A/N: I cannot apologize enough to all those who started reading this before now and have had to wait so long for this chapter. I'm not sure how it happened (and I personally don't want to think about it), but after I originally posted the prologue for this story, somehow "School" came to stalk me with a vengeance, which was not...fun. Then I honestly slaved over how to write this (and future) chapters while I was in summer school, only it was somewhat difficult considering that I had thought of about 6 different ways to start off this story. Finally, I figured it all out (not to mention the next ten chapters), so we're all set:-) Thanks so much to CrusaderTransformer1 and silvergenji for talking with me, listening to my idea, and giving me new ideas! Extra thanks to silvergenji for being my beta (and listening to me complain about strange siblings and even stranger dreams)!

I do not own The Phantom of the Opera or either form of Rigoletto. Speaking of which, I have a special request for those of you who have already seen Rigoletto: PLEASE do not spoil the ending of that movie for those who have not seen Rigoletto. Those who haven't, go buy it. It's well worth the money and then some.

One other thing: while conducting some research on the opera Rigoletto, I found a little discrepancy: apparently, Verdi wrote it in 1851, but it wasn't allowed (snicker) to be performed in Paris until about 30 years later, which is about 30 years after this is taking place. So, for the sake of artistic license, let us all imagine that Rigoletto was performed in Paris only a few months after it was written...

Chapter One:

These Precious Things

-Christine-

"Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me."

- Stephenie Meyer, New Moon

Dear Diary,
Today was another busy day. Papa's café was the busiest of all Paris (in my opinion). With all of the starving singers, dancers, stagehands, and everyone else, they sure kept Papa on his feet! Papa doesn't complain much, but I'm sure he's tired of it. But then he must be (partly) happy about it too, because heaven knows we aren't the richest family in Paris. I know he would much rather sit with Maman and their friends than work, but we do need the money. Aunt Giry and me try to help out as much as we can. But since Aunt Giry is the ballet mistress and I am only 9 years old, we can't help much. I thank God every night for Papa's sous-chef! I wish I was older so I could do grown-up things!

Dear Diary,
I am going to be 10 in TWO DAYS! Finally! Mamàn and Papa are really excited too. They promised me a special birthday treat! Rigoletto is going to be performed again at l'Opèra Populaire on my birthday, and I get to see it! I'm so happy! It's my favorite opera, and I have special tickets so I can sit in the house, not backstage like I usually do. I can see Rigoletto the way I've always wanted to see it, and now I won't have to keep moving to make room for all the performers and stagehands! It's the best birthday present ever!

Only one more day!

Dear Diary,
I don't know what to write.
Maman and Papa were killed

I snapped the small diary shut. With trembling fingers, I lifted my mattress with the strength born of desperation – a desperation to get that book out of sight as fast as possible – and slid it underneath, letting the mattress fall harshly on top of it.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Perhaps that was why it was still as much of a shock as it had been four years ago. Reading that phrase, that one phrase, was enough to reduce me to a bumbling fool, for no amount of mattress-slamming would push away the awful truth in those pages. I stared unseeingly at the bedclothes as I struggled to regain my composure: my hands balled into fists, my breath came in ragged gasps, causing my heart to pound much louder and faster than it was wont to. However, even when these symptoms had dissipated, even when felt I could trust my legs to carry me from my bedside to my armoire, I could still almost feel my mind recoiling with horror from that idea, that awful idea. It was the one thing I would never think about, never speak of, because to do so would make it more finally real than I could ever imagine. Then the unbearable pain would be there, pain I knew I couldn't deal with. If feeling only a small portion of that all-encompassing pain – simply by reading a phrase – was enough to send me into transports of suffering, how much worse would it be to feel it all, whole and undiluted? How much more would I feel, and how much more incapacitated would I be, with the vast magnitude of such affliction?

Best to do what I'd done nearly every day for over four years: just try to get through each day, one step at a time.

I focused on the objects in front of my eyes as I stepped behind my dressing screen, fresh clothes in hand. I concentrated on the feel of the cool, smooth linen against my skin as I slipped on my favorite white blouse and buttoned a navy skirt over it. Others might dispute on the propriety of wearing such an ensemble to l'Opèra Populaire – and on a Saturday – but I had learned the hard way that it was much more quick and convenient to change into one's leotard and hose out of a blouse and skirt, as opposed to a dress.

Ever since I had come to live with my Aunt Giry and her family, I had taken ballet lessons at the opera house. At first, it was merely out of necessity that I did so: my aunt was the head ballet mistress at l'Opèra, and she couldn't very well leave me in their house alone while she and my young cousin went to the opera house, and my uncle attended to his matters of business. However, after I had overcome my initial shyness of the more outspoken girls and discovered that our teacher's personality was not determined by her sharp tone of voice, I began to genuinely enjoy it.

There's something about dancing that I've never been able to accurately describe. To be able to feel the wind in your hair and between your fingertips as you twirl gracefully on, to feel yourself move with light elegance and yet with powerful expression…there's nothing quite like it. It is the only art form that I know of in which your whole body becomes a living, moving, breathing work of art. It's an amazing feeling, to let the power of music take over your movements, and then you are not controlled by propriety, but by emotion.

Perhaps this was the true reason why my aunt had wanted me to learn ballet. She of all people would know how satisfying it is to discard one's troubles through dance, and – though I had never heard her use these exact words – I got the impression that my aunt felt it would be healing somehow for me to follow in the footsteps of her sister.

Aunt Giry was right, to a point. Though I could not bear to think of the past, this was enough. It was enough to know that Gisèle Lecroix Daaé had once walked through these halls, that she had graced these rooms with her presence, and that she had once taken lessons in that very same place when she was my age, however long ago. It was enough to feel that mystical sense of other as I practiced in those rooms, feeling not as if I was just Christine Lucille Daaé, but more like Gisèle Lecroix Daaé, a strange combination of the two.

Unfortunately, it was never my life's ambition to become prima ballerina. I had seen enough operas backstage to want something different.

Something infinitely more beautiful.

Don't mistake me: I love to dance, I really do. And yet, throughout my lifelong quest for beauty, never have I found so sublime an art form as that of music. For me, music encompasses all emotion, all feeling; music, at its root, is divine. I can never remember a time when I did not love music – though, I suppose that growing up in an opera house had something to do with it. I've always wanted to be a part of that beauty: more specifically, I wanted to become the vessel for those melodies that have enchanted me all my life. I remember watching the prima donnas of my childhood, lost in a universe commanded by their words, my heart buoyed up by the sheer magnitude of their souls, their music. Awed into silence, I would listen while imagining myself in their places, filled with music and light.

Singing is my true passion.

When I had first informed my – my parents of my preference, they had tried to talk to me sensibly, telling me that 8 years old was a very young age to be taking singing lessons and that I might change my mind later. However, after some firm persistence on my part (I tried not to act like a spoiled child, but one must do what one can to attain what one loves more than almost anything else) as well as some reasoning of my own, my fa– Esbjörne Daaé began to teach me basic vocal technique. He was both a violinist and a singer, and as much a lover of music as I, so I had known the musical alphabet almost before I knew how to count (I doubt I would've learned how to do so that same month, had he not realized that I also needed to learn about rhythm and counting time). What he taught me, though, was different from those elementary lessons. It was difficult for me at the time, and yet I threw myself headlong into his tutelage, eager for every moment in which I learned how to properly play that instrument which God had blessed me with from birth.

My birthday had put an end to that.

I gasped aloud as the cold water with which I was washing myself splashed against my face.

Heavens above, Christine, will you never learn? Do you want to make yourself miserable? Have you really turned into some sort of glutton for punishment?

I inhaled deeply as I covered my face with a towel, letting the faint lavender smell eddy around my thoughts as they settled like grains of sand in the ocean. Looking that far back into my diary was an extremely foolish thing to do, especially in the morning when I still had the whole day ahead of me! How much harder would it now be to put on a pleasant face for everyone when I had had such a cheerless start to my day?

And what did it serve? What good did it do, to remember such things? It didn't signify how much I remembered them, for nothing could be changed. I might mope and cry and despair as much as I chose – not that there was much of that sort of behavior on my part – but nothing I could do would bring them back to this Earth. And, as arbitrary as time is –

There is no going back.

"Christine! Time for breakfast, ma chèrie!"

I dried my face and quickly folded the washcloth.

"Coming, aunt!"

There is no going back.