Chapter 1

It was three in the morning when the screaming started. Christine woke from an otherwise sound sleep to the smell of smoke, disoriented and coughing. Her heart drummed in her throat as she stumbled from her little twin bed.

"Fire! Somebody help, there's a fire!" Thinking quickly, she doused a rag in her washbasin and held it over her face. Her little wooded apartment would be up in smoke soon, and her too if she didn't hurry. Scrambling to gather a few prized possessions, she tripped on the threadbare rug. The crackling of fire was more of a roar, and the smoke dizzied her vision and stung her eyes.

The door fell with her as she pushed forward, fear urging her onward. Unable to reach out for balance or see, her path led out-

A hoarse cry tore from her throat as she tumbled down the flight of stairs. Pain bloomed in her arms and legs both from the impact and the heat. Dear God, help me! Still, her hands clutched tight at her valuables, and she staggered to her burning feet. The smoldering wood railings creaked dangerously as she ran down the stairs.

Women and children shoved past her, crying streaks down sooty faces. Someone stomped on her toes, causing her to jump back- and lean her full weight, just for a moment, against the flaming bannister.

The old, dry wood splintered and gave way. Christine swore she saw her life reel before her eyes- her father's kindness, her lonely hours- a phantom's love stamped on her page after page of her memories. Her heart skipped in its pounding beat at the moment she began to fall.

I'm going to die.

Cinders and sparks whirled before her vision, dancing like the insects that bore their name. Her hair fluttered with the currents of hot air.

I'm going to die, and there is so much I regret.

She shut her eyes tight and braced for impact.

…

The fire brigade arrived, too late to save the old building and too late to excavate any bodies from the wreckage. The landlady openly wept, as did many of the former tenants. No one noticed their missing songbird amidst the confusion.

Quietly, behind collapsed beams and the embers of many homes, Christine breathed through ash and smoke. A shadow hovered over her, covered her prone and wounded body with painstaking gentleness. And, as the people began to comb the ruins in a vain attempt to save what little they had, both shadow and girl disappeared into the first snowfall.

…

The once-famed ghost of Paris trudged through dark alleys and odorous byways, cradling the load in his arms as if it were a child. However, with each breath that fogged in the cold air he was reminded that he carried a woman: the woman with which his world ended and began.

Almost despairingly, he wondered if this was an end or a beginning. Perhaps fate dictated it as the beginning of a long, slow end.

His footsteps kept a steady pace to a large grating at the edge of the icy cold Seine. Slowly, so as not to shift or distress the woman in his grip, he knelt and undid the latch. Water sloughed into the dark tunnel ahead. With his reflective eyes, he had little need for a lantern. The slippery twists and turns of Paris' underground were all quite familiar to him.

Winter was fast approaching, with its sleet and wind, and yet all the bone-thin ghost felt was the warmth of another body clutched to his own. Christine. She was alive, just barely, and if he had any say in the matter, she would stay alive. She would heal, and he would remain her adoring audience until the end of his days. For now, however, chimerical dreams had to wait. She was badly burned, all the way through her skin in many places.

He was privately glad she wasn't conscious to see him gag at the fetid smell of her bleeding flesh.

His heart did not ache- much. No, it had stopped feeling more than the obligatory beat of life months ago. Christine was gone of her own accord, with the choice he had given her. His only emotional stimulus came from watching over her as she went about her business. He watched as she was turned away from the de Chagny home and returned to her apartment. He watched as she became a working girl, mending and sewing in a dress shop. He listened as her repertoire shifted from arias to art songs and modern ballads.

She seemed content enough- there was a roof over her head, and food on her table. Aside from the pain of loneliness, no pain came to her, until now. In some small part of himself, he murmured that this was his fault: if he hadn't let her leave, she would not have been in the apartment to be burned.

Circling thoughts were pushed aside in favor of the practicalities of medicine. He pushed open the door to a smaller hideaway, exiting the cramped tunnel. Once she was laid out on the one bed the place afforded (he hadn't anticipated having to house two once his original living space was flooded), he meticulously peeled his cloak from where it had begun to clot to her wounds.

If he were religious, he would have crossed himself.

Instead, he just breathed out the most vile curses he knew in seven languages.

Much of her skin was gone. Her clothes had been burned away, revealing red, raw patches and worse, expanses of waxy white where the heat had seeped all the way under the skin. That face which one held all the beauty of the world now peeled and bled all across her cheeks. One particularly bad rift stretched from above the hairline, across eyelids swollen shut, slashed through those bruised lips and just past the chin. Her hair had been reduced to ash, and her scalp badly singed. Even her eyebrows hadn't escaped.

His throat clenched as he surveyed the rest of the damage. From the soles of her feet, up her legs, all across her abdomen and chest, skin was either missing in patches or essentially cooked.

He scrambled for a vial of ether. Thankfully she could still swallow the amount he dosed out. She'd have to remain unconscious for this next part.

He ran the tap in the tub, thankful that he still employed a number of street boys to keep the water heated. When it was half full, he piled towels at one end to keep Christine's head above water. Then, gently, he set her in the water and watched as grime, blood, and bits of dead skin floated away. It took an effort, but he removed his gloves and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. Tissue debridement was a delicate matter and required the sensitivity only bare fingertips provided.

A third of the way down her abdomen, he drained the tub and refilled it, washing the gritty ash and dead flesh down the drain. Halfway through peeling away the dead skin he realized he needed a scalpel. Only her back had suffered less, and thankfully so, for he didn't think he could bear propping her prone body up again and working his hands across her mutilated skin.

It was highly apparent that his few small jars of antibiotic ointment were nowhere near enough to cover the expansive burns, so he was forced to improvise. Once she was adequately dried (and had soiled all of his available towels, he packed her raw flesh with sugar and wrapped every inch of her with whatever cloth there was available. The gauze was spent early on in the procedure, so the bed would have to go without sheets for a while until he could get out to purchase bandages from the hospital's medical storehouse.

Well, 'purchase' was a loose term.

The tub was still in the process of draining when a series of thumps sounded at his door. The man outright scowled. There was only one man who could possibly be at his threshold, and he happened to be that much more irritating for it. He shook his head and ignored the intermittent noise for a full thirty minutes while he carefully splinted and elevated Christine's limp limbs to prevent swelling and contracture.

Thumpthumpthumpthump-

Unwilling to let the din continue, he unbolted the heavy door and shoved it open. Before him stood the Persian he both depended on an couldn't stand. "Khan. I suppose I have you to thank for news of the situation."

Nadir Khan sighed. "Yes, and if you'd get around to thanking me so I may enter, I'd appreciate it."

He couldn't see it, but the taller man's skepticism was clear. "Who said you may enter?"

Khan ignored the cynical jab and peered around his friend's thin frame. "Is she in there?"

"What do you think?" The Persian made a move to enter and was blocked rather swiftly. "Ahem, I believe a gentleman would wait outside for the lady. As you know, she's a bit indisposed."

"Damn you, Erik, I just want to see how she is!" the agitated man growled. He shifted back and forth trying to see over the obstacle before him.

"She's not well, if you were wondering," the man said with his stubborn dryness. "Now go away; there is work to be done." Unfortunately, the usual glare from his catlike eyes was unable to budge his insistent visitor- or intruder, as far as he was concerned.

Nadir crossed his arms and huffed mightily, as if he might blow the door down like a wolf out of a fable. "At least tell me if there's anything she needs- medical supplies, food and the like. I don't imagine you'll want to leave her side for the next week."

Erik frowned. What little of his mouth was visible twitched. "If you're so eager to help, get me as much gauze and clean linen as you possibly can, at least a liter- no, two liters- of antibiotic ointment, and half a wheelbarrow of high-grade granulated sugar. And pay the boys who heat my water." Nadir hemmed and hawed a bit, mumbling something about extra expenses. "I never said you had to pay for it," Erik clarified. "I assure you, I will reimburse your expenditures."

"You're a sorry bastard, you know that?" the Persian said with a look full of pity.

"Get out," the phantom hissed, "before I behead you with your own watch chain."

Despite his confidence that Erik would not actually resort to anything more than a black eye, Nadir backed away and trotted out to the riverbank. It seemed he had shopping to do.

…

Christine opened her mouth before her eyes. When she did, it was to ingest broth and mildly sweetened tea through her badly chapped lips. Someone had kindly smeared an oily substance over the cracks, which soothed the burning somewhat. She decided to open her eyes later, when her head stopped swimming and her limbs weren't so heavy. I'll open my eyes when I'm not going to die.

The next time she moved it wasn't of her own will. What felt like only hours later, strong arms lifted her from her place, undid her wrappings, and placed her in a warm bath. She was too tired to panic, and her eyelids were still too swollen to see anything much, but…

From the delicacy with which her caretaker handled her, she had a good idea of the person's identity. Three times a day, he fed her broth, gruel, a few bites of stew, and a whole two cups of tea and milk. Twice a day, he changed her bedpan, since she was immobile and had no choice but to soil the sheets. Once a day he bathed her, rinsed the sickly-sweet ointment and sugar from her, and redressed her wounds. Countless times he stretched and manually exercised her joints and muscles, moving them himself if she was too tired to muster up a bit of strength.

Still she closed her eyes, even when they no longer hurt and the swelling had gone. He never said anything, and neither did she. It was childish, but often she imagined that if she pretended, nothing existed. She wasn't confined to a bed, or burned, or hurting so badly that she was almost willing to request more ether. She wasn't being intimately attended by a figure of guilt that tormented her dreams.

There was simply…nothing.

At least, there was nothing but oblivion until her next meal, or the next unceremonious shift of the mattress, or her next bath.

But after the first week, boredom took its toll and she pried her eyelids open to roll her eyes about at the same four walls she'd seen again and again. They were plain, grayish stone, but with the candles burning constantly about her they appeared a warm, almost reddish color. To her left, there was a plain dresser and predictably no mirror. Her few handfuls of belongings had been placed, untouched in their little bag, in the center of the surface.

Well. He'd touched every part of her by now, but still provided what little privacy he could.

On the eighth morning, when he entered quietly with a bowl of oats and milk, she looked at him for the first time since her arrival. Her voice, unused but for the occasional cry of pain, made an awful clicking, croaking sound when she opened her mouth. "Eri-… Erik."

He stopped just short of the foot of the bed, jaw only slightly tighter than usual. He'd foregone his black wig, so what little hair he possessed stuck up like tendrils of fine, dry grass. Even through the daze of painkillers, Christine saw the tension in his eyes. Without a word, he sat beside the bed for the twenty-second time, filled the large soup spoon with porridge, and held it to her mouth.

Obediently, she swallowed down the honey-sweetened concoction, watching all the time. He refused to make eye contact, however, and the meal passed in relative silence. Then he left, and she remained abed, listening to the sounds of his movement about the house. Her imagination pictured him sweeping, washing, preparing her next meal and hopefully his own. With the door closed, she couldn't watch him go about his business, but sounds filtered through and provided stimulation for her otherwise inactive brain.

It took another eight hours and another meal before Christine finally spoke more than one word. He'd come in to change the bedsheets and the pan under them again almost as if she weren't there.

"Erik…why don't you look at me?" She turned about for a better angle.

He still did not meet her eyes. "I have looked at you. I daresay I've looked at you far too much in the past week," he asserted coldly. With that, he whisked the dirty bedding from under her, replaced the pan and blankets, and left the room.

Christine swallowed hard and blinked, eyes stinging with salty tears. She knew she deserved that coldness and worse. He saved her life, and it ate at her conscience that she'd not uttered a word of thanks. She resolved to thank him profusely the next time he came, even if she had to verbally grovel. After everything she'd done to him, he deserved that much.

…

Just outside the now closed bedroom door, Erik clutched at the front of his shirt as if it choked him. She remembers my name. Yes, he supposed the incidents of the months prior were fresh in her mind, but that she remembered his name and willingly called him by it…

He forced his lungs to suck in a deep breath, unsure if the tightness in his chest was elation, fear, or relief. There in the silence of his catacomb hideaway, his heart pounded louder than it had for weeks on end. He almost wanted to extinguish all his lamps in an attempt to forget her searching azure stare.

He surveyed his little front room, and still was unable to escape. In one corner sat piles of sugar sacks. On the table were the jars of ointment the Persian bought at his request, partitioned into smaller containers for convenience. The kitchen just beyond smelled of chicken broth and steamed vegetables. Even the pianoforte had not escaped the change just one woman brought, for its closed lid now served as a hanging place for freshly washed linens and sterilized bandages.

Suddenly exhausted, Erik let his legs fold under him to sit on the cool floor. His objective in every hour was to rehabilitate her and let her go to live her life, to watch until he died. But with just one look, she compromised his every motive. In one moment, he knew he wanted her to stay, to interact with, even if only in passing.

But how could he keep her? Was it right to let her suffer the slings and arrows of a world whose only idol was beauty? The burns to her body were not going to heal prettily, or be concealed easily. Once she managed to stand and move on her own, she'd have the power to leave him alone again, with his halfhearted heartbeats and shallow breaths to keep his body functioning.

He tilted his head back just to feel cool air flowing in his throat. His chest expanded to fill again with breath. Saving a life would make his own life worth something. Because of Christine, he had to endure. If she abandoned him he would guard her every day, albeit from a distance. If she returned to the upper class of Paris to love and to marry, he would ensure her happiness and that of her family. And if, in the smallest of suppositions, she stayed… If she stayed with him… Living suddenly didn't seem so bad.