Christine sighs sadly as she stands on the empty stage of the Opera Populaire. Her eyes scan the floor, trying to stay focused on her task and not got bogged down in thoughts of the past.
A ballet girl had lost her ring while rehearsing, and Christine had promised to look for it for her.
She can't help but glance up at row after row of empty seats in the dark theater and think of all the times she's stood here with the bright lights blazing and dazzling her eyes as she'd sing.
When she's busy with work or composing, or distracted with Erik, she can usually keep her mind from lingering too long on how much she misses this. But there at times, like now, when it is impossible to keep those feelings at bay.
Her spell of melancholy is broken by something fluttering in front of her face and falling on the ground. She looks down. Rose petals. She looks up. Erik.
Erik standing on the ropes holding the stage curtains up, holding tight to the ropes with one hand and crumpling a rose in the other and letting the petals fall around her in a gentle shower. She smiles.
"How did you get up there?"
He gives a nonchalant shrug.
"It is easy when you're a ghost, my love."
"Show me."
He points across to the thin catwalk meant for the lighting crew, and from there Christine can make out a series of ropes he must have stepped across.
On a whim she starts up the little ladder leading to the catwalk. Erik watches with amusement as she tries to stand on the narrow metal, a feat made much more difficult with her heeled shoes. He watches with less amusement as she appears to ready herself to step out into the ropes.
"Christine, that is entirely unsafe," he chides.
She scoffs, but realizes perhaps her balance is not quite as good as his, and stays where she is.
"Will you teach me? Then it would be safe."
"Why ever would you wish to learn such a skill?" he is confused.
"So that we may haunt the Opera Populaire together, of course."
He is touched at such a thought. How can he say no?
The very next day he constructs a wooden beam on a slightly elevated platform that she can walk across to learn her balance in a safe environment. As a former dancer, she takes to it quickly.
Several days after that he announces that he has a gift for her, one that will aid her in her wish to explore the secrets of the opera house. It's a box with some article of clothing in it, but she can't tell what.
"Go try it on," he suggests.
She takes the box to their bedroom to change. It takes her decidedly longer to change than it should, and it's almost to the point where Erik considers knocking on the door to see if she's alright when finally she appears.
Her face is flushed and she walks slowly into view, embarrassed. She keeps her eyes trained on the ground. She's not certain why she should feel so awkward, heaven knows he's already seen her in every stage of undress - and often enough too - that it shouldn't matter, but this feels so different somehow.
Erik has bought her pants.
Pantaloons, to be specific- loose in the legs and gathered at the ankle. They feel like something she would wear underneath of a dress or a skirt, but there is most definitely not a skirt that's meant to go over these. She checked the box, thinking there must be some mistake. But no. He has given her actual pants.
She creeps closer, her face feeling as though it will surely burst into flame at any moment.
"How do you like them? Do they feel like they fit?"
"They're pants," she chokes out.
He nods.
"Yes."
"Men wear pants."
"Women wore these all the time in Persia," he waved a hand as if to brush away her concern.
"Yes, but we are not in Persia, Erik," she reminds him.
"You don't like them," he sounds concerned, concerned and disappointed.
"No, it's just... It's very different," she isn't sure how she feels about it, but she knows she doesn't want him to think she doesn't like it.
Christine considers herself to be quite a modern woman - this is 1889, after all! - but she has never worn pants before save for the occasional costume on stage. Except this is no costume. These are to be normal clothing for her, and it feels like the most scandalous thing she's ever worn. But she must admit, the soft black silk does feel rather nice... However she could most definitely do without the feeling of her backside being so exposed.
"You cannot crawl around in tunnels and walk across ropes in your skirts, Christine."
She nods, understanding the logic behind it but still unused to the feeling of them.
Pants. She shivers.
"Perhaps- perhaps I could wear a small skirt over them..."
"Christine-" a smile quirks at his lips.
He stands up from the couch, walking behind her to put his arms around her. His wife is so adorable, he thinks fondly.
"Are you feeling shy about wearing your new pants?" he murmurs as he rests the uncovered side of his face against hers.
She squirms in his grip.
"I'm just not used to them," she's certain her face is beet red. "It- it feels like wearing men's clothing, almost. Or nothing at all, really."
"The point of them is to help you not be seen when you're playing ghost. No one will actually be watching you walk in them."
She didn't think it was possible for her face to feel any redder, but here she is.
"Why?! What's wrong with how I walk in them?!" she squeaks out.
She suddenly fears there's a concern she has yet to think of. He merely chuckles and pulls her closer.
"There's not a problem, Christine. I simply meant that you need not be embarrassed to wear them. I think they look just fine... Quite fine, in fact," he lowers his voice to a purr at the end and presses her to him just a little tighter.
She is reminded once again just how thin the material is, how different from her layers of skirts and bustle these new pants are, because she can most definitely feel things - very pronounced things - in a way she couldn't feel them through her skirts as her husband presses his hips against her backside, and she decides that perhaps these pants are not as terrible as she first thought if that's the kind of reaction they elicit from Erik.
So she wears them along with a black long sleeve shirt tucked into them when Erik is showing her the various tunnels she did not yet know of.
She is not certain where exactly he procured the shirt from, with its high collar and dark buttons, and despite how it's tailored to fit her perfectly she assumes that the shirt is also a man's shirt, but she figures since she is already wearing pants that it hardly matters anymore. She leaves her corset loosely laced, and that makes it far easier to stoop and move freely, although with so much clothing missing she can't shake the feeling that she's traipsing about nearly naked despite being cover wrist to toe.
Luckily there are enough things of interest in the tunnels to take her mind off of her unusual clothing.
It seems to Christine that there is not a single inch of the Opera Populaire that Erik is not familiar with. Hidden hallways, air ducts, secret staircases, spots where the sound will carry from certain other rooms, trapdoors (even trapdoors in the ceiling, for heaven's sake!), entire rooms behind the walls of other rooms - and he shows her every one. Her feet often ache by the time their exploring is through, and at the end of such nights he sits her on the couch and massages her feet.
Being taught the art of being a ghost by Erik is much different than being taught music by him. He holds music in too high a regard to treat it with anything other than complete devotion - their music lessons are professional and serious, a teacher and a pupil. But being a ghost - here he is mischievous, there are no rules. It is a side she has rarely seen of him, and she loves it. He is fearless in these moments, in his element. She tries not to think too much of the circumstances that have led him to know and use such skills, why it is imperative that he know how to escape a room without notice, why he must use tunnels instead of hallways.
Here he is simply a man with his wife, sharing his world of mystery and secrets - and occasionally sharing a kiss or two in the darkness. It feels strange to him to be showing anyone else this vast system of hidden passages and doors, a thing he's relied on to survive for so long - a thing that his survival depends upon it being secret. If Christine so wished it, she could send the gendarmes after him and there would be nowhere left to hide. His entire life is now laid bare before her, she could crush him like a bug under a boot - and the thought does scare him, but he is so tired of his solitude. But he trusts her completely - how can he not after all they have been through together? - and so not a single secret of the Opera Populaire is held back from her. She shall know it as he does.
"And no one uses these rooms for anything?" Christine asks, incredulous.
He has led her down a long tunnel deep underneath the Opera House, room after room on either side, most of them empty, some filled with rotting wooden barrels that likely contain gunpowder.
"Not anymore," he replies.
They reach the end of the tunnel and come upon what Erik had wanted to show her. He places a hand on her shoulder in warning - the stone pathway ends abruptly, ending in a sudden drop down into the underground lake.
Christine marvels as the sight of it. She knows that the lake is an extension of the Seine, but she's never given much thought to the sheer size of it before.
Erik turns the lantern off, and Christine gasps as the blue light of the glowing water fills the tunnel.
"Oh, Erik - it's beautiful! What makes it do that?"
He raises an eyebrow.
"I'm afraid I do not know, my dear. I've put much effort into finding out, but to no avail."
She steps closer to him, holding onto his arm and leaning against him. He slips an arm around her.
With the eerie blue water and the mossy stone floor and the drip drip drip of water coming from somewhere, she finds the setting oddly romantic. A glance up at Erik tells her that he feels similarly.
He stoops down as she leans up, and they spend a long moment in a kiss.
Erik knows that no matter how long he lives, no matter how often they share moments like this, he will never cease to be amazed at the miracle that is the sensation of her lips against his - but he is suddenly pulled from such tender thoughts by Christine gripping his shoulders tightly and the sound of her high pitched scream ringing off of the walls.
Everything had been quite lovely until she had felt something small and furry brush up against her ankle.
Erik is baffled by her behavior until he too feels something moving down by his ankles.
He sighs. They have been quite lucky, he supposes, to have only just now encountered a rat. He wisely chooses to withhold this information from her.
"What was it? What was it?" she babbles, clinging tightly to him, her eyes squeezed shut. "Oh! No, don't tell me - please, just turn the lantern back on."
He quickly turns the lantern back on before pulling her trembling form into his arms once more, stroking her hair.
"It's alright, Christine, it's alright," he soothes.
Erik has always been indifferent towards the rats that live so numerously in the Opera House (though he tries his best to prevent them from getting into his house) - they are merely fellow creatures who are shunned by the world above and shun it in return, trying to make it through another day just like he is, but now - now one has ruined an intimate moment with his dear wife, and because of the sins of that one single rat, he suddenly hates each and every last one of them with a burning passion.
Christine calms, and they both decide that they have had enough exploring for the day, so they return home.
The encounter with the rat, luckily, does not seem to dull her interest in following Erik into the walls as he had feared it would. On occasion they will hear a scritch of tiny claws, or a muffled squeak, and Christine will try her best to pretend that she did not hear it.
More than just the layout of the enormous building, he also teaches her all of the magician skills he knows, all of the things that have helped him to convince the poor denizens of the Opera House that he is truly a specter. Some she picks up easily, and some take more work, but she is determined and Erik is more than willing to continue with her training in the ghostly arts.
Eventually it becomes a second nature to her - she's able to slip away in shadow and climb the ropes and walk without a sound. There have been more than a handful of occasions that she didn't even realize she was walking so silently, suddenly appearing behind Madame Giry and frightening her on accident.
Although she's often with Erik when she's haunting the Opera, there are times he is otherwise occupied and she goes alone. Her command of opera gossip, while already impressive, now soars to new heights. She learns new information which she puts to good use, and quickly becomes a favorite of management - they often find themselves wondering how she knows just what they'd like done, suggests things they themselves were thinking, and offers solutions to problems they weren't aware anyone else knew of.
Who was stealing all of the earrings of out of the dressing rooms? Mlle Daae had an idea of who's vanity drawers to check. Were they going to be needing a replacement on short notice? Mlle Daae would mention that perhaps another understudy for a certain role would be smart, just in case the performer was deciding to leave suddenly. When was the last time anyone checked the pipes in the upper rooms? Mlle Daae managed to save them from quite a bit of water damage by mentioning it out of the blue one day, the leak was stopped while it was still a mere trickle before the entire pipe burst. Mlle Daae was truly an indispensable fountain of knowledge and advice.
It is no wonder, then, that one day while she's sitting in secret hallway where the sound from the managers' office carries, that she overhears her own name mentioned in a conversation regarding the current managers' possible retirement.
