Chapter Two: Apprentice to the Seamstress
Well… I haven't updated this story in a while, but then I was searching through all my old PotO stories for the longhand draft of my first phanfic, Be Careful What You Wish For, and I stumbled across the almost-complete second chapter of this story. So I decided to finish it and post it. Depending on how you, my dearest readers, react to this story, I'll update more or less quickly. But I'll eventually get around to finishing it, I already have the whole plot worked out and saved on my computer. Unlike every other story I've written for PotO… So if you want more, everybody review! Anyways, I know that this chapter is slow, I have to set up the plot and setting, right? Just bear with me! –pleading smile-
Two months withered in winter's icy frosts, but Brat was warm for the first time she could remember. Her hands ached from the long hours they spent in boiling water, and her stomach was never quite full, but it was the most she'd ever known of contentment. She was the most frequently chosen to bring the cartloads of cleaned apparel to the prop and costume managers, and even ran errands for the other laundresses for a bit more of the bread crests she had grown accustomed to eating exclusively. Even Manon had to see what a hard worker she was, and stopped making her work until sunrise.
One day towards the middle of February, Brat was sent to Mme. Boudreau, the head seamstress, with an elaborate, albeit unfinished, gown. She had been told to drop the garment off and return quickly or else, as usual, but the kind woman was intrigued when Brat offhandedly mentioned a few things that could make the costume particularly exquisite.
"Tell me, child, where did you learn to sew?" Mme. Boudreau asked in interest.
"I-I don't know, mme." Brat shook her head slowly. "It seems as though I've always known how."
"Well, then your mother surely taught you." The woman bustled about, gathering embroidery thread, the unattached sleeves, needles, and regular cotton thread.
Although the statement wasn't meant to be answered, the teen did anyways. " No'm, I'm an orphan. 'Can't even remember my mum."
"Hmmm… what a shame."
To Brat's surprise, the woman asked her to sit down, and then handed her the gown, a needle, and the fancy embroidery thread.
"Dear, this was your idea, so I'd like you to at least begin it so I know what you're envisioning. Don't worry about displeasing me, if it is truly horrid then I can always remove the stitches and do it over again. I'll send a girl to notify Manon, you just sit there and work." With an encouraging smile, she hustled away, leaving the little room feeling strangely huge and empty.
Breathing in the comforting smells of fresh linen, Brat touched the fine material in awe. She had repaired clothes for money before, but never had she even seen something so elegant unless it was on an aristocratic woman in a carriage, far from the filth and squalor of the streets. Grateful for the opportunity, she set to work embroidering silver and light gold sunbursts around the hem of the dress, extending in fancy swirls up to the waist. They shimmered enough to stand out, but almost blended into the silvery-white tulle at the same time. By the time Mme. Boudreau returned, the pattern was well established, wrapping it's way around half of the front already. Brat's needle dipped and pulled at a furious pace, as though she was afraid that pausing even for a moment would allow the beautiful article of clothing to vanish in a puff of silvery smoke, a figment of her imagination.
"Oh my, that is even more splendid than I had imagined!" The woman said in delight, kneeling next to the orphan. "Tell me, dear, would you like to become a seamstress?"
It didn't require much thought for Brat to decide. She'd much rather spend short hours laboring over the opera company's costumes than long hours slaving away over a tub of water and a washboard, surrounded by the vile smells of the soap made of animal fat.
"Oh, yes, ma'am! Thank you so much! I promise to work twice as hard as-"
The woman simply laughed. "I believe you. Just finish this gown, to begin with."
Brat worked for three hours on the garment, finally finishing around three o'clock. She was just adding a few finishing touches when Mme. Boudreau burst in the door.
"Quickly, bring in the seams to these measurements!"
She thrust a piece of paper into Brat's hand, and the girl stared at it blankly.
"What are you waiting for? Sew, sew!" She cried impatiently.
"I… I can't read ma'am…"
The woman stopped in the middle of picking up a tape measure from the floor, and looked at her incredulously. "You can't?"
"No…" She hung her head in shame, but brightened when an idea hit her like a runaway carriage. "But if you can get the girl to come here for a few minutes, I'll pin it up to her size."
"Well… I'll see what I can do."
Within 20 minutes, the woman returned with the actress in question.
"Please make it quick, she had to return to dress rehearsal, and having the dress might help."
After she left, Brat sent the young woman to change behind a screen and waited patiently. The girl was certainly different from what she'd expected a diva to look like. From what the laundresses had told her in their incessant gossiping, she had come to expect a demoness with flame-coloured hair. But instead she got a young woman who was hardly older than herself, if indeed she was older at all, with long golden hair and big eyes of a crystal blue. Not only that but she seemed timid, almost scared, far different from what she'd gathered from gossip about the opera's infamous prima donna.
"So… you're the famous Carlotta, eh?"
The actress emerged in the costume, and smiled shyly.
"No, my name is Christine Daae. I'm sort of an understudy, you could say."
Christine's soft voice struck a sharp contrast to Brat's which was rather loud and confident, another trait born of a life on the streets.
The two made polite conversation as Brat began to pin up the sides of the bodice. Both could relate to being orphans, but also shared a love of singing, though one was certainly more accomplished and trained than the other. Christine pleased Brat by teaching her the song "Think of Me" from the upcoming event, while the latter worked. By the time the alterations were finished, Miss Daae had succeeded in teaching her the song, and Brat found herself humming it once she was alone again, working on the gown. It seemed to brighten the semi-dark room as she took in the seams. Brat finished by the fifth round of humming, and stared at the dress in her lap for a long time. Christine was almost the same size as her…
Shoving aside her doubts, Brat skinned off the grey wool top and long, ugly brown skirt that Manon had given her. She carefully lowered the gown over her head and looked at herself in the nearly full-length mirror. The costume fit too snug for comfort over her bust, but it fit almost perfectly everywhere else, and made her look like some princess from a fairy tale that she'd once heard a mother telling to her children. Or at least that is how Brat saw herself. In truth, she looked like a dirty, skinny urchin in a stolen ball gown, but at least it seemed to make her hair appear more golden than it usually did.
Smiling at her reflection, Brat soon found herself singing the song that Christine had taught her while she envisioned an invisible audience before her, adoring every note that came from her untrained vocal cords. Although she didn't know it, she did have an audience, a certain masked man who watched from where he hid.
Erik observed the slender young woman in very mild interest. He had been watching Christine, however he remained where he was after his angel left, hoping that she might return. He began to leave when the girl known as Brat started taking off her clothes –he was a gentleman after all- but her singing sparked the musical genius' interest. She didn't sing nearly as well as Christine, her lack of training obviously showed in her poor breathing and articulation, nor was she even close to being as beautiful, in Erik's eyes, yet she still was somewhat intriguing, in her own way. For one thing, she possessed a fire that gentle Christine could never have, and though they were both orphans, Brat knew much more of the pain of never knowing a human's love or compassion that Erik himself had felt.
Brat was barely past the halfway point of the aria when she suddenly got the eerie feeling that she was being watched by more than just her fantasy audience. Glancing around as a shiver ran down her spine, she surveyed the empty room and reluctantly shrugged off the feeling, redressing in her coarse clothes and carefully folding the gown.
Erik crouched in the passage behind the small hidden door in the wall. He had no worries of being seen, if the girl found him than she'd simply have to die. He certainly had no qualms about killing this nameless orphan; he'd strangled many more men without regret for the little sultana, hadn't he? Yet it did seem a bother to attract more needless attention to himself indirectly and yet directly as well. He had nothing in common with those men anyways, or at least he never bothered to find out. He simply killed for the pure joy of killing, the ecstasy of the adrenaline rush that he experienced as he whipped the Punjab lasso around their throats, right as they themselves thought that they were the ones going for the kill, the satisfaction of hearing the little sultana's laugh of delight as he dragged the strangling man around the arena like pulling a sled or a log, not a dying human being. But those days were over, he reminded himself with a curse, forcing himself to leave before that old bloodlust could truly turn him into a demonic creature, the relentless murderer he once was.