She's paler when he finishes his story, their tea cold and her fingers fidgeting at the handkerchief she holds, twisting it until it is at risk of disintegrating, threads loosening, falling apart. Perhaps it was a mistake to tell her so much of it, perhaps he should have censored it more (perhaps he should have kept it all to himself), but she had a right to know and still does. Of course she should know.

(Most of it, the bits that he was not there for, he learned in those long weeks of Erik's illness, in the moments when he was too weak to rage and too melancholy to be left alone, before he miscalculated his morphine. Some of it he knew already, the tales of adventure more than the tales of the man, told to him on the long journey to Ashraf, when they were half-enemies, half-acquaintances, and it was merely a job.)

Madeleine. Javert. Giovanni. Names with so much to say, so many stories encapsulating a young man's life. And then his years as a travelling magician. His time in Persia and these are the details that Nadir knows best, where he started his story before going back. (He is oddly proud, telling of his poor, dear Reza, voice steady and heart twisting.) India, Turkey, Belgium. He's learned it all or he's picked up enough to fill in the story. (And a laugh bubbles up inside of him at the thought of Erik as a contractor, doing something so ordinary but it dies before it reaches his throat when he remembers the morphine that it let him buy. That dreadful drug that's cost them all so much.) Paris, and Garnier, and the days of the Commune, and the completion of the Opera House. Her lips twist at the mention of finding Ayesha, and he leaves out all that Erik said about Christine herself, his soft murmurings of the first time he heard her sing, and how he loved teaching her and fought to keep his distance but couldn't, the slow tears that he was oblivious to trickling down his cheeks as he spoke of her. And his eyes shone with all that was unsaid about dear Christine, his voice cracking and lips twisting.

She is crying silently, too, when he finishes and as Darius bustles in with fresh tea she raises the much-abused handkerchief to dab away the tears.

"Thank you," she murmurs, words so desperately faint. "Thank you for everything." Nadir closes the gap between them with his hand, laying it gently on her arm.

"He loved you very much," he whispers, wanting to assure her of that so badly because no matter what else Erik may have done there can be doubt that he did love her. "The things that he did were wrong - taking you, dropping the chandelier, the torture chamber and so much else besides. I will not try to justify them, because they do not bear justification. But he did love you and he was glad to have borne the pain of his past just to get to know you at the end. He told me as much when he truly believed he would never see you again. And he was sorry, so very sorry, for all that he'd done to hurt you."

She doesn't speak, but there's a world of gratitude in her tear-filled eyes and it eases the hollowness inside of him to think that he might have brought her some comfort. Allah knows she needs it after all that she's suffered. For the first time he feels oddly thankful that he did not have to sit with Erik as he slipped away, and that thankfulness sits guiltily in his chest. He should have been there. She should not have been alone with him, not then, should not have had to bear that alone.

They sit like that for a long time, each drawing strength from the other, quiet in their own thoughts. If he could take away her grief he would. He would grant her relief, and peace, let her put this time behind her even if Erik's spectre would always linger in her heart. But he is powerless to do so, however merciful it may be, and he can see it in her eyes that she will carry this grief inside of her always, until her own death comes.

He knows the look. He has seen it in his own reflection and even now he longs for Rookheeya to take him in her arms and promise him that everything is all right, that Reza is all right.

(He saw it in Erik, too, the night he sent her away. It was etched into his face, the hollowness, the numbness. He scalded his fingers making tea, such was the trembling in his hands. Then he sat in his chair and stared at nothing for hours, not daring to speak, each breath unsteady, until the tears spilled from his eyes. It was the first time Nadir ever held him, Erik's maskless face pressed into his chest as he made soothing noises until he cried himself out.)

"I have some things of his," he says, eventually, to break the spell of the memory as he sits back in his chair and moves his hand from her arm. "Mostly scraps of manuscripts and such. I wish I could have saved some complete ones, but he was very thorough and, well, they are yours if you would like to have them." Mementoes of the man that Erik was, and he thinks that she might like to keep them but she catches him by surprise when she shakes her head.

"No, thank you, Nadir. They are yours and I couldn't take them." She hesitates a moment and swallows, then nods resolutely. "I went back there a few nights ago," she murmurs, lips barely moving, as if she is afraid the Vicomte could overhear her here, "and I took his cloak, and a couple of the dresses that he had made for me. I…I think he would have liked for me to keep them. When he went to so much trouble."

Nadir's throat tightens and he nods. Erik would want that, would have been so proud of the work that went into those dresses, his muse ever in his mind.

…enthusiasm to satisfy an artist's insatiable vanity.

The remembered words echo in his mind, only it is not Reza's voice now but Erik's own. An artist, yes he was. Vain, undoubtedly. And before Nadir sits his greatest masterpiece, as he called her when half out of his own head, yet still so very proud and vain. What would he think to see her now, composed once more and every word heavy with her love for him, and her grief? How would he feel to know his death was the cause of so much pain? Would it make him fight harder? Could he have given up the morphine, then, and bought more time with her?

(Would he have sent her away with the Vicomte at all?)

So many questions, and no way to answer them for the man who is the cause of it all is lying in a grave of his own planning, and there's nothing that Nadir can do about that.

(Nadir sat by the body for a long time, mind too blank to think or even feel, simply existing in that room of guttering candles. Erik's hands where they lay on his chest cold beneath his hand. He hadn't wanted to be alone, on the night he sent Christine away. He didn't say it, would never bring himself to admit it, but he was so very afraid of what he might do if he were alone. He hadn't wanted to be alone then so how could Nadir leave him lying alone while he waited for Darius to arrive to attend to the necessary details of burial? He was the one who wrapped him in a shroud, carefully, gently, Darius waiting for all to be ready, and did not give him back his mask, not even in death. That mask that was for so long armour and cage rests now alongside the scraps of manuscript, and he takes it out sometimes when the pain twists so hard inside that he can't breathe, and the time he spent with Erik feels as if it were a fever dream. How can he be sure he is not still lying delirious in his tent on the journey back from Nijny-Novgorod? The mask grounds him, though he longs to tear it apart for all that it did and meant.)

"I needed something to remember him by, more than a ring that I can't wear in front of my fiancé." Her voice is a whisper that breaks his thoughts, and he is shocked to feel the tears stinging his eyes. She smiles at him, a sad twitch of her lips, and squeezes his hand in hers. "Sometimes it feels it never happened, and all of the time I spent with him was only a dream."

Her thoughts mirror his own so closely. But it was not a dream, was so very far from a dream. The pain attests to that, and what he is feeling can only be a shadow of what she's going through. She loved him, she lay with him as he died, she is in every way a widow, just as he has been a widower ever since Rookheeya and if what she is feeling is even only a quarter of what he felt in those long weeks and months after Rookheeya's death …

(It is more than that, he knows. It is so much more than that.)

How he would protect her if it were within his power to do so. Erik would want him to look out for her – and for the Vicomte, for her sake – there is no doubt of that. But they have each other, and they do not need his protection. What is there for him to protect them from now?

He musters a smile for her, and pats her hand. It's on the tip of his tongue to ask her to write to him, to tell him how she is getting on in England and her new life. But perhaps that would only serve as one more painful reminder of what she has lost, and so he locks the words away deep inside himself.

She leaves shortly after, with a soft 'Thank you' and a hug that surprises him, yet is so welcome and seems to force the bleeding edges inside of himself together, still not enough to cauterise the wound. He doubts if it can ever be cauterised. Likely it will bleed secretly, hidden, as long as he lives and there is simply nothing that he can do about that, no treatment and no doctor that can cure him. And there is an odd communion between the two of them, as he squeezes her hand one last time before sending her on her way, both recognising that here is someone who understands. They do not have to be alone.

(Though he did not ask, three weeks later a letter arrives from England and the first words of it make his eyes burn with their lonely poignancy.

I have no one else to talk to about him, you see…)