Author's Note: This came about when I was just thinking about various versions of the Phantom and stuff. You've got Leroux's Erik, Lloyd Webber's Phantom and a hundred versions in between. And everyone seems to have a slightly different version of the character in their own minds. So this popped into my mind and I decided to write it down so it wouldn't remain a half-hollow idea in the back of my head for the next couple of weeks. Enjoy and please review.
He had started out a man. Just a man who had a taste for playing tricks on humanity in return for how they had tormented him in his youth. He hadn't fully meant to become something to them, but they turned him into so many things. Everyone had their own version of him, everyone a different thought as to what he was and what he meant.
To Madame Giry, his dear box-keeper who tried as hard as she could to make the managers heed his warnings, he was still a man of sorts. Still, he had been a partial employer, a man that still held on to childish follies such as throwing his voice to scare nervous ballerinas. She had seen him as a genius, and though she had cared for him and seemed to fear him less because she knew what he truly was, she also feared him more than anyone for that same reason. While others used their imaginations and stories to decide what the ghost would do, she knew what the man would do most of the time. She had seen the man behind the mask, and she knew that was more terrible than any ghost.
To the old managers he had been a fearful nuisance, to the new ones he was just a nuisance. A hoax and a collection of opera folks' superstitions rolled up into a troublesome scheme to extort money. He annoyed them with the kidnappings and letters, the disruption of performances. Even at the end of it all their only real worry had been that he had ruined them.
To Meg Giry he was a ghost. A fearful, yet utterly intriguing specter of the rafters and passages. She and the other ballet rats were terrified of him no doubt, gasping at the stories, blaming the ghost for any mishaps, screaming at any sign of a dark figure that was simply not human. But to Meg most of all he was a frightening thing that she simply had to know more about. She screamed loudest when a stage piece fell, her eyes were widest when the dancers waked close together down the dark halls in the hopes of seeing something. The ghost was every childhood fear and almost all of her adolescent fantasies. After all, who could resist the thought of a being that was so mysterious?
To Christine he was many things. Her Angel, a madman, a pitiful soul. From her earliest days in the opera house she had believed in the ghost, but the Angel was the more prominent otherworldly being in her mind. All the opera had a ghost, but only she had an Angel that was sent by her father. The Angel had taught her to sing, molded her voice for greatness and then disappeared one night. Right before her eyes the Angel of the mirror was shown to be the ghost, then moments later a man. And yet she still hadn't known who he was, he hid behind so many personas, so she had removed his mask and uncovered something so unlike the Angel she had first known. He was flesh and blood, anger and sadness. He had loved her, yes, but no Angel could have the face of a monster and the rage of such a beast, she hadn't been able to see past that to how much he cared for her until much later. With her Angel gone he became a monster, and even if part of her pitied him the girl was over come with fear. So she had run into the arms of the last remaining thing of her childhood, her valiant knight and childhood sweetheart. And yet, she still could not resist him. She wanted to cling to the image of her Angel; the thing her father had promised her had to remain true in her mind.
To Raoul, he was a fable-turned-rival, an obstacle that had to be overcome so that he and his lady-love could have their happily ever after.
All of these combined were what the citizens of Paris saw on stage that fateful night of 'Don Juan Triumphant'. There was the man, the monster, the Angel, the ghost, blending together into a performance no one would ever forget. No one ever had their own image of him again. He transcended superstitions and ghost stories, masks and blackmail. To everyone there and everyone who heard the stories, he became something entirely different.
After that night, he was a legend.