Note to Angelic Lawyer who had said that Erik's character progressed with each chapter – I believe it's because I wrote the first four chapters of Temperance when I was 16 years old, and the rest now, 5 years later – I do wish the contrast wasn't so stark, but I can't help writing him darker and darker :-D Thank you guys for all the reviews – they really make my day!

Warning about this chapter: It's a bit R-rated


I met Christine at the gates of La Rue Scribe and beckoned her to follow me without conversation. She did as she was told, but I caught a second of the puzzled disappointment in her eyes as I did not extend my hand to her or offer her my cloak, as I have always done. There was no time for that, Christine—there were more serious concerns tonight.

My mind was extremely troubled by the presence of my pestilent friend. How could I have missed Nadir all this time? Sitting in the twelfth row of the orchestra with his opera glasses glued to his eyes, he had raised his eyes up warily to the ceiling several times during the performance, as if he'd expected me to be swinging from the crystal chandelier! I watched him as his gaze wandered across the balcony and rest on my ambiguously dark box with a nervous squint.

There was a very likely chance that daroga had come to find the Vicomte and let him in on the startling blood-tie, and perhaps even try to reunite us.

"You're always looking Nadir…what a pity you never quite manage to see!"1

Christine must have felt my tense concentration because I flinched as she squeezed my arm.

She gasped in pain as I sharply twisted the hand that touched me and spun around to face it's owner, but as I recognized the soft curves of her features, I released her immediately and took a step back in surprise.

"Forgive me!" I said disconcertedly and reached for her hand to see if I'd done some serious harm to her tendons. She pulled back with an instinctively jolt of her arm and averted her eyes from me.

I studied her for a moment of resigned regret before continuing on towards the lake without a word. I had no interest in facing the feministic qualities of the hurt and accusation in her eyes tonight—if she did not comply, she would simply have to find her way back alone.

Minutes later I could hear her footsteps tapping behind me with the rhythm of her panting as she ran…

We reached the lair, and as she has always done in the past, she automatically walked next to the organ expecting a lesson. Instead I did not follow her and instructed her to sit down at the sofa. With quivering lower lip she, obeyed and sat with her head bowed, as if she'd expected an eminent reprimanding. I poured two glasses of red wine sunk into the chair beside her, studying her quiet hesitation as I offered her a drink. She shook her head shyly and shrunk into the cushion of the couch in unease.

Sighing, I motioned for her to accept it without apprehension. "You were flawless tonight…One should celebrate such a triumph."

Slowly she accepted the glass and brought it to her lips. She sipped the red liquid uncertainly, and looked up at me.

"It wouldn't be fair to say that the triumph was all mine, Master," She took another, more courageous sip of her wine. "I'm ashamed to take the adulation."

I made a gesture of indifference. "Nevermind who the praise goes to, I have little regard for public approval. I would rather obtain the veneration of you, my dear, than all of Paris."

She blushed as crimson as her drink and proceeded to drink quite rapidly until the glass was empty. I poured her another glass and sat back and watched with incredulous marvel at the speed with which she accepted the liquor into her mouth. She seemed almost eager to be calmed, and I did not refuse her the next two glasses as she finished them greedily. Slowly but surely her clenched hands began to relax and her eyes glazed over with the glassy veil of intoxication. As she extended the glass to me once more, I took it from her hand and set it aside. She dropped her arm limply and sank her head into the arm of the sofa, leisurely submerging her face into the scarlet velvet cushions. Gazing at me through her half-masked eyes and smiled.

"Erik?"

I sat languidly in my chair, mesmerized by her drunken beauty and taking in the parting and closing motion of her lips with my eyes with hungry unease. She adjusted her hair amongst the cushions so silky tendrils spread around her face in an ocean of waves. Then, slowly, her hand crept to her neck, messaging the muscle in her shoulder that made her release small sounds of pleasure.

"Erik?"

"Hush, I'm here."

I did not move. I dared not. Behind the mask my expression had already gone to one of complete loathing, twisted despite its powerlessness to retrain and tensed to every aching bone in my body.

What it is that the Khanum used to call me?

Temperance.

"You can gore yourself in all the blood in my kingdom, Erik, but what a shame you must always keep away from the women! Yes that's what you are, my elusive Temperance!"

What a sardonic name for me, I had thought. I could not have then what I could not have now, yet I could, for the first time, live up to the reputation of my name….

I felt the power leave my body as I took in breaths of air engulfed by her soft perfume. I tightly gripped onto the arms of my chair, my own arms shaking as if I was being whipped and dragged into a pit of ravenous lions—Still she turned her body towards me and widened the pleasurable little smile across her lips as she called out my name with distilled passion.

"Erik…come please. Tell me a story."

But my mind was at a sudden standstill—no folklore that I had ever heard remained in my memory. It was as if my extraordinary powers of recall had vanished without warning, leaving me with nothing but the sight of my clenched hands with their knuckles turning the ghastly white shade of my mask.

Take her!

I leapt from my chair and enclosed beneath my body like a bat resting it's wings over a possession it's forbidden to own. With unnerved savageness I began undoing the lace-up strings of her corset, and then plunging my lips into the soft flesh of her breasts, I felt the shackles on my shoulders burst with release. She tasted like soft, becoming eagerness on my tongue, and as I kissed her lips with greedy desire she returned them between sounds of unrecognizable happiness.

She did not refuse.

Her arms wrapped caressingly around my neck as we kissed with a fiery urge of two needy children, and as I saw the look of intoxication turn into one of pleased bewilderment, I knew without a morsel of doubt that Christine Daaé loved me. But something was terribly wrong. The guilt in her eyesdug like agluttonous blade deep into the centre of my heart…

She had lied….

1 Quote taken from Kay's Phantom