If Erik weren't so gravely concerned, he would have found it terribly amusing how beautiful the Italian language was even as Gaia displayed the most wretched portions of her vocabulary. After being repeatedly chased out by the midwife, Erik confined himself to the study to sit at the piano, plucking away gently at the keys, too distracted by the sound of his wife's screams and wild cursing from the room just upstairs to play anything of substance. For nearly twenty hours now, Gaia had been in labor. Erik's nerves wouldn't allow him to sleep even during the breaks in Gaia's fussing. He kept waiting, distracting himself as well as he could but still on edge, desperate for the event to be over.
It was all Gaia could do not to damn her husband to hell for putting her in this condition. She spewed every nasty phrase she knew violently at the midwife, who seemed shocked by such a tongue on a well-to-do young woman; normally those sorts of insults were thrown out by sailors' wives, not the wives of wealthy young architects. After hours upon hours of pushing and so much pain Gaia was sure she would faint, there was a sudden release of the pressure on her pelvis, and a yelp of fear from the midwife before the room became eerily quiet. The older woman crossed herself and backed away from the child, not daring to touch it; this… thing could not be the work of God.
Gaia breathed heavily from the bed, light headed from pain and lack of food or sleep but sharply aware of the sudden change in the woman. She sat up against her pillows, and immediately saw what had put the woman on edge; there at the foot of her and Erik's bed was a bloody, writhing pink mass of flesh with Death's face, gaping as if for breath but not uttering a single cry. In weak but driven by panicked instinct, Gaia grabbed her son and patted him on the back in a desperate attempt to get breath in his lungs. "What do I do?" She demanded of the woman, crying. "Why won't he cry? Please, tell me!"
The sudden quiet followed by shouting from upstairs sent Erik hurtling up the steps two at a time, bursting into the room. He was met with the sight of the midwife cowering against a wall, staring shocked at the pink mass in Gaia's arms. Tears were streaming down Gaia's cheeks, "Erik I can't get him to breathe, how does he breathe?" Quickly Erik pulled the boy from Gaia's hands by the foot and gave the newborn a firm slap on the rear. In a moment the child coughed and cried, a surprisingly sweet, melodic sound, much more tolerable than the screams of Gypsy newborns Erik had heard once or twice in his youth. Gaia sobbed gratefully and reached out to take the boy from her husband, who deposited the pink mass of flesh into his wife's waiting arms.
Erik turned upon the woman in a frightening rage. "What the hell is wrong with you, Signora? Your job is to see to my wife and the baby, not stand there like a slack jawed idiot!" The woman covered her mouth in fright, suddenly realizing why the man must wear a mask, mind filled with visions of a larger skull like the one on the newborn she had just delivered.
"His face, Signore… his face…" was all she could muster, quickly pushing past the man to run down the stairs without collecting the second half of her payment Erik had promised her upon the safety of his wife and child.
In his haste to get the child to breathe Erik had not seen the boy's face, only his backside. He whirled upon Gaia, who was sobbing quietly on the bed. Erik stood frozen as he watched his wife gently clean the boy with the blanket the midwife had kept at the foot of the bed to catch the baby. He could only catch a glimpse of the boy's deformities from where he stood; thin, nearly translucent skin about the face, with a mop of dark hair unnaturally hollow cheeks for a newborn and deep set eyes. Gaia cradled the baby carefully, almost as if she were afraid she would break him. Gently she placed a kiss on his ugly little forehead. "Oh my poor, sweet baby boy…"
Erik came to the quiet realization that Gaia wept from grief, not from fear or disgust. He watched in fascination as she drew the child to her breast and the writhing newborn became quiet and still, suckling hungrily. Gaia's sweat-drenched brow furrowed at the sensation, and she watched her child for a moment before looking to her husband tearfully. "Erik… I'm so sorry," she sobbed. "so, so sorry…"
Finally Erik found his legs and moved into bed to embrace his wife as tight as he dared with their child between them. Gaia wept into his neck, utterly exhausted by past day. "I'm the one who should be sorry. Any child of yours should have been perfect," Erik frowned under the weight of his guilt; the newborn certainly had not spontaneously developed such horrible deformities, not when they so neatly matched his own. What made him feel worse still was that in spite of his guilt, Erik felt and odd mix of jealousy for the boy, and immense love for his wife.
Not once had his mother drawn him to her breast. Not once had she wept for his fate and not her own. She had never been able to love him as immensely as Gaia already loved her son, in the eight years that Erik lived under his mother's roof. For that reason, Erik resented the boy. He shared Erik's deformities, but would never face the same level of stress Erik had been put through since birth because of them. At the same time, Erik had never been more in love with his wife than when she drew the boy to her breast, weeping out of relief for his life and grief for his future. She was a singularly remarkable woman, Erik knew, and he would be damned if he let any harm come to her, God's will or not. He'd sooner sell his soul to the Devil than see such a remarkable woman fade away, he decided quietly.
Gaia took a shaky breath once she was too tired to cry anymore. Erik brought her a fresh blanket to wrap their son in once he seemed finished suckling. The new mother wrapped her son gently, watching as his thin little eyelids drooped closed. The poor child had no idea what a difficult life he had in front of him, if Erik's was anything to show for it. Gaia loved her husband dearly, but she knew his face was the root of the things she didn't love about him, like the ease with which he talked about killing, or his sudden mood swings. Erik had told her much of his past, and all of the horrible parts (which was most of it) came as a result of his ugliness. She had never once given any thought to Erik's fear that their child would look like him; she had figured his face was simply a fluke, a fear that could be easily dismissed based on logic; his parents had been attractive, he had mentioned once, but Erik was certainly not attractive in the vain sense. Why should there be any thought that his face could be given to a child, if he didn't receive it from his parents?
Clearly, her logic was flawed. Gaia stroked the boy's thin little cheek moving to a rocking chair to allow Erik to change the bedding. She couldn't take her eyes off of the boy… she felt wretched, imagining him as she had seen in her dreams, with full cheeks and large, bright eyes. In her mind their son had been a perfect cherub, as picturesque as any Renaissance painting there ever was. What had she or Erik done that had been so wretched as to curse their son? They had waited until marriage to have sex, they were married by a proper priest, albeit not in a church. Was that it perhaps? Or perhaps their lovemaking as God made them, and not mostly covered by clothes? Yes, perhaps lust was their crime…
Erik helped Gaia back into bed, making sure her weak legs wouldn't give in while she was holding the baby. He interrupted her quiet thoughts, climbing into bed next to her. "You were right about his gender," he offered quietly, trying to ease her upset.
"I was. Woman's intuition I guess," Gaia remarked quietly, looking to her husband. "We need to name him. We should find a priest…"
Erik shook his head, firmly. "No priests. We don't need to christen him under any church," he stated firmly, but made no remark as to a name; he had thought to name the boy Giovanni after their father, but it seemed so inappropriate now.
"What about a good Roman name?" Gaia suggested, "Adrian, perhaps? Julian? Or Antony? Maybe Ignatius…"
"I do like Adrian. And it's not unfitting; we're not terribly far from the Adriatic," Erik told her, kissing her temple.
Gaia smiled down to her son as he slept. "Adrian then. That reminds me… why did that woman call me Renard? I've never heard of such a name."
"She refused to go with a man in a mask who wouldn't offer his full name, so I gave her my mother's name. She must have assumed you had taken it as your married name," he explained. "I don't think we should give it to our son, if that is what you're considering.
"Well, wouldn't his life be just a little easier I he had a surname. It would make him seem more… more…" Gaia trailed off at a loss for words.
"Human," Erik finished for her, and she frowned realizing that was the word she had in fact been looking for. "Why don't we let him decide when he's older, hm?" Gaia nodded at that, finding it a suitable compromise. Gently Erik kissed his wife's temple again, pulling her into his arms. Gaia moved into them, comforted by the contact. She frowned some at the uneven feel of the scar on her husband's shoulder against her back.
"His life isn't going to be like mine," he told his wife, barely more than a whisper. "He's already loved more than I ever was."
Gaia frowned and turned her head to meet her husband's lips. "More loved than you were," she corrected firmly. "I can't help but worry though… Papà was such an extraordinary man, without him you might never have had a chance. How many more men like Papà can there be to give him a chance?"
"I will teach him everything I know, and if he must he will be able to make his own chances," Erik promised. "His life won't be easy, but he will be loved. That's all that matters for now."
Author's Note: To clarify, the false nose I mentioned a few chapters ago is the result of listening to Leroux's Phantom on tape while rewriting my class notes the other day. I don't remember whether or not it was mentioned in Kay's version of events or not, but a friend of mine who reads was confused so I figured I'd clarify for the masses.