Hello all! This story is a continuation of a halfway-finished story by Rogo (called The Silence Broken, appropriately enough). You definitely ought to read the chapters she's written before starting with mine so that you understand what is actually going on – plus her beginning is great anyway!

For those who are jumping into my continuation cold, I'll provide a crash-course of background: Manon Moreau is a willful young woman with a turbid past on the run from the Parisian police. She takes refuge in the Palais Garnier, is attacked by an angry and hostile Erik, and flees from the opera house after he suddenly decides to refrain from killing her. A fortnight later, she returns to the opera house as she is running from the police, whom Erik kills after hiding her from them. Manon, however, is shot in the side of her abdomen, and Erik hesitantly takes it upon himself to extract the bullet and take her in. Both are wary of one another as they remain in each other's company – Manon hating feeling so defenseless, and Erik exasperated but still intrigued by her as they hesitantly learn more about one another. Manon has just awoken to find herself moved from her original room in the upper floors down to Erik's cavern – which is where we pick up here! Enjoy.

(In recent news – I've combined chapters one and two because chapter one was pretty short and basically didn't have much flow or context. The first section is also the final bit of Rogo's last chapter, so hopefully this will make for a more engaging and contextualized chapter!)


Hand pressed to her side she sat down and looked at up at him, then around at the cavern.

"Welcome to my humble abode," the Phantom said, eyes riveted on her as she stared around in admiration.

"It's certainly distinctive," she said quietly. Silence settled between them again. Then Manon spoke up, eyes curious.

"It was you... the music, Wasn't it?" The phantom nodded, and gestured to the pipe organ.

"Indeed, forgive me if I disturbed your sleep."

Manon looked at him in intriguingly, "It was beautiful. ...It seems you are a knight in shining armor, a surgeon, and a musician all at once."

He let out a soft chuckle and Manon's heart skipped a beat. She found that she liked his laugh, deep and cool as it was. Part of his smile disappeared into the mask, as his lips curved into a dark smirk on the other side of his face. Manon secretly noticed the graceful way his unkempt hair fell before of dark brows.

The Phantom wore simple black trousers and a loose open shirt revealing the welcome familiar chest…

Manon closed her eyes and looked away gritting her teeth.

Manon, stop it!


Leaning his shoulder against the cool stone wall, the Phantom watched the pantomime of reactions playing across Manon's face – not with his usual cynicism, but with a quiet, considering sincerity. It was quite the opposite his typical, mocking demeanor.

He spoke again:

"I apologize if you were alarmed to wake up in your new surroundings" he said slowly and evenly, "the room in which you previously slept has been uninhabited for too long to be fit to dwell in now."

Seemed okay to me… thought Manon. It had been a roof, hadn't it? But then again, she had to hand it to him, (as she looked around her at the strange clash between the elemental cragginess of the cavern and the Baroque luxury of its furnishings,) it was a damn sight more comfortable and, well, interesting being in then the drab, cold room above.

She noticed him staring at her and she responded, quickly, though truthfully,

"My alarm soon gave way to amazement…I mean, this place…" she gestured unnecessarily towards the cavern at large, but retracted her arm quickly as pain shot through her side. She hissed her next words out through gritted teeth, "How...how did you come by it?"

He nearly chuckled at how comically ironic the banality of her choice of words was. How did he come by it? It was like she was inquiring after a summer home he'd just purchased, rather than a cave under an opera house. But he saw only sincere curiosity in her face, and looked at her for a moment, considering how much to tell her. Then...

"Well…it isn't exactly property that's highly in demand, now is it?" he asked archly, though with a trace of a smile. He walked a few paces to the side and sank down onto the organ bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees as he looked at her. He gestured towards the walls and continued, "It is…undisturbed here, and it is quiet. As I alluded to before, I don't exactly make it a habit to mingle with high Parisian society. This place makes that easy."

Manon didn't exactly know how to respond. She just looked at him, waiting for him to continue. When he did not, she said the first thing that came to her mind,

"Well... having an opera house for a roof is pretty convenient for your being a musician, wouldn't you say?"

He shrugged with a guarded look in his eye.

"The two influenced one another, it's true."

The sudden coldness of his expression told Manon that this was a topic she'd be well-advised to waltz right on past. She watched as he turned away and fingered the edges of the music sheets lying on his desk. He murmured hollowly as he toyed with what looked like a dried, red rose,

"There is something to be said for…and against… being forever reminded of one's purpose…"

The rose fell from his hands onto the desk.

Erik took a deep breath, tearing his eyes from the rose to look at his hands. Why had he let himself carry on like that? More to give himself something to do than anything else, he quickly straightened the many papers littering his desk. Though he found himself apprehensively intrigued by Moreau's presence, he had, by choice, told her almost nothing of himself during their time together. Starting now did not seem like a positive idea.

Manon watched as he handled the sheaves of parchment with an unaccustomed tenderness. She had been riveted by his words before, never having even considered his past, or indeed, that he had one at all. All she truly knew of him was what Charles had told her when she was young.

That, and the infamous tales of the Opera Ghost…

She wrapped her arms around herself subconsciously, watching him. She sensed that she shouldn't press him further, but her curiosity got the better of her –

"And…what was this purpose?" she asked with attempted casualness, though after she said it she noticed with annoyance how vapid her voice had sounded.

He looked at her for a moment almost appraisingly, and then…

"Music." He said simply.


Manon shivered, but not from the cold, though a cold breeze had just blown through the cavern moments before. At the phantom's words, she had felt a slight (but not unpleasant) turn in her stomach.

Ah… she thought. Though he was still thoroughly guarded and rather enigmatic to her, she supposed that this answer did correlate with each (of the many) nuances she had glimpsed of the phantom during her time here…his dark intensity, that otherworldly music she had heard that cold night before, the way he spoke, the way he moved…music as a life-force, how strange. It occurred on her how very different she and he must be….

The phantom looked up from his hands and seemed to come out of a reverie as he saw her shiver, his eyes registering the thin muslin of the ragged shift she still wore. Wordlessly, he stood and leaned across her to the opposite side of the mahogany desk and retrieved his own thick cloak from a hook on the wall.

Manon would not help but catch the scent of him as he reached for it…warm, spicy, and distinctly male. Appropriately, it also smelled of something like candle smoke. She swallowed as he proceeded to swing it elegantly over her shoulders and clasp it gently beneath her throat.

She looked up at him in tacit thanks and then flicked her eyes away quickly, wrapping the warm, fine wool tightly about herself modestly.

He studied her for a moment more, tapping a finger on his folded arms, then turned back to the organ. He situated himself loosely on the bench, toying with an ink-stained quill lying on the keys.

Manon approached him warily, limping along…. As he was obviously a creature of solitude, and she one of mistrust, both were still rather ill at ease in the company of one another. This fact made Manon feel quite skittish…she hated not knowing what to expect from people, and certainly she could not guess the moves of this man… a man who had come within moments of throttling her, yet who had also quite frankly saved her life. And for this, Manon was determined to put forth at least some semblance of gratitude and manners, even if they were emotions she wasn't used to expressing.

He raised his visible brow as she approached, and slid over hesitantly on the bench to make room for her.

"May I…?" she said cautiously but softly, her eyes on the organ. After a moment he nodded silently and watched her as she sat quietly on the edge, still clutching his cloak around her with one hand. Her eyes roved over the massive pipes and opaline keys appreciatively. They slid closed as she hovered one hand over the keys, an ethereal smile coming over her features.

She seemed, to Erik, to be caught between worlds…suspended between the abyss of some memory and the corporeal instrument before her.

What could she be thinking? He found himself wondering.

Again, he unwillingly found himself captured by the curve of her shoulder…His eyes lazily followed the path of a stray lock of her hair, escaped from the cloak, brushing gently across her collarbone with the rise and fall of her breaths. Pale skin covered her shoulders and the slender curve of her neck…

Even more unwillingly, he was reminded of the frail beauty of another woman. Though Moreau possessed none of her innocent delicacy, the feminine curve of her neck was nonetheless painfully reminiscent of hers…and of the painfully beautiful sound that would rise out of it…Oh God….

Wrenching his eyes away from her before the torrent of memories again claimed him – disgusted with himself, disgusted with her (though she was hardly at fault) he forced his eyes to settle elsewhere, anywhere, landing on his inkwell sitting on the organ.

A slight sound from the woman to his right brought him back – a soft, slightly choked gasp. He turned and looked at her stiffly, frowning. Erik suddenly felt very tense in her presence, and averted his eyes from her face so as to prevent any more memories from rising. Even so, he could not help but follow her riveted gaze that was fixed on a spot some inches over his shoulder.

He glanced over, and his gaze fell on a small niche carved out of the wall…on the glowing rosewood, the slim neck, the dully-glinting tuning keys, and dusty strings of a violin.

Ah, he thought. That.

After that night, years ago, the Palais Garnier had been abandoned by those two buffoon managers, André and Firmin…they had left it all too hastily to the mercy of the charred decay that was slowly consuming the once-magnificent structure. While the wounded man inside of Erik had reveled in the ruination of the beautiful building that had at once given him reason to live, then swiftly robbed him of it, the musician and artist inside of him had mourned the loss of such a monument to the arts.

The violin itself was, admittedly, a rather stunning piece. It had been one of the few artifacts he rescued from the ruin engulfing the Opera Populaire.

He looked at Moreau again; she was still staring at the violin. Erik took her apparent fascination with the instrument as an indication that she would like to see it more closely and perhaps hold it. Though still feeling rather standoffish, he felt almost guilty for channeling his hostility towards her for something she could not have prevented.

He couldn't think of any reason why she shouldn't be able to hold it. He reached over into its niche, grasped the wooden neck coolly in his hand, and brought it out. The translucent red varnish made it seem almost luminous in the dim light, highlighting the subtle grain of the wood. He caressed the fret board lightly with a fingertip before turning back to the woman beside him.

Does she play? Erik wondered, the thought coming to him suddenly.

He held it out to her without saying anything…but as he did so, her eyes – still fixed on the violin – suddenly clouded over with a profound sadness and turmoil. Erik could see a myriad of emotions flickering in their chestnut depths, all fading too quickly, one after the other, for him to perceive their meanings.

Frowning impatiently at her odd behavior, he held out the violin farther, gesturing for her to take it. But as he did so, a look of fearful alarm wrenched her features and she moved quickly backwards, groping blindly at the bench. He placed the violin on top the organ and stared at her, momentarily stunned, as she scrambled to the other side, though Erik could not for the life of him understand why.

Suddenly, though, in her haste to put distance between herself and the instrument, Manon had reached the edge without noticing. He watched with an odd leap in his chest as she bonelessly slid sideways off the bench.

In one fluid motion, he had caught her, barely inches short of hitting the floor. With his right arm wrapped around the front of her waist and his left supporting her head, he eased her back up into a sitting position, but she slumped over against him, her dark eyes whirlpools of memory and emotion. His brow furrowed. What the devil…

Her face was pressed into his neck, her warm, scented hair slithering across his chest. Erik swallowed tightly, an action made doubly more difficult by the rough, wooly sensation in his mouth. His heartbeat quickened slightly, a solid, steady rhythm.

He stood up roughly, in part to bring Moreau to a more facile seat, and in part to rid himself of these strange and irritating reactions he had to her nearness. Knowing full-well their meaning, these sensations deeply unnerved and rather angered him all the same.

He lifted her easily, wondering if this damned woman was more trouble than she was worth. He hefted her into her arms and rose to bring her over to a divan that stood along the back wall of the room. He was lowering her down when he noticed a slight reddening of the bandages on her side. Or had they already been red?

Damnation, he thought savagely, It's not as though I have an unlimited store of supplies with which I can tend to this wench constantly! Nor patience, for that matter…

He nonetheless proceeded to wrap her snugly in the velvet throw that was slung over the side of the divan, and blew out several of the nearby candles before retreating into the shadows.