Disgusting. It's the only description for the menagerie of people assembled around his opera house. It is a shame that even though his power over the interior of the Opera Populaire is absolute, the streets outside of it are completely beyond his influence.

If he was in charge of the surrounding city, a circus would never have been allowed to stop in it.

He hates circuses, with a passion. He hates them more than tuneless singers and graceless ballerina. He hates them more than a cast who can not act and a manager who refuses to listen to him.

He can fix a bad opera. But he refuses to go near a circus with a ten foot pole.

Or, at least, he would normally.

Erik pulls his cape a little closer to ward off a phantom chill as he ghosts through the camp. The cape, while normally being an ally in his nightly escapades, is more of a detriment in this case. Its stark outline stands out harshly against the multitude of colored tents that make up the camp and he worries a little more than he normally would about being spotted.

But that is probably nerves talking.

He hates circuses.

Bad memories. His confidence is at an all time low.

It's a little ironic, the Master of the Night, the deadly and dangerous, Phantom of the Opera, shaking in his boots over a few colored tents and caravans.

And a whip and a gypsy who loved to use it and his face, his accursed, abhorrent, damned-

Erik shakes his head and increases his speed, he could stand there and brood the night away if he let himself start thinking about that. Besides he is not that same little boy, he is dangerous and talented and armed. Even if someone does see him, they will not be survive long enough for it to affect him.

The phantom continues his trek through the circus but darts into a dark corner when a sharp cry pierces the air. A second cry keeps him silent and alert in his spot of darkness. A few more pass and he realizes they are an adequate distance away for him to continue without worry. He walks out and prepares to continue on his way but another scream brings a sudden realization to him.

The voice is a child's.

...

But why should he care?

Erik walks a few more feet when another agonized cry stops him in his tracks. It is raw and pained and full of something he himself had been familiar with in another part of his life.

Acceptance.

It is not the cry of someone trying to fight back, it is the cry of someone who knows trying to stop the pain is useless.

And without thinking, the Phantom pivots on his feet and sprints towards the sound.

It's not rational, he has a purpose for being out and he should fulfill it as quickly as possible so that he can return to his home and ignore the circus parked outside his door.

But he's always been a creature of passion and his mind is filled with memories and a deep rooted, even if long forgotten, desire - Help Me! Please!

Another scream fills the air and he reaches it in record time.

The scene that greets him is horrifying but not surprising.

A boy, no older than ten but probably much younger, cowers as a man in a flamboyant suit and large top hat looms over him, holding a blood stained cane high in the air. The man is grotesquely overweight and the boy is shockingly thin. The man is red in the face and screaming, the boy is pale and shaking.

And Erik is enraged. He sees red and then a corpse as the man falls down onto the dirt.

Erik's lasso is out of sight seconds after.

And he is calm.

The boy is too. He gazes at the cane that had fallen next to the man, to the corpse of the man himself, and then up to Erik.

"Boy," Erik says gruffly. "Are you-"

The boy's eyes close and his body begins to fall. Erik catches him before the boy sullies himself by falling next to the man who had abused him and makes a quick assessment of his injuries.

Several bruises line up on his back and torso in neat rows, undoubtedly caused by the cane. A few times the cane had landed hard enough to break skin but none of the wounds are deep enough to be life threatening. Erik runs the hand not holding the boy, up and down the child's body (a task made easy by the fact that the boy is only wearing a pair of dark pants, a piece of blue fabric wrapped around his left arm and shoulder, and a single black glove on the hand of the same side) but nothing appears to be broken.

His largest problem is the possibility of infection, the boy is positively covered in dirt; Erik cannot even tell what the boy's hair color is, so the chances of the wounds getting dirty are high. The boy is malnourished too, which would further limit his ability to fight any sort of illness.

It's cold outside, hardly the best conditions to perform a medical assessment. The child should not be exposed to the frigid temperatures and he needs to be cleaned.

Erik scoops the boy fully into his arms, stands up and turns around to go back to his lair.

And pauses.

What is he doing?

He helped the child, fine. But what on Earth prompted him to even think about bringing him back to his home?

Erik hesitates for a few moments before he lowers himself to his knees. He prepares to set the boy down when a piece of the blue fabric on the boys arm comes loose.

The uncovered skin is red and distorted. Erik stares.

Oh.

Oh.

He unwraps the arm a little further, revealing even more of the boy's disfigured arm. A bit of silver embroidery on the fabric catches his eye.

Bazil Bizarre's Freakshow

Oh.

That changes everything.

Erik looks back at the corpse on the ground, the man's tacky cuff links read BB.

That changes everything.

Erik closes his eyes for a few seconds and then stands up.

The boy needs medical attention. His lair under the opera will be the best place to treat him.

And the Phantom and the boy disappear into the night.

A/N: Erik and Allen both have somewhat similar pasts so I've always wanted to write some sort of meeting between the two. Somehow that idea became this. As far as the writing itself goes, I love writing in present tense but don't actually do it very often. So I apologize if it reads a little awkwardly, I'm very out of practice.

Anyways, reviews are always appreciated.