A/N: So this chapter is short! Much shorter than my regular length, but I felt I had to give you guys something since my one month time limit was up. You may expect chapters of this length from now on since I find they're much quicker to write! Muchos gracias to Cat for beta-reading!

Chapter 23

Lethe's Memory

Christine was playing with one of her curls, wrapping her soft, springy hair around her fingers and moving the digits like little furry creatures when she heard the door open with a warm squeak of hinges.

The figure was tall enough that he had to stoop to reach the knob to close the door behind him. Then he turned, his blue eyes smiling warmly. "I'm back, my little Angel. Have you missed me?"

Christine and her fingers waved back with a grin. "Papa! How was the fair?"

"Lovely." Her father sat down next to her and pulled her feet into his lap as she giggled. "They gave me this as a token of their gratitude." He removed a flower from underneath his brown jacket and handed it to Christine. She turned it in her fingers; it was a dark red rose, its stem stripped of its thorns and tied with a black ribbon.

"Pretty!" She laughed, as she waved the long-stemmed flower like a magic wand.

"Not nearly as pretty as you, Lotte" he smiled, pressing a kiss to her cheek and blowing a tickling breath into her ear. She laughed even more when his hand left the side of her face holding a chocolate coin.

As she ate, her father settled himself next to her on the sofa and ran a comb through her hair. Her father had always combed her hair when she was small, laughing whenever Christine wrinkled her nose and said it was a girl's job. He had never shied away from tasks such as cooking or sewing either. Christine suspected that by performing these tasks, her father was reminded of the woman who should have been doing them instead. He always had a wistful smile on his face during these times.

For a long time they sat and talked about everything and nothing: the fair, their music, their next move, the next time that Raoul and she would play by the seaside, and Christine closed her eyes to savor the sensation of her father's hands lovingly stroking her long brown curls. Eventually Christine noticed that the coin had melted upon her tongue.

The chocolate left a bittersweet taste in her mouth. Christine swallowed hard. "Are you disappointed in me, Papa?"

She held her breath and her heart was hammering away in her chest. The sudden tension in the room that had previously held only laughter and love clung to her skin like clammy sweat. Her father fell quiet and put the brush down. He looked up at her.

"No." He gave her a small smile. "Only disappointed in myself."

"Papa, no…"

"I was selfish, Little Lotte. I refused to move on after your mother died, I didn't want to. So I tried to keep everything as it was before, I never moved a single thing out of our rooms, I never stopped playing the music we had made together, and I never helped you to grow out of the little girl that for your mother, you always will be. I failed you, Christine…Christine, do you dream often?"

The unexpected question jerked Christine out of the crushing terror she felt at seeing her father cry. "All the time," she said quietly.

Her father nodded, as if he knew very well what sort of dreams they were. "How do you feel in the morning?"

"Guilt…but it doesn't feel quite real. I don't feel the shame twist my heart into knots and I feel even more horrible because of it. It's like…it's like when you have a dream where you're killing your best friend, or stealing something, or, or…"

"Making love to someone you shouldn't?" her father asked, his lips moving into what may or may not have been a smile.

Christine flushed red as her eyes went wide. "Papa!"

The old man smiled in knowing amusement. "You are no longer asking the questions of a child, Christine."

Christine chewed on the end of a curl, and the flush did not leave her face. "When…when I wake up I feel so terribly guilty and so terribly relieved because it was just a dream. But the guilt doesn't go away because I know the thoughts must have come from somewhere inside of me. But there is no one I could talk to, no one would understand." She shook her head and opened eyes filled with sudden weariness. "All of my life seems like a dream now, I've lost the memory. I have no idea anymore. But I cannot let it go because I know that awakening would hurt so much.

"Papa? I've heard people say that they look upon their past as if they were someone else's memories. But not me. For me, it's my life today that feels like scenes from someone else's life. I have been staying for over two months now at Raoul's estate. Can you believe it? Raoul, a vicomte! My God, it feels like the other day that I was standing with him in shame as his governess scolded us for swimming in the sea in our clothes."

Her father wrapped her in his arms and hugged her close. "I know, Christine, I know. I'm so sorry."

"Will it get easier…with time?"

"No one can stay the way they are, Christine." He had not answered her question. Instead he leaned forward and kissed her forehead before smoothing her baby-soft hair with his hand. He stood slowly.

Desperation seized her heart like a painful vise, and Christine felt the sound explode out of her. "NO! Papa, don't leave…"

She leaped forward and grabbed his hand desperately in both of hers. The hand was clammy and cold as death. Rather than shying away from the chilly touch, she pressed her face into his icy palm, warming the flesh with her cheek.

"Please…Papa. Don't leave me alone. I'm scared of the dark."

Her father did not attempt to disentangle his hands from her grasp. He crouched down next to her. "Christine, I love you."

Christine was shaking her head, the tears moving softly over her skin. Through her blurry vision, she saw him twisting the stem off from the rose. He placed the dark red flower gently in her curls.

He pulled away and placed both hands on either side of her face and tilted it up to meet his eyes. He wiped away a tear with his thumb. "I never forgot you, Christine. But you must not do the same for me. Paint a beautiful portrait in your mind and bury the rest deep in your heart. My love is a poor substitute for the love of one who is living."

Tears sprang once more to her eyes, but for a completely different reason. "He lives?"

Her father smiled. "Erik lives."

Christine bit her lip and kissed his cheek gently. The cheek felt cold and waxen, like the smooth surface of a mask.

When she next opened her eyes, she was alone in the room. She waited, trembling like a leaf in the breeze, but no tears came to her eyes. So she raised a hand to her hair, touching the flower and lifting it away with her hand. She gasped when she saw that the rose was as white as snow.

She had picked up this flower so many months ago from the foot of a tomb in a frozen graveyard. The little bud had long since opened its petals and withered away. Christine had pressed it carefully and kept it under her pillow ever since. She remembered how she had cherished it.

The petals were brittle and fragile now and their sweet scent had long since disappeared. She closed her hand around the flower tenderly and when she opened her fingers, only white powder remained.

So she let her hand fall to her side and only then did she remember the last thing her father had said. She tried it out in her voice. The name was foreign, dark and rich on her tongue.

"Erik…"

A refresher definition since everyone's forgotten Chapter 8 by now. In the Victorian language of flowers:

White rosebud: girlhood, a heart innocent of love