A/N: This is the chapter that finally makes this fic novel-length, so I hope you all enjoy it!

Flashes of light against the insides of his eyelids, but he is too tired to open them. They must be shells, off in distance. At another time, the thought would worry him, would make him check on his men and ask Dupuis for updates and cause anxious fear for the men out there to twist in his heart, but not tonight. Not when he has Antoine's arms around him again, Antoine's heart beating softly beneath his ear. Such a lovely heartbeat. He could listen to it forever, over and over, the softest, sweetest melody. Could weave it into a violin composition, the soft susurration of blood getting pumped through is body, of his breaths, each one an affirmation that he is alive, alive, alive.

Antoine is safe. And how can anything be wrong in the world if Antoine is safe?

There has been no telegram, not since the one telling her about the infection. And no telegram can only mean that he is still alive, terribly ill, but still fighting.

It's not much hope, but Christine will take what she can get right now.

Sorelli has not had a telegram either. But Sorelli's last news was not of infection, was simply a line saying that Antoine's wound "showed good signs" (what is that supposed to mean anyway? It is like some sort of a code, containing information only accessible to those in the know) and he is resting. And not for the first time, Christine wonders if Antoine knows about Konstin. If he knows, he is hardly in any state to rest. The two of them have always been so close, and Antoine has always worried so.

And Konstin, Konstin likely does not know about Antoine. Not with how badly wounded he is himself, and with this infection. And it is probably for the best that way, that he does not know. He would fret himself.

Christine cannot bring herself to feel relieved at the thought of his ignorance. There is no room in her heart now for relief, too many questions crowding it out. Is he looking for her, her little boy? Asking for her as if she can take the pain away? He must be in such pain, or is he too drugged with that dreadful morphine to feel it? She has always hated morphine, hated it for the way Erik needed it, but the thought that it might bring some comfort to Konstin, might keep his pain at bay...

What if he does want her? How could she go to him? She aches to, aches to take his hand, and kiss his forehead, and sing for him as if he were that tiny boy again who insisted she go to the opera instead of staying home to take care of him. She wound wrap her arms around him, and hold him close, and hum to him softly as she nuzzled into his hair, and hope it would keep his nightmares at bay. (Please God let him not have nightmares. The pain is bad enough, the wounds, but, Lord, spare him from the nightmares.)

Her whole body is trembling, trembling with her thoughts, and Sorelli must notice because she reaches over and takes her hand, and squeezes it gently though she does not say a word. She does not need to speak, not truly. They are both bound by their worry. What room is there for words between them?

If she listens, clears her mind and focuses, she can hear only faint whispers of voices from the other room. Raoul and Philippe have sequestered themselves away with Guillaume and a bottle of cognac, and they have never found such comfort in silence. She cannot make out what it is they are saying, but surely it is irrelevant, some minor thing to distract themselves and Heaven knows they need distraction but she needs distraction too only she cannot find it, not anywhere, and she is left sitting here, with her own breathing and Sorelli's and the soft ticking of the clock, her throat as dry as the desert, waiting. Endlessly waiting.

He can hear the music, tinkling softly on the phonograph, can feel Konstin's arms around his waist as they sway. He leans in, lays his head against that chest, and sighs, Konstin's hand warm as it slips up his back, cups the nape of his neck and he—

and—

—and the rustling of clothes breaks the spell of the memory, Antoine's eyes flickering open to find the same dark ceiling he has been staring at for so long now, and a face swimming before him.

A face?

He blinks rapidly to clear his vision, swallowing, and it comes to him slowly through the haze of his thoughts that it is Marguerite. Marguerite sitting beside him, her face pinched and ashen-pale. Pale? Why—why is she pale? Did something happen? Is she all right?

Konstin. It must be over Konstin, and at the very thought there is a check at Antoine's heart, and he turns his head, half-fearing for a moment that Konstin is gone, but finds him lying there, in the other bed, as pallid and grey as he was before and just to see him there is a relief even if nauseous anxiety twists afresh in his stomach. Konstin and an infection and his Saint Anthony is missing and the wedding band and the fact that they are missing must surely mean that he is going to die and Antoine's heart pounds painfully, his breaths coming in short gasps but Marguerite is shushing him gently, patting his hand, stroking his hair, and her eyes shine with tears.

"He'll be all right, Antoine, he'll be all right."

But how will he be all right if the Saint Anthony is missing? It is supposed to keep him safe, supposed to keep him well, but if it is missing it cannot keep him well and maybe that is why he got an infection and— and—

"His Saint Anthony—" Antoine gasps, unable to fully get the words out, unable to ask her if she might know where it is, and a look crosses her face, a look he cannot make out, and her hand is leaving his hair, is reaching into the inside of her uniform and slowly, infinitely slowly as if the world has stopped turning, she pulls out two gold chains. And as they come free a Saint Anthony dangles from the end of one of them, and a wedding band from the other, and Antoine's heart lurches as he stretches out his hand, and feels the weight of them as she lays them in his hand.

"I took them for safe-keeping before his surgery," she murmurs, her voice low, but the words rush over Antoine and all he can hear is his own heart pounding as he looks at that wedding band.

The wedding band. The way it glints around Konstin's finger when under candlelight though it is so rarely on his finger, only when they are together. It would be too dangerous otherwise though it is made to perfectly fit. He took the measurements himself to know.

His hand trembles, nose tingling and tears burning his eyes and they blur the sight of the thin gold band. Will he ever see it around Konstin's finger again? Will he ever get the chance?

Distantly he is aware of Marguerite calling his name, her voice high with concern, but it is so very far away, and there are only the tears stinging his eyes, the wedding band in his hand, until the world fades to black.

Erik said, once, that he would marry her in the Madeleine. It was that awful night, the terrible night when he would have killed Raoul and Nadir out of madness in his torture chamber only for she realised that she truly did love him. Do you throw yourself under the wheels of a cab as we leave the Madeleine? She can still hear the hiss in his voice, see the sparks that danced in his eyes and she shivers at the memory, but they never spoke of it again. Not of that night, only to acknowledge its existence, once or twice, and not of the possibility of marrying in the Madeleine.

They both knew it was out of the question, really. It was likely for the best. It is too sprawling, too vast with its high vaulting ceilings and colonnades. They would both have been terribly out of place, dwarfed by the sheer magnificence of it.

If he had been anyone else, would they have married here? And if they had, would she be sitting here now, her mind a tangled mess and her Rosary beads wound tight between her fingers, praying for the life of her son so very far away. Did they curse him to suffer so by marrying as they did, secretly and privately, beneath the Garnier in a ceremony of Nadir's own devising? They were married before God but not before the Church, and if they had married before the church would Konstin be wounded now?

It is a question without an answer, a question she could never hope to answer, not in this lifetime. And she tries to push it away, tries to focus on her prayers, tries to call on every saint there is, but it wanders back, again and again. Is it somehow her fault, her fault and Erik's, that Konstin must suffer now? Are his wounds their penance for the sins they committed so long ago?

She hopes not. Oh, how she hopes.

She has never confessed it to a priest. It was a sin, yes, surely, but no worse a sin than those that get committed every night in Paris by other couples who love each other outside the bounds of the faith. But perhaps she should find a priest. Perhaps she should sit down with him and say, yes, I loved Erik. Yes, he could be violent, and cruel, and was prone to bursts of temper, but he was capable of great gentleness too, and kindness, and I loved him, and I still love him, and he loved me. No, we were not married before a priest and yes, our son was conceived out of wedlock, but it was out of wedlock only in the eyes of the law and the Church, and we considered ourselves married, considered ourselves bound to each other. No, I do not regret the conception of my son. No, I do not repent his existence. The remorse I feel is for the possibility that the way we chose to live may be the reason our son is so ill now.

How could she confess that to a priest? How could he absolve her of it? She does not repent. She does not feel remorse for the fact of Konstin's life. She does not regret loving Erik. What is there that a priest can hope to do for her?

Nothing. Not a single thing. And it is that simple fact that makes her squeeze her beads tighter, and draw a deep breath to ease the pounding of her heart.

If a priest can be of no help, she will simply have to pray hard enough to help Konstin herself.

It comes to Marguerite slowly, as if it is something she has always somehow known but never put words to. Love. (Dupui—Edouard's fingers twitch in her hand as she thinks it.) Love. Tenderness. Affection and longing and desperation. They are all the things that shine in Antoine's eyes each time he asks for Konstin, each time he looks over at him. All of those things, but love most of all.

How did she not see it sooner?

Surely it has been there for years, clear in his eyes, only she was too blind, or too young, or just too distracted to see it. But now it all slots together, and it is not a shock so much as a moment of clarity, as if all at once the rain has cleared and there simply is what has been there all along, revealed.

The colour drained from Antoine's face when he held the wedding band and the Saint Anthony, and something prickled at the back of her mind even then though she was too caught up in the fact that he was about to faint, when his eyes rolled her fingers fumbled at his throat, seeking out his pulse. She knew it was there, knew it with complete and total certainty, but the moment she felt the flutter of his pulse (a little too fast, but strong and there) a powerful wave of relief washed over her (one hears stories, after all, of hearts stopping suddenly with powerful emotions) and she sank back into her chair, feeling suddenly weak though not for the first time today.

And still the pieces did not slot into place.

Carefully she lifted the two chains and cupped them in her own hand, her mind replaying the way he held them so gently, the way he stared at them as if they were the most precious things in the world, instead of merely a Saint Anthony and an old wedding ring. And she wondered what it was about them that made him react so, that made him faint, but she does not have to wonder now.

It was because they were Konstin's, are Konstin's. All because they are Konstin's.

But she did not know it then, or some part of her knew it, felt it in her bones, though it was not obvious to her brain. A groan from the bed interrupted her wondering, and she looked back at Antoine, found a furrow between his brows, and his face tight. She curled her fingers around the chains to keep them safe, and gently took his hand. "Antoine," she whispered, "Antoine you're all right."

And he whimpered, whimpered at her words so that she shushed him and squeezed his hand tighter. But instead of quieting, he breathed "Kon...Konstin" and his eyelids flickered, opened to find her sitting there, and she did not have the strength to smile. He turned his head, and found Konstin lying in the other bed (the way he has done each time he wakes, she realises now though she did not think it then), and his voice was rough with the tears in his eyes as he whispered, "he can't die, Marguerite, he can't."

She shushed him, shushed him and wrapped her arms around him as the tears trickled down his cheeks, and whispered a hundred, a thousand soft things, soft promises that of course he's not going to die and he just needs more time to rest and he will get well he will all the time wishing that she could believe them, that they were not lies as dry as sand rolling off her tongue, pretending that they were not words she has whispered to other men, other soldiers, some of the nurses, over and over and over again in these last three years, wishing that her tongue cannot form them so easily, does not know the shape of them so well.

She held him, rocked him as if he were a child though he is older than her (so much older than her, but age is an irrelevant thing now, hardly matters when there are mere boys lying in bits in the mud), whispered to him for what felt like hours until his breaths evened and sheer exhaustion pulled him back to sleep. And then she lay him down, and dried the tears that still lay damp and rough on his cheeks, and pulled the sheets up to his chin, the tears dripping from her own eyes with the weight of the lie-like promises she had told him,

She did not bother trying to wipe them away. They would only come again, and her eyes water now at the memory of them.

With the Saint Anthony and the wedding band held safe in her hand, she turned to Konstin, lying whimpering in the bed behind her, his lips parted with his gasping breaths. And she eased his sheets down, and his neck was warm beneath her touch as she clasped the two chains back around it, the little saint in his capsule and the wedding band lying pooled in the hollow between his collarbones. She groped for something to say, something soothing, as if he could hear her in the depths of his own unconsciousness, but the words all fled from her mind and she could only tuck the sheets back around him, and stroke back a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead.

And now she wonders, sitting here beside Edouard who is sleeping too, unconscious with the power of his own fever, wonders if Konstin loves Antoine too. Does he dream of him, see him behind his closed eyes? The handful of times he has drifted to wakefulness as she sat with him he asked for Antoine with worry flickering in his good eye (likely in the wounded one two, though the bandage hides it from the world). He must care for Antoine deeply, must love him too, in some way. In the same way, maybe. A way that they have only between them.

He must.

The twitching of Edouard's fingers brings her back to him, and she presses his fingers gently to her lips. His eyes flicker, but do not open, a faint crease in his brow but he is not in pain. If he were in pain, between his wounds and the peritonitis he would be screaming by now.

She cannot bring herself to feel relieved for his numbness.

For stretching minutes she watches him, her thoughts hollow and his fingers cold, but he does not wake, and when at last his fingers still again, and the slight roughness in his breathing eases, the crease fading from his eyes, she leans in and with her lips beside his ear she whispers, hoping there is some small part of him that can hear her, "Call me Marguerite."

As she pulls back, a single tear falls from her eye to his cheek, but she does not wipe it away.

A/N: Thank you for all of your lovely reviews so far, and please do leave reviews on this one! It's a chapter that I'm quite happy with so please do let me know what you all think.

Up next: Marguerite dwells on her realisation, and Konstin receives a spectral visitor.