The man beneath the monster
What happened that night between "Phantom of the Opera" and "Love never dies" when Christine sought out the Phantom? Inspired by the song "Beneath a moonless sky" in "Love never dies".
Maybe Christine is a little out of character, but I could not let her continue to be this silly woman who thought the Phantom was an angel sent by her dead father, like in "Phantom of the Opera". I have tried to be in character with everything else.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything made by Gaston Leroux or Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Please review.
The mist safely cloaked her as she walked the cobbled street of Rue Saint-Marc. It was unusual to have thick fog in Paris at this time of year, but Christine welcomed it, as she did with the lack of moon tonight. Maybe it would rain tomorrow. Was rain considered lucky or unlucky on your wedding day? She did not know, nor did she care. Her oncoming wedding with Raoul, which would make her the Vicomtesse de Chagny, was the last thing on her mind that evening.
It had been the talk of Paris for weeks, about the deformed sadist who, after he had killed the renowned tenor Piangi, abducted the young primadonna from the stage and held her captive beneath the opera. Of course the story got wildly exaggerated over time, with tales of devil worship and dysfunctional lusts. When inquired, Christine always said that she had fainted when she saw the man's face and only woke up after Raoul had rescued her. In time, the gossip had faded down to the acceptance that the police had shot the monster down and the general life went on.
But not for Christine. Even though she filled her days with rehearsing for a new production ("Don Juan Triumphant" was never shown again, of course) and planning her wedding, her mind always went back to her old maestro, the man she only knew by the name "Phantom".
Whatever he, whatever they later became, she still owed him everything. He had first come to her, only as a voice then, three years ago. Her father, a violin player at the Opera, had recently passed away and she felt lost. The previous owner of the Opera, monsieur Lefevre, had graciously let her continue as a dancer at the Corps de Ballet, even though she had little talent for dancing. Late one night, after a disastrous rehearsal, she had stayed behind to practice. "To learn discipline!" Madame Giry had told her, before shutting the door. Her father's death, her failure as a dancer, it all became too much and for the longest time she lay sobbing on the floor. As she lay there, she found herself softly singing a song her father always sang to her when she was upset as a child. He had come to her then, told her she had a pure voice and that he wanted to train her. She had asked the voice who he was, which he, after a moment, told her the she could call him the Angel of music.
A scrambling noise brought her out of her reverie. Startled and with heart pounding, she looked around. Only a stray cat, its shadow elongated by the light of the nearby window. Relived, but with her heart reluctant to quiet down, she hurried down the street.
When her initial shock with being abducted and the relief that the Phantom had let both her and Raoul go quieted, she found herself thinking more and more of that night. And when the police came and said they had shot her abductor down, she had to know if this was true, had to see, to know if he was alright before her marriage to Raoul would part them forever.
It had been a long journey to find out where he was. He was always a clever man and his long stay underneath the Opera had taught him how to stay hidden, even though all of Paris looked for him. In the end, she went to see Madame Giry, the Mistress of Corps de Ballet at the Opera.
"Madame?" Christine had lingered in the doorway of Madame Girys office, not daring to enter. Even though it was years since she had been told off by the ballet mistress, the strict woman still made her feel like a child in trouble.
"Mademoiselle Daae". Madame Giry had looked up from her notes, a curious expression in her usually stern face.
"Madame, please, I would like to speak to you" Christine had said, clutching her gloves.
"Come inside, but close the door". Madame Giry pointed to a vacant chair which Christine hesitantly sat, looking at everything but her old ballet mistress.
"Well, what can I do for you, mademoiselle Daae?" Madame Giry asked a hint of impatience in her voice. With a whole ensemble of ballet girls as her responsibility, she had never time nor energy for polite small talk.
"Please, call me Christine." Christine had said, nervously avoiding the real reason she was there.
The ballet mistress sighed. "Christine, you have never been good at hiding your feelings, one of the reasons you had problems with managing the discipline required in ballet. Is this about the incident a couple of months ago?"
"Madame, I have to know where he is. The police said he was dead, but made up some excuse as to why they did not have his body. I know you always knew more about him than you let on. Please, tell me!" In her agitation, Christine's voice had risen and the ballet mistress looked sharply towards the closed door.
"Very well, I see there is no reason for me to deny to you that I knew him, or rather, knew of him, when he lived at the Opera. What I don't see is why you would want to know where he is. Did he not scare you, with his dark personality and gruesome face, like you told us? Hm?"
Christine slumped in her chair, knowing full well that Madame Giry disliked when one of her girls, former or present, did not keep an elegant body position, but right now she did not care.
" I don't know anymore. I mean, yes, he do scare me, on some level. He has an unstable temper and at first it scared me too look at him. But still, I need to talk to him once more before I get married tomorrow. Please, if you know where he is, tell me".
Madame Giry leaned back in her chair and looked at her for a long time. She opened her drawer and took out her inkbottle and a scrap of paper, on which she wrote something down.
"Here is the address, it is an abandoned warehouse some distance from here. But Christine, think about if it will do more harm than good to either of you if you seek him out. "
Breathing in the foggy air, Christine stopped and looked around at the deserted buildings. The warehouse should be somewhere about here. It would be foolish, of course, to think that she would automatically find his hiding place when the police did not, but she had an advantance he did not know about, namely the address of his whereabout. And the hope that he would not flee or hide further when he saw who his visitor was.
Looking through a dusty half broken window, she hoped she was at the right place. Why he should choose this exact place to hide out, she did not know. From the outside it looked like all the other broken down buildings, with part of its roof caved in and boarded up windows.
She went up to the door only to find it locked. Looking up, trying to see how he himself entered, she saw a rusty old water drain that went by a window with its glass missing, the remnants of it littered the street below. As a child, she was always good at climbing trees, but as an adult woman, in a long dress and shoes with heels? Not to mention her corset...
"Don't be a fool, Christine. Go home to your soon- to- be-husband. It will not do to stand bride with scraped hands and knees" she said softly to herself. Still, she had come all this way... Taking a quick look around, she gathered up her skirts and tied them all in a make shift knot at her hip. Not exactly ideal (nor proper for an adult woman, even less for a primadonna at le' Opera, she chided herself) but it would have to do.
Grasping the drain, she pulled herself up and searched frantic for some unevenness in the wall to place her shoes. On the third try, success. Painstakingly slow, she dragged herself up the drain, placing her shoes in small cracks of the old building and praying she would not fall. Luckily the window was not very far up, it would be worse if it was on the topmost floor of the building. Reaching her goal, she, rather unelegant, pulled herself over the windowsill and rolled to the ground.
"Well", she thought," if he did not heard me climbing up the wall, he sure would have heard me now". Or heard someone, at least. It was so dark inside that she could not even see her hand in front of her. She fumbled with the matches she had brought with her, her scraped hands only producing brief flash of flames. Then suddenly, without warning, she felt herself thrown to the floor and something sharp pricked the side of her throat.
"You will not scream, you will tell your fellow patrolmen down below that you have found nothing, or I swear I will cut your throat with this piece of glass" a harsh voice growled in her ear.
"No! No, it's me, Christine. Please. I came alone!" she whispered, scared by this turn of event.
She heard a sharp intake of breath before being suddenly released.
"Christine?" A disbelieving voice came from somewhere on her right side. Felling shy, all of a sudden, she said " I...came to talk to you. Nobody know that I am here tonight."
"Did...did I hurt you?" Now the voice was to her left
"Probably a bit bruised, but nothing worse". The truth was that her back ached and her heart was still in her throat, but it would not improve matters to tell this. Move and speak with caution was the trick here.
"Why have you come? You made your choice very clear last time we spoke. And when is this famous wedding to be? I doubt you are here to give me an invitation?" he said, his voice laced with sarcasm and only a bit hurt.
Christine hesitated. "We are to be wed tomorrow...but I needed to make sure that you...that you weren't...that you were alright".
There was a pause. "How noble of you. How kind to have the Vicomtesse de Chagny make a visit to the poor wreck who gave up everything for the chance that she might love him back. Well, now you have seen me. Go back to your husband-to-be".
"Don't say that. I know that it was you who made me the singer I am and for that I will always be grateful". She heard a dismissive sound and footsteps that removed themselves from her.
"No wait, don't go! Please." Trying to follow in a place that he obviously knew even in the dark, she tripped over something and fell to the floor. In an instant he was there, betraying his apparent need to show her that he did not care for her anymore. Placing hesitant arms around her, he pulled her to her feet. "I am sorry" he said in a low voice. Hearing that pitiful voice, like a scared little child it was, she reached out to touch his face. He must had sensed it, even in the dark, for he quickly released her and stepped away. She knew he did not wear his mask, it had been one of the first things the mob who came down to his lair had found.
"What are you going to do now?" she asked him. "I gather that you are not to stay here forever? The gossip have quieted down and the general population thinks you are dead"
"Me, dead? No, my Christine. Never me. Speaking of which, how exactly did you know where to find me?"
He had led her to a corner where she sat down, grateful to have a solid wall against her back instead of this vast darkness.
"Madame Giry" she said. "She also was the one who told Raoul where to find you on...on that night. Amongst other things"
She felt him sit down, but a distance from her.
"Amongst what things?"
She hesitated. The man, the Phantom, her Angel of music had always been a mystery to her. But then she learned that he was, indeed, a man. A man with an intensive temper, ranging from the most fearsome rages to the most heart wrenching pleas, all driven by the need to be loved, to be accepted. She had to know, before she got married.
"She told him about a travelling fair, many years ago. A fair where they also displayed human...oddeties. Freaks. And one of the attraction was...was a man in a cage."
Her nerves on edge, half expecting a rage for her inquires, she was startled when he instead let out a small humourless chuckle.
"Madame Giry has a good memory. I was sixteen at the time." When she did not reply, he continued. "Maybe you though that I had always been at the Opera house, but the truth is that I was born a long way from Paris. My father was a carpenter at a circus while my mother tended the I was born with this cursed face they gave me the name "Eric". One of the line dancers came from some country up north where "Old Eric" is a name the common folks use for the devil."
Christine hardly dared to move. She had known him to be many things, but this open side of him was entirely new. She felt like the slightest whisper would break the moment and have him keep his past under close guard again.
"My father was a drunk, and although I was born this hideous, his whip and knuckles did nothing to improve my appearance, you might say. When I was seven, the big top of the circus caught fire. My mother perished in it and my father, out of a job and money for liquor, sold me to a travelling freak show." At this point, his voice hardened. "I spent nine years in that hell, before I managed to escape and make my new home underneath the Opera. And now I am alone again, have lost everything for the idea, that stupid hope that you might love me, if only a little, if ...if you...only knew...knew me..." His voice rising, then breaking as he started to sob. Softly at first, then louder, like a dam that burst. He had used three months staying alive and hidden, but now, with his rare re-telling of his cruel childhood and the reason of his heartbreak this close, but still to be married tomorrow, he could not take it anymore. Great heaving sobs racked his frame as he cradled his hated, his hideously deformed head in his hands.
Christine's heart broke when she saw him this way. With eyes slowly adjusting to the dark she crept over to his hunched form and placed her hand on his shaking back. He tried to pull away, but she held on even tighter, forcing her arms around his neck, not caring about the half dark outlines of his deformed face. Not knowing if he would break away, she felt a strange sort of happiness when he tightened his arms around her waist. She felt tears come to her eyes as well, tears about his unhappy childhood, tears for her own father, long ago dead, tears for the unfairness that the man in her arms should be born with that terrible burden that was his face and, she realized, tears that they would be parted for ever when she married Raoul tomorrow. Raoul...She had been in love with him when they were children and those feelings came back when they had met again as adults, the very night she had seen the Phantom, had seen Eric for the first time. Raoul was kind and funny and, in a way she did love him, but she knew, as she had secretly known for three months now that she wanted someone else.
Suddenly afraid herself at being rejected, she clutched Eric even tighter. "I do not wish to marry Raoul. I cannot. Let me stay here with you".
Eric looked up before he suddenly stood, towering over her. "What trick is this?"
Confused by the sudden turn of event, Christine scrambled to her feet, reaching out for him. "No tricks. Why did you think I came tonight? I have tried to forget you, have tried to tell myself hundred reasons, many of them justified, as to why I should not seek you out, why I should marry Raoul, but the truth is...I love you."
A small hope growing inside him, but still desperate that his most desperate wish would again be taken from him. He roughly moved to the shattered window and letting the slight light shine on his tufts of hair, his deformed scull and scarred flesh. He turned to Christine.
"Is this what you love? Christine, look at me! Maybe you have forgotten my repulsive appearance in the three months we have been apart, but it is still there, oh yes, will always be there. Why would the new primadonna at le' Opera give up her marriage to the handsome Vicomte, to be with this loathsome gargoyle who has nothing to offer her?"
Christine eyed him calmly. He only freely showed his face when he was too angry to care. It was no denying that he was hideous, but in many ways he was beautiful. He was beautiful in his songs, in his music, in the way he looked at her with that intensive look in his dark eyes.
Crossing the floor, she reached up to touch the deformed side of his face. Knowing he would turn away, she met him in half turn. His eyes widened when she stroked his face, feeling the ridges and bumps under her fingers. Lifting her other hand to his heart, where she felt it pound in rhythm with her own, she kissed him.
Softly at first, then more intense, their lips adjusting to each others. Her left hand slowly slid down to his neck while his right hand, hesitantly at first, buried itself in her hair, pushing her tighter towards him. Only stopping to take small gulps of air, they let hands walk their own paths, grasping shoulders, resting on hips and caressing faces. It was only when Christine's hands found the topmost button of his shirt that they stopped.
"Christine...are you ...are you certain about this?" His voice, huskily by their current emotion held a tinge of nervousness. She kissed him in reply.
She expected the pain, when it came, but she moved with him through it until the pain was replaced by something else. Grasping her shoulders tightly, he breathed soft words into her neck, words that she replied. Hot tears dripped from his eyes into hers, but she pulled him closer and kissed the tears away, promising him everything and so did he, to her.
And then it was over. The dark night started to taste of morning, and with it, the doubt came. Eric woke to find himself entangled in old blankets and various items of clothing. Almost afraid to know the answer, he hesitantly turned around. Yes, she was still there, his angel, his muse. He would have written her the most extraordinary arias, making her a star to match no others. Maybe even their love would have a chance... But he knew what he had to do, and he thought his heart might shatter by it. Carefully, slowly, so to not wake the beauty beside him and make him loose his strength, he collected his clothes and put them back on. He had left his mask at the Opera, but it did not matter. It was still dark and he knew the trick of making himself go unnoticed if he so wished.
Finished dressing, he looked back over his shoulder at the still-sleeping woman, his Christine. She had promised him many things last night, things he knew she would had regret to keep. He was a half-beast, shunned by the society, while she...
But as he stood there, a new decision took form. He would leave this place, leave Paris entirely and start anew. Not as a ghost in the cellars deep beneath the privileged society, this time he was the one who would be in control. And when he had built up his new world, he would return and offer everything to her.
Not looking back, he crept out the window, slid down the drain and disappeared down the still-dark street of Paris.
The end.