Chapter Text
Christine became a ghost quite by accident.
She was a clumsy spook in those early days, unaccustomed to sneaking around. First a stagehand spotted her on the stairway to the cellars, and then a fireman glimpsed her passing by in the 3rd basement. Soon rumors of the Opera’s new resident specter had reached every corner of the company, and Christine found herself the sudden subject of legend.
Some said she was the spirit of a diva who had committed suicide after being abandoned by her patron. Others claimed she had died a prisoner of the communards during their occupation of the half-finished opera.
Sometimes she wished their tales were the truth. If only she had once been a diva, even a short-lived and unhappy one, to remember the warm glow of the stage lights and the adoring eyes of all Paris upon her! To have had a life, any life, as a normal girl with a normal face, instead of being born dead! But no amount of wishing would make it true.
One day, she was drawn from her daily haunting of the halls by the most beautiful music. It came in fits and starts, sung by a voice which kept stumbling and pausing, but even so the notes called to something in her heart, reeling her in like a fish on a line to one of the practice rooms. There she found the new Spanish diva, stamping her foot and cursing at the ceiling.
“This man’s works are impossible! Does he not know that people need to breathe?” she said.
Christine was so taken by the music that she forgot herself, and spoke: “What song is that?”
“It is the new work by Dumont, curse him. ‘Don Juan Triumphant,’ he calls it,” the diva huffed, then seemed to realize she was being spoken to, and whirled around to glare at the room. “Who is that there? Did I not say I did not want to be disturbed? …well? Show yourself!”
She would have slunk away then in embarrassment, but the sight of the diva looking for her, unable to find her, filled her with sudden inspiration. She remembered a trick taught to her years before, by a member of the carnival she and her father had traveled with briefly.
“Have you not heard of me?” Christine said, her voice coming from a spot just over the diva’s shoulder. The woman turned, but of course saw no one there. “I am the opera ghost!” And now the voice came from the ceiling, filling the whole room and shaking the mirrors.
“I do not believe in such superstitious rot!” the diva Carlotta insisted, drawing herself up straight. “There are no ghosts here—why, you must be one of the ballet rats, trying to play a trick!”
“It does not matter to me if you believe,” Christine replied. “This song, you’re having a lot of trouble with it?”
“It is impossible!” Carlotta said, happy to return to the subject of her complaint. “The man is mad if he thinks anyone can sing this.”
In her pacing Carlotta had moved a little to the side, so Christine could read the music from her vantage point behind one of the many mirrors. She opened her mouth, and began to sing, letting her ethereal voice spill over the room. It felt good to sing for an audience again. She sang all the way to the end of the page, where she had to stop. Carlotta had fallen silent, in fact, she seemed to be hardly breathing.
“Can you turn the page? I have no hands to do so myself.”
“How can you sing like that?” Carlotta said, in a voice so choked it was almost a whisper.
It was the first time Christine had really spoken to a person in years, instead of simply listening. It made her feel real in a way she hadn’t for so long. A full person, able to touch the world and to change it, instead of drifting along as a silent observer. And though her heart pounded with fear over the possible consequences of her actions, the rush of power carried her along beyond the reach of fear. She wanted this to continue.
“I can teach you.”