AN: Hello Everybody! I'm back with something a little different. The basis of this story is this: my husband and I like to write/role-play erotic stories and we thought this one was interesting enough to publish here. Both his and my writing are intermingled, so by necessity, this story's point of view is 3rd Person Omniscient and there may be some stylistic whiplash, which we have tried to minimize.

This is a retelling of The Phantom of The Opera as an erotic fiction, so a strong rating of M. It will not follow the canon story line and yes, it is HEA... eventually. In this story, there is an amalgamation of Phantoms and Christines. Try to read this with an open mind as we picked qualities and character traits that appealed to us and inserted some of our own at will. We hope you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it!

AN2: Currently in the process of being re-edited, so my apologies for the constant pinging if you are following this.

He Loves Me; He is Here

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"Farewell past, happy dreams of days gone by. The roses in my cheeks already are faded." Verdi, La Traviata

-o-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chapter 1 ~~~~~~~~~~~

The year was 1889. France- the fickle, emotional mistress that she was- teetered on its last legs of stability between economic depression and La Belle Epoche, The Golden Age, where art flourished and redefined the world. People were starving, but their heads and hearts were filled with the gluttonous power of music, movement, and color.

The Palaise Garnier rose from the ashes of greed and humanity and shone like a phoenix reborn. To even look upon it, one was filled with the heady pull of beauty and artistry.

Christine thought all of this as she craned her neck to stare at the stone gargoyles and angels peering down at her. She was known as the quiet one, the reserved one; hard to make smile and harder to upset. But her mind always sped like blurring horses at a racetrack. It was impossible for her to quiet her mind enough to focus on such mundane things as idle conversation or menial tasks. As such, many thought her slow and delicate. But in her head, she felt like anything but. While standing in front of the greatest theatre on earth, her thoughts quieted, focused. It was her church- her sanctuary - she knew it immediately.

It was her eighth month at the ballet conservatoire. She was chosen as a supernumerary in the upcoming Opera. Faust. While she did not get to dance in the ballet quite yet, the opportunity to simply stand on the glorious stage while such beautiful music was created around her was enough to make her cry with joy.

She had never entered this building - oh, she was much too poor to attend such majestic outings!— but it had been a part of her dreams since she was a young girl. With a mixture of reverence and fear, she stepped through the understated doorway off of La Rue Scribe. She was met with darkness and clutter- stagehands and costumers running through the hallway, nearly colliding into each other but never daring to slow their pace.

With wide eyes, Christine ambled down the hallway, peeking into rooms, trying to find the stage. Eventually she found a sign directing performers to the Dancer's Foyer. The door was open and the room was filled with ballet dancers stretching and gossiping, actors contorting their faces and creating bizarre noises from grimacing lips. There were a couple men in lovely suits pressing closely to some of the younger performers, who in turn either shrank back with trepidation or pressed back with boldness. It was a circus. She looked for any familiar face, but found none.

She almost turned around and left when she heard her name being called. It was Meg Giry! She was a year or two younger than Christine, but had already made the ballet corps- although her mother was the revered ballet mistress, one would find it difficult to ignore Meg's legitimate talent and her deserving of the role.

Christine smiled and rushed over to the little ballet rat and engaged herself in a friendly embrace.

Meg was glowing! "Oh, isn't this exciting, Christine! Both of us, on the greatest stage in the world!" Little Meg was endearingly prone to the dramatic.

Christine smiled and nodded, pulling her tattered shall closer to her body. "It is a dream come true," she answered quietly in her richly melodic voice.

The flurry of activity was wild with stagehands and costumers, coaches and promoters flurrying about. Today was the first staging rehearsal of the new production of Faust, and expectations were high, to say the least. The opera itself had its premier delay for a year following its composition. The reason? It was far too pedestrian for the attendees of the Paris Opera. No, deals with the devils were simply insufficient in today's Parisian culture. As a result, the work had been rewritten; an orgiastic ballet added to the fifth act of the work, the flawed and damned protagonist dining and carousing with witches and devils while his ill fated love languished in jail for the murder of their love child; which of course, he had abandoned. Critics would comment that this had little to do with the grand plot of the work and only really served to delay the conclusion of the story. None the less, the audiences of this time demanded nothing less. This was the height of Grand Opera in France. Meaning, this was the aperture where rich men could come and ogle the legs of women and for a price, perhaps even take one home for the night.

In all consideration, Paris was a little behind the times when it came to opera tradition. Italy had moved on to its gritty and brutal slices of life; Verismo, they were calling it. But truly, who would like to spend an entire night watching a poor bunch of artists struggle, only to have the diva die in a paltry third act of tuberculosis? That sounded like Tuesday night, and a commonplace, dull, Tuesday night at that. Germany had never really recovered after Wagner; no one truly ascending to his heights. And, on the cusp of the rise of the Second Viennese School which would push their music in a far more atonal direction.

No, the City of Lights demanded more. And the Paris Opera gave this. Faust was rewritten to fulfill all the lusty demands of the people.

Christine saw the results of such demands in the beautifully designed Dancer's Foyer, which she heard once was specifically created for patrons to slip into the back and snag a ballerina.

From some hidden door, a stage manager entered, barking, "Ladies and gentlemen, we'll begin with act two. The street scene."

Christine grinned at Meg and eagerly followed the crowd.