Chapter One: A Return and an Encounter
It had been almost three years since Erik had watched Christine Daae, the only woman he'd ever loved, sail away with the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. In Erik's own boat.
An angry mob had then gone after Erik, hoping to bring him to justice and forcing him to leave his home. Not knowing where else to go, he had sought asylum at a monastery on the outskirts of Paris. He didn't particularly care to find comfort in God (after all, how could a deity care for such a monster as himself, and how could he care for a deity that made monsters such as himself, for that matter?), but men of God would not turn away a man who needed a place to stay.
Although he had sworn to himself that he would never compose again without Christine there to sing his music, the monks would only allow him to stay if he wrote hymns for them in return. He had grudgingly kept up with his music, serving as a constant reminder of the woman he'd lost. He couldn't help but imagine how each note would sound if sung by her. It seemed that these men of God, these merciful figures who had given up the world, couldn't show mercy to a poor, unhappy soul.
After one year with the monks, renovation to the Opera Populaire had been completed and Erik decided that it would be safe to go back to his home in the cellars. He wasn't sure why, but he was drawn to that prison. Perhaps it was because everything he owned was there. He had always relished having power, and his belongings were the only things he controlled. Perhaps it was because the Opera House was the only place where he had known any kindness, any happiness. Or it might have been because the shadows of the dark and gloomy cellars were the only places he truly belonged.
No matter the reason, Erik soon found himself standing in the mess that was his home. He was rather surprised to find that little was missing. He supposed that he had Marie Giry, the ballet mistress, to thank for that. Still, the mob has seen fit to throw things about and break a few sculptures. A little clean-up was required, but he didn't mind. It occupied his mind while he tried to change the place. There were far too many memories, and the only way to keep them at bay was to end the associations. It didn't really work that well, but it made his life bearable.
Soon a problem surfaced. How was he to eat? The Phantom couldn't go back to his old tricks. People were bound to have found their way around the cellars; he would probably be discovered in no time at all if they knew he was back. He decided that he would have to sell his music under the pen name Octavian Gautier, O.G.
Erik tried to tell himself that he was making the world more beautiful by allowing others to enjoy his music, but he had a sinking feeling that he had given his children to be raped by a mob. How comforting.
His music was very successful and Erik was able to live quite comfortably, or at least as comfortably as one can when living alone five stories below an opera house.
But Erik wasn't thinking of all this as he was walking down a familiar passage, a passage he had not visited in three years. His mind was concerned with his morning paper. The morning's edition of L'Epoque had announced the birth of the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Chagny's first child, Phillipe Charles de Chagny. It was a terrible blow and had been completely unexpected. That announcement dashed all of his feeble hopes that Christine would come back. He knew that she could never leave her son, nor could she bring the boy with her. She may have given life to the child, but he belonged to the father.
Besides, he wasn't sure he would take her back if she wanted him to. Somehow, he had been able to ignore the fact that husbands and wives participated in certain actions. But now that they had a child, that wasn't something he could disregard. The Vicomte had touched her, and it made his blood boil with rage.
Erik was now walking along the passage leading to a two-way mirror connecting his domain to Christine's old dressing room with the intent to sit in her room, to remember her, and to mourn her; she was dead to him.
No one had been assigned to the "haunted" dressing room since Christine left. They were still afraid of the Phantom of the Opera. That much Erik knew from his extremely infrequent excursions into the above-ground portion of the opera house. He had been proven a man, but they were still in awe of him.
So, it is understandable that he was rather surprised when he reached the two-way mirror and found the room occupied by an old piano. And a girl. A young girl. A young girl who had several pages of sheet music spread out in front of her. Erik stood there watching her for some time, too stunned to move.
This strange apparition had long, almost black hair pulled up in a tight bun. A few strands had escaped and curled becomingly around her face. Her skin was palest porcelain. Her fingers were long and thin, and her hands were so small and graceful that they seemed to be made for the piano. She also had what Victor Hugo would have described as a distinctly Parisian nose.
The girl scribbled several notes on the music. Then she began to play and sing a song the ghost behind the mirror had never heard before. Her soprano voice was strong, but gentle as she sang:
"My cruel fate leaves me in darkness,
For I shall never know the light of your love.
All that could be is gone,
And I shall never see the guiding starlight again."
Erik felt thrills go up his spine. The girl had such clarity of tone, such perfect pitch! This was beauty, indeed. Something in her voice seemed to cry out to him. She sounded immeasurably lonely. Like him. Erik felt his chest tighten, as if in a vise, a sensation he had only experienced when hearing Christine. A soft moan of miserable ecstasy (the kind that could only be caused by music) escaped him, as the girl hit an E, six notes above the staff. Her voice cracked a little, possibly because she was sitting down, but at least she seemed aware of it, judging by her slight wince.
The singer stopped suddenly and made a few more notes on her music. Erik wondered anxiously if the girl had heard him. Her cheeks reddened noticeably, so he supposed she must have imagined that something unseemly was happening somewhere nearby. When she began again, Erik noticed a subtle change in the rhythm of the bass clef. The invisible vise tightened more as he realized why he had never heard this song before: she was in the process of composing it.
With a few months of my instruction she could become a great artist, Erik thought, but immediately dismissed the idea. He didn't want another Christine Daae on his hands. The Angel of Music's first, and last, journey into the realm of teaching beautiful, young opera singers had been a disaster. Erik had trained Christine, had fallen in love with her and had wooed her in vain. He had learned his lesson the hard way; history would not repeat itself.
Erik turned to go, but before he had taken four steps toward his underground lair, his ears were jarred by several loud, dissonant notes from the piano. He looked back through the mirror and saw the girl's slight frame shaking with tears, her head in her hands. Her weeping halted as suddenly as they had started, and the girl raised her head, her expression blank, all traces of tears gone. Unbidden, the word "mask-like" entered Erik's mind. He silently cursed himself for being so pre-occupied with his deformity and the mask that concealed it.
The girl put her sheet music in order, and then stood up to retrieve a new set of sheet music from the top of the piano. Erik noticed that she was around five feet, seven or eight inches. She had seemed rather petite when she was sitting down, so he supposed that her legs must have been long. It was difficult to tell because of the way women wore their skirts.
She spread her music out in front of her and began to softly play a piece with which Erik was more than familiar. It was one of his. He had written it many years before he'd met Christine, and it was rather simple for his pieces. It had been one of the first to go to the publishers due to its relative lack of sentimental value. Although certainly not one of his favorites, he still felt anger well up in him at her impertinence, but it quickly died when he realized that she was not butchering it.
In fact, she was doing a reasonably good job. What really struck him about this performance was the way the girl reacted to the music. All of the tension in her shoulders and neck relaxed as her fingers danced on the keys. Her eyes closed, but she played just as well, if not better, than she had when they were open and following the page. Erik's composition seemed to calm her when her own had failed. He couldn't fight the smirk curling his lips at the thought. At least it helped somebody.
The girl finished and looked down at a little clock on the piano. She sighed and ran out of the room, leaving her sheet music, as if she knew no one would come in and bother it. The former opera ghost had a sudden relapse in his old curiosity. He cautiously opened the mirror, and stepped out, his pant leg brushing against the frame. His ungloved fingers left a slight smudge on the surface of the glass.
He silently stepped towards the piano. When he was close enough to touch the sheet music, he reached out and grabbed. The music wasn't exactly neat. There were blotches and scribbles all over it. It looked like she had been jotting it down in her spare minutes. At least the curling script was lovely.
A creaking sound betrayed the light step of a ballet rat in the corridor. Erik lightly put back the music, and turned to go. He began to make his way back to his lair, determined to never see the girl again.
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Danielle D'Artoi was sitting at the piano in her adopted music room working on a rather satisfying composition. This particular piece seemed to relieve her stress temporarily after every session, or at least after most of them. Today, it wasn't really working too well, but at least it was a distraction, which was all she could really ask for.
At quite an inopportune moment, she thought she heard someone, possibly a man, moan. She stopped playing, startled, and listened for a moment, correcting her music as an inward pretense for stopping. She felt a bit embarrassed that she could be disturbed by something so trivial. It wasn't as if there was anything to fear.
She started playing and singing again, reasoning that she must have heard one of the actors rehearsing in his dressing room. Danielle tried to ignore the facts that (1) the moan was far too convincing to have been made by any of the actors there, (2) that her room was too far away from the other dressing rooms to be able to hear someone rehearsing, and (3) that she couldn't think of an opera that called for a man to moan with pleasure, the emotion the moan obviously conveyed. Her cheeks burned slightly because of that last thought. After all, it wasn't as if trysts and other assignations didn't occur in the opera house, which was the most likely reason for the noise.
She was having a very good day for composing, so Danielle tried not to think about the interruption. Her inspiration was the fight that she'd had with her father the night before. The argument was about Danielle's worthlessness, as it always was.
Why hadn't she been given a leading role yet? She had been working there for more than a year now! Did she think that he had given her a good education so she could waste her life in the chorus? When was she going to make more money to support him and her brother with? Money, money, always money!
Jean D'Artoi didn't care about her, his only daughter. All of the generosity he possessed had been expended when he'd decided to keep her, instead of exposing her on the streets. And even then his reasoning had been that she might one day marry rich. All of the love her father could offer was lavished on Danielle's older, squandering brother, Luc. What he squandered his money and time on, she didn't care to think on.
So, Danielle was left with no fatherly love, no affection, and no time to pursue such enjoyable activities as parties, making friends, shopping, or falling in love with a wonderful man with whom she could gladly spend the rest of her life. No, she had to spend every waking moment trying to get a leading role in one of the Opera's productions. Of course, she didn't mind focusing on music. It was her first and only earthly love. It was also her only consolation for her lack of romantic love.
Romantic love; it all came down to that didn't it? Ever since she was a little girl and learned to read fairy tales to herself (obviously no one in the house would humor her), she had dreamed of little else. She didn't necessarily want a knight on a white charger, but she needed someone, someone different, special, or at least kind. Even now, at eighteen years old, she would still lay awake at night thinking of the man who would one day have her heart. Love was her greatest, most secret desire, a desire she feared would never be satiated.
In a sudden, overpowering longing, Danielle brought her hands down hard on the piano, the harsh chords voicing her pain far better than words. She began to weep, which was really rather odd. She didn't do so often. After a few moments of indulgence, she inwardly upbraided herself for breaking down. After all, she had intended to purge herself of her emotions with this composition, not to succumb to them.
Danielle looked up at the sheet music, her features arranged in as calm an expression as she could muster and read through the day's work. She had made some progress. She just wasn't sure about the bass clef. Something about it bothered her.
Deciding that it could wait, she began to play one of her favorite pieces of store-bought music, as her father derisively called it. It was by a reclusive composer named Octavian Gautier, who was talked about all over Paris. He was even more talented than he was mysterious. Danielle day-dreamed about him sometimes, always trying to imagine what he was like, or why he would hide himself away when all of France clambered to meet him.
Danielle felt herself relaxing as she played the soothing tune. By now she practically knew it by heart, so she closed her eyes and let it carry her away. At the end of the song, she wondered how long she had been there.
She glanced at the clock and realized that her lunch break was almost over and she hadn't eaten anything. She ran out of the room and dashed to the kitchen for a bite before rehearsals.
