The next morning, Grace awoke without having any sense of time whatsoever. Leo lounged next to her, giving her a look that suggested his bladder knew exactly what time it was, down to the exact minute.

"Use a houseplant if you must, most of them are dead anyway - pick a really deep dead houseplant!" She called after he jumped off the bed.

If Erik wondered - Erik! She jumped up. He hadn't broken anything or screamed so he hadn't appeared to have needed her.

Still, she got up and went out. Pressing her ear to his door, she heard nothing.

"Grace, I haven't died. Go put on a dress from the wardrobe in your room."

🌹

Half an hour later, Grace was carrying a tray with tea, water, fruit, and bread into Erik's room, planning on having breakfast with him. A breakfast that included him sitting perfectly still.

She knocked on the door with her foot - kicked it - until she heard him call her in.

He stared at her in confusion. He had not asked for breakfast, and knowing how unpredictable he was, and that she had knowingly gone through his kitchen without permission, expected to be yelled at.

"I hope you're dining with me, because I refuse to eat all of that. It's too much."

"I'll dine with you afterI have a peek at your shoulder."

She set the tray on the table. "Now come here."

He gave her a look.

"You're right, don't move, I'll come to you."

He did shift forward to allow her to squeeze in behind him. He looked much better then last night, too. His color - what little of it he had to start with - had returned and he had been able to put a shirt on.

She peeled back the collar and glanced under the wrappings. No more bleeding and no sign of infection. "Okay. Tomorrow you're allowed to leave your room but do not resume any of your regular activities such as scaring people and yelling directions for at least one week."

"Five days."

"Six. And if I have to force my presence on you, I will."

"Fine."

She served them breakfast and glanced around his room as she ate. It was highly improper, and Nora would teasingly scold her if she found out, but Grace couldn't care less. What if she was sitting on a bed in a bedroom with a man she wasn't married to and who wasn't Rodger? This was Erik.

She was impressed with his room: it echoed him perfectly. The walls were black, and thick black curtains fell from fake windows, or lined the walls as tapestries. The occasional red hue was there of course, his bed hangings for instance, were a sheer red. The few candles that were lit offered her a larger view to. His room was very wide. It could fit a desk, a dresser, a table full of sheet music and drawings, a wardrobe, and a coffin and still have plenty of room for dance to be held. But Grace's eyes wandered back to the black coffin.

Erik followed her gaze.

"Let's not add that to the list of long conversations we have to have, yes?"

"Er...."

"It's a reminder."

"That you're going to die?"

"No. It's a keepsake sort of. A token. A souvenir."

"I don't judge."

"I don't sleep in it any more."

"I buried a doll once, so you can sleep in a coffin."

"What has one thing to do with the other?"

"Precisely."

Erik stared at her. She stared back, smiling creepily.

"Do not look at me like," he said, shaking his head at her. She laughed at him. "I'll tell you if you tell me."

Grace looked around his room of darkness again, nodding once. She felt more comfortable talking to him with the shadows cast over her, shading her face, shading his, protecting them from gazing into the truth the other was about to dig up.

"The doll was me. I was eight or nine... maybe ten. I had come from a past I wanted to forget. A past you and I need to discuss, as you mentioned last night. In my mind, I was burying that part of me. I had other momentos to bury, but those I... couldn't part with, they were too lovely. In my mind, I was killing that part of myself, separating it from the person I was going to grow to be. I never realize at the time that burying things didn't mean rhat exhumation wasn't possible any less longer. I often relive my life through dreams. But I still don't regret burying that doll. It symbolized the beauty that I once craved and admired but doubted I ever deserved or would have. I opened my mind by throwing the toy into the dirt.

"It looked like a pretty little girl. Hair curled into thick ringlets. A pink dress richly lined with lace. A ribbon in the curly hair. It was everything I was not and thought I no longer needed to be." She closed her eyes tightly, not wanting to see his disgust or an expression showing off how disturbed he was by the story. But gentle fingers lifted her chin, roughly forcing it up when she tried to ignore them.

"I slept in a coffin as a boy," he said, gold eyes glinting into a shade of dark amber. His fingers fell away, softly brushing her hand for a moment. "I was the main attraction at a carnival, a gypsy fair. The Devil's Child, that was my stage name. Erik, the monstrosity who played the violin, harp - any instrument - with precision, perfection, and raw beauty. Blessed with talent, cursed to be a monster. A miraculous prodigy cursed to look like a demon. They stole my mask and put me on display with any instrument available, providing a coffin for a prop, my bed, claiming a creature of death could only be comfortable in such lodgings, and a two foot long white cross on the front of my cage, which was supposed to be what was holding me inside the metal bars. I had no where else to rest, and I wanted to hide from the screams, the laughter, and the jeers. So one day, not a week after I arrived, I opened the coffin and slept for the first time in days." He hesitantly glanced at her, and she offered him a small, sad smile in acceptance.

"I slept in that thing for years. Even as an adult. For a few months I stopped, several years ago, telling myself I was a man, when I was still, agewise, a boy. I went back to it. Christina however, was horrified and said it was madness. Insisted it wasn't normal, so I finally stopped. I have it here to remember those days and hate them."

"The things people do to children," Grace said.

"Abuse is never forgotten."

"Right. But it can be eased. That's why I think its the duty of people like you or I to try and step in when we see something so vile being done in front of us." She swallowed, tears welling in her hazel eyes.

"Erik, I'm so indebted to you. But why would you spend that much, do something of that caliber?" They were on the topic after all, she would like to know.

"I did it because... well they are a bunch of whores, but I guess they don't deserve that treatment. Is this what you hated me for so much last night? You don't owe me anything, it was nothing."

"Thirty thousand francs!"

"Is nothing, yes."

"It will take me at least two years to pay you back."

"I said you owe me nothing!" He snapped now. "Grace, think nothing of it. I used to make twenty thousand a month for fifteen years, and with this theatre I make much more than that over a three week period. My bank account hasn't seen a scratch, trust me," he laughed as of it were a preposterous notion.

Grace was ruffled at his arrogance.

"Well then... thank you for that. Though, please don't call them whores. That's like calling you a demon, or me a whore. They are as innocent as I... I think we both know I might have ended up like them."

"But you didn't. And knowing your pride I'm pretty sure you'd kill yourself first. Or all the men you could. Female Jack the Ripper."

"Stop," she laughed. "It is not that funny!"

But Erik had grown somber again.

"Why do you think of them as ladies? I'll never refer to them as that slur again, but -"

"But they didn't choose their fate. If they had any other option they'd have taken that. Mother's don't want that for their daughters. Felicette would have done anything to save Mai from that. My own mother -" Grace stopped.

"I would have liked to meet your mother, because I cannot imagine what anyone could do for you to have turned out a the fiery little canon ball you are."

Grace nodded slowly. "Erik, I think I should just confirm... my name is not Grace. You -"

"Know you as Celine Christoux. And your mother tried her best to teach you how to be a lady in the little time you had with her. My name is Erik, but you misheard and I didn't correct lest things didn't work out. And about what happened, on my part... it was all my fault, and I am -"

"No, please, let's not uncover the rest today. I don't feel well." She read the concern in his eyes. "Not like that. I never feel very well after I have to revisit something. There's a lot I still haven't told you since then. And I don't want to go back to being that girl and Erin. I prefer us as Grace and Erik. Can we forget it all, please?"

"Anything for you, Grace. Except," he said seriously, "I will not purchase every prostitute in Paris and give them positions and living quarters, I'm sorry."

Grace started laughing with him at that. She liked seeing him smile. It was always a rare event, yet his smile was beautiful because it was only giving on the most deserving and genuine of happy occasions.

"Please stop making me laugh!"

"It hurts me more than it hurts you. Let's see you laugh with a bullet - no, heaven forbid that from happening. You'd probably take the bullet out and use it to shoot the person."

"Stop!"

"Who's the morbidest of them all now? Ow."