I still need your votes in the fic contest! Thanks to all of you who voted already! And for all of the nice comments people made! You really made my week.

A/N Anyone who read GL or SK POTO will know the casket references. Those of you who haven't read the book: the non-ALW Phantom slept in a coffin. Not exactly a romantic swan/eagle bed.

Erik, have something to say my dear?

Ch 60

The consternation in Julia's gaze was something I should have expected. She was standing five floors beneath an abandoned opera house in the middle of the night with a phantom, a boy who had run away, and an aristocrat whose wife had attacked her earlier in the evening.

Frankly, I was surprised she didn't run from the cellars screaming.

Instead she stood cradling her bound hand. Her eyes moved slowly around the parlor and took in every macabre detail. Truthfully, there was nothing absurd in what could have been considered a living room. Though covered in dust, the pieces of furniture had always been in good repair. The modest space was a bit crowded and there was clutter everywhere, but it was really no different from her home. If her home had suddenly plummeted five stories into the earth, I suppose.

Don't go into the bedroom, I thought. I hoped she would be too exhausted to bother with exploration but the morbid curiosity in her eyes had me concerned. My former bedroom was different than the one which stored my mother's old bedroom set. For years I had slept in a casket. A damned casket, of all things!

"Julia," I called to her before she could wander. "We should leave."

She nodded slowly and turned to the vicomte, who had walked back toward the doorway. The vicomte graciously allowed Julia and Alexandre to pass before him into the hall. The three of them together looked irritatingly pleasant, a perfect, happy little family.

I lingered in bitterness for a moment, my mouth forming a hardened scowl. They disappeared from my sight.

Julia had seen too much of my past. Now that we had found Alexandre, she didn't even look at me. She passed through the doorway with the vicomte at her side. She had taken a liking to him, a preference to the handsome little hero, the kind boy who had offered up his assistance to find my son.

Julia. My Julia.

What did she have with me but a vast, colorful lie? Once we left the opera house, once I took her home, I would never see her again. The house would be put up for sale or rent and she would leave. I was certain she would travel as fast and as far as she could to get away. Already she had distanced herself. She had used her dead husband's name when the Vicomte de Chagny had asked for her name.

I shuddered at the thought. She was not my Julia.

She would never stay with me. What reason would she have? If I was such a mastermind, such a genius, then I should have been able to convince her to stay with me.

But I didn't want to cajole her into my life.

I wanted her to stay because it was her choice, because I was her heart and she was mine. No more conniving, no more threats, no more lies and deceit. I wanted Julia.

This damned place, these damned, foolish dreams! This damned foolish man! I had lost her.

My hope betrayed me. Perhaps I should never have left the darkness, I thought. Perhaps I should have remained in that coffin, in thatdeep, dark, hellish hole. Perhaps….

"Erik? What are you doing? I thought you were ready to leave," Julia said. She walked to me and squinted at my face. "What is it?"

"I think I owe you an apology," I replied without meeting her eye.

She sighed and took my arm. "A night of rest will suffice for now. Please, I'm exhausted and my hand hurts."

"I'm sorry you saw this," I blurted out.

She nodded once. "Tomorrow," she said in a low voice. "You have time tomorrow. Please, let's leave this place."

We gathered several candles and joined Alex and the vicomte in the hall. Alex had perked up enough to start sputtering on about Egypt and how mummies were embalmed. It took me a moment to register what he was talking about. From what I initially heard, it didn't sound like appropriate conversation.

"They take a hot poker, and they stick it up the dead person's nose and they scramble the brain—just like an egg! Do you know why they did it?" Alex never let anyone answer his rhetorical questions. He barely took a breath when he spoke of something that interested him. It always surprised me when he wasn't blue in the face by the time his dissertation ended."Because they didn't think the brain was important, it was the heart."

"I never knew that," the vicomte replied.

"They thought the heart was responsible for everything and the brain was useless. So they pulled it out through the dead person's nose before they embalmed them."

"Fascinating."

"Would you want to be embalmed?"

"I don't believe so."

For a while longer Alex strived to repulse the vicomte on everything from sacrifices to archaic medical techniques. He certainly passed the time as we made our way through the five cellars to the ground floor. Alexandre was adamant about convincing the poor vicomte that the extraction of his internal organs and the mummification process wouldn't hurt because he would, in fact, be dead.

Aside from the topic of conversation, Alexandre and Monsieur de Chagny were hitting it off like grand old chums. Chagny even agreed that if Alex became a practicer of ancient embalming techniques, he would donate his body for the sake of science. I rather thought it was for the sake of silence.

"Alex, I believe Monsieur…Raoul…has heard enough about the intriguing Egyptian civilization," I said over my shoulder. "What more do you want from him? You already have his body for science."

The vicomte was grinning at the absurdity of the situation. As much as I had expected he would still annoy me, I found my little vicomte tolerable. He was no longer a threat. He was nothing more than a man. Strange.

The vicomte waved his hand around. "He's done no harm. His retention of facts and information is mind-boggling," the vicomte commented. He still couldn't look me in the eye. The unmasked side of my face was far too much for him to bear.

"As you wish," I mumbled.

From there on out, I considered whatever Alexandre decided to tell him was something he brought upon himself.

Once we made it to the second cellar, I heard the vicomte asking Alexandre questions about Rome. I found myself almost chuckling at their conversation. This was as close as Raoul de Chagny would ever come to having a son.

A son.

Strange as it was, I found the thought more disheartening and something I would not gloat about. He was in love with a woman,and by swearing his loyalty to Christine had killed his own name and legacy. The more I thought about it, the deeper it burrowed into my conscience. He wasn't a pathetic little worm after all. He was…dare I say…honorable?

As we reached the stage door and entered the auditorium, I was acutely aware that I did indeed have a sense of right and wrong. It had been a long time since I had felt remorse for anyone other than myself. It had been a long time since I had cared about the feelings or fates of others.

But now I had a peculiar thought rattling around inside my head, a strange downward pull to my heart. I felt a great injustice had been done to Vicomte de Chagny. Raoul de Chagny! Of all people!

Julia, who had not said a word since the fifth cellar, squeezed my arm as Alex continued on about the history of the world.

"Do you think what he said is true?" she whispered.

"About the brain being pulled out through the nose?"

She made a sound of disgust and lowered her candle. "About the heart being more important than the brain?"

I contemplated her words a moment. There was really no need to think it over. The entire journey up through the opera house had me convinced.

"Yes," I said. I looked down at Julia's face, at her beautiful oval face and smiled. "Yes, I think it is."