Him.

Chapter XII

True to the very words she spoke, Haya ceased to compose. Erik had taken a while to allot for hope to fill in the gaps she had left in his heart. Maybe she would find a muse to allow her compositions, but Erik found himself left only with the one score she and him had created together. That was the only music from Haya he had left bar his memories of her playing and her dedicated works. He did not know whether to feel regretful or melancholy or... just plain awful more like it. Every moment of the masked-man's life since she had ceased to compose he thought that it was his fault. And, it mainly was if he was to be completely honest, yet when was Erik ever completely honest? He could not remember a time, bar maybe when he was with Haya herself. That woman seemed to be the only thing that kept Erik sane, that and his family.

Philippa was due any day now, and there was an excitement bursting in the household that no one could deny. The blonde seemed a little more stressed out than usual, but that was to be expected, in all honesty. She would constantly be checking her appearance or making sure that she was eating and being healthy in general. Philippa obviously wanted this child, and Erik had assured her that they would be fine. He also promised to never let her get pregnant again to which she replied with an uneasy smile and a contraction.

Erik noticed her changing a bit, and he could not place whether it was the pregnancy or them in general. It is not as though they had had a problem, they had not, but he could see her more anxious as of late, and many a thing could contribute to such a bump in their relationship.

Maybe, even, Erik considered it to be himself as he had been distant since Haya stopped composing. It unsettled him, the way she never published another thing again since the concert they had held for her. He felt almost guilty for showing up if that was what stopped her music. The masked-man desperately missed her scores, for it brought life and happiness to his sore ears. Children screaming and playing was not entirely his forte in all honesty. Well, he loved his children dearly, but the noises they made hurt his head often enough.

Erik watched as the time went by and Haya failed to write anything still.

When the final Destler child was born to Philippa, Erik was rather surprised to see they had had another girl. She was a pretty little thing, with unrecognizable features. The girl, named Cynthe, was a delicate thing, rather small and possessing a slightly faint figure. Erik assumed that the child had just inherited it from him.

It was highly possible, for he often enough compared himself to death's own image in which he never felt that off in his assumption. He was not a muscular man, but he was strong. Erik was not a fat man, but he was hearty. There was always more to Erik than what met the eye.

It was just that he felt hollow missing Haya's music, and piece that he had memorized could only do so much for him. Easily enough, Erik's fingers could rack the piano with ease and hit each note as though the melody was something he had been playing since birth. It felt like a part of him, the music and the notes flowing from his fingertips and slowly creating a masterpiece that was already written on paper. But on paper the work meant nothing, if you could not read music, and you were not of perfect pitch, the melody would be lost to you. And no one truly had that ability that he knew of, so obviously the paper meant nothing. No, it had to be played, on the piano enabling you to hear the beauty of it. If you can not hear it; it is not music. And Erik lived those words, he lived by them in accordance to Haya's music that he held high in his heart.

Eventually, he played it for his child to lull her to sleep, and he played it for guests and such when he had them. The composition was an amazing, nothing less, work of true music.

And yet, he still never felt fulfilled enough to go on with writing his own music. His own music was overused and over-heard anyways. If he composed the music; then the music had been played, replayed, re-written a million times and was boring to him by the time he got done with it. Erik hated hearing his own music because it was never new, it was always what had been playing in his mind for months and years on end. It was almost sickening attempting to play your own music when you had dissected it and played with it so often that it became peculiar and almost worse to hear than when your started composing it! Suddenly, the music sounds awful, and no matter what you do to it you feel as though you have failed as a composer.

But when Erik heard Haya's music, there was no telling where his heart went. Slowly but steadily, the masked-man began to realize something that made him weep at night and over his children. Something, it was, that made him look at his wife with guilty eyes. This something was always something he'd known of, obviously, but it had been hidden and he wanted to be rid of it more than anything.

At the same time, however, he never wanted it to go away.