GRECHKA @grechkathekasha - Tumblr Blog

17h

Masquerade

Rebecca Ferguson Erik[a] x Christine Daaé Reader

^The illustration above was a commission from @grechkathekasha. This is her work, don’t you DARE post it somewhere else or I’ll throttle you.

Summary: A remix of both the Gaston Leroux novel and the musical to resemble something of my own personal archetype/imagining of the phantom. But make it gay.

Warnings: Leroux accurate violence/murder mentions

A/N: This was a passion project that took a damn YEAR to write with my schedule, shared for the masses and their enjoyment. Because this is such an individual passion of mine, it doesn't make much sense without book and musical knowledge, so I apologize if it's vignette style is confusing/misleading to readers. Au revoir!

Word Count: 7k or so

The auction was a dreary place, dark taupe curtains covering what was once the grand stage of the Opera Populaire. Bidders sat in a sad line of chairs, none speaking with the casual air of Parisian aristocracy. Rain drizzled from the ceiling above, floodlights illuminating the makeshift stage constructed for the showing of each object. Mystery and memory blurred foggy here, each bidder with their own

"Sold! Your number sir?" the auctioneer called. "Lot 665, ladies and gentlemen, a papier-mache musical box, in the shape of a barrel-organ."

A burly porter in a tired suit walked forward, carrying a small monkey with cymbals, the hand-craftmanship clear.

"Attached, the figure of a monkey in Persian robes playing the cymbals. This item, discovered in the vaults of the theatre, still in working order." the auctioneer said, beginning the bid, "Showing here…"

With the twist of a hidden lever, the box sprang to life, monkey delicately clapping two cymbals together with feather-light touch, a melodic tune playing softly from the hidden box. For a moment time seemed to freeze, an elderly gentlemen dressed in a fine tux and overcoat pausing at the music, eyes misty with the memories of a hundred past circumstances.

" May I start at twenty francs? Fifteen, then? Fifteen I am bid." the auction continued, snapping the Vicomte out of his trance.

Two bidders began to slowly fight for the box, a gnarled woman raising her number again, much to the Vicomte's annoyance.

"Do I here twenty-five? Twenty- Thirty? Thirty once? Twice? Sold! To the Vicomte de Chagny."

Returning from the stage the porter moved towards the crouched man, showing him the piece up close. Fine lines deepened as he studied the figurine, weary eyes watery from the dim-light or memory, none dared to draw their attention for too long.

"A collector's piece indeed, every detail exactly as she said," he spoke softly to himself, "She often spoke of you, my friend, your velvet lining, and your figurine of lead. Will you still play, when all the rest of us are dead?"

Drawing one hand to the side, Raoul de Chagny dismissed the porter, leaning heavily against his chair. More bidding would come, more pieces to be pulled and bid for, like gulls scrapping for a piece of bread.

"Lot 666, then: a chandelier in pieces," the auctioneer continued, "Some of you may recall the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera; a mystery never fully explained."

The Vicomte sat up noticeably straighter, shoulders pinned back in attention. He knew well enough the mystery, the affair, the atrocities committed in this very opera house.

"We are told ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier which figures in the famous disaster. Our workshops have restored it and fitted up parts of it with wiring for the new electric light," he continued to narrate, voice gaining a theatrical tone, "So that we may get a hint of what it may look like when re- assembled. Perhaps we may frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination, gentlemen?"

‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

Forty years prior…

The most human thing you ever saw Erika do was wash her laundry. Bent over a metal basin, salt and pepper hair obscuring her mask as her hands dove into the sudsy basin, she scrubbed a linen undershirt against the washboard. She looked peculiarly at ease, something uncharacteristic of her, something you knew she struggled with. Back and forth her hands worked, frothing the water beneath oil-lamp light. For all the effort she put into music, the rage-fueled tempo at which her hands would grate a horse-hair bow against her violin, this action itself seemed calming. Milky hands, scarred in odd, criss-crossed patterns up to about the elbow. A sadistic teacher, you'd assumed. In hindsight you seemed more naive than ever.

The wet slap of the cloth against the board ended, tendons flexing in her hands as she made quick work of wringing out the cloth. It was the closest to beautiful she was in your eyes, mundanity making sweet work of her otherwise erratic temperament. The cottage she lived in, though it was better described as a shack, put all of her capricious tendencies on full display. The drying rack was set before the fireplace, several bits of rope broken and retied. There were several holes in the wall, filled with a crude mix of clay and plaster, gently papered over in the original, unstained wallpaper. Every so often the chimney would cease it's filtration, belching ash and soot back into the living room, staining the red furniture almost purple. A single finger drawn against the fabric revealed its original hue, though the black had stained under your nail for days.

Throughout your time spent in captivity in her home, it was never easy to feel welcome. Her cooking was well enough, the bed she supplied you adorned with all of the proper sheets and such, but the very air seemed foul, though Erika assured you the ventilation system she'd constructed remained perfectly functional. On the fifth night of your stay, two nights before the destruction of tender trust between you, the air had been almost sweet. Erika seemed pleased by your noticing, her hands a bit stained with oil from the machine she'd been tinkering at. It was the new vent, Erika said. It sucked air straight from a garden some astonishing meters away. A cherry tree was in bloom, sweetening the air and filling it with the promise of spring, a spring you hadn't yet seen. Sometime in your slumber, the angel of music had slipped into your bedroom with a tender clipping of those same flowers. All this time spent smashed in your diary and the petals still seemed to smell of cherry.

Your captivity in her home had left more questions than answers. Her strange manner of speaking, though filled with large words, were pronounced often carelessly, or with tentative recital, like she'd learned them sounding out the phonetics rather than hearing them firsthand. Her drawing room was respite, filled with musical instruments and inventions alike, though sometimes the two intersected into marvelous music makers. There would be no tender entrance into her world, no sweet invitation to breakfast in the sanctity of her office. You trembled to imagine the potential greeting such an encounter would offer, wrists still raw from the iron grip you'd felt last night.

No sound greeted your ears as you ventured into the main sitting area. The fireplace crackled with dull life, left to burn out with careless disregard. A small platter of bread, eggs and jam sat at one of the coffee tables, left so that you might eat something. Her generosity was something to be noted, no? Perhaps Erika still hoped for your relationship to be mended, though you'd wounded her so terribly.

Each bite of cold egg and stale toast made your stomach turn, though you felt more strongly than ever that refusing food from Erika would be greater insult than refusing the King. My angel, a woman with a voice capable of such low tones, almost a baritone, and yet more light and graceful than yours, spilling out high notes in a startling female falsetto. There were not the words to describe how her grasp of music pulled at your soul, how her wounded, solitary nature drew bitter tears of compassion to your eyes. Equal parts affection and terror fused together, love, and admittedly lust. No two women should love as you were beginning to understand you loved Erika, and yet she was such an abysmal individual you almost resented her as much as the love itself.

Least of all was her mask. The carved ivory molded so perfectly to her face, hardly needing a string to keep it in place. Bright eyes peeked out, always far more intelligent than you were ever prepared for, haunted and terrible where you wished they would be tender instead. What her body looked like beneath her appalling choice of men's fashion, one could not know. Her hips flared, though only slightly noticeable from the tailor of her clothes. Her breasts seemed almost flat at times, though you knew them to be there. A roll of bandages, she'd tentatively admitted. Thus she could drop her voice, walk about Paris at certain nights appearing every bit a man as she desired.

"Anonymity is a privilege behind the privilege of masculinity. My dear, I have mastered both." she'd remarked one cold evening.

A ventriloquist, as you'd discovered soon after. And yet there was no true word for Erika's alarming ability to throw her voice around a room without so much as parting her lips. Her genius, her mystery and the occasional magnanimity she had shown you during the winter's captivity here all added to her strange charm. You'd been too brave, assuming she could withstand such an attempt, such an injury from one the composer had come to trust. You suffered her to exposure, with the removal of her mask. And in turn I you suffered her anger as Paris had never known.

"There." a voice said, coming from your left, tucked into the wallpaper like a centipede.

You turned, half-expecting it to be a cruel trick, to find nothing but an empty doorway staring blankly instead. But there Erika stood, disheveled and glaring, still dressed in the clothes from yesterday night.

"… Angel." you spoke, voice betraying the smallest quiver of fear.

Though you tried to remain composed under her gaze, it was clear you offended her anew with hesitation, by the way you trembled across from her. Erika's eyes flickered, first in hurt, and then fresh rage as her lip curled in disgust.

"Come. You will dress, and then we will return you to your opera colleagues." she spat, hurling a simple pink dress at your stomach.

Return? Hope and humiliation warred low in your belly, fighting against the childish desire to cry, to break apart under her insensitivity. Mistreatment wasn't the correct word for her fit, rather resentment, petty frustrations nailed your heart like barbs.

"There is no reason to treat me with such inhospitality." you answered, clutching the fabric between trembling fingers, as fine as the rest of the garments Erika had ever provided.

"Inhospitality?"

Startled by the growl within her voice, you flinched, reminded once more of the way her terrible malformation had purpled with her anger, how the deformity had almost shrieked with its own fury. And yet it was not truly what you were afraid of in this moment.

"I have fed you, clothed you, taught you, kept you! I have given everything a guest could desire, everything that any better woman would have thanked me ten times over for! And yet you are unsatisfied?" Erika sneered, roughly shoving aside a stand of music as she stalked towards you. "Tell me plainly dear, why you flinch away from me."

Every rumor of the phantom spun slowly in your mind, the terrible story of the malicious opera ghost that taxed its owners twenty thousand francs a month, left ballet girls trembling with the crack of a stage prop, a man injured by a falling beam after jeering up at the rafters. There was no doubt that Erika's anger had terrible consequences. But the worst of all was knowing how split her personality was, how remorse and guilt would follow soon after.

"Erika, please-" you tried, to no avail.

"Erika now? What happened to your angel of music?" Erika taunted, drawing closer. "It is my deformity, I know it! You fear me as the rest, despise me as the rest! You see the angel fallen and you flinch away from my every word!"

"Stop shouting!"

The yelp seemed only to inspire more disgust, a blur of grey-black hair the last of your memory before she slammed the door shut to her study. You waited for the infernal blare of the organ, perhaps the shrill wail of a violin, but were met only with silence. There would be no more explanation, no more requests to be made. Breakfast sat like a rock in your stomach as you changed in my chambers, the intricacy of the silk feeling only too rich.

Beautiful pink, perhaps even a pastel orange glowed with the complexion of your skin. To love a beast, was that what this was? To stand in a room she'd decorated for you, cleaned for you, altered for you, and to be afraid regardless? The days in her imprisonment had passed, had bled together until you felt compelled to call this place your home. But to return to Paris? To live with the other ballet brats and dance until your feet ached? To endure such a change was not one you felt incapable of, but to do it now? Without your angel of music and the soft tremble of the woman behind the mask?

Hands pale as the mask she had carved with them, tender and so timid when they rested on your back, bearing the pressure intended to flare your ribs, to engage your diaphragm and sing, sing with the beauty of a lark fully consumed in the song of spring. What was the Paris opera without her touch? Without Erika's promise of comfort, of guidance and tutelage?

Feet moved forward, toes covered in soft moccasins padding out into the living room with new purpose. No world would be the same without Erika's touch on it, without the minuscule imprints of her fingers in the clay of creation.

"You're ready." she stated, voice stopping you in your tracks.

Cloak in place, short hair combed back into a sleek coil at her neck stood your guardian, cape pulled tight around her shoulders, lantern in hand.

"We leave now."

The dim light of Erika's underground lake house glowed ominously as she led you towards the door, the last object to greet you remaining a monkey marionette, still in pieces, still remaining to be finished.

‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

Wind chilled your neck as you moved through the quiet streets of Paris. The changes at the opera house were too fast to understand, the new ownership of the building, the proposal of Raoul, a childhood friend from Nice. And yet she haunted you, a smell of jasmine and sage hanging close to your dressing room mirror. The call of the void, of the wild desires she'd instilled turned you to wandering aimlessly some nights, no chaperone or guardian to guide you, to watch closely after a young woman walking after dark.

Melody haunted you this night, the soft tune of the monkey's music box spinning itself in slow circles through your mind. Gentle steps pulled you closer towards the cemetery, your thin shoes too cold for the winter air. Six months without the whisper of Erika's voice in your dressing room, six months spent singing as the Primadonna of the Opera Populaire.

"There is no greater threat to femininity than solitude, my lady." a gentleman to your right warbled.

The ends of your hair raised at once, body stalling with the hypnotic resonance of his voice. Your arm raised without intention, looped firmly into the grasp of a leather glove. Feet moved to his rhythm, steps careful and soundless as your chaperone pressed forward to the opera house. Not a word was spoken, keys rattling with a dull 'ching' as you were let inside.

It was just in your bed, curled into the soft damask cocoon of your bed curtains did you recognize the individual. Not a single man alive could produce such a beautiful command, the subtle consonants rendering you hypnotized; compliant. Only one person alive had that power, and he was no man at all.

‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

The Opera Populaire glowed with Halloween festivities. Candles burned bright, music blared from quartets in every corner of the opera. A night of celebration, six months of peace without one threat from the phantom. The opera ghost had all but disappeared, leaving nothing but the present to worry after. And your present sang with potential.

"Ladies and gentlemen, ladies, gentlemen!" a short man wearing a bear mask persistently called, tapping a knife against crystal glass in increasing 'tings.'

You paused, letting your arms rest in the hands of your childhood friend, Rauol de Chagny, and current courtier for your affections.

"It is with great honor, and tremendous bliss that the Opera Populaire be unveiled in its pristine beauty for this momentous occasion, this wonderful display of…"

Amidst the ballroom decorated for the festivities hung several pristine chandeliers, gilded with gold leaf painstakingly applied across a ceiling mural painted in swatches of baby blue and ballet slipper pink, resembling a sky just beginning to turn with the sunset. Erika had once muttered about the integrity of the murals, she had resented the artist and moreso the detail he used in painting clouds, "too floral to be real." You'd laughed then, amused that she would have even known a man. This was before you understood the true magnitude of her genius, before you had stood paralyzed like a moth in lamplight under the weight of a gaze so intense it shattered your soul into a few sole notes.

That was the night you'd sang under her tutelage, truly sang with the whole base of your being. It had frightened you to tears, collapsing at her feet in frightened sobs. To be consumed by your own voice, to press outward through your lungs until nothing else remained, that was what Erika demanded of you.

She'd soothed your exhausted mind with tales from her past, of the time she spent in a Persian nobleman's home, sculpting and building a palace soon to be occupied by his entire harem. Each woman she described in jewel tones, one sapphire blue courtesan that sang and played the sitar. Another, emerald green, who danced and climbed aerial silks up, up, up, to the highest point on the vaulted ceiling, only do tumble down until she was suspended mere centimeters from the ground. Onyx, jasper, tourmaline and more. For each gem you named, Erika had a story of a woman from this distant place, of an enigma she'd witnessed while carving pillars of marble and limestone.

"This all really happened?" you whispered, staring up in dim candlelight at the ivory carved mask.

"Where do you think these carpets beneath your feet come from?" she'd answered, carefully tucking a stray lock of hair behind your ear.

Perhaps it was the dimness of the room that brought on such musings, staring up at the dim ceiling and wondering quietly if Erika was staring down at you, watching through one of her many peepholes. Only your gaze caught a single note falling down, careening like a leaf through the night sky. It landed at your feet, deliberately gilded with the same gold leaf of the crown molding.

"… Raoul, wait!" you gasped, watching your suitor pick it up in modest curiosity.

He read it once, brow furrowing in confusion at the scribble of letters you recognized with merely a passing glance. Once, twice, you reached for it, catching it with a frustrated grunt. The back was blank, smooth parchment wrinkled by your consistent attempts to snatch it back from Raoul. Written in swooping scrawls, almost too even to be from a carpenter's hand lie a single message: Mon ange, don't look up.

It wasn't Erika's hand that permitted you the grief of seeing Petyr Ivol's body suspended from the ceiling with a single red noose. It was Raoul, valiantly shielding you against the screams of an entire ballroom, who dragged you out into the cold night air.

You'd kissed him then, whispered sweet promises of affection out of fear, valiantly fighting for a semblance of control. The Phantom of the Opera was the true master of your ensemble, of the cast and the show, of even the stagehands who had once tormented young ballet girls with tales of a monster hiding in the shadows. He had only whispered, only dared to face the truth in a caricature of a story, not lived to see such a monster.

But you who knew her, knew what lie deep in the bones of the catacombs remained trembling in your bed far longer than any of the others. The Phantom demanded his salary, a note tied to the body declared. Three days later, an opera appeared in a galleyway, stapled with the names of the owners of the Populaire. Don Juan Triumphant, it was titled. And you were to be her Primadonna.

‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

Dark was the cape your scene partner wore, perfectly encompassing Paggicio's form. Scanning the opera boxes with slight trepidation, you wondered at what fresh horror would befall the performance, what wrath the phantom had planned for the night. Only the bright stage lights burned back at you, audience waiting with bated breath for this next scene.

"… Past the point of no return…" the voice began again, silky and tempting as the choreography displayed, feet moving like water over the stage. "Our games of make believe are at an end."

Your breath caught in your lungs, as stiff as the rest of your body on the bench. Shivers of delight, of passion came with his voice. Note and vowel spun together like silk, inflected across your spine with subtle twinge of tamber and inflection. A beautiful performance, clouding your mind like spider's silk. Brief fear slid slick like an eel down your spine, the prop goblet in your hand trembling slightly as you mimed drinking. Stage nerves, you assumed

"Past the point of 'if', or 'when'…" your scene partner continued, "No use resisting! Abandon thought and let the dream desceeeeeend…."

Graceful and smooth was your choreography, far more defined and fluid than rehearsals. Even Paggicio's grip on your wrist was firm, controlled with enough leeway for you to skip through your spins to the practiced perch at the bench. Still something felt wrong about Paggicio's pronunciation, some thin accent the man had never sung with, hardly an Italian dialect. The audience didn't favor doubt, too many eyes to be so concerned with nothing but Erika's opera.

"Past the point of no return, the final threshold;" he continued, hand sliding up your corseted sides, "What warm unspoken secrets will we learn?"

Too firm were the strokes, too desiring against your hands. Clutching firmly at your hand, raising it up to your bodice… Paggicio didn't smell of oil, of handmade soap and vanilla bean extract. Animal terror welled slowly, burning at your gut as a hand certainly familiar to you drew closer and closer to your covered breast.

"Beyond the point of no return?" the voice continued, the smallest hint of vibrato betraying a tutelage Paggicio had never possessed.

No man sung like that, with the sinful depth of a baritone, with the high grace of head voice unbetrayed by the twinge of falsetto. It wasn't natural, how comfortable this covered singer was in the alto range, how rich the notes were compared to Paggicio's high vibrato, the notes he had resolutely declared as 'beyond his range, or did the composer intend him to go mute?'

Dark stage filled your sight as you dashed away, spinning under the stage lights to face the masked man. But he was no man, none at all. This had been a trap from the start.

"You have brought me to that moment where words run dry, to that moment where speech disappears into silence… Silence…" you sang, the insidious duality of the lyrics slowly dawning on you as you stared across from the very writer of them.

Sitting neatly on the bench, surely watching beneath the black hood was a figure too slight to ever be mistaken for Paggicio, he was too fat! The comments about his weight, the Phantom's cruel insinuation that he ate too many pastries, consumed too much wine… How much planning, how much work had Erika gone through to ensure this very moment, a place where she could court you, envelop you in her presence where no exits lay?

"In my mind I've already imagined our bodies entwining, defenseless, and silent," you sang, choreography and adrenaline keeping the performer alive in you, watching over Erika's shoulder at the audience watching, "And now I am here with you, no second thoughts, I've decided… Decided…"

What composure Erika had rattled slid neatly back into place. The refrain slid slowly over your lips, each word pronounced with the kind of accuracy the angel of music had toiled over you for months. A performance, is that what the angel of darkness wished? She would have it, most certainly.

"Past all thoughts of 'right' or 'wrong', one final question…" you sung, watching as your scene partner seemed to tremble with joy beneath the black robe, "How long should we to wait, before we're one?"

Sliding her hands up her body, you watched with fascination as they visibly trembled, Erika's hands clammy with nerves as you grasped them in yours.

"When will the blood began to race? The sleeping bud burst into bloom, when will the flames at last consume us?" you sung, pressing yourself far closer to her than you'd ever dared with Paggicio.

The trembles you felt, the breath hot and heavy beneath the cloth growled with rage as you released her, breaking from the choreography as she dragged you across the stage, digging hard into the flesh of your arms.

"The bridge is crossed so stand and watch it burn!" she howled, voice carrying above yours and filling the auditorium with her fury.

"We've passed the point of no return-"

One motion, the cloth flung over her shoulders was all it took to reveal her to the world. Porcelain pressed into her cheek, peppered hair wet with perspiration as it clung to her unobscured forehead. Not one of you moved, both lacking the courage to step close, to shatter the astonished reverie of the audience.

She, clad in trousers and a shirt stained with sweat, she stared down at you, panting beneath stage lights designed for illumination, not comfort. Vulnerable, exposed, the legend and torment of an entire opera troop staring blankly at you beneath the gentry of Paris.

"Mon ange…" she whispered, drawing close to you, hands extending up to ribs she had only clasped a few moments earlier.

To touch you, to fondle you in front of an entire audience in a choreography so grotesquely obscene, to sing in sprawling double entendres of the passion she felt burning through her soul, to have your voice echo twin desires in lyrics written for her own gain… Your foot slid harshly against blackened hardwood, searching for purchase in heels too high for true balance, stage shoes she'd certainly picked.

"No…" you whispered, shaking your head once.

"Sing with me, the rest of the opera," she answered, searching for your elbow, "They don't know it isn't meant to be this way, the orchestra will play if you sing."

"I won't, I can't."

"Yes, yes, sing the next lyric, sing it for me, sing."

"No, I won't, you can't make me!"

"Sing! Sing!" she growled, pressing down into a register that resembled a lion's roar.

"No, no, NO!"

Harder she grabbed for you, harder you pulled, trying desperately to make it to the edge of the stage where Raoul stood in shock, where police remained standing should you cry out for help should you-

"Release me!"

One pull of ivory. That's all it took to shove the mask off, to reveal the true terror of your soul to the world. One trapdoor. That's all it took for her to haul you downward, pressing you through handmade tunnels, through stone lit only by Erika's memory.

‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

"How was I supposed to love you from the sidelines?" she gasped, eyes wet and wide , devoid of the covering of her mask, "Like a spectator? Viewing the show of my creation with circus peanuts?" she spat, veins bulging from her temples.

The white dress of your costume felt all too restricting, cutting off the vital flow of oxygen through your lungs. You couldn't breathe, could barely speak as Erika paced like a woman possessed; a victim of her own immovable ambition. More terrifying than her deformity laid bare, more terrifying than the striations of purple and red splattered like wine across her face was the wolfish look in her eye. A hunger for blood, a lust for revenge, a lust for all life had denied her.

"You have harmed innocent people, you took the lives of innocent-"

"Do not speak to me of innocence!"

Both of her hands outstretched, grasping firmly at the meat of your arms. Your yelp of pain only seemed to antagonize her further, a snarl of pearl white teeth all you could see from the corner of your eyes.

"I do not hurt you, don't be so pathetic. You are a singer, not a ballet girl! I know what I've made, I know how strong I have made you!"

"You're scaring me!" you gasped, stumbling down the dim sewers towards the swaying gondola.

"Ha!" she shrieked, laughing like a harpy as you trembled in her grasp. "You would claim such a terror!"

The gondola was as unstable and jagged beneath Erika's furious hands, rocking to and fro like a see saw. Your captor only seemed to press forward with every successive paddle, gliding through the labyrinth of interlocking tunnels with more ardor than your first night. Not a word was spoken, rather only the sounds of water rushing through the canal and Erika's own furious breathing stirring your imagination.

The phantom's abode sprung out of the underground lake like the gates of old Valhalla, unearthly and opaque in the lantern light. Each wooden board of the dock seemed to be made of the fog surrounding it, your feet sinking down grotesquely as you stumbled forward under Erika's murderous gaze.

"Ah, see how beautiful your prison is? How radiant it is this night?" Erika sneered, tying off the boat with maniacal glee, "It sings to its mistress, it yearns for her virginal embrace!"

Each step seemed to draw you closer and closer to collapse, trembling hands clawing at a nearby pole for support. You were dizzy with fear, uncertainty and terror, too afraid to gaze at the house you had once considered a home, too ashamed to look back at the woman who had built it. Erika had always been beautiful to you, lamplight had crafted an ethereal beauty that shone in the hollows of her cheekbones, the concave of her eyebrows. Lips you'd wished after, traced in your imagination puckered thoughtfully when she worked. But even the deformity, of which you knew it to be, could not fully puncture her beauty. White hair sprouting from her white temple blended beautifully into the purple, blue eye just as vibrant as its twin set in perfect porcelain.

What terrified you now could never be her face, it would never be something so shallow as her body. The soul that lay beneath it haunted you more, the beauty you found in her tender care with you polluted like the deformity of her face, brackish and diseased with wrath.

"Oh, does my bride dwaddle at my door?" she crooned, boards creaking beneath her feet. "Ah! She waits but for her groom to carry her over the mantle!"

One glance at her expression and you would know for certain that this was all another game to the angel of darkness, a sarcastic farce at what would never be a true ritual of love. And yet you crumpled into her arms the moment they slid under your legs, grateful for the alarming strength of your captor. The dizziness you felt upon disembarking was still substantial enough that you worried of fainting, resting your feverish cheek against her shoulder. She smelled of tobacco.

CReeeaaAAAkkkKK

The groan of the door had it's own musicality, sending an ominous shiver down your spine. Spectral wind rushed through the cabin as you entered, glue and sulfur rushing in to pucker your nose. Electric light whizzed to life at the touch of a switch, warm incandescent light filling the room you already knew by heart. She dropped you to the floor, a pool of white silk and satin floating to her carpeted floor.

"There. You are home, wife." she spat, jab more hollow than venomous.

Moving around the room with slowing momentum, you watched from the corner of your eye as she arranged various papers and dishes with unnatural calmness. Fresh despair sang in your blood, re-igniting every ember of loathing you'd suppressed for this trickster, this two-faced harbinger of enmity and passion.

"Are you satisfied with yourself? Every life ended, every drop of blood spilt, has it all amounted to your desired outcome?"

Her hands slowed their arranging of papers, puckered flesh turning in the yellow light to glare at you head on.

"My appetites for blood, for violence, as you are so inclined to remind me of, are of the same nature as this deformity you hate so!"

With a wail of rage she sprung forward, grasping at your shoulders as the right side of her face bore down on you in all of its ghastly disfigurement.

"See it! Revel in it's corpulent hideousness!"

Red and purple puckers, the way her face twisted in one motion with each of her words blurred with each of her words, swimming in a sea of vermouth and indigo as tears welled in your eyes.

"I'm no longer afraid of your face. It is the twin distortion of your soul that holds the horror I feel so deeply now." you whispered, hands trembling in your lap.

The floor sagged towards you as you were released, despondent sobs dry and noiseless as you clung to the bear rug beneath your hands. To be trapped here with the Erika of eighteen months ago would have been a blessing. Nights spent with her songs, learning how to make pasta as she had done in Venice some years before, perhaps reinvent the kaleidoscope as she was attempting to do, throw your voice with the same perfect accuracy as she was capable of. Blood stained it all now, cherry blossoms dried and withered, springtime faded into a terrible, dry autumn.

"… You believe I would ever hurt you?" she murmured, a twin sob complimenting your own.

Shuffling hands reached out towards your own, grasping uselessly at fingers cold with hate.

"My love, my angel of music, please, I beg you-"

"Release me!" you screamed, twisting away from her from beds of satin. "You liar! You falsifier! I believed you, I believed you!"

"Believed what? My love? My devotion, was that never clear enough for you? I will burn down all of Paris if I must-"

"I wanted you!" sobbed your own anger, hands pulling and hitting at hers as she grasped repeatedly.

"Then you shall have me, body and soul…"

"Before I knew what you were."

Haggard eyes blinked unbelievingly across from you.

"A murderer. A deceiver. A false angel."

Anger, despair, terror and more complex emotions swam over her stuttering face. Ennui would be next, the worst of her moods, the most dangerous. A twin change was happening in your own soul, resentment and hatred condensing into a cesspit of slow-burning wrath.

"… I see I have corrupted you." she whispered, lower lip trembling just slightly, "… An angel of the dark cannot create another angel, I've ruined what was unsoiled. I see it now."

The bones of her knees cracked as she rose, stacking one limb atop the other until she towered over you, watching with expressionless intensity. You stared up at her, hands fisted in a white wedding gown.

"You've ruined me, is that your judgment?" you whispered, trembling at her feet. "Like a failed song, a melody too temperamental for your penmanship? Too wild?"

Erika's face spasmed once, tears brimming in her eyes for all too brief a moment.

"Go pity someone else. It's too late to lament what is already done." she turned, spinning on her heel and leaving to haunt her office.

The torches of Paris burned bright that night, police inspectors wading through the catacombs, voices loud and raucous as they searched for the Phantom, the murderer and fiend responsible for the misery of the public. You sat until dawn, cold metal around your finger warming with every immobile minute spent staring in the direction of her office. Only exhaustion claimed you, leaving you slumped against a tattered Persian rug.

‧₊˚♪ 𝄞₊˚⊹

Soft cotton cocooned every inch of your body. Dark damask curtains framed the bed, a nearby candle burning low. Not a fiber in your body ached for anything but more rest, a lifetime you could spend here, curled in a bed you cared not to decipher.

The wedding dress was gone, only a thin chemise remained. Your hair was undone of the headdress of the performance, your hair loose and wild against silk pillows. The phantom's work, surely. Done in your sleep, done without the barest twitch of your body. To be so defenseless, trusting in her grasp was injury in itself. But to be touched, toyed with, manipulated… Recoiling inward, turning from the light you hid. A body met yours, flinching immediately at your touch. Dark, salt and pepper hair splayed wildly against a pillow, a men's nightshirt covering her back.

She did not speak, assuming your movement to be involuntary, sleepy and innocent. Not a word left your mouth, eyes shutting immediately to avoid detection. So you wished, silently and as hard as you could, that this was a dream. That you'd wake in your dormitory in Paris, Meg Giry asleep beside you in a twin bed identical to yours. That this year had never gone by, that your world existed only as a ritual of dancing, soft singing in front of your mirror. No angels, no phantoms, no music besides your own.

But as you drifted back to sleep, curled into the warmth created by two bodies, a soft voice whispered quietly beside you, singing the slightest lullaby. A world without Erika's music was no world at all, none that you wanted anyhow. So when she sung a bit louder, voice sweet as candied almonds and resonant like an organ's echo, you prayed again. Not for the impossible, the constant passage of time to be unwound like string in your feeble hands, but for courage. Courage to love, to bear the strangeness of your companion, to show outwardly what you knew to be the balm to your torment.

One hand slid forwards, across the space between two bodies in a modest double bed. Ribs fluttered under your hand like a startled bird, her entire body seizing in shock.

"… Wife." she whispered, voice raspy and breathless.

"Yes?" you answered, heart thumping in your chest as you moved closer, carefully pressing close to your angel of music.

A small surge of desire burned through you, the same twinge of fire that had ignited when you'd performed hours earlier with her in front of all of Paris. No barriers existed now, no games to be played. Still you felt flushed with hesitation, the darkness of the room no true barrier between the two of you.

"Angel?" you found yourself whispering, fingers inching closer to that face on the pillow.

"I am no angel." Erika choked out, both of her hands fisted firmly into the sheets.

Her breath was hot as you leaned in, hovering above her prone form. You dared not touch her face first, rather placing both hands gently on her shoulder before your right inched up, cupping one smooth cheek.

"Will you let me go if I wish?" you asked softly, carefully stroking at her face with your thumb.

"… I know no world without you."

A single tear slid down against your thumb, wet and warm with emotion.

"But if I wished?"

Two noses brushed in the dark, the phantom's laborious breaths the only sound you heard in that dark room. She trembled with every breath, hands still fastened firmly at her sides, too afraid to touch, to consume with the true intensity of her restrained desires.

"I cannot keep you to myself," she sobbed, "No more than a man can keep the morning dew that graces green fields."

Blooming softly in your heart, with the same slow assurance it had first begun, you felt surely that you must love Erika. Desire, disgust, fear and loathing had burned too hot, too fast through your experiences. Not one clung solidly, none except the tender affections you'd felt at the first whispered song spoken so many months ago at your boudoir.

"But you're no man." came your reply, more tenderly spoken than the rest.

Erika moaned in relief as you spoke, hands finally grasping firmly at your waist, feverishly stroking over the thin chemise she'd left untouched.

"Angel, mon ange-"

The calloused hands that you'd seen work so firmly at chores, grasp with hideous strength at the levers of her inventions could not have been more feather-light, more delicate. She touched like she was learning how to cradle water, tracing the curve of your shoulders, your spine, finally cupping the back of your skull in perfect devotion.

The pads of your fingers stroked carefully at her unmarred face, cheekbones, eyebrows, even teasing the sharp curve of her jaw up into her ear. She shivered when you leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to one wet cheek, yelping when you cradled the left side of her neck.

"Don't fear me, let me see you." you whispered between kisses, tracing the curve of her nose down, veering to the left side by a hair.

She gripped at your hips, firm and defensive, bracing herself to throw, to turn, to prevent the touch of your lips against her deformity. There was nothing you could do or say to prepare her for that invasion, to so senselessly adore the one thing she could only despise. So you did the next senseless thing you could imagine; you kissed her.

Every fiber of tension in Erika's body went lax, tensed again, and then melted entirely, mouth bowing slowly, pressed against yours. She did not flinch away as you cupped both sides of her face, too overwhelmed by your sweet kisses, peppered slow and gently against her mouth. Only when you tried to pull away did she make a sound, whimpering softly like a deserted kitten.

"Shh, shh." you soothed, stroking a hand through salt and peppered hair.

Her mouth bobbed, quivering as she fought for air, for words, for strength. The second kiss she reciprocated, moving her lips ever so carefully against yours. The stutter of her ribcage beneath your hands, the way with which she moved her lips so carefully, like arranging the pieces of some impossible puzzle to fit, it filled your heart with warmth.

"Angel." you whispered against her lips.

"You've always been the angel." she answered.

grechkathekasha

AAA omg my art on fem!phantom of the opera fic first time kinda nervous

#phantom of the opera #rebecca ferguson #commission #yuppieeee