A/N: Thanks again, guys, for letting me share your thoughts in the reviews for the previous chapter. I know it takes time to write a review and I promise, every one is read and valued.

An actual note on the content: there is mention of oakum dressings - this was used after the American Civil War and was effectively a non-absorbent form of lint with some antibacterial properties. It consisted of fibres picked (by hand!) from tarred rope. Picking oakum was an awful activity performed in prisons and poorhouses, but it was not as pointless as usually thought. There is also a mention of nuns; they performed the function of nurses, going from patient to patient, but unfortunately this resulted in the spread of infection in some quite dramatic ways. It was not known about at the time, and luckily for Raoul, the American Ambulance was well-staffed with their own volunteers and was less affected by this than other ambulances in Paris.

Chapter 39 - Petit Pas

Raoul was getting used to the low murmur of voices outside the tent, muted for his benefit, as though he was already dead and laid out in state. Whatever it was they made him drink had not exactly dulled the pain, but had lifted his mind from it, so that he seemed to be floating over his own body, looking down at the grey blanket pulled up to his chest, and the lopsided shape beneath it.

"Is he awake?" came an unfamiliar voice outside, a woman's voice, softer than the others and speaking clear, unaccented French. Raoul thought he should wonder at the new arrival but found he did not care. He needed to walk. He tried to move his swollen leg, but succeeded only in locking the knee in a spasm so strong it made him grit his teeth. Christine had been right when she had returned that morning, it was folly to try, but he chafed at this helplessness. He could not even manage the short trip to the latrine without aid. How long before he had enough strength to stand with the others on the wall - would Paris fall while he still lingered in safety?

Christine… Raoul shut his eyes against the floating numbness that was not pain, and allowed his mind to paint her as he had left her a lifetime ago at the Bois de Boulogne, in that distant summer before the war: the white-faced girl with grief in her eyes who could not accept comfort, who refused to choose peace above honesty. The same girl he had run with on the beach so long ago, the same girl who last night had embraced him with all her strength… He might have believed it a dream had she not returned to his bedside this morning, so graceful and poised and grown up beyond recognition, with her hair tamed into a modest chignon and her dress plain and bare of jewellery, but her smile still gentle and childlike, unchanged. She had stayed all morning by his side, travelling with him back to the days before her father's death, remembering together. It was mingled comfort and pain, but he welcomed it, wishing only that she would not have to see him like this, a half-dressed, bed-bound invalid. She had promised to return later and he would have dearly liked to greet her properly, standing up.

"Good afternoon, monsieur. How are you feeling?"

Raoul had not heard the nun enter. She stood at his bedside, her hands clasped, her head bowed, the picture of elderly dignified reverence. She made a quick cross over his chest, and put her fingers to her pale lips, then took up a bowl and some linen.

He sighed. "I am recovering, sister, thank you."

"Do not thank me, monsieur, it is the Lord who saves. I am only Sister Thérèse."

She sat beside him, moving the blanket to expose the dressing that covered thigh and hip. A sharp chemical smell assaulted Raoul's nose as she lifted away the old oakum dressing, phenol mingled with tar and the sickly sweet smell of pus. He gagged and looked away as she proceeded to wash the wound with the chemical concoction these surgeons insisted on, something to fight putrefaction. The pain was searing, too hot to think of anything else, and for that at least he was grateful.

When it was done, he leaned over the bed and retched bile into the pan, then fell back, spent and humiliated.

"You have great strength," the nun said, passing him a cup. He hesitated. "It is only water," she assured him. "Your physicians will tell you, you must drink. Water is life."

Raoul drank, but it was not water he wanted. He wanted a potion to give him back the use of his body, and perhaps another to make him forget.

"Shall I return tomorrow, monsieur? The Americans do not like us ministering to the wounded here, but we come to all who are in need; they will not deny you God's solace."

Raoul tried to find something gracious to say but it hurt too much. "Please," he muttered. "Do not... trouble yourself. I am in good hands."

Sister Thérèse reached over and wiped a damp cloth over his forehead, a gesture at once so maternal and yet impersonal that Raoul had to close his eyes and look away lest she see him unmanned. She said something else, a blessing, but to his relief did not stay. When he heard the rustle of skirts against the canvas door, Raoul slammed his face into the pillow and tried in vain to stifle the useless convulsions that racked his body.

"Your salvation had precious little to do with the Lord, Chagny."

Raoul stilled at once; even the pain receded briefly to a safe distance as his blood thundered in his temples. He raised his head, half turning onto his good side. The former Phantom stood at ease near the tent door, contemplating him calmly from beneath his false bandage. He was, and he was not, the man in Bazeilles: the black suit might have belonged in the theatre.

"What is it you want?" Raoul managed. "I owe you a debt; there, I acknowledge it."

"Only to see if you plan on living."

"I am," Raoul said, with more certainty than he felt.

"Then why tell the sister to go?"

"I have not the strength for her solace. The nurses come, they can change the dressings…" Raoul propped himself up on an elbow, heavily, but it still left him at a disadvantage. "If you came to find Christine, she has gone. But… she did come."

"Surprised, Vicomte? I gave you my word."

The barbed tone sharpened Raoul's own temper. "It is not your word I doubt, but your reasons. Do you come here courting Christine's gratitude? Has she not suffered enough?"

The Phantom came forward, until he towered over Raoul. "You overestimate yourself. But I do want something, since you insist. An answer."

"To what question?"

"Your honour, Vicomte. What makes you believe you still keep it, with all those men left dead by your hand?"

Raoul set his jaw, returning his stare evenly. "What is it you accuse me of?"

He half expected the man to speak of murder as he had in Bazeilles, but he only shrugged irritably and thrust his hands in his pockets, turning away.

Raoul shut his eyes. Behind the blackness, he was holding a rifle, aiming at a column of brass buttons on a man's chest. He opened them again, and with a great effort sat up, feeling the stiff new dressing compress under his weight.

"You believe it murder still. You truly think it's the same as… what you did. What you put her through."

The Phantom did not bother to look back. "I have not the luxury of splitting hairs. Thou shalt not kill is written somewhere, is it not? Or is there a limiting clause on it, for uniforms? A pity you sent that nun away before we could ask."

He started for the doorway having tired of this jeering, and Raoul found he could not take another word.

"Why did you do it?" he demanded, his voice rising uncontrollably. "What in God's name did that stagehand do, or Signor Piangi, or any of them? The fire?"

The Phantom's black-suited shoulders hunched as from a whip, and yet Raoul thought it was a strike he had been expecting. He turned, and Raoul saw the raw grief that twisted his features, reminding him unnervingly of Christine.

"Have you ever hunted, Vicomte? The beast has no honour. The beast wants only to live."

Raoul watched him duck out of the tent, making his exit. It was not that simple, he thought, but the pain was returning and he did not have the strength to fight it. He closed his eyes again.

o o o

"Raoul?"

Christine blinked in the diffuse light in the ambulance tent. Someone was standing at the side of Raoul's bed, a thin grey-haired man she recognised as the physician who had administered the pain relief Raoul so disliked. He threw up his hands at her arrival:

"Is this an ambulance or a public thoroughfare? For goodness' sake, mademoiselle, let him sleep! A man in his condition can't spend all day entertaining visitors."

"I'm sorry," Christine said hastily, "I meant only to leave something for him. A book. May I?"

The physician acquiesced with a sigh. "Of course."

Christine took up the heavy book, a translation of some of the tales her father used to read, and set it carefully on the small stool at the head of Raoul's bed. He was fast asleep, his arm over his eyes, as exhausted as Christine had ever seen him. Shamefaced, she thanked the physician and retreated as quietly as she could.

Outside Raoul's tent the ambulance was busy; two more Garde Mobile soldiers and a handful of army regulars were standing around a smaller tent, having delivered a stretcher bearing a comrade, and Christine saw the surgeons gathering at the doorway of her another tent nearby, deep in discussion. Injuries, she wondered, or wounds? There was feverish construction work going on at the inner circle of fortifications, and accidents abounded, but thus far nothing from the besieging armies, no sounds of artillery, no news. The waiting stretched, gathering tension like a string being tuned, rising gradually in pitch.

At the kerbside, Christine paused, waiting for a gap in the crowded traffic, trying to see her way across between all the rattling supply wagons and gun carriages that replaced the once elegant landaus on their way to the Bois. Just when she thought she spotted a gap, something at the edge of her hearing caught her attention. Crossing forgotten, she turned to look back to the where the sound had come from.

And kept looking.

Erik stood a few paces behind her, framed by the slender trees of the roadside gardens, motionless as a statue beneath their rustling branches. The afternoon light cut sharp shadows across his face, hiding the bandage, and flared copper in the dark stubble on his cheek and jaw. His mouth was open a little, but whatever he had said was lost in the rumble of traffic — it did not matter, Christine thought. She had known that morning he would find her again. She just had not realised how much she wanted him to.

He was here, back in her life — and yet he never really left. He could become an architect in another city, disappear for weeks in the war, wear a new suit or an old one. It made no difference. He was in her life, and there was not a thing she could do about it.

It was a relief to see him.

She remained where she was, waiting. Erik hesitated, then came to her quickly, in two strides, like a man leaping a chasm.

"Your music. Let me hear it again."

His voice was fire, an angel's demand, but Christine refused to back away. Instead, she reached out and touched his gloved hand, wrapping his fingers with her own as they had done over her music book. Erik made a small noise, almost distress, and she dropped her fingers at once.

"I tried to be an architect," he said, confessing it.

"Your courthouse..." Christine thought of the afternoon he had left to return to it, of their voices in the Angels' Garden. "Was it damaged in the battle? Is that why you had to fight?"

"There was not enough of it to matter. It is gone now."

Christine gave a small nod. The loss was there, in the lines near his mouth, in his eyes. She knew this: some things were not replaceable.

"I saw your Vicomte," he said abruptly. "He is improving."

"You saw Raoul?" Christine felt sharp heat in her eyes, remembering Raoul's arm over his face, shutting out the world. He had warned her Erik would demand something in return for bringing him back to her… "Is that why you're here?"

The appalled expression on Erik's face told her all she needed to know.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I did not mean to be ungrateful."

"I do not want your gratitude."

Then the wariness slipped from his eyes, and behind it Christine saw the true need, a thirst as deep as her own He reached forward and slowly, ever so slowly, picked up her hand in his.

"Let me hear your music again. Make it live."

"All right," she said simply, as if she had expected this twinning of her own obsession — and then knew that she had. Of course she had. The notes beneath their two hands had created something new in the whispering darkness, and now the sound begged to be born.

"Let's find a cab," she said. "I know where we can go."

o o o

The Boulevard Montmartre was unrecognisable under the trappings of war. Outside the Variétés, epaulettes and buckles had replaced evening suits and flowers in lapels, the purposeful scurrying of officials and the strides of the officers took the place of promenading couples, and a large tricolour flag overhung the colonnaded façade.

"Not here," Christine called to the driver when the cab slowed down behind a group of officers on horseback. "The artists' entrance please, around the back."

Her gamble paid off, there was nobody at the rear of the theatre but the doors were not locked; the municipal offices that had taken over the upper floor and the new ambulance that had taken over the foyer still needed the access. Inside, boxes marked with the Red Cross were stacked against the wall.

"This way," Christine said, keeping her voice low. Erik hung back a little, following half a step behind as she wended her familiar way upstairs. They were lucky; with the rehearsals suspended the rear stairwell was deserted. The first two doors she tried did not give, but she continued along until they came to the dance practice hall. To her joy, the tall doors swung inward easily at her touch.

"Why here?" Erik asked as they entered. His voice echoed against the polished floors.

The space was large and airy and bare, just the barre along the walls and, over by the windows, the accompanist's battered black piano. By way of answer, Christine went to the piano and pushed open the dusty lid.

"Nobody else is using it," she said, pulling out the wooden folding chair from its place behind the piano.

She glanced in the direction of the doors, where two similar chairs were kept for the comfort of visitors come to observe rehearsals. Following her lead, Erik brought one over and joined her at the piano, after a moment's hesitation taking the upper register. Christine was momentarily surprised, until she glanced up at him and realised he positioned himself so it was the open, unmasked side of his face that she saw. She tucked a stray curl behind her ear self-consciously, staring at the keys, black and ivory, ivory and black, alternating… Erik waited in silence, so disturbingly near that she thought her elbow would bump his arm when she raised her hands to the keyboard.

Christine took a breath, and then let her fingers flicker over the keys experimentally in a scale, a feather-light pianissimo. It was a good instrument, despite its years of ill-usage in the repetitious pummelling for the benefit of the dancers, and in tune. The last note dwindled softly to a shadow in E flat, then not even a shadow.

Before she could lose her nerve, Christine moved her hands to encompass the opening chords, and gently brought them down. The sound formed all at once, like a gust of salt air, then dissipated. Erik stilled, and Christine had a sudden vivid memory of that long-ago night in Montmartre, of his utter stillness when her lips found his scars. She stumbled, losing the beat, but only for a moment. With a shake of her head, she threw off all distractions and dived into the music, her own creation, imperfect but hers, and beloved. She let her right hand pick up the melody, and it became so easy, the easiest thing in all the world, as simple as breath.

Erik was there beside her, solid and real, not a ghost or the author of her dreams but the audience she had craved all this time, craved without knowing it, the only one who could hear it just as it was.

In a few bars she knew she would reach the point where last night they had altered the flow, restoring the vocal part and adding another, and Christine thought she might stop - but the momentum carried her on and then, before she fully understood what was happening, he was singing. It was her music, not as written but exactly as she intended, completely, perfectly alive. Christine did not dare stop now, she could not. Erik sang her music, softly, more tentatively than she had ever heard him before, with no words on his lips but only sound, pure sound that transformed the air around them into something shimmering and bright.

It ended, but Christine felt its echo still drumming in her heart, in the rhythm of Erik's movement as he turned towards her, his eyes wild. He was breathing hard, and his hands fumbled at the edges of his own gloves, trying erratically to remove them. Christine reached over and pulled them off, one then the other, dropping them to the keyboard. His bare hands were cold; she took them between her own and felt the blood returning, but before it could warm him, Erik freed himself and raised his arms.

He was trying to take off the mask.

Christine could not speak, riveted and pained in equal measure by what he was struggling to do, and yet could not. She saw the muscles in his neck tense and tremble with the effort, and his eyes closed hard against it, but the bandage remained.

Christine found herself rising to her feet. He looked up at her, bewildered, caught still by the music they had created, the same song that played in her soul and would not let go. She took his hands away from the knot of linen, and brushed her thumb over his jaw, her nail catching at the shadow of a beard that lay flat to his skin, rough in one direction, silk in the other.

"Dance with me," she whispered.

"I… cannot."

She felt her mouth curl very slightly, a smile she had not expected. "Monsieur. May I have this dance?"

Erik stood up then, past her touch, until they were very close, too close to see one another at all. He was tense with a nervous energy that transferred itself to Christine in a thrill of anticipation — and then he exhaled and held her by the shoulders, as though he would turn her away. Instead he drew her closer still, and Christine put her arms awkwardly around him, her cheek pressed to his rougher one, breathing him in. She had missed him. Oh God, she had missed him...

If it was a dance, it was not one she had ever practiced or seen, but it flowed and ebbed with the music between them. She hummed and Erik made the harmony somewhere deep in his chest, thrumming against her heart, shivering down to the soles of her feet as she danced.

The sound gathered force, ascending in great winding spirals from a low hum to the height of her speaking voice, and beyond, to a hymn in a chapel, a cathedral, and higher still, a pure tone without vibrato, innocent of any embellishment.

Reluctantly, she brought it to its end.

Erik held on to her although they were no longer moving. His back was up against the open jaws of the piano, there was nowhere to go. Christine felt his grip tighten on her shoulders as he straightened his arms with difficulty, cleaving apart the creature they had briefly become back into their two separate bodies. At the back of her throat, Christine tasted salt.

"Bravo!" called someone from the doorway, shattering the air.

Christine and Erik whirled around: the doors stood wide open and a small crowd had gathered there, petty clerks and orderlies in uniform and ladies who must have volunteered in the ambulance downstairs.

They cheered as furiously as if it has been a grand spectacle, and Christine froze in this explosion, unsure of what all these people had witnessed. Erik stepped aside and, in a flourish that was all grace and theatre, deferred to her this ovation. Christine had no option but to sink down in a deep révérence, a bow straight from the stage of the Opéra.

Erik offered her his arm and she rose smoothly, having done this a thousand times in the ballet, and followed his cue, gesturing her thanks so that he in turn might take his bow. The cheering became applause, and they walked through the middle of it, people stepping back to clear a path. They too had understood this to be theatre.

That applause still rang in her ears when they were back in a cab, safely anonymous, jolting their way back home. Erik gave her address, then sat next to her on the bench, gripping the door handle, white-knuckled, staring out the window into the the fading dusk. In all the construction dust, trees and people stood out as violet shadows.

"Christine…"

"Yes." She tried not to look at him, afraid suddenly of what he had to say.

"It cannot be like that. Never again."

The Phantom, Christine thought. The music, the stage, the applause, the myriad accolades he had once sought with such terrifying need. Even thinking of it hurt.

"You told me… You said that man was dead."

"I was wrong. I am what I am."

He turned to her then, and took something from his pocket. Her ring. He studied it in the centre of his palm, and for a horrible second Christine thought he meant to give it back, but he only clenched his fist over it, hiding it from himself.

"You are what you are," she agreed. "Like all of us."

She turned his fist over, exposing the broken nails and the web of fine lines blackened by sticks of charcoal, or by gunpowder charges. He had lived through something these past weeks that had split him away from her, split him apart in some way she could not quite understand.

"I was proud." He was almost whispering, and Christine had to strain to catch the words over the rumble of the cab wheels and the clopping of hoofbeats outside. An artillery wagon rolled past, drowning all else for a while.

"I thought I had worked enough, earned it — redemption by good works, isn't that the thing? It is a lie, Christine. I had thought it would be different if it was your music, not dark, not mad, that I was allowed it. But it is no different, it cannot be. My music is still there. And if I listen to it… The Phantom lives."

"No," Christine said sharply. She wanted to strike him, to rip away the mask, to cry. His fist was a stone in her grasp. "He never lived at all! He was a mask, a costume — a man. Don't you see? It is not what you are, Erik. It is what you choose. Today, tomorrow, a year from now, in Sedan or in Paris or anywhere else. You can bring back the Phantom. Or you can not."

He stared at her as though she had struck him, then subsided, slowly. "This is too hard, Christine. The music. The force of it, intoxicating… It is too much."

Christine felt her own anger dissolving at that, a wave returning to the sea. She thought she understood, a little, but what could she say? The music was deep within her, carried in her bones with the song of her father's violin. It could not be denied.

"Watch out!" came a rough shout outside, and the cab veered around another horse, juddering as the axles creaked. "Parbleu! Can't you see where you're going?"

Christine was thrown forward; Erik caught her arm and the ring clinked onto the bench between them. Erik lunged and snatched it back before it could roll away.

"Pardon, monsieur, mademoiselle! You all right back there?" the driver called back from the box.

"Yes," Christine called back. "We're all right! ...We are all right," she repeated, watching Erik hide the ring safely away, inside the Phantom's suit. "All right."

He caught her watching. She lifted her hand and slipped her fingertips beneath the edge of the bandage, over his cheek. There was no beard there, just the warped skin, warm from the mask.

"I've wanted to do that," she said, not apologising.

He covered her hand with his, then let go and reached behind her head. Christine felt him draw out the long pin that held her chignon, and her curls sprang free of it, tumbling past her shoulders.

"So did I," he told her.

The cab creaked and stopped.

Erik held out the hairpin for her, and Christine felt the tremor in his palm as she took it. "Since you are back in Paris," she said quietly, "you should come and have dinner with us again, sometime."

"Yes," he said. "Sometime."

The cab swayed as the driver jumped down and went to get the door. They were home.