Disclaimer:

No characters in this chapter belong to me. They are the property of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Gaston Leroux, most unfortunately.

Author's note:

While I know a few of you have read my one shot by the same name, I urge you to go ahead and read this version. It's based somewhat on the other one, meaning the flashback is the same, but I have changed things up a bit. As a lot of you are going to recognize, the quote at the top of the chapter is from Beauty Underneath from LND. Just remember, you're going to be seeing a very different view of the song in this chapter.

Aminta

Chapter six

The Beauty Underneath

"When you stare behind the night, can you glimpse its primal mite? Might you hunger to possess, hunger that you can't repress?"

My dearest,

Your tone is forgiven, as I understand how easily it can be created with years of no one caring enough to know how you really are, and what you really feel. I caution you, however, that it is not something I wish to occur again.

I am glad to see that father, mother, and Corin have accepted you as easily as they have, because whether they like it or not, I have claimed you, and you will be going nowhere, save for, if you can convince me you are well protected, back to Shreveport. We will discuss that when I return. . Father is a great man, but as the incident with Vlad showed you, he is a man that will do anything, even kill, to protect his family. He would not have killed you, because in his mind you were nothing more than an innocent child who bore the unfortunate curse of having information he desired. This is not a place anyone wishes to dwell, trust me.

That said, mon amour, I am most displeased that you have let yourself become so ill. Perhaps there was nothing you could have done, given how your wolf seems to have rebelled against you, but it concerns me greatly that this may be a possibility each time I leave for an assignment. This is not something that will bode well for either of us, as I do not function well if kept in one place for too long.

This life… the kill… it has come to define me in so many ways. Some would say it is not the sort of life that should define a person, but when one has seen as much hatred and hardship as I have, that person will do anything in their power to preserve as much innocence as they can. True, not everyone can be saved, and there are a few who never truly wish to remain innocent. Still, I try as best I can.

So many times, I've been asked, how a person becomes what I am, and I have been content, until now, to simply say that it always was. I think, however, that you may be able to draw a bit of strength from my first years of training. Thus, I share them with you. I ask that, as a matter of safety you keep these papers locked away, at the very least. However, if you wish to do me a greater justice and service, I would ask that you burn them when you have finished.

…

Leather and cold steel, the mixture was heady… intoxicating. I thought the rush that came when my fingers touched the ivory keys of father's piano could never be equaled, but I had been most assuredly and most sadly mistaken.

My leather clad hand curled and uncurled around the hilt of the heavy blade, testing it. For what, I wasn't certain at the time, but my hands seemed more knowledgeable than my seventeen years.

I have often been asked, in the years since, if there was any fear in those first moments, and depending on the company I kept at the time, I would often swear to be completely unfamiliar with the emotion. This, though I force myself to admit it even still, was not the case. I was terrified.

What if father found me, I remembered thinking. He would be none too pleased to find that such a blade had gone missing and was now in my hands, and mother, with her all too delicate constitutions, what would she say, what would she think I intended to do with it? Better still, what did I intend to do with it? I wasn't certain of the answer to that myself.

A barely audible creek, the lightest of steps, he was close, and I'd been caught. I never knew how mother still gasped at his illusions, how she could never hear him, feel him, when I could tell exactly where he was at any given moment.

"Gustav," his voice was cold, dangerous, unyielding, and while it should have made me shiver as it had so many times, I only straightened prepared for his strike.

"Oui mon pere," I asked, my tone a mirror of his own.

"My blade…?"

I made no attempt to answer, only held out my left hand, the one that was curled around the hilt, letting him examine my prize.

"I see," he answered gravely, a new look crossing his face, and how does it feel?"

Was this some sort of trick question, and if so, what was he after. His eyes were pressing me, daring me not to answer, and I fought my urges to become childlike under that incredulous gaze.

"It feels… it feels like the music, consuming, possessing, but yet, it is so much more." I answered almost automatically.

The look in his eyes would have made me beg for mercy and run to the safety of mother's skirts if I had been a weaker creature, but I knew I had dug the whole and must follow through with whatever he saw fit to do with me.

A single gesture was the only warning to follow him I received before he vanished, nearly at a run from the room. I lost track of how many floors we ran down, but by the time he stopped, I was in a part of the house I had never seen before. Thus was the nature of my father, nothing was ever as it seemed.

"I must confess I wondered if this would be the case, as I watched your nature progress," he admitted softly.

"Mon pere?" I questioned. He was doing it again, assuming any and everyone knew what he was thinking and leaving me only with cryptic half answers. Something that, many times, I have been told I inherited to the despair of those closest to me.

"In a way," he began carefully, "Your mother and I have wronged you by not telling you all of my past. You know of The Phantom, you know of our story, but never once have I told you about my time in Persia and the Angel of Death."

"Qu'est-ce que c'est sa?" I asked, confused. Persia… the Angel of Death… What the hell did this have to do with me stealing his blade. He was losing me and fast.

"The summer of 1876 was more insufferable than any I had seen thus far, and made even more sweltering by the heat and sweat that pooled beneath the mask I refused to remove, even before my mentor…"

There was a point to this story. There had to be, or I was going to be several shades of angry. Deciding I wasn't going to get free of his recitation any time soon, I settled back into a chair, prepared for whatever was coming.

"The Shah's palace had been long finished, and I thought my time in the cursed place was long near over. But it was then that I met her…

She was a brutal woman, the Shah's mother, a sadistic one and a voyeur of tortures, and she had decided someone with my skill could learn to serve her sadistic fantasies. Day after day, I became an architect of an entirely different sort, designing chambers of tortures, designing torture carried out by my own hand. The Angel of Death I was often called, alternated with The Prince of Stranglers, as I favored the cat gut noose— the Punjab-, a weapon unique to that region.

I never saw myself as a killer, though I had done so from time to time, but during those days, those "rosy hours of Mazanderran", I killed with a beautiful lustful pleasure which intoxicated me like no drink or substance I had ever known, and I had known many."

My mouth dropped to the floor, and I fell speechless... overwhelmed by this new information.

"Are you saying I… I…?" I couldn't say it, I couldn't accept it. My own father attempted to tell me that I would take pleasure in taking the lives of others. This couldn't be possible, could it?

"It sings for you, doesn't it?" he asked as he stroked the blade like a long lost lover. "You hear the song that no one else can hear when it is in your hands."

I nodded weakly, my mind racing a million heartbeats a minute, as I too stroked the beautifully lethal object.

"Get up," he instructed coldly, "And take the blade."

I hesitated, the old terror beginning to grip me again, but when I saw him whip the noose out from beneath his cloak, I realized I had no choice.

"You fear me?" he asked coldly.

"I fear what you tell me I am," I managed weakly.

There was a split second's warning for me, as I watched him prepare to throw the delicate looking cord about my neck but that split second wasn't enough. In the next moment, I was thrown to the cold stone floor, writhing in panic as the noose tightened and left me gasping for air.

He released me slowly as the glaze of focus left his tawny eyes, and I picked myself up from the floor.

"Where were you," he asked me, and his voice was tender again.

"Je ne sais pas," I confessed honestly.

"You must focus," he warned, "Those daydreams are good for nothing save getting you killed."

I straightened myself, and he allowed me the briefest of moments to return from my wanderings before the noose flew again. This time I was ready, the blade flashed in my hand, cutting down the cord, and before I knew exactly what happened, the knife was being lunged toward his throat as a snarl like nothing that had ever left my lips filled the room.

His eyes glowed and flashed, and without a single word being spoken between us, I could tell he was pleased with me. This fact sent me reeling in pleasure. That fight must of lasted for hours, though the true timing of it escapes me now.

Each day for a year or so after that, the training continued, and then the testing came. He told me, when his mentor had given him the same test, it had been days before he finished, and there was talk that he might not have even survived, but I can still remember the utter childish pleasure in those golden eyes when I finished in a mere matter of hours and was forced to take my oaths upon his blade. It was a year after that when my mother finally came to terms with the fact that she had been cursed, as she often viewed it, with a second Angel of Death.

We have brought her to a state of, at the very least, tolerance now, but I fear lest she will never truly cease her worryings over either of us. Though, as my father's prime ends, he consents more and more to remain with her in favor of sending me to perform what was once his greatest pleasure.

…

Though I know this has given you much to ponder, my love, and as probably made you a bit skittish of me, I hope there is some strength and understanding you can draw from it. Know that I think of you often, and I await my return home to all of you with bated breath.

I remain, yours forever in love,

Gustav