A/N: Thank you for your support of this story and just for being here. Your reviews and comments make my day/week/month! Please take a moment to let me know your thoughts. Or at least one thought. :)

A bit of historical trivia: The first serious attempt at a sortie was actually supposed to happen in mid-November (1870) but due to various delays wasn't initiated until the end of the month. By then, Gambetta's Army of the Loire had managed to take Orleans and the government in Paris decided to change prior plans for a sortie to the north to a more risky plan to break out to the south-east, towards the Army of the Loire. This was, of course, well known to the Prussians.

ETA If you're wondering about the name Erik uses for Mme Giry, have a look at the note Mme Giry reads in chapter 11. That was a long time ago, I know!

Chapter 64 — Duty Bound

Erik remained morose and withdrawn all the way to the apartment, and excused himself from supper at the first opportunity, having scarcely even touched his share of the cold cassoulet. There was not much to go around, and Christine saw Meg frown at the unfinished plate. Erik disappeared into the gloom of the living-room. He did not light a lamp, and she could not help but doubt whether he intended to stay there at all. She wished she knew the cause.

"Christine, how can he not be hungry?"

"I don't know. Here, have mine." She let Meg finish her plate and took Erik's for herself. She had scraped up the last forkful before she noticed Madame Giry watching her, in the same quiet, neutral way she might have observed their rehearsals. Obscurely embarrassed, Christine finished what was left of Erik's meal, and stood to collect the dishes.

Madame Giry touched her arm lightly as she reached for her plate. "It's all right, my dear. Go on." She did not need to indicate the living room; Christine nodded her gratitude and fled.

Behind her, she heard Meg speaking in a questioning tone and the rustle of newspaper as Madame Giry reached for the evening news. The distant bombardment from the forts was growing more erratic but was still there, a dull headache that refused to go away. Christine looked back, wondering if she ought to stay and find out whether the sortie had at last been announced, or whether anything more had been heard from the armies riding to their relief, but a sound from the living room made the decision for her.

It was not a sob, exactly, or a sigh — only a lonely note that struck her in the heart just as it had done many years earlier, when she had heard that sound coming from the chapel walls.

She closed the living room door softly behind her.

When her eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight slanting through the window, she saw Erik seated at the piano with the keys laid open before him. In his hands was a small silvery shape that, coming closer, Christine recognised a comb he had drawn from her hair a night or two ago. As she watched, he put it aside and touched the keys, too lightly for the sound that emerged to have come from the instrument. His shoulders shook with it.

Christine approached. "Angel of Music," she said, remembering, — "why do you cry?"

He dropped the lid. Christine jumped at the noise, and snatched back the hand she had reached to him as he turned around. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the dark.

"Forgive me," he said hoarsely. "I am… out of sorts this evening."

"Because of the sortie?"

He looked away. "It would be best if you left, Christine."

She risked a touch to the back of his neck, tracing her fingers along the marred jawline under his mask. "I'm frightened too."

He kept still, but she felt the tension in every roped muscle under her touch. With her free hand, she reached down to raise the lid again, and found the first chord of their old song.

" 'I will sing for you, Angel, so you don't cry anymore.' "

She had not expected a response, but Erik pushed the keys with sudden weight, adding a second broken chord to complete the measure, then threw down a rapid, fluttering, angry phrase. Startled, Christine kept her hand where it was. The music was new. She found herself trying not to breathe, for fear of jolting him from it. It had been such a long time since he had permitted himself to compose.

Erik shifted closer to the keyboard and, lifting both hands to it, expanded the sound. There was in his playing a kind of reckless spontaneity that filled Christine with dread, as though she was watching him step up onto the railings of a bridge above a raging river. She recognised the echo of the Moonlight Sonata woven into a brighter, sharper transposition of the theme they had worked on together the night he returned from Sedan. Only there was no liberty in this variation. The sound was not loud but brash, unforgiving, martial, without a single slur or pedalled chord to soften its edges. Worst of all was that it compelled her, even thrilled her; her heart pounded with its rhythm and her body could not withstand the urgency of its battle cry.

"Stop," she pleaded when she could stand no more. "Erik, no. Don't mock it." She covered his hands with her own, crossing them against his chest despite his resistance, and pulled him tight against her, his back to her chest. "You make it sound like the Marseillaise."

"Everything is a Marseillaise now." He wrenched free with an impatient twist of his shoulders, but at once grabbed hold of her elbow. "No, stay." He grimaced at his own ugly tone and released his grip, moving aside apologetically to make space for her on the bench. "Please. Sit with me."

Christine let him draw her down next to him, at the upper register. "Try it again," she suggested, nodding at the keys. "From here."

She repeated the fluttering phrase he had flung earlier as a challenge, but simplified it, letting the melody flow slower, calmer and more introspective. Without the embellishment of anger, it was lovely.

Erik glanced over at her, poised between wariness and admiration. "Slower still. Start from the A."

She played it at half speed for him, then folded her hands away from the piano to let him try it out for himself, finding his own voice within the changes she suggested. She mourned how long it took, how desperately he struggled to release the music without surrendering himself to the terror lurking inside him. He was like a violinist with a damaged instrument, afraid that at any moment an over-tightened string might snap.

"Again," she insisted when Erik let the sound fray into silence. The skin above his collar was damp. "Until you feel it here." She slipped her arm under his jacket and waistcoat, over the thin fabric of his shirt, and counted out the beats against his spine.

Erik made a small, helpless noise that briefly drove all thoughts of music out of Christine's mind. Then he half-turned to her and cupped her chin, lifting her face to his.

"Play!" she told him, fiercely. "Play it as you hear it. This is your music, not mine."

"Enough." He released her and moved back as far as the bench permitted, balling his hands into fists. "That is done with. We are living in the age of soldiers now. When a hundred thousand rifles are about to fire, this is the only music that matters." And he drummed out the Marseillaise with one hand on the keys, keeping perfect time, like the heartbeat of war. "Tomorrow or the next day—"

"Tomorrow or the next day all this will end, and what then? Erik!"

Erik turned to her vehemence, and the bruised, cornered look in his bandaged face seemed to disfigure it far more than any deformity. "Then you will see that every decent man picked up a rifle and did his duty. And you will know your Erik for what he is."

She gaped at him. "Duty? You're thinking of enlisting?"

He was silent. Christine shook her head slowly, baffled. "That is a lie. I know who I spoke for in Montmartre, and I do not believe that man could ever return to the war."

Erik's gaze roamed over the piano. "Every man has his duty."

"But not every duty is the same."

"No more blood. That was the vow." He pointedly did not meet her eyes. "Tell me, what would you do if I asked to be released from it?"

For a moment Christine felt numb. Then she realised what it was he was really asking, and scooted over to gather him into an embrace, her cheek rasping against his stubbled one. "Nothing. I can't release you, any more than you could release yourself. It is not I that holds you to it. But," — she found his mouth and gently grazed it with her own, "you are not asking."

"No," he admitted, and Christine felt she had withstood a test. Erik clutched at her waist as she strengthened the kiss, holding nothing back, willing him to know he could trust her. This was what he had sought: proof that the war had not dulled her horror of bloodshed, that even the most stirring call to arms could not break her. Whatever had unsettled him today had made him crave that reassurance, and willingly, she gave it.

"Let's try that piece again," she said when she could bear to withdraw from him.

Erik's mouth was still raw from their kiss, and his voice low and harsh. "Yes," he said, "let us." He made it a declaration of war, the two of them against the world.

Christine held his gaze and very softly hummed the melody of their first and oldest song. It was not a hymn, but Erik joined in harmony to make it one, and the words they did not sing brushed against the strings of her memory. It was the song of the Angels, born to bring music into the world.

o o o

Christine and Erik had been engrossed in their music for the better part of an hour before Madame Giry could bring herself to disrupt them. It was after curfew; the day's relentless cannonade from the forts had at last died down to an uneasy rest, and still they played on. As yet, no irate neighbours had knocked at the door to demand silence, but there were limits to what was prudent in this age of neighbourly denunciations. Caution would be wise. On the eve of the grande sortie, an evening spent at the piano could well be construed as a lack of national feeling.

She watched from the doorway for a minute or two, marvelling to herself at the scene. To see them animated by one idea after another, alternately excited and frustrated, bursting into complicated sequences or repeating the same phrase over and over with minute variations — these were the moments in which all her doubts about this entanglement were consigned to the wayside.

And yet, there was the matter of the missing letter.

Madame Giry gave a discreet cough, and saw Erik glance toward her. He shifted closer to Christine, as though he meant shield her from the truth he had not shared.

"Coffee," she reminded them. "Christine, kindly help Meg in the kitchen. Monsieur, a moment."

Christine rose to make her way out, her fingers brushing Erik's in a fleeting caress. Madame Giry waited until she had gone past before coming through the doorway and pulling the door almost closed behind her. A wedge of light from it fanned out over the rug and up to where Erik sat at the piano, sketching the profile of his intact side as he shut the lid.

He did not wait for her question. "It was addressed to me. You had no business concealing it, Madame."

Madame Giry acknowledged the rebuke, waiting for him to continue. When he only watched her in silence, she sighed. "It arrived last night. There was not the right moment."

He glared at her. "That letter was posted two weeks ago!"

"To rue Fontenelle. Where its contents will have been inferred, and judgements passed. It would have been safer by far to collect it in person."

"I had duties here."

"That is so. But you knew this must come; the decree says young men must serve. I warned you when you returned: Paris is become a city of soldiers."

This drew a huff from him. "Incompetent soldiers. Clerks and shopkeepers playing at heroes with their uniforms and guns. Half of them don't know one end of a rifle from the other."

"Indeed? And do you intend to lend them your expertise?"

"No." He rose smoothly from the bench, as though he had not a care in the world, and gestured for her to precede him out of the room. "I believe I can smell coffee. After you."

"Erik." Madame Giry took a step closer to the door, adroitly blocking his escape. "A conscription letter is not an invitation you can decline. Not unless you mean to return into hiding."

He stood tall in front of her, demanding with his very bearing to close this discussion, but she'd had too many years of facing irate managers to be so easily intimidated. "Whatever we may think of it, that is the law. You ignore it at your peril. And not only your own."

He gave her a humourless smirk. "The wonderful thing I have discovered about the law, Mademoiselle White Girl, is that there is always a greater law above it."

"That of God?" she said, taken aback by the name she had almost forgotten.

"That of greed." Erik gestured to the door again. "If you please."

o o o

"The American Ambulance! Have you entirely taken leave of your senses? It is halfway across the city and in the wrong direction. No." Chagny planted his crutches before the the heavy front door that led from Guyon's residence out into the street, and refused to budge another step.

Truly, the man was determined to make this as difficult as humanly possible.

"I have not slept," Erik said through his teeth, "I have not eaten, and just now I have no time for idle curiosity." The freezing pre-dawn air made his teeth chatter, and his feet were numb with cold from standing around. Frost glittered on every step and cobble and last night's puddles were solid ice. "The Ambulance is a perfectly manageable distance. Let's go."

"Look there. In the east." Chagny freed one gloved hand to point towards the end of the street, where it opened onto the boulevard leading down towards the Seine. Above the dark rooftops, white puffs of smoke drifted like spent fireworks through long streaks of cloud tinged violet by the coming sunrise. Every minute or two, a dull thunderclap sounded, and another puff would go up.

"That's a battle, Andersson! The sortie has finally started and I for one would like to see what is going on."

"What do you think is going on?" Erik did not care to look too long at the horizon; it was difficult enough to close his ears to the voices of the heavy guns and stop his mind from spiralling into nightmares. "A mass of half-trained men and starving horses shuffling across the Marne, up to their knees in mud, while the Prussians fire at leisure or wait to draw them deeper into a trap."

"Trap?" Chagny looked startled. "What makes you say that?"

"Damn it, Vicomte! Did that bullet hit your leg or your head? You cannot tell me that an attack that's been promised for weeks, with every detail published in the papers, is anything but suicidal. Every child in Paris knows where the diversionary attacks will come, and how many men to each, and the rest of it. Do you imagine the Prussians don't get copies of Le Combat? Or that they are unprepared? This is exactly the desperate run they've been waiting for."

"There is nothing desperate about it. Gambetta's army is waiting to join us—"

"Gambetta is not here. And neither is his army."

"They have been here for days! They left Orléans last week and are marching straight for Fontainebleau; Guyon showed me Gambetta's letter before he left."

"Left where?"

"To shuffle across the Marne," Chagny said in a brittle tone. "He is taking his men with the rest of the Third, doing what the likes of you can only sneer at. That reminds me," he glanced back over his shoulder to the door, "Guyon left a package for Meg Giry, something I am to give her in case… In case he cannot."

"Marvellous." Erik swallowed down the nausea that rose each time another distant explosion echoed in the deserted street. Beneath those puffs of smoke were soldiers crossing pontoons, just as they had done in Bazeilles. A forest of bayonets rising from the fog... then blood, and gunfire, and death. He felt a piercing headache coming on. "You can go back and spend the morning wrapping lovers' gifts, or get your binoculars and go battle-watching. I am going to walk to the Ambulance. Come or stay, it is all the same to me."

"Why the Ambulance, tell me that? Swinburne is no longer my physician. And if you mean to test my strength, the Panthéon is almost as long a walk, and nearer the news."

"Don't let the shock stun you, but not everything in this world revolves around you. I have business at the Ambulance."

"Business." Chagny lifted his jaw and crossed his arms contemptuously; a manoeuvre made more than a little precarious by his crutches. "You need me to accompany you to the Ambulance. Very well. Do me the honour of explaining, and I will consider it. Or continue these games and go on alone. It is all the same to me."

Erik measured Chagny's stubborn stance against the precious time he was wasting, and suppressed a curse. "Do you not see? If this sortie succeeds for more than an hour, and indeed, even if it fails, they will mobilise more men. I need to deal with this conscription. Now."

"But you cannot. The days of buying a replacement are gone — and who would replace you? All Belleville and Montmartre are already up in arms. There is no one left to take your place. Wait." Chagny's pale eyebrows rose until they fairly disappeared under the brim of his hat. He indicated Erik's bandage: "You mean to pay Swinburne to sign you off as wounded."

"Something like that."

"He will do no such thing."

"We'll see."

"He is an honourable man, Andersson. He will not perjure himself."

Erik gave him a feral grin. "Everyone has their price."

"If it was only a matter of money," Chagny said quietly, "I would help you if I could, for Christine's sake. But you must understand, Swinburne is the wrong man. His surgery is all that matters to him, and besides, he is a foreigner here. He will not risk compromising the entire American legation by meddling in French affairs." Chagny hobbled forward a step on his crutches. "Look. Guyon's father is a physician; he may know someone more suitable. Give me a day and I'll see what I can do."

"I don't need your money. Or your influence."

"Then what is it you want of me?" Chagny looked so honestly bemused that Erik could not bring himself to dissemble any further. The words came out before he could moderate them, humiliatingly uncensored:

"I cannot do this alone." He took a long breath and tried to compose himself. "I need a witness. And if it does not go well or I am for any reason delayed, I will need you to take a message to Christine."

For a wonder, Chagny asked nothing more. He collected his crutches, nodded to Erik to go on, and without another word they set off.

Erik kept his gaze fixed directly ahead and made his steps steady, trying hard to recollect at least the appearance of dignity. Chagny's swinging half-walk set a respectable pace once they were out on the smoother paving of the boulevard, and he discovered he had to lengthen his own stride to keep up. It was just as well, for the sun was already rising. What had seemed so simple last night — a few carefully chosen words with the American surgeon in his seaweed-infested tent — in the cold light of morning was beginning to seem like madness.

He should have given more thought to going into hiding. A return to the Folies was out of the question, but even in an encircled city there were other basements and attics, dark places where he would not be known…

No. A thousand times no.

Courage, he schooled himself as he forced his legs into a faster rhythm, and blinkered his mind to the narrow tunnel of what needed to be done. A few hours at most, and then he could return to Christine. He consoled himself with thoughts of how she would throw her arms about him to learn that he was free, enveloping him in the warmth of her scent.

The boulevards were still deserted at this early hour except for the huddling queues awaiting their rations outside the butchers' shops, and the occasional orderly rushing with bag of dispatches from one signalling point to another. The closer they came to the centre of the city, the less audible was the sound of battle, but Erik was certain he could feel the vibrations of the gunfire through his feet, and the hits were becoming more frequent.

Chagny stopped at the corner of rue le Peletier, where the makeshift stalls of the foragers were attended by a few sullen women in thick quilted overcoats and gloves. The stall nearest them, built of two school desks roped together, displayed a single bunch of three dirty onions and a small cabbage. Behind them, the black backdrop of the Opéra reared incongruously. Erik tried his utmost not to see it.

"Which way?" Chagny asked, puffing to catch his breath. He too averted his eyes from the ruin.

"Left; go around the market. We've no time for it now."

Chagny frowned at the line of stalls. "Are you certain? There is nothing more between here and the Ambulance. What will you bring back for breakfast?"

"Breakfast is cancelled today." Erik looked around, trying to gauge how busy the side streets were likely to be. He could not afford any more delays.

"And dinner? Are you in such a hurry that you would let Christine starve?"

"There is enough bread for this morning."

Chagny narrowed his eyes. "And beyond it?"

"I am not leaping off a cliff, Vicomte. Or going into hiding."

"You are taking yourself to the Ambulance, where—"

"Where I will not spend one hour more than necessary. On that you may have my word. This is a simple transaction, nothing more. Swinburne signs a paper, and in return gains what he wants."

"Which is what, exactly?"

Erik looked at Chagny's aristocratic face, the symmetrical features, the tall forehead and the wide, ludicrously honest eyes, and he knew the murderous rage he felt was not at this man but at himself:

"His very own freak."

With a vicious swipe, he yanked his bandage to one side. The smack of freezing wind on the raw flesh of his cheek knocked the breath from his lungs, making the Vicomte's gasped breath all the louder.

"What are you doing? Andersson!"

Erik pulled the bandage back up into place and secured it with hands that refused to move properly. His headache had grown to a pulsating agony in his temples. "The good doctor is a learned man. He has students. I shall present to him the perfect teaching aid for instruction in the disciplines of anatomy and physiology. All the joys of studying a cadaver without the drawbacks. What could be simpler?"

Chagny was staring at him in alarm. "You cannot be serious."

"Quite serious, I assure you."

"If you are right, if Swinburne accepts… Have you any idea what they could do to you? Photographs, measurements, skin samples—"

Erik realised he must have made some noise because the Vicomte abruptly stopped his litany. "I will do what I must." He tried to twist his mouth into a grin. "I have no shortage of experience in this particular field."

"You would choose to be prodded like a... like a—"

"Freak," Erik supplied.

"—rather than do your duty?"

Erik looked back to the horizon, where the hanging gun-smoke had turned to bloodied fog in the morning light. The decision was so easy, after all.

"Christine is right," he said. "Not every duty is the same. My place is by her side, Vicomte; and I will do whatever it takes."

"You would humiliate yourself and her."

"Christine has made her choice. She knows what I am."

Chagny gripped his crutches so tightly that for a moment Erik had to impression he would have liked to hit him. Then he swung himself around. "I cannot go where you're going, Andersson. I'm sorry."

At any other time the sight of the Vicomte pirouetting his crutches on the icy cobbles would have been amusing, but right now it was nothing of the sort.

He was leaving.

"It's a long way back," Erik called after him viciously, "the footpaths are slippery. Do you really think anyone in this city will notice a lone cripple sprawled in the gutter?"

Chagny looked up at him from under his furrowed brows, and Erik did not like what he saw in his eyes.

"It is a perfectly manageable distance. Good luck, Andersson. God knows you need it."