Author's Note: A few things: updates might be more Bi-Weekly for a bit. I got Covid in January, and it has really messed with my brain, a.k.a chronic fatigue and a suddenly very short attention span has made it hard to focus when I sit down to write in a productive manner.

Next, a little pronunciation knowledge for you. The name Garlaid - is a name I made, and French Origin, as such, it is pronounced Gar-Lay (just drop the D). The story will explain the rest for you.

Last... if anyone has an interest in listening to a Spotify playlist for this fic (and technically the others) let me know.

L-i-a-m

Raoul de Chagny watched with curling fists as he watched Christine emerge from the Giry house, hours after the masked man went inside and a while after the Girys returned. He knew it was not a proper thing to do, lingering outside a lady's home, yet he needed to see. He needed to confirm the suspicion. Christine certainly would never tell him, so he did what needed to be done.

Seeing them together with Christine so willingly on the Chantseur's arm, Raoul felt a stab in his spirit. The gentility between the apparent couple was not something that he anticipated, then again, he did not know what he expected to witness either. Just not…that. There was not a kiss or hand-holding, rather, they shared that kind of arm-holding befitting of a coupling.

Raoul's gaze fell to the ground as he placed a steadying hand on the adjacent brick wall, taking a pause to quell the ache in his being. While he knew time parted them, the stab of pain in his heart was no less potent.

How could she favor a man such as that?

Perhaps, he played his hand wrong in wooing her affection. Raoul might not be a man about town, but he never had difficulties attracting a woman. All he had to do was offer his arm and an outing and the girl would leap at the opportunity. Not Christine.

She was different.

She was not enchanted by his wealth or class.

She wanted a man in a mask, who was suspect as best.

Raoul continued to watch, knots twisting in the pit of his stomach, and scowled when the other man wrapped an arm around her. That was…disquieting. However, what irked Raoul most was the lingering glance this man cast over his shoulder – at him. How did he know? Could he see him lurking in the alley's darkened shadow? Was it a lucky guess with the sense one got when being watched?

Damn, Raoul thought as his hands curled into fists and he stiffened his posture. Not that it mattered much when the coupling turned the corner.

He was too much of a gentleman to follow again, especially when Christine's apparent suitor was already aware of his presence. Instead, he swallowed his pride and stepped back into the quiet street, towards home.

~x ~x ~X~ x~ x~

It was a tiny townhouse in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood, where Liam LeMaitre and his wife, Natalie, finished clearing the table and tackled the dishes. While they discussed the highlights of the day between their respective jobs and activities, it was not lost on Natalie how quiet Liam remained. He did not talk about his active cases or puzzle over the riddle left by a wayward brother. Granted, ever since Liam and Valen were sacked by the Préfecture, he had grown quieter from the lack of challenge in his work. There were not many homicides to solve in private investigation.

A shame when their investigative skills were akin to that of Doyle's imagined Sherlock Holmes – with all those eccentricities included.

When they settled into their cushioned chairs by the hearth, Natalie watched Liam at length before offering some bit of solace, "I'm sorry he didn't come."

Liam hesitated with a small glance to her, brows slightly rising before they furrowed as his jaw went slack. "I didn't expect him to come," he answered, grasping his reading glasses from the small table between them. "Not tonight and not for a while yet, if it all."

"Then why would he even come by the office today if he doesn't want to have some connection with you, or Valen?"

"Because he cares," came the matter-of-fact response.

"Rather odd way of showing it."

"I can't fault him for that, given the circumstances."

"You and Valen turned out fine."

"That… doesn't even compare."

"Then explain it to me," she implored, leaning closer to rest a hand over his. "I know your parents and upbringing are something of a sore subject, but when you have only ever mentioned having an older brother once or twice before, it's concerning this he is occupying your mind so much now."

"Because there is only so much that can be said, Natalie. I barely remember him from then, just a few scattered moments. What I know of Erik now…" Liam sighed a little, but remained perfectly still in his chair. "I cannot presume to know him or his motives from what little information Valen and I have managed to gather, but I know that he cares. Not about our parents, but for Valen and me. He proves that time and again…"

"How has he done that? Apart from today, of course."

Liam gave a fleeting glance to his dear wife, unsure what to start or even say, even as those fleeting memories came back, eager to tell their tales. A small little keepsake that he dug out from his bureau earlier, now burned in his vest pocket in its demand for attention. He pulled it out after a pausing hesitance and a mild shake in his hand as he set it on the side table between them. It was a small little block that was about the size of his thumb and much of its red paint had worn away, what remained forever embedded in its surface was Liam's name.

A mess of blocks lay before him, plain wood with letters haphazardly carved into flat surfaces. Beside him was an older boy in ragged clothing that was too small, and a sewn mask covering his face. The distant voice of that boy reciting each letter echoed in Liam's ears, not that the years allowed him to remember the sound.

"L-i-a-m," he remembered the boy spelling; or was it a conjured memory that his mind used to fill in the blanks to make logical sense?

"That's your name, Liam. Here, take this," the boy handed Liam a small red block, with his name etched into its side. "So you can always remember how to spell your name."

Then, his brother was gone with the sound of a door slam in the next room.

"He… made that for me, and one for Valen. I thought I lost it when Erik vanished, but I found it one day, in a corner of the toy chest, mine and Valen's— Valen was an infant when Erik was last in that house."

"Do you think it was deliberate?"

Liam's brow lifted though he felt as though he was in a perpetual daze from the scattered memories. "Mother only ever opened the chest to throw the toys we had into it, I think he left it there for me to find, and to give Valen his when he was old enough. I held onto it until Valen found out about Erik on his own."

"Why?"

"Because Mother erased him so completely from the house that I began to think the boy in the mask was just a conjuring of my imagination. Why tell him about someone that didn't exist? An imagining? Then… Valen snuck into Father's office and picked the lock of a drawer, for fun, and found a few of Erik's old masks and pages of music signed by Garlaid. He showed me, then I knew he was real."

"Garlaid?"

Liam nodded, pursing his lips into a thin line. "Erik is a name he chose for himself after he was…gone," he quietly explained. "Our parents called him Garlaid, which was just a conjunction of Ugly Boy… He would play with me whenever Mother was out of the house. He was not allowed out much when she was home, and Father did not care either way. If there was a storm, or if a candle went out in my room at night, he would come with a new candle and read to me…"

Liam felt his eyes tingle a bit as he stared blankly into the fire burning in the hearth. "If I was scared of the monster in my closet or under the bed… He would promise me that there was no monster there, because he was the biggest monster in the house, and there was no room for another one."

"That's horrible…" she gasped, more for the reference of the horrid name and monster than the story of a kind older brother.

He gave a nod, "Mother would call him that every day… and would always blame him for something. The last time, that I remember… I can't remember why, but I was running in the house…"

He buzzed around the house like a mad child. Where else could he run? They were never allowed outside and the house seemed so large then. Voices called after him, three of them, Mother, Farther, and Big Brother. Nothing would or could stop him, not until he took a turn too fast, where socked feet flew out from under him and he slid into an accent table in the hallway.

One of the thin spindle legs snapped when he hit it, sending the table with its fine vases and candle sticks down upon him in a terrible crash. He was too stunned to cry, even as Garlaid appeared above him, uttering kind words as he pushed off the table.

"…Mother was furious," he recounted the story to Natalie, closing his eyes tight at the next part of the memory. His Mother's hand rising high, and then Erik falling onto the shards of the broken vase beside him, those mismatched eyes wide as he gave a pained cry, a freshly cut hand rising to his masked cheek. "She hit him in the face for no reason— he did nothing wrong, but she blamed him. He vanished after that, they said he ran away… But I would not be surprised if she sent him off."

"I can't say I would blame him if he did run off. Your father never said?"

"Father didn't like talking about Erik at all, even after Mother died— I'm not sure why. But, after he died, Valen and I would sneak out of the school at night to visit his grave when we could. One night, we ran into two graverobbers – at another gravesite; they were not so keen on having any witnesses to their crime. They could do little more than grab us…"

A township near Rouen, 1873

"Let us go!" Liam demanded as the men dragged him and Valen toward the open grave. The robbers already dug enough to breach the casket's lid of a fresh burial, and it was tossed aside to reveal the discolored and bloating corpse within.

"We won't tell, promise!" Valen swore, squirming and bucking against the man who had him by arms, pinning them behind the boy's back as he was shoved along.

At the ages of fourteen and eleven, the brothers resisted their captors. They dug their heels into loose soil, trying to impede the advancement toward the gaping hole and an alarming drop. Their efforts did little to help their cause. Kicking shins or stomping feet did nothing to merit a slip from dirt-stained hands.

The sounds of struggle echoed around the graveyard, bouncing off headstones and scattered mausoleums. A thick blanket of fog had rolled over the ground as moisture and shifting seasons debated the temperature change making that night eerier than what was typical. Perhaps that was where they went wrong, for choosing that night to visit their miserable Father's grave. Going during the day was never much of an option, the boys' home that sheltered them would sooner have them shuffled off to a workhouse or a farmer's field instead of school.

While they did not miss their Mother and her icy heart, they missed their Father, and two months was not enough time to heal. As broken and despondent as he was, their Father at least harbored some care for them, in his way. Never a hug or a word of love, but he at least saw to their education.

"You sure as hell won't!" grunted one of the graverobbers. "You'll be as quiet as the dead when we're through with you!"

Liam managed to twist an arm free from its wretched position and jab an elbow back into the beer belly of his assailant, then jerked his skull back into the nose of the fiend when the man doubled over. Freed, he dashed from the man's grasp to tackle the brute who had Valen teetering at the edge of the grave's pit.

The attempt was a foolhardy one, the man shoved Valen into the hole with the boy's panicked cry piercing the air before the man turned on Liam with a ready fist. Liam managed to duck below the punch and hugged the robber's waist, tackling him onto the fresh dirt mound. There, they wrestled with fists flying between them, and Liam, blinded by the heat moment, fought wildly with the intent to just make the other stop.

But his wiry frame was no match against a full-grown man, as drunk as that man might be. Liam soon found himself being pried away from Valen's former attacker and falling. His body tensed, feeling like he was weightless for far too long, until his back hit the head of the open casket and he was face-to-face with the deceased woman whose grave suffered the desecration. Despite the stabbing pain along his spine, he scrambled away from the corpse.

"Had to make it difficult, didn't you?" grumbled one of the robbers.

Breathless and his world spinning, Liam saw the glint of the dim lantern's light catch the metallic surface of a pistol, aiming for them. His hand found Valen's by instinct, and he pulled his dazed little brother into his arms in a vain attempt to steal away from their pending doom. The concept was made crueler by the fact that they would share a grave with a stranger, and the men giving a cynical laugh.

When the loud boom clapped in their ears, the brothers flinched and clutched each other tighter, bracing for death. There was no involuntary jolt, no pain or stunned gasp, nor a final exhale, only the echoing ring of the revolver's discharge pulsing in their ears.

Above them, a shadow in a hooded cloak moved between the graverobbers in a graceful dance with a shovel twirling and spinning in harmony. The spade would collide with the head of one, and the handle's end would strike the other in the gut in a show of efficient handling and skilled precision that left both men sprawled into unmoving heaps.

It was over by the time either boy realized what transpired. However, when the shadowed figure appeared above them and extended a gloved hand down toward them, neither boy felt the knot of fear twisting within. Instead, a calm came over them at the presence of that shadow and the soft voice that further lulled that sense of tranquility into their spirits.

"Come on," the rich voice beckoned, soft and cool.

Liam allowed his guard to unwind, loosening his hold on Valen, then gave his little brother a small nod.

Valen bit his lower lip, then wobbled over uneven footing to accept that outstretched hand.

The Shadow lifted Valen out of the grave with ease, and then the hand returned to the pit for Liam. The Shadow's grip was akin to a vice, unyielding but not harsh as Liam found himself being heaved up with a bit more effort.

"What are you doing out here? At this hour?" hissed their benefactor, collecting the lantern and drawing the brothers' attention away from where the robbers lay prone.

"We wanted to visit Papa," Valen explained, hugging his wrist to his chest. "They won't let us during the day."

"Who?"

"Mercy House, for Orphaned Boys," Liam interjected.

"Mercy House?" came the incredulous response. Where the Shadow was drawing them out from the graveyard, he turned back, raising the lantern high and grabbing their hands, turning them palms up to reveal angry blisters, and then looked over their faces with a curse on his tongue. "You should have an inheritance enough to afford boarding school."

"How do—?" began Liam.

"I knew Amile," he answered with their Father's name, setting down the lantern. In the next moment, he tore a bit of the cloak and began wrapping it around Valen's swelling wrist.

"The executor said there wasn't any," sniffled Valen, wincing as his wrist was carefully manipulated.

The Shadow's cowled head jerked up from his task, another curse slipping out from the darkness of that hood, a glimpse of almost luminescent amber eyes burned from within, one eye shining brighter than the other. He dropped Valen's hand and took up the lantern again, "Come with me."

Present Day

"I know it was him," Liam explained. "I couldn't confirm it until much later but, I knew. He took us to the church and left us in their care without another word. Within a week, our inheritance was restored and we went to boarding school. The priest kept an eye on us along with a new solicitor to manage the inheritance and what remained of Father's company."

"How did you learn that it was Erik?"

Liam offered a small, bittersweet smile. "When I came of age, I was able to see the records and do a little digging. Father's solicitor decided to take the money meant for Valen and I, and ran. I don't know why Erik was there, or why he didn't take us with him, but he somehow corrected the situation, and claimed a familial connection to us as Erik LeMaitre. It was enough to manage the inheritance and to get us out of Mercy House and into the school. It was only for us when he signed anything under that name."

Natalie rose from her chair and went to her husband's side, resting her hands on his shoulders. "Given what you have said of him, perhaps, he needs more than an invitation to come to dinner," she leaned over to kiss the top of his head and caressed his hair. "If your Mother rejected him, perhaps he fears you will too. Find him, and remind him that he has family who cares for him. If anyone can find him, it is you and Valen."