A/N: Waaaaaaaah, we're back! This was a hard chapter to write, but I do hope you'll like it. We're so close now, so very close…yet don't think I don't still have some surprises up my sleeves.

Chapter 24

Into the Light

The same time as Christine was purging her soul of the kindest demon to have ever haunted her, a rather intriguing scene was playing out not more than several feet above her head.

"God in heaven…"

"Please take the cup from me, madam. My hand grows weary." There was a healthy spark of humor in Erik's voice, an alien emotion Clarice had not heard in all the time she had known him. The shock was enough to make her close her fingers around the proffered vessel. Swiftly, she gulped some of the hot liquid and the heady flavor of cinnamon finally cleared her head enough to think.

Yet what could she think? She looked up to see a smirk with a perfection to rival Mona Lisa's plastered to Erik's face. Oh, he was enjoying this.

"Erik, I…"

"Yes, Madame la Duchess?"

As well he should enjoy this. "Congratulations." It sounded like the croak of a stunned reptile. "How…?"

"It seems as though your husband is useful for more than driving a man completely out of his mind. I mean to say, he still does…but then again, sometimes one needs to be forcibly removed from a prison of his own making, doesn't he?"

Clarice tore her mind away the image of the impossible scar twitching on Erik's left forearm as his perfectly functioning fingers scratched his exposed chin thoughtfully in time to process his final statement.

"Should not an escaped prisoner now collect his prize?"

"I don't understand."

She grinned inwardly. It was her turn now to shock him senseless. "Hannibal has handed you back your music and a clear mind as well. Now it is my turn to give you my gift. For did we not also have a wager of sorts, Erik?"

He stiffened so slightly Clarice might have believed she'd imagined it if she hadn't known better. "I don't believe I recall the circumstances."

"I have discovered something, Erik. The only times when you fail to be brilliant are when you're avoiding the subject. I am speaking, Erik, of your muse."

"Don't…"

"You've been to the edge of death and back, Erik. Surely you can't be afraid to speak of Christine." She continued speaking even as the man began to swell like an infuriated peacock. "She still believes you to be dead. Now is your chance to show her it is no longer true."

An unnatural fire was kindling in his amber eyes. "I have been dead to her ever since that night in the Opera House cellars. Why should it change now? In little more than a week's time she will marry the perfect man of her dreams. I have better things to do than intrude upon her life again."

"Erik, you are speaking to me, a woman who has known the kind of raging love that the rest of the world believes to exist only in storybooks. You don't fool me for a second. Is it so hard to admit that you'd die without her?"

The explosion was so sudden and so unexpected that she nearly cried out when she saw him, a furious silhouette dark against the dark room, looming over her in her chair. She didn't remember sitting down.

"You must have believed yourself so selfless when you informed Raoul of my untimely demise. You wanted nothing but for them to get on with their lives, isn't that right? You are a liar, Duchess. Everything from your stolen title to your misguided attempts to do good has been a lie. Well, I will not be another pawn in your twisted game. Both of us decided at one point that Christine belonged with her lover, don't decide now to use me simply because you have changed your mind. This…" and here he clenched his scarred left hand into a hard fist. "…this changes nothing. My own demons are my own problems."

"If you truly love her…"

"OF COURSE I DO!" This second explosion seemed to sap away his energy, for suddenly he was sitting as well, across from her. He lifted his hands to his head and touched his temples gingerly. "I always have, ever since that first day I saw her singing to herself in her dressing room. It's not natural, I suppose, for a monster to believe in love at first sight. But in the end it didn't matter what I believed, the feeling took on a life of its own. So I tried to capture it, control it, control her. I came so close to destroying her, so close to turning her into nothing more than another monkey on a barrel organ playing the cymbals. She won't forgive me. No one should ever forgive me for manipulating, frightening, and tormenting a child.

"It was only after I let her go that I could even begin to live with myself. And if it hurt, it was because I deserved the pain. I cannot haunt her again, I simply cannot. Please, try to understand."

Clarice blinked rapidly. "My God, Erik…I would beat you soundly for being so selfish if you didn't have to be so goddamned noble." He lifted his head and glared daggers at her. She held up her hand to prevent any further outburst. "You've given your speech, now it's my turn. Once upon a time I dedicated my life to doing good. Or rather, to what I thought was doing good. But what I thought was meant to save lives, they believed was meant first and foremost to save their own asses. I threw my life away worshipping something that didn't love me back. Do you honestly think, Erik, that I would now be encouraging you to make that same mistake?"

"I don't understand."

"For God's sake, I thought only my husband could be so incredibly intelligent and dense at the same time. I'm trying to make a point that you have been too damned stubborn to accept for two months. The girl loves you back."

He flinched as if she had struck him. "It is a shadow and a dream that she loves," he said with a shrug. "With the boy she has a chance for a normal life."

"Don't make me laugh," she scoffed. "Normal? How achingly dull. There is nothing normal about that girl. Angels and goblins, ghosts and demons! Not to mention the scandal and notoriety that surrounds an Opera diva. Singing…and the Opera are her life, her very existence. You couldn't drag her kicking and screaming into a normal life."

Erik stood up suddenly. "Then you would prefer to call this a life?" He gestured violently at the windows curtained against the sunlight and the lamps that turned the enormous piano and instrument cases into flickering silhouettes like malformed tombs. "You would call skulking around the shadows of hell with a murderer, thief, and morphine addict a life?"

"Well, you are no longer a morphine addict."

Erik dropped back into the armchair unceremoniously. "You are mocking me now."

"Can you not see what's right in front of your eyes?"

She had spoken those words before, at least, in his imagination she had. The memory of that dream, when the burning mouth of an avenging demon had revived his spirit from the coldness of death, hit him with the force of a blow to the face.

Erik's head snapped up. "What?" he said disbelievingly.

"Enough self-pity, Erik. You said that Hannibal forcibly freed you from a prison of your own making, now it's my turn. So listen. I have known Hannibal for close to ten years. Among other things, he is a murderer and a sadist; he is arrogant, selfish, and an appalling housekeeper. Frankly, I don't know what we'd do without the servants. But I love him. It's as simple as that. I can't explain it, and I don't want to. Waxing poetic is only fit for philosophers and fools. It cheapens your feelings. I don't suppose you know how obvious you've been, but you only philosophize when you're afraid.

"Your brilliant mind has built an equally magnificent maze around the heart, and since you don't have the courage to tear it down, you stumble in this labyrinth of your own making like a lost child, too proud to ask for help. And when you see that at the end of all that searching, that what you were looking for was in front of you all along you turn away because you can't trust yourself to believe it. And so you make up excuses and you make up reasons, and you make it all sound so damn logical and noble that there's no way you can argue with yourself."

Erik was noticeably uncomfortable, and he reacted predictably. He sneered. "So that makes me a two-faced monster. I know that. I've been told that all my life, and there's no reason to start disbelieving now."

"Please, Erik, I've heard all I want to about your poor, godforsaken face. Yes, you're hideous," she said simply. "But tell me this. Do you truly think it was your appearance that made the world reject you?"

Erik's mouth fell open and stayed there. "I…of course…I never thought to question…"

"Erik, you made the entire Paris Opera House fear you without any of them ever seeing your face."

"That's not entirely true."

She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. Your face is secondary. What people see first…" she reached out and tilted his chin toward her with a finger, "are those eyes behind that blank mask, staring out with hatred upon the world." She let her finger drop. "And you wonder why people fear you."

The underside of his chin tingled from where her finger rested. He slouched back into his chair, sulking. "What do you know? You could not ever know…"

"You can sulk, Erik, or you can consider this. Two months ago she chose you. When you granted her freedom, she didn't run off to marry Raoul. Not because you forbid her, but because she didn't want to. I know you've eavesdropped on every session that Hannibal has had with Christine since the first day, so you know it's true."

Erik, who had kept his eyes upon her the entire time, dropped his gaze now, looking down at his black shoes. Looked at the way they blended into the darkness of the room. He looked up again and Clarice could see the battle raging in his eyes. His mind and his heart waged war inside an already-broken man.

He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them again, she could see the exhaustion in his gaze.

"She belongs with the boy," he said. He covered the scarred half of his face with his hand and continued wearily. "She belongs in the sun…I am a poor substitute for the light."

Clarice set her lips in a firm line, and one could almost sense the fury and determination radiating from her body. "Fine." Erik's head jerked up as she spat the word into the thick silence like a curse. "Then we shall do this the hard way."

She whirled upon her heel and walked in large strides towards the door. She threw it open, and he flinched from the spears of sunlight that pierced the dark room. Clarice turned and stood by the doorjamb, staring fiercely at the man that sat before her with his empty hands and empty eyes.

"'Impossibility is not a concept I acknowledge.' I believe you told me that at one point, Erik. Now, prove it."

His frantic gaze flew to the dark corners of the room like a bird lost in the night.

"Don't make me wax poetic, Erik. But it's your turn to go to the light now, not have it come to you. You've always been a man of action."

Erik wasn't sure when he got up from the chair, but the next thing he knew he was standing on his feet, next to Clarice. He turned to look at her with a wary and awestruck gaze. "You are the kindest demon to have ever haunted me, madam. None have ever been able to make my demise sound so appealing."

Clarice scoffed. "Don't be so melodramatic, Erik. It doesn't suit you anymore. Whoever heard of a noble and brave Opera Ghost?"

Erik winced.

Clarice reached forward and put a hand on his shoulder. "But that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it, Erik?"

Erik stood silently before her, his eyes as silent as death. And then he smiled, a real genuine smile. It was as if a gray curtain rolled back from across his face, and his white teeth gleamed between bloodless lips, which stretched and strained from the unfamiliar expression.

"No bad thing," he said softly.

And he walked out the door and into the light.

"I would suggest that you first make your way to my husband's study. I believe you will find something you desire." It was last thing she said before shutting the door firmly behind him.

Erik stood in the corridor blinking in the bright light. He felt rather lightheaded but not unpleasant. He made his way to the study in time to hear the front door closing in the distance. He thought he saw a flash of brown curls disappearing into the outside world.

He opened the study door in wondrous trepidation, only to smile when he caught the powdery scent of roses.