A/N: Hi! This is my first Phantom of the Opera fanfiction, and the first fanfiction in general that I am optimistic I may complete. I have a full outline and quite a few chapters finished, but I am in desperate need of a Beta reader to help with things like characterization and plot (and spelling and grammar as well!)

If you're interested, please let me know. And please leave reviews! Since I don't have a beta, I need all the help and insight I can get, and I'm eager to see what people think of this little venture.

Thanks!

Chapter 1: The Governess

Madam Giry sought with excruciating pains the ideal candidate whom she could cast into certain woe. In the months after the horrible events of at the Opera House, fear lingered with baited breath in the stiflingly heavy smog of Paris, but for Madame Giry the dread was more poignant. Only she knew that the Phantom still resided in the house by the placid and unapologetic waters of the underground lake; only she knew that he teetered ever closer to arrant and unqualified madness; and only she knew the extent of the destruction he could leave in his wake, should he so choose.

This knowledge demanded preemptive and precautionary actions, but as Madame Giry stomped through the muddy streets, her boots squishing and heavy with every step, the nature of such action evaded her. As her first trick, Madame Giry attempted to lure the Phantom out of Paris altogether. She brought pictures of America's great inventions such as the light-bulb and the phonograph and told him of the Bowery and artist boroughs of New York City. When that failed to pique his interest, she tried to convince him to pursue more innovative operas, such as the Gesamtkunstwerk opera style, in which Wagner was rumored to be completing his final work, or architecture and ruins of the great civilizations of the Latin America; all to no avail. The Phantom insisted he could not leave Paris, especially not the Opera House. He refused to part with the last, lingering pieces of his life as the Opera Ghost and his muse...

When the Phantom would not leave, she tried to satiate his desperate need for human interaction and love by seeking him a concubine. Madame Giry had searched for sweaty, stained, harlots that lurked around corners desperate for a touch worth their trouble. Such a woman could, at the very least, provide a degree of physical comfort to the Ghost, and wasn't that enough to quell even a portion of the loneliness that maimed his soul? She believed that to be the source of his problems: he had never known love. And all humans needed love! The clerics in their austere robes and humbly solitary lives found comfort in the love of the Lord God and His Holy Trinity, the lepers and outcasts of society found solace in each other, and even the sickest and most diseased of the commonality were met with compassion and love on their deathbed. But the Phantom had no God, no equal among mortals, and only Madame Giry to comfort him in the event of his death, if Ghosts could even die. Yet, when she had brought lust to calm his nerves in the form of two women (though appalled and horrified at the lewd and ribald explanations, Madame Giry had heard that this would heighten a man's pleasure), she returned later only to find her failure enshrined in the lifeless companions' bodies on the banks of the lake, doomed to rot with their broken necks and bruised skins. The Ghost's touch was surely not worth their trouble.

When sexual stimulation could not satisfy him, Madame Giry briefly considered presenting him with another artist. The idea was short-lived, however, as it only took a moment of consideration to recall that it was art and obsession that had consumed and broken the Phantom's spirit in the first place. How could she possibly have even spared a thought to providing him with another protege? No, there would be no dancers, no singers, and no musicians. No mortal soul could match his passions, his talent, or her voice.

Damn her and good riddance! Madame Giry told herself. It seemed comfortable to blame poor, weeping Christine for the ruin in which the Phantom now lived, but Madame Giry knew it was all an attempt to circumvent her own, remarkable role in those events. For it was Madame Giry who had allowed Erik to cultivate his person as the Angel of Music, not Christine; it was Madame Giry who had kept quiet his secret passages and his underground abode; and it was Madame Giry who dutifully carried out her role as a pawn in his game. Her lack of fortitude had allowed him to plant the seeds of tenderness and trust, or more adequately of obsession and deceit. She nurtured the Phantom's obsession, and the guilt choked in her lungs like the smog and fog of the Parisian streets.

If the Opera Ghost could not manage romance, maybe he could manage fostering a boy as damned and unlovable as he? Madame Giry only considered this for a second; of course an orphan could not pluck the heartstrings of the Phantom, for it was the chains and wounds of his own childhood that still haunted him. In so many ways, the Ghost was just a child himself. A child that she had left to die in black and tragedy.

But all children need pets! Madame Giry thought to herself. And so she had brought him a songbird, gray with a black cap, and a sweet voice that could mimic any melody with enough repetition.

"It will learn very quickly," She explained to the Phantom. "You could teach it to sing."

"Is this your idea of a divine comedy? A cruel humor?" He snarled from behind his mask. "Do not tell me you are so ignorant, so acutely stupid, as to think that a bird could sing my music, as if a bird could somehow replace Christine!"With that he had snatched the cage from her trembling hands, throwing it through the cavern with an agility both magnificent and terrifying. The cage clamored against the cold, damp stone, bending its bars and allowing the bird to escape while screeching a cacophony of fear and freedom into the darkness.

"And now look what you've done," His voice was softer now but had lost none of it's malice. "Surely it will die down here, like me. And like you, should these pathetic attempts continue."

No, Madame Giry realized, a pet would not do. A whore would not do. A child would not do. His soul anguished in perpetual torment and without Christine, he had disintegrated into something less than human. He was just a mass, hollow without purpose or passion, shattered and left in the dungeons to ferment in the last of five decades' worth of heartbreak that had finally ruined him. He needed someone to care for him, someone to keep him from wasting away.

Madame Giry was not up to the task herself. No, she had too much to live for. She had a pretty, unemployed, unmarried daughter and the absence of a husband or father meant that their situation was precarious at best. She could not afford to sacrifice anymore for the ungrateful Ghost, and that was without considering the fear of him. Though she had cared for him, always from a safe distance, she had never learned to live with the terror caused by the Phantom's unpredictable nature and could not resign her or Meg to a life in caverns and dread. Poor, poor Erik! Even those closest to him could only cringe at the thought of helping him through these most desperate of times.

Futile though it seemed, Madame Giry felt compelled by this sentiment to seek for the Phantom a companion, a caretaker, or a friend. The Persian had ran from the debacle, assuming Erik dead or at the very least tamed and broken for the rest of his days. So she sought anyone who could spend the days with him, perhaps removing the stink of cognac and wine from his breath and replacing them with cards or, dare she even hope?, returning them to his violin.

With a deafening thud, the answer hit her. A moment of black in her vision, and the shocking pressure of body against her face, and she had found her solution (though it was yet still unbeknownst to her).

"Madame, my sincerest apologies," A soft, articulate voice said, barely louder than whisper. "I had rushed out the gate without turning to look, I did not mean to disturb you."

"Oh you little, fool," Madame Giry mumbled as she smoothed her frock as best as possible, looking up to face the perpetrator of this assault. As her eyes found the girl, she paused her intended scoldings. "We've met before, have we not? You're the new governess to the Michaud family?"

"We have and I was. I have recently been… shall we say, released from my responsibilities," The girl smiled softly.

"Why?"

"Suffice it to say, Madame…"

"Giry."

"Well, suffice to say, Madame Giry, the Madame Michaud felt that I am an infernal bore, my connected letters are sloppy like a child's, and my abysmal humor was unbecoming of her rank and status." Her hazel eyes, and the slightest creases at their corner, betrayed no shame. In fact, Madame Giry could see quite plainly that the girl seemed rather amused.

"And mademoiselle, to who's employment will you now find yourself?"

"I find myself in no employ, for now," she said, her voice careful but without worry.

"And your family, Mademoiselle?"

"Please, you may call me Amelie, or Mademoiselle Comtois if you find that more to your liking. But, alas, I have no family in Paris and no family I should like to associate with beyond that."

"Unemployed, with no family… but perhaps you are to wed soon?"

"It was avoidance of a wedding that brought me to Paris in the first place, Madame. Suffice it to say, the endeavor is of no concern to me now and will not be until a time of my own choosing. So often it is us women who must suffer the fate of an improper match at the commands and whims of men. The rank of governess had previous afforded me enough solitude that I could avoid such caper. But with your analysis, my situation does seem rather hazardous… Perhaps I'm destined to be a tavern wench," Amelie, bared her teeth in a hearty laugh. Madame Giry found herself smiling as well. Amelie's mannerisms demonstrated a flippant neglect for decorum, but Madame Giry could easily deduce that she seemed unnerved at the prospect of living and working on the streets.

"Or perhaps, you would like to remain a governess?" Madame Giry offered.

"Madame, though unrefined I may seem, I am still a woman of dignity and I would prefer to keep that in tact," Amelie replied, the smile falling from her lips. "Have you knowledge of any positions? Or perhaps children of your own?"

"Indeed, I have one, a rather troublesome one at that."