Sometimes Antoinette Giry regretted the loss of the upper floor of her office. The extra storage space, the little sitting room where she could unwind and take breaks from work, the view of Paris from the windows. Sometimes she regretted losing these things, but on the whole she was quite pleased with what she had gained from giving these up nearly ten years ago.

She had been terribly uncertain when Nadir had brought up the concept, telling her about his associate from Persia who was in dire need of a job and a place to stay. In fact, she had outright refused upon hearing what exactly he had been up to in Persia, but Nadir had steadfastly vouched for the man and she trusted his judgment enough to agree to at least meet him before deciding.

She'd never forget that first meeting when Nadir had brought him in. He had warned her beforehand of his appearance so she wasn't surprised when he arrived and he didn't mince words about it - apparently the man was horribly disfigured under that white mask that covered nearly all of his face. From what she could see of the skin that showed through the openings of the mask on his right side, she could believe it. He had prepared her with a description of him, but nothing could prepare her for his actual presence - well over six feet tall, impeccably dressed, light amber eyes that held a piercing gaze, dark hair slicked back - the man oozed intimidation.

But one did not get far in Antoinette's line of work by showing when one was intimidated, so she drew herself up to her own full height of five and half feet, jutted her chin out, and eyed him up and down in a show of dominance.

"You must be Erik," she said in place of a greeting.

"Yes," he had taken his hat off and held it politely in his hands.

Manners, then, she had noted.

"What's your last name?"

He dropped his gaze to the ground.

"I don't have one."

She raised an eyebrow at Nadir, who gave a small shrug in return. Erik was telling the truth.

"If you expect to work for me, you need to know I don't tolerate any nonsense," she told him coldly.

"Yes ma'am," his tone was serious but the ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth as he remembered the conversation he had on the way over, with Nadir telling him in no uncertain terms that he better not fuck this opportunity up.

"We track down missing people here. The point is to keep them from being harmed. We don't solve our problems here with a Punjab lasso. Is that understood?"

His eyes widened for a brief moment at the mention of his weapon.

"I am... familiar with the concept."

Her mind still wavered. Was this really a good idea? An assassin helping in missing person cases? But he could bring a different perspective to it, and the man did nothing if not cut an imposing figure - something she could desperately use in her work. She was excellent at what she did, but it was so difficult to be taken seriously by the men in her field and by clients who doubted the ability of a woman. Erik could be quite helpful at lending credence to her skill - a man such as him who would follow her every word, who would stand behind her during investigations? He would hardly even need to do anything, just stand there and glower and already her whole business would look ten time more effective. She sighed inwardly that such a thing was needed, but the fact remained that it was. Antoinette Giry was good at what she did, but Giry and Erik would be afforded more respect.

"If you slip up even once, Nadir will hear about it."

Erik glanced over at Nadir. He was Erik's friend, yes, but he was also the chief of police and Erik knew there were only so many times Nadir could overlook his actions.

She paused as she regarded Erik, his eyes still focused on the floor. In all the years she'd known him, Nadir had never steered her wrong.

"You may stay upstairs, if you wish, and your room and board can be deducted from your salary."

He raised his eyes to meet her gaze.

"Thank you."

He sounded sincere enough, but it was terribly difficult to read any emotion on his face due to the mask.

"You may stay tonight, if you'd like - Nadir has informed me that you are somewhat between residences at the moment."

Erik nodded.

Antoinette looked at him expectantly, glancing towards the stairs that led to what would now be his rooms. He stood there awkwardly, not taking the hint.

"You may go to your room now, Erik," she finally told him.

"Oh! Yes ma'am. Thank you," he hurried up the stairs, his long legs allowing him to climb two steps at a time.

She watched him as he quickly disappeared from view and wondered what she'd gotten herself into.

"He's afraid of you," Nadir chuckled.

Giry smirked.

"Is he really?"

"He knows he's running out of chances for a fresh start. It's so hard for him to find work because of-" Nadir motioned to his face. "- he doesn't take well to people mentioning it, and so many people insist on mentioning it. Did you know he applied for a job at the Opera Populaire?" here Nadir lowered his voice.

"Oh?" Antoinette was thinking of her daughter who danced there. "Does he play an instrument?" she couldn't imagine him being on stage in any capacity due to his face, so the only other option had to be a musician.

"He plays beautifully - and he sings, too, he sings like a dream, Antoinette." he sighed before continuing in a whisper. "He auditioned for them and they wanted to hire him, but they refused to do so unless he removed his mask. Can you imagine? They wouldn't even let him play hidden away in the orchestra pit unless he removed it. Well, obviously he can't, and he fought them on it but they were quite insistent on the matter. He told me that they even tried to remove it forcefully. He was crushed. He actually cried over it. He had wanted nothing more than to be able share his music with others, even when he was... otherwise engaged, in Persia. But now it looks like that's never to be."

She glanced over at the stairs. That imposing man reduced to tears was an image she couldn't picture. She shivered.

"So I wanted to thank you, Antoinette, for doing this. A mind like his needs something to focus on, a problem to solve, a quest to keep him busy, or otherwise... Otherwise I fear he'll fall into something unsavory yet again."

She shot him a look of alarm and he winced at his choice of words.

"Not- not anything like what he did in Persia, I'm certain he's put that kind of thing behind him - but fraud and thievery are still unsavory, you know. I imagine he'll be on his best behavior here, but if he's not..."

Antoinette nodded. "I'll let you know."

Nadir brought in Erik's bag of belongings and took them upstairs to his new room. As he shook Erik's hand in farewell with one last admonishment to behave himself (which garnered no more than an eye roll from Erik) Nadir was stuck between being glad to finally have the man out of his own small apartment where he took up so much space and being concerned that he could no longer keep as close an eye on Erik as he wanted. Either way, Nadir shook his hand and left.

The following morning when Antoinette arrived in her office she knocked on the wall next to the stairs and called out for him. He arrived within moments, once again dressed finely and ready to start work. She spent the better part of the day showing him her filing system, explaining how she expected him to behave with clients, describing the policy procedures and investigation codes of conduct. Finally she had glanced up at the clock.

"I'm going out for lunch today. Would you like to come along?"

"No, thank you."

She nodded.

"Here is the extra key, in case you get back from your lunch before I do," she slid the key across the desk to him.

"Ah, no," he glanced over at it from the stack of current case files he was absorbed in. "I meant, I will not be eating lunch today at all, I am not hungry. I would much rather catch up on these cases."

So she left him on his own for the afternoon.

It had only been a half an hour after she had gone that the door swung open once again, a little bell ringing to alert him of the presence of a client.

He glanced up. A girl of about fifteen had entered and was staring at him with burning curiosity. He set the case file down and straightened in his chair.

"Is- is Antoinette here?" the girl asked as she crept closer to his desk.

"She is out at the moment, but I am her associate. How might I assist you?"

Ahhh, so this was the strange man Maman had been telling her about over dinner last night. Her eyes lit up.

"I'd like to report a kidnapping," she said, breathlessly and with far more enthusiasm than Erik thought was entirely healthy. "I saw him quite well, you must take down his description!"

Erik pulled a drawing pad and a pencil out from a drawer and set to work rendering the face she described. He turned out to be quite talented with a pencil, a fact that delighted Meg to no end as she made up feature after feature of this fantastical kidnapper and watched as Erik dutifully etched them into being.

"And his eyebrows were big! No, bigger. And he had a mustache. No, not like that, like a handlebar mustache. Yes, and it went way out - no, farther than that! Oh, that's a little too far, don't you think? Yes, that's better," she happily described from her perch on the chair, leaning over the desk with her chin propped on her hands as she made him erase and redraw over and over again.

Antoinette returned from her lunch to see this strange scene. She frowned.

"Meg, what are you doing here? Don't you have rehearsals today?" she walked over to look at what her daughter was engrossed in. "Why are you bothering Erik?"

Erik paused in his work, glancing from Antoinette to what he now realized was her daughter. The girl -Meg, apparently- had a mirthful smirk on her face as she caught Erik's eye. It was in that moment that he realized he'd been had. There was no kidnapper.

"Rehearsals were cancelled today, Maman - the stage caught fire."

Antoinette sighed wearily.

"That's no reason to bring this nonsense here," she told her as she gestured to the sketch. "I have to pay him for the work he does, you know."

"You would have to pay him regardless of if he sat here and read or if he drew me a picture. At least I got a picture out of it!" Meg made grabby hands for the piece of paper, which Erik reluctantly tore from the book and handed to her.

How terribly embarrassed he was to have thought that it was real, an embarrassment that only deepened when Meg looked at the paper frowned, sliding it back to him and tapping her finger on the space in the lower corner.

"You have to sign your name right here," she pouted.

His face flushed red under the mask as he gripped the pencil and scribbled out his name in the corner. He hated how childish his handwriting looked, how difficult it was to get the letters to look right, the amount of effort that went into something so seemingly simple especially when his skill at drawing in all forms was so good. But it seemed every skill he had with a pencil suddenly vanished when it was time to write words.

Nevertheless he returned the signed paper to Meg, who took it and positively skipped out of the room. He and Antoinette stared at the door she left through for a moment before Erik broke the silence.

"I assume Nadir will be hearing of this, then."

And Antoinette couldn't help but laugh at his grave and serious tone.

He took to the work like a natural, falling into it easily and pursuing cases with a determination that rivaled Antoinette's own - he often would skip meals and, she suspected, sleep, when he was working, a course which often brought about the conclusion of cases much quicker than expected. His mind was that of a genius, she marveled, and wondered at what his life could have been like had he been gifted with a face like any other. He was always respectful of her, never doubted her ideas or opinions simply because they were hers - a novel concept for her when working with a male partner. And though he excelled at field work he also never balked or complained when assigned paperwork. When working with the police or other detectives he knew when to speak up and when to stay quiet - to push for her ideas to be heard when they fell on deaf ears, to push on doors as they were attempting to be closed in their faces, and to push Antoinette to keep continuing when things got difficult.

She regretted the loss of the upper rooms, yes - but she never regretted Erik.

In turn for all he did for her business, she also graciously allowed him the use of basement in which he somehow managed to drag an entire organ into. She never pried about his past or about Persia or what was behind his mask. She allowed him days off at a time when he needed them, after she realized that on occasion he suffered from debilitating headaches. And perhaps, in Erik's mind, the most important thing she did for him was to treat him no differently than anyone else, although she surely wasn't even aware of this or how it affected him. She never cringed under that preternatural gaze that he couldn't help, never let her eyes linger with disgust or morbid fascination on the skin that peeked out from the corner of his mask and trailed down his neck, never shied away from the accidental brush of cold fingers when handing him something, never cowered next to his imposing height. She treated him like a human, like a person, not some circus freak, and for that she had his undying gratitude and loyalty.

And so the years had marched on, the two of them working cases and enjoying each other's company.

Nearing that ten year mark, he had insisted on gifting her with a small remodel of her office, and she had to admit that it was looking rather nice, especially the new door.

The harsh lamplight glinted off the golden lettering on the glass of the door - 'Madame Antoinette Giry, Private Eye'.

Said Madame sat behind her desk, stared at the stack of paperwork and rubbed her temples. What she wanted more than anything in that moment was a cigarette - she could almost taste the overpowering flavor of ash and fire, but she had sworn them off ages ago, a promise to her now-departed husband when they had first married. She hadn't had a cigarette in twenty five years, and she had no intention of having one now - but sometimes the urge was there, all the same. She pushed it out of her mind with a long sigh and finally began to settle to the task of sorting the papers when a knock came at the door - blessed distraction.

She knew it could only be one person this late at night, and as she opened the door she found she was correct. The police chief was there to greet her.

"Nadir, come in."

She graciously ushered her friend inside.

"How was your day? Hopefully better than mine."

Nadir sat on the couch and sighed.

"That Jospeh Boquet again," he shook his head. "He's spending the night at the station - again. He was out in the square, roaring drunk and picking fights," Nadir pauses. "Again."

Antoinette chuckled at this. The stage hand at the Opera where her daughter worked was quite troublesome. It was far from the first time he had to spend the night at the station.

"How is Erik?" Nadir asked.

Antoinette frowned.

"He couldn't work at all today. He's been quite incapacitated with it all, but hopefully it passes by tomorrow."

Nadir made a sympathetic noise. "Such a shame he's not able to take anything for it. Is he upstairs right now?"

"Yes. I've had twice as much work on my plate because of it. He normally does all the filing, and I'm sure he won't mind having to get through the backlog of it all, but I did think it would be nice if I could help him out so he doesn't have so much to do when he's feeling better, but-" she gestured to the stack on her desk. "Clearly it is not going how I intended."

Nadir began to speak but was cut off by a voice coming from the stairs.

"It appears we have a guest," Erik was slowly descending the stairs, gripping the handrail to keep his balance.

The last remnants of the throbbing headache were still lingering, the desk lamp burning his eyes and making him squint and scowl. The dark circles which were a constant under his eyes looked all the darker.

"Erik," Nadir greeted him. "I was just asking about how you were doing."

"Yes, Daroga, and you were doing so in a voice which could wake the dead, hence my sudden appearance."

"So you heard about Boquet, then," Nadir chuckled.

"Who the devil cares anything about Boquet in the slightest," Erik pressed the heels of his hands over the eyeholes in his mask as he slumped onto the couch near Nadir.

"I care, when I have to escort him in such a state as he was tonight. He took a swing at me, you know."

"Daroga, I have half a mind to take a swing at you right now."

But Erik made no move from where he was lazily sitting and neither of the others gave his threat a second thought - they were far too used to his grumpy moods when he was in pain.

"Oh, Nadir, I received word that Christine Daae is on her way back, did you hear?" Antoinette found the letter from several days ago that had been buried under other papers. "She's hoping to get an understudy role in the latest production, apparently her training in England went quite well."

"Good, good." Nadir nodded. "The poor girl has had quite a difficult time, I'm glad she's had something go right for a change. Do you know when she'll be arriving?"

Antoinette shrugged sheepishly.

"The letter was from days ago, so I imagine she could show up at any time."

"Well, I'll keep an eye out for her at the Opera."

Erik perked up at the mention of the opera. He had recently felt there had been enough years that had passed after that heart-wrenching audition to perhaps finally go to a show every now and then, although he hadn't gone yet and he had barely played much at all since that night. The organ in Giry's basement was just gathering dust, his violin just sitting in a corner on his bedroom. He had tried to play something every now and then, but the spark was gone and he didn't think he'd ever get it back again. Still, listening to an opera held some appeal for him, if the singers were good.

"What's this about then?" he asked.

"Christine? Oh, I don't think you've met her, Erik. She's a little older than Meg, they were in the ballet and chorus together when they were younger. I knew her guardian, Madame Valerius - Christine is an orphan, you see - but Valerius passed away a number of years ago as well, and Christine has spent the last five years in England studying music."

Erik's mind had started to glaze over somewhere around 'they were in the ballet together' - it was simply too much detail and so many words and he couldn't keep up with them all. He had merely wanted to know who the opera singer was, but apparently that was too involved a story. No matter, he thought, if she was still attempting to land an understudy role, she couldn't be that good.

"Oh, yes, I see," he offered instead.

He rose from the couch and surveyed the massive stack of paperwork.

"It is late, Antoinette," he said gently. "You should go home and get some rest. Leave the papers to me, I will finish them."

"Are you certain, Erik?" she wanted to protest, wanted to help lighten the load for him, but she still stood up because she would be lying to say she wasn't exhausted.

"Very."

"Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow, then."

Nadir rose as well and followed her out, bidding Erik farewell.

Erik turned the lamp on the desk off, opting instead to open the blinds on the window to let the streetlight in. He brought a few candles down from his room and set them in strategic places around the office. The room remained obstinately dark, but he had always been good at being able to see in low light, and least this wouldn't aggravate his migraine. He enjoyed the silence as he worked, so he stayed up for hours sorting and filing the papers. Fatigue began to set in around the early morning hours, at which point he left the remainder of the work for later, closing the blinds and blowing out the candles and shuffling upstairs for sleep.

When he awoke once again, a glance at the clock informed him that he had not only slept past the normal hour they opened the office but had also slept through half of the lunch hour. He sighed. Surely Antoinette had seen to opening, then, and had left him to sleep. She would be at lunch now, the woman never neglected her strict schedule of breaks from work, something Erik was terrible at.

She must have left the radio on when she left, he mused. There was the sound of singing coming from downstairs, an operatic tune being sung by a woman. It was quite good, he thought to himself as he adjusted his wig and mask by feel as opposed to looking in a mirror. He found himself humming along softly as he continued getting dressed, until, as he was putting on his cufflinks - the last of dressing routine - he decided to sing along with the radio, emboldened by being the only one there to hear him.

He only made it halfway through a verse, however, when the lovely voice from below suddenly stopped. He stopped a second later, a sudden wave of horror hitting him and threatening to make the world tip sideways.

That wasn't the radio.