Sorry about any errors that may be in this chapter. I don't really have time to read it over. Thanks to Opera Ghost 1881, The Real Christine Daae, Punjabchild, and of course Julia for reviewing! You should have seen my review dance. Only now, my parents are convinced I really am insane, and they're shipping me off for a month!

Erik: Don't believe a word she says! She's going to summer camp to have fun without you!

Auronlives: Oh shut up you!

Anyway, we get to see a Broadway play. Maybe it'll be Phantom! I'll try to write a few chapters when I'm away, but they won't get posted for a short while. I just want to assure you that I am not dead, and remind you I am still looking for suggestions for a new title!!! Oh, yeah, and I still don't own Phantom of the Opera.

Erik: But I own you

Auronlives: Oh yeah!!! Excuse me for a second…(shuts curtains)

CHRISTINE

We buried the dead child today. I never even knew it. Raoul said it was born dead.

I was stunned when the maid informed me of the news. The midwife had warned me that the second child would be likely to die, but I had never even considered the possibility. Everything had been going so right for me lately, and I was sure that things could only continue to improve. Besides, I was sure that I would feel something, that I would know somehow if something was wrong. I was the mother, after all. Weren't mothers just supposed to know?

I had been unconscious for the rest of that day and all night. Raoul arrived back from making the funeral arrangements at around midday the next day. I hastily dried my tears before I spoke to him. I didn't want him to see me upset.

"Well," he said, and I got the strange feeling that he was speaking more to himself than to me. "It's all settled. Everything's done with now."

"Raoul, are you alright?" I asked. "You were gone for a long time…"

"Um, yes," he said hurriedly, "I had some issues with the…the undertaker. I had to go all the way to Paris just to meet with the man."

I wondered why he hadn't just gotten a different undertaker, and why he had to meet the man in the first place, but I decided to let the matter rest.

However, that wasn't the last time Raoul acted oddly this week. Just this morning, when I asked if I could look into the casket, he went berserk, forbidding it absolutely. He went on and on about how it would accomplish nothing except to trouble me, and I had to keep myself calm and healthy to take care of the other baby, and he just wouldn't have it.

We decided to name him Verrill, after the Valerius'. Mama Valerius had been the first to congratulate me about the baby, and offered to help care for it. Tragically, she had passed away during my pregnancy. It was the least I could do to thank her for what she had done for my father and I.

Verrill was calm, rarely crying, and always smiling. He was my only respite, the harness that held me back from plummeting over the cliff. But even he had cried at the funeral. It was as though he sensed that there was something wrong. I held him and comforted him, but his crying did not cease until just a few minutes ago, when he fell asleep.

For the past few months, since Erik had allowed me to go, I had thought about him little. I was doing what he wanted, and I convinced myself that as long as I was happy, he would be happy. There was no news of a major disaster in Paris, and also no mysterious obituary in the paper declaring, "Erik is Dead," as he promised there would be as soon as the inevitable event came to pass. So I went on thinking that he was living his life without me and doing just fine, and that I would never have reason to fear him again.

But suddenly my mind was full of him, and I was sure that the miscarriage was due to some curse or scheme of his. He would not be forgotten so easily it seemed. I had no reason whatsoever to connect Erik to the incident, but my mind did so without first consulting me. Soon, everything that went wrong, every minor misfortune, from a spill to a stubbed toe, found me cursing Erik under my breath.

I could never have two of anything, it appeared. I could not have both Erik and Raoul, and I could not have twins. In my childhood, I had rarely felt the need to make choices. After my father died, the world seemed to be filled with nothing but choices. Things ceased to be "and", and became always "or". Perhaps it was life's little retaliation for my picturesque youth.

It seemed, however, I had ended up all right, if not well, on both deals. Raoul was everything I could have ever hoped for in a man, and Verrill everything I could hope for in a child. The way his eyes lit up when I sang to him filled me with an ecstasy I had not felt since I had last heard Erik's music. But now, I told myself, with this child, I could live without it. With my loving husband, and my perfect baby, I would no longer need the illusions of a masked genius.

NADIR

"She's crying again," said Erik, a note of frustration in his voice, as soon as I entered the house. "What on earth does she want?"

"Have you tried feeding her yet?" I asked. Of course, it would perfectly suit Erik's nature for him to forget to feed a baby. He had always shown a strange indifference to food. "You know, you really only need to eat once a day," he had said to me once. I always found this particular quality of his quite unnerving.

He looked sheepish for a brief second, and then suddenly horrified. "What am I going to feed her?" he wondered.

"Well, milk, of course," I said. For a genius, he was showing an astounding lack of common sense.

"Doesn't it have to be from…oh, you know what I'm talking about!" he raved angrily, pacing so furiously it was a wonder Etoile didn't go flying through the air.

"No!" I said quickly, realizing what was upsetting him so much. "No, you can just warm some regular milk up. My wife did it that way sometimes." Perhaps I wasn't the authority on young children, but compared to Erik I was a guru. Obviously, he lacked any kind of experience in the matter, and either didn't remember or refused to acknowledge anything his mother had done for him.

"Oh," he said, ceasing his pacing as sharply as he had begun it. "Well, I don't have any milk in the house anyway. What use would I have for it? It isn't good for singers."

"You'll have to go out and get some!" I told him. "Whether you like it or not, that's what babies eat. And while you're at it, you may want to get her a cradle, or something, unless you want to sit up all night holding her again!" Apparently, from his description of the previous night's events, he had not moved an inch from the time the Vicomte had presented the girl to him to this morning, when I came banging on his door as usual. Then I left to attend to my own affairs for several hours, only to find him in the precise spot I had left him in when I returned. It seemed I would have to guide his every move in the early days of Etoile's life. And being the one to guide him was a situation completely foreign to me.

It had been a long time since I had taken care of a baby. Etoile, I realized was my second chance twice over. She was my second chance at helping to raise a child. My son had been abruptly cut off from me by death. Death by Erik's hand, actually, though I'd never resented him for it. He did what I could not, and in doing so spared Reza from the unbearable suffering of the last months of his short life. Now, here was my opportunity to prove myself as a guardian with his child. Our roles had been reversed.

She was also my second chance at turning an exceptional soul towards good. I had failed quite miserably with Erik, to the point where I sometimes regretted even sparing his life. If she was anything like him, I would have to do everything in my power to keep her from following in his footsteps. Maybe, she would come to be everything he could have been.

"You may also want to consider buying her some clothing. Or at least a diaper." It may have just been my imagination, but I think he cringed a little.

"Very well, Daroga," he sighed. "I have to post this anyway," he added, indicating a letter, the only evidence he had moved a centimetre since I had left him that morning. "Will you stay here with her?"

"Yes. But Erik, I have one question."

"Don't you always?"

"Erik, what are you going to do about her face? Will you make her wear a mask?"

"No," he said, and I could tell that he'd thought about this before. "Not yet. When she gets to a point where she may be able to comprehend that she is…different, then she'll have to wear it. But until then, I think I can spare her the discomfort. I'll just have to keep the door to the guest bedroom locked, there's a mirror in there. It won't be a problem for you, will it?" This was obviously a loaded question.

"No more than you ever were."

He laughed. "Then, my friend, I expect this will be quite interesting." And with that he handed Etoile to me and left without another word, still chuckling deep in his throat.
I sighed and sat down, bouncing Etoile on my lap to keep her entertained as I thought. As irksome as I found Erik's moodiness and sarcasm, I was glad he was back to normal. The past few months, he was really beginning to scare me. He had been in an almost vegetative state, sitting on the couch and staring into space for hours at a time, getting up only to use the water closet or eat periodically. The great pipe organ stayed silent, gathering dust along with the sheaths of paper he would normally have been penning away at, and the myriad strange devices he would have been adjusting. When he spoke, his voice had none of its usual bite and vitality, and had completely lost that hypnotic quality that just made you want to listen to him speak. He was wasting away mentally, and it was even harder to watch him then than in the month or so that he appeared to be dying.

About an hour later, Erik returned, laden with so much stuff I could hardly make out his slim form beneath all of the parcels he carried. "I'm going to have to ask my managers for a raise, if this persists," he said.

"That is completely your business," I replied.

"Oh, Daroga, you're never any fun," he sighed. "Here, help me with this."

We managed to get Etoile fed and clothed, and set up a crib in Erik's room (there really was no other place for it. There was a mirror in the guest room, the bathroom had to be avoided for obvious reasons, there was no space in the drawing room, the laboratory was too dangerous, and the Louis-Philippe room was too far away from Erik's for him to know if something was wrong) in a reasonable amount of time.

"Well, then," I said, "I'll see you tomorrow morning. Try to get her to sleep," I motioned toward Etoile. She had not slept since I had first discovered her that morning, which was most unnatural behavior for a baby. I didn't break my head over it though. She was Erik's daughter.

"I'll try, but I'm not making any promises. Goodbye, Nadir," replied Erik, and went to his room. I was about to leave, when I froze in my spot. He was warming up on the organ. I smiled. Thank Allah, he really was back to normal!

Then, I heard a crash, the overturning of the crib no doubt, and Erik leaping up. I was about to run back in when I heard him laugh, and I relaxed. "You little demon," he said glowingly, and after a second or so of pause, resumed his playing. I just knew that Etoile was in his lap.

Smiling conspiratorially, I closed the door softly behind me and left.