A/N: Hi folks! I've put a lot of brainpower into this fic and I am SO excited to share it with you. Here's a brief sketch of what you should know before you read further:

This fic is a Cold War AU, and it picks up soon after the events of PotO as though they had unfolded in the 1960s. While I've most closely stuck to the ALW canon, I have also drawn elements from Leroux. It should be around 25 chapters in length (this may change).

Researching for this fic has been equal parts exciting and frustrating. Tragically, and as often happens when writing historical fiction, much of what I learned didn't make it into the finished product — if it had, this fic would be much longer and more meandering and less fiction-y overall — so I'd be overjoyed if anyone wanted to come yell about stuff with me, either here or on tumblr!

P.s. reviews are great and I would love if you left one! Even just to say hi!

The first day was spent shivering in the smallest bedroom of a manor house near Yvelines. The first day, and the next and the next for thirty-two consecutive days. The thirty-third day saw the bright interior of a Citroën, briefly, and then a mausoleum, and then a cramped sitting-room with a barre tucked discreetly along the far wall.

A change of scenery on the seventieth day: a flat on the rue de la Mare, smaller than the smallest bedroom of a manor house near Yvelines.

That first day, and all the following days, the sun had mounted the sky and chased off the moon-shadows and it was then, when the sun was in view, that the forgetting was easier.

April 1964

They had not found him.

They had not found him, but damn it all, he had left the mask behind, in some histrionic lapse in judgment which he now greatly regretted. The labyrinthine tunnels beneath the Palais Garnier extended only so far before they met with the wider sewage network - he would have to ascend, and soon - and even if they thought him dead, his flight was not in vain; there was little hope of laying low sans mask. He must get as far as possible, as quickly as possible, and no one knew these tunnels better than he. His hat, his coat: both abandoned, foolishly, and here he was, clad in evening wear no longer impeccable, coated as it was in silt and sewer-grime. He gave a wild laugh, and it echoed, trapped by the stone of walls and ceiling, a fading cacophony of hysteria. How mad he must look! How demonic -

No, that wasn't right. He was no demon; she had made it so. Not a phantom, not an angel, nor a lucifer - but a man.

Yes, she had made it so. With fear and mercy and crush of lips she had exorcised him, drawn him from himself until a new, quivering thing lived where once there had only been death.

A ladder, up ahead. A sewer grate above it. He was not sure how long or how far he had been running, but instinct told him to grab hold of the rusted bars and haul himself up. What little he could see through the metal lattice assured him that he would, at least, be under cover of darkness.

The grate slid aside with some effort and he pushed himself up through the hole, emerging onto a deserted street, hazy in the light of the street lamps. He did not recognize the buildings, but then again, it had been years since he had last properly surfaced from the bowels of the opera house, mausoleums and rooftops notwithstanding. He knew the city better than most - he could thank his eidetic memory for that - and, sure enough, crossing the length of the street, he knew a spark of memory at the name on the sign: rue de Provence. At this junction it intersected with the rue Taitbout, but he recalled distantly that the next perpendicular street over was Saint-Georges, and a plan began to coalesce.

He moved down the rue Saint-Georges, one block, then two, relying more on feel than visual memory, and finally found his feet turning instinctively to the right. The brick facade of a subsidized apartment building stood before him, looming large in the darkness. Soft light shone from a sixth-story window, and he was certain that this was the right building. The outer door was easy enough to pick open, and he flew up five flights of stairs, emerging onto the sixth floor more winded than he should have been, given the years he'd spent scaling the scaffolds and arches of the opera house. Brushing his discomfort aside - it hardly registered against the anguish seeping further through his veins with every pulse of his calcified heart - his feet once again followed an obscurely familiar path and came to a stop outside a door, indistinguishable from the others but for the flare of memory it provoked. Bracing a hand on the lintel, he raised his other fist and pounded on the door.

From within, an aborted curse and the clink of china. The shuffle of footsteps nearing. The door opened inward, infinitesimally, to reveal green eyes behind a pair of reading glasses.

"Oh, fuck," came a voice, and the door opened wider to admit him. "So it is you. I should have known—"

"Not here," he muttered, shouldering his way inside the apartment. The door clicked shut behind him and he paused to listen for movement back in the hallway. When he was confident that none of the neighbours had emerged, he turned to face the apartment's occupant, a dark-skinned man, hair liberally shot through with grey. "I assume we may speak freely?"

"The place isn't bugged, if that's what you're insinuating," the man said, frowning. He removed his glasses and polished them on his shirt, a nervous tic he had never managed to subdue. "I may be retired, but I'm not a fool."

"Retired, old man?" he replied, derisive. "I never took you as one to abandon your noble duty."

"And what would you know of duty, Erik?" the man said, and then he sighed tiredly and raised his glasses back to his face. "What are you doing here?"

Erik. A name he hadn't heard in so long. A simple arrangement of letters, a name, and yet, it rendered him breathless for a moment. "You must have heard—"

"Oh, yes, I've heard all about the exploits of the Opera Ghost."

"Then," he said, brushing aside his annoyance at the interruption, "you'll know that—"

"That you killed two men and abducted a young singer? Yes, I do, and what was her name? Christine—"

A strangled scream tore from his throat and his lungs constricted and her face, her hair, her mouth, the feel of it on his, twice - "Damn you," he roared, forgetting himself, palm slamming into the wall beside his head. "Do not say her name!"

The man just stared at him, with an expression of resigned chagrin, before he sighed again. "You know you can't be here."

"What will you do," he snarled, raking a hand through his hair, feeling another mad laugh swirling in his gut, "bring me in? Me, your only friend? Or have you forgotten, Samir, what I have done, what I have risked, for you?"

"Is that what you are?" he asked quietly. "A friend?"

His chest heaved, and he became aware that he had come to Samir barefaced - he raised his shaking hand to cover the twisted flesh and worked to modulate his breathing. "Please," he said, "all I ask is that you assist me in finding a place to hide, and that you tell no one of my location. You will never hear from me again, if you wish it."

The man's face seemed to crumple, minutely, and he said, "You are aware of the repercussions I would face were my superiors to discover that I had let you slip from my grasp once again."

"So you are not retired," he said, grimly triumphant. "I knew it—"

"One never fully retires from the Service, you imbecile," Samir said, without heat. Sweeping his doleful gaze over him, he seemed to straighten his shoulders before beckoning him farther into the apartment. "You didn't happen to bring a change of clothes, did you? You smell like a sewer."

July 1964

Paris in mid-July was all swelter and drizzle and spirit – Bastille Day had just passed, with a military parade and street-dancing and an ocean of Mousseux. A particularly hot day. She had thought, abstractly, of war, and then less abstractly of gunshots and catacombs and mobs, and then she had gone back to bed.

The ninety-seventh day began with a sunrise. She had risen early, startled awake by some nebulous dream that she had already begun to forget, tangled in sheets twisted and sticky with sweat. Frantic to be free of the stifling bedclothes, she'd kicked and tumbled her way off the bed and staggered to the window, pressing her forehead to it and smudging the glass before throwing it open. The pre-dawn air knifed through her lungs and she welcomed it and braced her palms on the windowsill and breathed deeply, waiting for the young morning light to saturate the night sky.

Being awake at this hour, on the threshold between night and day, felt somehow like trespassing. Felt heady, too, and sonorous; Paris in the key of B minor.

Fingers pressing into the windowsill, shoulders hunching against an unbidden surge of yearning, the first steps of a whole tone scale sounding discordant in her ears. A mask, a boat, a hand curled talon-like around her arm, dragging her down, a voice, a voice. His voice.

Never before had she dreaded nightfall, but now, after it all - she was supposed to be free, now, but she wasn't, she couldn't be, not when he still haunted her dreams, the white flash of his mask and crook of his fingers beckoning. Take her, forget me, forget all of this - as though she could forget the sound and smell and feel of him, sharp and beguiling. The taste of him, something like misery, coated the back of her throat, and she breathed him. Raoul had not understood, when she had clutched at her throat those first few days, had held her and comforted her when she had thought she might die from it. Now night heralded long hours of aborted memory, fear, and confused longing.

The sky had lightened and the stars had begun to fade. She was shivering. Prying stiff fingers from the windowsill, she moved back to the bed, straightening the sheets and replacing the pillow that had fallen to the floor. She slipped a dressing-gown over her shoulders and moved about the flat, setting the coffee pot on the stove, assembling what remained in the fridge into something that resembled breakfast. The wireless, tuned to France Inter, crackled when she switched it on - it was too early yet for the morning broadcast - so she sat and ate to the sound of air-wave static.

In a few hours, Meg and Madame Giry would come to fetch her and they would board the metro at Ménilmontant, transfer at Père-Lachaise, and disembark at Opéra. Emerging from the underground into the bustle of the Place de l'Opéra, her eyes would catch on the elaborate facade of the Palais Garnier, the polychromic pastiche of columns and statuary and glinting gold. Her heart would stop, briefly, and then it would jolt and start anew, whether out of fear or desire she was never certain. To once again ascend the Grand Escalier, to giggle and dream in the wings with the ballet corps, to survey from the roof the vast length of the Avenue, the Louvre's pyramids glinting at the street-end…

Ninety-seven days and she had not returned. She would go as far as the Place de l'Opéra, Meg hugging her goodbye before hurrying across the street, and wander off down one of the side streets. She thought perhaps today she might visit the Beaujolais gallery.

She moved absently through her morning ablutions, lingering in the hot shower until the room crawled with steam, and when she returned to the kitchen to hear music playing softly on the wireless, she switched it off with a grimace and went to get dressed.

Ninety-seven days and she had not been able to endure the sound of music, either. Torturous, made worse by the melodies simmering mellifluous in her head, and oh, she hated him, then, and the fact that even now, the mere memory of him could seduce her mind. Of all his crimes, this injustice, this violation, was the worst. It felt like losing her father again.

"I'm sorry," Raoul gasped, as soon as they were out, "Christine, I'm sorry - you told me and told me and I didn't believe you -" He clutched her tighter, the diaphanous material of her dress sliding beneath his fingers.

"Raoul," she could only say, for she had lost all other words. "Raoul."

Huddled together on the rue Scribe side of the Palais, star-pricked night settled innocuously about them, it was impossible to imagine that mere minutes ago she had come close to -

To what? She could not put words to the feeling. The despair and misery and bitterness, yes, but the way his voice, even just the thought of him, touched her… like flying, electric and thrilling but foreboding all the same. Unfathomable and bewildering.

The thought of Raoul, neck snapped, dead forever, made her feel faint. She brought trembling hands to his face and they clutched at each other, listening to the gradual slowing of their heartbeats. No sound came from within the Palais. Had the mob found him? Had they discovered his hiding place? Would he surrender, or would he fight? She could not be sure which alternative she found more alarming.

"Christine," Raoul was saying, "you're trembling. I should - I should have brought you straight home."

"No," she said at once, burrowing tighter into him. His dress shirt was torn at the shoulder and his vest, smeared with grime, had lost its buttons, and still she pressed herself against his chest. "I can't go. Not there."

"All right," he said, soothing. "All right, Little Lotte."

Today, in the sun and the crowd, in her polka dot shift dress and Mary Janes, she could pretend that she was a young tourist, and marvel at the architecture and the crêperies and the street artists. Ignore the pain and fear, push it back into the steadily growing penumbra of her mind where, during the day, she kept the memories locked away.