A/N: Thanks as always for the reviews! :) And now I give you…

Chapter LXVIII

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With a soft purr of contentment, Christine wrapped her arm around her dark lover, nestling more closely to his side. Her head rested on his broad chest, her ear pressed to the rapid beating of his heart. Their bodies damp from their exertions, they relaxed in a languid pool of ease and exchanged short, breathless endearments. The haze from their lovemaking soon began to lose unfocused edges and clear into sharper detail to include their muted surroundings, lit by candlelight coming from beyond the closed curtain of velvet to their left.

The sudden repeated clap of what sounded like small tin bells had Christine jump and partially sit up in stunned surprise. She stared toward that side of the bed and the curtain to the right. Erik groaned at the evident need to move and rolled to his side, flinging back the curtain and reaching hard toward the intrusive noise. In the shadows where the deposed Nyx once stood, a small table now took up residence. Barely seen in the darkness, what looked like a stuffed ape in an exotic costume and playing cymbals perched atop a pillow that sat on a rectangular black box, and Christine remembered where she had seen the unique toy before.

Erik fumbled and slapped his hand at the back edge of the polished box. Instantly the clanging stopped. Once he was again sprawled flat on the mattress beside her, he met Christine's inquisitive stare.

"The boy dropped the music box when he helped move his belongings into the other chamber," he explained in the deep, husky velvet timbre that always emerged after they made love. "The tune no longer plays well and hangs. Apparently the gear that controls the cymbals is also broken. I told him I would mend it, since I made it for him -"

He got no further in his explanation.

Christine suddenly rolled over him, straddling one of his lean-muscled legs as she lifted herself up while her hands went to his strong shoulders. Victorious, she held her habitually elusive Phantom down, now her captive.

"Ah, yes – Jacques. Let us speak of Jacques…"

His glowing eyes flicked down along the front of her and the revealed portion of naked curves that her switch in position now bared, but she did not let his renewed interest deter her and certainly felt no shyness or the need to cover herself after what intimate pleasures they just shared.

"Now that there is no longer any chance of us being overheard, since it is well past midnight and both sister and brother are sound asleep and quite a distance away, I wish to know everything, Erik. From your vague responses earlier and the unusual patience and fondness I've seen you give the lad – which I've never once seen you exhibit with anyone else besides me – I know there is much more to this story than what you formerly shared. Just who is he?"

"He is my brother."

Christine blinked in shock, his low words not fully conveying themselves in her mind to allow for clear thought. Indeed, such a statement, as grave as his expression was for what should be glad tidings to have found his family, made little sense.

"Your brother?" At his soft nod, she opened stunned eyes wider at the impact of her next thought. "Then Jolene …"

"Is not my sister," he concluded fiercely, letting out a snort of disgust.

She shook her head in helpless confusion. "I don't understand."

"Jacques is my half brother."

As soon as he said the words, she recalled Jolene's terse recounting of her parents shortly after Christine awakened from her high fever, months ago. "Our mother died when I was twelve. My father died when I was a baby. I do not know who Jacques' father is." After hearing the girl's explanation, until she realized her Phantom was Erik, Christine grimly assumed that he was the boy's father – but instead Erik and Jacques shared a father?

"How did you come by this information?" Christine asked, her interest to know blazing more intensely with every startling piece of information he tendered.

"It is rather a long story."

"I'm not going anywhere," she said pointedly.

With a resigned nod, Erik released a sigh. Slowly he pushed himself up, and her with him, her restraining hold a futile mockery against his greater strength.

"Erik?" she insisted in soft complaint.

"Patience, love."

He set her aside with care and moved to sit at the edge of the bed. Leaning over, he picked up a bottle of wine they had earlier shared with a late night repast of cheese and fruit and poured some into a silver chalice until the dark liquid nearly hit the brim.

In the full sum of time she had spent in these caverns, Christine noticed that her Phantom never drank spirits of any kind, except for one glass of wine with supper, and never did indulge. Now he took a long draught of the burgundy as if it was the sole cure to a lethal disease.

"Erik…?" This time her voice was laced with worry.

He turned slightly and offered her the goblet without looking at her. She took it without thinking and sipped at the bittersweet wine though she had no true desire for any. In the tense silence, her thoughts took her back to their childhood and the rare occasions when he spoke of his family, what little he knew of their existence, which was enough to fill the back half of the smallest of calling cards. Perhaps. If one wrote in large, wide letters. She recalled that his mother was from France … he had supposed that his father was from hell …

"Is that why you first came here, to Paris?" she asked breathlessly. "To find information about your mother?"

He shook his head gravely. "No. I told you why I came."

She shook her head in confusion. "Then how did this come about?"

He inhaled slowly and deeply through his nose, letting the air out in a long, harsh breath through his mouth before he again leaned back against the pillow. "I should begin with my escape from Persia, or rather what came afterward -"

"Your escape?"

At her emphatic question laced in horrified concern, his lips twisted in a wry grimace.

"Another time, Christine. As I have said, I intend to tell you all that you wish to know, but each revelation must have its own moment."

She tersely nodded, the hold to her patience fastened by a precarious thread. Knowing he was so damnably correct did not make the delay to learn the many mysteries of the missing years any less tolerable to bear.

"Yes, alright…" She let out an inaudible breath, determined for the moment to quash all eager questions and be quietly accommodating to hear all of what he would say. "I'm sorry. I do not mean to push so. I seem to be unable to help myself when it comes to the wish of knowing all about you that I can know."

The Phantom shook his head as if it was of no account and made a small flourish of his fingers in a wave, brushing off her needless apology. His jaw set like flint, his expression took on a hard cast that had nothing to do with the present or her impatience to understand the past.

"On board a ship there are diverse forms of…humanity," he said the last with a sardonic sneer. "Among them are the disreputable, contiguous to my own notorious ilk. For reasons I am sure I have no need to express, I chose to remain in my stateroom for the greater part of the journey. However, upon leaving its confines late one night – the nights being one of the rare occasions I allowed myself to partake of the fresh, sea air – I felt I was being followed, and I backtracked, to confront another brigand, a sailor – taking him by surprise in the shadows. At the sight of his barely concealed dagger, I thought he'd been sent to kill me and immediately had my rope at his throat, demanding to know who he was and who sent him. From his panicked words, I realized he had no knowledge of my identity, so I released my hold on him, with a threat never to speak to anyone of our encounter or I would not be so merciful next time."

Once upon a wretched time, the Phantom would have disposed of the common thief without pause or remorse. Yet, despite the lecherous Buquet's murder and that of the abusive cook, taking life had long ceased to satisfy, if the bitter emotion he had nurtured in his hurt vengeance could even be called satisfaction.

"Fearful I might yet send him over the edge of the ship into Davy Jones' Locker," he darkly chuckled, "he related his true purpose there; he had tracked for months and followed a foe on board – an enemy who betrayed his family and deceived him over an unpaid debt. We parted ways, with my warning never again to come near me to send him on his. I kept my silence when his victim was found battered and robbed, having no interest in the vendetta of another. Over the course of the voyage, we developed an understanding of sorts, though we remained distant and never again spoke. Not until by happenstance, when we found ourselves in the same tavern after we docked in England. I learned there through gossip that you were with that idiot boy, on your own ocean voyage to visit warmer climes, and I had no desire to remain in the cold and damp terrain any longer than I must. The culprit, Alric, with no further desire to work on a ship agreed for a price to assist me in my endeavors."

Christine set down the chalice of wine and gracefully crawled up to stretch out on the bed beside him, like a beautiful, seductive Delilah intent on his every word and the discovery of his every weakness. No, dammit – no! He must find faith in her again, must learn to trust her, though old feelings of betrayal and hurt that he wished forever banished stung his heart with their relentless reminder. He glanced away from her.

"My stay in England was brief, and I made a decision that has long been a thorn in my flesh." He hesitated grimly. "I went in search of my mother."

Christine gasped in surprise. From what little he told her years ago, she had always assumed the woman must be dead. She simply could not conceive that a living woman, a mother, could hand her child over to gypsies to be caged like an animal.

"I could not appear in public without a mask and the presence of one breeds insecurity and suspicion, so I remained hidden within shadows while the wily Alric acted as my mouthpiece. With his assistance in confronting others to seek answers to questions and with what scarce facts I recalled from my accursed childhood, we pieced together what little of my history we could find."

The air seemed to shift and prickle as Christine waited, sensing the difficulty for him to continue... tenaciously clinging to that raveling thread of patience not to prod him again.

Briefly he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"My mother was the beloved daughter of a gypsy elder whose caravan had been camped in France, near Rouen. A petite thing, she died while giving birth to me. My grandfather, in his hatred of me for killing his only child with my wretched existence, forbade any member of his family to have anything to do with me. They cast me off as refuse, leaving me to die in the forest for the wolves to find. If not for the mercy of a feared and demented woman in their tribe, they would have surely had their wish."

He scowled and paused only long enough to take another drink, this time directly from the bottle.

"When I was barely three, my grandmother feared a curse would come upon all of them to have me remain in their camp and persuaded my grandfather to give me to another Romani caravan they came across, in trade. They did not tell that band of gypsies my true identity and passed me off as the child of the mad beggar woman, who could scarcely care for herself. It was in that camp I remained, my earliest memories – a freak in a carnival sideshow. Locked in a cage for years. Until the night I killed my perverse jailer to escape his … beating."

His words came to a concise close, his eyes glittering hard and moist, as if his soul relived each fearsome, black moment of the past he had hidden in the mind of the terrified small boy he'd been. His grip on the bottle grew so tight she would not be surprised to see it break in his hand. A tear slid free and he growled in disgust, again tipping the bottle to his lips.

Christine watched him with huge eyes, also glazed with tears, equal parts of horror and compassion stirring inside her heart.

As a child he had killed to survive…his own family had left him as a babe to die and later sold him?!

Not knowing how to respond to such unthinkable revelations, she felt there was even more he withheld in those few clipped sentences – that one last word and his hesitation to give it voice expressing a dark pain and torment she did not want to believe possible but was painfully certain transpired. Less than a year ago she never knew such perverse men who craved the exploitation of innocents existed; now after learning the girl's sordid story only months after her own horrifying encounter at her cousin's hands, Christine knew only too well.

Her heart breaking for her dear Angel, she laid her hand on his arm, in an effort to offer what morsel of comfort he would allow. His muscle clenched but he remained still.

"I had earlier reached for and hidden a short length of rope left on the ground outside the cage bars," he continued, his tone dark with a detached satisfaction while faintly trembling with the remembered horror. "When my jailer approached, I kicked him in the groin, and once he doubled over, I came up from behind and strangled him with the rope. It was a merciful end I would have preferred not to grant. I was panicked and sought only escape. But he deserved a much more slow and agonizing death. What he did – no man should do to a child – even if that child is no more than a monster..."

At his uncharacteristically choppy words and clear struggle to maintain control, she swallowed hard over the painful lump that formed in her throat, aching to draw him into her arms and console him, as the man he was. As the boy he'd been. The jagged wound to his soul surely never had healed; indeed, it was a wonder he'd not been driven over the brink of insanity and could extend affection to anyone; she felt doubly thankful to be the recipient of his love – and so intense and passionate it was! But should she attempt to put her arms around him and hold him now he likely would construe her act as the pity he loathed, and be angered or disgusted, perhaps even end this disclosure – what she most certainly did not want. So she remained painfully still.

He had never in their lifetime told her so much about his past, and she greedily absorbed each coveted, terrible, pain-filled word, even as his ghastly testimony ripped through her own soul. She contented her desperate need to reach out to him by slowly tracing her fingertips back and forth above his elbow along a puckered white scar made by a dagger, his arms and legs also having not been spared from a blade's cruel marks. Though they bore far fewer scars than his torso held. Her action seemed to soothe him, his harsh breathing eased, and he went on.

"My dear relations had even more reason to despise me other than the grotesqueness of my face and the murder of my mother. I was considered unclean, not only due to the evil eye and my gross affliction, but because my mother had done what was forbidden – she had union with a gadjo – one not of their tribe. Not a gypsy. My father, though he deserves no such idiom…"

He took another swig of the wine. Words evaded Christine, everything that came to mind too trite or simple for such a weighty disclosure. She could no longer resist the urge to nestle close and draw her arm around his waist, whether for her own comfort or his she no longer knew, and sighed in relief when he welcomed her advance, drawing his own arm around her. Her tears fell, wetting her hair clouded beneath her cheek.

She felt his pain as intensely as if it was hers to bear, fresh and not a memory of the past, as if she was the one so heartlessly abandoned and mistreated. He had left her yes; she had suffered.

But as a child she had always known the protective tenderness of her dear Papa, had always felt wanted and loved. Erik never had such a blessing, not until she entered his life. And though she felt like a disloyal daughter for the thought, Papa never truly loved him or treated him as a true son. He spoke of and regarded Erik as a charity case, giving him a home, nice clothes and schooling, extending kindness because he felt it was expected to help those less fortunate. A worthy ideal, but an obligation all the same and never based in affection. Not once had she seen her Papa hug Erik or kiss his cheek and forehead, as he'd often done to her. Christine was the only one to ever truly love her dark Angel.

His fingers wove into her hair, idly cupping the back of her head, the tips caressing her scalp, and she moved her mouth the fraction needed to softly kiss his chest, beneath which beat so wounded a heart. He released a long pent-up sigh, as if grateful, and she felt his tension begin to ease.

"We learned his name and tracked my father's family outside of Paris," he said after a moment, his voice stronger but still quiet. "My father is a sailor who rarely visits his hometown village of Calais, but on his last visit over six years ago remained long enough to bed a local tavernkeeper's daughter, a young widow with a small daughter. Nine months later the woman gave birth to a son, another bastard like myself created out of wedlock. A high fever in his infancy struck him both deaf and dumb…"

"Jacques…" she breathed.

"Jacques," he said with a solemn nod. "Already the village pariah, when the woman died in her sickbed years later, the tavernkeeper foisted his grandchildren off onto his eldest son who came to visit from Paris, and had gained a perverse interest in his eleven-year-old niece, desiring her as a maid at his hotel. He took the boy as well, as she would not go without him and the tavernkeeper did not want either of them underfoot any longer."

Christine wanted to forever despise Jolene for the pain she caused in her rivalry to win Erik into her bed, and especially for having had intimate knowledge of her husband in the past. Each time that truth broke through her pretense of forgetfulness she pushed it swiftly down to try to drown the realization before it could fully surface, not yet ready to face what she must. As the Phantom with a shadowy history, his nocturnal exploits had bothered her but not unduly. As Erik, the mate of her soul, with a history they shared as far as she could think back – they mattered immensely. It distressed her to know he had lain with other women, the bitter sting like a scorpion's stab to her heart – before she could once more force the hurt and the cause of it away.

And yet, after hearing of the girl's mistreatment that began in early childhood by those who were supposed to love her, akin to Erik's own heartbreaking experiences, she found it difficult to retain the bulk of her anger, her recent dislike for Jolene calming into reluctant compassion for her sad plight. One Christine had been most fortunate never to bear.

So much was finally beginning to make sense. So much was at last falling into place. Something she would have to think about soon, but God help her, not yet…

"It was during this time I made my home, here, in these caverns," Erik continued his story, the fingertips of his other hand brushing up and down her arm in repeated caress as he held her against him. "In a bizarre fluke, I learned that the hotel to which the fiend took the children was located several blocks from the opera house. I went there to see Jacques. I slipped in through the back entrance, not wishing to be noticed, and saw the boy from afar, in the kitchens. In the short time I observed him I could tell he was a victim of neglect, his frame thin and smaller than it should be for a boy his age, his clothing torn and soiled, not unlike a beggar's rags. I slipped into his uncle's office to confront the fiend. I demanded that he hand Jacques over to my care, speaking of our connection through our father. I had no idea what I would do with the boy, mind you, but I was continually reminded of your father and how he helped me, a small, runaway gypsy vagabond, giving me a home. I could not in all good conscience leave Jacques there to suffer, especially since he is family, and was as unwanted as I had been."

"Of course not," Christine agreed, fresh tears dampening her eyes and quiet warmth filtering through her heart to hear his ardent resolve. "You did what you must. You did what was right for Jacques. That doesn't surprise me."

No matter who her husband had killed, no matter what horrors he had wrought in Persia to make "escape" necessary, or the havoc he yet created at the opera house, she knew, despite how damaged he was, or perhaps because of it, that there existed some aspect of goodness inside Erik – an inherent integrity in his nature that cared about and protected those he loved. It had always been that way. And she exulted in the knowledge that it still was, her heart yet troubled by his dark and flippant confession to her that first night at the hotel, of presumably "hundreds" of murders.

She shivered and tightened her hold around him.

Whether one or more than one hundred, they had that in common and the need to hide.

"The boy's uncle, the concierge, treated Jacques as a useless hindrance but recognized an opportunity to gain wealth," he continued. "He refused me unless I paid a steep price for the boy. Having used almost the entirety of what I absconded with from Persia, I could not meet his absurd demands, even had I wished to. And so I awaited an opportunity to take the lad." He turned his somber golden eyes to her dark ones. "That opportunity came, unexpectedly, on the night of the opening of Tristan and Isolde. I followed you to the hotel, saw you in the wretched Vicomte's arms, and slipped through a back entrance into the rain. It was then that I heard the girl scream…"

"And you rushed to their aid and saved them," she concluded softly, taking the bottle from him with little less than half the wine remaining and setting it on the ground so as to slip her hand around his and kiss his palm. She had not missed the bitter tightness in his voice when he referred to her and Raoul.

The Phantom nodded. "The brute, the main cook at the hotel, had struck the boy unconscious and was beating the girl when I arrived. I killed him with my lasso, and their uncle later learned of a masked man seen on the premises inside the hotel during the search for what I now know is your cat. Apparently I was not as careful as I should have been in staying hidden."

After having witnessed Christine held so tenderly in the wretched boy's arms, soon slipping with him inside his room, the Phantom had been walking in a cloud of hurt rage, uncharacteristically unaware of his surroundings. Slipping outside into the rain had saved the Vicomte's miserable life, for the Phantom's first strong impulse had been to rush forward and snap the fool boy's neck.

"Now, I am a wanted man and must remain hidden. And that, in part, is why these caverns remain my home," he concluded.

She thought over all of what he told her, so much of it too tragic to comprehend, but sensed he awaited her response. His muscles contracted beneath her, proof of the return of his nervous tension, and she asked one of the questions uppermost in her mind.

"Does Jacques know that you're brothers?"

"No."

"And Jolene?" She answered her own question. "No, I suppose she doesn't and that's why you insisted we wait until we had complete privacy to tell me this."

He gave a curt nod. "She has no knowledge of the truth. Nor do I wish her to know my history. She has learned entirely too much about me as it is." He pressed his lips together in grim recollection.

Again, she sensed more that he did not say, but decided in this she had no wish to know, since, perhaps, she already did. Christine sternly forced her mind back to the boy.

"Will you tell him?"

"There is no need. It is best to let matters stand as they are. He is content here. He has a home. He has his sister…"

Christine frowned at his idea of what was "best", since his idea of the "best" had been faulty before, with regard to his cruel masquerade against her.

"You are his brother," she gently insisted. "You are his family too."

"I see no reason to upset the order of his world with that fact."

"Upset it how?" She shook her head in confusion. "I should think he would be delighted to know the guardian he so adores is his very own brother."

"An intrepid murderer," he bit out in tight sarcasm. "A freak of nature. Oh yes, who would not love to claim such a monster as a member of their family?"

"I would – and did." She sighed, wishing to make him understand. "You are my family, the only family I have left. I chose you for my husband even knowing all that, though I certainly don't consider you a freak of nature." His harsh expression did not alter and she continued softly, focusing on the latter part of what he said. "My God, Erik, you saved the boy's life and gave him a home. You have taken care of Jacques for years! He already thinks of you as family. Has he never seen you without the mask?"

She asked the last on an impulse to know, recalling Jolene's fearful warning never to try. Surely as stealthy as the boy was, much like his older brother, he must have sneaked up on him at some point without the covering and accidentally glimpsed his face, as Christine had when they were children.

"NO!" his reply came fierce as he looked at her. "Nor will he. You know the consequences," – he pointed savagely to his right side –"He must NEVER see this aberration of humanity that lies beneath the mask!"

Her hand lifted to cradle his scars, those he was born with and those viciously inflicted on him. Her thumb made a gentle sweep against his warped cheek of the longest burn scar.

"I see only a man," and she was thankful he'd given in to her request for her to remove the mask when they retired within their velvet enclosed sanctuary, though he had somberly evaded her at first. "The only man I have ever loved. I did not run, and I certainly didn't die. Nor will Jacques."

"No, Christine," he insisted, placing his hand atop hers but not forcing it away. "It is different between us; you have said so yourself. You are a part of me. It is a truth complex to conceive, but I feel you deeply beneath my skin through every sinew and bone and fiber of my flesh. You flow throughout my veins and are in my blood; perhaps that is why the curse has no ill effect on you. We are one, made more so now. But Jacques…" He shook his head. "Even if he somehow escaped the horror of the evil eye, I could not bear for him to see me as I truly am, to suddenly look upon me with fear or loathing."

"I highly doubt he ever would."

"And I can never take that risk."

She shook her head sadly and lowered her eyes to the sheet, not knowing what to say to break through such stubborn gypsy beliefs – all of them wrong, so horribly wrong, she was sure of it. Perhaps the Persian had been diseased or possessed a bad heart for it to fail so quickly…

The Phantom peered at her face with grave intent, noticing how she frowned and averted her eyes from him.

"And you, Christine…" His voice came soft and raspy with lingering emotion, the slight quaver both from fear of her response and the disgust of the creature he was. "Now that you know from whence I came, that I was a mistake born of nature…now that you know I am not only a murdering beast, but a bastard as well, and the full extent of my disgrace, do you regret giving yourself to me as a wife and pledging a lifetime of commitment?"

Her startled gaze swung up to his. "Never."

Her reply came swift, the conviction ringing clear in her voice, and his eyes fell shut in relief. Her heart twisted at the pain he so often tried to conceal as her other hand rested against his perfect cheek to cradle his face fully.

"You are not a mistake, Erik … though sometimes you do behave like a brutish beast."

His lips quirked at the corners at her gentle teasing, however true the sentiment, and he nodded shortly in acknowledgment.

"But you are so wanted and needed and loved." Her tone grew softer in its sincerity, the words precious and fragile with their need to be embraced. "My life would be a mistake without you in it; certainly it was in error while you were missing from it. The days black and white with no color to them. Harsh. Absent of all music. And I am that much more convinced God sent you to me fifteen years ago, to be my companion always. Because nothing and no one has ever satisfied me as you do, as being in your presence does…"

She touched her lips against his in slow tenderness, moving her hands from his face to link around his neck, her fingers weaving into his thick hair. "…and now, to have this intimacy we share, this passion, which goes beyond such a weak word as bliss…"

"Christine, mon amour, mon petit Ange. Je t'aime pour toujours..."

She shivered deliciously at the deep velvet of his French endearments, that seemed their own caress. Flicking her eyes up to his golden ones, she saw the desire again burn so intensely.

"Satisfy me again, my love," she whispered. "I want to feel your hands caress every part of my body…I want to feel every inch of your skin beneath my hands..." Her face flushed with warmth at her bold words, but she did not cease with her coaxing whispers. "Let us satisfy one another…"

There was no need to vocalize such wishes.

At the first brush of her lips against his, Erik pressed his warm palms to the back of her hip and the center of her spine in tender possession, returning her kisses with hunger while laying back with her against the silk sheets. She spoke such sentiments in the sole hope that the more times he heard the truth of what composed her heart, the less he would waver in disbelief with regard to her unceasing love for him.

She would once and for all time break through the prison bars of his foolish doubts, and in so doing she would set them both free…

Further coherent thought and speech fled at the sensation of his lips and tongue making a slow, heated slide between her breasts and down her stomach. Christine moaned deeply in rising excitement, utterly giving herself over to the passion of her beautiful dark angel.

xXx