He would never love another like he loved Christine.
He had loved her. He had lost her. But he would not make the same mistake. He would not subject himself to love, the same way he could not subject himself to normalcy, the sunlight, the public. What had he been thinking?
It was after the first time Meg had given up her body to the landlord to forgo having to pay rent for the month, and it was the last. A week later, she was absent her monthlies. More weeks yet, she felt decidedly ill, queasy, not yet throwing up, but she felt as if she'd boarded a boat that rocked on violent waters. She progressed to sleep at least twice every day, was very sensitive to smells around their small apartment and craved pickles endlessly, devastated when they ran out, so devastated she cried.
Then her clothes wouldn't fit. By then, her mother had become aware of the changes in her daughter, and one night, she confronted her.
"You're with child!" Madame Giry hissed, pushing her onto a lounge. "You stupid girl!"
"I am not!" she was mortified. She shook her head, mouth agape. "No, it cannot be!"
"It is." her mother's lips drew into a tightly bitten line as she pressed her palm against her daughter's womb, testing the feel of her bloated stomach.
"Mother, say it isn't so!"
"And lie to you, Mon Cheri?" a singular eyebrow lifted. "No. I would never lie to you. You are with child, indeed. Who is the father?"
Ashamed, Meg explained. When her mother understood why their greedy landlord had suddenly given them so much lenience, she realised her daughter spoke the truth, and sighed, her face softening.
"There is a way. If you should take a fall. If you should drink a strange elixir. If you should let me shove upon your navel."
"NO!" Meg jumped to her feet, tripping over herself, a palm pressed against the life inside of her. "No, no!"
"We cannot afford it, Meg," her mother understood what it meant to loose a babe, but they had no choice. "Would you have it brought up in poverty?"
"I cannot!"
"Would you have yourself grow fat?"
"Mother-"
"To have yourself put out of work?"
"I won't."
"You must."
"NO!"
"DO AS I SAY!"
"I WILL NOT SLAY THE BABE!"
"THERE IS NO OTHER WAY!"
"I. WILL. NOT!"
The double doors, bright red with golden handles, swung open, revealing their Phantom in his billowing white shirt, and egg white mask. He stared only at Meg, his arms propping him against the edge of the blood coloured doors.
Madame Giry broke the silence.
"Good evening, Master Erik."
"Are you with child?" he asked the blonde, who trembled under his stare.
"Do not make me," she whispered, unblinking as she looked on him. "A life is a life."
"I would not kill the child." Erik said, his voice clipped, as though the very notion appalled him.
"You wouldn't?" Madame Giry was entirely surprised. Her pencilled on eyebrows rose, dry lips pursed.
"No. A life is a life." he repeated, and gave the madame a particularly searing look. "You will have the child. Then you will give it away, where it can be properly taken care of." And then, he closed the doors, the matter settled.
Meg burst into hysterics, fleeing to the sanctity of her room, her body shivering as though she'd walked straight into six feet of snow. Her mind was throbbing, and she was tired, so tired, with the little babe growing inside of her.
Her name was Angel, she was tiny, and beautiful, with vibrant green eyes and curls of gold. Still suckling at her mother's breast, the Phantom conceded that she would stay till the very same moment she could be fed solid foods.
It happened one day, when Meg had the babe in a cradle, in the lounge, reaching for something in the highest cupboard. She'd been on tip toe, holding onto the ledge of the bottommost shelf, when the nails gave and the whole thing swung forward and toppled onto her.
The Phantom, hearing the large noises, went to investigate - a heavily bleeding Meg was hoisted out from under the rubble by her mother, who was pale white.
"I'll take her to the hospital," Madame Giry professed, and carried her daughter out. The baby gurgled, kicking her little fat legs. "Watch the baby!"
Had he ever been spoken to in such a manner?
He went and stood near the bassinet, peering down at the small bundle of pink. She reached up, making nonsense noises, and opened her bright green eyes.
"Bahabhaba." she said.
The Phantom took several steps back, prepared to retreat to his quarters and spare the child his face.
The baby started to cry. Loudly. Real, fat tears slipped from her eyes, and she screamed, kicking her legs, pushing all her other comforts away.
"What is this?" he murmured, and went to stand over the child again.
She reached for him, flexing her fingers, still crying, just less loudly. He dipped, and very carefully slid his hands under the baby's head and back, like he'd borne witness her own mother doing.
He held her up, his hands her only support, and she reached for him yet, until he'd lain her on his shoulder, and curled her little pink fists into the lapels of his dress shirt.
When Meg had come back with three stitches and a mild concussion, the Phantom was holding her babe on his chest with one hand, playing a very quiet, and soft tune with his other. He promptly returned the child to her mother and said: "The babe stays."
Then he shut his double doors behind him.
The babe grew, as babes tend to do, bringing with her a slew of trouble.
She was six, every inch her mother and nothing of her father. She knew that Master Erik lived with them, behind the red doors with the shiny gold handles, but she wasn't allowed to go in there, no matter what, she was never to go in there.
But sitting in the lounge, alone as her mother worked the Coney Isle fair for every dime, and her grandmother watched, Angel tried to plait her hair.
Finding this somewhat impossible, she got to her feet, and knocked politely at the doors she wasn't supposed to touch, ever, never, ever supposed to touch.
They swung open after a moment, a huge, towering male before her, a mask covering half his face. He stared down, blue eyes sharp.
"Hello," she said politely, used to his height and mask. "Do you know how to braid hair, sir?"
He blinked.
"Do I what?"
"Know how to braid hair, sir." she repeated. "I tried and tried. Now it's tangled, quite the opposite of what I needed."
She held up an expanse of matted tresses that was currently attached to her head.
"See?" she said.
"I see." drawled he.
There was a moment in which he paused, and sighed, his eyes briefly closing.
"I cannot braid hair." he confessed. "But I am... competent, in the theory of brushing it."
"I'd like that." she said, and produced, from her pocket, a long, pink, fine toothed comb.
"Come in." he stepped to the side, and let her pass, through red double doors, doors of which she'd be warned, scorned, shooed away from all her life.
"My mama says I shouldn't go in here ever," the little girl said, gazing around with wide green eyes. "She says you're very busy, all the time."
"I am."
"What're you busy with?"
He motioned to a seat, which she took, and handed him the brush.
"Music." he took into his hands the knotted mess of the girl's hair, wondering how on earth she managed to get it in such a state.
"I like music." she informed him, tipping her head back to give him a wide, and childish grin.
"Yes, that's good." he approved, and guided her head back up straight. "Keep still."
So she did. For nearly half an hour, he brushed, and she waited patiently, keeping as still as her six year old body could manage. When all the knots were unwound, and her hair hung like a wave of gold, the Phantom returned her brush, and picked her up, setting her down again as careful as though she were made of glass.
"There." he patted her detangled head. "Go along, now."
"I'm lonesome, sir." she said, green eyes wide, and pitiful. "Can I stay in here with you? I won't make any sound, I swear, sir, and if I do, you can lock me out."
It sounded like a fair deal, but Erik did not like eyes on him while he worked. He put a hand on her shoulder and started to steer her toward the door.
"I'm afraid I must insist-"
"But sir I really must persist-"
"Go along and play-"
"But sir I'd really rather stay-"
"No you don't want that," said he, and put her in the doorway, leaving her to turn to him with wide, hurt eyes. "Play with your toys, have something to eat, or should little girls, be well into sleep? It is late, and you're better off out here, rather than have me anywhere near."
"I have no one to play with," said the little blonde girl, looking at her dress hem. "No friends, and no toys, sir, we can't afford them."
That made something in Erik stir. Hadn't he had toys once? Given, they were made by his own hands, but he'd at least had something to occupy his time.
The hands that had been on the doorknobs slipped away, and for the second time that night, he stood aside to let the little girl rush in as though she were being chased the the hounds of hell themselves.
"Thank you, so much, sir-"
"There's a love seat by the candle you can have."
It was the only seat not otherwise occupied with some form of writing implement, half written or mostly failed music. The leather was dark blue and quite worn, like everything in his little room, it held a certain sense of age; a wiseness, borne witness to the depths of the human condition.
And that was just the furniture.
She sat on it with her legs crossed at the ankle, while he closed the doors behind her and return to the chair before his piano.
"Not a sound," he reminded her, and she nodded in earnest.
He began to play slowly, one note and then another, sounding mediocre, at best. He wrote about what the candlelight did to Christine's hair, and how the shadows had accentuated her fine features, the music leaning heavily into dark, deep, and bellowing notes. But dark, deep and bellowing was not his Christine. Only what he felt, in his own chest - a loud, reverberating and low anger that she had chosen the pretty one over him.
He had loved her, truly loved her, and hadn't they made beautiful music together?
The sound of scuffling made him automatically swing to face the double doors that lead into the house that he loathed. A faint knock had him calling to enter, and Meg's heavily made up face slid between the crack.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, Master Erik, but have you seen my daughter?"
He waved absently at the corner.
There was a small pause, in which nothing was said, so he too, looked at the little blue loveseat.
All he could see was his cloak, in reality, even if it was hiding the child underneath it. She was sleeping peacefully, put to dreaming by the sound of the piano, as she had when she was no more than an infant, curled on his chest.
"What's this?" he said, and got to his feet, going to the child's side to lift a corner of his cloak and see that the girl was indeed, fast asleep, curled into a ball, tucked into herself.
"I told her not to come in here, a thousand times." Meg amended fretfully. "She should've known better than to-"
"She was silent." The Phantom lowered into a crouch, peering over the girl's soft features. He remembered brushing her hair, her silence then, too, and her patient nature, her wanting to be in the room with him.
It was odd. No one had ever wanted to be near to him.
Except Christine.
He found his arms looping under the fragile figure, and taking her past the rather shocked Madame Giry to the smallest room of the house, that belonged to the girl in his arms. It was mostly bare but for the bed and tiny dresser by her head, which he minded as he lay the girl down and went about removing his cloak from between her clenched fists.
Meg went to her feet, removing her shoes, and socks, pulling the blanket up over her soundly sleeping child and tucking her in.
"I din make any noise!" she sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes. "Promise, swear, I din make any noise."
"No, you did not." Erik nodded, and folded the cloak over his arms. "Not a sound."
"Oh." the girl's eyes were already closing.
They waited a moment more before the child's eyes were closed and she was again, fast asleep, before Meg turned to him.
"Thank you, Master." she whispered.
He made a small, non-committal noise in his throat and retreated to the safety and regularity of his quarters, which oddly felt rather empty.
Another night alone in the coming week, and Angel could hear through the door that Erik was playing the piano again. But instead of knocking, and interrupting, she quite plainly sat by the doors with her head pressed against the wood, listening.
Abruptly, the music stopped, and the door swung in, letting her sprawl across the threshold.
"What are you doing?" he asked, blinking down at her.
"I didn't want to interrupt, sir." she replied, rubbing her chin, which had met the floor loudly. "I was listening. Is that acceptable?"
It occurred to him that she had been an audience before, without him even realising it. She had been listening to his music for, quite literally, all her life; the walls of the apartment weren't soundproof, nor thick enough to blur the clarity of his notes.
"It is." he said, and offered her his hand.
She accepted it, and was hoisted to her feet, still rubbing her chin.
"Let me see."
She stuck out her jaw so that he could examine the injury.
"Does it hurt?"
"No, sir."
His lips quirked into a satisfied frown, and he made a noise.
"You want to listen again?"
"Yes, sir, very much, sir."
So he let her inside, this time, with more ease, and then he watched her proceed to go to her little blue love seat and sit down on it, crossing her ankles and waiting patiently.
He left the doors open just a crack, letting the outside light spill into the rather smoky room, creating a slight repreive. He sat, and put his fingers on the keys... but nothing would come. There was a block between the music in his mind and what could come out at his fingertips, and he loathed that blockage. After testing a few notes, the Phantom realised that his plight was pointless. Whatever he had been playing as the girl sat outside was gone, evaporated, nothing - she'd interrupted the flow of the music before he had the chance to write it down.
"I think you should leave."
"I'm sorry, sir, please."
He didn't even turn to address her. But what could have possessed her, to think that he might be company she could keep? Shouldn't children be asleep?
"It is late," the man sighs.
"I hate the dark," the girl cries.
"There is nothing to fear-"
"Please don't leave me-"
"Not while I'm in here-"
"I don't want to be alone-" She is looking at him with the widest green eyes, a truly pitiful creature. "-I hate the dark, sir, I don't want to be alone, sir, I'll be ever so quiet, sir, just keep me through the night, sir."
He closes his eyes. His salvation had been the darkness, the night, and this girl child shied away from it. The Phantom was confused - it was evidently darker in his chambers, darker than out in the living area, but yet she wanted to stay?
"I don't understand." he confessed.
"I like being near you." she professed, then sat in silence on her little blue love seat.
So he did what it was he did best, and began to play a song, thinking on the worn leather and the little blonde child who was scared of the dark, but not of him, the darkest thing she would ever behold. The melody was slow, filled with the right side of his piano, and he played what he saw, finding a muse, and playing to it.
He did not notice that the Madame and the dancer had returned, when he usually did. He did not notice them at the door, peering in. He was too busy writing about the blue of the leather and the green of the most grateful eyes he'd ever seen in his life.
Then the music inside his head stopped playing, so his song ended. But it had been like old times, for once, a perfect song describing the beauty he saw in the strangest things. The girl smiled, and he smiled back.
"My mama is home." she informed him, and he glanced over his shoulder to see that they were indeed, home, and eaves dropping. "You play music like water, sir."
"Like water?" he mused.
"Like water," she confirmed. "It flows, you see, good sir, your music flows on like water."
Then she got up, smoothing her skirts.
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight, little one."
She beamed, and left the room retreating to her own room.
When Angel was eight, she'd spent every single night of hers inside the master's rooms, listening to him and learning from him. He'd made her toys, crafted her dresses in all the colours she could dare him to do. He showed her how to play the piano, and she learned that music started in your heart, then filled your head, so you had to feel something from the heart before any music would come.
There was something very melodic about the way her Master Erik spoke, so she played to that. She wrote him words that he sang quietly to her, as though he was trying to keep their songs secret from her mama and grandmama, and Angel didn't mind. She liked keeping Erik all to herself, all his words and music and songs, they were just between the two of them, something special.
One night, in particular, spurned by a hateful comment as she was walking home from Coney Island in broad daylight, she flew into the master's chambers, fury igniting the green of her eyes. He looked up from his papers, watching as the small fuming girl threw herself down at the piano, and let the music fly.
Angry.
Red.
Hot.
Dangerous.
Tormented.
Loud.
Demanding.
This is what her music was.
She played faster, and faster, her little fingers tangling on the board as she stood, gathering yet more momentum. More! She needed the music to let the hurt out of her body, into the night. She barely even noticed when The Phantom sat down on the chair and put his fingers on the board.
He hit one chord, a high noted, sweet sounding chord. She stumbled, confused by the rhythm.
He pushed the keys with tender care, his soft sounding music stark contrast to hers. He was soothing her, coaxing her into sitting down again, beside him, as her fingers slowed their furious flight. His keystrokes washed over her like waves on the sand, and like her mother had always promised her, the water cleaned her soul, washed all the bad away.
She stopped, her little shoulders heaving, and hands hurting. Her Master Erik finished his little melody, ending with her favourite chord, making her eyes fill.
She looked at him, trying to convey desperately what her tantrum meant, but if anyone could hear the rage in her music, and understand the unspoken lyrics of her heart and mind, it was him. He placed his gloved hands on her tear stained cheeks, dabbing the wet away, before kissing her forehead, his mask and lips both kind and understanding.
She held his hands against her face for perhaps ten seconds more, feeling safe under his palms. She then got up, and closed those big red doors behind her on her way out.
"Please, sir, can't I just read, sir-?"
"Begone, stubborn child! Begone, annoying girl! I have shown you enough of my world!"
"I just want to read, sir, I won't even play, sir-!"
"Do you listen to what I say? Begone!"
"What if I gave you my songs, sir, the ones I've kept for your birthday? I'll give them to you early; I just want to read the lyrics you have written, sir. You have music that lulls me to the safest places, my Master, please, sir?"
He held a breath.
She had been writing songs for him?
"I will give you one song." he said quietly, and watched her face brighten. Nine year old, she had a vibrancy, a brightness, an incandescent light. She had once told him she was scared of the dark, but without her, now, he would be scared of the dark. She was an ever burning beacon of light; warm, hopeful. And like a moth to the flame, she mesmerised him on a daily basis.
"But, you must preform your song for me, Angel."
She hadn't preformed in so long, and this they both knew. Her cheeks filled with blush, redder than any rose, and twice as sweet.
"I will." she lifted her chin, and shuffled around in her briefcase of all things; she found her two sheets of music, sat down at the piano, and began to play. At first, no sound emerged from her lips. She was too focused on twisting her hands around the complicated notes of her song, playing with all fingers and thumbs, not missing a single beat. The beat was constant, soothing, flowing from one note to the other.
Then, she sang.
"On my little blue love seat, I watched you, I heard you.
On my little blue love seat, you were magic.
From my little blue love seat, I loved you, I adored you,
Learning your music, sweet music, is the best thing to have ever happened to me."
Such warm, tender words. Her voice was birthed of her namesake, surely, even angels wouldn't sing so fine? She played, hands skipping, and a blush on her cheekbones. Erik stood behind her, a large shadow of music, listening to the kindest creation he'd ever been gifted.
"You taught, I played,
You instructed, I obeyed.
Not for one moment did I ever want to leave.
All this music in my mind I must conceive.
Though you claimed to be dark, not for one moment did I believe..."
The note hung in the air, potent, ringing in his ears in the most pleasant way. She had been holding back, his little Angel, holding back from what her voice was truly wrought of. She slowed the song, her fingers now dancing over the simplest of notes, all the good ones, everything sounded perfect.
"From my little blue love seat...
When I was just a girl...
From my little blue love seat...
You became my world."
And she finished with a high noted flourish.
Erik was about to cry, the music and lyrics having moved him to tears. He could barely breath for the sobs caught in his throat, let alone open his mouth to thank, and congratulate her. But it never came. At the very same second she turned around to see tears in his eyes, to ask him if she could read his music, those double red doors swung inward, and her grandmother Giry stormed in, looking furious.
"What are you doing?" He cried, as Angel as snatched up, hoisted roughly from the chair so violently it tumbled to the floor, crashing loudly.
"Ow, grandmother!"
"You will not cast the same spell over both my girls." she snarled, turning around to wave a finger at him.
"Release the girl!" he bellowed.
"Grandmother, you're hurting me!"
"You release her!" the elderly woman sneered, and dragged her out into the sunshine.
"Erik!" Angel reached out a hand to him as she was being dragged away, forced toward a carriage. He ran to her, his shirt billowing, and caught her forearm, standing tall to inform the madame that he would resort to drastic measures if she did not let Angel go.
The men driving the carriage had loaded both the girl's bags onto the top, lashing them down securely. They watched with interested, if not slightly apprehensive eyes, as The Phantom almost tore the little girl from the old woman's grasp.
But the madame had other ideas.
Not to be outdone by the genius, she simply took his mask off, rendering him speechless, gaping at her. He couldn't help it- though he didn't want to see, his eyes darted to the girl still clinging to his arm. Now she was looking at him, her struggles ceasing, her green eyes wide.
"Erik?" she whispered, before the horses reared, the owners tugging on the reins in their shock.
Madame Giry shoved her in the carriage just as the horses bolted, the men whipping them into speed. Erik picked up his mask from the ground, but he did not replace it. He turned the full extent of his hideousness onto the madame, amplified ten times the natural ugliness for the sneer he now wore.
"I will retrieve her." he promised. "That girl was my miracle. Why would you take her from me?"
"Because you never would've loved her." the madame didn't flinch away from his deformity.
"I already love her." he vowed, looming over the madame, his blue eyes trained on hers. "She was the closest thing I've ever had to a daughter, Madame Giry. There is nothing in this world I would not give to her, should she ask me."
The madame looked properly shocked at that.
"You love her?"
"Intensely." was his dark reply. "Mark me, woman, for your interference, you will pay."
The elder woman didn't have a chance to react. Still in their sights, and still travelling too fast to be safe, the carriage carrying such precious cargo tipped up onto two wheels, wobbling dangerously before collapsing in on itself. The Phantom dropped his mask and ran, beating the madame, who was already screaming.
He fled to the horrible scene, pulling away pieces of splintered wood, and large flat boards. Becoming increasingly desperate, he used all his strength to pull away the largest hulk of wood there, hiding what he feared most.
"Angel? Angel?" he dropped to his knees, splashing in the blood.
She was still under his fingertips...not even her heart beat. Although she looked so peaceful, though he'd just sent her to sleep by playing her a melody, she was paling more and more by the second, her blush fading, wasting through the hole in the back of her skull. Erik's heart had already been broken once, but seeing the little body so limp in his arms nearly broke his soul.
Her hair was red, dripping, and stinking of gore. He combed it out with his fingers, singing into her ear, as madame Giry finally found her feet and ran to him too.
"On your little blue love seat,
When you were just a girl,
On your little blue love seat..." his voice broke, something that had never happened to him before.
"You...Became my...World."
No music would come.
His quarters were silent.
He could not even make enough noise to cry.
All he could hear was madame Giry trying to calm her daughter down, telling lie, upon lie, upon lie.
He was on the ground, with his ear to the cushion of a certain small, faded seat, tears trickling over his nose and becoming trapped in his mask.
In his hands, the music she had so badly wanted to read. All because she saw the title:
"Angel."
The music for the lyrics was dead, but the lyrics were still there. He felt her, hovering somewhere just out of the corner of his eye.
"Let me lull you to sleeping,
Keep you safe from the dark,
You're mine for the keeping,
Now you command my heart.
Little child, with your hair fair and golden,
What have you done, to have my soul so quickly stolen?
I look on you as my own,
I cherish you as my own,
I adore you as my own,
My own Angel..."
The End.