Originally posted on AO3, written for the PotO Commune Week, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. Uploaded here by request - thank you blubird2021! Written also with all love and respect for Gerik, that beautiful himbo.
1871
It had been a difficult year.
Erik hadn't gotten an invite to the New Year's Masquerade, he lost a sword fight to a man with a ponytail, and Don Juan had not been triumphant.
And now Christine was gone — gone long enough that the fiancé she'd left with had become her husband. Or so Erik assumed. There was no way to be certain; he hadn't heard anything of the outside world in months. He didn't even know what had become of the Opera house above him, having not ventured past the third cellar since the night she left. He only knew that the fire must have been put out because his lair no longer smelled of smoke.
The night the mob bore down on him, he had narrowly managed to escape — yet he had not actually left the building. Instead, he'd hidden in a small, secret room accessed from the passage behind the broken mirror. There he had kept clean clothes and jugs of water and bottles of wine, along with tinned meat and vegetables and preserved fruit in jars, which went untouched. He lived on nothing but wine and agony those long days.
Eventually the shouts had turned to murmurs and then to nothing, and Erik had decided it was safe enough to emerge. Glass and shredded paper crunched beneath his feet with every step. His lair — his home since childhood, his safe haven from cruel humanity — had been completely torn apart. All he had left in the world was destroyed. Any other time, he would have given up right then and there and allowed himself to succumb to the hopelessness, but his spirit was already so broken that the despair hardly registered. Mechanically, he set about putting things to rights. It would take a long time, but time was all he had now.
Months on, almost all of his days were still spent cleaning and repairing and rebuilding. But he also took time for singing and quiet reflection — that is, singing quietly to his reflection.
Truly, Erik thought, pouting at the distorted face reflected back at him from the lake's murky waters, he was the most hideous creature to ever walk the earth. This face was a curse which inspired nothing but fear and loathing in all who beheld it, deformed so terribly that it had to be concealed behind a three inch wide swath of leather at all times. The screams of an entire theater full of people still rang in his ears. Even the people in the cheap seats, who, really, come to think of it, shouldn't have seen much of anything at all, had been horrorstruck when Christine snatched his mask and wig and revealed his inhuman face and his real hair, which was fine really, just more blond and less nicely styled than his wig.
Erik watched the reflection of his muscled chest ripple on the dark surface of the lake. His actual muscles rippled too. He sighed. What good was such an ample bosom when he knew that the heart that beat within it would always be on its own? When the only fingers to caress its meaty curves belonged to him and him alone?
Overcome, he put his woes into song, his voice rising to the heavens he would never reach — the voice of an angel who was all too human. He had never meant to trick Christine into believing he was an angel, but with the exquisite, ethereal beauty of his voice she was quick to assume, and how could he correct her when, except for her, no one would listen?
Erik swiped at his reflection with the single rose he held clutched in a fist. What did it all matter? In the end, she hadn't been able to accept his monstrous face. She had only been able to kiss him twice. When she could not bear to go back in for thirds, Erik knew he had to let her go. Still, for weeks after he'd emerged from hiding, he had lain awake beneath the (probably) moonless sky, waiting, hoping...but she never stole to his side. She wasn't tormented by her choice. He was just too ugly.
A single tear rolled down the slightly reddened flesh which passed for Erik's cheek. There was only one thing to do when he was in such a melancholy mood.
"I love you, Christine," he said softly.
"I love you too, Erik," replied a sweet, high pitched voice.
The wax heads of the two figures came together in a passionate kiss.
"Oh Erik, you're such a good kisser," Christine squealed.
"Not as good as you," growled Erik, clashing his lips against hers again.
The smooching and slurping sounds which followed must have masked the sloshing of boots through the water.
"What the fuck? What is all this?" came a man's voice from behind him. "Some kind of prop storage? Jesus, that's a lot of gold leaf."
Erik froze. His hands clutched the dolls almost hard enough to snap them in half.
"Why would it be all the way down here?" asked another voice. "And what's with all the goddamned candles?"
"Stop!" shouted a third. "There's someone here! Rifles up!"
Turning from his dollhouse, Erik saw three men standing at the shore of his lake. One was dark-haired, two were blond, all three wore a matching uniform of blue pants with a red stripe running down the leg, and each carried a sack. And, most concerningly, all three had rifles pointed directly at him.
"Who are you?" demanded the dark-haired man. "Are you Versaillais?"
Erik wasn't quite sure what a "Versaillais" was, but he had an introduction prepared and wasn't about to waste an opportunity to use it. Dropping the wax figures, he stood and drew himself up to his full height.
"I am not an angel nor a genius nor a Versaillais...I am Erik ," he said with a dramatic flourish.
"I don't remember anyone saying anything about a genius," one blond man muttered to another.
The dark-haired man quieted him with an imperious gesture; he must have been in charge. "What the fuck does that mean? Why are you down here?" he demanded. He looked Erik up and down. "Your clothes are spotless! Have you been hiding down here this whole time, you coward?" He spat into the water behind him.
Erik took in the men's tattered and stained jackets and their gaunt faces smeared with soot and sweat, and then looked down at the pristine white cotton ruffles framing his bronzed chest.
"If I am a coward, it's because man's hatred has made me so," he said sadly. "I've lived down here for many years. There is no place for me amongst humanity. Not when I look..." Erik paused for dramatic effect and then, bracing himself for the sound of their screams, ripped off his mask— "LIKE THIS!"
"Ah, okay," the leader said. "Yeah, that's a pretty bad burn. Was it the Versaillais? They've been blaming our side for all the fires, the bastards, but we're the ones who have suffered most." He gestured to the others and they dropped their rifles. "Did you come down here looking for rats, too?"
"Why would I look for rats?" Erik asked as he sheepishly replaced his mask.
The men looked at one another and laughed. When Erik didn't respond, the leader furrowed his brow. "To eat, of course."
Erik shook his head and went to the red velvet curtain which covered an entire wall of his living area. "Why would I eat rats when I have this?" He drew back the curtain, exposing a set of shelves loaded with rows and rows of tins and jars and bottles.
Immediately, all three men ran to the makeshift pantry, blinking at the vast assortment like they'd discovered a pile of jewels. One of the blond men turned to Erik with a snarl. "You asshole, we've been eating rats for months, and you've had a wall made of fucking jam?!"
"Well, why on earth are you eating rats? That hardly seems like my fault," Erik said in a huff, crossing his arms over his wide chest.
"Why are we—" the blond stopped, his face boiling red, and threw his hands up. "Are you shitting me?" He turned to the other two men. "Seriously, I think this guy might be crazy. Can we just grab the food and leave?"
"Wait," said the presumed leader, "if he's got this much food and that many candles, he may be hoarding other things." He lifted his rifle again. "What else have you got, you bastard?"
The other two men moved quickly, one filling the canvas sacks with jars as the other began knocking over tables and yanking at the curtains which divided the cavernous space into different rooms. Erik could feel his blood pressure rising. Little spots appeared at the edge of his vision
"I really ought to just shoot you, you know. Then we can come take whatever we need whenever we want," said the man holding the gun. "But I would rather not kill a fellow citoyen who has already been victimized by Thiers' goons." Again he spit over his shoulder, and Erik's hands curled into fists. The man gave him a hard, questioning look. "Vive la Commune?"
"Vive la what?" Erik replied with a snort. "Commune...Versaillais...Thiers...eating rats...I really haven't any idea what you're talking about. Are you drunk?"
With a look of absolute bewilderment, the man shook his head. "Paris is burning, the people are starving. We have been under siege for months and now we fight for freedom and for our lives, and you don't know? How do you not know?"
"Well I've been very busy with my opera, you see. And there was a girl, and we were in love, but there was a boy—"
"Opera!" exclaimed the man with a wild laugh. "No sane person would think 1871 was a year for Opera! Of all the years in our great city's history, this year would be one of the worst to stage a show. Are you some kind of an idiot?"
The approximately one quarter of Erik's face behind the mask began to burn hot. Him an idiot? He wasn't the one eating rats. Who were these maniacs who had invaded the sanctity of his solitude, who had defiled his space with spit and spilled papers and lies! They threatened him with guns, were dismissive of the tragedy of his face, and hadn't even given him a chance to bemoan his brokenheartedness, preferably in song. And now they were stealing his jam! Heat continued to flood Erik's body, tingling in his fingertips which clenched tighter and tighter into fists. It had taken so long to repair the damage the last—
"Oh my God! You have to come see this!"
There was the sound of quick footsteps, and Erik glanced up to see both blond men standing by the now-opened curtain of his bedroom.
"What the— is that a...mannequin?!"
"Yes! And thank God, I thought it was a dead body at first."
"Wait, it's in a wedding dress!" The man looked over his shoulder at Erik. "I didn't know you were married. What's her name? Does she have a sister?" He laughed heartily at his own joke.
The man pointing the rifle at him raised his eyebrow. "Looks like someone has learned how not to be lonely. What, are you actually fucking that thing or—"
...
Or what, Erik never found out. He killed him, of course. He killed them all. Strangled them to death with a bit of rope, one-by-one.
Just like he had killed Piangi, Buquet, and a half dozen or so others before them, as well as the handful who had come looking for him after the fire: Giry and her daughter, one of the managers (or was it both?) and Carlotta, though that one was a kindness. Erik knew she would want to be reunited with Piangi, and if he had learned anything from the incident with Christine, it was selflessness.
Erik added the three bodies to the pile, rowed back to his home, and climbed into his golden swan bed, exhausted. He sighed. A smear of blood stained his shirt and his chest glistened with perspiration; he was filthy. He pulled off the shirt and cradled the mannequin against his bare chest. As much as he tried, he couldn't stop thinking about what those men had said. Was Paris burning? Had there been a siege? Did he really have that many candles? Erik felt as though he was losing his grip on reality. He buried his distorted face in the cascade of curls and cried.
"Oh, don't worry about them, my love." Christine said, her voice high and sweet, with just a hint of a Scottish accent. "They must have been crazy."
