Welcome back! Thank you so much for your comments on Dress Hem last week! This is another very small addition to the Scrapbook, a piece written for a challenge. I don't, in any way, "ship" the Phantom and Daroga together, a pairing nicknamed "pharoga"...but this little story is what appeared. The next two pieces will be longer, I promise, and after that I will start posting my modern AU piece.

Please read and review! 3

~R

Regret

2016

I watched him go off with the Persian again and knew they would spend the evening in the underground house, as I once did, playing chess or cards, perhaps smoking that evil-smelling pipe, or talking late into the night hours by the fire over tea and brandy, and my heart twisted again in my chest.

Gently, so gently he had put me from his life, and though I came back again and again, full of regret and pain and sorrow, he had moved beyond me, to a place I could not now reach. Bereft of company, alone in the dark, I had destroyed him, destroyed what little chance of happiness we might have had, and being Erik he would give me no more opportunity in which to hurt him.

He had given me his music, his heart, his world, and I had forsaken him utterly.

The Daroga had tended his injuries, the broken fingers, the cracked and broken ribs, the bloody wreck of his face, had gazed upon him with an openness and compassion I could not, in my callow weakness and youth. It was the Daroga, who, once again, held the pieces of his shattered soul together long enough for them to heal, a cracked and flawed instrument, but still of staggering beauty. One could look beyond the damage and see what he might have been, if only…if only.

He had never been like other men, and perhaps this latest realization brought some measure of acceptance. I could not fault him that, no…I had made my choice, too, only now I saw with clear eyes, the shadows gone, what I had lost.

I do not know what passed between them; perhaps I did not wish to know, and surely others would have found it morally repugnant or sin. In a way I did not care, for Erik was always a law unto himself. In a way I was truly happy for him, that in the Persian's company he had finally found some measure of peace and comfort.

But oh, how I would always grieve for myself, for the what might have been.