AN: I should never start a secondary long haul project when I'm already behind on the deadline for my main one, but this story has been calling to me all day. It seems a shame not to share what I've got written.
Will update when I have new chapters written.
How many years had passed since that fateful night beneath the opera house? How many times had he walked the charred halls of that abandoned opera house and known himself to be alone, yet heard laughter and the distant call of a pipe organ? How often did the vision of his oldest friend, still and cold and lifeless, really need to creep to the forefront of his mind? The Persian, as seemed usual in the rough decade that had passed since the disappearance of Christine Daaé, had far more questions than he had answers.
He wasn't even quite sure what it was that compelled him to return to the opera house that night, but he knew it had to be that night. While his wits were still about him, while he still had the nerve, the Persian knew that he had to confront the Opera Ghost one last time.
As he stared up at the opera house from across the street, his mind flooded with memories he fought to keep away. He could remember the first time he'd set eyes on the little soprano. He'd mistaken her for a child in those brief first moments. It hadn't been until he'd realized just what the Opera Ghost was attempting to do with her that he had discovered that she was no child, she merely resembled one in every way with her slender, doll-like features.
He made his way quickly across the street and into the opera house through one of the hidden passages that he'd only learned existed because he'd happened to have been following the Ghost at just the right time once, ages back. Once he was inside and certain that he was alone, he withdrew one of the slender-yet-lumpy handmade candles he'd stowed in an inside pocket of his jacket and he struck a match to light it. The dim light cast by the candle's flame illuminated a decade or so of cobwebs, dust, and mold.
The tunnel in which he found himself was long and straight and if it weren't for the sudden finality of the spiral staircase at the end he knew he wouldn't even need the candle to navigate it. He'd toppled down the spiral case once. He wouldn't again if he could avoid it.
The further he walked, the colder the tunnel grew. The air was stale, slightly damp, and harsh on the man's lungs. By the time he reached the rather menacing-looking spiral staircase, he was finding it difficult to catch his breath. He set the candle down on the second step down and pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth before continuing.
When he reached the bottom of the spiral staircase, he found that he was ankle deep in murky, gray water. He contemplated returning to the surface and abandoning his quest, but it was then that he heard it. He was certain he heard it. The faintest strains of a melody being played on a pipe organ. He'd heard it before, but not from this close and never so late at night.
The music halted abruptly when he started to move toward it, but was replaced with that all too familiar laughter. It faded in and out, stopping entirely as he neared the hidden entrance to the Ghost's lair.
He debated snuffing out the candle as he approached the sliding panel that would give him access to a space he'd tried so desperately to push from his mind, but decided it would be foolish to deny himself the ability to see simply because he was being superstitious. The Opera Ghost wasn't a real ghost, simply a man scorned by life itself. A man that had died many years ago.
He said a silent prayer as he reached out and touched the sliding panel. He hoped the wood wasn't too warped to open.
It was. He pulled and pushed and kicked it, but the panel would not budge. He loathed the idea, but it seemed the only way he was going to gain entry was to break the panel. He wanted to keep the space however he found it, a shrine to a man that had once been his closest friend.
The wood was waterlogged, making it easy to kick in. He tried to leave enough at the bottom of the panel to keep some of the water out of what had once been an elegant home, but as he peered inside he realized it was a fool's errand. A little water would be the least of his worries as he found himself staring into a pair of glowing amber eyes.
He dropped his candle and it crackled as it was doused by the water, leaving him in the all-encompassing void of darkness, staring into the soulless amber eyes that had haunted his dreams for some forty-odd years.
"It's— It's you," he stammered, never once taking his eyes off the dark figure with glowing eyes who stood before him. "It can't be."
"Oh, but it is." The Persian couldn't stop the tears welling in his eyes as the smooth, lyrical voice touched his ears for the first time in more than a decade. It's impossible!
"You're dead. I saw your body," he said, shaking his head in disbelief as he backed away. Without looking way from those eyes to light another candle, there was no way he was going to get away. He could become lost in those underground tunnels for days before dying of thirst.
"You saw what I wanted you to see," replied the Ghost. "No more, no less."
The Persian stared up into those golden-amber eyes, positively entranced by their continued existence. A storm was raging within him as he considered all of what he'd just learned.
"You've been alive all this time," he said. The Ghost said nothing. "You've been alive all this time and you've just stayed down here, hidden, alone…"
"And how is that any different from how I lived prior to the the night I let my heart slip out this very exit and into the night with some young navy man? It is not as though you weren't fully capable of returning prior to now."
"It's simply not possible. I'm hallucinating. That has to be—" A cold hand reached out and clamped itself around the Persian's throat, cutting him off in a most effective manner. Long, cold, bony fingers dug into the warm flesh of the Persian as he struggled to breathe.
"A hallucination, am I?" There was no amusement in the Ghost's voice, in fact he sounded quite like the angry Opera Ghost that had struck fear into the patrons of the opera for so long. The Persian stared at him in horror as he continued to struggle. As his vision began to blur, the Ghost finally released him. He fell to his knees in the stagnant water that covered the cellar floor, sputtering and wheezing and rubbing his neck. It was the first time he had taken his eyes off of the glowing yellow eyes in front of him.
"Come inside and dry off," the Ghost said after a few minutes had passed. "I can't be responsible for the freezing death of an old fool who decided to wander my cellars."
The Ghost struck a match and lit an oil lamp to his left, temporarily blinding the Persian as he pulled himself to his feet. Shielding his eyes with his forearm, he stumbled into the Ghost's home. Looking around the room he found himself in, there was strong evidence that there had not been a living being there in a long time… yet there was the Ghost. He was quite obviously physically there; the Persian could still feel his icy grip on his throat. So why did it look as though nobody had been there in longer than a decade?