Disclaimer: I do not own the Phantom of the Opera, movie or otherwise. I also don't own the Sims 2. Haha, didn't expect that one, did you?
A Note from the Authoress: Hello, there! I know I said I'd post a longer, serious phic. Unfortunately this is neither. First off, I am going to ask for no flames, please, although I'm fairlycertain that you don't care, and if you want to flame me you will, but know they will not be taken seriously. It is possible to tell me that you don't approve of this story and offer your opinion without being rude or a variety of other things. Intelligent comments in the negative will be read, flames will not. Now, there is a story behind this story, and if I tell you it will ruin it for you, and you may not even get it! But it involves my dear friend Christine Persephone and her prototype Christine in the Sims 2 that had a little . . . accident? It was begging for a story, so here you go.
Note - this is not to be taken seriously in any way, and in no way am I professing this to be a good example of my writing. It's just for fun, so read it as such. Thank you.
Oh, and please don't kill me.
Dedicated to Christine Persephone and the havoc we wreak on our poor sims daily.
Little Emmanuelle Daaé
It had been odd at first for Christine Daaé to live in the cellars of the Opera, but as time passed, she'd grown accustomed to the darkness and befriended the shadows, and there, when Erik was busy with his music, she'd play, flouncing around in the new dresses her wonderful Angel had given her, and skirting round the edge of the lake in her bare feet. He'd even given her a room of her own, where she'd sing while getting dressed in the mornings and dance as she leapt into bed at night.
And there, covered in heavy blankets in her soft, warm bed, she felt completely safe. What she wasn't aware of was that she was prone to dreadful episodes of sleepwalking. For the most part, Erik would wake and find her in her nightie, often on the shore of the lake, gazing out across the shimmering depths with great emptiness hidden behind her doe-brown eyes.
One night, though, things were not quite that way. Erik did not wake as Christine slipped out of bed and made her way to the lake, and there, as would be predicted, she stared off vacantly, as if awaiting some great moment – and what a great moment it was. The deep caverns around her filled with an eerie green glow, pulsing lightly, mocking her fragile heartbeat in its insistent rhythm.
She blinked, and in that one movement, she gained control for a brief moment in time. She cried out as she felt herself lifted, but to where she could not be sure, as the Opera was placed steadily above her head, and surely she could not break through the floors and ceilings there.
The next morning, Erik found her naked on the shore of the lake.
Several weeks passed, and things were normal in the little house on the lake, or at least as normal as things could be there. Christine still sang and danced her heart away, and Erik spent his time composing. Nothing had changed.
Or so Erik thought.
One morning, he woke to find his dear Christine retching into the sink. Naturally, she insisted she was fine, and that she must have simply caught some bug, although he knew not how she could have caught something when she never went above ground. Still, she insisted, and he spoke no more of her illness, not until, after another week, she still complained of nausea as well as soreness in unmentionable places.
Finally, Erik insisted she see a doctor.
She put up a bit of a struggle, but when she waltzed in the door following her appointment, he knew his suspicion to be true. Christine was expecting a child.
Now, Christine, the naïve little thing she was, had never really known exactly how a baby was procured. But, after all, she was expecting one, so it must have been something she'd done; whatever it was, it didn't matter, so long as she was going to have her very own.
Several months later, on a very snowy night, when no carriage could possibly make it from the Rue Scribe to the nearest hospital, Christine's child was born.
Or actually, children. Yes, Christine had given birth to twin girls. Erik had been of monumental help, delivering the children himself. When he caught sight of the first little angel, he could not help but look surprised, although Christine seemed not to notice. Her daughters were her most precious possessions, and she cuddled and fondled them whenever she could, from the day they were born. She named them Emmanuelle and Isabelle.
Christine loved her darling girls, and dressed them in the finest baby clothes she could find. They stayed in her room, where she'd play with them and sing to them each in turn, and she'd tell them of how beautiful they were, and how they would grow up to be the finest young ladies in Paris. She kept them in separate bassinets beside her bed.
Emmanuelle's was pink, and Isabelle's violet.
As the girls grew, and grow they did, Christine would play with them still, and teach them things she thought they ought to know. They were the youngest children in all of Paris who knew how to count to a hundred and say their alphabet aloud, and Christine insisted they attend a private school when they were older – they had such potential, she said.
In fact, one night when she was cooking dinner, slicing vegetables into smaller bites for her girls, she told Erik of her plans for them. He hesitated and began, "Christine . . . my dear, I don't think that's the wisest idea. Don't you think they might not . . . fit in?" She looked up at him angrily.
The next day, private school headmasters received curious letters written in red ink, their envelopes sealed with red skulls of wax, telling of two of the most gifted children in all of Paris.
The girls were strictly told not to bother their father while he was in his room composing, and in all truth, that is how he spent the majority of his time, at least as far as they could tell. The door was always shut and locked, and yet somehow Emmanuelle managed to find a way in. She'd clamber up onto her papa's lap and sit there as he worked, and he never once asked her to move.
But that mattered little, for soon, Christine would take them for walks through Paris, holding their hands and prattling on with stories about the various places they were visiting. On these outings, she'd dress them up in matching, frilly little dresses.
Emmanuelle's was pink, and Isabelle's violet.
They were very young still, but they'd often mimic Christine when she'd dance about their room, and that was when Christine had her brilliant idea – to enroll the girls in ballet lessons.
So the very next day, she dressed them up in their nicest dresses, took their hands, and brought them up through the cellars to the opera and to Madame Giry and her daughter, Christine's best friend, Meg.
When she proposed her plan to them, they had the exact response as Erik. Enraged, she asked them why her daughters weren't good enough for them. "Of course they're good enough," said Meg. "They're just . . . young."
"Yes," her mother said. "Young."
Christine lost her favorite scarf on that outing.
Within a week, the girls were dancing with the other dancers, under the careful instruction of their mother.
One day, on one of their outings, they ran into a familiar face, at least familiar for Christine: the Raoul, le Vicomte de Chagny.
"Oh, Raoul! It's been so long," she said. "Here, I'd like you to meet my daughters, Emmanuelle and Isabelle." She glanced at them as she introduced them.
Emmanuelle wore pink, and Isabelle violet.
He stared at them and did not say a word.
With a kiss to his cheek, Christine said goodbye and took her daughters home.
That night, when Emmanuelle thought her sister and mother asleep, cuddled up with one another in bed, she slipped away and into her father's room, where as always she'd scramble up onto his lap and tuck her head beneath his chin.
There was a loud crashing noise from the bedroom – maybe Mama had fallen out of bed.
But no, there was a voice, a man's voice. "Where's the other one?" it said, demanding. "These travesties must be destroyed."
Feeling threatened, she pushed at her father, demanding he do something, but he remained frozen in fright. She slid off his lap and padded through his room on bare feet, until she found it: the thing Mama had told her never to touch. She ran to their room.
There stood Raoul, le Vicomte de Chagny, aiming a gun at her mother, who sat in bed, wide-eyed and tearful, protectively positioning her body in front of little Isabelle. She did not even notice Emmanuelle there – she probably thought her dead.
Little Emmanuelle, in her pink nightdress, raised the gun and leveled it at Raoul's back. He was shaking, so was she. She closed one eye and squeezed the trigger with all the might her little fingers held.
And in that moment, when the bullet hit him, his hand spasmed, and the bullet flew forth from his weapon, knocking both Christine and Isabelle back to the bed, staring with glassy eyes at the ceiling.
Emmanuelle, trembling, her lip beginning to quiver, dropped the gun and cried out for her daddy, running blindly to his room. She tripped. She'd forgotten, the nice lady and her daughter from the ballet always slept there – there, on the floor by the door. Where Mama kept her favorite scarf.
She crawled up into her father's lap, pulling herself up by the kitchen knife lodged in his chest. She cuddled up close to him, but his arms did not wrap themselves around her as her mother's did, and his lips never bent down to meet her hair as her mother's so often did.
She cried, her delicate little tears trailing down her perfect green cheek, gazing ahead with large, empty, black eyes, and her little smooth, nail-less fingers twisted in the fabric of her daddy's coat.
And so Emmanuelle Daaé curled up in her father's lap and wept, and not once did he ask her to move.
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