AUTHOR'S NOTE: Seems you all liked the two sleeping beauties g – and thanks for NOT reading any weird slash implications into it. I knew I had intelligent readers. ;)

The Next Christine: Now, now, I wouldn't consider myself an artist. I'm just a slightly morbid lad who needs to do something beside his law studies. Anyway, I can't yet tell you what Erik is going to do, I can't give out too many spoilers, after all. Yet Christine is his top preference; he'll rather have her than anybody else. It seems he might not get the chance, though, so he has started wondering… Feel free to e-mail me if you want to get to know me any closer, I answer every mail.

Nugrey: Yes, I like the ferret, too. I just wanted to make Maurice eccentric, and this is what I came up with. :) You're completely right about the perspective, of course, thanks for the tip.

Alisendre: You had coke in your nose? That once happened to me with lemonade, it was a bit embarrassing. lol My sister got a whole mushroom into her nose once because of a laughing fit, she beats all records. ;-) Yes, I'll make your favourite little Ghostie happy. Soon enough. ;)

The Musician of the Night: Yes, it's the swan bed, otherwise there wouldn't be any chance of squeezing in four characters at once. ;)

TheQueenSarah: You picked out the contrast I used precisely – the gentle glow of candles is opposed to the dark, yet all the same the cellars count as darkness – I have the imagery "pre-mirror" Christine's emotions. You see, I actually do some thinking while I write. lol I'm a cheese sandwich? Uh-oh, my mother might eat me now… g I don't know about "teh", except that I learned all about "teh hawtness" on PPN. ;) Sorry to continually mess up your life, but I just can't resist. ;-)

Bea: Elf-Squee, eh? lol Yes, I know, I'm being pretty cruel, no Meg POV yet and you're so eagerly waiting for it… There will be Meg chapters in the future, of course, though not until Book Four at the earliest, I'm afraid. I'm expanding Erik at Meg's cost, so to say.

Ashley: For the Holiday Special, I let myself be inspired by Terry Pratchett. Only that he is a lot better than me. Give him a try if you like humorous fantasy stories.

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VII. Promise me

Sitting at his organ as so often, the Phantom was busy working on his new opera. He was making good progress, in his own opinion, though he was not quite content with several aspects yet. However, there was time enough to change them until the new year, when he would have to be finished with it at the latest.

And time enough to work on his Requiem, too.

Putting his quill down, he read through what he had just been orchestrating, frowned and tried a few chords on the organ. Not that he needed it to hear what they sounded like – the music was there in his head, and he heard it as he wrote it – but he just liked to try out what he had written. Then he added a few notes in the flutes and crossed out another few in the clarinets. Much better. Orchestrating passages was quite a simple thing really, and rather uncreative compared to composing the actual melodies, yet at least he never had to rake his hands through his hair wondering what he should write next. Once he had the melodies, everything else was easy.

But that did not mean that the melodies did not come to him easily, too. Just not as easily as orchestrating was.

There were others who could not even do that, though. And Reyer said his orchestrations were among the finest he had ever seen, and that was saying something. After all, Maestro Reyer had been the Opéra Populaire's conductor for many years now, and many an opera had been performed under his skilled instruction and guidance. He knew what he was talking about.

Over at the table with the stage model, Raoul was thoughtlessly toying with some of the little figures the Phantom had made to fill it. At first the Phantom had been reluctant to let the boy touch anything, but since he had been here for over a week now and not yet broken anything, the Phantom had let him have the cardboard box with all the rest of the figures, too. There were so many, accumulated during all those long years he had spent living down here, and the box was hardly large enough to contain all the old ones anymore. Christine and Meg had been fascinated when he had shown them his collection, and so was Raoul, apparently. Yet there were two little dolls the boy would not find among the rest, two the Phantom had removed before letting the boy play with them: one of Christine and one of himself, both in their costumes for Don Juan. They were in the breast pocket of his robe now.

"How's it going?" Raoul asked casually after some time. Clearly he was bored, and clearly he was too lazy to get up and find something else to do.

"Fine, until you asked," the Phantom muttered, scribbling an alternate version above the trumpet part. That one might be worth some consideration, yet he could not quite decide just at the moment.

"Care for a game of cards?"

"No."

"Come on, don't be a bore."

The Phantom rolled his eyes. Little idiot! "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Don't you ever get bored?"

"No."

Raoul stretched, groaning noisily, then sighed. "Guess what? My parents are plotting something. But I don't know what it is."

"Really? That's fascinating." The Phantom did not interrupt his filling out a blank place in the second violins.

"You bet they are. But that's just what my mother is like. Never cross my mother."

"I know."

"You were one of very few she couldn't outstare yet."

"I won't let myself be outstared by a fop's mummy."

Raoul laughed. "No, I doubt you would. She's not particularly fond of you."

"Never expected her to," the Phantom muttered. He had seen Raoul's mother three times until now, twice at Raoul's place and once last week, when they had paid Chateaupers a little visit. A stern woman who did not like being contradicted. Somehow he wondered how she would get on with Claire Giry. Obviously she did not like mysterious masked men around her, but the Phantom did not care. Why should he? He did not see her that frequently, after all.

Raoul's father did not mind him much, though. A true nobleman, Vincent de Chagny was unexpectedly open towards everything all the same. He had been the first to say that he did not care whether his son married a countess or a young singer, and his wife had agreed soon enough, and at least she was very kind to Christine. But while the vicomtesse was highly suspicious of Christine's friends – especially of himself, the Phantom knew –, her husband never said anything. And when Christine had been brought here by Maurice, Raoul's father had agreed to this kind of safe-keeping straight away, quite the contrary to his wife, who had found it utterly unacceptable to make a young lady live underground with a… Well, she had not specified, yet the Phantom had a pretty good idea of what might have come had Christine and Maurice not been listening. Madman. Murderer. Monster.

"She doesn't mean it, though."

"What, those looks she keeps throwing me? Like I'm some misbehaving dog?"

Right on cue, Senta raced past the Phantom, chasing after a rat, which tried to flee into the water. But the dog did not give up the pursuit that easily, and soon enough she placed another limp, mangled form beside the Phantom's booted feet, wagging happily. Suppressing a sigh, the Phantom patted her head. At least she had brought her prey to him and not to Raoul, even though she actually belonged to the boy. But animals just tended to like him. Somehow they could feel that he was… different.

Still wagging, Senta sat down beside him expectantly, gazing up at him intently. One look into her pretty brown eyes told him what it was she was hoping for. It was there in her mind, right in the foremost place: image and smell of a biscuit.

"Have you fed the dog yet, kid?"

"In the morning, yes. She can have a biscuit, though, if she wants one."

"I daresay she does."

The peculiar thing about animals' minds, the Phantom thought as Raoul threw Senta a dry biscuit, which she caught in the air and crunched noisily, was that their thoughts and feelings were easy enough to understand, once you got used to the senses playing different roles. Smell and sound were very important, for example. Apart from that, they mainly thought in images. The whole structure was similar to a human's, though a lot less complicated. It was a straight, simple way of thinking, and not too difficult to understand with a bit of practice. And with some more practice, communication was possible – in images as well, and with memories of sounds and smells added for good measure. But once he had understood how it worked, he had mastered it easily enough, and animals understood him.

Or at least two of them did, Senta and his horse, César. With others, he had not experimented often enough, and rats hardly counted. Those minds were so small, so unbelievably simple while still being capable of some kind of thought, but they were different. Rats lived in a pack, it seemed, and sometimes the Phantom almost got the idea that the pack had some kind of collective mind, yet he was not quite sure, and rats had never drawn his curiosity much.

"Erik? About that girl…"

"What?" he growled roughly.

Yet Raoul would not be deterred. "That girl. At the Maxim. Don't think we haven't seen her. You spoke to her yesterday, and you did last week already. She's pretty, isn't she?"

"So what?"

He could be as unfriendly as he wanted, he noticed with annoyance, and still Raoul did not give up. "You'd rather have her than a courtesan, right? Because last week Lilie said –"

"I don't care what she said!" the Phantom snarled. "It's none of her business, anyway!"

Everybody else would have given up the topic, but the idiot actually insisted. "She said that one's a decent girl, Erik. That means she's not interested in –"

"Hold your tongue, or I'll come and rip it out personally!" He really would, if that fop boy said one more word!

Raoul held his hands up defensively. "Now, now, no need to take that tone! I was merely wondering –"

"About things which are none of your concern," the Phantom finished the sentence for him. "I don't care what you say, and I don't care what Lilie says, and I don't care what Leyla and Suzette say, either. Is that understood?"

"Erik…"

"Yes or no?"

Again the boy ignored the warning in the Phantom's voice, even though Senta heard it quite clearly and whined softly. "I can't see what's the matter with you. I only asked you about that girl, and you pretend I offended you or something." And not only that, but now a grin appeared on the boy's face as well. "Or are you so particularly interested in her that you take offence at the very mention of her?"

Rising from his seat, the Phantom walked over to the boy slowly. With another little whine, Senta edged away from him as he advanced on Raoul.

He had always known it: The dog was a lot cleverer than that silly lad.

Turning towards him in his chair, Raoul did not even rise. One arm over the chair's back, he looked up at him expectantly, and seemingly completely at his ease. Only a brief flicker in his eyes told the Phantom that in fact Raoul was nervous. So he was bracing himself for a face-off between them? Very well, he could have one if he wanted it so badly. "Now listen to me very carefully, kid," he growled, softly and dangerously. "When I tell you something is none of your concern, then I mean it, and you shut up about it and waste no more thought on it. Is that understood? Otherwise I might have to use… drastic measures."

The threat hung in the air heavily, almost material and tangible, like an ugly fat bat. Lowering his gaze, he boy swallowed and nodded. Had he understood at last? Perhaps the Phantom should enter his mind to teach him a lesson he would not forget too soon, like giving him the feeling his skin was on fire or falling off in strips or something similar; the possibilities were almost endless.

But no. The boy was more stupid than it should be allowed, but he could not just torture him. Before his inner eye, he saw Raoul in the place of that Communard Maurice had asked him about last week, that man he had killed in the street. He had not just killed him, but played with him as well, like a predator playing with his prey, and he had learned that whatever trick he performed on a victim, nothing would show when the body was found. Nobody would ever find out. It was only logical, but this was the first proof he had seen. Raoul thrashing on the pavement trying to scream, yet the connection to his voice was broken, and nobody would ever know that a million fiery needles were piercing his skin… No. Not Raoul. The Communards, any of them, but not Raoul.

"Erik…" The boy reached out towards him, but he took a step back automatically. Nobody had the right to touch him… except girls, that was, and girls only if he was in the mood. "Erik, I'm your friend…"

"No, you're not." He did not have to think to say it. It came to him all by itself. And not just because it was the little fop, but on general principle. He had no friends.

Sighing, Raoul got up from his chair at last and came straight towards him, taking him by the shoulder, and as he shook the lad off, he just gripped the collar of his robe more firmly. "No, listen to me." Those bright, honest blue eyes were holding the Phantom's gaze, and he could have taken over the boy's mind easily. "I don't care what you think. But for my part, I am your friend. And I don't give a bloody damn about whether you hate me or not. Because I understand. You tried to kill me, and I understand. Believe me or not, but while waiting to be sent forth to battle with my regiment, I wondered whether you were better off perhaps, away from the world, and I thought you weren't. I was. Even when sent to battle, maybe to my death, I was. Because I had lived under the sun and been happy, as happy as a man can be, and I had known love, and if I died, I knew I would be remembered with love. Whereas you spent a dark eternity alone. And then I came and took everything from you, even if I didn't mean to. I still don't mean to, but I love her as much as you do." He swallowed. "Don't hate me, Erik."

Swallowing in turn, the Phantom turned away. Why were his eyes stinging like that? How could he possibly be so pathetic? Suddenly he found that there was something much easier to say than he had expected. "I'm sorry."

"Already forgiven."

And Hell consume him, how could that boy be so pure, so good at heart? How could anyone, in that dark, cruel world?

This was the kind of man Christine deserved, not a foul creature from Hell as he was himself. A true angel.

Why did his eyes have to sting, curse them?

"And not just for Christine's sake," Raoul said behind him. "For your own."

The Phantom bit his lower lip. No, he was not going to be pathetic right now! "Are those the Christian virtues people are always going on about?"

"What? No. That's just me." Picking up one of the small model figures, Raoul twirled it between is fingers thoughtlessly. "It's not that they should not be respected and all; as a matter of fact, it's quite impossible for human beings to live together without values of some kind. It's just that… well, I'm getting a bit fed up with the Church these days."

That almost sounded like the boy had begun to see reason. The Phantom grinned; grinning helped against pathetic feelings welling up inside him, too. "Still the dogma of infallibility?"

"Mainly. But also some of those priests we had in the field. I feel they don't really care about God anymore. For some, it's just another job. I heard them talking among themselves; I'm not making that up. Or power." An expression of clear anger entered Raoul's youthful face. "I mean, why else would anyone proclaim he's infallible? Bloody pope wants to return to medieval times, if you ask me. Why else would he proclaim such a thing?"

The Phantom nodded. He had read about it in one of the papers Claire Giry had left lying around, and Claire had had to ask him what he was laughing about so hard. Throughout the whole rest of July and August, French newspapers had printed one furious article about the arrogance of Pius IX after the other, and it seemed that Germany was in an uproar as well.

Only that Germany was more busy with invading France at the moment.

"I mean, yes, it's only when he speaks in his function as pope, something like that," Raoul conceded, "but still, that one's a madman! He's against rationalism, too, which means he's against modern science and all. Just imagine! Serves them right we withdrew our men from Rome, in my opinion."

"They'll be overrun by those forces trying to unite Italy under one crown," the Phantom agreed. The Prussians had the same thing in mind, he suspected, to finally unite the German states to one. If they won this war, Prussia's dominant role among those states would become even stronger; that much was obvious even for someone who did not care about politics at all, like he did.

"Maybe he'll wake up and see reality, then," Raoul said grimly. "God forgive me for that talk, but it just disgusts me so."

"God doesn't hear you, kid," the Phantom stated, taking the small figure out of Raoul's hand before the boy could accidentally cause it any damage. It was a little ballerina in a thin blue dress, resembling Meg very closely.

"And God forgive you, as well," Raoul added. "Here, look, I found myself another pendant. A little act of rebellion against our field preacher, you might say."

"I know." It had not escaped the Phantom's notice that Raoul was wearing a small silver anchor on the thin gold chain around his neck now, instead of the little crucifix he had worn before.

"When you use a Christian interpretation, it's the symbol of hope."

"When you use a normal interpretation, it simply means you're a sailor," the Phantom grumbled. Why couldn't Raoul cease that Christian stupidity completely? It was pointless, after all. Love. Humility. Forgiveness. Mercy. For someone like him, they were only weakness. Yes, love as well. Love was making him vulnerable.

And redemption. Yes, grant me redemption, you sheep-brained hypocrites, and we'll discuss it.

And not even the men of church had accepted him as human, not even they, despite all their talk of mercy and love and all that, had been ready to help an outcast alone in a cold, empty desert. The only thing he had ever heard from them was that he should pray and seek God's forgiveness – for what he was, probably. As if it were his fault what he was. How he despised them!

"Good point," Raoul agreed, picking up another little doll. "Here, that's me! Why did you make a figure of me?"

"So I have someone to hang from the chandelier when I'm in a bad mood."

"Which is constantly," Raoul countered, giving the miniature chandelier in the model a gentle poke. "Why am I not hanging?"

"Oh, alright. I made it because Meg asked me to." The Phantom almost rolled his eyes. A silly request, but he had done so. As he replaced the little Meg doll on the table, a brief feeling of tenderness, of warm affection, passed through his awareness.

"And here's another little Christine." Raoul carefully placed his find in the line with the other Christine dolls. There were about twenty of them already.

Regarding the collection of little figures, the Phantom smiled. Out of the darkness, he had watched Christine's progress with fondness for many a year. There were several replicas of Meg as well, but not as many as of Christine.

And his secret favourite was still in his pocket.

"Can I ask a small favour of you?" Raoul suddenly said, his eyes still on the line of little models.

"What?" Not another attempt at getting him to play cards with the boy, hopefully!

"I want you to promise me something."

"Not before you tell me what this is about." He could have looked in the boy's mind, but that would have been a little boring, knowing everything before he was told.

"It's Christine." The lad took a deep breath. "Erik, if anything happens to me… will you make sure she is well?"

Oh, the silly boy! "You don't need to make me promise you that, kid."

"I know. But I want you to promise you'll be there for her. All the time. And…" Raoul licked his lips nervously. "And to take her back. Not to bear any kind of grudge against her because she wanted to marry me."

The Phantom sighed softly. There were wounds, it seemed, which never truly healed. Months had passed, and still his heart was bleeding at the memory of that moment when Christine had come back for a little while, to give him her engagement ring to remember him by. When he had understood that this was good-bye forever, that his rising hope had been in vain, he had truly thought he felt his heart break. And it was bleeding still. It would never stop bleeding, not even in those moments when Christine took him in her arms and he rested his head against hers. He would always see her go that final time.

"Erik?"

"No, not necessary, either." His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. No, how could he harbour any grudge against her? How could he ever? He loved her, an unhappy, desperate love, a love doomed from the very beginning, but he still loved her. He drew his strength from her, his courage, his will to live. She was in his mind always, the awareness of her without which he knew he would feel more alone than he had ever felt in all his lonely life. Once he had hoped that she would give him light after his empty darkness, but she had cast him into a deeper darkness, and only her presence in his head saved him from wasting away, from dying of his own bleeding heart.

How long could a heart bleed until it was bled dry? How long could a heart still beat that had lost all strength to beat?

"I still want you to. Please. To step in when I'm not there anymore. To take my place when I die."

Oh, all those times she had searched the list of the dead and wounded and of those missing in battle, all those times when deep down inside him a tiny hope had risen… And how he had hated himself for it, every single time. Scavenger, waiting to take a dead man's girl…

He tried not to listen to the mourning song of a single violin in his head.

"Erik, please. At least I'll die in peace if it should come to that, knowing you'll be there to love her as I did."

Turning, the Phantom faced Raoul fully, and their eyes met. In the soft candlelight, Raoul's eyes looked darker, of a deeper blue than they seemed in the light. And behind them, a feeling of sadness, of loss, but still… of hope. For Raoul, there always was hope, even in the face of death. It was there in his head, not concealed at all. The boy had looked death in the eye, and he was not afraid. A lingering sadness there was, the grief of parting, but still, there was the belief, no, the knowledge that he and those he loved would be reunited again under another sun.

Hope, hope in the face of utmost darkness. There was nothing those honest eyes would ever hide.

Wordlessly, the Phantom nodded, and equally wordlessly, Raoul nodded in turn. At this moment, they did not need words to understand each other. "Thank you," the lad whispered, quite unnecessarily, for it was written in his eyes as well.

Senta was lying on the carpet nearby, watching them, and there was trust in her eyes.

"Do you know what it's like," Raoul said softly, "to see men dying around you, good men, men you have known, to see them dying and know they have gone forever from this world, just as simply as that? And then you wonder why death takes them and not you, and around you your world is crumbling, and you feel like this is the end, the end of ages, of time itself, and still the sun is shining on you and you can't understand why…" He swallowed. "Because the sun will always shine. The sun does not care."

"And you wish it would fall from the sky and set the world on fire," the Phantom continued quietly. "You wish for it all to end so you don't have to bear it anymore. And in this moment, the thought of immortality holds nothing but despair."

"How do you know?" Raoul seemed surprised, but at the same time his eyes said that somehow he had expected this… somehow he had hoped for this. "You've never wandered aimlessly over a battlefield, bidding a silent last good-bye to those you knew. I told Christine, and she listened, but she did not truly understand, not all of it. But you… you do."

"Yes. I do." His heart was heavy as he said it, heavy with a memory that was not his own. He refused to let it be his own.

There was a question in the boy's eyes, a question he did not want to see, and still it was there, and it would not go away. "Tell me," Raoul said gently.

It was nothing more than a dream, even if that dream was a recurring nightmare so intense as he had never experienced it before. But at the same time, it was more. It was so much more.

He spoke quietly, and Raoul listened, without asking a single question, though the Phantom saw many fleeting through his mind. As the boy placed a hand on his shoulder, he did not shake it off.