Gabrina here (Erik has almost 3000 words so he can calm down and let me talk for once!) I was just going to say that the page with my profile--click my pen name--you can get to my website and there you'll find the link for the contest. We only have about three chapters and this story is over! I might write a part two. We'll see.

Ch 56

Julia cleaned off her hand in a restroom outside the hotel lobby while the vicomte called for his horse and carriage. I sat in the front of the hotel and stared at the ground. For the first time in many years I was glad to be alone. My own version of reality was better than this.

We should not have come here. My desire for revenge had ended with Julia injured and Christine raving and eventually drugged. My past obsession and my only true love, one I no longer wanted and the other I was certain I had lost.

I had spent a lifetime assuming no one had ever suffered more than me, but now here I was, simmering in a pot filled with despair. There were rarely times when I felt guilty, but sitting on a miserably cold stone bench on a bitterly frigid night, I had never before been so filled with a greater sense of culpability.

The vicomte—because I couldn't call him 'the boy' anymore—headed back toward the lobby entrance with his gloves in hand and a sullen expression on his face. His eyes appeared heavy, his footsteps dragging.

He stood silently nearby with his head down. I made no attempt to acknowledge him. I hadn't even figured out why I had suggested he come with us to the opera house. The one man with the potential to steal my son away and I had asked him to join the search party.

He had to know the truth, to see it with his own eyes. If I forbade him from seeing Alexandre, the vicomte would be a bitter man always on my conscience.

I was becoming soft, compassionate. Was I weaker or stronger, I wondered. I settled on tired and delirious. Maybe I was the one who needed laudanum. What I wouldn't have given to be in bed with the dog kicking me in the spine.

Julia emerged from the lobby a moment later and sat down beside me. She was still visibly shaken by the ordeal though she remained silent. She threaded her arm through mine and rested the side of her hand on my leg. I had taken two taper candles from the hotel room and placed them into my overcoat pocket. I was surprised she didn't say anything about the candlesticks against her leg. It had to have felt unusual.

"Do you want me to take you home?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I want to find Alex."

"It's very late."

"I don't want to argue with you, Erik. I just want to see Alexandre and know he is safe," she said with a note of irritability in her voice.

Head bowed, I let it pass until I could stand it no longer. I pressed my arm tighter around her side. "I'm sorry for this," I whispered.

"Don't be sorry. Just find him."

Julia spoke mildly though she had every right to give me a piece of her mind, a colossal, jagged slice, impossible to swallow. Instead she sighed and rested her head against my shoulder. At least for the moment she still found comfort at my side. A creeping fear spread through my mind, a wicked little weed chanting everything would be over. Not just the night, but any sense of happiness I had with Julia. There was no bigger mistake I could have made than coming to the Wisteria.

No one spoke again until the carriage came around and the weary driver opened the door. The vicomte instructed him to drive a street away from the opera house. He climbed into the carriage and sat across from Julia and myself.

"How is your hand…Madame?"

"Madame Louis Seuratti," Julia replied.

My hold on her loosened. I wanted to turn her to face me and tell her she was mistaken. Her name was not Madame Louis Seuratti - her name was Julia Seuratti. I felt deeply ashamed of myself, as if something I did could have changed her name.

No one spoke again until the carriage lurched to a stop a street away from the opera house. The vicomte told the driver he could leave and the young man gave a bleary-eyed nod and slapped the reins to the two dapple gray horses and disappeared down the dark street. Once the glow of the lantern bobbed away, Julia and the vicomte looked at me.

I could have closed my eyes and found a door to the opera house. Anyone could have found a way in if they had looked closely enough. There was a main entrance at the front, an entrance for the dancers, one to the stables, and another for deliveries, all on the eastern side. A door to the chapel and a small archway with an overhangthat led to the managers' office were located on the western side. There were at least a dozen more I was aware of but none of those had names. It was amazing no one robbed the place blindaside from me, but I considered it my home and would do with it as I saw fit.

We made our way down the street and around the corner. The opera house stood like a proud old sentinel in Paris, lightless windows staring into the bleak night.

In nine years the locks and bolts had rusted, wood had rotted, and chains had weakened. It wasn't a matter of how to enter but where. The point nearest our home, and where I expected Alex had ended up, was on the western side. We walked westward until we stood in shadows. Two gendarmes on horseback clopped past but didn't take notice despite the vicomte breathing like a damned horse.

Though I didn't know for certain, I expected Alexandre had taken the boat docked on the western shore and rowed his way east toward the apartments. If he knew how to get there, I also assumed he had been there before without my knowledge. Still, despite his insolence, I was glad I had disabled all the traps from the cellar to the apartments. I had a feeling when he was five years old and taking apart Madeline's good German clocks, he would soon be aspiring to much more enticing adventures.

We entered through what was once an admission booth on the western side. Squatters had loosened two nails in a board and made it easy to maneuver through the boarded-up doorway.

Just before we entered, I pulled two candles from my coat pocket and handed one to Julia. I glanced at the vicomte. "They belonged to the hotel," I muttered as I struck a match and lit both wicks.

"I hadn't even thought of that," he replied. He glanced over his shoulder as I held back the wooden board and helped Julia into the abandoned building. "Are we…safe?"

"I have no idea," I answered, which, if not comforting, was at least truthful. When I glanced back at him I knew he hadn't meant safe from being discovered. "I'll walk first, then Julia and lastly you, Monsieur de Chagny."

"Call me Raoul," he insisted nervously. He placed the board back as it was and peered ahead. "We've known each other, or at least of each other, long enough, I think."

I preferred the more formal address but didn't argue. We were not friends. We would not enjoy drinks or sit around a fire chatting. As far as I was concerned, I would never see him again after this night. Unless he took Alexandre, and that didn't seem like a possibility any longer.

Julia made a sound of disgust as we entered. "It smells…dead," she complained. The acoustics played with her voice.

"Musty. The ceiling is damaged," I answered. "The fire weakened it."

We passed the dilapidated stage on our way to the back stairs where we would make our way down to the cellars. The vicomte paused for a moment and stared, his eyes shifting from center stage to Box Five. He visibly shuddered. The hairs on the back of my arms and my neck stood on end. We were both thinking the same thing.

Don Juan Triumphant.

Julia walked several steps ahead of me and I was forced to move. There had never been any lethal traps on the main floor, but there were trap doors used by the theater, ones I had not designed.

"Monsieur…Raoul, if you will," I said. I felt like the butcher coaxing the steer to the killing shed. He remembered the place well and knew I could have killed him without a second thought. No one would have found him, which couldn't have been a comforting thought for him.

The vicomte broke the uneasy silence with a ragged sigh. "So now you know."

I glanced at him. He was silence again as he pressed forward.

"I suppose you now find there is nothing envious about my life. With our life." The vicomte came up alongside Julia and glanced at her for a moment before turning away. There was not much to see with only two candles to light an entire theater, but he looked. He had to do something to avoid looking at me. "She's not always this…sick. There are good days," he added quickly.

I merely nodded and continued to the rear of the stage where scenery was shifted and props were designed. He was talking a great deal, more so than I would have ever thought possible. I had scarcely heard him speak in the past. He was eloquent, I'll give him that, gregarious but a good speaker.

"There have been…episodes…for a while, longer than you know. Of course no one really understood because she was a dancer. All dancers have their fits, and singers? Yes, when she was a young singer it was worse and no one was any wiser. She was a diva—she is a diva. Her fits are expected." His voice turned low as if what he had to say had become a secret he was afraid to speak. "She's been ill for a while. It wasn't just giving up Alexandre."

'Giving up' was a rather nice way of putting it, I thought. I turned my head to be certain he was still following and watching his step.

"Though that made it worse for her." He paused and swallowed hard. "As did Suzette's death, which you knew about. You did, didn't you? In Africa."

"Madeline and Meg," I said quietly.

"Ah, of course. Madeline—Madame Giry—it's difficult to call her by her first name. I saw the note you sent her, the one with the brown ink. Lemons, wasn't it? Very clever. I assume she did write you back, but who knows? What was I saying? Oh, Madame. Well she knew Christine's father. She knew how his sickness progressed and how…it was very difficult for Christine. Before that summer, she was happy. A vibrant girl, Little Lotte, bright-eyed and just simply happy to run around and cause trouble. That's how I remembered her."

I assumed he meant the summer her father passed away. We descended a spiraling stairwell. Rats screeched at our presence and darted away before they were seen. I always hated rats. For a while I had kept a cat but she was attacked by a group of rats. I never saw her after I heard the fight.

"When she started all this nonsense about her father sending an Angel of Music I just assumed it was something she dreamed up. If you had known her back then you would have known she had quite an imagination. Always saying she heard brownies in the attic—the Green Man—have you heard of the Green Man?"

I nodded. It wasn't important to get into details.

"Yes, yes, she was very fond of the Green Man, faeries, anything at all. So the Angel of Music was just one of those little tales. But then she swore that this thing—this angel—was a real person, a real man who lived behind the glass. And he was strict! Very strict, she said to me with this stern expression.

"But I didn't say anything because it upset her when anyone told her something wasn't real. She needed something, I suppose, something to make her feel like she wasn't alone. It's really quite sad, this beautiful little girl living a strange dream."

Julia lifted her head. "You blame Erik for this?" she asked. Her voice lacked emotion, the words hollow. The expression on her face, the toneless sound of her voice, it was as if part of Julia had died.

The vicomte ground his teeth for a moment. We both still wanted desperately to hate one another but we lacked reason. Christine was terribly ill, maimed emotionally beyond recognition. Even I could not throw it in his face. It hurt to think of her, of all her talent and beauty wasting awayher life controlled by a small amber vial. None of her letters had ever indicated the extent of her suffering—or if they had I had failed to notice. I wanted her to be perfect. For so many years she had been the immaculate diva.

"No. He never intended to hurt her. Even when I hoped to save her from something evil, I knew in my heart he would never put her in harm's way. He had no way of knowing. She hid it well for fear of being sent away." The vicomte met my eye. "You never knew she was so devastated by her father's death. You knew she was lonely, I think, but you didn't know she…was ill."

Yes, I nodded, yes I knew she was lonely. Her pain, her solitude, was like mine. Night after night I heard her pray, heard her cry. It was the worst sound ever heard, the torment of a child.

I saw in Christine Daae the most beautiful, most fragile thing in the world. I would nurse her like a sparrow with a broken wing, repair her and make her into something grand—a swan, perhaps—or a songbird. Together we would find happiness and belonging in our suffering. Everything had started out with good intentions. All I wanted was her happiness, her love…her respect.

We walked down two more floors without conversation. The vicomte and I kicked in a door while Julia held both candles. Fire had not damaged anything this far below the surface. The air smelled different, heady like soil. Millipedes scurried before us and spider webs curtained the doorways. We were near the furnaces and incinerators. There were three more cellars before we reached the lake.

The vicomte cleared his throat after a while. He coughed into his sleeve as the air thickened with dampness. The dank air didn't bother me as it did the vicomte and Julia. Neither of them had ever lived underground.

"I don't want your pity," the Vicomte de Chagny said suddenly. His words stopped me in my tracks and I turned to look at him curiously.

"You don't want my pity and I don't want yours," he continued. "I didn't tell you this for you to feel sorry for us. I love her. With all of my heart, I do love her and I would never, ever abandon her. She needs me, I think. She needs someone to watch over her. And she's not a bad person…she's not. Deep in her soul she is good. She gets confused. When she takes her medicine, when she's…."

Sedated. If he had been able to form the word in his mouth he would have said sedated or drugged.

We walked awhile in silence. The vicomte exhaled sharply, the sound echoing through the cold stone confines. "I'm surprised."

For a moment I stared at him from over my shoulder, unsure of whether or not he would elaborate. He stared back at me, challenge evident in his dark blue eyes. Quite frankly I was too exhausted to fight with him any longer.

"By?" I asked.

He looked away. His cheeks flushed when he spoke. "I expected you would gloat or use this against us."

"He is not spiteful," Julia snapped. Those were her first words in almost an hour.

I would have liked to have thought she was correct. After everything, I didn't want to disappoint her.

"Serves no purpose," I replied curtly.

He didn't protest though he knew very well how I could have ruined him. Madeline and Meg or even Julia could have gone to L'Epoque and slandered her terribly. The world would have looked upon her with great disfavor had they known she suffered bouts of madness and delusion. She would have fallen from her pedestal and I would have guaranteed Alexandre a place beneath my roof.

Yet I still didn't want her to suffer. Enough had happened to her. I would not wish anything more, least of all total humiliation. I knew what it was like to be completely strippedof everything.

Christine could not raise Alexandre. She should never have borne children—not even Alex. Her daughters, though, were not my concern.

I paused at the fifth cellar and shuddered. Perhaps Christine had not been so callous after all. Perhaps in good conscience she had given up a child she knew she could not care for in her condition.

"Are we close?" Julia asked. She held the candle at an angle and watched the wax drip onto the ground.

I nodded toward a crumbling doorway. We had made it to the bottom, to the very pit of the opera house. I hesitated for only a heartbeat before ducking through the small doorway.

There was a light up ahead, a soft yellow glow forming a halo around a small figure.

My son.