Fondest greetings to you all,
A few notes before the story begins:
First of all, thanks to those who reviewed my first story-it encouraged me to start writing this! It includes "Portrait of a Modern Christine", but it has been modified/edited, so please, if you've read it before, don't skip it!
This story follows Leroux's tale, but gives Erik the background Kay worked out for him for the time being (and no, Christine is NOT the cowering child of Kay's novel, blech!). There may be some stuff that uses a tiny bit of ALW's play, but I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible. The timing, as well, is taken from Kay's novel (i.e. the events chronicled in Leroux's novel took place in early 1881). The story begins in 2001 purely to keep numbers even, and I include the prologue as part of the first chapter to keep things easier to keep track of for me.
I give it a rating of M for later chapters…this is going to be potentially a rather long novel so please don't be disappointed by the lack of anything going on- I have to set up the background and it's rather complicated.
And finally, instead of sticking the prerequisite disclaimer at the beginning of each chapter, I'm just going to give a blanket disclaimer, so…
DISCLAIMER: No, I don't own Phantom. The only thing I own is this story and any original characters in it.
And now…
Seal my fate tonight,
I hate to cut the fun short but the jokes wearing thin,
Let my readers in,
Let the story begin!
Carpe Noctem
Prologue-April, 2001
Most nights at the Paris Opera during the annual Bal Masque were no different from year to year. Flowing dancers, flouncing singers, paint spattered artists, and pompous managers all swirled about the Opera floor in a confused menagerie of color, costume, and mask, rubbing their ever so common elbows with France's most titled blood, the only party in France were sons and daughters of common street musicians and singers could dance with societies glittering bluebloods by virtue of a beautiful voice and talented feet. And so it seemed the panorama of masks would never glide to a stop, the musicians would not cease until the wine ran out. Except for this night.
This night, the crowd stopped for someone as they only had once before, over a century before.
She was not statuesque, not by any means, but her lack of height was made up by her presence, the odd feeling of frozen air and dignified melancholy that overlaid the room as she entered. She walked with casual, assertive grace and lightly clicking heels, locking piercing blue eyes on every pair that dared to meet hers as she climbed the darkened steps of the Grand Staircase, her gaze vaguely, innocently feral, causing the former inhabitants of the steps to shrink back from her instinctively, clinging to the stone handrails or, in some cases, to each other. The room's merry buzz of conversation and laughter quickly quieted to a slight, fearful murmur echoing in the sudden silence of the room.
Her ascent was slow, one ghostly pale hand holding the hem of her deep maroon dress above the tips of her shoes, the ends of her black velvet frock coat gently trailing on the stairs behind her, long curled hair pinned up in loose coils. She did not look down, stepping up as if it were a climb she'd made a dozen times before, her colorless face staring straight ahead, black-masked gaze riveted on the portrait that now decorated the top landing.
It was old, that portrait, painted in the opera's heyday by Degas himself. The figure was of a young woman, decked in white, the heavy canvas held in place by a gold gilded frame. A small plaque to the bottom gave its name: Christine.
Guests were later to say that the picture had swung out and away from the wall of its own accord, opening like a door on hidden hinges at the slight touch of the masked woman that stood before it. Some fleetingly recall hearing the faint echo of a scream.
She approached the painted as if treading on broken glass, reaching gently up to remove a small cord strung with a heavy gate key, a plain gold ring, and a rather unrecognizable object hanging on the wall behind the painting itself. Breaking the cord, she put the gold ring on her left ring finger with aching slowness, sliding the other two objects into a hidden coat pocket as the portrait swung on creaking hinges to resume its normal position on the wall.
The woman stared for several moments at the painting, moving her lips in the ghost of an old song. None present could remember the tune when questioned later, but a few overheard the whispered words: Fate links thee to me forever. All remembered the shock of her face as she removed her mask.
Though hard pressed to find any guest who would speak of what they'd seen that night, one young man standing on a small balcony in the main room recounted that her face had been that of the woman in the portrait.
Chapter One
Journal of Christine Daaé-April 2001
(Found by a worker in a collection of papers in the attics of the Paris Opera House)
One hundred and twenty years…The nights pass without number now, the endless eternity of waking, stalking…feasting mercilessly on human flesh-on human blood-before sleeping once again as day rises to burn mist off the skyscrapers of Paris.
My God, what has he done to me?
My dress lays now in a pool of silk and satin on my ill-made bed, the black mask forgotten on the coverlet. The thick robe I belted around me upon my return has failed in warming perpetually cold skin. Paris itself shivers in chilled night beneath my bare feet.
Paris is no colder than the body of the man lying at my feet on the floor this night, his blood staining my lips crimson.
My God, what has he done to me?
I came to the masque this night in the hope that I was wrong-only to find the horror of the truth, shockingly displayed in a mounted painting amidst a sea of masks and the liquid sound of French on every mortal tongue, a sound I had missed for so long now twisted by the terror it worshipped. And for all my fighting against it, for all my flight from that swollen edifice with his ring searing my finger, struggling against every memory my preternatural mind tried desperately to forget, I could only pray to a God I knew would never hear me.
Please, God, not this pain again…It was with a great deal of trepidation that I returned to Paris.
I had spent many years in what the old ones of our kind still referred to as the New World, though the North American continent was hardly new to anyone but scientists and historians. The events at the Opera House had driven Raoul and I to abandon Europe altogether, and I myself had no desire to travel any further east then the boundaries of Russia.
Thinking back, I suppose I had no real desire to do anything at all.
Raoul was concerned for me, of course, as my skin paled and my appetite waned, but visits to several doctors on the road to the Spanish coast only confirmed to him that with rest and time my health would be restored and he would have back the Christine he loved and remembered from before…
No, I will not remember that yet.
In Spain we boarded a ship for America, and I was disheartened to find that even here the story of my triumph at the Opera House was known, as the captain of the vessel insisted upon giving "the great prima donna" a more lavish suite than Raoul's hastily acquired funds would have bought us. We were travel worn, weary, and although the unpleasant reminder of Paris would normally have brought Raoul into a rage and myself to tears, we were of no disposition to argue. I kept Raoul's arm fiercely clutched in my own as the jovial captain escorted us and our ragged assortment of baggage to our suite, and I know that by the end of that strained march he was the only thing that supported my weight. He lifted me into his arms as soon as the door closed upon the captain's concerned face and lay me down on the bed that took up almost three quarters of the room, whispering anxiously that he would have some tea brought up from the galley. I felt him pull the heavy comforter over me and I remember nothing until waking up the following day at sea, violently ill.
For three days I did nothing but sleep, waking only to retch into the chamber pot before collapsing back into tormented dreams, Raoul keeping vigil silently at my bedside, drinking coffee to keep himself awake until lack of sleep drove him to curl beside me on top of the sheets.
I woke with pain on the fourth night, having bitten through my own tongue.
Dragging myself from the bed was torture, my limbs cramped from lying still for so long, and my legs collapsed beneath me. My mouth filled steadily with my own blood as I rose painfully to my knees, crawling across the floor to the powder room of the suite. I attempted to raise myself to stand by gripping with claw-like fingers to any hold on the wall I could find, my sharp nails finding no purchase, before finally bracing myself on the short armoire that filled half the room, my legs trembling and unsteady. The mirror above the washbasin showed me the countenance of one near death, and for a moment I had convinced myself that I was dreaming once again. The stark white, hollow eyed face that stared back could not have been mine.
Grimacing at my face in the mirror, I swallowed my own blood.
The world reeled, my eyes clouding with a red haze as I lost my handholds and fell once again to the floor, the warmth of the blood that I'd swallowed traveling through my chest and down to settle in between my legs. My hand traveled with it, momentarily, and unbidden my legs opened. My God, I wanted it again…
Raoul's worried shout of my name echoed through the room, and I once again attempted to summon sufficient strength to stand before he threw the door open and came round the corner, picking me up from the cold floor and settling me once more on the bedsheets. He carefully wiped the sweat from my face with a cool cloth, and stood to pace the room as I drifted off into sleep.
My last thought was only that I could never tell him what I had become.