A/N…Hello, all!

A few things that I would like to address that have come up in the reviews (which I absolutely adore and appreciate, so thank you to all of you wonderful and supportive readers.):

-Luka is not Erik's son…sorry, ladies!

Nade-Naberrie: I am sorry to say that I have not read Susan Kay's Phantom. When you said that my story was reminiscent of her novel, I didn't really know how to take it…A compliment, I hope? But for the record, my story is based on ALW's Phantom of the Opera, and there is particular emphasis on the 2004 movie's portrayal of Erik (his looks, his attitude, etc.).

THANK YOU! to all reviewers who have supported me in my story. The reviews keep me going, so thanks, from the bottom of my heart.

-I have been reading Moving On by ashanti01, and noticed that there is also a character in her story named Luka…NO connection whatsoever, and the name similarity is completely coincidental. I had established my character long before I realized that the name Luka was circulating in other fics, and when I spotted it I wanted to clarify that I am not copying her in any way (although I would have good reason to because her story is brilliant ). I have my reasons for his name being Luka, and they have nothing to do with the Moving On story.

That being said, here are some explanations about the character names:

Alexa means Guardian of Man in hungarian

Luka is a derision of the Hungarian Lukacs, meaning Light.

Okay, I'm kind of nervous about this chapter because it was giving me a bit of trouble.

Please, please, PLEASE review after you read. i need to know what you think...Please. Don't be shy.

Beautiful Revolution

ps...there are a few Hungarian terms used...their definitions are given at the bottom. okay, i am done now, i swear!

Luka stood by the doorframe, clasping a leather portfolio, frayed from age, to his chest. He looked between Erik and Alexa, insecurity again dictating his actions. Seeing his hesitation as he entered the room Alexa replaced the confusion that marked her face with a smile and motioned for him to come closer.

Luka looked at Erik, then back at Alexa as he walked forward. But instead of sitting in the chair that he had previously occupied, he climbed into Alexa's lap, his legs dangling over hers. Alexa in turn put her arms around his waist protectively, preventing him from sliding down, and placed a light kiss against his distorted cheek as Luka opened up the portfolio. He began to pull out pieces of paper and hand them to Erik, who watched the situation in reserved silence, his thoughts continuing their assault on his perplexed mind. Just who the hell was this girl, who showed no fear or disgust in the presence of such deformity? He thought back to his wretched childhood, if you could call it that, and remembered the beatings, the scorn and disdain at the revelation of his wretched visage, so similar to the unmasked child before him.

Erik looked down to the papers being given to him and was not surprised to see that the artwork before him was no less impressive than that which graced the walls. Tiny birds with dappled wings and bright eyes stared up at him, as if they would hop off the paper and soar about the room. Erik looked at Luka, who had been watching his face intently, and smiled.

"Why don't you put it on the table, so he can see them?" Alexa whispered into Luka's ear, trying to guide him out of the solitude he was so accustomed to.

Luka didn't say anything but did as she asked, pushing the folder towards Erik. Erik smiled at him and pulled out another drawing, carefully placing the one he had been looking at next to the tattered leather case.

Erik was startled by the next sheet of parchment, a portrait of Alexa so accurate that it could have been a daguerreotype. The eyes held the same compassion and beauty, but he noticed that in the drawing she did not smile. He wondered if this had been a drawing Luka had done from memory, for in the brief time that he had known her Alexa rarely lost the radiant smile she so frequently wore. It was then that Erik considered the idea that perhaps behind her happy face there was something more; a dark and hidden past that was not as happy as he had assumed. After all, he reminded himself, not everyone chooses to live nearly destitute, with a scarred little boy as their only companion. He looked up to her in an attempt to discern her thoughts, only to see that she was not looking at her portrait, but rather was staring out the window in the kitchen, her attention caught by something that lay on the other side of the glass. When he looked down again, a new picture was before him, Luka having pulled out another drawing from his collection. A port with numerous shipping vessels and burly seamen throwing ropes and crates about their vessels gilded the paper.

"Lookit," Luka leaned over the table, pointing to the charcoal water that caressed the parchment. "See? It's the Danube."

Hearing the young boy's confident voice surprised Erik. A good, strong voice, no longer quiet or insecure, resonated in his ears. Alexa looked from the window down at Luka, brought out of her daydream by his openness. She smiled to herself and gently placed a kiss atop his head. Good, she thought. We're getting somewhere.

Erik looked at the picture again. He could not place what part of the Danube it was, and took a guess as to where the picture was drawn. "Austria?"

Luka looked at the picture again. "No. This one was from when we were in Budapest, huh Neni?" Luka looked up to Alexa to make sure that she was nodding in agreement, and smiled back at Erik when she did. He pulled out another sheet, saying, "See, here's one from Austria." A landscape of a river and its coast flowed before him, flowers blooming on the shore as a small boat floated down the current.

"So it is." Erik smiled at Luka again, looking at Alexa for some sort of explanation.

"We passed through Vienna on our way to France." Alexa explained, seeing Erik's confusion.

"Yep, we went on a boat, huh, Neni?" Another nod from Alexa was his response, who had taken to looking out her window again. "We were on it for so long and Nagybácsi(1) László…" A loud bang ended Luka's sentence, and both he and Erik looked to Alexa for an explanation. But her thoughts had not been upset by the noise, her gaze never leaving the window.

Erik quickly glanced to the glass to see what had caught her interest, and saw that a tiny ashen bird had perched onto the windowsill, its body angled into the windowpane. It hopped about the sill, flapping one of its wings while the other dangled helplessly at its side. Broken, Erik thought to himself, seeing the distorted wing. It's as good as dead. But as he thought this, Alexa, her eyes never leaving the bird, slowly picked Luka up and set him on his feet next to the chair and stood up, touching Luka's cheek as she walked to the window. She pulled the edges of the frame upwards in slow, intentional movements so as to not startle the bird.When the window was opened, she reached her hand out, slowly, and cupped the bird in her palm. But rather than fighting her, the bird, a mourning dove, simply cooed in pain and allowed itself to be lifted into the warmth of her hand. Without saying anything to either Erik or Luka, Alexa walked across the kitchen, past the hallway and its frescoed walls, and into the farthest room along the left, all the while whispering words of comfort to the little bird.

The door was left slightly ajar as Alexa made her way through the room, and Erik could see that it was a bathroom, with nothing more than a sink and a large brass bathing tub. Upon seeing that she was coming back, Erik looked back down to the table, glancing at Luka, whose attention had never left the broken creature in Alexa's hands. She returned to the seat, a bundle of towels in one hand and the dove in the other. She looked at Luka and sat back down, allowing him to lean into her side to look at the bird.

"Be careful, he's very frightened right now." She watched as Luka gently pet the dove's little head, its eyes closed in response to the slight pressure.

His hand hovered over the bird for a few moments, then he withdrew, asking, "Is it going to die?"

"I don't know." She looked down at the shivering little body, gently lifting its wing and assessing the damage. She could feel its tiny heart hammering against her palm, and wondered how it had come to be so broken and alone. She looked over to Erik, who shrugged his shoulders slightly. Looking down at Luka, she smiled reassuringly. "It's up to him…it just depends on how hard he is willing to fight."

Erik watched in rapt attention as she gently wrapped the tiny bird in the tattered cloth of the towel, humming softly as she nursed the wounded creature. She would fold the corner of the towel over the bird's slight body, and rub gently, back and forth, back and forth, then take the towel away and replace it with her own hands, guiding her fingers around the broken wing. She looked up, and searched around the room, trying to find something that Erik could not guess at. Craning her neck to look behind her, she found what she was looking for and stood again, this time reaching with one hand into the cupboard to bring down a large glass bowl. She put the bowl onto the table and centered the little bundle, snuggling the bird in it tightly.

"What has happened to you? What brought you so far?"

Erik wondered the same about the woman before him. What could have happened to her that would bring her nearly a thousand miles from her home, with a deformed little boy as her only companion. Surely someone as beautiful as she had been given other opportunities in life. She could have discarded the child somewhere along the road, or even left him in Hungary. Why had she committed her life to one of servitude where anyone else would have fled the responsibility? He could not understand.

Erik returned to the stack of drawings before him. As he leafed through the pile, he came upon several pictures that were all of the same landscape; a small hill covered with wildflowers similar to those on the wall, with a small pond and meadow spreading out across its base. One right after the other, each illustration the exact copy of the one before it. The only thing that changed from picture to picture was the skyline. While one would show vast rolling clouds, another would illustrate an open sky, and there were several with a solitary, opaque orb centered in various positions across the heavens. Erik guessed that the latter of these were nightscapes because several minute specs marked the page, which he assumed to be stars. Try as he might, he could not understand the reasoning behind the repetitious behavior.

Turning to the pages after these, he looked down at the face of a woman whose acerbic expression and dejected eyes alarmed Erik. He wondered who this was, but as he stared at the page, he began to see a slight resemblance to Alexa. The facial structure was the same, except that this woman's face was rounder and not as lean. They shared the same cheeks, but where Alexa's eyes were bright and captivating this woman's were downcast and uninviting. Her forehead was lined with wrinkles and her lips were pursed into a thin frown. Sisters, maybe?

Slightly shaken by the stark contrast in the two women, he flipped through the remaining pages, eager to see what else he could discern about them. A sunflower, a butterfly resting on a rose wet with dew, and several more portraits of Alexa passed before him as he skimmed through the collection, looking for something out of the ordinary. He came upon another portrait, an old man with a full white beard and Alexa's benevolent eyes, smiling kindly up at him.

"Nagyapa.(2)" Luka whispered. Startled by the small voice beside him, Erik looked up from the drawing to find that Luka had lost interest in the bird and now stood next to him, staring down at the portrait with forlorn eyes that betrayed the sorrow that beat in his heart.

Alexa turned her attention slowly from the dove to Luka's crestfallen face, and without looking at the drawing immediately understood what had upset him.

"My father," she explained, looking into Erik's eyes with the same hurt that reflected in Luka's despondent stare. But in her eyes Erik saw anger and hate behind the grief, something that was missing in the little boy's gaze. Erik nodded in understanding and looked down to Luka once again. Tears had pooled in his eyes but he refused to let them fall, holding them back with the strength that Erik understood all too well.

The silence that followed was ended abruptly as Luka began to cough, and as his lungs fought for air Alexa held onto him, supporting his slight frame as the coughing assaulted his lungs. But his coughing did not desist, leaving Luka gasping for a breath that would not come. Alexa looked to Erik, who had been watching the situation helplessly. "Please, he needs water. There are cups above the sink..."

Erik quickly rose from the chair and filled a cup with water, giving it to the little boy. Not knowing what to say, Erik crouched next to the two of them, and watched Luka drink. Hesitantly, he moved his hand up to rest on Luka's back and began to rub it, soothing away the pain that was gathering in his chest. Alexa looked down at him and smiled, but Erik quickly turned his gaze away from her and back to Luka. The coughing had subsided, but his breathing was still shallow and forced.

Alexa moved her hand to his chest. "Are you okay?" Luka nodded in response, still unable to speak. "Okay. Come on, time for bed," Luka nodded as he drank from the cup, and after he had finished drinking he put it down on the table and walked towards the hallway. But before he got there, he stopped to look back at Alexa.

"I'll be there in a minute, darling. Go on, now." Luka remained where he was, and looked from Alexa and then up at Erik, who had stood up and was now hovering awkwardly behind Alexa's chair.

"Will you come back?"

Erik was taken aback by the question, not knowing what to say. He looked at Alexa, expecting to see her abhorrent reaction to her child's request, but found instead a smile beaming up at him, and the glorious sound of her whispered response.

"That would be nice."

Erik looked back at Luka, and forced a smile upon his determined lips, having no intention of keeping his word. "Of course I will."

Luka smiled, a bright and cheerful grin that eradicated any misconceptions about him. "Okay, then. Goodnight, Erik." He turned around to walk down the hallway, but stopped suddenly, and looked back at Erik again. His smile was gone, and he looked at him with what Erik understood to be worry; an apprehension that he would not return. Luka stood there, rooted to the spot for a few moments, working up the courage to bring himself out of his self imposed isolation. Then, without warning, he ran over to Erik and threw his arms about his waist, clinging to him with a desperate strength.

The shock of what happened stunned Erik and Alexa alike. Neither expected the little boy before them to do what he had just done, and both remained motionless in disbelieve. Alexa, the only person whom Luka had ever trusted, sat in shock at the bravery of the child who had never known a loving touch, a gentle caress save for hers. Erik, who had been forced to grow up when he was but a child, stood rigid with shock at the little boy latched to his leg in such an emotive fashion. He could not understand the reasons behind Luka's sudden display of sentiment, and did not know what to do. He looked at Alexa with shocked eyes, silently pleading for direction. But all she could do was stare back at him, her breath caught in her throat, too anxious to see what Erik would do to say anything. I have to know…If he does this, he does it on his own, she told herself. No more lies.

Erik slowly lowered an arm around the slight shoulders, patting them in comfort and uncertainty. Alexa sighed, and smiled apologetically at Erik, seeing that he was obviously not used to such affection.

She stood up and walked over to Erik's side. She paused, and allowed Luka the time to let go on his own. As he did so she reached down to offer him her hand, which he obediently took. She looked down at him and smiled as he looked back to Erik.

"Alright, little man, off to bed." Luka turned around, Alexa's hand guiding him away. She looked back over her shoulder at Erik, "Until next time, then?" He smiled, and she smiled back to him as she nodded. "Good. Please, wait here, I will be right back."

With one last glance from Alexa, Erik watched as they disappeared down the hall.

As soon as they had gone, he quietly opened the door and left, the echo of the dove's soft call deafening the sound of the door shutting behind him.

definitions:

1 Uncle

2 Grandfather