In which Erik's past resurfaces, in more ways than one.

Chapter 27. April 1887. Second week after the wedding (continued).

Most of the time he could keep the memories of Persia from gaining mastery over him. And he was very good at it. He had had quite a lot of practice, after all. The daroga's mention of that time several weeks ago, as they both stood on the banks of the lake, had not been enough to disconcert him. He had been too preoccupied with the fact that the Persian had gotten that far into the sub-basements in the first place, and nearly penetrated Erik's defenses completely.

"You know what you promised me, Erik! No more murders!"

"Have I really committed murders?" Erik asked mockingly, tilting his head to one side. This dolt was so angry he was beside himself, when it was his own fault that he'd nearly drowned. Erik would toy with him for a few minutes, before sending him on his way.

"Wretched man!" snapped the furious Persian. "Have you forgotten the rosy hours of Mazanderan?"

"Yes. I prefer to forget them. I used to make the little sultana laugh, though!"

Mihr had stood glaring at him for a moment, and then made a visible effort to calm himself. "All that belongs in the past," he said in a low voice, and then his head came back up and he glared once more. "But there is the present… and you are answerable to me for your present! Because if I had wished, there would have been none at all for you." He stabbed a finger in the air. "Remember that, Erik! I saved your life!"

At this point, Erik had sent the irritating intruder away as fast as he could. The last thing he wanted was for those memories to destroy him, and in any case Erik's deeds there hadn't been his fault, had they? The fault had lain squarely at the feet of the shah and the others who wanted to see him commit atrocities. They were the guilty parties.

In the immediate aftermath of the daroga's daring rescue, escape had been paramount, and survival depended upon Erik's keeping his mind focused on it, to the exclusion of all else. And by the time he was out of the country, he had successfully buried the trauma of those memories deep within his mind. So deep, in fact, that the very next thing he had done had been to go to the Ottoman Empire and enter the service of its sultan in much the same manner as he had with the shah. That approach, after all, had worked splendidly before, and it did again – for a time. But once bitten is twice shy, and at the first inkling that the sultan's liking for him was waning, Erik had fled Constantinople as well. Sick of the barbarism of the East now and even a little appalled at what he had finally proved capable of, he had turned his sights toward home. France seemed a bastion of civilization, and he found himself longing for his own country, after all these years of travel. He had seen so much, and done more. He was nearing thirty, and feeling distinctly tired and disillusioned. It was time to go home.

But if he had left the worst of his black past behind him in the Orient, and sought to remake himself in a better image once back in Europe…that did not take away what he had once done. The past could not be changed. But Erik had been quite successful in forgetting about that. There were new things to see and do as he made his way back to France; and the Opera House to build once he got there, and the war with the Prussians. The war had then led to that exceedingly annoying curtailment of his movements, amounting almost to a house arrest,within the partly finished building that he had been subjected to during the fighting and the subsequent weeks of the Commune. It was really rather easy to forget about Persia, truth be told.

However, while Erik might be able to justify his past actions to himself, he knew Christine enough to fear that her reaction to hearing of his foul deeds would be quite different. She would no longer be willing to be his wife after learning of them. Her forgiveness would evaporate immediately, he was sure, if she knew what it was she was forgiving.

He had wanted more than anything to be loved for himself. At the time, he had been unable to see that his true self was, almost certainly, someone she could never love. Viewing himself now through her eyes revealed a vision of such shocking hideousness that he cringed away from it. In the end, his own face was not the ugliest possible thing to see in a mirror, for his soul was worse. And if by some chance she was right and God could forgive him all his crimes for a single act of selflessness…well, then God was a fool.

And so he played and played, trying to distract himself from his thoughts. No need for the score; he knew these sections perfectly. He'd played them often enough, when he was angry. In that manuscript was contained all the terrible and pitiful feelings of which man was capable. Burning hatred, sordid lusts, fear that pain and rage would overwhelm and humanity be lost. On and on he struck the keys and worked the stops and pedals, forgetting everything but the need to keep on, until his fingertips began to hurt and he finally realised that he was exhausted and sweating. He looked over at the clock on the wall, and saw that over two hours had gone by.

He had left the daroga and Christine alone together, and without, this time, listening in on them. What if Mihr, in Erik's absence, had seized the opportunity to tell Christine exactly what Erik had been fearing him telling her? What on earth had he been thinking to walk out like that? He leaped up, frantic.

In the parlour he found his wife sitting in a chair with her fingers in her ears. When she saw him she took them out and looked warily at him. She was alone. And she did not seem to be looking at him with revulsion. Perhaps the daroga had exercised restraint after all?

"Well?" he demanded harshly. "Where is that pompous ass of a Persian?"

"He left," said Christine, equally tartly. "And don't swear. He said that he could tell you did not want to see him just now, though he didn't know why. He told me he would come for a visit later, after you had got over your tantrum."

"Tantrum, is it?" snapped Erik. Not a word about Persia from her, so perhaps he was safe on that front, but he was also unable to decide whether to be relieved or angry at himself. He vented his spleen instead on the closest available target. "And how did you expect me to feel with you in there with him, letting him persuade your fickle mind into leaving Erik?" It was easier to think about their immediate past than his long-ago one. He had never thought he would deliberately recall the scene on the rooftop, but it was preferable to what else he had been contemplating.

"I am not fickle!" she retorted, outraged, and leaped up to race past him. He caught her arm and whirled her to face him.

"And what else would you call it? Bear in mind, Madame, that I heard you up on the roof!" As he rashly substituted one concern for another, all the bitterness and pain he had felt that night were rushing back, and his temper began to get away from him yet again. "I heard you swear that you were disgusted by me, that you were filled with horror of me – " All things that she might feel again if she learned of his history. Diversion was a powerful thing. Taking the coward's way out, he abruptly became furious at her in lieu of himself, over something he hadn't even been thinking about two minutes previously.

"Erik, stop, you are being unreasonable – "

His control stretched paper-thin, and then broke without warning.

"That you lied to me for weeks!" He seized her other arm, and backed her up against a wall, leaning down to shout into her face. "You lied, Christine! I heard you admit to it! How do I know you are not still lying? How? Tell me!"

Her response was instantaneous. "Take your hands off me!" she screeched in outrage, twisting, and then she tried to knee him. He wasn't expecting it, and she managed to hit him high up on the thigh just as his reflexes jolted to life. They allowed him to deflect the impact enough to avoid actual injury, but it had been a long time since any assailant had managed to land a blow on him, and it startled him enough to make him realise what he was doing.

He was holding his wife pinned against an unyielding wall, with his hands like iron clamps round her arms. Her expression was appalled. What was the matter with him?

Stammering an apology, he released her and backed away, falling into a chair and burying his masked face in his hands. He heard Christine stamp her foot.

"If you felt like that about me, you should never have married me," she stated. "And if you felt like that, and married me anyway, then you are a fool."

"Yes, Erik is a fool," he mumbled despondently. "And he is a monster to treat you so. You will probably have bruises on your arms now."

"It's not the first time you've bruised my arms, but I admit I did not think I had to worry about that happening again," she said cuttingly, and he cringed as he heard her walk over to another chair and sit down.

"I am sorry," he managed to say. "But Christine…much as I want to, I can not burn from my mind my memory of your words that night."

She sighed, and it was some time before she said, "No. I do not expect you can. Any more than I can burn from mine a lot of things you have said."

This had not occurred to Erik, and he was disconcerted. "I…apologize," he said awkwardly. "I…did not intend for…anything I did to still be hurting you, this much later."

"Well, as you just said yourself, two weeks is not enough for some words to lose their power to hurt, Erik."

Yes, he had said that. But he had been only thinking of his own pain. A married man, however, had to think of his wife's wellbeing. Erik paused, and then thought that perhaps he ought to know what words of his she was referring to. He knew so little of how to make a woman love you; any information on what not to do would be critically necessary in order to keep her.

"Ah…what things are you speaking of?"

She sighed again, and then whispered, "When…on our wedding night…when you called me a…when you accused me of being unchaste. When you…really believed it of me."

Erik had nearly forgotten about that. That quarrel was over, in his mind; anger dissipated, misunderstanding cleared up. There was no further reason to think about it. It was strange to him that anything he'd said during that time might still matter to Christine. He looked at her, puzzled; she was biting her lip, and there were tears standing in the corners of her eyes.

"I…" he started, and then realised that he really had no idea what to say or do to fix the situation. "I am sorry," he repeated finally, voice pulsating with emotion, and stayed bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands back over his eyes. He was afraid to look at her and see the hurt expression on her beautiful face, hurt that he had caused. Oh God, he did not know how to love her properly, as she deserved. How was he going to manage this responsibility he had so recklessly taken on?

But Christine said, "Oh, thank you," and she came and perched on the arm of his chair, and put her hand on his. He turned swiftly and wrapped his arms around her, clinging to her desperately. He could not live if she left him. Not after knowing what it was to be her husband. Erik was going to have to find some way to learn to control his temper.

"Poor Erik. I am sorry you had to hear those things up on the roof." She was sweet and forgiving once more; what power an apology seemed to have. He was too overwrought to think, just then, of the persuasive passion that had throbbed in his tone.

"It was Erik's fault he was following you," he said, his voice muffled against her bosom. "You thought you were alone. You deserved to be let alone, but Erik could not do it."

"I would never have said those things if I knew you were hearing them."

"But you would still have thought them," he groaned. "Erik was making you think them. He treated you abominably. Why did you marry him, Christine?"

"Because he changed – you changed," she corrected herself. "And I knew I could not stand to be without you."

He held to her all the tighter, praying that she spoke the truth. "Do you love Erik, Christine?" he asked, hating the plaintiveness in his tone but surprisingly unable to stop himself from sounding that way.

"Yes."

"Well, I love you," he said petulantly, "And I can not live without you." The self-protective part of his brain, never quiet for long, began to move again. "What did that dam – that Persian say? Did he try to convince you to leave Erik?" She did not know he had been listening. This would be a good test of whether she would lie to him if she thought she could not be caught out, as well as telling him whether they had conversed further after he left to go play the organ.

"No. He only asked me to explain why I had married you, and to swear that I did so according to my own will and desires. Once I answered to those things, when out of your presence, he was willing to believe it, and then we talked a bit about you, until you interrupted us. Before he left he offered his congratulations to me, since you had refused them, and best wishes for both of us."

"He was lying."

"He did not seem to be so to me. After you went off in a huff I helped him find his way out through the new tunnel to the Rue Scribe."

"You did what?!"

"Erik!" she scolded. "Calm down. The man already knows multiple other ways to get in here, what difference does it make if he now knows one more?"

"Because I wanted to have at least one entrance to and from here that he could not penetrate."

"But that is the easiest way out. Now he can come visit us without you having to go and fetch him."

"His ignorance of that shortcut here helped prevent us from being continually bothered by him. If he had to take the long way round it was some protection against his being on my doorstep whenever the whim took him."

"Erik. Is he your friend or is he not?"

"He enjoys flattering himself that he is."

Christine exhaled, sounding exasperated. Erik begged, "Christine, do not be angry with me." Without waiting for an answer, he dragged her onto his lap. She came willingly, and leaned her cheek against his masked one. This was comforting for a little while. But very soon he began to want her, and he could not have her. Not just now, anyway. He lifted her off of him and stood up, intending to escape somewhere; anywhere.

"Where are you going?"

"I – I do not know. Perhaps I am…not going anywhere."

"Can we go for a walk?"

"If you wish," he said dully, and glanced at a clock; it was six in the evening already. "Are you sure you are well enough?"

"Yes," she said, turning pink. "I'm not – not actually ill." Erik took her at her word, grateful to abandon the subject once reassured that she was all right.

Finding and assuming the lifelike mask, changing to a walking dress, and locating keys and gloves and so on, and then going up above and to the Bois, took them some time, so that it was sunset as they were strolling through the park. Christine seemed much happier, and eventually asked to go to a restaurant for dinner. Experiencing the pleasure of living like a normal man, with a pretty, smiling wife on his arm, and the sights and sounds of an elegant bistro, its patrons taking no more notice of him than of anyone else there, soothed away Erik's bad mood, for a time. When they returned home, she went to bed, but he was restless and uneasy. After pacing the length of the parlour a bit, he felt a growing desire to play some instrument. That had always been the best way for him to calm himself. But now there were other considerations. The sound would wake Christine. He must go someplace else to make his music.

Doing this in the upper parts of the Opera worked best in the very early hours of the morning, when even the night watchmen and the boilermen had gone to bed. That was why Christine's lessons had taken place at that time. But at this time in the evening there was too much risk of being overheard. There was one spot, however, that was so far away from everything else that it would be safe to make as much noise as he wanted…if he could bear to go to it again.

The rooftop of the Opera had once been one of Erik's favourite places. Heights troubled him not at all, and up there he could get some fresh air without having to come in contact with people. He could watch the sun set and rise, or the stars, and look down, unseen and unmarked, upon the denizens of Paris moving about their lives, small as ants from his vantage point. No one screamed, or pointed fingers, or complained about his very reasonable requests for compensation for his work as "the ghost." No one harangued him about promises made long ago in far-off countries, or followed him about irritatingly. Up on the roof, Erik could find peace and quiet for a mind that was ceaselessly restive.

But the last time he had been there was when he pursued Christine and her pet nobleman up there and heard her say the damning words that described how greatly she feared Erik, how ugly she found him, and how much she'd lied to him to secure her freedom from the teacher who'd been revealed to be a monster. Bitter irony, that, that one of the most dreadful moments of his life should take place in his sanctuary in the sky. Since then Erik had not been there once, and the memory was so recent... could he bring himself to revisit it now?

He stood in one place, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet in indecision. The urge for music warred with his desire to stay far away from the scene of his anguish, and won. And, once up on the roof, it was easier than he had expected to recall all the years that this spot had been a place of refuge for him, and to let those good memories wash away the one bad one. The little Vicomte was unimportant, for Christine had, ultimately, rejected him and chosen Erik. Soon, very soon, de Chagny would leave on his mission to the far north, and that would be an end to it. The painful memory withered in the wind and blew away, and the roof was wholly Erik's again. He played far into the night.

O-O-O O-O-O