Sitting in the office of his once deadly enemy was awkward to say the least. It was very expensive looking, dark cherry wood everywhere, red velvet chairs, and fresh leather books with gold imprints on high shelves. The two men sat across from each other, separated only by an office desk. Meg had left to get a carriage ready so they all could immediately leave when needed and Madame Giry stood in the corner to oversee.

"I suppose… I should start at the beginning." Raoul spoke quietly, avoiding eye contact with him. "Well, at least my beginning… After everything in the opera, Christine and I got married… A few months after we found out she was with child… Of course I was overjoyed." He nervously clapped his hands together. "When Sorelli was born, she looked like her mother… But not me."

Madame Giry stepped closer to glare at her son-in-law, but he ignored her.

"I sort of played it off… 'She looks like grandpa Gustave'." Raoul laughed. "We were happy, even if Christine sometimes did… Think of you, she got into painting and made your picture perfectly. She even let Sorelli see… So she wouldn't be afraid of you... Mr. Y?"

"Erik." He spoke. "My real name is Erik."

"… Erik." Raoul stated with a nod, it felt odd to know he had a real name. "So she wouldn't fear you… I didn't mind much, I assumed it helped her get over the fear…" Raoul scratched the back of his neck. "Then one day… Sorelli was six. For her birthday, her mother decided to teach her how to use the violin." Raoul smiled warmly. "She was a natural at it. As she played a simple tune, she sang…" Raoul looked up dreamily, "What a lovely voice, haunting almost, like her mother's… And someone else." He looked at Erik. "It was in that moment… I knew, in the song and music, she looked like someone else…"

Erik turned his gaze down and looked at a picture on his desk, but said nothing.

"Then my friends asked me to play poker, I said yes. Then I had some scotch… Then some gin… Then some whisky… Then I don't remember what happened." Raoul laughed slightly and wiped his face, though nothing was on it. "When I woke up, Christine yelled at me for losing $41054 in a drunken poker game… Then it started getting worse."

For once, Erik looked upon his formal rival pitifully. "So you started… Because of me?" Erik would have laughed if the situation wasn't so serious. "

"I know, I'm awful right?" Raoul laughed hard, but tears began to form. "After a couple more years of getting thrown out of bars, having the debt collectors come after me, squandering my inheritance after my parents died, selling everything and living in a run-down apartment to keep me from being arrested and getting disowned by all the nobility in France, I finally told Christine what disturbed me… She admitted it, crying…" Raoul scoffed. "Stupid fool."

With the sound of a pushed back chair and metal against leather, Raoul found himself at the knifepoint of his masked archenemies. "Repeat what you said."

"Not in that way!" Raoul screamed hitting his fist on the table. "She was a fool for thinking everything was her fault!" He breathed heavily, then quickly withdrawing back and curling up. "When it was mine. And I admitted it." He began to become lax. "And then things… Seemed to get better. I managed to quit the gambling, I limited myself to going out for a few drinks once a week, even got a new job. Christine and Sorelli still had the violin, and Christine even coached her. They started to sing at public shows and got money from that. We even told her, who her real father was."

Erik settled down back into his chair and put the knife back into his sheath. "How did she react?"

"She was surprised, but, due to some morbid curiosity… Perhaps inherited."

Madame Giry barely stifled her chuckle.

"She wanted to meet you one day, I told her she could. We knew where you were, a place called Phantasma is sort of hard to miss the hint. Things finally looked up." Raoul held his wrist and turned his gaze upward dreamily. He seemed lost for a moment before the light in his eyes died and he returned to reality. "Then Christine got sick."

Erik once again softened his eyes and looked away. "What sort of sickness?"

Raoul shook slightly. "Influenza. It was awful. Sorelli and I… We tried to make ends meet, paying for Christine's medication. But it wasn't enough. With winter, it became worse. Sorelli ran to pawn off her grandfather's violin to get her medication while I tried to beg people on the street for anything they could spare, after thirty minutes, I managed to get her some hot soup and fed it to her, I managed to keep her hanging on until Sorelli got the medicine." Raoul paused, he looked down he became pale and shaky. "Before she even opened the bottle, Christine called out to us… 'I love you both'… She died in my arms."

Erik clenched his fists, but managed to contain himself. "What happened then?"

"After cremating Christine, since we couldn't afford a crypt, and managing to get the violin back, I fell off the wagon like an idiot." Raoul admitted slamming his loose change on the table. "Everything Sorelli brought home I gambled and drunk away, but she stayed with me… After her sixteenth birthday, I won two transcontinental tickets to New York from some strange Italian man. I thought of selling them… Then I remembered you. As silly as it sounds, even now you have a wife, I knew you couldn't refuse to take care of her." Raoul immediately took out several pieces of crumpled paper from his coat pocket and laid them out as neatly as he could for Erik.

Erik looked over each of them; which included a birth certificate, adoption papers with Raoul's signature and official passports and immigration papers for Sorelli. "You want me to take her? Just like that?"

"Since the moment I first heard her sing I knew she was yours, she was never mine to begin with. I was never meant to be a father." Raoul slid off his chair and got on his knees before clasping his hands together. "Please. You have to, she deserves better than this worthless, drunken shadow of a 'Vicomte', and she deserves someone that can give her everything." He peered his eyes up. "I know that you have moved on, but if you're like Christine, then you still have a part of that love in you. Use that and take care of her. Please… Please…" He began to break down into a sobbing, slobbery mess.

"Stop that, you look ridiculous." Erik stated.

Raoul could hear metal scraping on paper, looking back up, he had signed every single thing that needed signing.

"Madame Giry, if you may please ask my lawyer to meet me in my home tonight, I have to organize things."

"Yes sir."

Raoul jumped up and kept himself from hugging him. "Thank you! I'll go get her, she'll be glad to meet you!" He opened the door and sprinted out of the room.