Thanks to all who have supported me through this endeavor especially the following Phantom Lilac(Danke) Brintravlr, anc3210, grandma paula, rupertbear, asarah, lovewillstillremain, trrmo77, nightmarefreak101, AnnMary, and all who favorited this work and followed it as well!
A huge thank you to my cheerleaders TMara, Brambled13, Kitkat, MissFleck734, MarylinKC, TMara thank you for your corrections to my German, Marilyn to your occasional English ones and for keeping me honest historically.
My biggest thank you of all is reserved for my Beta Judybear236 who has helped with all three of my works. She has corrected my mistakes of both punctuation, and also made sure that I was on my game historically. She also made an excellent sounding board when needed. Additionally she is a great cheerleader.
The epilogue takes the family into the first half of the twentieth century, a time when Alsace switched back and forth between France and Germany just like the Mulheim family. I could probably write an incredible fic just exploring that part of history with Erik and his descendants. Who knows maybe someday? I will miss writing this one.
Epilogue
Admiral Raoul de Chagny's POV November 11, 1918
I cannot believe that the guns of war had finally grown silent after four brutal years; so many dead on both sides, such a waste of blood and youth in a meaningless war. In front of us one of the enemy U-Boats, which we had been hunting for the last few days, emerged out of nowhere to surrender to us. Earlier we would have been trying to kill one another, but not anymore. The Captain had been wily and hard to trap. He had sunk many of our ships which we had been trying to protect. A small dingy containing the indomitable Captain of the U Boat was launched and headed our way. I could see even from a distance that he was a young German naval officer. As he pulled up alongside us I could see his face clearly with his intelligent green eyes and flowing blond hair. He looked very similar to my cousin Christian, at least how Christian looked a long time ago when I first met him in Alsace. I recognized him as Christian's son Otto.
The German pulled up to my flagship and gave me a salute, officer to officer. "Permission to come aboard Herr Vizeadmiral?" he asked me very boldly.
I looked at the German standing proudly erect before me. "Yes of course you may Monsieur le Capitaine."
We permitted him to board. I brought him back into my quarters towards the rear of the ship so that we could talk. It had been more than four years since we had seen one another, since his wedding in Alsace in that last peaceful summer in July 1914; right before war broke out once again between France and Germany. My cousin looked careworn and tired, he had lost the untested youth of the young groom that I met that day. He wore the face of a veteran of many battles yet he was only twenty four or five if I remembered. He had risen through the ranks quickly to have received such a command in so little time.
"It has been a long time cousin. The world has changed greatly in the last four years." He told me putting out his hand to shake mine.
"How is everyone in Alsace? I have no received news of the family since the war began." I asked him.
"I have not been home myself in over a year and a half, but I have kept in touch sporadically. My wife Dagmar had a child in the spring we named him Christian after my father. They are living on my grandfather's old estate in Konigswinter outside of Bonn, with much of the family. Erik felt that it would be safer if the families evacuated to there, so that they could be farther from the front."
I felt the jolt of pain that I always did when I heard Erik's name. It was not so much from enmity as it first had been, when we were both vying for Christine's heart long ago. It was only that it stirred up regret that I had lost Christine. I had never really recovered from losing her. The ocean had become my wife and lover. It sufficed. I occasionally did wonder what might have been had I not attempted to kill Erik, on that long ago night. But I no longer hated Erik. It had taken some time but I was cured of that disease.
"Tell me about the family, about everyone." I requested. "I have been worried about all of you."
"Well, Papa died last year over the winter. He had rejoined his old unit as an Oberst and was wounded at the Battle of Tannenberg in August of 1914 facing a cavalry charge by the Russians. He received an Order Kyffhauser Narew for distinguished service, and an Iron Cross directly from the Kaiser, but he was critically wounded and never fully recovered. Erik used to make fun of him for reactivating his commission when he was in his seventies, but my father was always a great German patriot. He managed to stave off death until last winter when he came down with the Spanish flu. His demise was quick and painless. Maman was beside herself with grief, but Christine and Erik both comforted her. My sister Antoinette is still at home and is as yet unmarried. Our cousin Elisabeth is now engaged to a German Graf. As you may recall she is Erik and Christine's youngest daughter.
"What about your brother Georg? He was in the infantry I believe?" I asked. I could see a fleeting spasm of sadness cloud his handsome face.
He told me mournfully "He died in Verdun almost two years ago, towards the end of the engagement. He was a commander of an Eingreif unit who fought very bravely; but their positions were overwhelmed by your armies. He was killed while fighting hand to hand in the trenches. He acquitted himself bravely. My parents were very upset. He was my father's heir, and he and my mother were very close. She did not want us to fight for Germany against France but my father was adamant that we do our duty to our Fatherland and Kaiser. Erik and Christine's children fought as well. My cousin Christian became a pilot and was lost in the skies over Belgium. They found his body in a cornfield shortly afterwards. Their oldest Gustave Charles survived the war. He was too old to be drafted and stayed out to help both his father, and mine, with the vineyards. Erik himself did serve Germany earlier this year. He would not aid the war effort against France but, with his knowledge of Russian, he was needed to help negotiate the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Bolsheviks earlier this year."
"What of your other sister Maria?" How did she fare?" I asked.
"She died of the Spanish flu not long after father. She had helped Maman take care of Papa and contracted the flu from him. She died within a week of coming down with it. Maman is taking care of her son Otto. His father is still at the front. What about your sister?" He asked me.
"Eugenie is still in England with her husband the Earl of Mercia. She and her children are doing quite well and are safe. England has barely felt the war compared to our two countries." I told him. "I have been able to see my sister fairly often. I sometimes traveled to England to meet with my British, Canadian and American counterparts. On one visit I encountered the grandson of your father's old manservant Volker. He was there as an adjutant to an American Admiral."
"It will be nice to get together again, as we did before the war, although we did not see you in Alsace very often. There is a rumor that France will be taking back both Alsace and Lorraine which means that Strasbourg will be French once again. I think that Erik will be pleased. He and father always debated over who started the war. He and my father would get so angry with one another I was afraid that one of them would end up dead. If France annexes Alsace we will remain in Konigswinter, despite Maman's French heritage we have always felt German." He told me.
"What about Christine?" I asked, I had deliberately waited to ask to seem only mildly interested but worried about her throughout the war.
He gave me a sad look "I just heard last week from Dagmar and she told me that Christine is very sick. She contracted the Spanish flu as well, while volunteering at a hospital in Bonn. If she dies, it will be a great loss to our family. As much as Erik is our patriarch, she is our matriarch." He looked at me strangely "That's right you once loved her. I am sorry."
"That's alright. I replied "It was a long time ago." But I did still love her I always would.
My mind brought me to her wedding day all those years ago. I had left the Chateau after Erik's talk with me, and made arrangements to bury my grandmere. The next morning I was seized by a murderous anger at Erik for taking so much from me. I couldn't help myself. I found my revolver and decided to kill him. If I couldn't have Christine why should he? I thought to myself. I was so angry that it overwhelmed all other emotions. I could not get the vision of her kissing his hideous face out of my mind. I thought that if I eradicated him from the earth, that I could heal the dark pain that had grown inside of me.
I mounted Pegasus and rode to Erik's Chateau. Once more I tied him to a tree and then I loaded my revolver. I crept silently towards the sound of a harp, knowing that I was coming upon their wedding. I snuck behind an old Roman temple, and found a place in a clump of trees and gazed upon them. Erik was dressed in very rich clothing, with a laurel crown and a full golden mask, looking every bit a Caesar lording over his realm. Christine was more stunning than I had ever seen her. Her hair was plaited with a garland of flowers and her dress looked to be made of fine gossamer silk. 'That should have been me beside her, not him.' I thought jealously. Meg and Christian were there as well looking so happy and in love.
I had a clear view of Erik. I thought that I could shoot him right through his black heart. I was ready to fire, but I stopped and listened. I could see and hear Erik and Christine singing to one another. It was the most beautiful song that I had ever heard. It was an unearthly blend of grandeur, and love. At first it was painful for me to listen, but I could feel the perfect symmetry and clarity of their combined voices and was captivated by it... The song spoke of hate dissolving into exquisite love. It was then that I realized what I had always known, but had tried to deny, that their bond was not an earthly one, but a symbiosis of two kindred souls in a celestial realm. Christine tried to explain it to me on the rooftop long ago. I did not understand; I thought that he had used some sort of hypnosis on her. The music revealed the truth about their relationship to me; only Erik, not me, could take her spirit to that blissful place. Erik was not a hideous charlatan seeking to ensnare Christine, but another facet of her own immortal soul. I could not kill Erik without harming Christine. I couldn't bring myself to destroy a union of so much sublime beauty. It would be a blasphemy before God. My hate dissipated and was replaced by a sense of peace. I put down my revolver and closed my eyes feeling gentle tears bathe my face, I felt reborn, and purified by them.
A moment later Nadir emerged. He turned to me, with a knowing smile, and observed "They are as close to perfection as anything could be. Allah has made them to complete one another don't you think Vicomte?"
I looked at the couple and then into the Persian's face. "Yes, I quite agree; as much as it pains me to admit it, I understand everything now" I replied.
The Persian confided "I was wrong to take you down there that night. I believed that Erik was acting against Allah's will, but I was wrong. They need one another. She needs him to set her spirit free, and he needs her to give him the love that he deserved. He has survived a lot Monsieur. You should heed what he told you yesterday when he warned you against heading down the wrong path into hatred. They were wise words Monsieur, which he imparted to you from his own experience. He fought his own demons very hard before he himself could see the truth of what he told you."
I handed him the revolver "It is hard for me to let go of her. I love her in my own way; as he does in his. But my love is not enough for her. I will never love another woman as much as I love her, but I cannot compete with what he has given to her; or her to him."
He smiled at me enigmatically in his eastern way. "Yes Monsieur, you do see it clearly now. Their love was not simply about the cravings of a human heart; it never really was. It is a matter of the soul. Erik's soul is cut from a different cloth from most of mankind. Christine's as well. Only she has the ability to heal the pain that until now has consumed him. Only he can bring out the purity in her voice and in her heart. To take her from him is to destroy the very thing that makes her special to you. Do you really want to destroy such beauty?"
"No, not any more. I just want to see her happy." I admitted to him.
"Then leave them be and put her out of mind. Move on with your life, Monsieur. Live a full and free and happy one. Purge yourself of the hatred that your grandmother instilled in you. Take the money that Erik has given to you and return to France. Be at peace Monsieur. Be the good man that Allah created you to be." He told me.
"Erik is a lucky man to have such a stalwart friend as you." I told him.
He laughed "At times he would like to put that Punjab lasso around my neck, and I his, but until now he has needed me to guide him out of the abyss of pain that had been his entire existence into a better place. Until now, he had no one else who would be there to help him. Mademoiselle Daae can perform that function for him now. Now that I know that he has found happiness, I will return to my home in Persia. It has been too many years since I have been nourished by the soil of my own land, and lived among my own people, who follow my faith. It is time for me to visit the graves of my wife and son. Perhaps you can return to your homeland as well."
He put out his hand as an offering to me and I grasped it and shook it. "Thank you Monsieur." I told him.
"I will not let either of them know what you had intended to do. You were close to death today, very close. If you had not put the revolver down before I came upon you, I would have killed you in his defense. Allah was looking after you this day and has provided you with another chance at life. I suspect that this will be the last time that our paths will cross. Au Revoir Monsieur le Vicomte."
"Adieu, Monsieur Khan." I replied. He was gone as quickly as he had come. I watched a little longer as Christine became Erik's bride. I could feel the promise of their happiness and suddenly I was no longer angry or bitter, just accepting of the truth. The hate had left me like a vicious storm that had passed me by. It was time to go home.
As the years went by, I did not return to Alsace very often. Christian and Meg would come to Paris occasionally and when I wasn't at the North Pole, Cochinchina, or any other part of the far flung French Empire. When they were in Paris I would see them and I got to know them. Once in a while, I would even see Erik and Christine socially or at some occasion. To their credit, they invited me to key events in the Mulheim family. I usually declined. Occasionally I could not resist the lure of seeing Christine. Erik was always unceasingly polite with me but the shadows of the past always kept us from exploring a deeper relationship. I prayed that Christine would survive the flu which had invaded and was beginning to kill so many.
Erik's POV
Paris, France July 15, 1942
As I looked back on the interwar years I could only feel blessed that Christine did not die of the Spanish flu. The light that she had brought into my life had never faded. It remained strong even in the face of adversity. She continued her promise to me and I never again felt alone or unloved. I was surrounded by a gaggle of beautiful children and grandchildren, and even a great grandchild. After being returned to France in 1919, Alsace had been reincorporated into the German Reich after the invasion of 1940. I had no desire to become German once more, because of the Nazis. These new rulers of Germany had corrupted a society which had achieved great standing and development, and turned it into a cauldron of hate and intolerance. Christine and I had returned to Paris in 1937 to live among the French and away from the border. Germany was just across the river from my estate and the government had expropriated some of my land to build the Maginot line. In 1940 the Germans occupied Paris for the second time in my life. I was fortunate that my facial prosthetics had made my face look almost normal, and that I was still considered a German Baron. Despite our advancing ages, Christine and I decided to help work against them. I definitely did not meet the Nazi standard of 'Aryan beauty' and felt a strong empathy for the Jews and the gypsies that the new rulers of Germany persecuted. Despite the Nazis I still cared for my German relatives. I had children and grandchildren on both sides of the border. I was worried for my daughter Elisabeth's children who had been born and raised in Bonn, where Elisabeth had fallen in love with a handsome German Graf while we were staying there during the last war. My grandson Karl Albrecht was in the Luftwaffe. Christian's son Otto was once again a U-boat commander. Fortunately, most of my grandchildren fought for France.
I heard a frantic knock on my door and I answered it to find one of Christian's grandsons, Ruprecht, a German official, who worked in the offices of the occupying forces. He was a pleasant person much like his late grandfather. He had his look about him as well. He entered my flat and looked at me frantically.
"Listen Cousin I have heard some distressing news. The French gendarmes and the Gestapo will be rounding up the Parisian Jews of foreign origin and bringing them to the Vel' d'Hiv starting tomorrow. They will be sent to camps in the east where they are marked for death by the Nazis. I have the names and addresses of five families who will be affected. Good people who have done nothing wrong but having the misfortune of being Jews. I know that you have some connections with the resistance. I have had to hide them for you from my own peers. Please help me save them."
I did not know Ruprecht that well but I did not suspect a trap, not from Christian's grandson. After a moment's hesitation, I thought of a place to hide them. I could take them where no one could find them and take them away. It had sheltered me as a shattered and broken phantom long ago. It would now help others survive this new form of hatred and intolerance which had permeated everywhere in France, and in most of Europe. I despised the Nazis with all of my heart because they had brought the same suffering that I had been forced to endure in my youth, to all who they did not approve of. I would not let them hurt the innocent, not if I could save them.
"Okay. I will help them but you must get me ration and ID cards. I will need to take care of them for a long time, perhaps even move them out of the country." I told him.
"That is why I have come to you. I know where your sympathies lie and I agree, Hitler and his cohorts have subverted our nation's honor. My brother Georg is at the front in Russia and has reported many disturbing things; the Nazis are killing people on a mass scale. I remembered when we would visit you and you would warn us all about the Nazis and their hateful venom that they have unleashed on all of us. I did not understand why you were so against them, until recently I supported them believing that they would restore Germany's greatness. But now I can see what you were trying to tell us. These men are without humanity, or honor, they are leading our country down a terrible path. We must retake Germany from them and take back our soul."
I clapped the boy on the shoulder "If more thought as you did, we could banish hate forever and all of mankind would be better for it. Unfortunately hate tends to penetrate its victims stealthfully, and overwhelm their best intentions; distorting the souls inside. It takes a strong spirit to push it back and reassert what is good and right inside of a person. No man is born to hate, hate is planted in them by others or by a bad experience."
"I know of some good colleagues of right mind, and good intentions who would see this cancer removed from our country. Right now because we are at war, and we are winning; we must stay silent and bide our time to strike at the head of the snake. In the meantime I am trying to do what I can to blunt the blow of their hatred. That is why I am entrusting these people to you, at the risk of my own life. I know that I can trust you." He told me.
"We will save as many as we can but there are many who would betray us. My sanctuary will be difficult for the Nazis to uncover but no fortress is impermeable. " I told him.
When he had left, I contacted a few friends that I knew who were involved in the resistance and recruited them to help. I also called upon both Nadirs' son, from his second marriage who was an officer, at the Iranian Embassy, and Christine's cousin who worked at the Swedish Embassy. I wanted to enlist their aid in smuggling Jews, Gypsies and others out of the country. I did not admit it to Ruprecht, but Christine and I had been deeply involved in the resistance since the fall of France in 1940, together with my son Gustave, and my grandsons Christian and Erik. Our fluency in German was crucial. Few suspected that an old man such as me to be so involved but I was passionately anti-Nazi. I was proud of my children. I had trained them to use the Punjab lasso as a weapon among other things. We had been using my old lair below the Opera Populaire as a headquarters, also as a place to store ammunition. We could store people there as well, as many as we could save. I could not turn away people who were facing certain death. Throughout the night we were able to gather the families together and enter the opera house through my old entrance on Rue Scribe. We brought them down through the two way mirror that I had set up long ago in Christine's old dressing room. It had not been in use much, since that time due to its association with me. Many had still feared the Phantom, thanks to that journalist Leroux, who painted me as quite a villain. Christine and I decided that we would mostly live down in the catacombs with the refugees; only I knew the ins and outs of all of them and I needed to keep them safe.
We safely resettled all of the families that Ruprecht had told us about as well as a few more. Thankfully we could recreate the kitchen and some of the other areas of my former home. Christine would cook for them. We cleaned the other catacombs out as well so we could accommodate more if necessary, and I reactivated my old traps to snare any unwelcome guests. Thankfully I had always been a modern man and had constructed crude plumbing and electricity beneath the opera house years before. It was strange to return to live in my old home, but unlike the past I was never alone, and I was always wanted, and of course I had Christine. I teased her that I finally had my way after all these years, and she now lived with me in my old house.
The people that we saved were always grateful to us. As the weeks and months went by and turned into years, many families were moved in and out. Some made it across the border into Switzerland using Iranian and Swedish visas. It was not long before I became known by the pseudonym 'le Fantome'. This time my reputation gave comfort to the citizens of Paris. Most who had heard it, had no idea that I was the same man as the infamous Phantom who once called the catacombs home. They just assumed that it I adopted it as my name because of the stories that had been told about him. Some of the children who had heard the stories would ask me if there really was a Phantom haunting the catacombs. I would always confirm it but tell them that it was the Phantom himself that offered them shelter. It seemed to suffice, and calmed their fears.
One day in late 1942, I was told of the need to aid a British officer who had been shot down just outside of Paris and was being hidden by a nobleman in his Estate just outside of Paris. I gave them permission to bring the man to my lair. At the time I was hosting around thirty Jews and others. Additionally I was using my fortune to obtain food and supplies on the black market, and war materials as well. Few people were permitted to know the path in and out other than myself, Christine, my son, my grandsons and their wives. I trusted no one else with the secret. I would meet my visitors in Christine's old dressing room and use the passage behind the two-way mirror to bring them down.
Imagine my surprise when we had another visitor, escorting the airman alone. It was Raoul, now the Comte de Chagny. It had been quite some time since we had seen him, not since the beginning of the war.
"Erik, you are here? I thought that the man known as 'le Fantome' had merely
borrowed the name due to the history of this place. I never would have imagined that it really was you. You are part of the resistance at your age?" he told me.
"Christine is here as well, but she is out at the moment. It is a matter of honor for me Raoul. I cannot let people who would kill innocents prevail if I have the power to fight against them. They would have killed me in my youth. How can I stand by and do nothing? This place is a perfect sanctuary and who else would know these passageways as well as I do? I spent ten years down here hiding from the world. How did you remember the way after all of this time? As far as I know you only called upon me once." I asked surprised.
"I can never forget the way Erik, just like I will never forget that night. How is Christine?" He asked.
"She is still in fine health. She is out buying supplies with our ration cards. We pretend to that we still live in our flat, but spend almost all our time here." I admitted to him as if he were an old friend. I had not felt any hostility for Raoul for a long time but we were never friends either. That was about to change.
"You are looking good for a man of your age Erik; very distinguished. You must be more than 90 years old. I am eighty." He told me.
"I am 94 years old, but still healthy as an ox. I have always been hard to kill." We smiled at one another about the irony of that statement.
"I'm glad that I failed Erik. I was young and angry and under the influence of my grandmother. I treated you abominably in those days. My attitude then was no better than that of those of the Nazi swine who are now in charge. I am sorry for my behavior. Truly I am. I don't think that I ever told you that during any of the functions that we have attended together over the years."
I looked at his cheek. It still bore the faint mark of my poker from all those years ago.
"My own behavior towards you was less than acceptable. I am glad that we have both moved past letting our hate rule our lives. Nadir told me about what you almost did on our wedding night. I am glad that it was he who saw you. If it had been me I would not have given you another chance. My patience with you had run dry."
"It was an impulse, but I did not act upon it once I saw you and heard you and her sing that song. It was the most beautiful song that I have ever heard, even to this day. It brought tears to my eyes. I finally understood what you and she had, and I could not act against you. Truth be told, you were quite an impressive man in those days. If I had not hated you, I probably would have worshipped you. You were a much better man than my own brother Philippe. When you offered me our deal you gave me better advice than my brother had ever done. I have kept my distance from you more out of shame than for any disdain." He admitted.
He looked around. "I am very impressed with what you have done here.
I noticed the airman for the first time. "Who is this man? He looks familiar."
"That is Ralph Philippe Darcy, Viscount Pemberton. He is my nephew, Eugenie's son."
I looked over to the boy. "He is a handsome man. He has the look of you about him. No doubt he is a ladies man. I will have to keep my granddaughters away from him. He looks to be quite a fop like you once were." I teased.
"He is very proud of his looks and pedigree as I was, although not quite as vapid and vain as my younger self." He admitted to me.
"I see that he has green eyes. He has at least inherited a little of his Mulheim looks. Christine always insisted that they were my best feature." I told him.
The Comte stayed for a while and we shared a few more stories of the old days; recalling the heyday of the opera house above us. We laughed at some of the old tricks that I used to say. Raoul admitted that he had secretly admired many of them, and that La Carlotta in particular had deserved them. Raoul had heard that La Carlotta was still alive and living in Italy but of course she had retired long ago. I teased him about that rag that the journalist Leroux wrote about us, and how Raoul must have told him the story since it made me look even more terrible than I was. He swore that it was not him who revealed the story to him. From that time forward we had finally become friends as well as cousins. Christine was thrilled, in the past it had been too hard to overcome the barriers but now we were fighting for the same cause. He would help us with our activities, using his connections to find out information. He also supplied us with weapons and food and other material. We worked together to thwart the Nazi plague that had blighted our land. Sadly, I knew that I would not live to see the war end.
Six months later, in June of 1943, I began to feel my age close in. I knew that my time on earth was over, my strength was failing. I decided to die in my lair, as I had once planned. My coffin was still there waiting for me like an old friend. Of course my death did not go as I had once planned. Originally I believed that I would die alone, but the lair was crowded with refugees. Christine looked at me, her face still youthful despite the fact that she had just turned eighty. She looked no older than sixty but her blue eyes held a look of sadness, as she knew that the end was near. "Sing for me." I whispered as my breath felt ragged and shallow. I could feel her gentle hands remove my mask and my wig for the last time. She gazed upon my face as if it was something of great beauty. She then grasped my feeble form one last time, caressing me smoothly, and reverently, ending with gentle kiss on my lips. Even after all of these years I could still feel the fire that the touch of her lips aroused in me. She began to sing to me softly and gently a Swedish lullaby that she once sang to our children when they were little. I could still hear her singing as I closed my eyes gently for the last time, secure in the knowledge that I had found true love.
Fin
I am working on something which I have tentatively titled "The De Chagny Legacy. Unlike my previous three it will not begin after the final lair. Erik will be a definite character, as will my version of Gustave, Nadir and Darius as well. The Giry's, Christine and Raoul will all appear as well but sometimes or all the time in flashback depending on the character. As always I will be developing OCs.