Complete Summary:

Christine Daae's father died when she fourteen years old and she was forced to work in a brothel from that very young age. As she grows older she escapes to find a better life for herself and finds herself working in the house of and in love with the Vicomte de Chagny. Misfortune strikes again, but this time an angel is there to catch Christine in her time of need. Time and time again her mysterious angel is there as a source of support and protection. Yet the identity of her angel slowly unravels, leaving Christine wondering if this Phantom of the Opera could possibly be the impassioned lover and musician she so fully trusts with her voice, body, and soul.

Author's Note:

This story is already completed, I'm posting as I go through and edit with the help of oktimenation, so updates should be pretty regular. There's a lot of mature content in this story, starting off from the first few chapters but the content gets lighter throughout though still includes mature sexual content and language from beginning to end. There will, of course, be warnings at the top of chapters that include extreme violent or sexual content.

This prologue includes sexual content. Trigger Warning: sexual abuse.

When she was first taken into Madame Rouge's care she was no older than fourteen, dressed in rags with nothing but her father's violin in possession; a free room for a month in exchange for the violin, her only earthly reminder of her father, seemed fair. He was dead and gone and it saddened her to depart with the beautiful instrument, she'd already sold its expensive case in exchange for a carriage ride into town after his funeral, but she forced herself to remember that Papa would be proud of her for taking care of herself. His dying wish was her happiness and she would not disappoint him, whatever it cost to survive is what she would pay.

After a month, Christine started working in exchange for the attic space she was granted. She didn't work like the other girls, at only fourteen she was still awkward and undesirable to the type of men who came into the brothel, instead she worked as seemingly everything else. Between long nights as the barmaid and long days of cleaning the disgustingly soiled laundry from the bedrooms, Christine found herself in a constant state of exhaustion. For a year she worked herself to the bone, still wearing the rags that she'd had when she first arrived, she was even skinnier, once luscious hair was now duller, green eyes sunken into pale skin, but somehow still growing more desirable to the men who visited. In the early afternoons, when most of the occupants of the brothel were dead drunk or asleep after a long shift, Christine would stand in front of the lengthy mirror in the largest bedroom and contemplate what exactly it was a customer would want her body for.

Trying to keep her blooming curves hidden, in fear that the Madame would set her into the business sooner than she hoped, Christine performed most of her duties while staying as far back in the shadows as possible. Cooking, preparing the other girls' makeup and clothes, cleaning the Madame's personal office and bedroom, prepping the rooms for the paying customers—there was never a moment of silence for the young girl. By Christmas of her fifteenth year, when she sat in the attic curled up in her raggedy shawl and staring out the small window and up toward the stars hidden by the heavy snow clouds, Christine came to the realization that there was no way out of her situation. For a year she'd walked around a mummy, dead on the inside and nonchalant on the outside, she performed her duties quietly and did not like to bring attention to herself. On the inside, however, she was waiting, always waiting.

Waiting for her father to walk through the tavern doors one night and pull her into his warm arms, place a kiss upon her brow and carry her away from this hell hole. On Christmas as she stared up at the concealed stars, Christine came to terms with her father's death and she wept. She wept for the entirety of the day, crying into the tub she used for laundry, muffling sobs as she lit the lanterns around the room before the usual time the customers rushed in, and sniveling into her pillow as she lay exhausted upon the thin mattress she'd been given a year ago. Her father had been dead a year and what progress had she made in life? Absolutely none, her father would not be proud at all.

On her sixteenth birthday Christine was called into the Madame's personal office. It was not a place she'd ever liked, the chair was draped in a blanket of bear fur with the frightening head still attached, cheap red leather lined a desk littered with empty rum bottles, and behind the desk was a window draped in thick red curtains. The glass looked out onto the front of the establishment so that if the Madame ever heard horse hooves or the sound of carriage wheels, she would be able to identify the rich man who would come slinking into the building. Most of the daily customers couldn't afford to travel by horse or carriage, and came by foot, drenched in sweat and reeking of their own musty body odor.

The Madame herself had changed little since Christine had first met her, Christine had been referred to the place by the carriage driver who took her from her father's funeral. She'd asked for a motel and ended up in a brothel, too exhausted to leave upon arrival and too poor to leave after a month, Christine found herself trapped in a place where she worked like a slave for little money or kindness. The Madame towered over Christine by at least eight inches, she was not the curvaceous woman many expected her to be when they heard of her title, but rather an extremely gaunt woman with bony shoulders and a beak for a nose. She glared down at all with raven eyes, her red nails a shocking contrast to the bleached white of her frizzed hair that looked ready to engulf her thin face. Thin lips were obscenely slick with red lipstick, what little breasts she had were close to popping out of her corset, the slit up the side of her dress revealed skinny legs that paced up and down the length of the foyer as she helped customers find the girl that would bring them the most pleasure. Madame Rouge was a business woman above all else, a business woman who knew sex, who liked sex, who aimed to please by giving good sex to all that could pay the price.

On her sixteenth birthday, Christine was told she could no longer stay in the shabby room of the attic in exchange for simple house duties.

"You will work like a real woman from now on and earn your keep, just like all the other girls. If you'd like we can move you down into a regular bedroom." The thought made her nauseous, still a virgin who had yet to receive her first kiss, the thought of sex was terrifying. The thought of sex with a stranger was even more terrifying, and being expected to live in a room where that act happened dozens of times a day made her even sicker. Christine shook her head, slightly woozy she felt the blood leave her face as she avoided the Madame's eyes. The news had somehow come as such a shock that she felt numbed from the pain, as if she was watching this horrific news be delivered to some other poor soul. She was no fool, in the two years since she'd come to live in that horrid place she had taken the time to peak in on what exactly the paying customers expected of the women. It was never anything less than gruesome.

"Fine, you can keep your attic. I'll expect good work out of you, you're young. You'll have good stamina; you've nothing to worry about."

"But who will keep up with the house duties?" Christine's voice was hoarse, tears tightened her throat and she tried to keep them from spilling over as she felt the penetrating gaze that meant scrutiny was coming. Green eyes concentrated on the thin material of her brown skirt as she listened to her fate be dealt to her from a cruel, uncaring woman. Hatred bubbled in her, but confusion and terror numbed the heat of it.

"I have a stable boy who's willing to do it for a small raise, certainly less than for what I was paying you. You'll take a bath and let Emilie dress you; I've bought you something nice to wear for your first night. Wasn't that nice of me?" Arguing would prove pointless, if Christine wanted a good beating then all she had to do was shake her head in disagreement. Considering she liked her limbs intact and her eyes without purple bruises, Christine nodded her head in agreement and left the office numbly.

Her thin figure floated by the Madame's band of hunchmen, brainless muscular men who had no problem beating up on the whores—on us, Christine corrected herself—for disobeying Madame Rouge's orders or beating up on disobedient, unruly, or unpaying customers. Their names were a mystery to Christine; she knew them only by appearance as she'd never heard them talk more than grunts to each other. There was the tall one with the eye patch who used a knife to clean out from under his finger nails, the fat bald one who resembled a large baby too much too intimidate her with more than his horrific odor of sweat and piss, and then there was the man that the girls referred to as Apple. He was medium height with red hair and a long neck that was covered in the freckles that dawned just about every inch of his visible skin, he was known for having his way with the girls while keeping a knife to their throats to keep them silent, even though the Madame had told him it was fine to have his way with them, his threat was for his own personal pleasure. Apple was undoubtedly the leader of the group.

The lobby itself was a clean place, this Madame insisted upon, as customers would only pay high prices if appearances were kept up. In fact, the entire building was a cleanly place; the only dirtiness there was between the sheets, or against the walls, atop the couches. The girls were kept clean, as were their clothes and bedrooms, it would have been a nice place if everything else about it had changed. Although dark and often bustling with noisy customers demanding more liquor and faster, the foyer was one of the best places to spend time in the building. Except for her little attic, that was most definitely Christine's favorite place. No one went up there; it held her bed, her clothes, and the one thing from her past that she'd kept after all this time. Two years had passed slowly and everything from the loving life she once led had fallen away to reveal the horrible present, but nothing could remove the two creased sheets of music paper she kept hidden under her pillow. The song her father had written and named after her, she hadn't heard it in over three years now, but of what she could remember, it was the most beautiful piece of music she'd ever heard.

The young woman was in the habit of living in a dream land, a world where her father still existed and loved her dearly. This was just her day job, she would reassure herself when dealing with difficult situations, she would be able to leave at the end of the day and go home to her loving father and a warm cooked meal. This dream world was shattered on her sixteenth birthday, a day that should have been filled with love and joy was now filled with horror and disgust. She was doused with icy water and then tied up in an ill-fitting green dress. It wasn't to her liking at all, the corset was uncomfortable on her chest and made it hard to breathe, she felt exposed and vulnerable when she realized she had no talent for walking in heals, and when her hair was pulled up to reveal her slender neck and pale skin she felt so naked that she sat in front of the mirror and cried. Emilie, an older, detached woman who had no liking for any of the girls, let alone the sobbing mess of a virgin, had slapped her cheek to silence her before applying Christine's heavy eye makeup for her. The woman in the mirror was not the innocent, young Christine Daae that her father had written music for or told ghost stories to. The woman in the mirror was a whore, and she had no say in the matter.

Her first experience with a man was horrifying, but she looked back on it with the knowledge that it could have been much worse. The man who took her was not overly large or overly small, he was simply average. He did not reek of onions or his own sweat, he did not smell much at all but of the scent of cheap cologne she'd smelt only when her father had performed at circuses and carnivals. Not gentle or rough, loud or silent, the time he took moving above her frightened frame was short, he did not press lying kisses to her skin. In fact, looking back on it, he was one of the easiest customers Christine would ever have to deal with. He'd used her body like he needed, cleaned himself in the wash at the end of the bed, had left a coin (her tip, Emilie had explained later that she could keep tips for herself) on the night stand then left.

Nobody explained the horrible burn between her legs, or the blood that had soiled the bedspread that he hadn't even pulled back, nobody cared to explain to her how to wash herself to ensure she wouldn't become pregnant after this horrible act. She was congratulated for neither her bravery nor strong stomach, but rather the ability to make her breasts appear larger than they were. Starving, Christine Daae curled up in the bed in the attic after the worst birthday of her life with stickiness between her legs, tears upon her cheeks, and a silver coin tucked into the music her father had written for her. She prayed for an angel that she knew would never come, and then she prayed for death.