Hello all, sorry for the delay in posting the next chapter; we were away for the weekend and I didn't bring my computer. Here you are; I hope you enjoy it.

Throughout this section of the story, there are various references to what was involved in getting married in Third Republic France of the 1880s. These may be a bit confusing to many modern readers, as they are rather more complicated from what we are used to today. But France was a very old and legalistic country and was also trying to function both as what was then considered to be "modern," and as a strongly Catholic country. According to Leroux's timeline, the second kidnapping of Christine, and Raoul and the Persian's descent into the catacombs of the Opera to rescue her, occurred sometime in March, when it would have been the season of Lent. Catholics were not really supposed to get married during Lent, but you still could if you paid a fee. Also, it was then and still is today required that you have a civil wedding in order to be legally married. Unlike in many countries today, a marriage performed by a religious official will not suffice. Devout people, therefore, must have two weddings; you both go before the relevant official to get the paperwork dealt with, and have the religious ceremony as well.

There is still one more factor to consider. Most people today are familiar with the concept of needing witnesses to make a marriage legal. In France of the 1880s, however, not just two but four witnesses were required, two for the bride and two for the groom. This presents a bit of a problem for our Erik...

Chapter 7. April 1887. Second day after Erik abducted Christine (continued).

He glared at her. "Fine," he snapped. "I shall come to the table and eat with you, as I am now." He gestured at his unmasked face. "And after you've seen the monster try to sit at the table and pretend to be civilised, we'll see whether you are still so adamant about marrying Erik, Christine!" He pushed rudely past her and stalked to the table. With sharp, angry movements, they both sat down. Erik did not hold Christine's chair for her. She unfolded her napkin and dropped it over her lap.

He had never eaten in front of her before today. She was not sure how much of his capitulation today was because he wanted to prove her wrong, and how much because of the real hunger he must have been feeling. And while it was not, in fact, a pleasant sight from an objective standpoint, Christine was currently incapable of being objective about anything. And so she stared defiantly at Erik throughout the duration of the meal, determined to prove herself and eating her own food mostly by feel.

For his part, Erik's expression metamorphosed gradually throughout the course of the meal, from belligerence, to puzzlement, and then finally to an awestruck devotion. When they finished, he pushed back his chair and came swiftly toward her, to drop at her feet again imploringly and bury his face in her lap.

"Christine…" His slender fingers reached pleadingly for hers, and she gave them to him with compassion. "How can you bear to look at Erik like that?" He sounded terrified to believe his good fortune, and she quickly sought to comfort him.

"Erik, you can not help the way your face looks. I told you before, that doesn't matter to me anymore."

"But how can that be?" he begged, pressing his cheek against her knees. Was he always going to need so much reassurance, like a frightened little boy?

"Because we are going to go out and get married. I already told you I wanted to do that. I wouldn't want to if your face still bothered me, would I?"

"You said…you said it was Erik's wickedness that made you not want him as a husband," he said, groaning slightly. "And Erik's past has not changed. It can not."

"No, but your future has."

He raised his head and looked up at her. "Erik, you made a very great sacrifice, and you did it for my happiness, because that became more important to you than your own. Was that – was that the biggest sacrifice you ever made?"

He nodded wordlessly.

"All right, then. You see? You changed. You repented. You put my welfare before yours. How could I not admire you for that?"

"But admiration…that is not – is not love," he insisted. He was gripping her hand so hard it hurt, and she tried to hurry the conversation along.

"But I…feel both for you," she said, gasping a little and embarrassed at having to say this. Erik did not seem to notice her discomfort, but said mournfully, "No one has ever loved Erik." He went on looking at her, and she realised that there was a desperate hope in his gaze. He wanted, needed to hear her say it outright.

"But…but now I…I…love you."

It felt wrong in her mouth; was it a lie? Or only unfamiliar, and dreadfully difficult to admit to? But seeing the joy which suffused his hideous features, and the way his hands trembled with emotion, made it impossible to take her words back. She felt awful, telling him this when he needed it so badly and when she was not quite sure it were completely true. She certainly admired him tremendously, did not want to be separated from him and was unhappy when she was, and was greatly concerned about his well-being. Was that love? A single word did not seem sufficient to describe the complicated relationship between them. But what else could she say?

Her mind was not equal to pondering such questions just now. Erik was staring up at her, his unnatural eyes wet, looking as though he wanted to believe her more than he'd ever wanted anything. Recalling what had moved him before, she bent and pressed her lips gently to his forehead. He shuddered, and a tear crept down one of his sunken cheeks. Christine smoothed it away, and then he turned his head just as she dropped hers, and their lips met again. Softly, sweetly this time, a promise instead of a bargain or a conquest.

Just what it was she was promising, or they were promising to each other, she was not sure, and she found she feared the answer. It was easier to retreat back into that mood where nothing seemed quite real and she could focus on mundane things, to the exclusion of the important ones, and so she did. They parted, and she said firmly, "Erik, I must go and change, and so must you." He nodded dazedly and released her, and she stood up and cleared the table before going to the Louis-Philippe room once more.

Sorting through her closet, she drew out a pretty pale blue taffeta gown, trimmed with pleating and embroidered ribbons, with white lace at the neck and sleeves. This would do, it was suitable for a wedding. Not everyone got married in white. She took a quick bath, and dressed as speedily as she could. They would have to hurry if everything were to be accomplished today. It was already past noon, and they would have to visit both a civil clerk and a priest, to get married legally and under God. And there was the problem of needing to be married when it was Lent; well, Erik would just have to pay the dispensation fee. Witnesses; what to do about that? She considered the problem as she brushed out her hair. Mama Valerius and her maid, for the bride's two witnesses. That would take up a lot of time. Mama would certainly need her wheeled chair, and they would have to be very careful when moving her, as she was so frail now. Christine had always been very grateful that her job at the Opera paid well enough to allow her to hire skilled and solicitous attendants to keep her foster mother as comfortable as possible. Explaining Erik to her would be…interesting, but it would have to be done.

But whom would he use for his two witnesses? He seemed utterly alone in the world; Christine knew of no friends or even acquaintances of his save for that strange Persian man. She supposed the Oriental might have some servant or other who could serve as the second witness, but presumably they were both Mohammedans? A heathen could not be a witness at a Catholic wedding, and that was the one which mattered to Christine. Something must be managed. But what? Thinking hard, she sat down at her vanity and put several hairpins in her mouth absent-mindedly. Then she stopped and stared at herself in consternation.

She had forgotten her injury. Her forehead was coloured in alarming shades of red and purple, with several spots where the skin had broken, which were now swollen into uneven lumps. She would have to bathe it in something to keep infection away. But how awful she looked! She couldn't go out like this! Whatever would people think?

Her wounded brain cast about ineffectively for a solution, and then found one. Her fringe! Why, of course. She hadn't yet arranged her hair at all. Why was she being so silly today?

Like most women, Christine wore her forelocks in a fashionable short mass of fluffy curls across her forehead, though she was luckier than most and did not have to employ a curling iron to get them to look stylish. The worst of the injury was near her hairline. She would just try to keep her bangs a little lower than usual, and pick out a hat that cast her face into shadow. Christine touched her cuts gingerly, wincing a bit. It was too bad she did not have her stage makeup with her, as that would have covered the mess nicely. But it was all upstairs in her dressing room. Well, a disguise made up of her forehead fringe combined with a carefully chosen hat should work all right. She twisted up the bulk of her hair into a knot on the back of her head, and stuck pins into it. This made her head hurt worse than it already did, but it couldn't be helped. She certainly could not go out in public with her hair loose. Her mind returned to the problem of witnesses, and, worrying, she finished dressing and went in search of Erik. She found him in the parlour, standing before the piano with his back to her, and something white and filmy in his hands. She had just time to note both that he'd changed clothes and that he'd made a good start on cleaning up the mess, when he turned to face her.

He was holding the wedding veil which he had bought for her. He had forced her to put that on, too, to fully create his frenzied fantasies of her as his bride. But it had not been ruined as the dress had, because the second he let go of her she'd furiously snatched off the veil and hurled it into a far corner of the room, and he had been so busy yelling vengeful words at her, and then with everything else that had happened, that he had never taken the time to go retrieve it and make her wear it again. She supposed it must have been lying forgotten in that corner all night, safe both from her wild retreat underground and his destructive rampage through the house.

But the more startling thing was that he appeared to have donned the lifelike mask which he had bragged to her of creating. It was a shocking difference. It covered him from his scalp to his upper lip, leaving exposed only his chin and lower lip, which were mostly normal. Flesh-toned and quite lifelike, its top edge appeared to be covered by his sleek dark-haired wig, and while if she looked hard, she could see the other edge of it around his mouth, the join was skilfully done and not very noticeable at all. It filled out his sunken cheeks and smoothed the shape of his distorted forehead; it gave him a nose, and a finely carved, aristocratic one at that. With this, he looked almost normal, if one ignored his height and his skeletal hands. He was wearing gloves, true, but nothing could hide the unnerving length of his fingers.

Erik had worn a mask of one kind or another his entire life. He had used them to his advantage in intimidating and manipulating other people. In his black or white masks, he looked mysterious, even supernatural, so that one was irresistibly drawn in and wanted to uncover his secrets; in this one, he just looked…like any other man. What he'd always wanted, or so he said.

But, once she got over her shock, she noted that it was still her Erik under the new mask. It was still his stance, his graceful movements, his thin limbs. And his eyes. Right now, they were apprehensive and awed all at once. His eyes were so expressive. It must be because that had been nearly all of his face which he could use to express his emotions, his whole life. She could not now see much of his real face, but she could still judge what he was feeling from the burning in his eyes. His fingers clenched spasmodically on the veil, and he started to say something and then stopped.

She thought that he must be afraid of her reaction to the new mask. "Erik…" Unsure what else to say, she smiled at him, to give herself a moment to think. Should she comment that he looked much better now? That it would be a great deal easier to go about together in public with this mask on? No, anything of that nature would just point out how problematic everything had been before, and that he could only attain a veneer of normality if he hid his true self. The only other option she could think of was to compliment his work.

"You've done a wonderful job with that mask, Erik. It looks completely lifelike."

That pleased him. He straightened a little, and seemed to regain some composure. Then he took a step toward her, and another, until he was moving steadily closer and closer, holding out the veil.

This was yet another moment where something was happening which had happened once already, but now in an entirely different way. Now Erik was wearing the light grey swallowtail coat and charcoal striped trousers of a bridegroom, not his usual all-black garb, and it was astounding to see him thus attired, as un-Death-like as he could have been unless he were wearing white linen. Why, he even had on grey kid gloves, and a gold and pearl stick pin in his cravat, not the jet one he generally wore, and the cravat was striped in shades of grey, not a plain dull black. And he was not stalking toward her with the veil held out before him as a challenge, his posture dominant and threatening; rather, he had very much the air of a penitent pilgrim timidly approaching a statue of the Virgin, to beg absolution. And he was extending the veil almost as if it were an offering…and one which he was clearly still terrified she would refuse. The fact that she had chosen a blue gown seemed suddenly ironic. He came to a halt before her, bending down in near supplication as his hands visibly shook.

She reached out, and accepted the veil…and all that it meant.

"Let me find a bag for this so it doesn't get damaged, and I'll put it on when we get there," she said gently, and folded it up before reaching out and squeezing his hand. His fingers entwined immediately with hers, needy, wanting to trust. But there was no further time for reassuring him yet again.

When they exited the house and went in the direction of the door on the Rue Scribe, he seemed to regain some confidence, and moved them both along quickly. They emerged from the darkness of the catacombs into a sunny spring day which did Christine's head no good at all, and her eyes adjusted to the light with difficulty. After she had stopped blinking and grimacing, she took a look at Erik, striding along with obvious purpose, and asked, "Where are we going first?"

"To the Girys'."

O-O-O O-O-O