A/N: This plot bunny sprang into my head months ago and refused to leave, soooo...here. Using ALW (stage) canon for this one. The rating may change in light of violence and/or sexual situations, in which case I will warn accordingly.

She walked onstage with the terror and resignation of one condemned to die.

It was almost laughable, really, how much she had to pretend otherwise. She was decked in flounces of peach-pink satin and black lace, her every movement coquettish and overwrought, but it was her first line that was most offensive: No thoughts within her head but thoughts of joy. Oh, how that could not be farther from the truth.

The truth was that she felt alone and abandoned amid that sea of spectators: a chirping sparrow, left unguarded to bait the hawk. With every second she spent cavorting about the set, she also scanned the auditorium for a white half-mask, stilled her hands from shaking, and tried not to vomit. She could barely focus on her stage partner, Piangi, as he made his re-entry under the cover of a hooded black cloak. He was a blur in the corner of her eye as she sat and let him sing to her the words of seduction that he, her masked pursuer, had written.

Broad, sinuous hands, masculine but expressive, hovered tantalizingly about her face and neck. From there, callused fingers skated down the bare expanse of skin at her sternum, over the soft swell of flesh at the neckline of her bodice, and down even further to her corseted stomach.

And then she knew.

Only one man would act with such poised bravado. Only he would emit the current of raw desire that she felt in that caress. And only he was capable of instilling cold, solid dread in her gut while at the same time setting her skin and blood aflame. He, her fallen angel.

The realization transformed them from Don Juan and Aminta to predator and prey. She leapt away from him, every nerve ending in her body crying out danger as she struggled to regain composure and continue the duet.

But beneath all of that, she felt a thrill. A terrible, shameful, sickening thrill.

It was a testament to his genius and to his voice that he had so perfectly emulated Piangi's vocals; she had carried on with the scene like a fool, too caught up in baiting him to notice that he was already there. But his skill did not stop at that. No, he had engineered the perfect duet to draw out her most hidden, forbidden desires and air them in front of her—until, in this moment, she could no longer deny their existence. Past the point of no return.

There on stage, in front of her fiancé and seemingly all of Paris high society, her voice expressed what her body could not, even as she racked her brain for an exit strategy. Her voice betrayed her, and though it may have seemed part of the act, she knew that he had noticed. He knew her voice better than even she did.

As their voices melded for the song's finale, entwining in a beautiful but too-intimate coupling, he began to reel her in. Her body and soul complied, terrified and powerless to resist.

The spell faltered just long enough for her gaze to flit to her fiancé, where he waited in the wings. Raoul watched them with such open revulsion that her stomach seemed to bottom out entirely. Was his disgust directed solely at the Phantom, or did he know?

Her guilt and shame became too much to bear, and so she did a horrible, cowardly thing: she transferred those feelings to him. And she would never forget his pained expression of betrayal as she removed his hood—and then, ultimately, his mask.

She ought to have known that a public unmasking would utterly unhinge him. The Opera Ghost roared and grabbed her wrist, and her world exploded in a wall of fire.

Christine woke with a gasp, fingers clawing at the bedsheets. She lay there, panting, until her mind cleared itself of its fog, and then she finally turned to read the small clock at her bedside: a quarter to five. She had fifteen minutes to dress and get to work.

She was up in an instant, splashing cold water onto her face at the washbasin as she tried to erase the scene that had just played itself out in her head. Again.

He still haunted her slumber. Many of her nightmares were marked by blood and fire and garrotting wire and chandeliers, and she would wake shaking and in a cold sweat.

In other dreams, she was forced to recall the initial tenderness of his touch, the rigid line of his body as he held her to him and sang soft promises of music that would transcend all else. He had still been her angel at that point—or had he? She must have already suspected by then that he was a man, for it would have been blasphemous to harbor for an angel as much longing as she had felt that night.

But the worst dreams of all were the ones like tonight's, dreams that reminded her of how some part of her, deep down, had always yearned for him. How she had kissed him twice. Even now, nearly eight months later, her dreams would not let her forget. Guilt and shame still stretched and loomed over her, an unrelenting shadow.

She slipped out of her nightdress, shivering all the while, and put on the garments she'd worn the day before: navy skirt and bodice, white blouse, stockings in need of mending. Then she took a brush to her tangled brown curls, frowning at her reflection in the mirror as she did so. When had her cheeks become so hollow, her skin so lifeless and gray? Even her blue irises seemed to have dulled, perhaps an effect of the puffy lower lids and dark undereye circles.

It was a hard blow to take after everything else that had befallen her this year. She would never admit it aloud, but she had always taken some comfort in her appearance, had always been aware of the allure held by her lithe dancer's body and delicate frame, her shining mahogany hair. It was hard not to be, not after she had endured the stares and murmurs of the lecherous old opera subscribers, with their black hats and wandering hands and unfettered access to the ballet dancers' rehearsal spaces. As much as those men had made her stomach churn, she had to admit that she had fed off of their flattery at a time when praise of her abilities had run short.

She still had her hair, at least. But that hardly mattered now, not as she twisted it into a neat bun and tied a white kerchief around her head.

From the coat stand by the door of her flat, Christine grabbed her favorite blue cloak, dull and weathered with overuse. A red scarf hung on the neighboring peg, and she paused to rub the soft wool between her fingers.

Oh, Raoul.

What was he doing now? Sleeping, no doubt, having retired not long ago from one of his late-night dinner parties with friends. He had tried to include her in them during the four months in which he'd put her up in a large and gorgeous room in his large and gorgeous house, though she had often preferred to sleep. She could recall his grey eyes shining merrily with camaraderie and drink and, when they caught sight of her, with utter devotion.

That was, of course, before he had suggested calling off the engagement.

Oh, how she had loved him—and perhaps she did still. But it had not been enough.

And he, her fallen angel, the Phantom—he had loved her, and it had also not been enough.

But then, she had hardly known the side of him that had set her free on a kiss, given up his happiness for hers, and confessed his love knowing full well that she was to leave. Who was that man? Oh, that lonely, desperate man! He had been so careful not to reveal himself to her, she knew now. She had spent many nights fuming about it, incensed over his treatment of her; his manipulation of everyone in that opera house; and his wicked, unforgivable deeds. And she had spent even more nights convincing herself that hers was not anger born of hurt and betrayal, because then that would mean that she had cared.

She had, though. Of course she had. And it would have been easy to drive herself mad wondering what might have been had he shown her his true self from the beginning, but she had finally come to accept that she would never know.

Now, no one in that strange love triangle was happy. Raoul still had a chance, though, and that provided some cold comfort.

A more unsettling thought occurred to her: that perhaps, at this moment, her love did not sleep alone. After all, four months was plenty of time in which to find another bride, and interest was in no short supply for a vicomte.

With renewed haste, she pulled the scarf down and tucked it away in a dresser drawer. Then she hurried out into the hall and down the four flights of rickety stairs that would lead her out into the street.

It was still dark outside; the damp pavement shone with reflections of the overhead street lamps. She raised the hood of her cloak to guard against the cold October drizzle, wishing she had thought to bring gloves. There was no time to go back upstairs.

Though the upper class had just turned down their sheets, working-class Paris was stirring, breathing life into the rain-slicked streets and sidewalks. Christine was nearly knocked over by a slew of men ferrying sacks of flour from a horse-drawn cart to an alley door. The smell of baking bread wafted out of the building and made her stomach rumble, reminding her that she had not eaten. She paused and glanced at the open bakery door; perhaps they would let her slip in and buy a morsel? But no, she did not have the time.

She tightened the blue cloak around her shoulders, and that was when she saw it: a subtle shift beyond the door, what appeared to be a sweep of a black cloak in the dark alleyway. She froze, her eyes fixed on that spot, but all was still.

No, she told herself. You are being irrational, Christine. It was likely a trick of the light or the wind. Even if it had been a garment, it could have belonged to anyone.

No one, however, wore a cloak with the combination of stealth and sweeping grandeur that he had. The movement she had seen, that smooth billowing of fabric that seemed little more than a passing shadow: it had reminded her of him.

She shook her head and moved on. The Phantom of the Opera was long gone, possibly even dead, and she had to believe that if he had been watching her of late, he would not have tolerated her toiling away as a laundress these last four months. She was not even sure how she had tolerated it.

Besides, it would not take him long to figure out why she had left the Opera Populaire. If that happened, then she was certain that he would want nothing to do with her.

She was the last of eight women to arrive at the laundry that morning. The coal stove had already been stoked, the irons laid out on top in preparation for the day's work. Someone had brewed a pot of weak coffee, and she eagerly poured herself a cup, letting the chipped porcelain thaw her fingers as she drank.

The clock chimed five before she could finish. The head washerwoman tossed her a dingy white apron and barked, "Enough dawdling, girl. Start sorting."

Christine tied the apron strings around her waist and joined several others at the large sorting table, where they counted, marked, and sorted the soiled clothes and linens that had come in the night before. Meanwhile, other girls collected the garments that had dried overnight and set to ironing them. The room, as always, became oppressively hot, cutting off idle chatter until the only sound was the dull thunk of the irons. It was not long before Christine stripped down to the short-sleeved blouse beneath her bodice.

The adjoining room, to which she rotated next, merely swapped the suffocating heat of the irons for the suffocating humidity of the washtubs. She scrubbed and rinsed long after her fingers puckered, knowing that her hands tonight would be papery and bone-dry, her knuckles cracking until they bled.

There was a meager lunch prepared in the sorting and ironing room, and then the women began to haul bins of wet laundry out to the courtyard behind the building. The rain had let up, giving way to meek sunlight, so they could take advantage of the outdoor clotheslines.

Christine took deep breaths as she pinned damp garments to the lines. The stench of the city air was just as odious as that of the dirt and sweat inside the laundry, but she no longer felt as though she was breathing into a hot, wet blanket.

"Hey, sweetheart!" called a man nearby, and only when he said it again did she realize that he was addressing her. "Sweetheart!"

She looked up. The speaker was a stout, square-jawed man in a blood-spattered apron, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he leaned against the rear door of a neighboring butcher shop. She had seen him before; the men working nearby often chose this hour to take their smoke breaks. Usually, though, they focused their attention on those laundresses who were reputed to go topless when the heat of the laundry became unbearable.

Christine could not say what caused her to meet this man's gaze, but she regretted it instantly. Even as she turned back to her work, he left his stoop to saunter over. "You look like you could use some company after a hard day like this," he crooned. "You have a name, little bird?"

She pursed her lips, keeping her eyes trained on the clothes, and did not respond.

"You are wasting your time, monsieur," said one of the other girls. "That one is a mute."

"And a prude," another piped up. "Come back with a few francs tonight, though, and I will give you some company."

"A mute, eh?" the man repeated, and he edged so close to Christine that she nearly gagged at the sour smell of raw meat and beer that seemed to seep from his glistening pores. "Ten minutes with me, darling, and I'll have you singing."

She hung the last of the clothes from her basket and hurried back inside before anyone could see the fresh tears stinging her eyes.

She would never sing again, in fact, and she did not even have the voice to tell him so.

It was eight o'clock in the evening when she trudged home, aching and weary.

Most of the girls slept in a small bunk room attached to the laundry. She had tried it, on occasion, when even the thought of the five-minute walk back to her flat was too much to bear. But that same room, she had learned, was also a place of business for those women who chose to supplement their meager income with gentlemen callers, and she had not stayed there since the night when one such caller mistook her for a willing recipient of his advances.

She knew how fortunate she was to have a place of her own, and she knew that the others gossiped about how she managed it: a wealthy benefactor, perhaps, seduced by her feminine wiles. The truth was that it belonged to her longtime friend and mentor Antoinette Giry. The ballet instructor and her daughter, Meg, had lived in the small apartment for years, up until Meg caught the eye of a wealthy Italian investor during one of his backstage visits. Two months and a wedding later, both women were relocating to Italy.

Christine had been forced to bid them farewell two days after her own engagement came to its inevitable end. Like a mother hen, Madame Giry had seen past the soprano's brave face and drawn the truth right out of her, until it was all settled that Christine would occupy the newly vacant flat as long as was needed. Raoul would not have kicked her out, of course, but every hour in that house with him had become soul-crushing. So she had accepted.

Four months in, she was still brimming with gratitude and continued to say as much in her letters to Meg, who had paid a year's worth of rent in advance. Christine could never have otherwise afforded such privacy on her measly three-and-a-half francs a day.

She used some of those wages now in the shops along her route home, on some bread and cheese and a bit of dried beef. She was desperately hungry. But before eating, she decided, she would wash up. Her skin was still damp with perspiration, blackened by soot and smoke, and coated in grime loosed from the dirty linens and garments. Her cloak and frock needed laundering, too, and she both looked and felt like a vagrant. Oh, what she would not have given in that moment for a proper bath.

A bitter wind was picking up, blowing directly into her face and stinging her cheeks. She pulled her hood more tightly around her face, until it nearly obscured her vision and she collided directly with a solid figure just outside her building.

The impact knocked her satchel from her hand, and she emitted a small gasp of surprise. She felt a steadying hand on her arm, and the male voice that accompanied it sounded amused. "Scusi, signorina." The satchel was pushed back into her hands, and when she finally got her bearings, she found herself facing a gangly, tan-skinned man who leered down at her from beneath a crop of dark hair.

"You are not hurt?" he asked, his accent thick.

She could not explain it, but there was something about him that made her stomach knot. Her mind reflexively recalled the knife that she now kept tucked in her boot when she was out. She shook her head, flashed him a faint smile of gratitude, and pushed past him and into her building.

It took all four flights of stairs for her heart to stop hammering, and by then she was ready to collapse from exhaustion. At the door to her flat, she stopped and stared, her brain trying to piece together what she was looking at.

There was a small chunk of wood missing near the handle, as though the door had been kicked in.

Perhaps she should not open it, then. But she was so tired, and so hungry, and what else was she to do?

It was locked, at least. Christine turned the key and pushed into the little apartment, letting her satchel hit the floor as she closed the door behind her. She had opened the curtains before she left, hoping for sunlight that would warm the flat, and the street lamps outside lit the room just enough for her to spot the anomaly.

There was a tall, dark figure propped up in the corner, his impossibly long legs stretched out before him. He had one hand tucked inside his black tailcoat, as though clutching his abdomen. Even in the low lighting, she could make out the flecks of crimson on his otherwise spotless white shirt. She could make out his expansive palms and long fingers, and his black hat.

He looked up at her through one blue eye and one golden brown, his white shell of a mask glowing in the lamplight. Half-bloated lips parted in surprise.

"Ah," he said, his silky tenor just as captivating as she had remembered. "You are not Madame Giry."