Okay dearies, before you send me to the gallows, let me state these things. Ahem takes out teacher's staff and points to chalkboard:

1. Our computer crashed, entirely and absolutely died on us it did.

2. I ordered my own laptop (his name is Roger) that came in only a couple of weeks ago.

3. Before I could get up this chapter, I had to rewrite things that were lost.

4. I had to do a book report on The Phantom of the Opera (top grade with a 101 thank you very much). You had best be darn glad too because it gave me a whole new batch of ideas, including a one-shot that I posted a few days ago.

5. Now, my apologies that I made so many of you wait, I even believe someone took me off their alert list just because I took this long.

I'm also going to state, the beginning of this is from when my dear twin Nade asked me "Can Erik actually eat that much?"

Erik sat staring at his meal while Faye chewed happily on her own. He didn't know what made him order it, the need to impress, maybe? It wasn't that he didn't like it, it was one of his favorite things to steal in fact when he needed nourishment, but he had never taken so much. He took a glance at Faye for a moment then down to his meal again and grimaced.

'Why the hell did I order this?'

"Everything is all right?"

His head shot up and Faye was looking curiously at him, her head cocked a little to the side, for a moment he thought she had the look of an innocent child, almost like…

"I… What?" Erik finally responded, shaking the image from his mind. Faye let out a small huff. "I said is everything all right? You have such an awful look on your face, Is your food undercooked?"

Erik shook his head at her, "No, it's cooked just fine but…" He immediately stopped talking though when Faye reached over, grabbed a piece of the chicken and promptly popped it into her mouth. She chewed the morsel quickly and swallowed. He had never seen such behavior in a woman, nor her next action. Faye grabbed Erik's fork, stabbed a piece of the chicken and brought it to his lips saying, "It tastes perfect, now, it does not do well for one to order a meal and then not eat it, now eat."

Erik could only raise his brow at the girl, no one demanded such things of him, especially not about his own eating habits. Then again, it was obvious she had no intent of removing the offending piece of meat from his lips, so, looking once more from her face to the fork, he unwillingly opened his mouth.

"There you are, see? It's not bad at all now is it?" She giggled as she set his fork down. She began to blush when she thought about what she had actually just done. Why she did it, she wasn't sure, but she felt that the look she received from Erik made it all worth the price of turning red in the face.

'This woman is mad,' Erik thought to himself, 'how dare she treat me like a child, and to laugh at me as well!' He sat there with all his fuming thoughts when another voice came to mind. 'Still, she is right, the meat is very good, and the wine is very rich with flavor'. He was finally at a lost of what to do until a question came to mind, if she was going mad, he would at least get an answer before she was entirely gone.

"Faye, may I ask you about your past?"

Faye widened her eyes and turned a bit pale, the color from laughing fully gone now. 'He wants to know why I'm such a wretched little whore. Why this is my role in life.' She wanted to say no, she really wanted to say no, but thinking of how he had treated her with nothing but kindness, she couldn't. She would not refuse him, whatever it may be. She swallowed her nerves and said "What would you like to know?"

"I was just thinking, you said that your father was French and your mother English, I'm just curious on where you lived as a child."

Faye breathed a sigh of relief, her childhood, that's all he wanted to hear. Just her childhood.

"What would you like to know of it?" Faye replied calmly, taking a sip of her wine.

"Well, how did your parents meet for one?"

Faye smiled at the thought. "My father, his name was Lowell. He wrote poetry for a living, but life here wasn't easy for him, no one wanted to buy any of his work, so he decided to move to England in hopes of better pay. He told me that it was while he was trying to sell a book of his that he ran into my mother, Katherine." Faye stopped a moment, thinking of her mother, and gave Erik a warm smile. "He said when he saw her he just knew she was an ethereal being, he was almost too scared to even try and talk to her, he said he thought she would just disappear. It was my mother who talked to him first though, she was very interested in her books and liked looking for things that were of the unordinary…" Faye drifted off, her eyes glazing at what fond memories she still held.

Then Erik cleared his throat.

"Go on then," he said, completely enraptured by her story. "what else happened to them?"

"He began courting her shortly after meeting, she was working under a head seamstress and she agreed to a trade off with him; she would fix any of his worn clothes if he gave her a poem or short story. Well, it didn't take long for his poems to be specifically about her, he would write about a woman dancing in the autumn leaves or heaven sending down the most glorious being. He wanted to show her how he felt for her through his work and-- Erik? Are you all right?" Faye asked urgently, and with good cause, Erik had begun to choke on his wine.

He coughed a moment, trying to catch his breath "Yes, I'm fine. Please, you were saying?"

'So her father had tried to win the heart of his fair maiden through his art. Must I always be reminded of my own foolishness?'

"As I was saying, he wrote about her, till he finally asked her hand in marriage. My mother said it was the sincerity and the way he asked her that fully won her over."

"And how was that?"

"He came in the shop she was working at with a tear in his jacket- or so he told her and gave her his newest poem. I only remember the last two lines were 'An eternity I'll spend with you. If you'll only say I do'. When she read the last line, he handed her his ocat and told her there was something stuck in the pocket. It was a little game between them, he'd hide extra things for her sometimes, a small flower or little trinket. That time though, she found a small silver band and my father went down on his knee."

"Amazing, how old were they at the time?"

Faye took on a pensive look before responding, "My father was in his mid-twenties while my mother was a few years younger than him. They were married not long after he proposed and moved to Birmingham. Ten years later they had all they needed; Father's poetry was at its best whenever he was with my mother and he had even written a long story. As for my mother she had given him a son and was at the time pregnant with me."

"So you have an older brother as well?" Erik asked, becoming more curious to everything about her family, they seemed to have quite a full and happy life. So how did she end up here?

"I had an older brother," Faye spat with venom in her words, "please Erik, I don't wish to speak of it." She pleaded, her breathing becoming harsh. Erik took note of how quickly her anger seemed to flare and nodded silently.

"Well then…" He said, trying to find something to take her mind off her rage. Faye laughed, albeit a bit forced and shook her head. "Forgive me," she asked "I'm being silly is all, as I was saying, my mother became pregnant with me. There's not much more to it beyond that, she gave birth to me and we lived there for four more years."

"That's all? But what about-"

"You asked me where I lived as a child," Faye said hotly, "and I lived in Birmingham as a child, so I have answered your question." She said with an air that told Erik there was no more that she was willing to say.

"Err, yes, you did answer my question." Erik said solemnly, he wasn't going to push this… for now. He was quiet, lost in his thoughts before Faye finally spoke.

"Erik?"

"Yes Faye?" He said, looking at her expression, almost a smirk.

"You need to eat your chicken."

Oh dear, whatever could be the matter that she could actually get Erik to leave her alone? Don't you just love Lowell and Katherine though, you'll hear more about them, don't worry. Now off with you to leave me lovely little reviews (no emphasis on 'little' though). I've gotten over 700 hits since our computer crashed, and only thirty reviews. That is a pity.