The little ballet girls had been playing on the stage again, taking turns singing and dancing and making fun of the prima donna, Carlotta. Not that the horrible woman didn't deserve every barb they threw at her; the woman had once had a lovely voice, but had ruined it with over-taxation and ignorance of limits. Now she was a burbling joke, surviving on reputation alone. And it seemed the audience enjoyed it as long as her name was on it. Despicable! No talent anywhere in the building! Except for that little yellow-haired brat on the stage, who had the intelligence of a teaspoon and the discipline of a poorly trained puppy! Then again, even she lacked the courage to actually use the talents Erik secretly knew she had. The other girls thought of the girl as morose and strange and teased her mercilessly. The girls prodded the tiny yellow-haired girl, trying to get her to sing. Even Meg Giry, the girl's only friend, joined in the torture. She refused, finally bursting into tears after several minutes of abuse from the other girls. Erik knew she would not sing in front of them. If it hadn't been for the intervention of a few of her famous father's benefactors, the child wouldn't be there at all, so unwilling was she to even open her mouth! It was amazing even he knew of her talent. But when she was alone in the chapel, she would sing a little, but only if she was alone. Her voice was not bad, interesting if nothing else. Erik had been listening to her, absolutely appalled at himself. This girl was a child. A child! A sniveling, stupid child! She could have such a pretty voice, and she already had perfect tonality, but she had absolutely no discipline! She was under-sized, blonde and useless! She wasn't worth his time if she was unwilling to use her gifts! He turned away from the stage in disgust. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the odd interest he was taking in that girl's voice. Annoyed, Erik dove for the underground passages he called home.

Over the past ten years, he had made a little nest for himself under the streets of Paris. He had travelled the length and breadth of the world and had finally returned here. He had been born in Rouen, running away when he was ten to escape the attentions of his mother. No one to blame but herself, really; she could have accepted that her son had been born….like he was and not gone insane. In a way, he understood; his eyes were small and yellow like a cat's and set so deep in his head as to give the illusion of bare sockets, the skin on the upper half of his face transparent and sunken and his nose…well, that had never grown in at all, leaving a large hole and exposed maxillary sinuses. He was also so thin that, coupled with his face, he gave the illusion that he had been dead for some time. Not pretty to look at, but if she had been a good mother, she would have realized that was her son and loved him the same. But no, her mind had fled by the time he was three and she resorted to vicious beatings and tortures when she was sober enough to notice he was there. He still carried a long scar on the back of his hand where she had tried to pin his hand to the piano with a paring knife; there was also a rippling of scars on his back from when she had tried to set him on fire. That had been the incident that drove him to run away. He figured he would be happier starving on the street than in her care.

He had done a stint in a travelling gypsy fair, as a freak in their show. He had learned magic, sleight of hand, ventriloquism, contortionism, and several other arts while he travelled with them, learning slowly how to frighten people into malleable states to take advantage of them for what he needed. Erik was pretty damn sure that was where he lost his own mind: the effort to ignore the humiliation of having people stare at his unmasked face and the realization upon puberty that, though he may look with longing upon women, they would never look at him with anything but shock, horror, or distain. Still, the fear his face inspired had been useful, and even if he wasn't getting one little thing he wanted, he certainly got everything else. By the time he had met the Daroga, he had become the most powerful man in the camp…at seventeen.

He had built palaces for the Shah of Persia, with trap doors, hidden passages, torture chambers, and other secrets. So many, in fact, that it had almost been his death warrant. Still, the Daroga had helped him escape and he had once again drifted from place to place, picking up architecture on the way. When the Garnier Opera House was being built, he had threatened the little sop Garnier into submitting whatever he told him to, while adding a few touches of his own that weren't in the visible plans as well. And under that Opera House, he made his home.

His house was a tidy little affair, with the newest advantages, such as plumbing for the bathrooms that vented out to the nearby sewers; a clever stove, fireplace and chimney system that piped into the Opera's vents so as not to be noticed; a little living room and dining room and two bedrooms. A large, ornate coffin sat in his room, perhaps an idea leftover from his days as a gypsy, when he began his performance in a coffin. His face had lent itself well to that. The pipe organ that occupied the other side of the room had been built piece by piece, using bits scavenged from a nearby abandoned church organ. He had a spare bedroom, furnished lavishly. Not that he ever used it and he, of course, never had guests, but he had built it and furnished it and kept it clean to give himself something to do. It made him feel normal.

All this and he was stuck with a talentless cast in this Opera! The managers were, luckily, blundering idiots, and a little threat was all that was needed to have them wrapped around his skeletal finger. He had a nice salary going, plus Box 5 reserved for him alone. It had merely taken a day of research to acquire enough blackmail to squeeze Poligny to bend to his will and Debienne was so superstitious that any hint of ghostly mischief was enough to buy his obedience. Still, the music being performed here bothered him. Their casting choices bothered him. The pretty little idiot of a girl –what was her name?- Christine bothered him. While the girl was a complete simpleton, her voice, flat and lifeless though it was, was near-perfect. He certainly could do something with it once he got the girl to open her mouth more than a few times every year. It intrigued him, if only to see where he could go with her. He knew the girl was fanatically religious, in his eyes, another sign of her utter idiocy, and had been waiting for five years for her father to send her an Angel of Music from Heaven. Sickening.

He stalked into his home and dropped into an armchair. Angry at himself for even taking an interest in the human race again, he stared into the fire. He'd made a vow to hate all of humanity and this scrawny little moron of a girl counted! He hadn't worn his mask today; he had not felt a need for it. Suddenly, he felt ashamed, naked. Growing more angry by the minute –first the interest in people, then the fascination with the girl, and now the mask! He had been certain that, since he had decided never to come into direct contact with people again, he would never feel ashamed of who or what he was again! And she had ruined it!

Why he was laying everything on the shoulders of that simple, clinically depressed moron of a child was beyond him. Her mere presence was near-unbearable to him. He hated her, her blind faith, her unwillingness to let the world know that, with a little training, she could have a brilliant voice! She was content to be a shadow, a mere stage-dressing. For some odd reason, the thought of Christine wasting away in obscurity angered him further and this frightened him just a little. He resolved to stop with this nonesense and never look at or listen to the idiot child again! Still, two nights later, he returned to the catwalks above the stage, watching her again.