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Chapter Text

Christine once had a father who loved her.

With every year that wedged itself between herself and her childhood, she came to understand more deeply how rare that love had been, how precious her fragile memories.

She had been born in Sweden, to a sickly mother who lived two years more before dying. After that, she and her father left their home and drifted from town to town, never settling again. They traveled all over Europe this way, heading gradually south. Her father played his violin for their bread, while Christine sang from the shadows behind him. Even young and half-trained, her voice drew small crowds to them as easily as the pied piper once summoned the rats of Hamelin, and she and her father never starved.

Whenever people became too curious about her mask or, worst of all, the covering slipped or was stolen, her father would bundle her away to the next town, far from jeering, cursing crowds.

“Your face must be kept secret,” her father had told her when he gave her the first mask. “It is a secret you can tell only to someone you trust deeply. Someone who loves you.”

And she wore that mask happily.

Her father taught her to sing. He taught her to read music before letters. He would sit her on his knee and tell her fairy stories of her home country, and her favorites were the dark tales about monsters more frightening than herself.

They were not always happy, and life was often hard, but so long as they were together Christine was content.

But fathers die, as all mortals do, and Christine’s father left the earth much sooner than most.

Alone in a world that could not abide her secret, she shut herself away in the last sanctuary he had found for her, in the hidden passages deep below the Paris Opera House. There, she resolved to wait for the angel he had promised her…

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.”

Chapter Text

The diva Carlotta saw plots against her everywhere she looked. Most were imagined.

But some were real.

That night, she left her dressing room in a cloud of euphoric self-confidence. Her gaze was distant, one might even say dreamy. She did not notice the figure behind her, which watched her with unbroken intensity. Nor did she see how, after she had turned the corner, that same figure drifted to her unlocked dressing room door, and went inside it.

The opera fans of Paris might have recognized this tall and willowy figure as a rival soprano, newly come to the Opera Garnier. She carried a small satchel, and did not light the lamps once inside Carlotta's room.

On the dressing table a red glass bottle glittered, caught in a shaft of light from the doorway. It contained the diva's throat spray, which she used before every performance. Step by quiet step, the rival approached the table. From her satchel, she pulled an identical bottle, with a very different concoction inside.

For tonight was the night of the gala celebrating the retirement of Monsieurs Debienne and Poligny, the Garnier's managers, and a good showing could turn future casting decisions in a young singer's favor. A bad one,on the other hand, could damage a reputation. She reached out for the bottle on the table.

A flicker of white from the mirror, as of light dancing across glass, was her only warning. A clammy, boney hand seized her wrist with inhuman strength, apparently emerging from the glass itself. That crushing grip cinched tighter and tighter until there came a sickening crack from the fine bones of the lady's wrist.

This is not why she screamed.

She screamed because of the face which appeared above the hand, a skull-like face, a death's-head, with yellowed skin and a hole for a nose. Barely any skin clothed the bone, and a cloud of wispy white hair flowed from the scalp. Blue pinprick eyes glared out from the sunken holes that ought to be eyes.

The rival put her trained lungs to work, and screamed with such power that every singer, dancer, and stagehand nearby were startled by the cry. A mob of them came running to that dark little room, and crowded inside the door. They found the girl weeping, alone, in the center of the floor, clutching her broken wrist to her chest.

The sharpest of them looked over the scene and knew immediately what had happened. The apparition had vanished now, and the mirror appeared smooth and innocuous, no more than blank glass. No man of them said it out loud, but their gazes wandered over the room, searching for some glimpse of a skeletal hand, for the burn of blue pinpricks in the shadows.

The Opera Ghost was always watching. If you were naughty, the little ballet rats said, you would not find sweets slipped into your pockets after a good performance. If you were very bad, and tried to sprinkle broken glass into the other girls' shoes, or trip up your rivals, you would see her death's-head looming out of the shadows above you. The glass would find its way to your own shoes, or hands would sneak out of the dark to seize your skirt and pull you off your feet.

The ghost was protective of La Carlotta most of all. This newcomer would not have known, or believed, what force waited for her in this room. Old Joseph Buquet, the chief scene shifter, knelt beside the girl and asked what happened. At the sight of his sober, hangdog face, she began to babble between gasps and sobs.

“A hand! ...from the mirror! It was so cold....and that horrible face! Ghastly face...a skull...like a ghost!”

At that magic word, 'ghost', all the ballet rats ran squealing from the room. “The ghost, the ghost, the Lady Ghost! ^[1]” they hollered, chattering and swooning against each other in their terror and excitement. They ran all the way to the dressing room of La Sorelli, the prima ballerina, who had not appeared to check on the commotion.

Three of the girls nearly barreled the esteemed dancer over in their haste to enter the room, for she had been standing beside the door with her ear pressed to the wood. Immediately she backed up and stamped her foot, glaring at the swarm of little girls in pink.

“What is all this commotion?” she demanded. “Some of us have a speech to practice!”

“Ohhh, it's awful!” chirped little Jammes. “Mlle. Fay snuck into Carlotta's dressing room, and the Lady Ghost caught her!”

“Broke her wrist!”

“Snapped it clean!”

“She nearly fainted!”

“Don't speak foolishness, there is no ghost,” La Sorelli said, and surreptitiously thumbed the sign of St. Andrew's cross onto the little wooden ring on her fourth finger. Like most of the opera company who denounced the ghost's existence most loudly, she believed in the specter with her whole heart. “What was Mlle. Fay doing in Carlotta's room?”

Here the older girls exchanged knowing looks.

“She had a bottle with her.”

“It looked just like the bottle Carlotta uses for her throat spray.”

Sorelli hissed through her teeth. “Then she deserves whatever she got,” she said primly.

A rustle outside the door. The girls all clung to each other, every pair of eyes fixed on the door, trembling in wait for a spectral hand or a death's-head to emerge from the wood. La Sorelli puffed herself up.

“Who is there?”

“Cécile?” The door opened, and Carlotta herself stood in its frame, red-faced and scowling. “What are you all doing in here? Shouldn't you be getting ready for Polyeucte?”

“Did you hear, did you hear?” the girls of the ballet crowded around her at once, like iron shavings to a magnet. “Mlle Fay, in your room!”

“The devil! Yes, I saw her. The clumsy scoundrel deserves every broken bone.”

Several of the girls piped up to correct the diva that it had definitely been a ghost, and not any clumsy mishap, that had broken Mlle. Fay's wrist. Carlotta would not hear it.

“Superstitious nonsense!” She bellowed, and oh, but the diva could bellow! Yet to the keen eye, the diva's face held a glimmer of satisfaction. “There are no ghosts here, only a lot of silly girls and empty-headed stagehands working themselves into a tizzy. Well! I will have to use someone else's dressing room, as everyone has seen fit to invade mine!” And she left, with the dancers giggling behind her.

“The nerve she has, after all the lady ghost does for her. She should show more appreciation,” little Jammes said very seriously.

“She does.” And this came from little Meg Giry, who clapped her hands over her mouth at once, startled that she had betrayed herself.

Naturally, all the dancers rounded on her immediately, and demanded explanation.

“Mum has seen her,” she relented, after a great deal of prodding. “Just last week, she left a box of chocolates in box 5.” She delivered this with an air of profound intensity, then leaned back, in wait for gasps of awe that did not come.

“What's so special about box 5?”

“You don't know? It's the lady ghost's box,” Meg said.

“The lady ghost has a private box?”

“Yes! Ma tends to it.”

"What does the lady ghost need a box for?"

"To watch the opera, what else?"

"No, that's not right. Gilbert the fireman said she watches every show from the catwalks above the stage. He's seen her there."

"She does not!" said little Jammes. "She's on stage every night. You can hear her singing with the chorus..."

"I hope she does not dance with us!"

The entire corps de ballet shuddered as one.

La Sorelli had had enough of this talk, and ushered all the girls from her room, insisting they must head on stage for Polyceute. The poorly lit halls held a special menace, tonight, with the memory of that ghastly scream haunting its corners. A cry came up from the flock, as the girls realized one of their number was missing.

"Mathilde! Where is Mathilde?"

They clustered tight together about La Sorelli's feet, as if afraid any one of them might be snatched up next.

"She was asking around for stories," Little Giry said. "She must be in the haunted practice room."

"The haunted practice room?" Sorelli said.

"Yes, the one where you can hear the lady ghost singing."

"The one with the cracked mirror."

"Why would she go there? ...little fool!"

"Haven't you heard? The old door-shutters say that the lady ghost loves stories. If you go there and you tell her one, she will give you good luck. Mathilda must have wanted luck tonight..."

Indeed, this rumor had been all over the opera house for weeks. It was not uncommon to see persons from every trade within the Garnier slip to that room after hours, and whisper tales of fairies and hobgoblins to the blank glass.

"I think she is quite too busy to listen to stories right now," Sorelli said with a huff. "Breaking people's wrists...Oh, Mme Valerius! You have got lost backstage again."

Sorelli waded out from the crowd of chattering girls to the lonely old woman leaning heavily on a walking stick beside the wall. The stately old dame said nothing, turning her head slowly away from the group still clustered around Carlotta's door. Shadow pooled in the dips and wrinkles of her face, so that she looked almost a ghost herself. Sorelli placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke loud and slow, as if to a half-deaf child.

"The grand foyer is behind you, madame, you must take this turn here. Then you must go UPSTAIRS to reach your box."

She did not wait to see that the old woman followed her instructions, continuing down the hall with her entourage following close behind. Nor did any one of them pay any attention to the pained look on the old woman's face, or the way her hands trembled as she turned herself around and limped away towards the grand foyer.

Chapter Text

Round the side of the Palais Garnier, lines of carriages rolled to the curb and deposited their gentlemen and ladies onto the walk before rolling off again. One young gentleman, a fair youth in his early twenties, slipped away from the calm presence of his older sibling and hurried into the building. He darted through the crowd to the grand foyer like a hummingbird in search of a flower, moving just a hair faster than was polite.

This young man was the victomte Raoul de Chagny, and the brother he had left behind was the comte, Philipe. Presently, he spotted his quarry, and a bright grim beamed from beneath his thin mustache. His eyes had caught on the two sober figures, each dark in a different way, who stood a little apart from the merry crowd.

The first glowered at the base of the grand staircase, doing his best to appear as if the statues beside him required his company, and not that he was waiting for anyone. The second man had planted himself about three stairs up, where he had a better vantage of the crowd. The boldest of the opera goes sometimes came to the first man to attempt conversation, only receiving curt replies in return. The most superstitious of them gave a wide berth to the second man, and made secret wards against the evil eye.

“Ah, Erik!” he said, sweeping his way to the dour figure standing at the base of the staircase. To the spectators, it must have seemed as if a ray of sunlight were coming over to greet a cave shadow.

The man turned.

He was not handsome, by the fashion of the day, his bone structure a little too heavy, his eyes too dark and sunken, his nose too large. Yet, the overall combination of his features proved compelling, in its own way. His eyes were a very light brown which flared gold when the light caught them just right, giving him some resemblance to a hawk.

“You are late, M. le Vicomte,” he said.

“We had a little trouble with one of the carriage horses,” the youth replied. “Have we missed anything?”

“Only the most boring speech by the minister of fine arts.”

“It is good to see you, Raoul,” said the second man, smiling warmly. 'The Persian', the opera patrons called him, and there were few living figures in that place more surrounded by mystery. He was darker than either of his companions, his skin a medium brown, his hair a gray-speckled black mostly hidden beneath his astrakhan cap.

“You as well, monsieur,” Raoul told him.

“Yes, yes, let us get settled into our box. I’ve tired of standing out here for people to stare at,” Erik said.

“The idea of the thing is to socialize, I think,” said the man behind him, amused.

“I’ll socialize in my own way, daroga,” Erik told him.

"Your own way? You mean, by staring at people in silence until they feel uncomfortable and slink away?" Raoul asked.

"It is an unusual approach," the persian agreed.

Erik sighed. "I should never have let you two meet," he said. "I knew you would inevitably join forces against me."

"Only for your own good," the persian told him, and they set off for the boxes together.

Raoul could feel the eyes of his peers upon him as he settled himself into Box 3. He had been back home from the navy for only a few months, and already he was gathering a reputation as a man with odd friends. Take the man sitting at his side, for example. Erik Dumont had distinguished himself as a composer of unholy talent, whose compositions filled the soul with dark fire, yet the more high society reached for him, the more he spurned it. Everyone wanted to know how the young vicomte had secured the friendship of such a recluse, but Raoul had no interest in telling them if Erik did not wish it known.

Then there was the matter of Erik's friend, the persian, a man whose true name and means remained a mystery even to Raoul. Erik spurned such common social niceties as introductions, and he always called his friend by the nickname 'daroga'. Uncertain what else to do, Raoul had taken to calling the man that as well. He did not seem to mind.

“Well, are you excited?” Raoul asked. At Erik’s changeless glower, he elaborated, “They’re debuting a piece from your new opera tonight, are they not?”

“One of the arias, yes.”

“And how many ladies will faint by the ending, hm?” Raoul asked with an air of conspiracy.

Erik did not share his amusement. His gaze was suddenly distant, staring through the thick red curtains which hid the stage.

“This one is different,” he said. “I have a new muse.”

Raoul and the persian exchanged mystified glances. Erik had never spoken of having a muse before. Yet he could get no more out of the composer on the subject, and reluctantly dropped the matter. His brother Phillipe arrived only minutes before the performance was to begin, looking harried and pale.

"Has something happened?" Raoul asked him.

"Someone has broken a soprano's wrist. She was found in La Carlotta's dressing room, sobbing on the floor. Caught in the act of trying to sabotage the singer, it seems. None of the scene shifters will admit to doing it. Dreadful business."

The men all made noises of dismay, save Erik, who appeared to have lost interest in the conversation.

"Of course, everyone is blaming the opera ghost," Philipe said.

"What superstitious nonsense," Erik said.

The performance began, interrupting the discussion.

The gala began with the jewel song from Faust, sung prettily enough by a stand-in for Mlle. Fay. Then followed a short romp on stage by the ballet corps, and a few other popular arias. Raoul quickly sank into rapture, ignoring the soft chatter of people around him. Raoul had loved music for as long as he could remember. It was for this reason he insisted on dragging his brother to the opera as often as he did.  Most of the people here weren't here for the music, but to see and be seen. Some nights Raoul wished they would turn the lights off and make the patrons stay quiet so he could better immerse himself.

“When is your piece?” he asked Erik as the ballet rats fled the stage.

“Just next. See, here comes La Carlotta to do her best butchering of my composition.”

“Erik, she's the golden voice of Paris!” Raoul protested.

“I've heard better,” Erik replied, and his eyes were distant.

La Carlotta strutted to the center stage, beaming to her audience. Then she opened her mouth, and by the second verse, Raoul was lost utterly to the world. He had never heard such music before, certainly not from anything composed by Erik. Erik could drag a soul into hell with his melodies, could inflame the passions so greatly that on the debut of his second major work there had nearly been a riot, but this? This seemed something stolen from the heavens, wrenched from the harp of some reclining angel. Even Carlotta's agile voice could not quite keep up with the score, and at times she stumbled.  Yet the spell was unbroken. The whole house fell silent, every eye fixed on the stage, until the last trembling note died upon the air.

“Eric...” Raoul breathed.

“She did not practice enough,” Erik said, and his face had the stony quality of someone trying too hard to reign in their emotions.

For a minute that silence held, the people too dazed to even think of moving, and Carlotta herself swaying lightly in place. Then the applause swelled, chasing away the last echoes of that sweet music with thunderous din.

“It is a good work, my friend,” the persian said. “Your best yet.”

“Excellent! Truly,” Phillipe added.

Erik simply sat still, seemingly deaf to all these compliments, his eyes fixed on something above the stage.

Chapter Text

In typical Erik fashion, the man vanished just before the end of the concert. He made no production of it. Raoul turned to make some comment and found the chair beside him empty, and the daroga met his eyes with a look of long suffering which mirrored his own.

As always, Erik had chosen a good time to make his escape. No sooner had Raoul and the others left their box then they were accosted by friends and well-wishers, all eager to congratulate the composer on the success of his new piece. Raoul smiled and nodded his way through all of these, slowly maneuvering himself towards the grand staircase. He slipped through the crowd gathered on the stairs, hunting for a glimpse of that towering, sallow figure, ears pricked for a whisper of his smooth tenor. That man would not rest until he had earned the adulation of the whole world, but god forbid he stay to actually hear any of it!

Just as Raoul clapped eyes on his quarry, who was turning into one of the little hallways off the ground floor, his way was blocked by a familiar and unfriendly face.

“M. le Vicomte. A lovely program, wouldn’t you agree?”

“M. Swan.” The boy drew himself up, not unlike an agitated cat. His eyes sparked in irritation, both at the company and the interruption. “I haven’t time to speak with you. If you’ll excuse me--”

“Your friend has written a simply astonishing new work. Astonishing,” M. Swan went on as if Raoul had not spoken. “Like a touch of heaven, rather than the hellish discord he usually trots before us.”

Raoul all but stomped his foot in impatience. “I may be his friend, but I feel no obligation to stand here and listen to your insults on his behalf--”

“I am trying to pay my rival a compliment, dear boy. He has finally produced an aria worth listening to. It makes one wonder, are we sure he wrote it?”

How dare he insinuate...! If any man in Paris could be rightfully accused of thievery and plagiarism, it was M. Swan.

Raoul was very nearly moved to violence at the man’s awful words, and indeed he might have conducted himself most abominably if it weren’t for the intervention of a dark brown hand on his shoulder.

“A weighty charge, monsieur. Have you any evidence to back it?” the daroga asked.

“Only an idle thought. Pay it no mind.” M. Swan smiled at them and drifted off.

“That odious...!” Raoul cut himself off, suddenly aware of the curious faces turned towards them.

“Ignore him,” the daroga advised, though his own dark eyes watched M. Swan depart with grave wariness. “He is only trying to invite trouble. Have you found Erik?”

“I had just spotted him before I was interrupted.”

The daroga opened his mouth to speak, then his eyes caught something. Abruptly he turned his head to Raoul. “Excuse me, there’s something I need to see to.” He vanished back into the crowd before Raoul could get a word out.

“Everyone is acting so strangely tonight,” Raoul mused to himself. He went on, cursing both his friends for being so damnably mysterious.

By the time Raoul reached the little hall, Eric was gone. He spent some time wandering that labyrinth, questioning every scene shifter and chorus member he passed if they hadn’t seen a tall, brooding character sweep this way. At last one of the ballet rats proved of some use.

“I just saw him enter the haunted practice room.”

Raoul, who despite being a sailor believed in a very different set of superstitions from the theater folk, put no stock in talk of ghosts. He asked which room she meant.

The girl, who was little Jammes of course, was quite put out about being shooed away from the room before she could tell the ghost her story. She led Raoul down to the correct hall and pointed him to one door near the middle.

“He must want his luck changed, too. Very badly,” she said, before dashing away.

Raoul paid the words little heed. Instead he approached the door with every intention of flinging it open and confronting his vanished friend.

A voice stopped him. The moment he laid finger on the door knob, the soft, high tones of the most beautiful female voice he had ever heard drifted through the wood. He was frozen, entranced, a sailor caught in the spell of a siren.

“Do you love me?” the voice asked. He did not even know its owner and he wanted to shout yes.

“How can you ask me that? Have you not just heard the music I wrote for you? Inspired by you?” Erik’s voice, darkly melodious in its own right if not as supernaturally beautiful as the woman’s, broke the spell. Raoul quickly backed away from the door, secreting himself in a nearby shadowy doorway where he could hear without being observed. His thoughts raced away from him. Erik and--a woman? Together, alone?

That sly devil! And here he had thought the man immune to romance. Raoul forced his mouth into a smile. He was excited, of course, for his friend’s happiness...and angry only because the lady had been kept secret from him.

His pounding heart drowned out the next exchange of words. There was quiet, for a while, and then Erik said:

“You still insist on this game?”

“I like being loved. I do not want...” the voice trailed off.

He did not hear anything more.

As the last chord died away, there was no doubt in Christine’s mind that her composer was heaven-sent. His music brought such rapture she nearly fell from her perch in the flies in an enchanted daze. It only worsened the ache to be on that stage below, to sing for herself his music. More than once she caught her own mouth opening, ready to reinforce Carlotta’s voice through the passages where she stumbled.

It was one of those nights when she could not tell if she loved her friend or if she wanted to crawl inside her skin, as spirits are said to possess wicked people and lonely dolls. When the spell broke and the audience rioted with clapping, Carlotta turned her face upwards. Her eyes were flames, darting in their sockets, her cheeks glowing red from exertion and joy. She could not possibly see Christine, yet still she threw a wink upwards before leaving the stage.

Christine’s face--what there was of it--could not stop smiling. On any other night she would follow her pupil into the chaos of backstage. Tonight she slipped away, just for a minute. Carlotta would hardly notice.

Tonight--her hands shook so, she could hardly operate the secret passages. Christine had a secret. She had done something she never thought she could--or would. She was meeting someone.

In the northmost practice room--the one no one ever went to, because too many have heard her voice there--she went to hide in her place behind the mirrors, where she could see in and none could see out. There she waited in trembling silence until the door opened, and a man stepped through.

Her composer. Her angel. He did not try to look for her, as Carlotta always did. Instead his yellow eyes closed, as he tilted his head and listened.

“You have outdone yourself,” she greeted him. “Surely even your fellow angels wept, tonight.”

“I wrote it for you. I wish that it could have been you upon that stage, instead of that old cow--”

“Do not speak ill of my friend, please.”

“She ruined it. The cadenza was a mess, there was no power behind her--”

“Please,” Christine said again, and he subsided. She had accepted that Erik and Carlotta would never get along. Still, she would not spend her evening listening to either complain about the other. “It is your greatest work yet. It is a piece of heaven in music form--even if Carlotta made a few mistakes.”

“You flatter me, child.” He smiled.

Christine fell silent, struck dumb by the impossibility of this moment, speaking with this person, seeing that rare and fleeting smile.

“Do you love me?” the question tore from her mouth almost without her consent.

His eyes widened.

“How can you ask me that? Have you not just heard the music I wrote for you? Inspired by you?”

“Can you really love what you haven’t seen?”

“If you would let me see you, I assure you I would love you.”

“There is nothing to see.”

“You still insist on this game?”

“I like being loved. I do not want...” She didn’t want to hear him scream. Couldn’t bear to see horror in his eyes as he beheld her horrible, horrible face. Feared, more than anything, that the sight would drive him away forever.

“I should get back. My friends will be wondering where I’ve gone.”

She wished she had the courage to toss the mirror aside and go to him, to speak with him face to face like everyone else. She wished she could convince him to stay.

But he would come back. As long as he knew only her voice and not the horror that lurked behind it, he would come back to her. She had to be content with that.

“Farewell, my angel,” she whispered as he slipped from the room.

Christine had not set out to meet the creator of her new favorite music. Nor could she be called entirely blameless for their meeting. She had been singing in the late hours of the night, as she liked to do when the opera house was silent and empty, or the haunted practice room’s reputation needed bolstering.

She heard footsteps approaching. While she usually went quiet when others came near, she recognized their owner—Carlotta had pointed this man out before. He was there—why, she never asked. Perhaps he had been investigating the rumors of ghosts that stalked the halls at night. He would not be the first.

In a rare whim of reckless bravery, she sang louder. He searched for her, first in her practice room, the the neighboring rooms, all up and down the hall. When he could not find her, he returned to the practice room and stood in the center, brow furrowed and hands on his hips.

“Are you lost?” she asked him.

He jumped, then scowled, angry for being startled. “No.”

“People get lost in here all the time. It's a big place.”

“You were singing my music.”

“So I was. Is this a crime?”

“No! I-I have never heard a voice like yours. After so many years of listening to second rate divas butcher my work, I never thought I would find anyone who could bring what I hear in my head into reality.”

“You flatter me,” she said.

“Where are you?” he asked. “I should like to see the woman behind that voice.”

No he wouldn't, she thought to herself. Yet she was too excited to feel sad. The praise from such a highly respected source buoyed her soul—she felt she could walk on light, if she tried. It made her playful, so she projected her voice behind him when she answered, “I am right here.”

He turned. Of course, no one was there.

“You're hiding,” he grumbled.

“No. Truly, I am right here. You just can not see me.”

“I'm sure,” he replied, skeptical. He approached one of the curtained walls. In the harsh light of his lantern, his deep set eyes looked like yellow pinpricks under the shadow of his brow. “Then I surely won't find...you...here!” He whipped the curtain back, revealing naught but his own startled face. There was a mirror there, and nothing more.

“You won't,” she confirmed, projecting her voice right beside his ear. “There is no body to find.”

He whipped around again, to empty air, again. “You're throwing your voice,” he said, with a note of wonder. “You can't fool me. I'm a man of the world, not like your superstitious theater folk.”

“Believe it or don't,” she replied, moving her voice as if she were walking away, “It does not change my reality.”

He followed like a fish after a lure.

“But who are you? I've never heard your voice before. Are you in the chorus?”

“I'm not in the company.”

“Why not?”

“You need a body to perform.”

“Are you still on about that? I don't believe in ghosts.”

She giggled. “What am I, then?”

“A shy girl, having her fun. You are afraid to come out and face me. Perhaps you think you are too low-born, or ugly?”

By now she had led him on a full circuit of the room. Christine fell quiet, and he stopped, having no voice to follow.

“I did not mean offense,” he added, when it seemed she would speak no more.

“Most women do not know what ugliness truly is,” Christine said. She would give her left eye for an ordinary, ugly kind of face. A pox-marked one, asymmetrical and angular and flabby in all the wrong places—even that would be better than her death's-head.

“May I listen to you sing a while longer?” He had looked down, perhaps sensing the change in her mood.

“Yes.”

In the present time the door opened again, shaking Christine from her reminiscence. A young man entered, blond and fair, with curly hair and a thin mustache. He poked his head in first, wary, and then he dared to full enter. His confusion was clear as he searched the room and found it empty.

“But who was he talking to?” the young man muttered to himself. “I know I heard a female voice...”

Christine said nothing, as her nails dug into her palms.

She knew that face.

Chapter Text

A few weeks later, Raoul came on invitation to the flat which Erik and the persian shared. Though he had visited them many times before, this was the first time Erik himself was absent. It was the persian who wised to see him.

The flat was a cozy one set on the Rue de Rivoli, and the obvious divide between the territories of its inhabitants had always amused him. The corners where the persian preferred to lounge were all kept neat and tidy, while Erik's spaces were papered over with dozens of half-finished drawings and compositions.

It was a cold, blustery day, and the two of them took their tea by the warm glow of the fire while they talked awhile of inconsequential things. Then, the persian got at last to business.

“I am worried about our friend,” he said. “Have you noticed anything strange about him lately?”

“No stranger than usual. What do you mean?”

“He disappears at odd hours, up to what business I do not know, and when he is here he seems distant. I like him best when he is here, lost in a flurry of composition, where I can keep an eye on him and know that he is out of trouble.”

“It's hardly unusual for him to vanish when you least expect it,” Raoul said. His lips twitched briefly, for he thought he knew just where Erik was disappearing to. “He's with his new muse, I expect.”

“I have my doubts,” the daroga said. He did not seem cheered by the idea. “And that is why I must ask you to watch him for me.”

“Me? Watch him? You're the one who shares a flat with him,” Raoul protested. He also knew that the persian had once been a member of the police in his home country, so it seemed doubly strange that he should ask this of Raoul.

“He knows me too well,” the persian said. “And he is tired of my 'meddling.' If I were to poke into his business, he would catch me right away, and be very cross with me. You, on the other hand, he would not expect.”

“Now that you mention it, I am not sure I wish to violate his trust.”

“I only ask out of concern. You have not known him as long as I have. You have not seen where his strangest moods can take him.”

Raoul contemplated his teacup. Frequently, Erik and the daroga would hint at some dark past which they had never revealed in full. If Erik was really in trouble, well, Raoul could hardly stand idly by.

“What would you have me do?”

“He is taking a trip to Puerros-Guirrec in three days time. I would ask you to follow him there, and watch what he does.”

“Puerros-Guirrec? What could he possibly want in such an out of the way place?”

“That is what I wonder. He has no family left, as you know, and he does not make friends or allies easily.”

“Yes, one has to do some drastic things to win his friendship,” Raoul admitted with a laugh.

“Like save him from a shipwreck?”

“Yes, or spare him from...whatever that nasty business was in Manzenderan.”

“Don't remind me of those days,” the persian sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Raoul laughed, his good cheer somewhat restored by old memories, and promised to get to the bottom of things.

Raoul had little confidence in his ability to spy, but he managed to follow Erik to little snow-logged Puerros-Guirrec and take a room at the same inn. His quarry spent the whole day there, locked up in his room, and Raoul wondered if he hadn't just come here to get away from Paris. He took his dinner at the inn, hidden in a corner so that Erik would not see him if he chose to come down, and then went to bed.

He wakened in the middle of the night to the sound of footsteps in the hall. Erik's door was open—so, whatever business he had, it was to be conducted by moonlight. Raoul threw a coat on and hurried out into the snow to follow his friend.

The night was bitterly cold, and snow had fallen thick on the ground. Through the pristine expanse of white, Erik’s shuffling trail of footsteps led Raoul on a winding path towards the old church and the cemetery at the edge of town.

In confusion, Raoul watched the man take a case out from the folds of his heavy cloak, and kneel at the foot of one poor little grave. From the case he withdrew his favorite violin. There, in the cold dark and the snow, with no audience known to him save the neat rows of gravestones and the little pile of bones by the church ossuary, Erik began to play.

At once, Raoul recognized the tune as the Resurrection of Lazarus, an obscure piece that was one of Erik’s favorites. So this was the answer to the big mystery. The daroga’s worried attitude had infected Raoul with an anxiety that his friend was caught up in some unscrupulous business, but here the man was, doing no more than paying his respects in his own slightly odd way.

Raoul leaned his back against the tree and let the notes carry him away. Erik excelled at many instruments, but none could match him on the violin. It had been such a long time since Raoul had been able to simply sit and listen to him play a full song. He did wonder who that little grave belonged to, to deserve such a private concert.

A voice joined in. It seemed to rise up from the graveyard as a whole, yet it was unquestionably a single person, a woman, singing with such inhuman beauty that Raoul was spellbound. He was a lost boat, carried away on waves of music, fully at the mercy of its currents, and he could not have moved under his own power even if his very life depended on it.

But the song ended, and once more, he was just a very cold man standing in the snow, spying on a graveyard.

“Thank you,” the unearthly voice said, its lyrical tone choked up with tears. Raoul recognized the voice as the same that he had overheard from the 'haunted' practice room.

Erik bowed to his unseen partner. The precious violin went back into its case, and Erik briefly laid a hand upon the gravestone. His back was to Raoul, so the younger man could not see his expression. When he turned to leave, Raoul pulled his head back behind the tree, though he need not have bothered. Erik was too consumed in his thoughts to notice anything beyond his own nose as he marched away into the snow.

Raoul left the safety of his watching place and approached the grave stone, dying with curiosity to read the name engraved upon it. He crossed himself and knelt before the stone, wiping snow away with his hand.

“Guustave Daae?” he read aloud to himself. Erik had never mentioned a man of that name before. Yet, strangely, it sounded familiar.

Something disturbed the pile of bones beside the church, and a trio of skulls toppled down from their perch, rolling along the ground towards him. The startled young man leaped to his feet, his aghast gaze shifting from the fixed grins of the skulls to the dart of a shadowy figure running into the church. It had to be the mystery woman, Erik’s muse. Without a thought, Raoul pursued the shadow.

It was definitely a woman, Raoul saw as he caught up to her inside the church. He reached out to grasp her sleeve, a question on his lips, and then she turned.

In the quiet, candle-lit space of the old church, Christine looked down upon the unconscious Raoul, who lay as unmoving as any of the other skulls in the graveyard. She was certain now, looking down upon the handsome face, that this was the boy she once knew. To think, he had only gotten a glimpse of her, and this was what it had done to him.

“Papa was right,” she pronounced to the church. “But papa was always right...”

Someone would need to revive him, before he froze to death out here. That someone could not be her. What was she but a ghost, after all? If he looked too closely at her, she might possess his soul...

She unfastened her cloak and draped it over him. She really needed to be more careful, in the future. If she had still been wearing her hood and veil, and he had caught her and demanded answers, she would not have been able to explain herself.

“I was just a bad dream,” she told him. “A bad dream you don’t have to remember.”

She left him on the floor, and went to follow a trail of footsteps through the snow.

Raoul woke to a pair of angry golden eyes, set in a familiar face.

"Raoul? What were you doing here, you little fool? Are you trying to catch your death?" Erik glowered down fearsomely, his expression so thunderous Raoul almost wanted the ghostly woman with the death's head back.

"I-I, well." Raoul swallowed, sitting up slowly. He glanced about the cathedral, searching the shadows for any sign of the specter that had frightened him into unconsciousness. “I’m just here to pay my respects to...an old friend.”

Erik’s eyes remained narrow and suspicious.

“I find it very difficult to believe that the de Chagny family could have had any friends in Puerros-Guirrec.”

“They were not a family friend. I came up here a few times, you know, as a child. I like to come see them every once in a while.”

“Which perfectly explains why you’re passed out in a freezing church in the middle of the night.”

Raoul flinched as if he had been struck. “Alright, alright, I saw you leaving the inn and I was curious where you could be going at this time of night. So I followed you.”

“Yes, because you just happened to be staying at the same inn as me, and never said hello.” Erik looked distinctly unimpressed. “This has the stench of the daroga about it. I’ve warned him enough times, that I do not appreciate his meddling.”

Now profoundly embarrassed, both for doing something as shameful as stalking a friend, and for being caught, Raoul desperately cast about for something to change the subject.

“After you left, I saw a figure running towards this church.”

Erik stilled. Fearful, no doubt, that his muse had been caught out. Raoul thought he had a pretty good idea of what all this was really about, though why his friend was acting so secretively about it was beyond him. Clearly the mystery girl had asked Erik to come play for her father’s spirit, and he had obliged.

“I was curious, so I followed them.”

“A running theme with you, it seems.”

“It was a woman, I think. But...” Raoul trailed off. Sitting here now, with Erik, the vision he had seen seemed so impossible. It must have been a trick of the eye, his exhausted mind sculpting a horrible wraith out of a passing shadow and a fallen skull. “She vanished like a ghost. I must have just been seeing things.”

Raoul moved to sit up, dislodging a warm, thick piece of fabric which had been draped over his chest. He hadn’t noticed it before. Erik reached down and pulled up a corner of the fabric, studying the delicate embroidery along the trim, his expression at once sour and triumphant.

“A ghost that leaves a woman’s cloak behind?” he asked.

Raoul had nothing to say to that. He was even more dumbfounded by the cloth’s appearance than his friend.

“Come. Let us go back to the inn, before you freeze into an icicle.”

It was with a somewhat sheepish demeanor that Raoul would return to tell the Persian of his misadventure.

“So, what was our friend up to?” the daroga asked him.

“Nothing as dark or scandalous as you were leading me to believe. He went to play the violin over one of the graves in the cemetery.”

The daroga seemed taken aback by this.

“Whose?”

“Gustave Daae.”

“Daae? Daae. No, I do not know the name.”

“Did you expect to?”

“I suppose it’d be arrogant of me to assume I know everything about Erik’s life. Perhaps he did have a lost friend or two, before we met in Russia.”

“I have a theory,” Raoul said. “There was someone else there, you see. A female voice thanked him for playing the song. I suspect he was there on her behalf, and this Gustave Daae must be her relation.”

“Hmm. I didn’t know Erik had any female friends. Did you get a look at her?”

Raoul shifted uncomfortably. He had not told the Persian about the overheard conversation in the practice room, for in a fit of self-awareness he had realized how bold it was of him, to spy on his friend like that. And how could he explain the specter he had seen?

“A silhouette. Nothing more,” Raoul said.

“A woman,” the persian mused. “I can’t recall a time when Erik has ever been in love. May wonders never cease. I hope he behaves himself.” The former policeman’s sharp, dark eyes landed upon Raoul, with a gaze so piercing that Raoul felt them brush the surface of his soul. “Will you be alright?”

“Why should I not be?” Raoul replied hastily. He cracked a smile. “It is good that Erik has finally found some fairer company. It shows progress. The man can be melted, after all.”

The daroga twisted his lip, and said nothing.