It was on that same cold November day that a tall, cloaked man was following around two young girls through the streets of Paris, only to assure their safety. He watched them while they were strolling down the market with their faces eagerly looking at all the food they knew they would never get without any money. He watched them greeting a tall, skinny man, probably at his mid-twenties, and followed the three people to, assumingly, his house. They stayed in there for a long time and the man knew they were safe now for at least an hour or two.
He decided he would stay around today, not just because he felt better about it, he didn't have anything better to do anyway.
He sat down on an empty crate, probably used to carry around fruits or vegetables and now carelessly dumped in this nearby dead-end street, and leaned against the wall. Cold, hard bricks touched the right side of his face, the only side of his face with which he was able to still feel anything at all. The other side of his face was hid behind a white, porcelain mask, and only one other person in the world knew what a distortion lay behind it.
A single tear rolled down the man's right cheek as he thought of his past.
Since he was a child, he had lived in the dormitories of the Opera Populaire. He was brought there by Mme. Giry, who rescued him from a cruel, gipsy family that treated him as if he were an animal. He was bound to travel around with their carnival, trapped in a cage, humiliated for years in front of thousands of people, only because he was born with half a distorted face. They had called him the Devil's Child, and only few had known his real name, Erik.
All those years he had spend in the dormitories, his house, were years of loneliness. In those years he had thought himself how to play music and became perhaps the best composer the world had ever known. Ironically enough, the world was to cruel for him to get to know better. And those few who did know him, or better said, had heard of him, would only describe him as an insane murderer, haunting the Opera in search for blood.
His heart was broken by the young soprano named Christine. He had forced her to love him and he knew now he had done wrong. If only he wasn't blinded by rage when she pulled off his mask and let the chandelier crash down, maybe then, the Opera would have still remained in all it's glory and his home wouldn't have been destroyed by men and women filled with hatred.
Oh well, he thought, as he slowly came back to reality again, I shouldn't dwell in the past, I should watch over those who need it the most right now.
And as he thought those almost heroic thoughts, he looked around and noticed that the sun was setting and the noise on the streets was a lot less than when he first arrived here.
Erik was about to get up when he noticed a grey cat was staring at him only two feet way as if he were to say "feed me". The cat tilted his head just a little bit to the left as if he was questioning why the man in front of him looked so funny and Erik couldn't help but to laugh at it.
God, it felt good to laugh.
"So, you want something to eat huh?" He spoke to the cat. The cat must have understood at least a bit of what Erik was talking about because he jumped up a few crates which were piled up against the wall and came back a few minutes later with a dead mouse in his muzzle. He put down the mouse right in front of Erik's feet and was waiting for him to accept his humble gift.
Erik picked up the mouse, a little astonished by the fact that the cat wanted him to be his friend. For the cat, this gesture of acceptance was obviously enough to be friends since he was now rubbing his head against Erik's legs and gently began to purr.
He stroke over its head and the cat rolled around on its back, trying to catch his hands with its paws.
"I guess I'm stuck with you now, right?" He asked laughing.
"So," he said like the cat would actually respond, "now I'm going to have to name you, of course. I'd suppose just calling you 'cat' won't do."
Suddenly he realised that, in order to name the cat, he would have to know its gender first. He picked him or her up and found himself happy with the outcome.
"Good, you're a girl, now I can call you Isabel." He smiled at the cat satisfied before putting her down. He had remembered that name for years after reading it in a book. It was strange how some things never seemed to disappear from your memories.
Meanwhile, it had gotten much darker in only a few minutes and Erik was waiting for his protégées to come out. But they never came. He decided to take a careful look inside the house.
He climbed through he open window, followed by Isabel, and had to decide which way to go now. He only knew they always went here, but this building was big and he had never gone inside before.
He took a wild guess and went up the stairs without making any sound. Soon he learned that his wild guess was the right one. He heard voices coming from the door at the end of the hallway on the second floor.
"It's getting late, we really should be going now." That was Elizabeth, the older one. He would never mistake her voice for anyone else's. She sounded like an angel, even when she spoke.
"No, I won't let you go out in the dark all by yourselves. It's too dangerous and it's freezing out there. "And besides," the other voice argued, "Anna is already asleep. Why don't you just spend the night here, I've got plenty of blankets for you to use, and you could go home as soon as it gets light again."
That was Tobias, the man they trusted so much.
Erik wished he could tell them the truth about him, but Elizabeth would never allow him to come anywhere near her or her niece. She hated him with all her heart after what he did to Christine. They had been like sisters for years, but Elizabeth had warned her for her "Angel" and yet, she wouldn't listen. Now, they had both ended up hating him.
The only man Elizabeth and Anna would trust was Tobias. And Erik knew almost certainly that they were now making a similar mistake with him as Christine had done with Erik. The only problem was, Erik's intentions were good. He wasn't so sure whether or not Tobias' were too.
Apparently, Elizabeth had decided they should stay as the voices had stopped talking a few minutes earlier.
Erik got up from the stairs he had been sitting on and walked slowly towards the door at the end of the hallway. He waited for a few moments to hear if they were all asleep. Considering the loud snoring, he knew, at least Tobias was fast asleep.
He opened the door, which went a lot easier than expected, and there, on the floor, were the two girls he had been protecting ever since the Opera had been as good as gone. He was satisfied to see at least Tobias hadn't fell asleep next to Elizabeth and Anna but instead had sunken down into one of the two similar chairs on the other side of the room.
Even though the one present window in the room hardly let any of the moonlight through and no other source of light was available, Erik was able to see everything quite clearly, as if at least one candle was lit. This, of course, had everything to do with the fact that he had spend almost his entire life in the darkness, and got used to walking around without any light in order not to betray himself wandering around through the Opera at night.
With an inaudible sigh he left the spot he had been standing for quite a while, now realising that all that time, he had been staring at Elizabeth's peaceful face. Don't even think about it, he warned himself. He paced quickly through the streets of Paris, back to the one place that had always been his home and he just couldn't part of. He reached the back of the Opera and disappeared behind a small, weather-beaten iron gate, leading to a narrow spiral staircase and eventually down to what had once been his home.
Numbly, he walked into what was left of his house and walked straight to his swan bed, which was remarkably the only thing the mob didn't trash. Perhaps because the curtain that separated the bed from the rest of the room was down and the mob was so furious, they didn't look any further beyond their noses. He could only guess.
He couldn't bring up the strength to look at his organ, or at least what was left of it. He had seen it once after it had been damaged and had been sobbing over it for days. He had thrown a blanket over it after that and decided not to look at it for at least a very long time.
Crawling into his bed and blowing out the candle he had put next to it, he turned around while he suddenly realised he hadn't seen Isabel since he had walked up to Tobias' room earlier that evening. He made a mental note to go find her in the morning before he fell asleep and dreamt the same dream as ever.
Hi everyone, just to say, this is my very first fanfic actually translated from Dutch to English which means it costs me double the amount of time a normal fanfic requires to write. I'm hoping for a lot of (good) reactions, but mostly honest ones so I can get a real image of what you guys think of it. Don't feel guilty to say so if you think it sucks, but just tell me why instead if you feel this way about it. I'm really trying not to make it Mary-Sueish so go easy on me please!
I'm working on the third chapter now, but since school is coming back in the picture agian ew it's probably going to take me a few days longer than I want it to.
Last but not least, these first two chapters are mostly just to introduce the main chapters and their dayly lives (even tough Erik really needs no inroduction), and are therefore a little low-action like. I'm aware that almost this entire chapter is about Erik, but I'm sure neither of you can really hurt me for that (A).
P.S. Feel free to point me at grammar mistakes, I'm still learning my english.