A/N: I am so sorry to have kept this so long. I have no excuses other than life getting in the way of, well, everything. This is going to be a short one, but I wanted to jump back in. I'm like that awful boyfriend who tells you he'll call and then keeps not doing it. Sorry. :(

They say things look better in the light of day.

They lie.

I woke up this morning and lay in bed for a moment, waiting for that sense of relief to wash over me, the feeling you get when you realize that it really isn't so bad, after all. Perhaps it was the night, you rationalize, or the brandy, or the exhaustion that comes from learning too much at once, but when you have some time to put it all in perspective, it's not really so bad.

I lay there for five minutes, then ten, waiting for that feeling to wash over me. It didn't come. The longer I stayed in bed, the more anxious I became. I felt trapped, like there was no place I could go that would put me far enough from this. I wanted to go downstairs, where Father was inevitably waiting, as I assume he spent the night, and confront him. I wanted to demand more information. And at the same time, I wanted to avoid looking at him for as long as possible.

How could she?

How could he?

How could he have kept this from me? I suppose many of my friends at boarding school were in similar predicaments, but their dubious paternity hardly held the ramifications mine did! Of course, my dubious paternity had also led to my success at music, the only thing in which I had found such a level of pleasure.

But what would I have done with the information? Honestly, what good could it possibly have done? I realized I really didn't care why Mother had gone back to that man. Le Fantome. I realized the friendship Father and Mother shared was just that, and nothing more, just like the hostility between Rosalind and I was just that, and nothing more, without even an underlying passion in the end to make the fighting that much more bearable. She had loved this other man more than she had loved my father, and the smaller details of how she managed to reunite with him, how Father could have let her go, how she could have behaved in a relatively obvious fashion, ceased to matter.

I knew that all that mattered now was getting out of Paris. And I knew where I would go. Perhaps running away isn't the best thing to do, but I wouldn't be running, not really, I rationalized. My work, my career, would bring me back to the city I so loved from time to time. All I would be doing was taking my son away from the environment that had almost killed him. It wasn't going to get any easier, I realized, as more people read what I could only assume was a pulpy venture into the world of grim histrionics. And I would be with the woman I loved. Mother would surely approve, I thought grimly. And my father - not Father - but my father, would surely understand as well. After what Father told me of Erik, I daresay he ran more than anyone else.

Of course, first my son had to live through the week.

Raoul

I'm a fool. I don't know why I thought this could stay a secret forever.

I wonder when I'll stop feeling guilty for one thing or another. For letting her go, for keeping her with me. For keeping her secrets, for upsetting the boy I raised. For allowing my grandson to be put through this misery because I was too weak to stop her, too prideful to tell the truth.

That's the problem with the theater - even a good play has to come down sometime, and then even the most elaborate, beautiful sets are reduced to something of little more value than common firewood.

I'm going back to London. It's time I stopped pretending Charles needed me and started understanding that whenever I try to do something, I cause more harm than good.

After Charles went to bed, I left for home, despite the early morning hour. I haven't slept yet, and it shows. I can't get away with that kind of behavior anymore, I'm far too old. Even when I was young, I was far too incapable of dealing with the consequences of my actions.
I should have let her go and never looked back. I should have done as my friends advised and married a pretty, rich girl with an established family and an empty head, a porcelain doll to dress up and take to parties and show off, someone who would have given me an heir and made my father proud. But I didn't, and I can't regret that. I love her.

With that love comes a guilt from which I cannot be free. I have a beautiful son, but I lied and cheated to get the honor to raise him. If I hadn't taken her then, if Erik hadn't died, how might it have been then? Would she have come back to me, a beautiful widow? Would she have had the audacity to ask me to have her?

I know the answer to that. She never would have dared. And I still would have moved heaven and earth to take her anyway.

I am too old for this. I imagine I am close to the age Erik was when he first fell in love with Christine. I can't imagine taking up with someone Charles' age right now, I'm far too tired. And yet, I'm in excellent health. I used to think it was morbidly triumphant that I had outlived the man who once all but swore he'd track me to the ends of the earth, and once again I realize how wrong I was. These thoughts play through my mind endlessly, moreso now that young Charles is so ill. But the doctors are hopeful, and I think he will be fine.

He has to be.

I've already started making arrangements, and as soon as young Charles pulls through, I will leave them to have as much of a normal life as possible. Perhaps Paris will be kinder to him than it was to his grandfather.