Who: Erik and Christine What: Erik shows up to check out Christine's new living arrangements and does not approve. Where: Montmartre, Paris. When: Errr recently. Warnings/Rating: None.
Montmartre was tall housing flats and winding, cobblestone streets. It was loud and crowded, the promise of decadence, of dark things that decent Parisians found shocking. It was young, in its infancy, the windmill atop the Moulin still bright red, Joseph Oller’s beacon in the darkness. Charles Zidler managed the Moulin, and men lined up in inky black and snowy white every evening to see his girls sing, to see them dance the forbidden can-can. Zidler’s girls were handpicked from the chorus lines of the best shows, the best stages, and he dressed them like diamonds and turned them into courtesans. It was, in a world where mistresses were kept hidden from respectable wives, a glittering taboo - and a profitable one, where money sang and little else mattered.
Artists and musicians crowded into the flats of the blooming city, which slept as quietly as a babe in a cradle during the daylight hours. After dark, Montmartre came alive in a whirl of lights and sound and the neon green of absinthe. From the cheap whores who plied their trade on the cobblestone streets and in the open windows of flats, to the Moulin’s songbirds who sang for only the wealthiest patrons, money talked, and Montmartre listened. It was a place where the strange thrived, there, in the darkness and, despite all the lights and laughter, there was no true happiness to be found in the winding streets.
Christine, like all of the unsponsored girls at the Moulin, shared a sleeping room with the others. She had been there nightly since things had gone poorly in Las Vegas and, finally, it seemed all her shared stitches were removed, her bruises faded to nothing. Not that these things had kept her from singing. Fabric could be conveniently draped along one shoulder, oui? And there were cosmetics for the rest. But she was grateful to be rid of the strange metal clasps that pulled at her skin. She sang a Swedish lullaby as she sat at the dressing table she shared with the others, working at the angry line of red and leaving only soft scars behind. The dress she wore would be considered chaste in Las Vegas, but her first few nights on the stage had resulted in more blushing than singing. But it was better now, and she was grateful to lose herself in the song.
She did not expect anyone to come. Paris had calmed since she had left it behind, and this was for the best. Raoul was not causing trouble, and Erik was not being tormented. Hopefully, as the papers said, the Opera House would reopen, and Meg could return to the ballet dormitories, and Erik could return to his home. Raoul would find a woman more suited to the life of a Vicomtesse - and she would sing.
The question was not if Erik would come, but rather when.
He had not yet returned to the Opera House, not permanently, though he had begun to make plans for its rumored re-opening. It was his home, Raoul or no Raoul, and while he was currently living underground and making do with stolen food and goods in order to survive, he had always known he would go back eventually. His lair may have been destroyed, but he could rebuild. He would rebuild. The Vicomte would not keep him from his Opera House, and should it reopen, he would remind the other man exactly what happened to those who dared cross the Opera Ghost. Yes, he would make his life very, very difficult. All he had to do was bide his time. This meant that he had quite a bit of time, however, between sneaking in and out of the Opera House to leave his roots, and a great deal of that time was spent thinking of Christine. Despite all that had occurred, he still loved her; it was simply impossible for him to stop. And now, now... she was no longer with Raoul. It was all he had ever hoped for and yet still he kept his distance. Even if she did not want him, which he doubted she did, Erik could not bear the thought of her being anywhere she might not be treated as she deserved to be treated, and this Moulin Rouge was not the sort of place he thought she should be.
Rumors and the spoken word made him wary, but for Erik to be sure, he needed to visit this place for himself, and while it took longer than it should have, perhaps, the day came when he decided to do so. It was always easier for him to travel after dark, and men like him fit in rather well in Montmartre. All he needed was a suit, the illusion of wealth and mystery, and a mask which matched his ensemble and the hat pulled over his eyes in order to further cast his face into shadow. He moved like a ghost, Erik did, soundlessly, smoothly, and no one noticed when he vanished around a corner and ceased to become part of the crowd. Men lined up to watch the girls here, but he was no ordinary man, and while he lacked the understanding of the Moulin Rouge’s infrastructure as he did the Opera House, he was capable of adapting quite quickly.
Thus, while the crowd waited below to watch, the sea of laughter and conversation only rising so high, Erik waited in the shadows, removed from them all, where he could see but not be seen.
The show opened, as it did every evening, with dancing and a swirl of colorful fabrics and a display of long limbs. Not the forbidden can-can, that was saved for later in the evening, but the early dances were provocative enough to make those in the crowd that had come merely to test the waters, without understanding what they were testing, blush and flee to the morality of clean Paris with scandalous tales to tell. The operette, Voluptata, followed the opening dances, and Christine’s white dress and plunging neckline were a stark contrast to the reds and blues and golds of the dancers that dotted the open floor in front of the stage.
However out of place she felt while she lingered in the wings and watched the dance, that melted away once she took the stage to sing. Voluptata was, as expected, risque, inappropriate, the language considered improper for a teenage girl who was visibly out of her element in such a place, and that exploitation was the thrill of it for the patrons. But for Christine it was merely song, and singing was something that had been denied her since she left the Opera House behind. As the fiancee of a Vicomte, performing was not something that was done. It was an easy thing to say, leave the music behind, but it was much harder to do, and everything faded away as she sang - the crowd, the spectators, the dress, the inappropriate lyrics. Her voice was still not perfect, still largely untrained, but there was enough talent there that the crowd hushed, torn between dark thoughts and wonderment.
Once she finished, once the applause had ended, she did as she was bid and joined the spectators on the main floor for the can-can. It was, she knew, displaying wares, for this was Zidler’s gift, selling things he did not own. While she feared the eventuality, she had thus far been spared it. He was a smart businessman, the manager of this place, and he was raising his price with her visibility and obvious purity. Still, as she smiled at a local merchant who asked after her parentage, she felt a chill of apprehension for the day she would need to pay the price for her safety here. “Veuillez m'excuser?” she asked after a moment, unable to shake the chill, before moving away from the merchant and into the darker edges of the floor, intending to edge her way around to the stage without being noticed.
Erik had fallen in love with her voice first. Before even having set eyes upon her, he had heard Christine sing, and from that moment onward he was bound to her. Yes, she was beautiful, but there were many beautiful women in Paris. She had something they did not. He realized then, in the darkness, just how long it had been since he’d heard her sing, and he closed his eyes as he listened. Perhaps her dress, they way it looked on her, stirred something within him--they called him a monster, but he was very much a man and subject to the same desires--but he cared far more for her voice. She was not yet perfect, but she could be. Such raw, genuine talent was near unheard of, and he thought that she was wasting her time here, with men who could never appreciate her voice as he did... much less appreciate her as she deserved. The lyrics did not matter, not when the feeling was there, the heart and soul of the song, and she portrayed that wonderfully. He ached to hear her, to listen; the sweetest sort of torture.
The applause jolted him out of his reverie, and his eyes snapped open in order to see Christine descend to the main floor. His previous calm, a sort of serenity lulled out by her voice, vanished, and he withdrew into the shadows with a silent snarl. No man here would ever touch her, not if he had anything to say about it, and the Opera Ghost most certainly did. He prowled on the edges of the floor, a dark shape no one paid attention to, and he waited. Erik had no desire to cause a spectacle here. His patience, rare as it was, paid off, and he forced himself to refrain from luring the merchant who’d spoken to her into the shadows and moved towards her instead.
“Christine,” he called, his voice a whisper meant only for her.
She had been hearing his voice since she was little more than a child - in her mind, in the shadows of her room, in the halls of the Opera House dormitories. Then, lonely as she was, she attributed it to something divine, something sent by her father to guard and teach her. But there was more to it, even then. If his voice had been something less than it was, she would surely have realized it was only a man in the shadows. She was young, and she was naive, but she was not unintelligent. But no, his voice was more like music than like a mortal voice. And then there was the music, his music, and it had all become mixed in her young mind. Even now, long after she had assured Raoul that the Phantom was nothing but a man, that voice still felt like something more than human.
She did not expect to hear that voice here, however, and she turned in a circle of white fabric and brown curls, wondering if she had gone mad in her loneliness. No, even if he came, it would not be like this, it would not be somewhere crowded with people as this place was. But she knew she was wrong, even as she logicked it away. She could not mistake that voice, even if she tried. Bewitched, Raoul said in the beginning, and perhaps he was right, but Raoul had never heard anything in her song, in any song, that was not written in the notes; he did not understand.
She did not move in the direction of the whisper. Instead, after a quick backward glance, she continued forward, around the edges of the floor and onto the stage, where the wings promised the privacy of curtains and drapes.
Perhaps being in such a crowded place was unwise, and his presence was admittedly uncharacteristic for him. Unless he was extremely familiar with his surroundings, Erik preferred solitude, and while he may have undeniably been a madman the word genius had also been used to describe him. He was smart enough to recognize that this was risky, but when it came to Christine what little reason he had was often pushed to the wayside. All of Paris knew about the Opera Ghost, but the one advantage he had was that no one expected him to be here. He had, for all they knew, dropped off the face of the earth, and the women provided an adequate distraction. No one was looking for him, and so he bypassed them all.
He watched her turn, knowing that she’d heard, even if she might have doubted herself. She never would have forgotten him so quickly. Based on their location, Erik didn’t expect her to stop; he’d simply wanted to alert her to his presence. When she moved forward, he followed, silent in the wake of his whisper. No one gave pursuit, too occupied with others, and he slipped past her to move behind a heavy curtain shrouded in shadow. A monster he may have been, but to give him his due he kept his gaze fixed firmly on her face as he watched her approach; it never once ventured downward to the plunged neckline of her dress.
It should not have surprised her to find him there before her, in the shadows and the darkness. He was full of such tricks, and she had always thought them magical. Being in the mind of the woman in Las Vegas had brought practicality with it, along with the understanding that it was probable he simply moved faster than her to get there, without the hindrance of tiny heels and yards of fabric. But she was still a creature of her world, despite all newfound practicality, and she gasped when she saw the movements in the shadows that hinted at his presence there. It was not a mirror in her dressing room, but the feeling that coursed through her was precisely the same as the moment that mirror had a revealed a secret passage.
She stopped for one of the lady’s maids turned dresser, and she assured the woman she felt faint, but would be on the floor again in moments, after catching her breath. After a disapproving look, the woman went on her way, and Christine stepped into the shadows, leaving a decent space between herself and the man she knew to be there. “I suspect you did not pay the price of admission, monsieur,” she said, her fingers fluttering to the scars she knew to be mostly covered by the cosmetics. “I did not believe you would come. Did you hear the song?” she asked, because this seemed the most important query. Not if he intended to save her, to purchase her, to steal her away. No, but did he hear her sing?
Erik’s mind worked quickly, and he had already decided that this was no place for Christine to be staying. Perhaps he was not as worldly in some things as others were, but he was no fool, and he knew singing and dancing would not always be all that was required of her. With Raoul nowhere to be found, it was up to him to keep her safe. His hope that they had made some sort of progress dimmed when she gasped, but he consoled himself with the fact that she didn’t run from him. He might only have surprised her. Surely, if she had feared him, she would have found a way to leave, rather than step into the shadows with him.
“Non, I did not,” he agreed quietly. “Of course I came, Christine. I... wished to see you.” Gone were the days when he simply wanted to be left in peace. Things had changed when Raoul rescinded his claim, and he and Christine ceased to be involved. This was unfamiliar territory, and he could not help but tread carefully. “Oui. I heard. It was-- you have far too much talent for a place such as this. Do you like it here, Christine? Truly?”
His question was not unexpected, and she turned her to look at the stage, at the increasingly provocative dancing going on there. Her turn to regard him again was slow, and she moved past him and fully into the wings before continuing. Speaking of such things where she could be heard would not do, and she wound a dark path up to the flys, which she knew would be empty during this time of the evening, when all the attention was below. The stairs curved and swayed, and the long line of metal that she stepped onto was equally rickety, but this was nothing new for him, she knew. He traversed the areas above the stage of the Opera House like it was sure footing and steady land.
She, on the other hand, held on tightly to the rails with fingers gone pale on gloveless hands. “Monsieur, it is work, and it provides me a place to stay. I am a chorus girl, oui? No one will allow me to be a governess or a lady’s maid, and I do not have the schooling for either profession. I know to sing, and I know to dance, and this is all that I know,” she said plainly, with no request for aid in her tone. That she did not intend to return to the Opera House was obvious, but there was something in her voice that said she would consider it. Perhaps it was the way she looked down at the can-can dancers below, or the way she let go the railing to press a hand against the bare skin of her chest protectively.
Unlike most men, Erik’s attention was not fixated on the spectacle below. His appearance and general course of life had not allowed for a great deal of interaction with women, and while knowledge could be gleaned through books and observation, he lacked any true experience of his own. He was more concerned with Christine, specifically her response to his question, and when none came immediately he did not hesitate before following her up the curved, rickety flight of stairs. Far more precarious paths had been traversed by his boots, and he needed no railing for assistance in order to ascend. He was as light-footed as a panther, quick and nimble just as much as he was sleek and silent.
She was well within her rights to find work wherever she chose, but he still thought that she was too good, too pure, for a place like this. “You can find work elsewhere,” he insisted. “Somewhere you will not be asked to give things you do not wish to give. You are capable of so much more. I could--” He stopped abruptly, catching himself just before offering his assistance and remaining silent for a few long moments, watching her expression, the way her hand pressed against her chest and her gaze was drawn down below. “The Opera House will reopen soon, and I intend to return,” he said instead, and perhaps there was something of a suggestion wrapped up in the words.
She was not surprised that he believed there were more options for her than what truly existed. He had grown up beneath the Opera House, perhaps, or in other places that were similar in nature. Society was a cruel creature that she knew he did not know well, and polite society was nothing like the name implied. “Monsieur, I am but a chorus girl, and we are considered to have low morals without the aid of being discarded by a fiancee of noble birth,” she explained, because there was no coming back from being set aside by Raoul, not without her name being tarnished, even if her presence here was not yet well known. She did not say that Raoul had not asked after her, that even in their conversations he had not asked where she was, how she was making her way, but the hurt showed on her face.
When he mentioned the opening of the Opera House she looked back at him, at what she could see of his face, of the bone-white of the mask in the shadowed of the darkened flys. “You will live there? Despite Raoul owning it outright? You are not afraid, Erik?” she asked, using the name he had given her all those months ago, but which she seldom used. “I would return, if I could,” she admitted, “even to work behind the scenes.” It was too much to ask to be allowed a leading part again. She had not had the necessary training before, and it had only been the Ghost that had forced that into fruition. But now, now she felt certain even the chorus would be denied her, even the ballet, given her poor relation with the owner of the Opera House and how far her reputation had fallen.
Erik’s view of society was not particularly kind, as he had experienced nothing but cruelty at its hands, yet it was as limited as she suspected. He assumed their scorn was reserved for him and him alone, a twisted sort of bitterness sprung from the treatment he received and his conviction that it all stemmed from his physical appearance. Perhaps he was now slightly more aware of his own sanity, or lack thereof, but he still did not think himself worthy of being called a monster. The way he saw things and the way society actually worked were two very different things. “Noble birth,” he sneered. “These people place far too much importance on that which is beyond our control. Your morals are higher than theirs could ever be.” He saw the hurt in her expression, knew it came from Raoul’s rejection, and while he was secretly pleased that they were no longer together he wished she had not been hurt in the process.
“Afraid of him, Christine?” He laughed, a low, dark sound amidst even darker shadows. “No, I am not. I may not own the Opera House, but it is my home, and I will not be driven out permanently. Raoul’s ownership gives me more of a reason to return. I must ensure he does not destroy it.” His tone was wry, but it was not said in jest. Part of his motivation for returning was to keep an eye on things, as he had for so many years, even before Christine had arrived and he knew of Raoul. “Do you think he would deny you?”
“A Vicomte keeps his word, and he would only cast his fiancee aside for the crime they suspected me of all along, Monsieur. Did Carlotta not believe everything you did was done by Raoul to advance my career? Did she not believe I was granting him favors?” She shrugged delicate shoulders, because she had long since accepted the shame of what people believed of her. “Now, cast aside, it merely solidifies their beliefs. They are a people who cling to morality, Erik. They do not like to step out of the light and into the dark. It frightens them,” she said, and there was something in her voice that said she too had been frightened of those things once.
“Afraid of what he might do. He will make you grovel to allow you to live there, and he will not allow it without his permission,” she said, and her belief in the ultimate power of the upper-class was in every word she spoke. She knew the world better than he, and she knew the power Raoul wielded without even lifting a finger. “He will not destroy it, but he will only want you there if you are cowed and at his command,” she assured him, a hint of sadness in that. It should not have come to this, none of this should have come to this. “I would not ask it of him. We have spoken only briefly since he called off the marriage, and the conversations were not warm ones. Even if he was inclined to assist, I could not be on the stage, not with my reputation in tatters. The Opera House is too refined for that, and it would suffer for my presence there. Perhaps I could speak to Meg, ask if her mère would allow me to work with the dancers. It is something, at least.” She glanced down at the stage. “Though I would miss singing terribly,” she said mournfully, almost too quietly to be heard above the music below.
Erik had paid so little attention to what Carlotta had said, as the sound of her voice had irked him in every medium, but even so he saw the truth in her words. Society loved their assumptions and public opinion was difficult to change once established. “Carlotta was a jealous fool,” he said derisively. “As were the rest of them. If morality is what they believe it to be, then it is nothing but a lie, a farce, false protection given to cowards.” He had wanted to be like them once, and perhaps a part of him still did, but he had grown too bitter, too jaded, to ever believe that being an accepted part of society was all that he’d once believed it would be. “They create their own darkness,” he added, bitterness tainting his words. “I would prefer to dwell in the shadows than live in the light alongside them.” Oh, it was a lie, one he wrapped himself in as a child might wrap themselves in a blanket out of a mistaken belief it would protect them from all the bad things in the world.
Groveling to Raoul was not something he had any intention of doing, and he almost laughed at the thought of begging the Vicomte to be allowed to return to the Opera House. “No, he will not. I do not need his permission, Christine, and he will learn that soon enough.” His eyes burned with a strange sort of intensity in the darkness as his gaze settled upon her. “I would rather die than be cowed and at his command.” He meant it, too, and that was obvious enough from the way he spoke. While he thought she still deserved to be on stage, and it was a travesty that she might not be permitted to do so, Erik knew that not even his influence could override the whole of Paris. “It is something,” he agreed, albeit grudgingly, but when she said she would miss singing he looked up, a flicker of something almost hesitant in his eyes before it was gone. It took him a few moments to gain the necessary courage, or whatever it was that nudged him to say the words, and when he did, it was with his gaze averted. “Even if you cannot sing for them,” he said, “you could still sing for me. If, of course, you wished to.”
The bitterness that tainted his words marked them for the lie that they were, but she did not take that lie from him. She had grown up with a loving father, one that doted on her and gave her the most precious gift that anyone could ever have given her - music, song. She could not imagine Erik's life, and she would not take whatever made it tolerable, not now. "Carlotta was a better soprano than I, Monsieur," she said truthfully, because she knew her limits, and she knew she only found her way to that stage because of him. "She was an unkind woman, but she had a magnificent voice." She reached out a hand to soften the words, settling her fingers on his sleeve, giving up the safety of the rail to do so. The statement did leave her with a question, however, and it gleamed in her eyes before she found the strength to give it voice. "Why me?" she asked. In a dormitory full of ballerinas, all of them lonely and away from home, why her?
The intensity in his gaze caused her to draw her fingers back from his sleeve, and her fingertips hovered between the pristine black of his coat and the railing, a hummingbird of movement in her uncertainty. It was not that she feared him, not as she had, but she feared the start of everything once more. In that moment, she realized she would not be able to stop it. It was as she had realized beneath the Opera House - this was not about her, not truly, not any longer. It was about them, and she could only serve to fan or douse the flames. She did not trust Raoul not to exert his force, and she did not trust Erik to concede, and her decision was made in that moment. "I will speak to Meg," she agreed, and she had not seen Madame Giry here; perhaps the need for a ballet mistress would be great enough that her credentials would not be too greatly called into question. The hesitation in his eyes was noticed as a belated thing, and she stared at him a long moment before nodding. "Oui, if you wish it."
Unkind was, in Erik’s mind, an understatement, but he refrained from objecting. Perhaps his opinion was tainted by Carlotta’s personality, that much he could admit, yet it was not enough to make him fully biased. “Oui, she could sing, but she was not better than you. A voice is not enough, Christine. She often lacked the emotion which would have connected her to what she sang, and in doing so made it more than mere words,” he explained. Her question caught him off guard, and he could not even begin to organize his thoughts enough to form a coherent explanation of why it had been her. Momentarily speechless, his gaze dropped to her fingers on his sleeve, half-awed by the fact that she was truly touching him. “Your voice had what hers lacked. I had never heard anything like it, Christine.” It was a simple explanation which left out a great deal, but he was terrible at feeling, never mind putting how he felt into actual words.
He thought he had frightened her, which was the cause for her pulling away, and failed to realize that she saw the past repeating itself in what he said. Had Raoul left Paris, Erik would have left him be and, with time, hopefully never have given him a second thought. Returning to the Opera House had nothing to do with the Vicomte taking ownership; he was returning in spite of him, not because of him. Having Christine present might complicate things, he was aware of that, and there was always the possibility that she and Raoul might reconcile, but even that was preferable to her working here and eventually selling herself to the highest bidder. He nodded when she said she would speak to Meg, and there was a brief flash of relief when she agreed, as though he feared she might say no. “I would like it a great deal,” he told her, hoping that she was agreeing because she wanted to, and not because it was what she thought he wished to hear.
She had trouble believing that a child's voice could be what he said it was, and she had been only a child then, when she had arrived at the ballet dormitories with more tears than song in her heart. It was his temporary speechlessness that kept her from arguing with him, the understanding that the words were somehow hard for him to say. He was nothing like Raoul in this. Raoul, with his easy words and endless charm. She saw him in another light now, Raoul, but she had never once doubted his words, his charmingly heartfelt words that made her feel like she was a princess in one of her father's stories. But things had changed, and perhaps she had matured. Perhaps before the final act at the Opera House, after Don Juan, perhaps even then she had seen that some things were not as simple as black and white. "You are perhaps biased, Monsieur," she said a blush in her cheeks at the compliment.
Below the can-can was ending, and her time to go on stage was nearing. She looked down, her expression thoughtful and too old for her teenage features. Non, she did not want to stay here, in this place. She had fallen, oui, but she was not like the girls below. When she looked at him again, it was with a look of resignation in the shadowed dark. "Life is not as my father said it would be, Monsieur. There are no angels here. There are only men, and they are not the princes of the stories he told me once in a darkened attic. Oui, I will contact Meg, and I will let Raoul know, and I will sing for you." Her hand slipped away from his sleeve, a slow and almost reluctant withdrawal. It would be best if Raoul and Meg did not know she had been in touch with the Ghost, and so she would not mention this. Perhaps she had learned something in the past year, or perhaps she only wished this to remain safe and in the shadows, where neither Raoul nor Meg would attempt to save her from a monster in a mask.
She took a step toward the stairs, and she turned as she edged past him. It was impulsive, the quick movement to press a chaste kiss to his unmarred cheek, but she was not yet grown and, despite everything, she was very much just a girl. "Au revoir, Monsieur," she managed, cheeks burning red.
Erik watched her, waiting for a response, encouraged by the blush and the simple overall truth that this encounter had not gone badly. Some of the warmth flickered and cooled at what came next, but it was true that he was no angel, and had only ever feigned being one. Nor was he a prince. He said nothing, not knowing how to respond to any of it, and simply nodded as she drew back. Regardless of what occurred with Raoul, he decided this was for the best; at least Christine would be away from this place, and he would still be permitted to see her, to hear her sing.
The kiss to his cheek surprised him, and he brought a hand to the skin her lips had touched in a sort of awe shadowed by the darkness. Au revoir, Christine,” he responded quietly, and as she descended the steps, Erik felt something like a smile--or the hint of one--beginning on his lips, and while it did not last, it had been there even for a moment.