Hi all, here is the next chapter. I hope you like it; writing Erik/Persian repartee is one of my favourite things about POTO fanfic!

Chapter 23. July, 1887. Sunday morning (continued).

When Erik returned, having discovered that the intruder had indeed been only a rat, and feeling that he was getting entirely too old for this and perhaps a normal house above ground was an even better idea than he'd previously thought, he found the Persian comfortably ensconced in an armchair and perusing a book of brightly coloured maps.

"All well?" asked Mihr, raising a salt-and-pepper eyebrow.

"Yes. I see you found your book."

"When I lent it to you I did not expect it to be a year before I had it back. I have missed it."

"My apologies," said Erik sarcastically. "I was rather busy for part of that time, if you will recall."

"What did you expect when you took up teaching at your age?"

"Yes, well, the Opera Ghost's duties are fairly light. Perhaps I was bored."

"I would expect as much after your, shall we say, exciting youth?"

"I suppose that is one word which could be used," said Erik, bending down to start a fire in the grate. "If one wanted to commit a gross understatement."

"You'd had a good many adventures, after all, and you always did get bored easily."

"Not at all; the human race is merely inclined toward tediousness in general. I was simply reacting to that." Setting the matches back down on the mantel, Erik inquired, "More tea?"

"Yes, thank you."

When fresh tea was brewed and both cups refilled, Mihr fixed Erik with a gimlet eye and said, "How are you, really, Erik? Are you happy about the child?"

"I... I do not know," Erik admitted. "I am more shocked than anything; or at least I was. The more time passes, the more I am able to think, and that is not altogether a good thing. I never expected this to ever even be a possibility, much less a reality. Surely you know that."

"If you honestly did not want children, you might have thought of that before taking a wife. The one does tend to follow the other. I did not think you needed to be told that, but perhaps I was wrong and we should have had a brief conversation before the vows were said?"

"As if you would have done anything other than call in your colleagues in the Surete to have me clapped in irons on the spot, had I shown up on your doorstep with such a request the morning after I dropped you there insensible! Daroga, your pitiful attempts at humour are not helpful. I do not know whether I want children or not," snapped Erik, setting his teacup down hard into its saucer so that they clinked together. "The thing is done and the decision is made now. I do not require you to tell me that I have been a reckless idiot these last three months. I am quite aware of it already. Erik has been abominably selfish. He had no right to burden Christine with his monstrous offspring."

"Allah, here we go again," sighed the Persian. "Stop using the third person and speak like a rational adult – wait, I forgot whom I was talking to for a moment. Do I really need to point out to you that most women want children, need them, even, to be satisfied in life?"

"Not my child," said Erik stubbornly. "Christine will hate it."

"Why?"

"That should be obvious."

"Actually, it is, somewhat. As you are being as unforthcoming as usual, I suppose I must tell you what you feel, instead of the other way round." Mihr leaned back and began to tick items off on his fingers. "Firstly, you are almost certainly deathly afraid that the child will be deformed. I am no doctor, so do not ask me the likelihood of that. Go find a reputable physician, if such a thing can be found in this country, and ask him. Secondly, you are most likely concerned that it will cause great disruption in your life. Which it will, unless you hire a servant to look after it and spend only an hour or so a day with your child, as is the way of the wealthy. I am not sure such an arrangement would find favour with Madame Phantom."

Erik shot another glare at his old friend from over his teacup. Mihr took no notice, and went on.

"She seems rather the maternal sort to me, and may well prefer to tend her own children. She will have had a good deal of practice already, with you."

With slitted yellow eyes, the former Angel of Death measured the distance between himself and the Persian nuisance. Only a few feet; the lasso could easily travel that far. Just let that garrulous old fool make one more insult, and Erik would be rid of him forever.

"Thirdly, you are panicked that the child will take entirely too much after its father, causing Christine to resent or despise it and, by extension, you. Need I remind you that she surely does not feel either of those for you, else she would not have consented to become your wife? Fourthly, you are probably apprehensive for your wife's safety. No need; giving birth is what women were designed for and the vast majority of them come through their ordeal with no real trouble. Christine is young and healthy and there is no reason to suppose she would be different from the usual. Fifthly, knowing you, I suspect that you do not care to give up any of her time and attention to anyone, not even your own child; in which case you ought to have kept this a marriage in name only. What on earth did you think was going to happen?"

"I thought we had already established that I was not thinking at all."

"We had. I would have thought that you might have grown out of that particular fault, but it seems you have no more sense now than you did in your youth when you burned your bridges with the shah. And sixthly, I am sure that you are thinking that you have no idea how to be a father."

"And just how in hell would I?" hissed Erik. He had deliberately made his voice frightening, but to no avail. His tormentor's maddening calm did not waver.

"Well, neither does any other man, the first time a child of his appears on the scene. You wanted nothing more than to be a normal person, a few months ago; normal people sometimes have to do things they do not know how to do and have no experience in. They can not just master a technique on an instrument or memorize the vocabulary of a language – or bully people – and be able to do something brilliantly the first time they try. They must muddle through the thing instead. You wanted this; well, you have it. Have the courage of your convictions and try to do the best you can, like everyone else."

Erik sat scowling in his chair. "Well, thank you for that fine dissertation on my emotions," he sneered. "In future I shall simply ask you what they are about any given subject, and not bother taking the time to attempt to discern them myself."

"Do; it will take less time than me cajoling you and you refusing to answer, again and again," rejoined the Persian. "Perhaps I should consult with Madame Giry. No doubt she has a spare opinion or two regarding your conduct."

"More than one or two, I fear. She was here yesterday – no, wait, two days ago. I have partially lost track of what day it is."

"Really?" said the daroga, looking far too interested for Erik's comfort. "Why? I did not know she was in the habit of visiting you too."

Erik cursed inwardly. Why had he let that slip? He did not care to tell the daroga about the events of the last two days. The old busybody knew far too much already.

He was saved this time not by an alarm bell, but by the timely sound of the front door opening and the house's new chatelaine returning from her religious duties. Christine seemed pleased to see the Persian – well, she would be, thought Erik, someone else for her to complain to about him – and after the necessary round of greetings and further pouring of tea, she settled down in a chair too.

"I understand I am to offer you my congratulations, Madame," said the daroga courteously, in French now instead of his own language, in which he had been conversing with Erik.

"Oh, you told him!" exclaimed Christine to Erik, half embarrassed and half excited. Erik gulped tea, wishing it were brandy.

"As a matter of fact, he did not have to," Mihr explained smoothly. "You see, when I met up with him he was so obviously filled with joy that I knew that given your presence in his life now, it could only have one cause."

Erik forbore to expose the lie. If Christine allowed herself to be taken in by such obvious fabrication, that was her fault. He certainly wouldn't take steps to prevent it. And besides, should she actually believe a story like that, she might be further pleased with him. Perhaps he should begin seeking the daroga's aid when he was at outs with Christine?

"Really?" Christine turned her own eyes on her husband, initially happy but, as she examined what could be seen of his expression, increasingly doubtful.

"Do not worry about his current aspect, Madame," said the daroga soothingly. "We have been disagreeing about matters of philosophy, and you know how he hates to lose an argument."

"Oh, I do, I do," answered Christine, now regarding Erik with a fondness which he thought entirely misplaced. She wouldn't be looking at him that way after the first time she was ill in the mornings. He knew enough about childbearing to know that that was surely on the horizon. This line of thought caused him to wonder when exactly she had become pregnant. She'd mentioned something about a recent visit to a physician; she must be far enough along for the man to have known she was expecting. But... she'd had her courses a week after they'd married; it must not have been from those first few times; perhaps a month or so after the wedding night, then? That would make her... he calculated swiftly. Something like two months gone with child. So it would arrive approximately seven months from now.

Oh, God. Everything was happening far too fast. Events seemed to be swirling past him, too quick for him to grasp at them long enough to comprehend them. The disaster of the second kidnapping, her return, the wedding, their terrible misunderstanding on the wedding night, the reconciliation – upon second thoughts, perhaps it would have been better if they'd not reconciled and he'd kept his hands strictly to himself thereafter, to say nothing of other things. Gloomily he reflected upon the obscene irony of his having gotten a woman with child within mere weeks of even having the opportunity to risk such an occurrence in the first place, after half a lifetime of celibacy. Other couples sometimes went a year or more before the woman fell pregnant; why could Christine not have done so? The beautiful idyll of having only each other, his joy and fulfilment, was soon to come to an abrupt end, to be replaced by noise and mess and upheaval of the sort which he was sure he was too old for. Though it seemed he was not too old to have brought this state of affairs about. He had thought he might be, when he thought about it at all, which had evidently not been often enough. But no such luck for Erik, apparently.

"... going to have a new house. Isn't that right, Erik?"

He realised he was being spoken to, and made an effort at a proper response. "Yes, indeed. I did some preliminary sketches yesterday."

"It's going to be a wonderful house," Christine enthused to the daroga. "I'll be so thrilled to be living in one that he's designed! It will be so romantic."

The Persian nodded politely, but met Erik's eyes over his teacup, a sardonic look in his own jade green ones. Erik knew precisely what his old acquaintance was thinking; that the words "romantic" and "Erik" had never been known to be included in the same sentence before. Well, Christine had a rather unorthodox idea of what constituted "romantic," which had been all to the good for Erik more than once. He restrained himself from snapping 'Oh, so you've given up the idea of separate bedrooms now?' The daroga did not need to know about that either.

"Where will you be purchasing a lot? Near the Opera House, I suppose, so Christine can get to rehearsals and performances easily?"

"I do not care where it is so long as a skilled physician is nearby for Christine's sake – wait a moment." There was a complication which he had not thought of till just now. He turned to look at his wife. "Christine, we can not possibly have a house built before... ah, before the... baby comes." What had happened to his ability to speak intelligently? "And we must be out of here well before then. I will not take chances with your health just now."

"Rent a suitable house then," suggested the daroga. "Allow the building of the other one to take as long as it takes, and move into it when you both are ready."

"We could do that," said Erik thoughtfully. The clock chimed noon loudly, and Christine jumped.

"Oh, but I am forgetting my manners!" she cried. "Will you stay and take lunch with us, Monsieur de Mazanderan?"

She was still stumbling slightly over the Oriental pronunciation, and blushed. Erik had informed her that the Persian's last name was merely the name of the region where he came from, his people not using surnames. When he was being interviewed in the course of his formal request for political asylum in France, the clerk had asked his name, and Mihr had answered automatically, "Monsieur Mihr of Mazanderan." The clerk had written that down on the form, stumbling over the spelling. It had seemed as good a surname as any other, in a country where he needed one. And when he took employment in the bureaucracy-bound French police force, a legal surname had certainly been needed. It still came naturally to him, however, to use simply his first name.

But Christine did not yet feel at all comfortable addressing him as such, though he had assured her she could. Erik intervened, to save her awkwardness and himself annoyance.

"No, my dear, he was just leaving."

"Lunch sounds lovely, thank you," said Mihr, at the same time that Erik spoke. They stood glaring at each other for a few seconds, while Christine looked discomfited, until Erik made a sharp gesture of assent. Accordingly, they all sat down to a cold luncheon together in the dining room. Watching Christine jump up and down every time they needed something that was in the kitchen, while not allowing him to fetch it, he decided that they must hire some staff once they were situated in the rented house. Doing without them had been all very well down here, but in a larger house, and in her condition, Christine could not under any circumstances be allowed to shoulder all the housework. He had had servants before, in the Orient; it had been some time, and he had learned to prefer his privacy, but he would have to manage for her sake.

"Christine, we must hire some staff," he announced. "We shall be living in a bigger house than this, and it will be too much work for you. I do not want you to exhaust yourself like this."

"But I'm not – servants? Us?" She was obviously confused, but unwilling to question him in front of the Persian.

"Not to worry," put in the daroga. "I realise, Madame, that you know Erik as the greatest of recluses, but when he lived in Persia he had servants, and many of them. He can do so again, even if it has been a few years."

"More than a few," said Erik darkly. "And I had servants during my time in several other countries, as well."

"Oh, you've travelled so much," said Christine with a sigh. She turned to the Persian, and continued, "Will you tell me more about your country? It's so fascinating."

"Of course, Madame. Has Erik ever told you of the tale of the hero Ya'Qub-I Laith Saffari?"

"No."

"Ah. Well, he was a famous warrior in the ninth century who conquered large territories, and founded the Saffarid dynasty in Sistan – a city in what is now Afghanistan, Madame. It was at his court that the Persian language was brought back, after centuries of being ignored in favour of Arabic. Ya' Qub is rather like the Europeans' Robin Hood, as legend has it that he stole from the rich and gave to the poor…"

Christine was greatly interested by the story, and asked many questions as they finished their lunch. Erik, who was thoroughly familiar with all this, quickly stopped listening, in favour of sitting in sullen silence over his pâté and dwelling petulantly upon the upcoming changes which were going to be forced upon him. When the Persian had departed, the book of maps under his arm, and Erik's house was his own again, he came back into the parlour and found his wife seated in a chair. He took off his mask, sighed wearily, and then sat on the floor before her, burying his face in her skirts as he clutched handfuls of silk in his fingers.

"Oh, poor Erik," she murmured, laying her hands on his head. "It's been a tiring couple of days for you, hasn't it? Are you worried about the baby?"

He was too tired and too upset just now to try to ponder what the required response might be. "Christine, I have no idea what answer you want me to make. Tell me, and I'll say it. But I do not want you to be angry with me again."

"I'm not angry. Why would I be?"

"You almost decided to leave me yesterday."

"I did not. Please don't say things like that. We're married; I never meant to leave you."

"But you wanted to."

"No, Erik, no. You're the father – " He groaned loudly, and she went steadfastly on, " – the father of our child. It's a link between us that can't ever be broken now. Don't you see that? I was never going to leave you anyway, and I'm even less likely to now."

He had not thought of it in quite that way. If it were true that a baby would cement their marriage for all time, perhaps it was not such a bad idea after all... ?

The clock chimed, and when Erik glanced reflexively at it, he saw that it was time for Christine's music lesson. He must not neglect that. She would still take her place amongst the great singers of the world; he would see to it. His plans for her would just… have to wait for a bit. But he would not let her voice suffer.

Over dinner that evening, Christine asked, "What is your new opera about?"

"Oh – " Erik had been thinking about the child, and it took him a moment to refocus his mind. "It is, or rather, will be, a four-opera cycle on the subject of the Divine Comedy. One opera each for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, with a shorter work to serve as a prologue of sorts, for explanatory purposes, based on Vita Nuova."

"You mean, like the Ring cycle?"

"Yes. I thought of it years ago, but a work that long and complicated seemed absurd. Monsieur Wagner demonstrated that it was not. I travelled to Germany in 1876, you know, to the festival at Bayreuth when the full cycle was finally performed as one."

"You did?"

"Yes. Oh, I see what you are thinking; yes, I braved the crowds because it was worth it to be able to listen to that music. I'd seen his Tristan und Isolde in Munich in '65, when I was making my way back to France after I decided to leave the Orient, and it was an unbelievable experience. So I was intent on hearing this new work from him. I went back to my rented room full of inspiration, and stayed up all night scribbling down an outline for Dante, but then when I got back to Paris other things intervened and I never got much farther than that until now."

They had largely finished eating. Erik got up and fetched the draft of his new work. "I do not intend to copy what another man did, of course; that is for the mediocre artist. Look, here is what I have done with the journey down to Hell, in contrast to Wagner's descent into his underworld of Nibelheim…"

He showed her the melodies he had already written, and the plans for other parts of the score that he had sketched out but not actually worked on yet. Christine was flatteringly delighted with them, and he was pleased with himself at being able to make her eyes widen with amazement.

"Oh, it sounds wonderful," she finally sighed, running her hand over the messily scrawled notes in red ink. "Play a bit for me?" After clearing the dishes, they went into the parlour and Erik sat down at the piano. Improvising some lyrics of a love-song from Dante to Beatrice as he went, he sang for her with a rising passion, his voice gaining power effortlessly and swelling with the emotion that was never very far away when he thought of Christine. When he finished, he turned to face her, and saw the languid pose of her body and the sensual expression on her face, her beautiful eyes half-lidded. He knew what these meant now; she wanted him again. His own body stirred forcefully in response, but he controlled it, for he did not know whether it was safe, with Christine's condition, in fact he honestly had no idea. It was not, after all, as though he had ever needed to make use of such information before. And he very much hoped that last night's goings-on had not hurt her in any way. She certainly hadn't acted as though it did…rather, he had had the distinct impression that his life would have been in danger had he not satisfied her.

And he could be satisfying her again right now, but this damned inconvenient pregnancy was preventing it. Barely three months of finally having a husband's rights, and now he had to give them up, at least till he could consult with a medical professional. Maybe even until the child came? No joys of the marriage bed for Erik for months and months? He felt a strong surge of irritation, and barely restrained himself from making a cutting remark. Balling his hand into a fist instead, he looked away from Christine. But then he sensed a change in the atmosphere, glanced back at her, and saw that she was now looking concerned. Another moment, and she would be asking to know why his mood had suddenly changed, and he did not want to answer that question at all. She was so happy about this baby; it would make her angry with him if she knew how he felt about it.

In self-defence he took up his harp, and began singing again, softly this time but with deliberate charm, and plucking the strings in a peaceful, soothing song. Mesmerism had long since ceased to be something which required his full attention, and his hands and vocal cords performed their task automatically as he watched his wife out of the corner of his eye. Her eyelids were drooping farther and farther, as he had known they would, and after a few minutes she curled up on the couch and closed them. When he had finished his song, he lifted her into his arms and carried her into the Louis Philippe room as she mumbled incoherently, helped her out of her dress and into a nightgown, and then perched on the bed and sang to her again until she was fully asleep. This was best, he thought as he ran his fingers through her hair and stood up. He did not want either to risk harming her nor to upset her by refusing her advances.

He returned to the parlour and stretched out on the couch. He would have so liked to have stayed in the bedroom…but he could not risk intimacy with her until he had determined whether such indulgence was safe during pregnancy. Also, he was tired. It had been a stressful day, and he had not slept enough the night before to make up for not sleeping at all the previous two nights. Vexing that the daroga had shown up; Erik could have used some peace and quiet, without that meddler intruding. The Persian had been a fairly regular visitor ever since being given the announcement of Erik and Christine's marriage – or at least, ever since he had forgiven Erik for the entire debacle surrounding it. Erik smirked as he recalled the shock on his old acquaintance's face.

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