Hi this is Ems and I love Phantom of the Opera but this is my first real phan phic so please r&r! Thank you to my friend Lynds who helped me come up with the idea!

Tears of the Blood-red Rose

By Ems :)

Genre: Mystery/Romance

Rating: T

Pairings: E/C, E/OW, R/C, R/OW

Chapter One

A Voice in the Gloom

"Christine . . ." whispered Emmanuelle Daaé, holding the name on her breath like a prayer, as though it were an enchantment holding the key to all the mysteries that surrounded her. She set down her suitcase and gazed up at the majestic front façade of the Opera Populaire, her narrow shoulders slumping a little beneath the weight of fatigue and constant grief. It was an old suitcase, patterned intriguingly with stickers from the far exotic reaches of Europe. She had traveled the length and breadth of the continent, when her mother was alive. Now her only friend in the world was Monique, her pet white mouse whom she carried everywhere with her in her pocket.

Emmanuelle was seventeen and newly orphaned. Her parents, Gustave and Anne Daaé, a famous violinist and opera singer, respectively, in Sweden where she had been born, had divorced when she was of the tender age of three, and her mother had taken her with her when she left Sweden to sing all over Europe. Eventually they settled in Milan, where Anne sang at La Scala. Then, in the summer of Emmanuelle's seventeenth year, tragedy struck. Her mother died, under mysterious circumstances. On her deathbed, she revealed to her daughter her best-kept secret.

Emmanuelle had a twin sister.

"I know . . ." whispered Emmanuelle, her eyes going distant as she held her mother's weak hand, "I don't know how, but I've always known . . ."

And so she had come to Paris in search of the long-lost twin sister of whom she only had vague, clouded memories, but whom she sometimes saw in dreams.

Her name was Christine.

The golden rays of the late autumn sunset collected like a halo around Emmanuelle's mahogany curls that fell all the way down her back and sparkled in her large amethyst eyes as she looked up at the building. She wore a lacy black mourning dress to signify the recent death of her mother, and a long, sweeping black cloak. The only hint of colour to be found against either her porcelain complexion or her sombre attire was the delicate tattoo on her left shoulder, which she had gotten in Madrid as a fifteenth birthday present from her mother. It was of a red rose with droplets of blood falling from its thorns like tears, and tied to its stem was a black ribbon, which circled her upper arm. She had gotten it to match the silver pendant rose pendant set with a ruby that she always wore on a black satin ribbon around her neck. It was the only memento she had of her father, and thus held great sentimental value. She never took it off.

"Well, Monique," sighed Emmanuelle, picking up her suitcase again, "I suppose we had better go in."

Once inside she found herself in a maze of passages and became soon lost. Here and there she could see places where the walls and floors had been recently repaired. She had heard that this building had been badly gutted by a fire a year ago, but now it had been renovated and was due to reopen this winter.

Presently she came to a door that stood partially open, so she could only catch a glimpse of the interior. Pushing it open lightly she found herself in a dressing-room filled with wilted roses of all colours, white, pink, coral, yellow, seemingly all colours except red, and all of them several months dead. Yet Emmanuelle scarcely noticed the flowers, for her gaze was immediately drawn to the mirror on the back wall of the room. It was immense, as big as a door, and set in a heavy gilded frame in a pattern of winding roses. In the dim light spilling in from the hall, it seemed to glow mystically.

Emmanuelle reached out one pale, tentative hand to the shimmering glass, and found a tiny gap barely wide enough to fit her fingers in between the mirror and the frame. Setting her fingers into it, she pushed and found that it slid, leaving a gaping open portal in the wall, and a passage of impenetrable darkness beyond.

Gathering her courage, Emmanuelle went in.

"It must be some form of secret passage!" she exclaimed aloud excitedly to Monique, who squeaked in reply. She decided to follow it for a ways, though she wasn't entirely sure why. She trailed one hand along the wall to guide her through the deep, inexorable darkness. The passage turned several times down winding staircases and finally brought her to a vast underground lake.

"Hello?" Emmanuelle called nervously across the murky greenish waters. "Is anyone there?"

"Only me," said a mysterious voice behind her, as a rope suddenly appeared around her neck. "Your hand at the level of your eyes," growled the voice imperturbably in her ear as the noose tightened inescapably around her neck. Coloured starbursts dazzled behind her eyes as Emmanuelle suddenly realised she was going to die down here, alone at the mercy of some unknown madman, and no one would ever know what became of her or hear her screams.

"How could I be so stupid?" she moaned through the tightening of the deadly noose.

Suddenly the rope slackened. The last thing she heard before she fainted was the voice.

"Christine?"