Hi folks. Here's another chapter. Time to start ramping up for some drama.

Chapter 46. August 1887.

On the first morning in the house they had rented, Erik rose before Christine, as he often did, but this day it was not so much because he needed less sleep than she did, as because he was entirely unaccustomed to the light of dawn coming into the room in which he was sleeping, and it had woken him up.

It was 1887 now; and it had been 1866 when he moved into the rough beginnings of what would eventually be a palatial little apartment tucked deep within the foundation of the Opera House. Twenty years of living underground, where the only light was that which he himself made with gas and candles and fireplaces, and his electricity, which had been active long before the Opera House itself was electrified.

Twenty years. At first, he had simply rested. His life up till that point had moved at a fever pitch, and the last few years had been an all-out rush to get the Opera House completed before the querulous new republican government cut the budget again, or decided they didn't want an "imperialist monument" to exist at all. What a lucky thing the old Opera House had burned down finally and left them no choice. He smiled briefly at the memory. How lucky, indeed… some men had to make their own luck.

Once the Opera was safely past its lavish formal inauguration in January of 1875, and Erik could sit back and revel in such safety as he had never known before, he had realised just how exhausted he actually was. For a brief while he allowed himself to relax and rest, for the first time that he could remember. But his active mind could not be quiet for long, and, lacking anything pressing to do, Erik had travelled quite a bit during the waning years of the 1870s and the beginning of the 80s, visiting places he'd missed on his earlier journeys. By then he'd had more than enough of fraternizing with criminals only to wind up fleeing for his life, so he kept to himself and merely explored, shunning the sort of trouble he had gotten into repeatedly in his younger years. With interesthe roamed through Great Britain and northern Africa, both places where the ship which bore him on that very first journey from France to America had merely dropped anchor long enough to unload goods and take more on, before leaving again. Now, unlike before when he was young and foolish – well, more so anyway – he was much more skilled at keeping unwanted attention away, and his first experiments with the lifelike masks, while nothing that would fool anyone up close, did at least cause people not to give him a second glance if they saw him from some distance away. No one paid much mind to the thin man sketching an image of Stonehenge onto a pad of paper with his back to them, or sitting far back in the shadows in a corner of a café in Casablanca, drinking a glass of wine and listening to the music. He'd seen many a dawn during that period of his life.

But eventually he returned to Paris, and there his madness began to take hold again, and he retreated back down underground, where he could feel safe. And it had now been quite a while since he had been awoken by the morning light. Pulling on a dressing gown, he felt uncomfortable and out of sorts, as though he did not know what to do with himself. Should he go and make breakfast? Take a walk? Wake up Christine? It would be romantic to share this first early morning together – or rather, it would be if his wife were in any way fond of rising early. And she was in a delicate condition besides. Erik looked at her, sound asleep with her arm tucked under her head, and tried to gauge whether her body was any rounder than before. Yes, perhaps a little. She seemed tired much of the time now. He would let her alone for a while.

Thinking that he was tired himself, but of always feeling as though he were attempting to play the part of a husband while missing half the lines of the script, Erik slid his feet into slippers and went downstairs, where he started coffee brewing and then prowled restlessly about the little house. It was, however, rather difficult to have a really satisfying prowl due to the sheer amount of things in the house.

They had, in the end, rented furniture. Erik had commented, as blandly as he could manage, that that seemed to make more sense since they were only going to be in this house for a year or so. Christine had agreed. So there was a full complement of chairs and tables and bookshelves and so on taking up space, as well as the packing crates stacked here and there. A good number of their possessions still remained to be unpacked, but Christine had insisted that they get the parlour in order first, so they would at least have somewhere pleasant to sit. And so Erik's oriental rugs were now on the floor and as many of his books on the shelves as would fit. Christine's workbasket reposed on a table next to the chair she had chosen as hers. The pink-globed lamp from the parlour in the underground house sat next to it, and there was an aspidistra on there as well. Erik, for his part, hated those plants, but Christine liked them. The room's very domesticity seemed to mock him, and his long skeleton's fingers looked most out of place when he laid them on the flowered upholstery of the rented furniture. There was a mirror over the mantel, as was the fashion, and Erik scowled at his own reflection. The black silk mask was lying on a table where he'd left it last night; either that mirror would have to go or he would begin wearing masks at home again. He noticed then that they had forgotten to close the curtains the previous night. It would not do for the neighbours to see Death walking about next door. Erik slipped the mask on, and moved to the window to pull the heavy red brocade over the glass that revealed the empty street – no, not empty.

There was a scruffy-looking man in a yellow waistcoat standing in front of the house, in fact, and scribbling something down in a notebook. He finished, put his pad and pencil away, and then stood critically looking at the house for another moment, and nodded to himself.

Every defensive instinct in Erik flared, instantly awake and alert. He was already at the door and reaching for its knob when the stairs creaked, and Christine's puzzled voice said, "What are you doing?"

"I – hush, Christine. There is a man looking at our house."

"…And?" The disbelief in her voice made him glance quickly in her direction, and then look again. Her expression told him how absurd that remark had sounded, when taken out of context. And of course, she did not know all of his history, and thus could not know the context.

She came up behind him, ignoring his sharp gesture for her to stay away, and looked out the window. The man had put his hands in his trouser pockets, and was strolling away, whistling a tune. A baker's boy had just come round the corner, carefully balancing baguettes on his shoulder and baskets over his arm, and the man stopped and handed him a coin, receiving a roll in return.

"What on earth were you so worried about?" Christine asked, sounding peeved. "I don't see that there is anything amiss."

"Well, of course you wouldn't," snapped Erik. "But I tell you, that man was staring at this house and writing something down, and it looked distinctly suspicious. And now you have stopped my going after him." It was easier to be annoyed with her for interrupting, than himself for having let his guard slip.

"But why would you 'go after' someone just for that? Maybe…maybe he is a writer and had just thought of something and wanted to write it down before he forgot."

"Then why look so intently at the house?"

"Perhaps he was simply staring into space while he thought, and the house happened to be here. You stare into space all the time when you are thinking about something, and it doesn't have anything to do with what you are actually looking at."

"Yes, but I am not trying to do us harm – " Frustrated, Erik stopped speaking. Anything he said would be misunderstood, it seemed. He stole another look out of the window; the man was gone now. It was too late to do anything about him.

Erik turned on his heel and stalked toward the kitchen. Christine trailed after him, and, standing in the doorway while he banged around getting out coffee cups, she said warily, "Are you going to be like this whenever anyone walks past this house?"

"Quite possibly," Erik said disagreeably. "If you are so foolish as to not already be wishing you had married someone else, you no doubt will be soon. I did warn you the morning of our wedding, if you'll recall."

"Oh, stop it!" cried Christine. "I am tired of hearing that! Aren't you ever going to stop doubting me?"

"I expect I will eventually, likely around the same time as I cease caring about keeping us safe."

"You don't need to fear every passer-by who glances at our house!"

"Fear? Fear? I am not afraid, Christine! It is those who would harm us who ought to be afraid."

"You wanted to live in a normal house. People will pass by. You don't have to threaten anyone who looks at you the wrong way – "

Erik slammed the cups down, and hot coffee spilled all over the kitchen table. "Yes. I do. Christine, I stand before you, alive today, for the sole reason that I trained myself to spot danger when it was coming my way! You have no idea how many times people have tried to kill me, none at all."

"That man was not trying to kill you – "

"You do not know that! And because I could not follow him, now neither do I!" He jabbed a finger accusingly at her. "You know nothing of the world. Until I die I will bear the scars from those who have attacked me. You must forgive me if I do not care to add to their number. I – "

Christine had dropped her belligerent expression completely and was now looking at him with tears in her eyes.

"No. I don't suppose I do know. You allude to it, but will never tell me. I can see that there are dreadful things in your past. But Erik…those people will have won if you allow their cruelty toward you to ruin the rest of your life."

This pulled him up short, and he stood glowering at her for a moment, before saying shortly, "I have won. I have won by continuing to live, when they wanted Erik dead, oh, wanted him dead very much indeed."

Christine came forward and put her arms around him. Erik stood like a rock, unmoving. "It makes me feel so frightened when I think of what you went through before – before."

"Then do not think of it. Erik does not."

"How can I not, when I see its effects on you every day? Erik…you wanted to live a normal life so very much. I want you – us – to have that. But you must unlearn the habits you learned before, or we never will."

"I will not risk your safety by becoming complacent."

"Erik." Christine tugged on his head until he met her gaze stonily. "You are in France, not the East. You have a new name, a new identity, your lifelike mask, and me by your side. You are not in danger now."

He sighed, very deeply, detached her arms from around his neck, and said in a remote tone, "I am sorry I am not a better husband for you." He picked up his cup, poured more coffee into it, and strode out of the kitchen, leaving Christine disconsolate behind him.

Out in the hallway again, he peered out the window one more time, mask firmly in place, and thought to himself that no matter what she had said, the strange man's actions had still seemed suspicious to Erik. And Erik was a far better judge of such things than Christine was. He would install safeguards about the house, alarms and perhaps a trap or two, and he would keep a careful watch for a time.

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