In which, the Opera Ghost, days after the final departure of his love and 'Angel of Music', Christine Daae, finds a strange child wandering his tunnels beneath the opera house and makes it very clear that he wants nothing to do with her.

(•}_•)

It was the treading of small shoes against the damp stone that first caught Erik's attention on that fateful day. In hindsight, perhaps he should simply have kept to the shadows, guided her out to the Rue Scribe and been done with it. But no. Would he always be so desperate, so impulsive?

"Christine..." he breathed, as the footsteps came closer. His Angel... surely, only his Angel would be able to find their way down to him through the new disarray that were his catacombs. Then, louder, and throwing himself from the shadows into the light of a torch, "Christine!"

He froze. This... this person, was decidedly not Christine Daae...

"Qui es-tu?" he cried.

The figure before him took a step back, and amongst the shadows, a pair of gleaming eyes shone back, as intelligent and curious as he remembered his own once had once been.

"Ah," he muttered. "You're not my Christine."

Whoever she was, she could be no more than five years old, and a mop of short, blonde hair escaping the oversized boy's cap, coupled with the marks of dirt along her thin cheeks, hardly suggested she had strayed from her governess's side. Neither did the oversized waistcoat and trousers that hung from her skeletal frame. If he hadn't been trained to see beyond disguises, he could quite easily have mistaken her for a paperboy.

"How did you get down here?"

"Walked, M'sieur."

Erik shook his head in horror; he was entertaining children in these gloomy halls now? He knew he'd sunk to lows unparallel to any normal man, but this?

"Abscond!" he muttered, slinking back into the shadows of a nearby wall. "Return to wherever you came from and say nothing of my existence." He made to turn away, but the hand that suddenly caught his cloak sent a chill down his spine, cold enough to freeze him in place.

"Why?"

"Well..." He pulled his cloak out of her grip and swept her germs from it in mild disgust. "Don't you have a family to return to?"

She shook her head and several locks of dark hair fell over her face.

"No family, M'sieur."

Erik folded his arms over his chest, frowning behind his barre mask, which his broad-rimmed hat mercifully shadowed. "And I'm Louis-Philippe. What makes you think you're any more welcome in my home than any other place? It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I advise you to scat, Kitty Cat!"

But she stayed put and gazed around at the gloomy labyrinthine hallway. "This is your home?"

"Scat, I say!"

"Why is it so dark?"

"Child—"

"Don't you buy candles? You have just one torch over there." She returned her gaze to him and canted her head. "Are you a hero?"

"A what?" he spluttered, sweeping his cape about in frustration and sending a family of rats running. Was his anger so easily enflamed nowadays?

"You have a mask." Her eyes grew wide suddenly and she clapped to herself, a dirty-toothed grin spearing on her small lips, which the Ghost had not thought capable of stretching to accommodate. "You're wearing your disguise, M'sieur! Are you about to save someone?"

Stunned, the Opera Ghost could only stare at the child, who had, in the blink of an eye, become a fluster of girlish excitement that he hadn't seen coming. Was he to endure the same idiotic nature the ballet rats had possessed? Ah, but it was a small punishment; he had expected a long and painful death, though perhaps he might still be granted such a thing, just under different methods of torture.

"Yes..." he said at last, eyeing her reproachfully. "I am... a hero. Of sorts. And unless you leave this cellar at once, I will not be able to fly to the aid of a victim of a robbery. Now, for the last time, girl, abscond from my private property! Or I'll hand you over to the evil overlord of this domain! The... the Rat Catcher! Yes, the Rat Catcher will send his legions of rats after you if you don't disappear!"

She gave a loud squeal and Erik grimaced.

"Please!" she begged, catching his cloak again in both hands and staring up at him with a hope he could hardly bring himself to look at. "M'sieur, take me with you! I want to help you save someone!"

Ah, but more the fool was she. Had she known what he was capable of, she'd be gone by now, run off in a fit of screaming terror and left him to drown his misery of losing his Angel in glass after glass of Toulouse wine, which he had been fully intending to drink until his cellar was empty or he died of alcohol poisoning.

"Do remove yourself from my person, you little skelpie-limmer!" he cried, shoving her with such force she stumbled and landed on her derriere a number of feet away. The laughs died in a sudden strangulation, replaced by the horrified shock that now swept over her eyes.

And then came the tears.

Erik grimaced again and retreated into the shadows a little way. "Oh, do stop you whinging, child! Are you not aware of the golden rule of childhood?: be seen and not heard! Did your mother teach you nothing?"

"No mother," she gasped through her bawls. "She were dead when I were just a babe!"

"Your father then!"

She gritted her teeth and wiped her cheeks furiously, trying not to choke on the sobs that racked her tiny body. She lifted her chin, but her defiance faltered and more tears trickled down her dirty cheeks, streaking the mud down her skin like the terrible 'accident' Carlotta had once endured with her stage makeup.

"Never met him."

Never met him.

Erik turned away. How often had he stared into the only mirror in his house — the one he'd gifted to his Angel as an early engagement present — and wondered how much of his ravaged face he shared with his own father? His mother had kept the only remaining portrait of her husband and a lock of his dark hair in a permanently locked jewellery box in her bedside cupboard. Thus, he'd never known his own father's face, the shape of his eyes and curve of his lips, or the way he held himself, whether upright with pride or a slouched kindness. Had he been tall like his son had grown to be? His mother said Erik had inherited his father's golden eyes, but was that where the similarities ended? He'd never know.

"Are you hurt?" he whispered, not turning to the child as she gasped for control of her tears. So young, and yet so adamant to be a strong young woman... or boy... Why exactly was she wearing boy's clothing?

He heard the squelches that suggested she was rubbing her eyes dry. "What?"

"Are you hurt?" he said, more abruptly this time and turning back to her at last. She scuttled back along the stone in shock and the clear sound of ripping fabric echoed through the dimness of the passageway.

"I'm fine," she muttered, making to stand up and holding her arm.

Erik moved before he could stop himself and offered her his hand. "Liar. You're obviously bleeding. Look here! See the blood you've left on my stone? Come, I shall attend to you."

She clutched her arm tighter. "I can look after myself."

"You are no more than five years old," the Opera Ghost scoffed. "Now for pity's sakes, child, do you wish to catch septicaemia? Keep up, if you can."

She let him take her hand and found herself swept away into the darkness of the long hallway.

With the child being so small and he quite the opposite, Erik found himself stooping at the waist for ten minutes as he tried to guide the little life-form through the darkness. Eventually, fed up of the burning in his hips — Lord knew he was far too old for this — and finding her stampcrab ways quite annoying, he stopped her.

"M'si—"

Her words ended as a mess of syllables as Erik's thin, gloved hands hoisted her into his arms. He shifted her about on his hip, suppressing nerves as he moved on once more. What if he dropped her? What if he was so distracted, he walked them both into a trap?

He shook off those thoughts with a growl. The child in his arms tensed and he cursed himself internally for forgetting her for a moment.

The rest of the walk through the darkness was spent in silence. All the better, for although Erik was surefooted even when their path was pitch-black, he was unused to the company.

When at last the candlelight at the end of the tunnel signalled their approach on the House on the Lake, he set the child down, confident there were no more traps. He led her to the boat that always sat on the banks of his lake, waiting for his return, and hoisted her once more, this time onto a cushion at the front which he usually occupied to read a novel on the rocking vessel. She watched in silent awe as he leapt aboard and seized the punt, pushing them away from the banks in three easy movements.

The boat moved through the inky waters with barely a trickle or slosh. He pretended not to watch her but found himself amused as she trailed her hand in the water, as if the phenomenon was entirely new. For a girl so young, he thought, it probably was.

The silence afforded him time enough to think. Of course, he knew he must return the child as soon as he was certain she would not die, especially by his hand. And yet, something within him dropped when he imagined that prospect. Had he been so deluded as to wholeheartedly believe his Christine would find her way back to him? Truly, he was going mad. It was a rush of such madness that now saw him steering a child into his home. A child! Good grief! And for shame, that he did not even know her name!

Was it pity that had softened his heart long enough for him to guide her down here? Or something more; empathy, perhaps?

"What is your name?" he asked, praying the days he'd spent crying in the ruins that had once been a respectable home had not made his voice too scarily rasp for someone so young. But she pulled a face of confusion and regarded him with the same cant of her head that habit seemed to have graced her with.

"Name?" she repeated. "No name, M'sieur."

No name. Were the similarities never to cease?

"I am Erik," he replied. "I was given that name by an old friend of mine. Like you, I never knew my father, nor did my mother care to name me—"

"My mother were dead before she saw me, Enjie said."

"Enjie?"

"My brother."

"And, where is he? Surely he named you?"

"Dead, I thinks. Caught stealing a loaf'o bread and they put him in the cells. He never came out for me. If he gave me a name, I don't remember it, M'sieur."

Erik paused the punt in the water for a long moment and stared at his young passenger. "I will name you then," he said at last. "From this day on, you will be Christine."

Her little, almond eyes, which he now made out in the light of the lakeside torches, went round with glee.

"And you will be my new Papa, no?"

He grimaced at that and resumed pushing the boat through the waters. "Let's not get too far ahead of our—"

But she'd already scuttled over to him, almost tipping the boat in her excitement, and wrapped herself amongst his cloak.

"Ah, yes, well..." he stammered as she leaned against his legs and snuggled further into his cloak, leaving just the mop of dirty, blonde hair poking out. He cleared his throat. "Let us not forget our personal boundaries."

And he nudged her away with his foot, so she no longer touched him, and the cloak fell away from her shoulders.

Before she could open her mouth to complain, he undid the clasp at his neck with one, deft hand, and swished it through the air so it landed over her. She pawed at the fabric until her head reappeared, graced with a thick scowl.

"Now, now, Christine," he said, shaking a finger at her. "That is not a ladylike face to make. That will be the first thing I shall teach you; after all, polite society cannot have such a face amongst it, especially on a young lady."

"Teach?" she repeated.

"And then you must learn to read and write. There are far too many illiterate idiots in the city. An education will benefit you greatly! And music! You shall learn to play the violin, I think. Your hands are fit for such an instrument; I will not have you waste such advantages on percussion, you hear?"

By now, she was gaping. Erik clamped his mouth shut. He was doing it again; the habit Nadir Khan had so often scorned him for. He was jumping to high hopes, fantasies of what could be, conclusions that might well be misled from the start. And yet, here was his chance at redemption; yes, he was aware he had named her Christine, but perhaps he could raise a child, an educated child with an instrument to play, to repay the world for the loss he had provided. Yes, it was a promising idea, surely! This child would be his replacement. He would pass on his rather extensive knowledge to her, and then release it into the world as a reparation, a substitute for himself.

But first, her arm needed seeing to. His new dreams would never be anything but dreams if she died before the week was up.