Paris, 1871

The last time Erik had been this furious, Charles Garnier had ordered the Ionic columns Erik had designed for the main floor loggia to be replaced with ones of the Corinthian order. That had been more than five years ago, and Erik still grew murderous if he was occasioned to go out and see the opera house's façade.

Still, that was merely a difference in opinion between an architect and his (undeniably more talented) contractor. Garnier could eat his dying and damned Second Empire dream for all Erik cared. But this—this—was vandalism.

They had commandeered the opera house quite literally from top to bottom—the roof was now a launching pad for hot air balloons, and the cellars… well, the cellars were now real cells, a prison for everyone who did not quite conform to the glorious new republic, the irrepressible Commune.

Perhaps he would be less cynical about this new reign of liberty, equality, and fraternity if such words actually meant something to him. Liberty? He had the freedom to do whatever he liked, so long as he did it in shadows. Equality? God knew, Erik could never be a man's equal. He danced between superiority and inferiority, and knew no balance twixt the two. And fraternity? No soul would claim kinship with Erik, until that inevitable day he took his place with the legions of Hell.

No, as far as Erik was concerned, there was precious little difference between the Paris Commune and last year's siege by the Prussians. Both had halted work on the erstwhile Imperial Academy of Music.

Politics! Erik was sure they worked well enough for normal men, but he would just as soon ignore them. Kings, Emperors, Sultans, and Shahs had no place in Erik's world beyond the stage.

Alas, politics had caused the stage to languish, an incomplete mass of framework—rather like the rest of the opera house. He lived in that half-made masterpiece, and lived for the day that it might see some better semblance of life in its halls. But this? No, not this. This was an infestation. Desecration.

The Communard jailers had even taken it upon themselves to create a new series of corridors leading down to the cellars. The entry point was, of all places, in what should have been a dressing room.

…Did these revolutionaries even know how to read a blueprint? Couldn't they figure out that a better path would have started externally—say, the Rue Scribe? Idiots, imbeciles, and philistines to boot. Erik suffered no guilt when he leaked ether into the junction the guards dallied in. He wanted a closer look at the amendments being made to his opera house, and he very much did not want to be accosted while doing so.

The drop itself was not terribly far, enough to bruise but not break, but it was followed by an unpleasantly long… tumble. Erik landed, winded and with no desire to try to arise. He conducted an inventory as best he could. No breaks, no sprains, no mask. He gave a cursory pat around the close ground, but found nothing. A single lit match did precious little to dispel the deep dark. The flame caught a tiny, metallic reflection. It turned out to be a gold wedding band on the hand of another unconscious man.

Not unconscious, Erik realized as the match burned down to his fingertip. Quite dead. His hands were bloodied and wrecked, as if he had attempted to climb to upper passage way. It had not turned out well. Perhaps he made it to the top and then took a misstep similar to Erik; but instead of rolling and banging his way to the ground he had fallen straight down. His body was rapidly cooling in the gloom, and Erik had little desire to keep company with a corpse.

He tried to conjure up a map of the bowels of the opera house in his mind. He had a vague idea of where he might be—near the waterworks—but who knew just how extensive the Communards had been in their alterations.

It had been only a month, Erik told himself. They couldn't have completely rerouted the underground structure. It was entirely possible that there was a door out of this little crypt—there! It was wood on wood, but Erik's fingers brushed over the hinges.

Next time, he was bringing a lantern.

Ah, he was deep under the stage, on the shore of the lake. There was precious little illumination here either, though something diffused and caught a gleam on the water. There was supposed to be more light here, Erik remembered, but the vents and windows were mostly covered in scaffolding.

"François!"

Erik froze. A woman voice echoed weirdly, almost a siren's call from under the lake.

No, she was somewhere close by, hurried footsteps slipping in gravel and sand. "François! François, did you find a way out?"

Erik stayed stone still. He could barely make out her figure, a shadow on a shadow. She was turning around and around. She ended up stumbling right into Erik

"François!" Erik felt the weight on a small hand rest on his chest, but was quickly withdrawn. "Or rather, not… Who are you? Did François send you? My God, it's been hours!"

She can't see me, Erik realized belatedly. If all he could see was a vague shadow, what more could she see of him? His hand flew up to his uncovered face. She can't see me, she can't see me…

"I'm one of the contractors," he said. His voice came out as a whisper, but he could hear the echo ring out over the water.

"Where's François?" she asked.

Single minded, this girl. Erik absently wondered if she wore a matching gold band to the dead man in the other room.

"I have not seen him. I took a fall."

"The same thing happened to us!" She said. "And then we ended up here, and then François went to find help… a contractor, you say? Do you know the way out? Do you even know where we are?"

"There should be a path into one of the lower cellars," Erik said, "provided we are not on the wrong shore, that is."

"What is this place?"

"It's the lake," Erik said simply, which was what all those who had worked on the project had taken to calling it. It annoyed him that the name had stuck with him, and he found himself compelled to explain: "which is incorrect. It's a cistern, a massive man-made water reserve. Not a lake in the least." He tried to find the far wall. "Just stay there—I'll try to find—"

"No!" Erik flinched as he felt her hand latch onto him. "François left me here—you will not do the same!"

Erik searched the darkness for some idea of what her face looked like, but there was nothing to see. "Very well."

Her name was Thérèse Perrey, she had volunteered to be warden over the women prisoners, and she believed in anarchy as only someone who came from a comfortable background could.

"You're not one of our contractors," she commented after some time had passed.

Erik felt like he was walking in circles around the massive support pillars and feeling his way around slimy stone walls. Nothing! He knew there was an entrance, he was sure of it…

"You don't believe in the Commune at all," she continued, "everyone here does. Who are you?"

Erik sighed, exasperated. He pitched his voice high and sing-songish. "Why, Madame! Can't you tell? I'm the Opera Ghost, here to wreak terrible vengeance on all those who delay the inauguration of this stage!" In his usual voice, he added, "It's supposed to be La Juive, you know."

There was silence for a moment, and then Thérèse began to chuckle. It soon became a fully laugh, that echoed beautifully in the dark.

"Oh, it seems like an age since I last laughed," she said, "it was probably just this morning when I did, but it feels so long ago."

"Your servant, mademoiselle."

"So why the opera, Opera Ghost?"

"Why the Commune, Citoyenne?"

She paused. Erik could hear her every inhale and exhale, resounding like a drum beat. "Because there's nothing for me in that old world, nothing beyond confinement. And I rather think I'd like to know what freedom is. And so, the Commune."

Erik let her comment hang in the silence for some time, mulling over it and testing it against what he knew of the world. "And so," he said at length, "the opera."

"Oh."

After that, there were no other interrogations. It was tedious, groping around in the darkness, but there was something wonderful about how Thérèse laughed at all of Erik's little quips. She even sounded genuinely concerned when Erik banged into a support pillar.

Erik tried to remember the last time he had spoken with a person. At least a year, since the construction had come to a standstill.

Garnier had said, "I hope it doesn't all come undone."

Erik had nodded in response. And before that?... workmen. He had relayed orders to workmen, and eavesdropped on the patrons of the Comique as he took in every opera he had time to sneak in to.

Beyond that, his time in France had been… quiet. Free of hateful crowds, and malicious stares, and awful paranoia, and really any contact with people whatsoever. He communicated mostly by post—awkwardly, with his poor penmanship and his sleeve perennially dragging through ink, but well enough to order goods and settle accounts.

But casual conversation? No. And a pleasant casual conversation with a woman? None that Erik cared to recall.

She did not know, tattooed in Erik's mind. She does not know that she chats and laughs with the devil, with a murderer, with a monster.

How delightful, that she did not know. How utterly, utterly delightful.

In the end, he found a counterweight, which when released opened to another dark corridor. A service corridor, if Erik was not mistaken. A dark service corridor that would eventually give way to a lighted hallway. Erik paused at the threshold.

"Why do you wait? Do you think it will take the wrong way?"

"No," Erik admitted, "I just remembered that I lost something back there."

"Something important?" Thérèse asked. She sounded impatient.

Erik thought of his mask, soft black velvet lined in silk, laying somewhere near a dead man's shadow. "Not particularly, I suppose."

"Well, then," Thérèse took his arm, "shall we?"

The walk was long and made in gloom, but it never veered to the right or the left.

"I think you should come with us to the café tonight. The landlady is awfully clever—while everyone else has resorted to dog and cat, she still manages to get beef."

"Or so she says," Erik pointed out.

She made a little noncommittal noise to that. Her tone became impossibly saucier "But you'll come? I'll make a proper Communard out of you before… well, before tomorrow morning, I should think."

Erik laughed at her, because he could not imagine what else to do. They came to the end, and Erik threw open the door, letting Thérèse into the well-lit back stage. He did not look at her. He did not need to, he heard her.

Her breath caught in her throat, and was released with pitiful, strangled sound. Erik hazarded a glance at her. Pretty girl, in a sharp-featured, romanticized grisette fashion. But the green shade that tinged her cheeks was ill-becoming, and her hand had settled protectively over her nose.

What? Did she think he lopped them off as midnight snacks?

"What I lost," Erik said, as nonchalantly as he could, "was my mask."

Thérèse squeaked in reply.

"The stage is just beyond that hall," he continued, willing himself to stay calm and his tone even. "I could lead you, if you'd like."

She managed to nod, and for an instant her hand resting on his arm again. But she snatched it away quickly, and sobbed, and ran.

The Commune fell a month later and within a few weeks Garnier had returned with his workforce.

"You're still alive," Garnier commented.

Erik had shrugged in response, and continued on with his work. He thought of his future, and his half-penned opera, and of that vast, dark lake and its inaccessible far shore. What might one do with such a space?

The question consumed him, and at length he determined to appraise its value at closer range. He took a lantern and descended to the cellars.

An envelope had been jammed between the door and its frame—it was addressed to 'the Opera Ghost.'

It took a moment before Erik realized that the envelope was for him. Not a name, just a patently bizarre title. How many of those had he masqueraded with over the years?... The Living Death, the Angel of Death, the Trap-Door Lover… yes, Erik could certainly see a theme that had begin when he was nothing more than a child. Fate, or damnation of his own devising? Or, of the world's?

The envelope contained no letter, just a scrap of cloth. A ladies' handkerchief, edged in lace. Two holes had been cut into the fabric and hemmed, and two blue hair ribbons had been affixed as ties.

He held it up to his face. A mask, of course. A mask, rather like his first mask. At the corner, in fanciful script, TCP was embroidered.

He clutched the white gossamer white mask as he trekked back to the shore, running his fingers over her stitches. When he arrived, and his lantern cast phantoms on the black water, he threw the mask in, watched it float and then slowly sink.