Title: By the Light of a Candle
Rating: T
Summary: By the light of a candle, her home was set aflame. And by the light of a candle, she descended into darkness and brought her light to he who lived there.
Author's Note: My first phanfic...it's an idea I've been playing with for a while now. Enjoy.
Paris 1874
April
Light is precious in world so dark
It is dawn, and the sky is golden. Birds sing from the budding trees, heralding the entrance of the sun in all its bright glory. A girl sits alone on the deserted steps of the newly-rebuilt Opera Populaire, trailing her thin fingers along a vein of black in the pure white marble.
A plump woman dressed in black stands in a doorway to the side of the main entrance. "Isabelle Moreau?" she calls. The girl's head jerks up, and she looks around at the woman. The sunlight glints off the copper streaks in her curly brown hair. "Come on then," the woman beckons, impatience pouring off her like water. "I haven't got all day."
Isabelle rises slowly, picking up the worn sackcloth bag sitting next to her. She climbs the steps, and follows the woman in the cool shadows of the servants' quarters. The main entrance is for paying clients and prima donnas only.
More stairs, these ones wooden and creaking, lead to the attics, where Isabelle is shown into a room with two beds and a small, cracked wardrobe. "The other maid is working," the woman says accusingly, as if it is Isabelle's fault that she is new, and cannot work.
Then the woman takes her through her schedule. Rise at dawn. Scrub the steps and sweep the entrance-way. Take breakfast in the servants' hall below where the performers live, then serve the breakfast to the performers. Sweep the stage in preparation for rehearsals. Tidy the backstage area, and make sure the auditorium is ready for the night's performance. Help serve lunch. Make sure the dressing rooms are ready, and made up with fresh flowers. Do the dormitories. Serve dinner. Stay out of the way during the performance, then tidy the stage in preparation for the next day. Go to bed.
Isabelle nods, pretending that she heard it all.
The woman purses her lips. "I will leave your uniform on your bed later today. Make sure you acquaint yourself with the rest of the Opera House, so that you can start work tomorrow morning."
"Yes, ma'am," Isabelle says quietly, sighing in relief as the woman finally leaves her alone. She walks to the small window at the side of the room, reaches on tip-toe to peer out at the sky. The gold of earlier has leached away, turned into the cerulean of daytime. She already misses the outside air, cool and fresh against her skin, the warmth of the sun beating on her back.
This place is worlds away from anything she's known before.
It is dark, like it always has been. He sits at his organ, trailing his elegant fingers over the ivory keys, too afraid to press one down. His muse left at the same time as his light, tearing his heart in two.
How is a broken man supposed to know how to fix himself?
It has been so long. He lifts his eyes to the vaulted ceiling. Why did he have to come back here? Here, in this very room was where he had first experienced hope. And it was here where that very hope was dashed against the cold, stone floor, because of course a monster isn't allowed to entertain thoughts of hope. A monster isn't allowed to love, and be loved in return. What an absurd thought.
He rises from the stool, feeling one again the aching loneliness wash over his heart. Then he looks at the entrance to the passageway, the one that will lead him up into Box Five. The one which he hasn't dared to set foot in these past three years.
Maybe it's time the Opera Ghost returned, he muses to himself as he approaches the yawning mouth of the tunnel. Beware of the Phantom of the Opera.
The letter falls from the ceiling with a crash of scenery. Creamy white parchment, sealed with a blood-red wax skull. Antoinette Giry shudders as she picks it up, ignoring the screams of the ballet girls as they point at the fallen backdrop.
It is taken to the managers' office, laid out on the table, the three words and two letters written in scrawling red ink scrutinised over and over again.
I have returned.
O.G.
"We thought he'd fled," Firmin's face is pale as a sheet, as he holds the letter in shaking hands.
Antoinette raises an eyebrow at him. "So did I. But now he's back, you had better obey his orders."
Andre, who turned puce before as white as his fellow manager glares at her. "I think we learned our lesson last time, dear Madame Giry."
"Just don't forget," she turns on her heel, her black skirts brushing the floor as she disappears through the open doorway.
Andre drops his head into his hands. "It was going so well," he groans.
"And that is why I must supervise you," the voice echoes through the wall, cold and forbidding, accompanied by a dark chuckle.
The two managers flee.