Disclaimer: I don't own Phantom, Corpse Bride or any of the work belonging to a certain man who wrote about a certain code by a certain strange, scary genius.

I feel I just have to say it, if only once.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

In other words, I've seen it.

Whee.

All right, enough excitement; on with the story. Hooray for Richard III, although he's not in this chapter. And Danny Elfman. And Corpse Bride. And roller coaster water rides in gondolas. And Corpse Bride. And all Phantom writers. And Corpse Bride. You can tell I like the film, don't you?

Oh, yeah…quite a lot of this chapter is rather angsty. And brutal. And eventually, you might want to just castrate the person who caused all the horror and blood and suffering.

So, yes. Enjoy.

Suffer the Children

'Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you that whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.'

Mark, Chapter 10, verses 14-15

Jacques crashed over the top of the bar, landing on the other side with a loud crunch of breaking glass. He looked up at Erik, shocked and more than slightly bewildered.

"What was that for?"

But Erik was already turning to run, to run after her, to try to explain. Something akin to a pulse was beating in his brain; he was dimly aware that it was horror.

What must she be thinking?

"Be glad I don't have time to deal with you as you deserve!" he shot back over his shoulder, as he pushed his way through the shocked onlookers and clambered up the stairs.

Christine! Christine, come back! Come back!

He hauled himself up and out into the street, just in time to see a figure in billowing red streaking away along the pavement, the cloak billowing out behind, brown hair flying. At once he was off the stairs and running after, feeling his own cloak tug and stretch at his shoulders, gaining ground with every step.

"Christine!"

If she heard him, she paid no heed, instead her speed seemed to increase. But he did not tire, his muscles no longer needed to rest nor complain, and in an instant he leapt forward and grasped her outstretched arm, pulling her back roughly to face him.

At once her other arm hit him across the face. He felt no pain, but his ears shrank at the sound of her shrieks, high and tearing in their accusation, and his eyes were scarred with the sight of hers, wild with anger and shame and horror.

"How could you let them do that? How could you? They were all staring at me and leering – and you, you just sat there and let them sing-"

"Christine!" he hissed, pulling her more violently to him, trying to calm her, while not feeling at all tranquil himself. "Christine, I didn't know Jacques was going to do that, I swear, I swear it, I had no idea…"

She looked up at him, calmer now, but her eyes full of hurt and pain. "But why…" she muttered, and then suddenly slumped forwards in his harsh embrace, her reproaching eyes – to his relief - closing, if only for the moment. It would seem her long time without sleep was beginning to tell on her after all.

He couldn't stay here; not with an unconscious Christine in his arms, and a pub-ful of curious people sure to be advancing even now to find out the cause of his outburst, in the middle of a street of the City of the Dead. But he couldn't take her back to the lair, either, it was too far, and risky with her unconscious, and he needed somewhere close, near at hand…

The irony of the situation hit him, as he groaned and concentrated with desperation flooding through his mind – though also a little sinful pleasure at holding Christine so close, as he had not done so for so long.

In a moment, the scenery around them had changed; they were still in the city, but in quite a different street, in one of the quieter areas of the city – opposite, in fact, from a quietly ornate door in the wall of a simple, whitewashed building, in sharp contrast to some of the architecture around it.

I can't believe I'm doing this, he thought, as he advanced to the door, and, cradling Christine easily in one arm, rapped on the wood of the door with his left hand.

Almost at once, it seemed, the door was pulled open slightly, and a little face peeped around it and up at him, with wide brown eyes.

He forced a smile to his lips, however little he felt like smiling at the moment.

"Hello, Ayesha. Is Nadir in?"

Her eyes opened suddenly, in a memory of horror and mortification at what she could recall so far, and her mouth opened to yell – but then she realised that the eyes staring back at her were deep brown, not yellow, so brown they were almost black; but at once they were gone, and she was left staring up at yet another unfamiliar ceiling.

She was lying on a bed, she could feel, a rather comfortable one – but she was tired of waking up on her back in odd, strange places, because of Erik. Erik! If he was here, she would give him such a hiding he'd wish he'd stayed dead; or deader! Sucking air into her lungs, she pulled herself up into a sitting position, aware at once of two things; one that she was in a light, airy bedroom designed much more with a child's pleasure than seduction in mind, and two, that the child for whom the room had probably been designed was standing not two paces away, watching her just as warily as she herself felt at the moment.

She was a pretty little girl, was her first thought. She didn't look as if she could be older than eight or nine; probably Arabian or Middle Eastern. Her eyes really were lovely and lustrous, and her heart-shaped face implied that she could have grown to be really beautiful, if only the time to do so had been granted to her – but the barely concealed gash in her throat (Christine hardly started when she saw this, she was so used to the macabre by now) stated plainer than any words how that had not been allowed to happen. She was dressed in a soft pink long sleeved tunic and trousers, and her hair was plaited with matching pink ribbons; she looked very sweet indeed, but however pleasing she was to the eye there was also something slightly wrong about her – as if that infantile sweetness had been affected in some unseen way, which nevertheless had stuck.

The two stared at each other for a few moments. Then she, feeling she had to say something, spoke. "Hello." At once she cursed herself for being stupid, since what were the odds that the girl would actually speak French? But she was surprised the next instant when her strange companion replied in slightly clipped and soft but perfectly clear French: "Hallo."

She sat up further. "What's your name?" she asked softly, since she had sensed perhaps even before the girl had spoken that she was extremely shy, and it had taken all of her courage to speak.

It seemed at first that the girl had exhausted her courage, but she seemed to surprise even herself as she uttered, "Ayesha." She drew back a little from the bed.

"That's a lovely name." Christine swung her legs over the side of the bed, and her bare feet touched the marble floor, which was surprisingly warm. She couldn't help looking around, expecting some, any, sign of Erik. But the only people in the room appeared to be her and Ayesha, who was smiling shyly.

"Is Erik around?" she asked, tentatively now. Ayesha shook her head so hard that her plaited hair whirled around her head.

"Oh, no! Erik has gone out! We are in my bedroom! Erik asked me to watch over you until you woke!" Suddenly the little girl darted forward, and clutched at her hand; her fingers felt like butterflies wings brushing her skin. "I'll show you! Come and see!"

Her evident eagerness was so infectious that Christine let herself be dragged off the bed to be shown around the room like a visitor to a grand mansion. She hadn't had much contact with children over the years, but that didn't mean that she was averse to being shown the little treasures that the child had accumulated in her time here – it helped her keep her mind off other things, like the rage that boiled inside her at a certain masked corpse who had evidently run away…

Ayesha, who seemed to have now quite overcome her shyness of this new, grown up lady, pulled her over first to a row of dolls that were arrayed on a miniature sofa, with truly beautiful silken clothes and calm, seraphic expressions; after these were duly exclaimed over – with some real delight, rarely in her childhood had Christine ever owned anything quite this fine – and the favourite one's hair and clothes were admired, she was then gently dragged over to a bookcase crammed with leather bound books, filled with fables and fairytales enough to delight any child.

"You are a very lucky girl," Christine said, sincerely, as she crouched down – another action her new dress allowed that her old costumes did not – to examine the names of the books, "to have so many lovely things."

"I know," Ayesha replied, hugging Fatima, who had seen fit to accompany them from the settee, to her chest. "Nadir is very kind to me. He gave me all this."

Nadir? Christine sat upright, recalling the name of the intruder to the lair, with the slit throat. If she was in Nadir's house – one who wanted to return her home – what could this mean? Perhaps he can help me!

To hide her sudden confusion, she asked swiftly, "Is Nadir your father?" She had doubts on that; from what she could remember of him the two did not resemble each other in many ways – apart from the obvious one – but there was no harm in asking.

Ayesha shook her head. "No. I never had a father." She suddenly looked very lost and alone, standing there clutching her doll to her.

I shouldn't be doing this, Christine thought; but unthinkingly she asked "Don't you remember your parents? Before…" she could not bring herself to speak the words. Did the little girl even understand what she was now? Did she know what 'dead' meant?

"I never had a mother or a father," Ayesha said flatly; but before Christine could apologise she went on speaking. "I can't remember them. But I can remember him."

"Him?" The look in the girl's eyes was starting to unnerve her. She seemed to be looking right through her.

"The man. The bad man." She's shaking, she thought dumbly, as she could do nothing but stare. "The one who hurt me."

"Hurt you?" Instinctively Christine reached out to her, but at once Ayesha flinched away. "What…what did he do?"

"He…he…" Ayesha was now visibly trembling. "He made me lie on my back and he tore me inside. I could feel things inside me break. And then there was sharpness…"

Oh, God. She sat back on her heels, speechless. Now she knew just how Ayesha had been 'hurt'. Oh, oh God.

Ayesha suddenly looked at her, and she flinched away herself at that gaze, that trembling, inquiring gaze, that seemed to cut and tear and hold inside her very soul. "What did he do to me?" she asked, in a small voice. "Do you know what he did to me? Why will nobody tell me?"

"Ayesha!"

Both of them jumped, and looked over to the door, where a figure Christine remembered all too well was standing, his gaze fixed on them. "I'm back, Ayesha! Would you like some almond cakes?"

At once Ayesha gave a squeal of joy, and dashed off across the floor towards the door, her former horror seemingly forgotten. Christine rose rather more slowly, not taking her eyes off Nadir. As Ayesha met him by throwing her arms, complete with doll, around his waist, he gave her a wan smile.

"Would you care to join us, Mademoiselle Daaé?"

The coffee, served in strange cups that were hard for Christine to handle, was not at all like coffee she had tasted. It had a different taste altogether, but she was tired of discerning all the things that were different here. Everything was different. She was sitting drinking coffee with a foreign spirit, in a pillared marble garden deep under the earth, with artificial flowers and trees.

Yes, everything is different.

She watched as Ayesha sat on the steps that led up to the pavilion Nadir had led her to and which they were at the moment sitting in, a little way away, holding an empty cup to Fatima's lips, and alternately feeding her crumbs of almond cake and some sort of mixture made partly of honey and pistachios, called gaz. She chattered to the doll happily, as if they were the only two people in the room, and as if Fatima was really alive…

"She told you, then?"

She dragged her eyes away from the little girl to look at Nadir, who was holding a coffee cup of his own, but making no attempts to drink it. His jade green gaze was disconcerting, and she had to work hard not to let her eyes wander to his slit throat, which both attracted and repelled her gaze.

"It was confused, but…I have an idea."

"So do I." Nadir looked at Ayesha for a moment, then back at her. "What was your idea?"

"Why should I tell? You already seem to know."

He sighed, placing his cup back down on the marble table. "You are shrewd, Mademoiselle. Very well then, I will tell you. From what I was able to gather and fathom, Ayesha was sold by her parents when she was very young indeed, to be trained as an odalisque – a concubine, a legalised kept woman, if you will. She was intended to be a tool of pleasure, when she was grown."

Christine had to put down the hot coffee, her hand was shaking so much. "That's…that's horrible."

"An ancient custom, Mademoiselle, and one that probably continues even now. I believe that practise is not unheard of in France," Nadir said smoothly.

"But to be sold into it, so young!"

"I am not saying it was a pleasant custom – or a pleasant fate." But the merest tremor came into his voice, as he continued. "Unfortunately for Ayesha, it would seem that someone was not willing to wait that long. First he…used her for his own pleasure, and then…he used her again. In a different way." The dead man's eyes now looked agonized. "The ultimate submission."

"I am sorry monsieur, I don't understand you." But she had an inkling that she did, from the tales she had heard whispered in the kitchens, and she was thoroughly appalled, as she looked again at the sunny little girl, making the doll 'dance' now that she had finished feeding her. The horror was slowly freezing through her veins. What must such an ordeal have done to her?

"Of that I am glad. But he was not finished," Nadir said, even more softly, however much she willed this to end, to finish. "I know that, at the height of his own pleasure, he…well. You can see what he did." He gestured to his own throat. "It is called Ghayat assa'adah. The ultimate pleasure."

Oh my God! Christine half shot up, slamming her fists into the table in fury, knocking over her chair. "That…that foul…that evil…how could he do such a thing? How could he?" She could feel the tears beading at the corners of her eyes; feel the disgust and horror that such a wicked sin could be committed. She was just a girl. A girl. And to do that…to use her in that way…that was the most terrible thing that could ever be imagined, the worst crime that could ever be conceived.

"Please – Mademoiselle!" Nadir put his hand on her arm, pulling her back down, slipping her chair back under her, holding her gently by the wrists. "Please, you'll frighten her." He smiled reassuringly at Ayesha, who was looking scared by her outburst, before turning back to her, as she breathed deeply to calm herself. "But I understand your rage. When I discovered Ayesha, when I found her shrieking in some corner of this realm, driven insane – her very soul gone mad with what had been done to her – when I learned what she had endured, all unknowing, I felt the same as you. I wished then, more than ever, that I could be alive again, if only to go after the one who used her in such a way and make him suffer for it before he died."

"But you couldn't."

"I couldn't. So instead, I took her in." He looked again at his little charge, playing again with her doll. "I helped her to recover, however long a period of time it took. She doesn't really understand what happened to her, and I try not to bring it up. I try to keep her happy, and it seems that she is happy."

"And so are you."

He was unabashed. "You are very shrewd, Mademoiselle Christine. Yes, I keep her beside me because she makes me happy as well. When I was…alive," he faltered only a little at the word, "I had a young wife, who was pregnant. But I was killed, murdered, before our child was born." The sadness in his eyes was like a knife in the heart. "I never knew what happened to either of them. I have never found them. I like to think that, I f I had had a daughter, she would have been as sweet and brave and kind as Ayesha. Erik loves her as well, as well as he can love anything."

The silence that followed was suddenly very acute, especially with Ayesha's happy play dropping into it like a stone. To break it, she asked hastily, "And where is he now, Monsieur?" She still felt anger towards him, of course, but he really was the only person she knew in this strange, mysterious place – and the only one wit ha true, corporal form, no matter what she felt towards him at the moment.

Or what I want to do to him.

"I do not know. But I believe he will be back soon."

"Oh. Thank you."

She was fully aware of Nadir's look of pity as she turned away from the table, and her mainly untouched coffee and cakes. Somehow, she found her steps drawing her towards Ayesha, now hugging her doll.

How can I approach her, now? How can I think around her, when all I can think of is what has been done to her?

By now she had reached the little girl, practically looking over her shoulder. Ayesha, aware of her presence, turned around to smile up at her, no remembrance of horror in her face anywhere in her sunny little face. It was almost frightening, but at the same time…slightly reassuring.

Christine, however, was more and more withdrawn. She could think of nothing, nothing to say, except, "Fatima is really very pretty." Weak!

Ayesha nodded eagerly. "She is." She paused, before adding shyly, "But not nearly as pretty as you."

She felt herself smile, as she sat down beside her. "Oh, I'm not really that pretty." Behind her, she heard Nadir's footsteps clip away across the marble floor, moving away from them.

"Yes you are," Ayesha said stoutly. She paused again, before asking, matter-of-factly, "Are you Erik's bride?"

The question caught her completely off guard. "What! No! No, of course not!" came out before she had time to think. Ayesha's quiet stare very swiftly calmed her, and she had time to think of her next words. "What makes you say that."

"Because whenever he speaks of his bride, his eyes light up, though they hardly ever do otherwise. But when he looks at you, his eyes light up all the time." Ayesha stroked the hair of her doll, thoughtfully.

"Well, I'm not Erik's bride," Christine stated firmly, to get the point home. Nip this in the bud!

"Oh." Ayesha seemed to think for a moment, and then looked up at her again. "Are you going to be Erik's bride?"

Of course not. Never. Why should I be? I'm already engaged. I have a fiancée. I couldn't marry him…

These were all things her mind shouted out, or at least one part of it.

To her own deep surprise – and perhaps the tiniest part of satisfaction – her lips said, "Perhaps."

Ayesha nodded again, more sedately this time. "I thought you might be."

I got the whole idea of Ayesha's fate from Dan Brown's Angels and Demons – quite a good book, better I think than The Da Vinci Code – if you want to know what the 'ultimate pleasure' is, read the book, because I'm not sketching it out for you.

I'm reaaaaally sorry I haven't updated for so long, but I reckoned without the school work. Consequently this is rather rushed; I just wanted to get Ayesha introduced and everything, so apologies if it's not up to your usual standard. I may edit it later on; if I have time.

Also, I'm aware of the fact that quite a lot of my chapters have been Christine centred, whenever we're down in the underworld. So, next chapter – or maybe the chapter after that, depending on whether we're going back up to the surface or not – I promise a whole chapter (and hopefully a fairly long one) narrated entirely be Erik! Which will be a first, I think.

Until then, my loyal reviewers, so long until next crime!

Reviews for the half-Irish seamstress!