A/N: Wheel of Fish, you're too perceptive. Leroux Erik tried pushing his way into the last chapter and I tried keeping him out, but I guess some of him lingered in the end ;)

Chapter 12:

Something soft and strange coaxed her out of her sleep. She couldn't place it though her exhausted mind tried to argue that it sounded both foreign and familiar. She sat up slowly and unsteadily, using the wall for support. She hadn't been dreaming, she realised. In the darkness around her she could just make out the opened jar of preserves, the knife and the teacup. No sign of the cat.

Then the violin began to sing again, wove its sad tune around her and chased all other thoughts away. Somehow she'd risen to her feet, the movements had barely registered. Something rough scratched against her abdomen but she knew not to investigate or remove it. Instead, she picked up her skirts that were stiff and damp and clearly not made for underground dwelling, and slowly moved towards the door.

The violin's music still filled the air, clung to every corner, its melody shifting, altering at every turn while still somehow retaining the same mournful theme. It wasn't beautiful yet it was compelling in its ugliness. It grasped her, dug itself under her skin and painfully lifted up layer after layer of grief until she finally felt able to breathe again.

The violin was weeping. How had she not noticed it before? And so, too, was she. She could barely manage to stand. Sobs tore from her throat, angry and hateful, confronting her with feelings she wished to have kept buried.

Resentment at having been abandoned, frustration that a career had always been priority, outrage at the stubbornness that had cost him his life. If only he had valued her enough to respect her opinion. If only he had been willing to pause, to think of her and what would become of her if this "slight cold" turned out to be a deadly disease instead.

Chicken pox, contracted while trying to help his friend Jules Ferry revolutionise the education sector.

Chicken pox, contracted from spending time with children rather than considering conceiving his own with his wife.

Chicken pox!

Laughter broke the flow of the music, harsh, unforgiving and hideous. Amber eyes found hers, pierced her with disapproval and curiosity until she realised that it had been her who had produced that dreadful sound. Her hand clamped over her mouth but it was too late. There was a witness now, somebody who knew that she was not mourning her husband the way she was meant to, that she was harbouring feelings that were quite unforgivable.

He didn't speak yet, for which she was oddly grateful, but kept watching her, his bow suspended in mid-air. The man who had taken her, who had killed to make the music stop was standing before her, making a violin sing.

She laughed again, the sound reminiscent of the one the Opera Ghost had first elicited at the premiere of Robert le Diable.

Something dark gripped her, an emotion too powerful to control and carried her across the rubble towards him. She reached for his violin, tried yanking it out of his grasp but he wouldn't comply.

"Shall we make the music stop, Monsieur?" she yelled, clawing at the instrument that offended her so.

Erik remained infuriatingly quiet while observing her with a growing sense of curiosity.

"Answer me!" she demanded. "You have been so loquacious before, giving your little speeches, mocking me at every turn. And what now? Am I not behaving the way you'd like me to? Would you prefer me calm and measured and of good demeanour?"

She pushed him angrily so that the instrument dug into his body but still he did not speak.

"Oh you infuriate me!"

Once more she reached for the violin, yearned to fling it onto the ground, to stamp on it. She wanted him to hurt, to feel the hell he had put her through.

"Perhaps you would like to help yourself to a different object," he addressed her suddenly with a kind of measured calm she had not expected, "you will find a rather big selection at your feet."

Something in those words slowed the hurricane of rage that had entrapped her, it made her pause long enough to survey the space in front of her once again.

Everything was broken.

Now that she was looking at it, it was so obvious that she wondered how on earth she had not noticed it before. It wasn't just a random assortment of objects, haphazardly dropped onto the floor, discarded by a man who possessed the temperament of a bored child. These were possessions, personal belongings of a man who - for some inexplicable reason- had been unable to possess anything else.

And they were all broken.

The sadness of the realisation washed the remaining shreds of anger away. "I hope you'll forgive me, Monsieur, I lost control over myself."

How absurd it was to apologise to him, how tired she was.

Uninvited, she sank down on his sofa, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them in a comforting way she had not engaged in since being a child. She felt his amber eyes resting on her still and quickly squeezed her eyes shut.

"I don't take well to captivity, Monsieur," she muttered against her knees, "or to lack of sleep."

It was like a world gone mad in which she made excuses for a perfectly understandable behaviour to a man who'd been nothing more than violent and insufferable. Suddenly the Vicomtesse did not seem so mad anymore. As a matter of fact she seemed remarkably strong and courageous for having suffered the same fate and still mustering the ability to offer understanding for a man who deserved a lot less.

She truly was not Christine Daaé.

She felt him take a seat by her side, then something cold touched her arm. She opened her eyes slowly and with great reluctance, dreading to see whatever he was confronting her with next. But it was only another cup of tea, balancing delicately on the palm of his left hand. His other hand was resting on his thigh again, but she knew that it had been grazing her arms moments ago. He was not wearing his gloves, but in the faintly illuminated room his hand suddenly seemed less repulsive. It seemed ordinary even, five long fingers on every hand, one pinky adorned with an opulent ring in whose centre a jade stone had been nestled.

She smiled tiredly though she didn't know why, accepted the tea cup and lifted it to her lips. A sweet scent infiltrated her nostrils and had her closing her eyes yet again.

"Women seem to favour sweet flavours," he explained with that same air of rigid formality, "I expect you'll enjoy the apple tea more."

A few hours ago she might have refused a sip, might have suspected some sort of drug or poison as punishment for her outburst. But in that moment she only felt tiredness, tiredness and the desperate desire to be looked after. If this cup indeed contained some poison as well as apple tea, she was willing to accept it.

Sighing deeply, she took a mouthful and relaxed as it ran down her throat, soothing some of the rawness like honey.

"You are right," she at last answered hoarsely, "this is delicious."

A strange kind of silence spread out between them, comforting somehow yet peculiar given the circumstances.

"You are angry with your husband, you feel betrayed because he has left you behind."

He spoke with such certainty that she wondered, not for the first time, if he was capable of reading her mind.

"Been investigating in my house, have you?" she asked with apathetic frustration.

"No, I had other things to take care of."

Like murder! She wanted to snap but settled for pinching her nose instead. She wanted the silence to return.

"Your…outburst seemed familiar."

She tilted her chin up while her eyes swept across the room once more. Was he truly comparing the loss of her husband to the loss of a woman he had killed for and who had not spent a voluntary second in his presence?

She noticed finely painted objects beneath the rubble, sheets of music half burned, a little white mask, small enough to fit the measurements of a child.

Perhaps the comparison wasn't so absurd after all. Death wasn't the only reason for someone to grieve.

"Still you are a damn hypocrite."

He hummed in acknowledgement and something in his eyes told her that he was smiling. What a crazy world she had wandered into and yet, for just this moment, she was content to sit there with him, side by side, too worn out to address the chaos that continued to reign inside them.

"Perhaps you would like a blanket and a pillow to feel more comfortable," he offered after a while when her tea cup was nearly empty.

She chuckled because she did not know of an appropriate response.

"A cage can feel bigger given certain…precautions."

She watched him curiously, tried to dissect the odd statement but he had already risen to his feet and she surmised that he would not grant her another glimpse into his life. Perhaps that was just as well, for she hardly knew what she was doing.