"Christine?! Christine! Christine…?" I opened my eyes slowly. The room was spinning and my head aching. I reached out to find Erik but my hands were bound. Suddenly the fog drifted away and everything became clear. Erik sat across the room from me. His eyes were transfixed upon me searching for injuries of any kind. Xenon pranced back and forth before me like a giddy child.

"I swear to God, if you touch a single hair of her head-"

"You'll what? Grab the old Punjab? What do you think you are tied up with idiot!"

"I'll kill you I swear I'll do it."

"I don't doubt that you'll try. But first I would like to have a little chat with your little slut." He bent down and grabbed a fist full of my curls. He turned and smirked at Erik and then dragged me into Erik's room. His cool exterior finally broke. He paced around the room his hands covered his face, his face was beautiful, almost breath-taking. He was tall with thick black wavy locks. He had deep smoldering green eyes. He was strong and that was obvious by looking at his arm muscles. He pulled off his tuxedo jacket and threw it across the room. "I can't do this." He whispered to himself.

"Are you okay?" He turned his icy gaze onto me.

"Shut up!" I shrunk back in shock by his sudden change of mood.

"Xenon, I'm sorry for what ever happened between you too but you don't have to do this." Leave it to me to reason with the crazies.

"You disgust me! You had the entire world in your hands and you threw it away for that pathetic sack in there." He stopped his pacing and looked me dead in the face his voice dropped and eerie three octaves. "I know people who would kill to have a life like that."

"I didn't throw my life away! I'm making my life now, saving it from the disgusting ruins it had once been. Are you that much of a fool to see that that MAN in there is man of my dreams, the father of my children, and my soon-to-be-husband?!" Xenon slapped me hard across the face. The pain ripped through me and couldn't stop the tears from falling down my face.

"He's a monster and don't you forget that Christine!"

"No more of a monster, than you are a man!" I spit in his face and he thrust me down onto the bed.

"Doubt my manhood, do you?" I felt my breath catch. Was this really happening? His body suddenly relaxed. He sat up and brushed a loose hair from his face. "I have nothing to prove to you. As if I would ever want to be with a woman as ignorant and disgusting as you." He climbed off of me and began to pace once more. I shifted my body weight until I could through myself upright again. "You have some nerve you know that?" I stared at him incredulously. "Answer me when I'm talking to you." I turned in the opposite direction of Xenon. "I just don't get it!" He grabbed his head again. "I was trying to protect you from him. And now you have chosen his side." Xenon grabbed me by my hair again and pulled me back out again to where Erik sat.

His eyes were wild. Tears slid down his face staining his dress shirt. Xenon held me right over his pitiful form. "I want you to watch her bleed. I want you to feel her blood falling onto you. I want you to taste it as it mixes with your own tears. I want you to watch her die and know you couldn't have saved her." Suddenly there was a knife at my collarbone. I could feel it slicing through my flesh as Xenon carved zigzagging patterns towards my throat. I watched as the droplets hit Erik's face. I watched as he struggled to get free, as he struggled to save me.

Suddenly the tables turned Xenon's knife was on the ground. I Erik grabbed me and pulled me behind him. He threw Xenon to the ground and put his foot against his throat. "All I need is a little more pressure and then I'll have crushed your larynx to pieces."

"Erik don't!" We all looked up at the same time. An elderly woman cam hobbling out of the darkness. It was the same woman who had told us of our baby. "You mustn't do this, Erik. For God's sake, he's your brother!"

"My what?" Erik looked down at the man beneath his black dress shoes.

"So you are-"

"-Their mother." Erik looked up at her in surprise.

"But you can't be. She died a long time ago."

"I faked my death. As a young girl I was stupid to realize that your father's violent tendencies were not going to stop." Erik's breath caught and he looked down at his own hands, no doubt imaging the shade of red he had painted on them. "You must understand I had to go. I was going to come back for my boys but you were gone by the time I figured out how."

"How could you leave you sons behind with such a man?!" The woman turned to look at me as tears filled her eyes.

"He never laid a hand on them!" In Erik's distress, Xenon was able to slip out from beneath his foot.

"Guess again old woman!" He pointed directly to Erik's face where it was disfigured and scarred.

"The moment you left, you left us for dead. Daddy dearest got angry one night with Erik here and lit him up! Lit his own 10 year old kid on fire!" Erik cringed at his own repressed memories. "And then when he needed money, he sold us off to some freak show. They made a living off of ugly boy here. But me? Oh, I had the time of my life." Xenon started to cry. Erik clutched his face and knelt to the ground. I knelt down and gathered him up into my arms. "For years I believed you dead. I blamed Erik for leaving me behind to get raped every night by the ring leader." His voice cracked. " I was six, mother, I didn't know what he was doing to me. I was dying from the inside out! I had NO ONE!" Xenon took a few threatening steps toward his mother. "You ran off to have a better life and left me to die! I blamed Erik for all of these years and from the sound of it he didn't even know me. He repressed his own past just like how I fed on mine. It fueled my hatred and it gave me a reason to live." I rose from my place and ran toward the old woman. Xenon through his blade forward and I felt as it found its way through me. I lost the power to stand and I hit the ground hard.

"Oh my God!" Xenon dropped the knife and fell to the floor grabbing his head and rocking back and forth. "I'm sorry Christine, I'm so sorry!" The old woman fell to her knees and tried to help me. Her batter fingers fell to the wound in my stomach. I could feel her fingers trembling. Erik was at my side in a second cradling my body.

"No, Christine! This can't happen. Not again. It is you and me until the end. Remember just you and me… and Gustave… and our little baby girl." My body was beginning to shake. I was twitching.

"We have to get her to the hospital Erik!" The old woman stood and helped Erik up.

"Let me help you." I could hear an echo of Xenon's voice.

"I think you have down enough for today." Erik pushed passed him.

"It was an accident! I didn't mean to…" His voice was barely a whisper in the back of my head now. "Please don't leave me again big brother." His voice was empty. I was dripping with the same loneliness I had once her in Erik's soft melodies.

"Will you sing for me, Angel?" Erik looked down at me and began to sing me the most beautiful song I had ever heard.

There's nothing like a good old family reunion. I hoped you liked it. Please Review. Stay tuned to find out what will happen next...