A/N: To quote the infamous words of Theoden: so it begins.

Glad you're still reading.

I have to apologize that this was not up Monday (or is it Tues before it shows?). Anyway, as I've said, my home computer doesn't let me update chapters, so I do it from the University of Hartford library… I have class M/W so that's when I'm there. Only a great annoying snowstorm came in… well, here you go, seven chapters at once. 

IX: UNVEILING

"We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again…" –The Fiddler (Erikson)

He had been nine when his mother died—old enough to remember her, young enough to forget. He had always thought of himself as the lucky one. Jaqueline had been only four—too young to recall more than the characteristic gray eyes and enchanting voice. Gerard however had been fourteen.

He remembered her all too well—remembered the cough that had ended with her bedridden, remembered how Father had refused to call a doctor until it was too late, how she had wasted away to nothing before his very eyes.

Gerard was… changed, from that day on. Raian knew she had loved Gerard dearly—the eldest, the businessman in the family. Her death had shattered him, much like Father's death had broken Jaqueline eleven years later. Fragmented. That was Raian's family.

He had been torn between the two of them—sheltering his younger sister from Gerard's growing rages. His father had watched, helpless, seeing his eldest become more and more a slave to his anger—and as he grew older, anger turned to greed. Jaqueline herself withdrew almost completely from the world, a vain attempt to stop being hurt, to desensitize herself—until only Father or Raian could bring her out again.

When Father died, half of that world vanished. Immediately Gerard—now extraordinarily wealthy and commanding vast influence on the gentry of Paris—moved to seize the family assets with only a token of grief. It had taken six months of legal proceedings for Raian to secure a small fraction and pass it on to Jaqueline, who fled into hiding.

Six months of trials, and five weeks of running through the streets of Paris, one desperate step ahead of his brother's hirlings.

He had tried to keep in contact with Jaqueline as much as he could, to let her know he was still free—still alive. Only three days before his last flight he had sent her a letter. Now he feared that the reassuring note was the precise means by which Gerard had found her.

Then the midnight flight through the streets of Paris, hemmed in from all sides, all paths taken from him, but one.

"Then I discovered that the Opera Ghost was very much alive," Raian said softly, concluding his tale. He dared to look up from his hands clasped on his lap to where his dark listener sat, a fragmented echo of night on his throne-like chair, white mask gleaming eerily in the half-light. The Phantom had said nothing during the long tale, but at last he stirred, supporting hand falling away from his jaw as he looked steadily at Raian, the visible half of his face perfectly expressionless.

The motionless pause held for a long while, until abruptly the Phantom surged upright, crossing the floor in a swift graceful motion that took Raian's breath away. He snagged something off a shelf and turned, tossing it lightly to Raian, who reflexively snatched it from the air.

It was a scroll of some sort. He glanced at the Phantom curiously, but when the other did not move unrolled an inch of the parchment. It read:

L'OPERA POPULAIRE

Another inch showed fine hatching and angled lines, neatly annotated. He stared at them a long moment before it hit him. "Plans—the original drawings… how…?"

"They are mine. This place is, after all, a feat of personal engineering." The Phantom allowed himself a slight smile at the look of awe on Raian's face. "The first time I suppose I will have to lead you myself—but if you wish to see your sister but if you wish to see your sister more often, you will quickly learn the way." He picked up the pole he had so recently discarded and paused on the way to the lake's shore. "I will, of course, need to inform Mme Giry beforehand… and make my presence known to Gerard as well." He fixed Raian with an icy stare. "Know this, boy. The Opera Populaire is my domain no one else's. You are here only on my appreciation—treat this as such. And one more thing…" he stepped into the boat, levering the pole against the unseen bottom. "She is not to know of me." He would not risk Christine again.