Hello my loves.

This story is set about ten years after the events of Phantom of the Opera. I'm taking a lot of inspiration from the sequel to POTO, Love Never Dies, which opened in 2009 - and which I only just discovered and got, like, totally obsessed with.

I've included a lot of details and minor plot points from Love Never Dies (Coney Island, Phantasma, Mr. Y etc...), but I'm generally ignoring the overall plot. In this, the Phantom has moved to America and has his own show on Coney Island. He is no longer living underground in obscurity, instead living to spread his music.

I figure ten years is enough time for Erik to get over Christine (even though, according to Andrew Lloyd Weber, it's not). So this will be PhantomxOC.

I'm including various songs in my fic, from other musicals and a few from popular music. I think the world of Phantom of the Opera really lends itself to song. Erik is just not the same unless he's singing. I hope you like how I incorporated the songs, but if you don't, please let me know!

Any and all deviations or changes from song lyrics are intentional, so that the songs can actually fit in with my plot. I tried to keep it so they fit the tunes. I'd love to hear your feedback concerning them!

***The Phantom I am writing is based off of Ramin Karimloo from the 25th Anniversary Performance of POTO (It's on Netflix! Watch it!) and the original London cast of Love Never Dies (NO BEN LEWIS! Watching him try to act is painful).

Ramin is omg-gorgeous, an insane actor, and he is my favorite Phantom. His voice, in my opinion, is PERFECT for Erik. He feels every single word he sings. So much better than Gerry Butler. I'm in love. Obviously, you can choose to imagine any Phantom who is your favorite, but I urge you to look up Ramin Karimloo. You won't be disappointed.

Anyway, enjoy.

BEHIND THE NIGHT

New York
Winter, 1890

Madeleine was dead.

I knew this now, as I hadn't for the past hour.

It was when the first fly landed on her open, cloudy eyeball and she didn't so much as blink. That was when I knew.

A burst of panic coursed through me, long overdue. I'd held it at bay with confusion and denial, telling myself she could just be sleeping. I'd once heard a handsome gypsy tell stories about wise old men who could sleep with their eyes open, and if Madeleine wasn't wise, I didn't know who was.

But now I started to shake and sob as my already-broken world tumbled down to dust.

My sister - my companion and guardian and only savior - was dead.

The concept was one that I was not completely familiar with. But even through my confusion, I understood one thing - Madeleine was gone. I was finally, truly, alone.

And at that moment, I needed to get as far away from her corpse as possible.

I jumped to my dirty bare feet, gathered the threadbare blanket I used as a cloak around my shoulders, and raced out into the freezing New York night. I had nothing but what laid dead in that filthy hovel - no money or possessions to my name. Neither had my sister. We'd started squatting there five days ago, when Madeleine had said she just needed to lay down. She was coughing so much the handkerchief turned red.

She was older than I was - eighteen years old to my fourteen. We'd been on and off the streets since I was four, and generally on since arriving in New York. Our parents moved with us from France to America five years ago. They'd died on the journey, and their girls were thrust into the strange American city with hardly a cent to our names.

I always did just what my sister said. She always led me right. She'd taught me to pick pockets and sneak in when the lights were out. She'd shown me which shops gave away loafs of day-old bread instead of throwing them in the muck. She'd introduced me to the streets of the city, and those who dwelled there - people like us, with nothing besides each other, hiding in the darkness.

I was still trying, as I raced by sputtering street lamps, to come up with the semblance of a plan. But my mind and body were awhirl with grief not yet fully understood. You'd think, living most of my life on the street, that death would be no stranger to me. But Madeleine had always guarded me from such dark things, filling my impressionable little head with stories of phantoms and angels instead of explaining what death really was.

Today, years later, I understand how truly incredible Madeleine was. She was a working girl, selling her body so her little sister wouldn't starve. But she always kept this fact far hidden from me - I thought her nighttime trists were those of a singer in the local tavern. And I never knew how close I was to joining the ranks of the prostitutes myself - her boss had recently noticed that I was flowering, and almost as pretty as my sister. If she hadn't been there to protect me...

Racing down dark city streets, I conjured up the strong belief that Madeleine was with me, a spirit manifested in my frosting breath, guiding me without my knowledge. The thought comforted me, so I shut my eyes and tried letting my feet lead me. I did not even slow my pace, so intense was my faith in the ghost of my sister.

And perhaps it wasn't completely unfounded.

After something like twenty steps I slammed into a set of tall, iron bars. Yes, running with my eyes closed probably wasn't the brightest idea.

The force of impact left me gasping, and I scrambled backwards, holding my left wrist where I'd jammed it against the bars. I started to cry then, desperate and in pain. I sat back heavily into the empty midnight street and wished I had Madeleine's disease so I could die too.

Looking around, I realized I was lost. I was in a part of New York that I'd never visited before, but I vaguely knew it to be Coney Island - that place of dark, whimsical reveries only appropriate for the rich and adult. It was known to be run, at night, by the carnies and entertainers, who were less than what you could call savory. This only made me cry harder. I wallowed for a good ten minutes, telling myself to just give up.

Then I noticed the small maintenance door in the side of the gate, nearly hidden behind the shrubbery. It wasn't latched. Hope flared inside of me, sudden and wonderful, as I looked beyond the fence to the multitude of colorful circus tents and stands. Even now, I could clearly smell food, and thought of all the warm little nooks in the carnival, perfect hiding spots.

Sniffling, I stood, went to the maintenance door and slipped through, into the circus.

The paths were empty, but lit by luminaries that wound between striped canopies and caravan trailers. Enchanted, I crept along, looking for a dark corner where I could curl up unnoticed. Or, better yet, food. It had been nearly three days since I'd eaten.

The first few tents I passed without pausing - they were lit, and I could hear low chatter inside. But as I slipped farther into the carnival, the sounds and movement died down, and it got darker. Presently I came to a large black building on the thoroughfare. A main attraction, though now, I was sure, abandoned for the night. I slipped inside through an unlocked side door.

It was pitch black and quite warm inside, both distinct comforts. One hand to the wall, I navigated the perimeter of what instinctively felt like a huge room, before slipping into what I thought was a narrow side passage. At one point, I trod over something solid in my path, about the size of a melon but much harder. I picked it up, tried to make out its shape in the darkness, and when I couldn't, carried my new mystery with me in search of light. The object was lumpy and oddly shaped, with holes where there shouldn't be holes and various divots.

I don't remember much of that time in the darkness. At some point, I must have decided enough was enough, and settled back against the brick wall for a nap.

I awoke to splitting hunger pains who-knows-how-much-later, still wrapped in my threadbare blanket but no longer shivering. It was warm and seemed dark and quiet, I noticed contentedly. I still had my mysterious item with me, which my fingers still could make not heads nor tails of, but the headache I got after crying so hard was gone. Feeling more optimistic, despite being weak with hunger, I once more got to my feet and trodded off in an arbitrary direction, completely blind.

The music reached me before the light did, haunting and melancholy. Lonely, was my first thought of it - and how apt that thought turned out to be. It drifted up the hallway I was traversing, played by violin, every so often accompanied by a rich male voice. I couldn't make out the words, but his tone and talent had my whole body trembling.

Christ. I think I loved him instantly.

I came abruptly to a door, and when I opened it the music was louder. My foot touched a descending step and a cold breeze swept up the passageway - stairs, leading downwards. My heart racing, I started down, wanting to find the source of that music.

I was convinced, for a time, that it was ghost who made the music, especially as I continued my descent and saw no signs of light or life. But then, I rounded a corner, pushed through a velvet hanging, and suddenly my world was opened to me.

I found myself in a wide room, lush and lit softly with candlelight. Velvet drapings in scarlet, black and gold hung from wrought-iron candelabras. The look of the ballroom, the way the light glittered off the crystals adorning the walls, the way the violin music rose and fell, the way that lush male voice wove in and out of the notes... It almost convinced me that I was in a fairy ball.

I crept further inside, peeked around a stone sculpture that resembled a gargoyle, and saw a huge pipe organ across the room. (I've yet to figure out exactly how he managed to get that organ down there.) Next to it stood a desk scattered with pieces of thick parchment, dripping with candlewax and inkpots. A scarlet sofa and matching armchair sat behind it, awaiting an audience, but I dared not come closer.

And then I saw him, standing near the organ.

He was tall, imposing, dressed all in black. For the moment, his face was in the shadow of the wide brimmed hat he wore. But I was positive he looked like the fairy men I'd imagined during all of Madeleine's stories - painfully, surreally beautiful. Certainly his body was long and lithe enough, his voice enchanting enough. His long-fingered hands guided the bow smoothly and artfully across the strings of his polished black violin, coaxing from it sounds such as I had never heard.

(Cue: Excerpt from "Grief" from The Devil's Carnival)

"Where claws come in sharpened on wolves in white fleece," the man was crooning, his voice a high, clear falsetto on one note, but swooping to deep baritone on the next. To this day, I have never heard a more beautiful voice.

He tilted his head up, and I saw his face - his eyes were closed in passion with his music. He was pale, almost white, but his skin tone had hints of olive - not the European pinkness which I possessed. His hair was perfect black, slicked back against his head neatly. His eyes were black as well, large for a man and somehow exotic, with heavy lids and thick lashes. They crinkled in the corners when he squeezed his eyes shut with feeling, but he was not old. Over those eyes sat expressive eyebrows that always managed to give his face an impression of sadness or concern. His mouth was pale, full.

"Tears, John… Tears, John…"

And of course, he wore a mask - a white mask covering the right side of face, from forehead to mouth. When I first saw it, I thought it must be ivory, such like the adventurers bring back from farthest Africa. I found out later that it was porcelain, carved expertly and beautifully by his own hands. He wore it like he'd wear a shirt, as a part of his basic outfit. Even when he was completely alone for weeks on end, he wore that mask every day.

His face was handsome, and while not as handsome as perhaps I'd expected for a fairy, the mask intrigued me. He was mystery, the very definition of it.

Other than the mask, he wore black - I rarely saw him in other colors, but when I did they were white or red. He had impeccable fashion, if somewhat of a propensity towards the extravagant and elegant. That day, he was casual in a black dress-shirt, slacks and suspenders.

"Tears, John… Tears..."

I know now that the song he was singing was one of his own creation. It was, in fact, an excerpt from the nouveau-opera being performed in the very theater under which I was now standing.

But to the fourteen year old girl, bony and shivering, the music was magic and the man was a dark angel. I stared at him, utterly enchanted, swaying. There was such sadness, such soulful longing in that voice - aided, of course, by the melancholy tune of the song.

"You're drowning in the grief of Jupiter's water.
Let me open my teeth and cradle you there.
There's a bed for the boy
And a rope for the father,
Both orphaned by heaven where no child is spared..."

At this point, I looked down to the item I still held in my hand - my melon-sized mystery. And, when I let loose a gasp of panic at what it was, his head turned sharply in my direction.

I don't know what it was that affected me so. Perhaps it was his swift movements, the whirling of his dark cloak, the gleam of white from the mask he wore over the right half of his face. Perhaps it was that the music suddenly cut out, leaving only ringing silence. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't eaten in the past three days. Or perhaps it was that I discovered the mysterious object I'd been carrying for the past few hours was, in fact, a bone-white human skull.

Whatever the case, I fainted.

The masked man sighed, looking down at the tiny streetrat who'd just collapsed on his floor. She was pale as a spectre - cheeks, lips, hair, all nearly white. A ghastly little thing, haunting his basement, eavesdropping on his music. She'd snuck in, windblown, uninvited - and listened in silence.

And then she'd fainted. He grimaced at the thought. No surprise there. In his experience, the masked man rather seemed to have that effect on women. Not that this girlish thing was quite a woman - but already she shared the delicacy of that fairer, untouchable sex.

His dark eyes flicked to the item she'd dropped - a perfectly clean, intact human skull. A prop, no doubt, from one of the sideshows. It was made of plaster, but it looked quite real.

He swooped, wanting the urchin out of his home, and scooped her up in his arms. He was surprised at the lightness of her, as though her bones were hollow. As ethereal and spectral as a true ghost. Her lips were blue, her breathing shallow.

A moment of pity swept through the masked man when he saw her hands - fingers thin and white as bone, the delicate blue veins glowing beneath papery skin. She would starve, and soon. The man's mouth tightened.

He tucked the pity away, where he tucked away all of his uncomfortable, shadowy emotions, and carried her towards building's exit. He had no time for an urchin girl, even a starving one. He was a phantom, not a philanthropist.

After a moment of thought, the man turned and scooped up the skull she'd dropped as well, taking it with them.

I awoke, freezing and shaking violently, just outside the gates to the carnival. Only this time, the small service door was firmly shut and bolted with a rusty iron padlock I was sure had not been there before.

It was dawn, and I was freezing. I wasn't sure, for a long moment, whether the fairy man and his violin had been a dream. Then I looked down to what had been gently rested next to my legs - the human skull I'd picked up in the darkness. Doubtless, he'd left it with me on purpose.

Today, I shake my head at his dark sense of humor - purposefully frightening the wits out of a tiny girl, a silent unmistakable warning.

But back then it merely scared me. I cried out and tossed the skull away from me - it shattered on the stone sidewalk across the street. I never did find out who it had belonged to. But it solidified my experience as non-imaginary.

"That was no dream," I muttered to myself, pulling my thin arms around my quivering body. Suddenly, despite the skull, I was aching for the warmth of that building, for the low sensuality of the man's voice - it awoke in me something I'd never felt before. A longing to explore the darkness behind the stars. And with that longing came a bravery I hadn't known I possessed.

I grinned to myself at the padlock on the fence. As if that would stop me. Madeleine had long ago taught me how to pick a lock.

For the second time that night, I made my way down to the basement of that building, which I now saw, in the new light, was a theater. I scarcely thought through my actions, focused only on the man with the angelic voice and long white fingers. I was determined not to faint this time. And if I was brave and proved myself to him, perhaps we'd dance and drink honeywine, or he'd take me to his fairy kingdom to be his queen.

Music drifted up the stairway once I found it again, this time played on the organ, the tune very different. Whereas before the song had been mournful and slow, this sounded much like someone simply slamming his hands into the keyboard, with only a hint of discordant melody. It frightened me, grated on my ears, but it was powerful nonetheless. There were no lyrics to accompany it, but I could hear the man vocalize hypnotically with his music.

I crept into the lit cavern, silent as a mouse, staying to the shadows. The man had eyes only for his music, however. He sat behind his organ, his back to me, playing furiously. He no longer wore his hat. From where I was I could only see the shininess of his ebony hair.

As I watched him, his music shifted to something slower, and he stopped vocalizing altogether. Then he took his hands from the keys, picked up a feather quill and started scribbling intensely on a large black journal to his left.

While he was thus pored over his work, I took the opportunity to slide myself up into the huge velvet armchair behind him, curling around myself as I watched him. He had yet to take notice of me, and turned as he was, I was confident he wouldn't for some time.

Once again in the warmth and light, more comfortable in that armchair than I could ever remember being, and weak from starvation and the long journey, I once again closed my eyes. The scrit-scrit-scrit of his quill lulled me into slumber.

It wasn't fifteen minutes later, and I was woken by his booming vibrato: "Who are you?!"

I scrambled to a seated position to find him towering over me, imposing and furious.

"Desole, monsieur!" I cried out in my native tongue, which always found its way out of my mouth when I was panicked. I closed my eyes, and tried again in English, "I'm s-sorry, sir."

The masked man frowned at me, dark eyes glittering.

"Tu parles le francais?" he asked.

I nodded and said "Oui." Clearly I spoke French, and it seemed he did, too. It had a strange calming effect on him. He took a deep breath through his nose.

"Your name?" he asked in French. I gathered myself and tried to sit straighter.

"Isabelle," I replied, then revised: "Belle." Belle was what my sister had always called me, since before I could remember. It was a sweet nickname - belle meant beautiful - but it was what I was used to. I could not tell him my last name - I didn't know it.

"Belle," the man repeated, his voice gruff. He laughed humorlessly, as though that in itself was a cosmic joke. Or perhaps it was because he did not think me beautiful at all. It hurt me, his laugh.

He swept back to his organ, his long coat fluttering behind him. I watched him, still feeling as though he must be a dream.

"Leave me now, child," he said, his voice deep and tired. "And do not come back. Or you will suffer the consequences of your actions."

(Cue: Excerpt from "Castle on a Cloud" from Les Miserables)

I stood, reaching out to him, and sang in a clear, wavering voice:

"Please do not send me out alone." He stilled at his organ, his head turning to listen over his shoulder.
"Not in the darkness on my own…"

"Enough of that," he sang back, low and smooth, planting his hands on the surface before him and hunching his shoulders. "Or I'll forget to be nice. You heard me ask for something, and I never ask twice." The last few words were a growl.

I sighed, frightened by him and yet wishing he would let me stay. But, bowing my head, I made my way back towards the door. A song had popped into my head at the sight of his mask, one Madeleine had sung me often. She, in turn, had heard it from our mother, who used to be a chorus girl in an opera house in Paris.

(Cue: "Masquerade" from Phantom of the Opera)

"Masquerade," I sang softly, to comfort myself, slowly moving towards the door. I felt weaker than I had before my short nap in the chair, and hungrier. Food was my first priority, or I would pass out. "Paper faces on parade…
Masquerade.
Hide your face so the world will never find you…"

And then I heard his voice behind me, tremulous and tender.

"Masquerade," he continued the song. I stopped and looked back to find him turned and staring toward me, eyebrows furrowed. "Every face a different shade.
Masquerade.
Look around, there's another mask behind you."

"Where," he said, after a moment, low and silky, "did you hear that?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but a wave of nausea swept over me, combined with a light-headedness I associated with an empty stomach. I groaned and my legs collapsed beneath me. For the third time that night, my world swam into blackness.

I hope you liked chapter one! Plenty more to come - I've written about fifty pages, so far. Stay tuned for more songs and romance (though, obviously, the romance won't come until later - Belle is only 14 at this point).

Review, please! I'd love to hear your thoughts. Did the songs work? Is the Phantom in character?