A/N: You know what guys? I'm rushing for some school camp now and I won't be around next week so I was nice enough to post a new chapter on Sunday LOL. Enjoy! I kind of don't have time to reply any of your reviews right now, so maybe when I get back or I'll just reply to the new reviews for the next chapter.

Thank you to those who fav/followed!

This chapter almost brought me to tears while writing it haha I hope you guys enjoy. I took many liberties with the story.

Chapter 37: The daroga and Reza

Paris, 1896

"Our story begins in the far off land of Persia," Erik began mysteriously, as though he were weaving a tale for Amélie to enjoy. "It begins approximately ten years ago, when a young man in search of a better future decided to try for a new life in a strange, exotic country.

I told you about my life in Persia, Amélie, did I not? I told you of the endless killings, the torture chambers, of my identity as the angel of death."

Amélie nodded her head. "I remember," she said softly. "You hated your time in Persia."

"Yes, yes I did." Erik said, his mind seeming to have travelled back into the past, into a distant country Amélie knew close to nothing of. " I hated it. In my time there, I had a sole companion, a single person I could consider a friend in that cold, unforgiving palace. I briefly mentioned him in my recount of Persia, discounted his role in my life far too much. That man was the daroga of Persia, and he is the very man you just saw moments ago in my house."

She tilted her head curiously. "The… daroga?" The foreign word felt strange on her tongue. "How did he know how to arrive at your house?"

Erik shrugged. "I know not how. The daroga, the police chief of Persia, will be visiting me again tomorrow to enlighten me. I told him that I was busy today and had no time to entertain his irritating questions."

Amélie opened her mouth, but Erik held up a hand. "And yes, before you ask, you may come down to visit when the daroga arrives, if only to sate your curiousity."

She grinned bashfully. "Why did you not simply meet with him today?"

"I did not like the idea of cutting our time together short just so I could spend time with that odious man," Erik informed her. "I value our time together, Amélie. They are the precious few moments I have to allow my tired mind to relax and rejuvenate. Now, may I continue with my story?"

"Oh," was the only word Amélie could think of saying, even though a warmth begin to blossom through her. He said he values our time together. He gave her a stern look, before continuing his story.

"As I was saying, in my time in Persia, the daroga was the only person I could call a friend. He was the one who had brought me to Persia, and he alone had known my fate, during our long journey to the palace. Perhaps he felt guilty, or even sorry for me. I do not know. I only know that I was… grateful for his presence. I do not think that I ever admitted that to him. His advice kept me alive in the harsh courts of Mazenderan, and his interference on my behalf saved my life many a time. In my time in Persia, I was drugged with hashish most of the time, though the daroga tried his best to remove the hashish from me whenever he could.

And whenever I was lucid, he brought a chessboard to my rooms, and forced me to play with him, to teach him the game. He had bought the chessboard from a travelling merchant many years back, but never had anybody to play with, nor any teacher to teach him how to play. He knew a little of the rules. It was tedious and tiring to explain the rules of chess and the numerous strategies while my mind was clamouring for more hashish, crying out for more of that blessed oblivion. And yet, he urged me to press on, to conquer the addiction. We talked about so many things, about anything under the sun that I could think of.

The daroga had one thing –or rather, one person—that he cherished the most in the world, his precious son Reza. The daroga's wife had died giving birth to Reza, and Reza was the daroga's only family. He brought me to see Reza, in the earlier times before the Sultana began to drug me with hashish. Reza was… not doing well. He was dying, wasting away from a degenerative disease that would eat away at his mind and his body. I had read about this particular ailment in one of the books from my extensive travels, but had never encountered it before.

When I saw Reza, I knew. The daroga himself knew that Reza was dying, and yet, every single day, he clung onto the minute hope that Reza would see the next sunrise. No doctor could help Reza.

Reza was… an animated child. His face used to light up whenever he saw me, and he would raise his arms to the best of his abilities – his illness affected his control of his movements— a welcoming gesture toward me. He would say my name as best as he could, garbling the word with the tongue that did not work like a normal person's did. Reza never questioned the mask on my face, nor what was beneath it. Perhaps he had too much on his mind, too much pain clouding his judgment to even care. I brought toys, little constructions that I made in my spare time to entertain him—music boxes that played a new tune each time he pressed the button, mechanic toys that clapped cymbals when he wound up the spring, and various other trinkets. If it brought him joy, I was more than happy to make it.

In time, Reza learnt to call for me, even if he was in pain. When he was shaking with the pain, his fragile limbs unable to move the way he wanted them to, my presence made him feel safe. I remember the daroga hastening to my apartments each time, still recall his thudding footsteps as he ran toward my door, the look of pure relief on his face when he realized I was not under the influence of hashish, because it meant that I would be able to give Reza some relief. I would travel with him, the short horse ride, to the daroga's townhouse, where I would administer Reza with a potion that would calm his tight muscles and soothe his pain. I knew a little about medicines, knowledge gleaned from gypsies and doctors I had met while travelling.

My potions could not cure Reza; they only alleviated the painful symptoms. We were both aware of that. And it hurt me, pained me so much, to see that little child, so full of life, slowly wasting away in a bed, when he should be enjoying the sunlight. Like me, he was forced to be cooped up in a dark room, with little companionship, hidden away from the world. I felt a kindred spirit in him. Perhaps he felt the same way, for he called for me far more often than he called for his own father. I often wondered if the daroga begrudged me the little attention his son could lavish on another person, but I know that the daroga loved his son far too much—if I could make Reza happy, so be it.

Over the years I spent in Persia, Reza slowly languished like a flower wilting in the shadows. Toward the end, he was barely awake. I tried to spend every moment I could with him, but more often than not, I was rendered barely conscious by the hashish. I regret that bitterly—if only I could have spent more time with Reza. I brought him all the toys he wanted, worked myself feverishly whenever I was awake to create new things to show to Reza, to attempt to tease back the smile that had once graced his small face. It worked, sometimes. His tired face would crease into a small semblance of a smile, and he would murmur my name before he fell asleep again.

The fact that his son's end was arriving soon broke the daroga's heart. I remember nights when I saw with him on the veranda, with the chessboard before us, the pieces laid out, but neither of us paying any attention to the game. He would talk about the cruelty of life, of the harshness of reality that would soon take his boy away from him. And I could do nothing, nothing at all, for the man who had shown me nothing but friendship, and the boy who had brought me nothing but joy. I was helpless."

Here Erik broke off, and looked down at his hands, as though he were remembering how helpless he had been, how useless those hands had been at that time. Amélie swallowed a lump in her throat, her eyes a little clogged from his story. She could only imagine Erik, so attached to a young child who he knew would one day leave him, and the pain he must have felt, to know that he could do absolutely nothing to save the boy.

"Did… did Reza pass away peacefully?" She asked cautiously, when Erik made no sign of continuing the story, so lost he was in his thoughts.

He looked at her, his green eyes stark in his face. "I killed Reza. In the end, I murdered the boy who had shown me nothing but love."

"What?" Amélie whispered. "No, you couldn't have."

He looked at her sadly. "If only I could agree with you, Amélie. If only I could deny what I had just said. I killed Reza with my own two hands, snuffed out the life in his small body as easily as one would snuff the wick of a candle.

There came a point in time when Reza was suffering too much. I hated to see the daroga, so deep in his misery, his face pinched with worry and despair, and I hurt, hurt so badly, to see Reza lying on the bed, barely able to move, speak, or eat, a mere shell of his past. I made a potion, a strong sleeping draught, if I may call it that, that would render the patient unconscious forever. Reza would sleep forever upon consuming that, his little heart beating no more within his chest. I gave it to the daroga.

The next time, when I visited him again, the potion still stood in the exact same spot that I had left it. The daroga did not have it in his heart to give it to the boy himself. I sat down next to him, and the two of us, we sat in silence for a while.

'He's suffering,' I told the daroga, and the daroga could only nod numbly.

'I don't want him to suffer any more, Erik. If only I could end his suffering by myself.' The daroga's voice was so sad, so pained, that it hurt me too. I did not know what to do.

And then a servant came to tell us that Reza had regained his consciousness, that he was calling for his father. The daroga leapt up so quickly, his face hopeful. He almost ran to Reza's chambers. I sat there, waiting for him, and when he came back, his face was bleak.

'He's dying,' he whispered to me. 'He is in so much pain. He asked for you, Erik.'

And so I stood, and I made the decision for the daroga. I took the bottle of the potion with me. The daroga looked at me—he knew what I would do with the potion. I thought I saw him nod slightly, heard him mumble 'do it, Erik.', but I could not be sure. I went to Reza's room.

The boy was lying in bed, pale and sickly, but he attempted to smile when he saw me. He opened his mouth to call to me, and managed to say my name before he relapsed into one of his coughing fits. I went over, and I presented to him a little tin monkey that I had made the night before. It was his favourite animal, and his eyes brightened when he saw it, even though he could not express his joy in any other way. He made a little movement, as though he were reaching for it happily, and I tucked the little monkey against his chest. He clutched it with all the strength he could muster in his arms.

'Thank you, Erik.' He whispered in his raspy voice, as best as he could.

I knelt beside him, smoothing the hair off his forehead. And slowly, knowing what I would soon do to him, I allowed myself to press a small kiss to his forehead. 'I love you, Reza,' I whispered softly. I had never said those words to any human being before, only Sasha.

His eyes brightened. 'Love you too Eri—', he managed to say, before coughing again.

I shushed him, and fed him the potion, my eyes tearing up with even painful swallow that he took. You see, Reza's disease caused him to have immense difficulty swallowing, and yet he still dutifully swallowed every drop of the potion, because I was the one feeding it to him, and he trusted me.

I stayed, waiting as his breathing slowed, and eventually, stopped altogether. There he lay, a small smile on his face, looking to the world as though he were merely sleeping. I wiped my eyes, and slipped out of the room. The daroga saw the empty bottle in my hand, and knew. He had no need to say it. I bowed to him, and left the house.

I never went back to the daroga's house ever again. There were too many memories there, too many things that reminded me of Reza. I heard from one of the servants that Reza had been buried with all the toys that I had made for him. At least he would be happy in the afterlife." Erik finished his story.

Amélie found it difficult to stop her tears from rolling down her cheeks. Erik looked at her blankly, as though he felt no pain, as though he had numbed himself so much that he could no longer feel the pain he had once felt for Reza. He reached out a hand and gently wiped the tears off her cheek with his thumb.

"Do not cry for this murderer, Amélie," he said softly. "I killed Reza, and I will never stop feeling guilty for that. I do not know if the daroga will ever forgive me for taking away the only thing he cherished in this world. And even so, he was my savior. He helped me escape out of Persia, at the expense of his own life."

He said it in a neutral voice, but Amélie knew he had never let go of the past. She got up from the divan, and shifted over to where he sat in his chair, sitting herself on the arm of the chair. Slowly, carefully, she leaned forward to press his head against her shoulder in a hug, her other hand landing awkwardly on one of his shoulders. She could feel his shoulder muscles tense, and she smoothed her hand over his shoulder blade soothingly.

"Erik, you did everything you could to ease his suffering. You were not at fault." She did not know if her words would be of any comfort to him; they felt like empty words to her. But she felt his hands move, felt them clutch her upper arms, holding her closer toward him as he pressed his face into the crook of her shoulder. The mask dug into her skin uncomfortably, but she did not care. It had to be pressing into his flesh more painfully than it did hers. She felt the wetness of his tears on her shoulder, and she patted his shoulder reassuringly, letting him cry.

He cried silently, tears that he had repressed since so long ago, the pain that he had felt from telling the story he had never told anyone in detail, not even Antoinette, in every tear he shed.

XXXXX

Later, as Amélie made her way through the opera house back to her dormitory, she pondered. Just when she thought she knew Erik, he had opened up a whole new side of himself to her, revealed something new about himself that she had never known before. Amélie had always known that he liked children; she sometimes spotted him smiling just a little as he observed the younger ballet rats playing. But she had never known that he had loved a child so much, back in his much hated time in Persia. It was the tender side of Erik that he rarely let others see. In Erik, Amélie saw a person who had so much to give to the world, so much love to shower upon others, and yet had had no opportunities to do so.

She wanted to be there beside him, to help him find the opportunity to lavish his love upon someone, to help him make new, happy memories that he could look back upon with happiness rather than tears.

And as much as Reza had loved Erik, Amélie realized, she had loved him too. The young Amélie-Rose who had roamed the opera house, hand in hand with her masked friend who had affectionately called her his little rose, had loved him too.

I think I love him.

A/N: See you all real soon! As usual please read/review/fav/follow. Hoping I survive at school camp! xx hazel