Inktober 2019 Day #22 - Ghost (E/C, Angel of Music AU, see previous chapter)

The first time she saw him, Christine brushed it off as a trick of the light. She often perceived shapes in the shadows, only to have them vanish when she tried to look closer. As a child, her father said she had the gift to see things others could not. As an adult, she chalked it up to too much stress and too little sleep.

The next time, she started to think she was being haunted by a ghost. He lingered in the corner for hours, an indistinct figure accompanied by a strange electricity in the air. After closing up shop, she dusted off the upright piano to play a tune that had been in her head all day, singing along softly. Sampling the merchandise usually did the trick to calm her nerves. It also seemed to please her unconventional guest. He drew nearer with each note, but when she turned and met his golden gaze, he disappeared.

The third time, Christine was afraid she was losing her mind. She commanded him (if it was a him) to speak and reveal himself.

"You truly see me?"

His voice was unlike anything she had ever heard. She nodded, too shocked that the vision had responded at all to do anything else.

"I am the Angel of Music."

What stood before her seemed to be a tall, thin man in dark clothes. Weren't angels supposed to be terrifying creatures, covered in eyes and wings and wheels of fire? If he were an angel, he would tell her not to be afraid then send her on a mission from God. Maybe he wasn't an angel, but a demon in disguise…

No. No. None of this was real. Her grief had manifested itself into the form of one of her father's stories, nothing more. She needed to talk to someone, anyone, not a figment of her imagination.

"Leave me alone!"

Angel, ghost, demon. Whatever he was, at least he was polite enough to stay away when asked. A week passed with no sign of him, but the damage had already been done - old wounds reopened more easily than they would heal over again.

Her father had poured himself into his music following her mother's death, claiming her spirit had sent the Angel of Music from heaven to inspire him. Christine never believed in his fantasies, but she envied the comfort they had given him. When her father passed not long after, there had been no such divine intervention for her.

Had her parents sent her the Angel at last, or was she sharing a delusion with a dead man? There was one way to find out…

She called him by the only name she knew.

"Angel?"

She dreaded the silence she had expected from him before.

"Yes, Christine?"

He still seemed like a man, except that he had materialized from thin air. She would ask him about the lack of wings later. There were a thousand questions for later. For now, one weighed most heavily on her mind.

"Did…did you appear to my dad, too?"

"I have come to many throughout the ages, in some way or another."

Christine's heart sank. To this heavenly being, her father was one of billions upon billions of lives. Unremarkable, insignificant. She was a fool to think she could have a piece of her Pappa back, other than the legacy he had already left her - a failing second-hand music store and a pile of debt. Before she could send her visitor away for good, he spoke again.

"Gustave Daaé never saw me, as you do…but yes. He knew me."

The angel gestured towards the piano and she took a seat on the bench, unable to disobey that otherworldly voice. Without making a sound or touching her, she heard him whisper a melody in her ear and felt him guiding her fingers on the keys.

Christine recognized it instantly. It was the song her father had played almost nonstop after losing her mother. He had never written it down, saying that it always came to him when he needed it, and so it had been lost to memory until now. She smiled through her tears.

"Please, Angel…don't go."