The Six Months of Winter

By Celeste

Epilogue

I never saw Raoul de Chagny again. I once asked Nadir of him a few years later, and he told me that there had been an arranged marriage and that he had joined the Navy. I pitied him and loathed myself for the lifetime of misery I had caused him. I never forgot the boy from the seashore and the man he could not become. I did not think of him often, but when I did, it was never with remorse.

The house Nadir had found for me and my unborn child was small and white with a garden and two floors. He and his servant lived with us there as well, watching over my child and me as part of his promise to Erik. Whenever I would ask him about it, he would smile and shake his head, a faraway look in his eyes of days long past. I was eternally grateful to him and all that he did for me; when I had no one, he was there, reminding me of how Erik would have wanted me to live.

It was not an easy pregnancy. The intense bouts of sickness hit me in waves and very often, so much as I did not leave my bed for days. When I moved, there was an ever present sharp pain in my back and neck, and there was more than one day where I wished it all would end.

It was the worst at night, when I lay in my bed alone and forever cold, no matter how many blankets were piled up over me. These were my darkest moments, the ones where I was alone in my thoughts, no one to pull me out of them. My dreams were vivid: I ran through the Paris Opera, never alone, calling for Erik, and he never came. I was chased by a shadow of unknown origin, threatening to devour me whole. When I awoke, sometimes screaming, others with silent tears, I would clutch at my bulging stomach and sob quietly until daybreak, a victim of my own mind.

In the last month before my child was born, I barely left the bed at all. Nadir had taken to sleeping in a chair outside my door, ever waiting for a sign. The doctor blamed my petite, weak body; I had never been very strong. There were nights when the doctor would stay as well, fearing as my condition worsened. I was fed simple things: soups, breads, never anything heavy and there were times I would wake up, not remembering when I had fallen asleep.

The pain of giving birth was extreme. The feeling of being ripped apart nearly made me give up. Nadir held my hand as I pushed, the midwife calling out instructions to me over a foggy haze. I don't know how I made it through; perhaps it was the majestic voice in the back of my consciousness that pulled me through. The voice told me to continue on, almost like a song, and I had no intention of disobeying it.

My son was a very small baby but healthy; more than anyone could ask for. When he was placed into my arms the first time, I cried both from exhaustion and overwhelming joy. A perfect face looked up at me, with soft, rounded cheeks, and dark hair on his head. I knew at once that my son would grow up to be a very handsome man, with the face Erik had never had. The perfect child whom I named Charles, a name I had considered long before his birth. It fit him in a way I never grew to understand, and as time went on, he filled the loneliness inside of me I feared would never disappear.

Oh, my love, if you could see him now! You and I combined forever, you genius never to be erased. Winter is not such a terrible season after all, for it always ends in spring, and even in the coldest and darkest of places, there is always a little light.

Charles's POV

The day we buried my mother was bright and warm, a cruel contrast to the event of which I was regretfully forced to oversee. The wind had blown very gently around Nadir, Darius, the priest, and myself, lulling me back deeper into the memories and the emotions I had tried to keep from spilling over. We buried her next to my father, of whom I had never known, and I had just been able to make it back to carriage before the dam broke.

She was a wonderful woman, my mother, whose eyes relayed the darkness of her past, one of which I was never told in full. Of my father I have no memory, for he had died before I was born. My mother's world was a secret, and there were things she never told me about herself that I heard of after she died from Nadir. She had her habits, of course, but she was always very closed about herself, leaving me to guess or interpret her feelings.

I remember times when we would sit together at the piano and I would play. I was born with a deep affinity for music, which I am told came from my father. When I played, it became everything to me, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer sublimity of it. Most of the time, she would sit in the room with me as I played and I tried hard not to notice the tears that would fall silently down her face, and I felt like an unwelcome intruder to some sacred place not meant for my knowledge.

I knew better, even at a young age, not to question her about the whimsicalities of some of her actions. Whenever I sang or even brought her flowers, she would get a strange look of remembrance on her face before it vanished into nothingness. I cherished those little looks she gave when she thought I wasn't looking. It was as if I was someone else to her, someone dearer, and although I always felt loved, there always seemed to be something missing. I learned more about her from Nadir than her in person. He was the one who praised her beyond it all; told me of her struggles and her unwavering spirit.

As long as I can remember, we had visited the cemetery every year on her birthday. It was the one thing that she always wanted, no fancy dinners or extravagant presents; on the occasions when I would accompany her, she would stand before my father's grave for hours, just staring down at the plain headstone. She was like an angel, carved in stone and forever unreachable by man.

He was the one that was always spoken about in my childhood. She would tell me stories for ours of him and I never grew bored. It was my way of knowing him and her way of making sure his memory would live on. Musician, architect, composer, magician- all of whose traits she said were passed onto me. I felt proud even without knowing him, and it made me closer to the man whose face I never saw.

She told me about the mask for the first time about a year before she died. I had always asked to see a likeness of him and then the subject would always change. She did not go into great detail over the deformity my father possessed but she did show me one of his masks she had hidden deep within one of her drawers. I remember holding the cold porcelain in my hand as she whispered the tale of their first meeting, and I felt a strange feeling I could not place at the time.

I was away at school when she died; I had known that day to be coming soon, had seen the anguish on her face when we had last parted. She had never been a healthy woman. Even as young as she was, she was weaker than most and as the years passed, I watched her fade away from us all. I was told she died peacefully in her sleep, one finger touching her wedding ring. We had her buried in that position, and on the many cold, sleepless nights hat followed her passing I always felt a strange peace.

When I did sleep on some nights, I would always dream of her pure, untainted voice mixed with the magnificent tone of another, forever entwined. The Phantom and his protégé as they were meant to be at long last.

FIN

Author's Notes: It's done:sob: I can't say how much I would like to thank you all for following me through to the end. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I loved writing it. I have no further Phantom stories to work on (my brain has been sucked dry with this one) and you have no idea how much you all inspired me to make this the best it could be.

Thanks again for your unwavering support!