It was the greatest conspiracy. The news of Christine Daae's triumph was easily overridden by rumors of her sudden disappearance. After her last performance, she had been seen on her way to her dressing room but when called upon, no one answered. The room had been empty. It was as if she had vanished into thin air! It was a curious case indeed, but no one seemed to fuss over it more than a day. That is, no one save for the Vicomte de Chagney.

I admit that I too had dropped the rumors as effortlessly as anybody else in the company. Albeit her sudden disappearance was odd, perhaps we were making a mountain out of a molehill. Perhaps, she had a family emergency or some urgent errand she had to see to as quickly as possible. It still didn't make it any less suspicious. From what Christine had told me, the woman she occasionally lived with, Madame Valerius, was the only family she had left. So, I summed it up to be a spur-of-the-moment visit to the elderly woman, and left it at that.

Oh, how I wish now that I hadn't dismissed it so lightly. The clues were there in plain sight, in the backmost deserted region of my mind. I just wasn't aware at the time there was a mystery they needed to be applied to.

It was while I was doing some work in the third cellar—no one else dared go down after what happened to Joseph (I'm not sure why I did)—that I met him again. I was carrying some props and, as usual, it was unbearably dark despite the few torches that lit the way down. I brushed past a piece of dark cloth close to the wall of the entrance, causing me to drop a plaster skull used in Faust. Precariously shifting the other objects in my arms, I knelt down to retrieve it, pushing back the flap of cloth which I assumed to be a costume or a curtain to a set piece or something. However, while feeling about for the skull, my fingers came in contact with something long and narrow…smooth…leathery, with something solid inside of it. I had unknowingly caressed a man's boot.

"Bloody Christ!" The realization sent my balancing act skittering across the floor, taking me with it.

"Hardly", came the deep cynical voice.

"Christ's bleedin' nails, you scared the bejeezus out of me!"

"Your language is worse than an intoxicated Russian."

I picked myself up off the floor, rubbing my bruised backside before collecting the scattered props.

"Hey, I've been to Russia my friend, and my language is the pink of perfection compared to them. Are you gonna help me or not?" I referred to the mess on the floor.

He stared at me intensely for a moment before replying. "Why should I?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Why should I help you when you, mademoiselle, have failed to help me."

Oh. That. I braced myself for the storm to come.

"I gather you know of her disappearance?"

"Of course I do."

"How about stories of where she grew up?"

"Naturally."

I don't know how to explain it, but something in my mind—perhaps another mounting suspicion I hadn't been aware of—clicked. Wheels started turning, neglected details and pieces began to connect. I had a vague hunch and decided to test it.

"Oh, well maybe it would interest you to know of her family—"

"—That, is no news to me."

…He was never seen by anyone, and if he was, only for the blink of an eye.

"Then surely, you must know of Raoul."

…He already seemed to know so much about her, which would mean spending sufficient amount of time around her.

"Yes, I know of the Vicomte!"

I had not mentioned Raoul's formal title. Either he kept up with the gossip of high society or…

I racked my brain for any other minor detail that might confirm my rising suspicions of who exactly this man might be. I recalled something Christine had told me that night at La Vie En Rose.

"There was a song Christine's father could play quite well, from what I'm told. It was one of her favorites and she wanted to hear it at his funeral, but never found anyone skilled enough to play it. I think it's called the Res--,"

"—Resurrection of Lazarus, I know!" The moment the words left his mouth, he stopped. The air stirred with tension and I suspected he had guessed my game. I still had one more card to play.

"That leads me to wonder, just how much do you know? I've got it, did you know that when she and the Vicomte played together as children, her father would tell them charming little fairytales? In fact, one story portrayed a little girl who may have looked quite similar to Christine. I can't recall what her name was…something like Lovely Lorelei or Little--"

"—Lotte." He blurted.

"That's right. Little Lotte…and her Angel of Music. The one she always confides in, shares her innermost thoughts with…" He knew the game was up. "With a hobby like that, it's a wonder you need me at all."

"You knew."

"I have keen womanly intuition. I do have to wonder though, what Christine will think when she discovers that her Angel and the dreaded Phantom are one and the same."

"She'll never need to know."

"You know where she is, don't you?"

He sighed heavily, bending to pick up the skull I had dropped near his feet before.

"Am I going to have to kill you too?" He sounded almost bored with the thought.

But his words sent my thoughts reeling back to the gruesome image of Joseph's cold lifeless body on a stretcher.

"You've rid the world of one Buquet. Not enough?"

He stared at the Death's head as if willing it to life with those unnatural yellow eyes of his. "It was complicated."

I snorted, feeling my emotions beginning to overcome my senses. "What's complicated about it? He saw you, it pissed you off, you killed him. The end."

"It happened far too often, you don't understand anything." He hissed. "My life, my very existence, such as it is, survives on the ignorance of others. It plays on the silence of the very few who know of me and where I dwell. Your fool-hardy brother chose to break that silence. He took pride in sharing everything there is to know about the elusive Opera Ghost! Oh, he was an arrogant, stupid, perverted, useless twit…"

It was somewhere in that lapse of time that I lost my mind. I must've lost my mind, because there wasn't a rational thought in my head when I dropped every prop in my arms and lunged for him. He easily countered my attack, ducking to one side, tripping me with his foot. I fell to my knees, but before I could react, he had me by the back of my shirt collar, yanking me up to press me against the wall.

"And you're not much brighter, are you?" He said through clenched teeth.

I struggled, my cheekbone grinding against the wall. His hands pinned my arms to the wall on either side while using his bodyweight to press into my back so it was nearly impossible to move…nearly, but not entirely. I couldn't use my legs to push off the wall, but with his body being right up against mine to restrict movement, I put my trust in the fact he wouldn't slack off for anything and let my feet fly backward—causing my body to sag a little—and wrap around his legs.

He tried to shake them off but I held tight. He pulled my arms behind me, tearing me away from the wall, but not before my cheek scraped against the rough stone.

"Your bloody soul to the devil, you have no idea what Jo and I have been through, no idea what you've done!" I screamed.

"I'm damned anyway! You have no idea why I did what I did," he responded gruffly, letting go of my arms so that I dropped to the floor, barely catching myself with my hands, unlocking my feet.

"I put the poor wretch out of his misery."

Overcome by a fresh wave of fury, I cried out in rage and slammed my boot into his shin as hard as I could, rewarded with a bellow of pain and a strong oath from the target. He instinctively grasped his leg, buying me a few precious seconds to scamper to my feet and get away. Under normal circumstances, Maggie Buquet wouldn't back out of a fight with any man. But these weren't normal circumstances, and this most certainly wasn't any ordinary man.

They say the things we fear the most are the things that have already happened to us. In some cases I reckon that's true, but in this case, it wasn't. I'd dealt with a lot of dirty bastards in my time, but I didn't know how to handle this situation and that's what scared me. He was unlike anyone or anything I'd ever encountered. And so, of him, I was genuinely afraid.

I ran up the stairs, thinking if I could make it out of the cellars, out where there were people, witnesses, he wouldn't dare follow me. I didn't make it far, before I felt something catch my neck, jerking me backwards so that I fell unceremoniously down half the flight of stairs. I was dizzy and in pain. Bursts of colored spots danced in front of my eyes like fuzzy, out-of-proportion flowers. I couldn't draw in any oxygen. It felt like reluctantly waking from a dream…or maybe drifting back to one, which must've been my preference because then there were no colors, only solid black, and I didn't remember anymore.

A/N: sorry it's so short, but I really wanted to get something out there in fan-land. Let me know what you think about fight scenes; if it's good, unrealistic, some suggestions to make it better…