Deep Down Below
E/OW Story-
Author's Note- Okay, I've been obsessing over Phantom FanFics for awhile, so, naturally, I've decided to take a stab at writing one. Please don't chop my head off if it's not great. I'm really not that bad a writer (In fact, I have been named the best in my school, but that was mostly for poetry) but this is my first fanfic. If you hate it, also keep in mind that I originally write in Hashaari, and have translate everything to English, which can be the cause of my writings sucking. Still, I ask you to check it out.
Also, don't kill me if dates/ages don't line up exactly. I have dramatic silence, and this is a fanfic so it doesn't have to be exact.
Lastly, I have never taken ballet before, so please don't hang me for any incorrect ballet references.
After the prologue, the entirety of the story will be told as a flashback (except if I decide to return to the prologue's time at the end, and then it will be announced).
Disclaimer- I own nothing. No characters (though I did come up with Evelia, I don't even know), no songs, nothing. I am just a loser like that.
Prologue- Deep Down Below
The Paris Opera House bathes in the sun of a cloudless day in late April. All around the Opera House, people hustle and bustle in the square. All the people seem to be busy, but not one person is in a sour mood. Everyone seems to be smiling and stopping to chat at any given opportunity. Everyone, that is, except one young woman. She keeps her sea-green eyes to the ground and walks quickly towards the Opera House, avoiding any potential human contact outside of the invisible bubble surrounding her. She is a young woman, probably 20 years of age, but reserved and mature in character. She is dressed in a lovely black dress, which matches her jet-black curls which fall down to her lower back. There is something more to this young woman, for, as you can see, she is withchild (maybe around five months). What is her name, you ask? She is called Evelia Leticia Chaillé.
The young woman walks quickly with a parcel in her hand, until she reaches the great wood doors of the opera house. She quickly glances back to make sure nobody is following her, and then swings open the heavy doors and disappears into the opera house.
"It's Sunday" She thinks. "Most of the actors will be out on such a sunny day, the stagehands will be as well unless they are backstage working, Andre and Firmin will be chatting up in their office about how marvelous the production shall be and how great they are, and Madame Giry will be...uhmm...well, not here. Wait, where IS Madame Giry on such a day? I never see her on days like this. No rehearsals or anything like that, but I doubt she goes out anywhere..." Evelia ponders this for a moment before coming to her senses "Oh, no matter. At least nobody will see me and follow me." and with that, she glances around the lobby to make sure nobody is in sight, and takes off down the more unused passages of the opera house. Hall after hall, passage after passage, Evelia hurries through parts of the opera house that people haven't set foot in in years. Even the managers of the opera house would get lost on this route! But Evelia knows what she is doing, going down, down, turning and snaking until she comes to a little, old closet that hasn't been used for many years. She feels for a small chain around her neck, and quickly removes it. attached to the chain is a small, rusty key which she inserts into the keyhole and turns the knob on the closet door. She has to push the door rather hard, but eventually it budges open to reveal the inside of the small closet. Against her will, she lets out a small cough in response to the dust and cobwebs that litter the little closet. It is cluttered with old footlights, posters of productions that were staged decades ago, and other such things. Evelia makes her way through the junk until she comes to another door, a smaller one, on the other side of the closet. You can hardly tell it's there, as it is so well-hidden! Evelia pushes the small door open, and squeezes through. Though she is naturally thin, it is much harder for her to squeeze through now that she is pregnant. "A few more months and I will have to go another way to get down there." Fortunately, when that does happen in a few months, Evelia probably won't have much of a problem finding another route. This is because shockingly, this was only one of the many ways to get to where she was going. Still, she preferred this way because it was going this way that she would be least likely to be caught. Evelia steps out of the small door and closes it behind her. The nice, open air on the other side of the door is a nice change from the stuffy, dust-filled air of the closet. It is amazing; Evelia stands at the top of a winding flight of stone stairs that leads down into a dark, dank whoknowswhere. she smiles at the lack of light and eerie feel of this place, and the faint sound of an organ being played.
Deep down beneath the opera house, a man in a black cloak sits at an organ and plays a dark and haunting tune. Every few bars, he stops for a moment to scribble madly down on a piece of paper beside him. Then he glances up and smiles at a sight you would never expect to see in this dark, layer-like dwelling- children. The man in the cloak watches the two children for a moment, forgetting his masterpiece-to-be. One of the children is a boy, a few months over the age of four. The other child is a little girl, about one year younger than her brother. The children wear cloth eye patches and wave pretend swords (which are actually nothing but air), as they are playing a game of 'pirates'. "I'll have you walk the plank!" exclaims the boy in a joking, false pirate voice. The little girl giggles and says back "You wahkka pank, Kiewan!" (Meaning 'You walk the plank, Kieran!', as the child can't pronounce her 'r's yet) and at that, they do a pretend sword fight, until the little girl trips and falls down onto her bottom. She scrunches up her face and starts to cry, even though the fall didn't seem extremely bad/painful. The man in the cloak father rushes over and scoops up the crying child into his arms. A white porcelain mask conceals most of the right half of his face, but the children do not pay that any mind. In fact, they've never seen their father without the mask.
"Octavia, Octavia," He says in a patient, kind voice "My poor little one, did you fall?" The little girl gives her father a teary nod. The masked man then begins to sing a soft, soothing melody, and the child stops crying. She listens, almost entranced, as her father sings one of her favorite songs about some little girl by the name of Lotte. The man's low voice is surprisingly good, better even than many of the singers far above in the Opera House. The girl listens intently to her father, even though she has heard the song a thousand times.
Suddenly, the little boy named Kieran shouts "Mommy!" and points to Evelia, who is now across the room, now at the foot of the staircase.
"Mommy!" The little girl exclaims with a grin. You'd think that, by the children's reactions, they haven't seen their mother in years, though in reality it was only a few hours ago when she left.
"You're back" says the masked man with a small smile.
"I'm sorry it took me awhile to find the sheet music, but I have it!" Evelia places the parcel in her hand down on the organ in the corner.
"Mommy I'm hungry!" Says little Octavia. And with that, her father hands the child to her mother, who walks over to a corner and sits down with the child in her arms. Evelia undoes the top half of her clothing, revealing her full, round breasts. Little Octavia immediately latches on to her mother's left breast and starts to suck. As the three-year-old nurses, her mother sings to her a dark, soft lullaby in a foreign tongue. Evelia's soprano voice is hauntingly beautiful as it floats around her. Little Kieran looks over at his sister while she nurses and can't help feeling a bit jealous. He was just weaned from the breast recently (at the age of 4 years 2 months), but not quite used to eating all "big boy food". His father quickly notices this and takes the little boy into his arms
"How about we go get you something to eat? And then maybe I'll tell you a story?" the little boy immediately cheers up and nods his head. He loves when his father tells him stories of the opera house. No stories of murder and such things, of course, but of hilarious sights of a past-her-prime soprano who strutted, screeched, and complained constantly. He tells his son stories about "The time I almost got caught" or "Did I tell you the one about the croaking soprano?", and Kieran always listens starry-eyed, soaking up every word.
As Kieran listens to his father's story (this time a new one as he cleverly improvises), Evelia sits in the corner, nursing the adorable little girl in her arms as she sings to her. Evelia's song is soft and a bit eerie, and it floats all the way to the winding stone staircase, and over to the corner in which the old organ sits on the other side of the lair-like dwelling. The melody soothes the little girl as she nurses, and seems to reach out and caress the hard, stone walls. However, those walls seem to ring out with another inaudible tune, unfamiliar to both the mother and the child. It seems that the song that had long since been trapped within those walls, to, just sometimes, haunt the father of the two small children.
Track down this murderer,
He must be found!
Hunt out this animal,
Who runs to ground!
Too long he's preyed on us,
But now we know,
The phantom of the opera is there
Deep down below.