A/N: The idea of a Christine who's not good and innocent has been playing in my mind for the longest time, so have this. It's going to be short, a few chapters long at most. Mind the 'M' rating; this fic is going to deserve it.

Perhaps she should have known that things could never be so simple.

It was supposed to be perfect. She, the fairytale bride and he, her perfect prince. Dressed impeccably in rich velvet, crisp in his linen suit. He is a dream before her; her handsome, charming, blue-eyed prince.

She walks to where he stood, and should have felt butterflies.

The wedding she had envisioned for herself is long and tedious. There's too much splendour, too many guests congratulating her on yet another marriage into the elite, a giant cake when she could not stand to eat. Every part of her feels queasy—her chest, her lips, her knees, but she brushes it away, tells herself that it's normal to feel nervous as a bride.

Intimacy, a voice in her head whispers. You crave intimacy.

But when they're alone at last, locked together in his room that's too bright and too big, she can't deny that intimacy is the last thing she wants with him.

He had been gentle, of course. He's just as much of a beginner at this as she, being the good, honest boy he is. Everything about making love to her husband feels soft, tame, innocent.

When at last he dozes off, she is left feeling unfulfilled.

The fairytale isn't what she had imagined it to be.

Somehow, she envisioned pretty dresses and a doting husband would equal to a happy life. He gives her all of these, of course—there is nothing she wants that he can't provide, no fortune too large for the Vicomtesse de Chagny. Her prince is so gentle with her, so loving and attentive to her every need.

He doesn't complain when she starts to give away her dresses, her—his money. As a Vicomtesse she is not expected to work, and she would rather not claim his money as hers but he insists that it's yours to do as you wish, Christine. So she takes his money, takes his food, takes the dresses and jewels that he gives her, and gives them to the beggars outside their door.

In all of the stories about princes and princesses, Christine has never heard the side of their citizens. They are poor and begging and hungry, and she has grown up in an Opera House of giggling ballet girls and frilly ribbons. All she has known is what it means to please the elite with perfect dances and pleasing arias. Her world had been composed of the rich, and so she didn't think of the poor.

Stepping into her palace of a mansion is a slap to her face. Gone is the splendour of the Paris Opera, the delusion of beauty and good. The world is ugly and hateful, and she finally sees it when she rides in the carriage with her prince for the first time. She sees the people—sees how they are hardly human, made of bone and stretched skin and hollow cheeks and angry voices.

Why won't you help? she asks her prince one day, when they are sheltered by the warm fire in the library that is far too big for them.

He shrugs noncommitally, turning the page of his book as he brings his feet to rest on the sofa. There are too many of them, he says, not looking up at her.

It's then that she begins to understand. Fairytales are written by the winners, and she has never been a winner.

She would like to say that she doesn't think of her angel beneath the Opera House, but he consumes her every waking thought.

Before, she was a girl envisioning the perfect life. A songbird with her head in the clouds, a princess waiting for her prince. Dreaming of her angel who would come down from heaven and sweep her off her feet.

Ideas of romance were just those: ideas.

Now she has her prince and her fairytale, she cannot help but cling onto reality.

She sees more of the world through poverty's eyes. There are so many colours—black, blue, green, grey, brown—but they all hold the same spite, the same hate. They sneer at her when she walks among them, and she doesn't blame them. She would sneer at herself, too.

The ladies in balls and enormous gowns wonder why she goes out to do the groceries by herself. That is a maid's job, and she is not a maid—she is a Vicomtesse. Every whisper, every glance tells her what she already knows, but she persists. The markets, though full of hardship, hold more life than the dances she and her prince are invited to.

But she sees, now, how the world works. There is sadness and despair and hate, and there is hurt. She is an observer on the sidelines, a princess in disguise who watches the events of the streets unfold. She sees crying babies and yelling mothers and abusive fathers. She sees children who crawl underneath tables and steal from stalls to bring food to their friends. She pretends not to notice when they come and steal from her, too. They like to steal from her—her basket is always full with bread and confections's she's nicked from the Chagny kitchen—and she is happy enough to let them.

One small act of kindness to change a little boy's life.

She begins to understand her angel, now. She doesn't forgive him—she cannot forgive him, not after his manipulation and possession of her—but she understands. Sees why he hates the world, and why the world has always hated him. The world does not like ugly things, and they deem him the ugliest of them all.

The women in ragged dresses throw hateful glances at her lavish one, at her: a representation of the elite. She sees him in them, and understands why he hates the world, as well.

But she occasionally catches sight of the skinny children laughing and giggling as they play, glimpses the hint of a kiss shared between parents who are undoubtedly poor, but in love. She thinks about how deep their gazes are, how plainly written their happiness is on their faces.

They do not have much where she has so much, and they are content. There is beauty beneath the surface of ugliness, just as there is ugliness beneath the façade of beauty.

And suddenly, she doesn't want her fairytale anymore.

Christine de Chagny is a good wife who loves her husband, a princess happily united with her prince. She goes to parties and laughs along with the elite, sipping daintily at the champagne flute in a gloved hand. Dances with every man who wishes her hand, and giggles prettily when her husband swats them away to claim her for himself.

Christine de Chagny doesn't exist, and never has.

In her place is Christine Daaé. Christine Daaé, who owns three pretty dresses out of the fifty her husband had given her because she had distributed them among the maids and their families. Christine Daaé, who cannot stand the sight of her polished shoes because it means she has not been outdoors to visit the world yet. Christine Daaé, who spends her every waking hour thinking about reality when she is trapped in a fantasy.

Her fairytale prince is no more.

She begins to want more than what he gives her. Not material goods—he has enough of those to spare. No; she wants to see more than an affectionate smile, she craves more than the tender kisses he grants her, wants to tear him apart with her tongue and teeth and touch until he is sobbing her name.

Princesses do not want to tear, but she does. She wants to rip and scream and laugh and cry until she is completely and utterly drained. She wants to bleed herself dry, to spend every waking moment of her life living for herself and only herself. Society is nothing, to her; they do not matter.

It's laughably ironic how she had the chance to refuse all of this, to throw it away and let herself live, sing, indulge in all the pleasures she's seen between men and women on the streets at night, and yet she didn't.

She, Christine Daaé who always wanted to be Christine de Chagny, has finally gotten her wish—and she does not want it.

She had thought something was wrong with her, before—because surely good girls didn't think like this—but walks on the Paris streets at night show her that this savageness exists in more than just herself. She sees couples against the wall and on tables and in the hushed secrecy of a dark alley, hears cries of passion and grunts of ecstasy, and wonders why she and her prince are so quiet in their bed.

She tries, one night, to initiate something between them. Pins her husband against their locked door in the dead of night and kisses him until he is panting in her mouth. Excitement flares in her stomach, and finally—finally—she can feel her skin thrumming, her pulse racing.

But he slows them down and takes the lead, guiding her to their bed and pressing kisses to her forehead. Hands do not wander from her hips, and when he pushes into her, it's slow and boring.

It's entirely proper.

Christine Daaé hates propriety. There is fire in the touches she sees on the streets, living within these people who aren't bound by the limitations of propriety. They are free to do as they wish, these people who do not exist in the eyes of her society—of her prince's society.

And perhaps they might call her disgusting if they knew of how she touched herself in the darkness. Her husband, being the good little working man he is, always finds himself away on business trips or dinners hosted by important men in important suits. Maybe she should feel lonely when he is gone, but she only feels excitement at the thought that she can finally rub herself until she's shuddering into her pillow, that she can touch her breasts and hips and all the curves he has neglected to put his hands on.

Usually, it's imagination that spurs her on. Her thoughts are full of wicked fantasies of a man on his knees, his head trapped between her legs. He does not have a face, nor does he have a voice, but in her head he cries out when she sits atop his lap and takes every inch of him into herself.

The woman empowers, the man lets her, and the roles reverse. Worship is written from one body to another, the scent of sex and sweat rising in the air.

Good girls do not think of sitting on top of their dressers and spreading their legs, but perhaps Christine Daaé has never been a good girl.

Eventually, the faceless man comes to have a face, though she cannot seem to complete it. His voice starts to remind her of an angel fallen from heaven, ready to sin. She imagines him to be tall, with long, graceful legs and strong arms and a thin chest, so unlike her husband, and the fingers between her legs are long and lithe.

He is always full of passion, this man in her dreams. Every part of him thrums with unrestrained ardour, and he uses it to teach, to take, to give and give until they both fall apart. He pushes and tugs and bites and licks, and he is completely, utterly savage.

He does not make love to her—no, she has had enough of lovemaking. She wants rough, she wants hard, she wants fire and desperation and to beg and make him beg.

In her dreams, he fucks her like she wants to be fucked, and there is something so delicious, so thrilling about giving this strange beautiful desire a name, and about that name being so obscene, so vulgar.

No, Christine Daaé is not a good girl, and never wants to think herself one ever again.

The acceptance of this slowly brings about a face to her faceless man, and she realises that she has never been able to complete it because half his face has always been missing. She wants lust and sex and hunger and he gives it to her—him, with his thin lips and blazing golden eyes, raised flesh and jutting spine. She knows she should abhor him, should be disgusted at herself for desiring him so—because this must be desire, this nameless need to possess him as he had once possessed her—but she can't.

Trying to think of another man does not work. The mysterious lover of her dreams is suddenly gone, replaced by the image of him and only him. Him and his seductive voice, him and his long fingers, him and his ruined face.

So she finally embraces the image of him, imagines him coming to her and setting his mouth on her and spreading her legs until she is begging for him until she cries out his name.

"Erik!" she sobs into the dead of night, her crisp white nightgown thrown on the floor, naked body laying on top of the covers, thighs spread apart with her hand covering the secrecy every proper woman strives to hide from the world.

Sleep comes easily that night, a blissful slip into dreams of everything and of nothing.

But still, the air kissing her breasts is nothing like what she imagines his tongue to be, and it's maddening.