A bigger wait than I would have liked - my apologies! I hope I've made it clear how dark this story might indeed get eventually. We're starting with an M-rating this time, after all.

This story is a new idea for me. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Chapter Two: Meet

Over the next several days, Papa's cough worsened until he was unable to make the walk to the park. Christine had feebly offered to go alone, but it was obvious that a young woman could not be seen doing such a thing without a chaperone. Their meager savings dwindled, and on the third day of being unable to earn any money, Christine gave him the last of their stew, not telling him there was none for her.

She cleaned the pot, listening to Papa wring out a cough that seemed to never stop. He had already drunk numerous cups of tea, and he had not left his bed since yesterday. Nothing was helping anymore. When one cough bled into another, she dried her hands and hurried to his room.

"Papa!"

He was doubled over, face turned blood-red from the bombastic force of his cough. He could scarcely draw enough breath to continue the awful raspy noise. Christine rubbed his back in slow circles, trying to encourage his lungs to calm down. The attack lasted longer than any other, seconds stretching into minutes.

She could take no more. She pressed her mouth in a firm line. "I am going to find a doctor," she said, squeezing his hand. She moved toward the door, but he grabbed onto her skirt, stopping her. "Papa, you need help!"

He shook his head, his eyes red and watering. Finally, his lungs eased enough that he could take a sip of water. "No doctor," he wheezed. "No money."

Her own vision began to blur. "I will go begging in the streets if I have to before I let you go another day without seeing someone. I'll return as quickly as I can." She jerked her skirts free of his grasp and bolted away, not that he could follow in his condition.

Only a couple coins jangled in the small purse as Christine snatched it up and slid it into her pocket. Fastening her cloak at her throat, she ran out the door of their apartment and into the hallway. At this hour, she had no idea where she might find a doctor, especially in this neighborhood. She flew down the many flights of stairs, using for a moment upon the stoop at the bottom. Even as far as she was now from their apartment, she could still hear Papa's terrible cough, and this hastened her resolve to find someone, anyone, who might help.

The night air slapped against her cheeks. A brisk wind had been brewing since the afternoon, and it swirled through the narrow streets, whipping her loose, tangled curls about her face. The threat of rain had painted the sky an angry, overcast gray all day. Now, the street lamps barely cut into the damp darkness.

She peered down the narrow street in both directions, hoping to quickly find someone who could help. She could see no one around. No doubt the nasty turn in the weather had chased away any who might brave the night.

Panic threatened to overtake her, but she pushed it down. She clutched her cloak tighter about her shoulders and chose a direction, one she knew would eventually take her a tavern that stayed open late.

Lightning flashed across the tops of the tenements a few seconds before she felt the rumbling of thunder in the balls of her feet. An impending storm hastened toward Paris. "Hurry, Christine," she hissed to herself. The first droplets of water hit her forehead, warning of what was to come. Again, a surge of panic, one that this time caused her steps to quicken until her slippered feet slapped upon the wet cobblestone in quick, rhythmic alarm.

A flash of black at the corner of her vision caught her attention. A shadow even darker than the night backdrop appeared, sliding just barely into her notice. She skidded to a stop on the sidewalk, heart thumping wildly. She knew she looked as hysterical as she felt, standing there in the night with her hair unbound while an approaching thunderstorm whipped up around her.

She glanced over her shoulder back the way she had come. The street stretched between the two row buildings, fading into darkness like a tunnel. Somewhere, she could hear the rain beating against stone as it drew closer.

Christine turned back around to continue to the tavern. And drew up sharply.

A man stood before her, closing enough to touch if she reached out.

His height loomed head and shoulders above her, a thick black cloak curving around his wiry form. His long legs were clad in crisp black trousers and stood in a casual stance at odds with the gloved hands she saw clenched into fists at his sides. For some strange reason, one of her hands came up to press against the side of her neck – an unconscious gesture that later she would not remember doing.

She tilted back her head to stare up at him with wild, round eyes. A bone-white mask covered his face from his forehead to the thin set of his mouth.

A scream welled up inside of her, but the sound of his dulcet murmur caused her to swallow it down. Those thin lips parted, and she watched, entranced, as they formed the shape of her name.

"Christine."

Her own voice struggled out of her throat, rasping, "Do… I know you?"

He did not answer. At that moment, the pelting raindrops swirled into a downpour. She found herself hurled backward into the frame of a closed doorway, slamming against the concrete just enough for her to feel the impact but not hard enough to knock the wind from her. Her mind spun, trying to piece together how she had been in the street one moment and then against the building the next.

The man was still in front of her, uncomfortably close. One of his forearms rested just above her head, his cloak forming a black curtain between her and the street. He leaned in closer still, and the brim of his hat nearly covered the crown of her head.

He was… shielding her from the rain?

She tried to look up at him again, but he was too close, too tall, to see directly in such a position. Glimpses revealed to her the smooth, pale skin of his face… a marblesque facade different from the mask she thought she had seen earlier. Her eyes seemed at war with what her mind was telling her and what they were truly seeing. She shook her head against the confusion, her thoughts blurring together, difficult to keep straight.

"Monsieur," she tried again. "Do we know each other?"

Whether he heard her or not, he did not answer. He was still as concrete, his towering presence bent over her in careful precision to keep from touching her. Somewhere beyond the curve of their bodies, the rain continued heavily.

He spoke again, his voice sliding over her, rumbling from within his throat. "Your pulse is racing. You are frightened... of me? No, you were frightened before."

"M-Monsieur?"

Was he even speaking to her? His attention seemed elsewhere, but then his free hand lifted, and she watched as long fingers encased in white opera gloves reached out as though to touch a lock of her unruly hair.

She sucked in a quick spurt of air, feeling dizzy. "Excuse me, monsieur, but I must be going," she said, and she placed her own palm flat against his chest. Her own heart beat wildly, as he himself had somehow noticed, but he was a statue before her. In the small space between them, she could not even measure if he drew breath.

Her hand upon his chest seemed to rouse him from his thoughts, however. He jerked back his hand from her hair at the same time he straightened his other arm, his long fingers instead splaying across the stone at her back. A line of rain managed to edge past the hulk of his body and fell like icy stings upon her forehead.

Two golden eyes pivoted to stare down at her. His face shifted again, blurred. Christine blinked rapidly and tried to focus, and the white mask from earlier returned. Then his face returned to the pale smoothness it had been earlier – a perfectly formed face with narrow, long features. Her ears began to buzz, the same feeling she might have if she were about to fall unconscious. Maybe she was more tired than she had thought…

"Christine," he murmured again.

She felt the hairs along her arms rise to attention. What was it about this man that was causing such a strange reaction within her? She had felt this same uneasiness for the past few weeks whenever…

Her hand upon his chest pushed at him with greater insistence, but still he did not budge. She knew this man, recognized his clothes, his height, this same strangeness about his face. She recognized this feeling she had around him – of being held beneath water, of standing on the edge of a cliff, of the expectation of something more.

"You're the man from the park," she said in a strangled whisper. "The man who has been watching Papa play every evening." And then, even more horrified: "You followed us home."

Whatever had come over him earlier, he seemed to finally, truly, see her now. His honey-colored eyes swept over her. His face contained a neutral expression, carefully blanked, but his eyes… she felt like they took in her every detail.

His boot scraped against the road as he took a step closer again, the hulk of his shape once more blocking out the rain. Again, he dodged her question. "You will catch your death out here, either by chill or by knife. The streets of this neighborhood at night are no place for a woman."

She tilted her chin up at that. Suddenly, she remembered that she had no time to waste chatting with strangers. "My father is ill. I need to find someone to help him. If you will excuse me…"

When she tried to edge past him, his free hand shot out and clamped around her upper arm. His fingers were long enough to loop around the entirety of her arm, and his steely, cold grip might as well have been made of metal.

"You have accomplished your goal, mademoiselle," he said. "Go home to your father and leave the darkness to the monsters."

She swallowed hard. She wanted to argue further with him, but she had a feeling it would be useless. She had felt the strength of him beneath her palm, the unforgiving hardness of his hand holding her arm like a vice. And yet despite how frightened he made her feel, despite how confused she was by him, never once had she wondered if he would harm her.

"You will help me?" she asked, her surge of yearning unmasked.

"Within the half hour. I swear it. Go home… Christine."

She swallowed again, her throat running dry, her heart leaping at her name within that silky voice. Then she nodded, and with that, he released the grip on her arm and stepped back a pace. Scooting along the wall, she stepped around him, noticing how he pivoted to keep her in his line of view.

What was it about walking away from the dark that could set one's blood aflame with panic? As a little girl, Christine had bolted whenever it was night, running from the room to her parents' bed or dashing up the stairs as though something might leap out of the darkness and nip at her heels. Again, she had the sensation of standing on the edge of a cliff, but she was not sure which way would cause her to fall.

Wrenching her eyes from the man in black, Christine fled.

Her father was still coughing when she flew back into the apartment, dripping rainwater upon the wooden floor. She toed off her sodden shoes, grabbed a towel for her hair, and knelt at his side.

"Someone is coming, Papa," she told him. "Just hold on a little longer." She rubbed his back and tried to help him focus on each breath that he could draw into his ragged lungs. Each breath in and out that she took with him served to also calm her own tensions.

Mere fifteen minutes later, a knock sounded on the door. Christine scrambled to her feet, opened the door, and found a rather short, stout man carrying a medical kit.

"M-May I help you, monsieur?" she asked, unable to keep the hope from her voice.

The man ducked his head within, looking about expectantly. "I am Dr. Martin. I was told there was an emergency."

Christine stepped back to let him in. "My father is sick with a chronic cough. Please, monsieur, if there is anything you can do to help him, we would both be at your service."

"Pardon me." He swept in confidently and went right to Charles. He closed the bedroom door behind him, but that was just as well. Christine was a bundle of enough nerves without having to watch the examination.

The next moments seem to stretch far too long. Finally, Dr. Martin removed himself from Papa's room. The glimpse Christine saw of her father found him resting in bed, his breathing more even than before, the blanket drawn to his chin.

"Doctor?"

Dr. Martin was busy setting some vials upon their small kitchen table. As he mixed and portioned medicine, he said, "Your father is quite ill, his coughing progressive. I am mixing a drachm of belladonna. He has already had a dose, but he can take a teaspoonful every two hours with perhaps one more if he cannot sleep tonight. I will return tomorrow evening to check him again."

"I am so grateful, monsieur." She wrung her hands. "I… I should freely admit that we don't have any way to pay you."

He gave her a shrewd look. "My wages have already been paid, and well enough to last the month! You shall be seeing a lot of me around from now on, Mademoiselle Daaé."

By that, she was stunned and could do little more than thank him profusely as he hurried from their apartment.

It was only later, when she undressed for bed, that she noticed her scant purse in her pocket had been joined by a second bag full of coin.

Erik moved with slower strides back toward his residence, now that he was certain the doctor had made his call. Moving across the neighborhood with such speed had cost him much of his energy.

Even though he had allowed Darius to provide him with a vial of Lucas's blood every day since the first sample, those few sips did little to appease the gnawing hunger in his belly. They merely staunched the shakiness that would return by the end of the night, slow the fatigue that would always settle about his limbs again.

How fortunate that he had drunk before venturing out to her home tonight.

He had previously maintained enough distance from her to keep his sanity. The two weeks watching her as her father played the violin had sped by all too quickly. When they had stopped coming, his position near her had only changed – standing beneath her window rather than behind the tree.

He had thought to spend another night merely lurking in the shadows outside her apartment. He had not expected her to suddenly run outside, certainly not with the threat of a spring thunderstorm. Her hair had fanned behind her in golden curls, her face set with fierce determination. She was beautiful, but that thought had not lingered long in his mind.

The panic and fear had poured off her in waves, stirring the predator within him. He had pushed her against the building only half to protect her from the downpour – he had needed her to stop moving long enough for him to reign in his instincts to hunt. His fangs had pressed against his top lip, aching with the need to break her pale skin.

Her pulse had throbbed just beneath the surface of her throat. It would have been all too easily to succumb.

Her voice had drawn him back out again. She had been frightened before he arrived, a fact that aided him in calming down. While his behavior and presence did little to snuff those fears, he was not the root cause of them. After that, he had been able to deal with his instincts and shift himself properly into the moment.

At his side, his fingers spasmed in remembrance. For a moment, he had gripped her upper arms to hasten her against the building, felt her soft flesh give under his hold. For a moment, he had trapped her there with his hand upon her arm – too many times touching her without consequence. Over and over, he pictured himself removing his glove and feeling a spiral of golden curl between the pads of his fingertips. He truly might have been lost then.

He had stood too close to her, felt the heat of her living body. Now, he needed to forget.

His chest ached. He rubbed at it angrily, increased his pace. He couldn't go home just yet, not this on edge, not with Darius, with his constant questions, wondering why. During a night like this one, he met no one on the streets. Even if he had, they would have seen little more than a shadow, a vague glimpse in the rain easily forgotten.

Before he knew it, he stood outside the Palais Garnier.

Too long he had spent wasting beneath the walls of the opera house. Two decades ago, he had decided to abandon his underground home and live above. Only then had he realized how much being in the Palais had transformed him into the very monster he had once fought viciously to avoid becoming. He had spent less time cultivating his persona as a maestro and more upon terrorizing anyone who had disagreed with him.

Daroga had pulled him out of the mess he had made. He had cleaned up the stagehand's body, forged the death of the Phantom who had haunted those halls, and helped Erik establish himself as a new composer: Maestro Voclain – the renowned composer who lived a reclusive life on the other side of the city. In some bizarre way, it had worked.

When Daroga had left, Erik had clung to this new identity to avoid relapsing back into his old ways. Like the manner in which he now slid around the side of the Palais Garnier, a black eel unnoticed by all.

His old hidden side entrance still operated, despite its disuse for years. He slipped within the walls of the Palais Garnier like he had never left and found his way in the darkness without needing any light to see. His feet found the familiar pathways, working upon muscle memory, and before long, he stood near the back of the stage. The company was between productions, and his sharp ears caught the soft footfalls of ballet girls practicing their leaps.

The old woman dressed in black could have been one like him, if she had been so inclined. He had once offered it to her during a moment of weakness, when he had been mad at Daroga, mad at the world, and determined to seek attention elsewhere. He had never really been able to fully explain to her what he was, what exactly he offered. Somehow, she had known her dislike of it all the same. Her sharp tongue had cut him deeply. It had been the last time they had spoken face-to-face.

She had grown old since the time he had last been here. He let his foot fall upon a creak in the floor, and her head tilted sharply to the side, her ear catching the familiar sound.

Her cane thumped upon the stage. "Ten-minute break, mademoiselles! Stretch those calves!"

The ballet rats responded immediately. Twittering, eager for the break, they scuttled off the stage. Madame Giry smoothed her graying hair over one ear – not that any strand was out of place – seeming undisturbed that she was now alone with the Phantom who had once rained down so much terror here.

"You have a lot of nerve," she said, after a pregnant pause. "This is a direct violation of our agreement."

"Yes," he said. He stepped through a hidden panel along the side of the stage, staying hidden in the shadows where only she could see him.

Madame Giry half-turned, laying one critical eye upon him, thin arms folded. "The managers have no response for you yet. But I suppose this is not about whatever composition on which you are currently working?"

"It is not."

"You look well enough." Her gaze swept up and down his form. "Alive, at any rate."

"If you can call this living. And you, madame? Are you and yours well?"

"Do you actually care?" She puffed a sigh. "Perhaps you noticed that my little Meg is not one of the dancers here. She is to be married soon to a young man who can keep up with her. I suppose you could say they are in love, but in any case, we shall be leaving Paris by the end of the year. Leaving France altogether."

He nodded as though he had expected this. People moved on, people left. He was the one who was rooted to the same spot, stuck in the same loop, decade after decade.

"Were you going to tell me?" he asked more smoothly than he felt.

"In letter form, if nothing more."

The tension lay thickly between them, constricting his own throat. He turned as though to leave, cloak swirling about his legs.

The steel in her voice softened. "Why are you here, Erik?"

He continued to draw back, hating the new lilt he heard. Her anger he could stomach. Her pity… She called his name again, softer still. He stepped halfway back through the hidden panel. The urge to rip something apart was rising within him, and he could not angle that unjustly toward her, would not endanger her as he had in the past.

He would never tell her the true reason he had wanted to come here. That he had wanted to be reminded of the person he no longer was. That he had wanted to trade words with someone who knew him. To be reminded that he still existed in this world. Everything and anything that would stir far too much pity.

Instead, he settled for a different source of conversation. It was too early to be asking this of her, but he did it anyway. "I hope to marry in the next several weeks."

Shock flitted across her lined face and was gone. She cleared her throat. "Oh?"

"The mademoiselle has no mother, no other family besides an ailing father. She will need… guidance… in ways I cannot give her."

"Erik-"

He swung back around, his arm cutting off the words he knew she wanted to say. "Whatever lingering disdain you have of me, would you at least set it aside for her? I am asking for your assistance, madame – for her sake rather than mine."

A long moment passed during which she merely gazed at him. He forced himself to endure that hard pressure. He could have said more, could have explained himself more and what he wanted of Madame Giry's help. But he knew she understood. She understood all that he meant, and all that he was demanded of her. She would have to enter his life once more to help in such ways.

Finally, she nodded. "Send word when you are about to marry."

"Yes, madame."

He drew himself fully within the partition in the wall, pausing when she spoke again.

"I have two conditions for this agreement, Erik."

"Name them."

"Leave my daughter out of this." Her eyes narrowed, cutting him through the shadows. "And if you ever come here again, I will not hesitate to tell the authorities where you live."

Such threats from a human. His anger swirled around her, batting her black skirts about her ankles, causing her to widen her stance to balance against the onslaught. She did not back down in the wake of his rage, but he unleashed it all the same. It was with no small satisfaction that he saw perspiration begin to dot her brow, and in the end, she had to use her cane to steady herself.

His anger spun out, his point made. "Agreed," he said as the heaviness in the air dissipated. She was breathing audibly, quicker than before.

He left without another word.