.

He stared at her, anguished longing raw in his eyes, for a moment which seemed to Christine to last an eternity and be over too soon. Christine felt his fingers tighten convulsively around her own and, barely aware of the action, felt herself take a step towards him and bring her free hand up to his shoulder. She felt hesitant fingers touch her jaw and tilt her face upwards -

There came a knock at the door.

Erik sprang away from Christine with his peculiarly catlike grace, his eyes searching the small room wildly for any means of escape, catching Christine off balance; she stumbled, and it was only the speed with which he caught her that prevented her from falling.

"Miss Christine?" called a voice from outside. "It's Jessica, I've come to see if you needed any help getting changed after rehearsal."

Erik withdrew his arms from Christine and crossed the dressing room to put distance between them, every fibre of him in utter turmoil.

Her heart hammering painfully in her chest, Christine grasped the side of the sofa for support and called out, "No, thank you, Jessica ... I shall be out soon." Erik felt his heart twist within him with useless adoration at her attempt at an English accent.

"There is something more, Miss ..." the voice called hesitantly.

Christine drew a hand back through her hair, tousled and coming loose from its pins. "Yes?"

"Mr Hammerstein said I was to tell you that your husband arrived on the last boat, and will be here to pick you up in a few minutes."

Christine almost laughed at the hideousness of it. She turned involuntarily to Erik, and saw a flash of pain in his eyes before he turned abruptly away from her.

"Thank you, Jessica," she called at last, and the following pattering of feet along the corridor told her that Jessica had no further bombshells to deliver.

Erik turned back to look at Christine, and she felt herself colouring scarlet under the unfathomable darkness of his eyes. She broke their eye contact and looked away, raising a hand to her hair in embarrassment.

"I'd ..." She gestured meaninglessly towards the door. "I'd better go."

Erik nodded, stifling the intensity of his anguished disappointment. God, she was so lovely ...

He looked away from her and picked up a cloak which she had evidently earlier in the day draped over the arm of the sofa. Christine could not help noticing that wherever he moved about the room, he kept his back steadily to the mirror; apparently he was still as self-conscious as he had been in Paris all those years ago.

"You had better wear this," he told her, offering it to her without touching her. "It is cold outside, and your voice must be at its best for the opening tomorrow night."

Christine accepted the cloak in silence, nodding her thanks.

"You will be there?" she asked, twisting the cloak in her hands.

He inclined his head in silence.

"Will I see you?"

"Perhaps."

She nodded slowly, and slipped the cloak on, tying it closely around her neck at the front. She looked back at him for one long moment, then turned and made her way towards the door.

His voice called her back.

"Christine ..." he stopped suddenly, a sudden memory of her eyes, staring at him with absolute horror, rising in his mind, and in that moment, his nerve completely deserted him.

"Yes?" Her voice eager, hopeful, nervous.

Ashamed of his own cowardice, he turned away from her and passed a hand across his face.

"Good luck tomorrow," he said quietly.

Disappointment and a kind of emptiness filling her, Christine could only nod through a sudden lump in her throat.

As he heard the door close softly behind her, Erik sank into the chair she had sat in and buried his face in his hands.