Author's Note: Why is it the further into a story I get, the less happy I am with the quality of the work? I've scrapped this chapter and rewritten it twice now, and it has officially taken up far too much of my life to keep fussing over. I have to admit, I'm rather regretting killing off our heroine, and I deeply, sincerely apologize for the dullness of the end of this story. Maybe I'll go back and give it a happier ending someday. Anyway the chapter is divided into three parts so that I wouldn't have to drag you all through three whole chapters of a story we all already know. One more chapter after this one!

"It isn't fair to take Cadence away from home, Papa!" Sixteen year old Adrian complained, now entirely a man in his father's eyes and in the eyes of the Venetian men who employed him as one of the chief engineers working on the problem of the sinking city. "She's only eight. How is she going to learn to be a lady traveling from place to place her whole childhood?"

"Well she's certainly not going to learn how to be a lady from either of us," Erik pointed out. "You'll both learn more from seeing the world than I could ever teach you here."

"Oh really?" Adrian countered, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I suppose you're going to strap the piano and our entire library to the back of the carriage?"

Erik glared at his son. "Don't take that attitude with me, boy. It is what your mother wanted-"

"Not this again, Papa! It was only a dream. And a perfectly explainable one at that! You hadn't slept in days, and it was the first night after Mama's funeral… of course you dreamed about her. I did too, and I'm sure Cadence did as well. But you don't see us rearranging our whole lives because of it!"

The tall man sat in his chair by the bookshelf and rubbed his face in frustration. "You will learn more traveling the world than you ever will staying here, Adrian."

"What more have I to learn, Papa? I have a career here that will last me a lifetime. Cadence could start going to the girl's school in Venice and learn how to be a proper lady. Neither of us could teach her that in a hundred years, you were right about that."

Quietly Erik rubbed the back of his neck, deep in thought. "Adrian, do you feel like I am holding you back?"

The young man opened his mouth as if to answer before closing it again and hanging his head some. "I think we'd be better suited here than traveling is all."

"And you think we would be better suited in Venice than here," Erik stated plainly, and after a moment Adrian nodded.

"Well, yes. It's the nearest girl's school for Cadence, and it's where I'm working now. It's quite a pain to spend a whole week there and then a whole week here. If we all went to Venice it would be easier…"

Erik thought for a long moment before choosing his words very carefully. "I think you should take Cadence to Venice."

"…What do you mean I should take her? Surely you would come with us?"

The man shook his head. "No, Adrian. Whether you believe the dream I had about your mother has any substance or not, I believe she was right. There are things I ought to do while I am still young enough to do them, now that I have the chance. You have been as good a role model for Cadence as I ever have been, perhaps even a better one for all of the qualities of your mother you possesses. I know you would take exceptional care of her, and goodness knows you can take very good care of yourself."

Adrian frowned, deeply. "Papa, I don't want to go to live in Venice if you're not going to be with us."

"Nonsense mon fils. You would do brilliantly there. And you are right about Cadence. She ought to go to school, and learn about people. She is different than us, and must learn to get along in her own way the same as we have. Your mother went to school herself, until her mother died. She didn't care for it much but at the very least it taught her about human nature."

"I'm only sixteen, Papa! I can't take care of Cadence by myself!"

"She'll be in school during the days, or even all week if you put her in the dormitories. You'll have plenty of time to work and keep time to yourself besides. She's an easy child and you know it."

"I won't let you just abandon us, Papa! It isn't right!" Adrian scolded him, and Erik chuckled gently.

"I am not abandoning you, mon fils. I am simply going away for a little while. I will write, and even visit when I am in the area. It's not as if I am moving across any oceans."

A year later the arrangements had been made, and Erik traveled with his children to Venice to help them settle in to their new home.

"You certainly picked a fine house, Adrian," Erik praised with an appreciative smile. "I do believe it is one of your grandfather's, actually."

Adrian's eyes widened. "Do you really think so?"

"I do. His design at the very least. It has quite a bit of his personality in the stonework," Erik smiled, and Adrian smiled back, wishing not for the first time that he had been able to meet the man who had so inspired his father. Cadence stepped inside carrying her tabby-type cat gently in her arms with a small frown.

Erik frowned in turn and crouched to kiss her forehead. "Why do you frown, my darling angel?"

"I miss our house is all."

"There were very many memories there," Adrian agreed with a bit of a frown.

"Which is precisely why I didn't sell it, children. You will be able to return whenever you please. I could not bear the house I built for your mother leaving out family, and I expect you will enjoy it for many years to come. I expect to grow old and gray in it myself some day," Erik smiled reassuringly, and Cadence nodded.

"When are you leaving Papa?" She asked sweetly.

"Not until you two are both so busy you won't even notice I'm gone. A few weeks at least, maybe a month or two," he promised, kissing her forehead again. "Why don't you go and pick your bedroom, darling?"

The girl moved upstairs, more excited than she cared to be at the newness of it all. She had spent her entire life inside the walls of the house on the vineyard, never venturing past the marketplace in Modena. Venice was a much larger city, with much more people and much less privacy than she was used to. It was different, but not necessarily bad, she decided.

Adrian helped his father arrange the furnishings downstairs. "I've decided not to place her in the dormitories. It will be hard enough with you being away, I would feel better with her in the house," Adrian admitted quietly, and Erik nodded.

"Frankly, I am more comfortable with her here with you as it is. She is such an incredibly bright girl I am terrified of what her peers will make of her."

"If she is bullied for even a moment I will make the little tarts regret it, you may rest assured," Adrian murmured, and Erik laughed at the boy's uncharacteristic display of viciousness.

"Adrian!"

"…Sorry Papa," the young man muttered, embarrassed that he had been heard but not regretting his words in the least. "Anyway, I don't really like staying alone. I think I'm going to get a dog as well. The house always felt safe with you in it, but now-"

"I think that is a very good idea," agreed Erik. "Really Adrian, you mustn't worry too much. I would not dare leave if I thought anything would happen. You did get your tendency to worry from me, after all," the man pointed out, and Adrian smiled gently.

"Yes, I suppose I did. Mama used to get so annoyed with you…"

"And what you saw wasn't even the half of it. She and I had many an argument about her condition. To be fair, she was right every time until the last one," he conceded, and Adrian nodded quietly.

"Adrian, Papa! I've picked my room! Come see it, it's huge, and I even left the biggest one for Adrian!"

True to his promise, Erik wrote his children as often as he could find the time and supplies. For years the pair received letter from such wonderful places as Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, St. Petersberg, Azerbaijan; for two three solid years letters came daily, all of them addressed from a place called Mazenderan in Persia. Erik described the palace as eloquently as any poet, though as the years progressed his letters became more brief and darker. There were nights Adrian wasn't sure he should read Cadence the letters at all, but she would insist upon it, staging a hunger strike until she was allowed to see the letter herself so she would know her brother was not lying to her.

The letters described a wicked witch, forests of death, and castles with trick doors and hidden passages, things that could not possibly be real but somehow Adrian found it hard to believe his father, a serious man would make up such tales. He wished now he had gone with his father and could see the world through his eyes and know exactly what Erik meant by his fantastic letters.

Without warning, the letters which for three years had arrived daily without fail ceased arriving. For a month Cadence would wait by the door for the post, eagerly gathering every piece of mail searching for her father's familiar labored penmanship. The siblings had begun to think the worst when one day a letter arrived on ugly, rough parchment, bearing their father's laboriously scratched writing in dull ink.

"To my darling children,

I beg your forgiveness for the sudden cessation of my letters. I can only imagine what you must have thought after so many days in a row of writing. I was forced to flee Mazenderan quite suddenly, and while I do not wish to worry you I must confess I am grateful for the chance to write to you at all after the events of that last day in Persia. The prince I told you of, the Daroga of Mazenderan was crucial to my escape. I spoke to him often of you, and I should not wonder if he attempts to find you if he is forced to flee the country himself for sparing my life. Persia was not the wondrous place I once thought it to be. It wears a mask much as I do, and what lies beneath is as terrifying as its mask is pristine and beautiful. At any rate should you meet a dark skinned man who seems to know you, I beg you house him. Without his help I would never hold the hope of seeing you both again, and for that I am forever in his debt. My writings will become less frequent again I am afraid, but this will fortunately not be the last you hear from your loving father."

When Erik arrived in Paris, finally the children received an address at which they might be able to return his letters. He told them he had purchased a small flat while he worked on his final project before returning home to Italy. It was not far from the truth, though he purposefully neglected to tell them how difficult life in Paris was and how hard money was to come by. Parisians were a cruel race, more unforgiving about the nature of Erik's mass than the Italians and the Persians had been. France was as vain as it had been when he first left it, Erik seethed.

His discontent was lifted when he received his first letter from Adrian and Cadence, and his depression turned to sheer joy when out of the envelope came a photograph of a beautiful young woman and a tall, masked man standing behind her where she sat. The letter itself was pages and pages long, bringing Erik to tears; he truly had not realized how much he missed his children until the arrival of their letter had brought the sad fact that he had missed five years of their lives. How they had grown in five short years! Cadence was surely a woman now, fourteen years old with her mother's brightness lighting up her eyes. Adrian was at least a head taller judging by his height against the furnishings of the venetian home where the photograph had been taken. Cadence had left school and was teaching piano and voice to young women in Venice, and was being pursued by a man nearly twice her age whom Adrian had on one occasion been forced to quite literally chase off the property. Adrian was now twenty two, heading a project to slow the sinking of Venice and courting a young nurse rather unsuccessfully. So like his father, the young man rambled on for pages about the woman's beauty, praising her and cursing her in the same breath. They had met when he had a coughing fit one week not unlike those his mother was prone too, and Cadence had insisted he visit the hospital. The poor boy had been lovestruck ever since, and would be until the day he died, he vowed, if only the girl would let him.

Erik kept the small flat even when he moved into the more hospitable cellars of the Opera he soon completed building, venturing out daily to received letters from his children and to mail them post in return. He neglected to mention the change in his residence, and did not mention the reason for his delayed return home was a young woman by the name of Christine Daae until the day he decided he would marry the girl who was so like his sweet Gaia and be a widower no more. More and more, his children's letters became the man's only remaining link to sanity in his solitude and loneliness, the one thing that would not abandon him as his wife had, and as the newfound object of his desires was soon to do.