Author's Note: Couple things before we get into it. Due to a change of jobs, my writing schedule has been non-existent. Case in point, Chapter 12, was written when I was in Trieste in the middle of July and Chapter 11 was written after 12(Yes, you read that right, weird I know.) As such, I probably won't be on a Regular Writing Schedule until closer to October when things are more settled at work.

Books and Doors

Christine did not know why she chose to go with Erik, other than settling on the fact he asked her first. While she knew Erik had great affection for her, and her acceptance of his invitation was possibly misleading, it still seemed a better choice. Erik's comments made days ago were persistent as they coursed through her fickle mind.

Raoul had been around the opera often since the announcement of his patronage, and not once did he see her. Not until tonight, after she sang and touched a bit of heaven. Now they were suddenly close friends as though years never parted them for so long? Surely his patronage allowed him to know of her elevation to understudy, and to see her name before now.

The journey to Erik's home was quiet, though not in an unwelcome way. Being in his presence left her fraught with nerves, but at least she did not seem to be alone in that. Erik was stiffer than she was used to seeing, not that they had much time where they were alone together, apart from lessons and revelations.

When they reached the abode beneath the world, Christine could not help but notice things seemed neater and rearranged since her last visit. "Please, make yourself comfortable," he motioned to the sofa. "Would dauphinois suffice? I do have a tomato bisque that can hold you over if you are hungry now."

"Whichever is easiest for you," she answered, a feeling of awkwardness starting to grow within her breast as she glanced around the parlor where drapes hung over non-existent windows. Where draperies were absent, tall bookcases laden with books filled the space, or an unusual piece of art or sconce with lit candles. Black, silver, red, and gray seemed to be the dominant colors. Fabrics were red, woods were black with steel accents, with gray stone bricks that made the walls there was a touch of creamy brown in them that added warmth.

As she studied his living space, Christine felt his eyes on her as she hugged herself and turned away. Uncertain of everything, second-guessing each decision, every thought bringing a twisted knot to the pit of her stomach. Was she even hungry or would she just shamefully retch it up? Poor Erik would be thinking the worst.

"Christine?" that musical voice whispered her name into her ear as though it were music itself. That lovely voice succeeded in drawing her eyes back to him, and his mismatched ones roamed over her in apparent confusion.

"I am not particular of what you wish to make."

Erik gave a tiny head shake and pointed to her arms in a graceful movement. "You are upset."

Christine glanced down at her arms as they lay crossed over her stomach rather tightly. She forced them to hang limply at her sides.

"Last time you held yourself in such a manner, you were upset and left," those piercing orbs lifted to hers, still so much question in them. Erik's jaw shifted a bit before he spoke again. "Do I… need to take you back up to the surface?"

"No… just," Christine's hand brushed over her face a moment before sinking to the patterned cushions of the sofa. "I don't know, Erik. I do not wish to see Raoul, but I do not want to mislead you either by my presence. I'm not even sure if I could eat anything and keep it down."

Erik stood stark still, save for the fingers of his left hand that began rippling and moving like there was some invisible granulate traveling between his thumb and every fingertip. Then a grand stretch would come as a pause to the motions before they rhythmically began rolling again. Those eyes moved away from her as his hand projected either the deep thoughts surging through his mind or anxiety welling up within.

Whether it was one or both afflictions, Christine was not certain. Even as the hand suddenly stilled and clenched into a minor fist, no answer to the travels of that mind was communicated. Instead, he stiffly turned away and strode into a threshold in the wall that led into what she glimpsed as a narrow corridor that she assumed led to the kitchen.

Christine dared not move for the sofa, looking down toward her hands so neatly folded on her lap. Regardless of the reasoning Erik had given, Christine still found herself wondering: Why me? Over and over again she wondered that thought like the seconds of a clock ticking away in an endless loop. Even when wound down when the spring lost its tightness, the circle continued. How many proverbial hours would tick away in those endless seconds until the thoughts stopped?

Despite his physical and perhaps mental afflictions, Erik was above her. Surrounded by books whose subjects extended beyond fiction and into mind-boggling schools of thought. Those subjects of sciences, mathematics, physics, and architecture were so far outside her grasp. The music he composed went even further. She could sight read to an extent, but him? His mind heard a score as his eyes went over the notes. Not just plain and simple music, like a composition for a single instrument, but rather, he heard the numerous staves for an orchestra and all its elements.

She could not. Christine could follow the music of a melody and a bit of its harmony. More than that seemed unobtainable.

Minutes slipped away slowly, but they were only a handful in number until Erik returned with a peculiar tea setup in hand. On the tray he brought her, was a small and unique ornate silver pot with a small flame burning beneath it and a spigot spouting from its base. Her brows pinned together as she studied the object, and the two equally ornate porcelain cups with a lavishly painted scene that she would need study to make out.

"It is called a samovar," Erik explained as he set the tray down on a small side table near her seat on the sofa. "From Russia. You can brew your tea and keep it hot until you are either finished or it is gone. Sediment that leaks from the diffusor will settle at the bottom of the pot rather than your cup."

"I don't know if I've seen anything like it," she commented as she watched him place a cup beneath the spigot and press the small lever that allowed amber tea to fill the cup.

"Here, an herbal tea with ginger. This should help your nausea in at least the physical sense," he set the cup and saucer down near her and motioned to the lemon, sugar, and honey for her to add at her discretion. "Although you are not singing any further tonight, adding milk or cream to this particular tea would be unpleasant."

Christine gave a nod, depending on how much ginger was added to the brew, any diary would make it unpleasant. Tentatively, she took up the cup and took a whiff of the liquid and subtle spice of the ginger root with floral undertones. "You've been to Russia?" she asked before taking a small sip.

"Yes, and most of the countries along the Silk Road," he answered and filled his cup.

The ginger was potent when it hit Christine's tongue, but not overpowering the herbal elements present. Her eyes, however, widened not from the tea, but from Erik's travels. "Really?" she asked as she set her tea down to add a squeeze of lemon and a bit of sugar. Under normal circumstances, she preferred the honey but this tea beckoned subtly to make it suit her tastes. "Where you really in the Foreign Legion?"

Erik shook his head, adding lemon to his tea before he settled into a nearby chair. "No. Though I have encountered them regularly, as Europe as a whole, likes to bend the world to its whim."

"What do you mean?"

"Colonization. Conforming other cultures and countries to our ideologies and religion to the point it threatens the local identity, until it becomes nothing."

Christine frowned and sat back a little as she pondered what he was saying from what she had been reading. "I thought we out there helping with medicine and education…?"

"In part," he nodded. "But much of what is done is the cost of their traditions and religion while giving empty promises of prosperity. You would not want someone to come and promise these things on the notion of giving up being Catholic and those traditions, would you?"

"No, I suppose not," she looked to her cup and indulged in the warmth of it in her hands. "What made you travel?"

"A want to experience the world and its fascinating cultures, and… searching for somewhere I might belong and not have to hide away."

"I guess… you could not find that?"

Erik's lips pursed together before taking a drink from his cup, drawing out the wait for the answer as he idly stared at a curtain. Though in this instance, he was staring through the textile. "I did and did not. I found places where I could belong for a time without much concern on who or what may try to end me, at least until my usefulness ran its course."

Christine's brows pinched together. "Your usefulness?"

"I never really belonged anywhere unless I gave something that was wanted. When I can no longer give whatever useful trait I had, well it was best to leave quickly."

"Like what?"

Another pause before he sat up and reached to set his tea aside. "It may be better to show you…" Erik rose from his chair and vanished into a nook that served as a workspace of arts and crafts. When he returned, he had a padfolio in hand and opened it to draw out two stacks of sketches and handed them to her.

Christine took the aging parchment with sketches that were lightly colored. Beautiful palaces of grand designs for both sets, even if the subsequent pages grew more technical. They were breathtaking and unlike any building she had seen before with magnificent columns, sweeping arches, and graceful curves that dared to challenge what she knew of gravity and physics.

"I would build palaces for the powerful, and advise them how to grow and keep what they sought– more power. Once a palace was done or they reached the pinnacle of status, I would become a liability."

"Why?" she asked, still marveling over the designs.

"They sought to keep me from building for anyone else, or risk my leaving while I knew too much. I got out of Persia before they could complete their plans at the end of my use to the Shah. In Turkey," he brushed the side of his head where the apparent scarring instead of deformity hid beneath the mask and wig, "I was not as lucky. The fleeting kinships I had there was not enough to give fair warning."

Christine frowned as she looked up at him, "That's horrible."

"That is life, Christine," he sighed as he sank back down in his chair and refreshed his tea with more hot liquid from the samovar.

Setting the beautiful designs aside, she continued to look towards him with an aching heart. "What did they do to you in Turkey?"

"Things that are better left forgotten, and what I do not wish to remember any more than I have now," his hand brushed over that concealed scarring again.

The silence that grew between them was only broken by the tick-tock of a grandmother clock that suited the room better than its larger masculine counterpart would. When questions continued to blossom and Christine could disregard them no more, she sipped her tea for courage. As Erik had suggested, it did soothe her stomach a bit, just not the nerves that inspired such wicked knots.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

Erik blinked out of his reverie and looked at her. "Come again?"

She touched the side of her head where his scars would be if their roles reversed. "The scars, the…deformity? Any of it… Does it hurt?"

His gaze shifted between her and inanimate objects, "Curious lines of question."

"You have books to sate your curiosities," Christine motioned to the overflowing bookcase, and that was not the only one he had in his home, she knew. "I have only the subject himself, and he tends to be a tough book to pry open and learn anything from." She looked back to those hesitant eyes.

"You really want to know?"

"You have said yourself that I am the only one who treats you as any other man, mostly… If you wish to have your feelings for me reciprocated Erik, I need to know more of you than just music and that you are the Phantom."

"Anyone taking a genuine interest in me for reasons other than my usefulness to a whim, is foreign."

"Are you suggesting that I would be like them? Use your tutelage for my gain and wash my hands of you?"

"It would not be unheard of, my dear. I do not consider you as one who would consciously betray me, as I would not invite you into my home otherwise.

"But you suspect that I would?"

Erik seemed to shrink in his chair. "Live as I have lived and you grow paranoid of everyone and everything."

"You are a walking contradiction, Erik," Christine stated.

"I find that most of humanity suffers from individual contradiction. My own contradictions are more apparent, socially and—" he motioned to his mask. "I seem incapable of diminishing my faults as others can."

"Then tell me your story so I may understand you."

Erik's mask had changed between his presence in the wings of the opera to his presence behind her mirror, thus she saw his visible cheek twitch at the notion as he took his time in answering. "Most of my past is dreadful and is best where it already belongs, forgotten."

"Is it truly forgotten?"

Those fleeting glances landed on her. "No. I forget little, though much of what I remember is locked away."

"Locked away? You can lock memories away?"

"Yes," he paused a moment and then motioned to the large wall of books. "Consider that bookcase to be my mind, Christine."

Christine turned towards in, taking in the numerous volumes stored there in leather bindings of colorful stains that titles in gold or silver leaf to stand out more. Others had just plain black embossed lettering.

"Countless books containing groups of memory. Now, I cannot tell you of every book on those selves without examining them in some fashion, be it reading the title or you asking if I have something from Dumas. I can see that memory or relevant memories and not only tell you where these 'books' are, but every notable facet of its contents in more detail than most. Certain books are locked in another room. Present and there, but I chose not to visit."

Her mouth slackened as he so expertly explained his books of memory. In truth, while it was more complex, it was not so dissimilar from her own powers of recall. "I have always considered it more like keys and doors," she began, drawing those mismatched eyes and a quirked brow to her. "I stand in this hallway of all these doors to memory, and not every door or key to it has a label until I can find my way to it. Others… are always open and when I look in it," Christine paused, her eyes losing focus on him as she searched for the words, "the memory is there in a way that if I walk through its door, I am back in it."

When Christine managed to focus on him again, Erik was looking at her with a small smile playing across his lips. At least until it seemed he realized he was smiling and it vanished as though it were a sin to have, though his apparent interest remained.

"It's strange really," Christine went on, "how memory can either be at the forefront of your mind or conjured with some bit of effort to be brought to bear. It's not so different from a library, which is probably superior. But I guess that's why I also feel a bit lost when I seek out a memory that's more elusive without a guide to direct me through the corridors. I guess that's why Raoul always would say, 'Little Lotte let her mind wander.' Even tonight, when my mind was not wandering…" she sighed.

Erik's eyes darkened at the mentioned name, back stiffening although he leaned back into his chair with his ankle now resting over the opposite knee. "It would seem, from my admittedly meager understanding, that you and I are in the minority in our methods of recollection. Yet, I feel compelled to remind you that there is nothing wrong with wandering thoughts, Christine. You have an artistic mind. Its wandering is a means for you to find muse and inspiration."

Those words cut into her quiet loneliness as someone else finally seemed to understand her and give encouragement that it was not so odd. "Is that how you find inspiration?"

"One of them," he spoke without expanding further.

So, she pressed for more insight, even if it was like pulling healthy teeth. "What are your other methods for muse?"

His eyes scanned her, jaw tensioned a moment in apparent indecision before he granted an answer. "Wandering thoughts being allowed to drift in any environment without hindrance, floating freely brings inspiration. Nature, music, an interaction… a person. Inspiration can come from anywhere if given the chance to blossom. Sometimes, it comes more from one source than another."

Christine's "What is the spring in which your inspiration currently flows from?"

Erik pursed his lips again at the question, but before he answered, Christine's stomach growled rather loudly. Her masked mentor nearly leaped from his chair at the sound. "It seems your nausea might stem from hunger. Tea certainly is not adequate to sate you, I will bring the bisque and a buttered baguette."

Then Erik was gone, vanished into the kitchen before Christine could utter a word.