A/N: At last, the chapter that coincided with so much upheaval in my life that it had to be written entirely at night. Better late than never, right?

As ever, please take a moment to tell me what you think.

Chapter 66 — Sortie

"He can't." Christine stared at Raoul in dismay. "He mustn't. There have to be other ways." She tried to keep her voice low and calm although she could tell by the tense silence from Meg beside her that it was an unconvincing performance. "How long ago did you leave him?"

"I came as soon as I knew. Let us go now, before he finds Doctor Swinburne and does something irrevocably stupid."

"How long, Raoul?"

"An hour, no more."

"We'll be too late." Christine felt lightheaded with the absolute certainty of it. "Whatever he intended, he will have done it by now, he must have." She went to the sideboard and pulled open the drawer, knowing as she did so that she would find the ration cards untouched. There; a flurry of little blue cards scattered under her palm. She should have known it was not the queues that delayed him.

Raoul pivoted to look after her as she circled the table toward the doors. "Swinburne is a busy man. We're in the middle of a battle, he will have his hands full with the wounded coming in. By the time Andersson gains his attention—"

"He will find some way. He always does. Doctor Swinburne did offer to examine him, more than once, and God knows Erik is not like to forget it. He thought…" Christine swallowed down the painful memory. "Erik thought Doctor Swinburne meant to find out the cause of his deformity and show it to his students."

"Even it that's so," Raoul insisted, "today of all days, examining medical oddities will be the last thing on his mind. There is still time. Make Andersson see how disastrous this plan is! What architect parades himself before medics as some sort of living cadaver, instead of doing his duty? Please, talk some sense into him before he ruins you both."

"How do I do that?" Christine heard a shrill note creep into her voice. "Should I send him to the ramparts? I have nothing to rival what Doctor Swinburne could do to help him."

"He may at least listen to you! He certainly does not listen to anyone else. Just dissuade him from this plan and we will think of something." Raoul leaned on one crutch and raked the fingers of his free hand through his hair. "It defies belief that in the middle of a battle for Paris, for all France, that man's first thought is for the mirror!"

"That is not fair."

"And this is? Was he alone in the world, he could sell his face to the whole of the Académie Française for all I care, but he has no right to drag you into this circus. You are his now, and if this reaches the papers—"

"I am not his!" Christine stopped with her back to the parlour doors. Raoul was regarding her as if she were a diva in a temper, and even Meg, who had retreated to the other side of the table, had pity in her eyes. A flush of hot embarrassment made Christine step back. She pushed the doors open behind her, and turned on her heel into the parlour Erik had abandoned.

Here daylight fell through the window in all its wintery softness, incongruous when the distant battle still rattled the glass. The tidied room, bare of any sign of Erik's stay, was stark proof he had planned this absence, that he intended for her to know nothing as he bargained away his dignity for the fragile promise of peace. Christine stared at the closed piano. Music, music, music thrummed in her veins and it sounded wrong, tainted with blood like Erik's awful Marseillaise of the evening before. Music lodged in her head and tore at her with the iron claws of his fingers the night he had returned from Sedan.

…The bayonets finish what the bullets start, and men walk upon men…

He had crawled from that pit of horror somehow, dragging himself and Raoul from a hell she could not begin to imagine. What had he left behind? The twisted, wronged logic of the rope? The Phantom? Of one thing she was certain, it was Erik who had returned to her, carrying her ring in his pocket and a part of their music in his heart. It was Erik who was now at the ambulance, pursued by the menacing voices of the Prussian guns — hearing their taunts in a way she knew she could not. That he would bargain away all he had worked for so as not to return to that slaughter spoke louder to her than the roar of any cannon.

She had a sudden vivid image of Erik in Montmartre, walking away from her in a circle of armed guards, returning to a cage. She could not let it happen again.

The little side table in the corner had been cleared of Erik's things and returned to its usual function of holding a lamp, but bending down, Christine found the shaving box he had tucked away there. Underneath it were a spare folded shirt and her silver comb. She pulled it all out and carried the armload to the divan.

There was no time to be delicate about this. Christine threw open the latch on the wooden box and raised the lid, half expecting to find nothing inside. But no, to her relief there were Erik's razor and shaving brush, along with a mirror barely large enough to see her own chin, two rolls of bandages — and underneath, just where she had suspected he kept it, an envelope fat with folded papers.

She shook these out and opened up the first. The document was creased along the folds but the official seal was intact, with the two names inked side by side. Erik Andersson, architect, hereby declares his intention to wed…

Her own name stared back at her like a reflection in the mirror. Did she dare?

Did she not? The name Daaé had been her father's, she had worked hard at the Variétés to clear it, but in doing so had made it her own. Mademoiselle Christine Daaé in concert. A precious thing, her name: a collection of sounds from her childhood, the wisp of longing that was her father's ghost. Her inheritance.

Hers, to keep or give away as she chose.

Erik was at the Ambulance and time was short.

"Christine?" Meg asked from the doorway. "What are you looking for?"

Christine glanced up to find them all there in the doorway, Meg and Raoul and Madame Giry, all three breathing identical worried puffs of white steam. Against all odds, it made her smile.

"It's all right," she said, but she could see they were not reassured. "I found what I wanted." She waved the unfolded document before her and stood up, pushing aside the rest of the things on the divan. "There is something can do."

Raoul opened his mouth to say something, then closed it with a snap. Meg, with less restraint, said, "You're both crazy," and looked to her mother as though expecting her to put an end to this.

"It needs only your consent, Madame Giry." Christine held Madame Giry's questioning gaze until, at last, she gave a small nod in invitation and Christine passed her the marriage licence.

"You know this is quite impossible," Madame Giry said gently. She tapped the date on the seal. "It expires today."

"Yes, Erik told me we had thirty days. There isn't much time, I need to go now. Perhaps if you went ahead to the mairie..."

"Why in God's name?" Meg began, before stopping herself with a realisation. "Married. Married men are not being drafted."

"Not yet," Raoul said, "but it is only a matter of time and numbers — Christine, you cannot be serious. After everything you said!"

Christine touched the gold band on her finger, turning it in a familiar motion. "Yes," she said simply. "After everything I said."

Raoul looked from her to the ring and back again. "Christine… Andersson."

"Christine Daaé," Meg spoke up fiercely, looking at Christine as if daring her to object. "It's on all your posters. I'm not changing them now!"

"You won't have to." Christine started to button up her coat to go outside. "Nothing needs to change here. We will simply go on as we are. And I will not take a new name for the stage."

Madame Giry's worry lines deepened into a frown. "This is not the moment for wild decisions. If the army breaks through and lifts the siege, marriage will serve no purpose but to bind you in a way you cannot undo."

"And if the siege continues," Raoul added, "sooner or later all men will be called up, married or not."

Christine was already tying her scarf and lifting her braided hair over her collar. To Raoul she said, "Go to the mairie for me if you can — please. Find someone who can help with the ceremony. I will meet you there as soon as I can, with Erik."

"Just like that?"

His ironic tone scalded her with a reminder of their own prolonged engagement, but he winced and she saw that he too regretted bringing it up. She touched his hand briefly, acknowledging the past. "Please."

"I'll accompany you to the ambulance."

"No. No, Raoul. You've done all you can and more. I need to talk to Erik alone." She carefully avoided looking at his bad leg, leaving unsaid what they both knew: Raoul could not endure another walk back to the ambulance; reaching the mairie in Montmartre would be trial enough. He looked embarrassed and deeply unhappy, but seeing her determined, voiced no more objections.

"Madame Giry?" she prompted. "The mairie..."

Madame Giry pressed her lips together, and for a moment Christine thought she was about to refuse her consent, but she only glanced at the licence again before folding it into her own coat pocket.

"Here, one moment." Meg ducked back into the dining room and returned to pass around the morning's bread between them. When Raoul declined his share, she wrapped it in a napkin along with her own and put the package into her pocket with a sigh. "I'm coming too."

They trooped towards the front door in silence. Christine wondered at the calm that was settling over her now the decision had been made, and at how strangely quiet her thoughts had become. Even the military music in her mind had receded to the faintest pulse of her heartbeat.

Christine Daaé, singer, hereby declares Erik Andersson, architect, bound to her in a way that could not be undone.

So be it then. She was not afraid. Around the walls the guns raged impotently, but they could not take him, he was spoken for. Christine Daaé claimed him for her own — and she was not letting go.

They emerged out into the teeth of the wind and the louder sounds of battle. As soon as the door to the building closed behind them, Madame Giry motioned for them to wait and to Christine's surprise, removed her own thick woollen shawl and wrapped it over Christine's hair and shoulders, fluffing it up to shield her cheeks from the wind. It was warm, almost safe. Christine felt a lump rise in her throat.

"Thank you," she started to say, but Madame Giry waved this aside, battling the wind to keep her uncovered hair from escaping its coil.

"Christine Daaé, I make you no promise to support this mad scheme. But if you bring him out of there, safe..." The intensity in her voice caught Christine off-guard; she could only wait.

"Then you may do as you choose." Madame Giry gave her a small smile, but her eyes were sad. "Choose wisely." She turned to shepherd the others towards Montmartre, leaning into the wind.

Christine saw Raoul and Meg glance back, then pulled the shawl across her mouth to keep out the cold and went her own way.

o o o

"My dear Monsieur Andersson, it is a course that benefits all."

Doctor Swinburne clasped his hands on the heavy desk before him and spoke in the measured tones of a treating physician. "Entertainment of as fine a quality as I hear you provided some weeks ago in Montmartre would boost our wounded men's spirits, soothe their impatience, and encourage them to remain until their recovery is complete. You would help them immensely. Now, is that not a better plan than this nonsense about displaying your injuries?" He favoured Erik with a benevolent smile through his beard. "Think of it as your contribution to the war effort."

"My contribution." Erik's own voice clanged like a bell in his skull. He tried to hide his confusion. What did Swinburne mean by entertainment? Entertainment in Montmartre… Could he have imagined that Christine's one concert there had been Erik's doing? Then all at once he grasped it: "You refer to my —" he caught himself before he could say 'arrest' — "my recital. The duet I performed with Mademoiselle Daaé."

"The young vicomte spoke so highly of it in explaining his absence that I confess I was sorry to have missed it. And we hear much of Mademoiselle Daaé's successes these days at the, er, Odéon—"

"Variétés."

"That's the one." Swinburne sat upright in his chair, all his attention focused unnervingly on Erik's face. "If you are as capable a singer as she is then I'm certain you could do much good here. Men will take you for one of their own with that bandage you insist on sporting; it will lift their spirits. Now, what say you to that?"

"You propose to hire me as your," Erik bit off the words, "singing freak."

"Now really, there is no call…"

A demon with the voice of an angel. The room began a slow rotation about Erik, as though he was a hanged man dangling from a rope. He looked at the floor, glad of the solid chair beneath him and the weight of the hat he clutched in both hands, and willed the world to be still.

Old memories scrabbled at the walls of his mind. Paolo the gypsy had heard him sing one morning, in an incautious moment when the sunrise had looked too magnificent to his childish eyes to keep silent. The keeper had stood there, slack-jawed, rooted to the spot behind the wagon where he had gone to relieve himself, and listened. And listened. The Devil's Child had paid dearly for that error, first in threats and cajoling, then in beatings that grew more savage in proportion with his stubbornness. Paolo had glimpsed his goldmine, the singing monster who would draw more crowds than any sideshow attraction before him, but that one glimpse was all he ever got. The Devil's Child never sang again in his hearing.

Swinburne's voice was still rising and falling and rising again in that patient tone of his that seemed calculated to reassure, but Erik cut him off.

"Never."

He stretched his mouth into a copy of Swinburne's vapid smile, but with no trace of benevolence. "If it's entertainment you require, you may stage a freak show. A human spectacle, such as you surgeons seem to enjoy." He broadened the smile until it deformed the bandage. Let him see it for what it was. "My letter, monsieur le docteur. Then you may see for yourself what this face is worth."

Swinburne's brows angled upward until his forehead resembled a washboard. "You would rather display your face than perform for us here as a musician, as an artist? Forgive me, I don't understand."

"There is nothing to understand. I will not sing for you."

"Your recital—"

"Was an exception. The Vicome was quite right, it was a most unusual occasion."

"Ah. One night only?"

"Exactly so. And the true attraction was Christine Daaé." Erik twitched in the chair, only with the greatest difficulty keeping his frustration at bay. "Let us keep to the matter at hand, Doctor."

"Tell me, wasn't Mademoiselle Daaé's first concert billed as 'one night only'?" Sparks of amusement danced in his eyes, too intelligent for Erik's liking. "The first of many such nights in the young lady's case."

Erik made no response, but Swinburne continued just as if he had voiced enthusiastic agreement: "Monsieur Andersson, I see no reason our wounded cannot benefit from music just as those at the Variétés do. We have precious little need of sideshows right now — but we could certainly use a singer." He reached into his pocket, flipped open his fob-watch and frowned. "Excuse me; the Ambassador will be getting impatient. I urge you to take a few days to consider the merits of my suggestion. There is no hurry; with the sortie going on we will be at capacity by tonight, and well occupied for a time with keeping souls and bodies together. But soon enough, sir, those souls will have need of you."

Erik stood a moment before the surgeon did. Now; it had to be done now. Under its linen swaddle, his deformity ached and burned and tugged at his jaw as if the very scars were crawling from his flesh. Swinburne was dismissing it, but how could he be expected to know any better when all he had seen was the mask — not even a mask but mere bandages, as commonplace a sight as any in an ambulance?

"Think on it," Swinburne was saying as he offered a handshake.

Erik raised a hand to the back of his own neck and grasped the linen knot.

"Darling! There you are." A voice at once foreign and familiar through to every bone in his spine sounded just behind him. Christine — but the lilt, the cadences she was using, were as artfully constructed as any costume and every note sparkled as if under a spotlight.

Erik dropped his hand guiltily and turned, noticing from the corner of his eye Swinburne look towards her in surprise, which at once, inevitably, blossomed into admiration.

Christine came in. In her fox-collar coat, with a shawl draped negligently from one gloved hand, she was the very image of understated elegance, made all the more dazzling by the sparse surrounds of the surgeon's tent. It was, Erik realised belatedly, an effect of which she was well aware.

"Good morning, Doctor Swinburne. I am so sorry to disturb you, but there has been a little misunderstanding."

"Mademoiselle Daaé!" Swinburne greeted her, recovering his manners. "What an unexpected pleasure to see you here. Coincidentally, I had just expressed to Monsieur Andersson my respect for your recent work with the wounded at the Variétés."

"You are kind, Doctor. I do regret this visit must be a brief one, forgive me," — she turned to Erik, "Darling, they are expecting us at the mairie right now. I'm sure Doctor Swinburne will excuse us."

"Of course," Swinburne bowed graciously, although he looked as baffled as Erik felt. "As a matter of fact I too have some urgent business to attend to. Was there anything I could do for you, Mademoiselle?"

"Not at all, now that I have found Monsieur Andersson."

Erik could only stand mute as a mannequin while Christine, this glittering star who was his Christine, approached him and wrapped a proprietorial hand around his arm. The pressure of her fingers was far greater than he had expected, a cue to follow, but he could not for the life of him fathom what his role was to be. "Christine," he said tightly, acknowledging defeat. Chagny must have fairly galloped on his crutches to alert her for her to have discovered him so quickly. Erik tried to feel annoyed, but the pressure of Christine's hand was distracting.

"Ah, there." Christine had spotted the conscription letter still open on the desk, and reaching across, plucked it up deftly and slipped it into her pocket.

"Uh, errr…" Swinburne looked from her pocket to Erik and back again. He almost pitied the man. "A misunderstanding, you say?"

Christine gave him a smile that lit her eyes; it looked utterly genuine. "So silly, really. We neglected to finalise a few details of our marriage, and well — you understand how the government is at the moment. The right hand seems not to know what the left does."

Erik frankly stared at her as she removed her glove and demonstrated to the doctor's bemused gaze the ring she had been wearing for weeks. "It is a poor time for a bride to be left without her groom, wouldn't you say? There should never have been a conscription. We are fortunate; the mairie seems prepared to help. But we do need to hurry," she added to Erik, with a glance that was at once a plea and almost a challenge. "Come, darling, I don't know how long they will wait."

"Of course," he said mechanically, before his mind had fully caught up with the substance of the extraordinary libretto she had composed, let alone his part within it. Darling. Her husband. He was to play her husband! While he was still struggling with this notion, Christine's hand on his arm was secretly, inexorably, steering him around to the doorway. "Do excuse us, doctor."

Swinburne was quicker off the mark than Erik would have believed possible. "Newlyweds! I had no idea. My warmest congratulations, Mademois— uh, Madame; Monsieur." He shook Erik's hand with apparent delight, yet Erik was instantly convinced that he had not believed a word of it. "Rather simplifies things with the draft, doesn't it? Why didn't you say so?"

"It was supposed to be secret," Erik all but growled. Christine blushed so convincingly that Swinburne looked a little less sceptical, but Erik had had his fill of this ludicrous operetta. He put on his hat.

"Good day, Doctor."

"I rather doubt it will be — but may I wish both of you the very best of luck. And perhaps you might still consider my offer, Monsieur Andersson."

Erik made a noncommittal noise and, freeing his arm from Christine, succeeded in leading her out of the tent.

Outside all was in chaos: the first of the wagons bearing the wounded had arrived from the lines, and even in the frosty air the smell of blood was overpowering. Erik averted his eyes from the contorted shapes of tomorrow's corpses, seething with humiliation. Bad enough to have failed in his own plan, but to be made a laughingstock by Christine's incomprehensible way of extricating him was untenable.

"What was his offer?" Christine demanded, not looking at him, their arms still linked, posing as newlyweds as they negotiated the suddenly crowded paths.

He walked faster, forcing her to speed up alongside. "Never mind him, what the devil are you doing? You cannot pose as married, we will be discovered at once. What will you tell him when he learns the truth, as he surely will? That it was another little misunderstanding?"

"That we are married."

"Married?" He dropped her arm and clenched his fists, unable to look at her lest she see the fury and agony of longing she woke in him. "You have rejected my suit; very well, but to mock it, to make of it nothing but a farce? To call me 'darling' in front of him… Why, Christine?"

"Erik." Something in the way she spoke his name made him look at her. Her eyes shone and she reached forward and brushed a strand of his hair over his bandages. Even gloved, her touch was a soothing magic, calming him when he did not wish to be calm. "It is only the truth. Madame Giry and Raoul and Meg are waiting for us at the mairie. The licence you obtained is still valid today."

"Today." Erik found he was shaking. "I don't — no. You said no."

"Married men are not being drafted." Christine shrugged lightly, but the façade of her courage was paper-thin and she was biting her lip despite the cold. "It needn't change anything. We would just sign the papers."

"Not change anything?" Erik was incredulous. "You would be my wife!"

Her eyes flashed. "Am I less than that now?"

"You — no, or maybe — Christine…" He was floundering, trying to find some thread of reason to hold onto. The idea of marriage, of Christine accepting him only to keep him from the National Guard was too bizarre to fit in the confines of his mind.

"This is wrong," he said finally. "All wrong." He had imagined it a hundred different ways, Christine in a flowing gown, Christine meeting him at the altar, lifting her veil… Or even just a subdued ceremony with only the two of them and a witness, Christine's hand in his and her lips warm from their kiss. Not this false wedding.

"This is wrong," he repeated more firmly, and stood straight before her, pulling himself up. He took a deep breath, glanced at the passing medics carrying a stretcher and hastily returned his gaze to Christine. "I will not join this danse macabre again; you needn't fear it. But there is the letter. Christine, I will need to disappear for a time — wait, what are you doing?"

Christine was working her ring over a knuckle turned red with cold. "Leaving you to your own devices." She held up the gold band between her fingers. "Take it."

"Christine…"

"Take it!"

He caught her hand instead and pulled her to him, shuddering with relief at the feel of her wrapped tightly in his arms. Until that moment he had not realised how badly he needed her, how afraid he had been of never holding her again. How long would it be before he could do this after he returned into hiding?

"Let me go!" Christine twisted out of his grasp and whirled to him angrily. She showed him the ring. "You gave me this. Or do you deny it?" She did not wait for him to reply. "I came here because I want you beside me. Not skulking in shadows and fearing discovery, or selling your sanity in some freakshow. I want you to stand with me and to sing with me and be mine. That's all there is to it." She took a shuddering breath. "And if that makes me yours also, then I accept. But I will not live my life watching the shadows, waiting for you to emerge, and then wondering when you may vanish again. Marry me, or take back your ring."

Erik had an eerie sensation of watching himself from high above, as though he was seeing himself through the eyes of a guardian angel.

Christine was waiting. Her monster of a lover had no shame; he kept her waiting while his heart pumped blood around his veins over and over and his brain refused to acknowledge the enormity of what was happening. Around them, a river of human bodies eddied and flowed: some upright, some supine, some missing limbs or with faces horribly burnt, all with hands black with gunpowder. And in the midst of this river of death Christine stood her ground and waited. For him.

He was almost certain he managed to put the ring on her before his knees folded beneath him.