Father and daughter walked silently towards their house only for a few minutes. She took advantage of him stopping to adjust his suspender-less trousers to speak.
"What did Rasputin mean when he said I didn't know? What don't I know, Dada?" She walked around so she was facing him.
Still able to see in low light, Erik could make out the anger on Charlotte's face. It was an almost mirrored image of the frenzied, wild anger that would paint his face those decades ago in the Paris Opera House.
"Can this wait till we get home?"
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, "What did you do to? Does it involve Mama?"
"Charlotte, I am tired. I already had to get out of bed to come and collect you."
"You didn't have to. How did you even know I was there?"
The Phantom sighed, "He rejected you. Your mother found your room empty after you had been in there all evening. As Rasputin said, you are my daughter and knowing things I had done in my past when I was rejected, I could only assume…you did something similar."
The tension in the girl's face melted into confusion, "What did you do, Dada?"
He spotted a bench on the sidewalk and sat down. Christine was right, I will always have to tell a version of the past to each child. My constant penance.
Charlotte sat down beside him; her doe eyes wide.
He took her hand, "You know I build this park for Mama, I sent her an invitation to come sing here while she was still married to Raoul."
"The man Gustave originally thought was his father?"
Erik nodded his head as he looked out over Phantasma, "Yes. The reason she was with Raoul though…I kidnapped your mother, believing I could make her love me over him after she had already showed me some affection. At that moment she was the first person ever to show me affection." He turned and looked his daughter in the replica of her mother's eyes, "From the way you talked I gathered Rasputin was the first man outside of family to show you affection. And he rejected you. I knew you couldn't kidnap him; however I figured you would do something similar."
"But Mama did love you! Isn't that why you're Gustave's father?" The girl stood and walked a few steps from her father. Turned away from him she crossed her arms in front of her chest. The Phantom watched the hemline of her dress billow in the wind. "But you left France and came here. I never understood why you left." She looked up at the stars. They were faint over the lights of Phantasma, "Rasputin said I would understand when you told me, Dada but I don't. All I can gather is if Mama loves you, he should love me. But I don't think he does."
Sighing, Erik stood, "My Darling, I did not get to finish. I kidnapped your mother believing I could make her love me. However, she also had feelings for Raoul. I had to learn if I really loved her, I had to let her go. Loving someone, truly loving someone, is letting them be happy even if their happiness doesn't include you. So I let your mother go and she went to Raoul. But then something happened."
He took the final steps to be standing next to her. He looked at the skyline of the park he had built, "Sometime later, she came back to me. A mere few days before she was to marry Raoul, she found me when everyone else thought I was dead. But again, I decided if I really loved her, I would let her go; I could not give her the life Raoul could. At least not at that moment. So early that morning I got up before she woke and left. Left to finish the plans I started to move to America, left not knowing I had made her pregnant with your brother and would cause ten years of heartache for both of us."
Charlotte turned and looked up at her father to see tears in his eyes, "I still don't understand."
Erik wiped his eyes as he chuckled, "Oh you are my daughter. Precocious but socially inept." He gently touched her cheek, "Like I said, I let your mother go because I learned if I truly loved somebody I would care for their happiness. The life I was living at that time would not bring her happiness, or so I thought. But I was wrong and we found our way back to each other. That is what you need to do with Rasputin. If you do really care for him, you have to understand that you cannot make him love you. If he does care for you, he'll find his way back. You are young, My Darling. You have time to learn from this."
"He also said I was a spoiled brat, that I'm mean to people. Am I, Dada?" Her face crumbled as she started to cry. She buried it in her hands. "I don't want to be those things! I don't mean to be!"
Wrapping his arms around his oldest daughter, his most precious one, he held her tight, "You still have time. We still have time to make it right."