#phantom 1943

1. Erique Claudin was madly in love with you in his younger years. He was a very handsome and eccentric man with a great talent for music. You soon became lovers and later told Erique you were with child as soon as the doctor confirmed it. Not wishing your baby to be a bastard and raised out of wedlock, you and Erique made plans to marry as soon as possible, before your stomach could possibly give you away. You later bore a beautiful daughter, Christine. Erique had composed a song for you during your courtship and later added a part for Christine after her birth. When she was little, Erique would play the violin while you’d rock her to sleep and sing an old lullaby that you both knew from Provence.

Unfortunately, you died when Christine was still very young, devastating Erique. He didn’t know what to do without you. You were dead and he was clueless when it came to raising a girl all by himself. Due to his demanding job in the Opera House Orchestra and your untimely death, he didn’t have the proper means to take care of Christine, who was only a baby or toddler at the time. He couldn’t raise her himself, so he either sent her to live with your family or put her up for adoption. Either way, he made sure she went to a good home. Whether it was your maiden name or her adoptive family’s name, she took the name DuBois and never knew of Erique’s true connection to her.

As she grew up, she resembled you more and more each day. Erique never found another love after you. Twenty years of you being gone, and he wished every day you were still with him. When Christine began her singing career as a chorus girl in the Opera, he put his entire fortune towards her education, anonymously funding her singing lessons. She was blessed with the gift of her mother’s voice and every time Erique heard her sing, he heard you. After he’s dismissed from the Orchestra due to his hand injury, he has to withdraw his support from Mademoiselle DuBois only for a little while, just until he can secure another position. But a series of tragic events lead to him committing murder and his face being burned by acid. A man who’s suffered so much loss would do practically anything for the love of his daughter, even kidnap her and try to force her to stay with him in his home in the underground sewers forever. Christine is the last vestige of you, his darling wife, and he can’t bear to lose her.

He tells Christine that he’s her father and he loves her. She’ll now sing all she wants, but only for him. He keeps a portrait of you in his lair and tells Christine all about her dearly departed mother as he reminisces on his much happier memories of being an aspiring musician. He was young and didn’t have much money or commercial success yet, a starving artist. But what little money he had would always be spent on a ticket to the theatre, just to see you. He was in love with you from the moment he first saw you on stage, so his earnings were well spent in his eyes. He could live without food or a roof over his head, but he couldn’t live without you.

“She was in a repertory company. the same actors and actresses doing different plays, a different play every night. First time I saw her, she was a singer who had a broken heart, a lot of sad songs. Had everybody in the theatre crying, whole ocean of tears.”

“I don't think I'd like that.”

“Yes, you would. Everybody did. Next night, she was a dancer. Whirling around the stage, sparkles in her hair, lighter than thistledown. Took my breath away just to watch her.”

“Dressed like that?”

“Yes, child. Artist didn't paint her as pretty as she was.”

“Did you see all her plays?”

“Every one of them. Not just once. The theatre was my courting place. I sat right in the middle of the front row every night, where she could see me. After, I went backstage. Was four days before she even said hello.”

“Oh. Then what?”

“Then it was the wonder, the glory, sunshine, and lightning all at the same time. After we learned we were expecting you, I came to the Paris Opera House to join the Orchestra. With my salary, I built us a house. I then went back and asked her to be my wife. When she said yes, I was so happy I was dumbstruck for an hour.”

“Why did she go away?”

“It's none of your business why.”

“I'm sorry.”

“She tried to retire and stay home to focus her energy on raising you, but there was nothing here but the house...No theatre, no people...no company except for the birds singing. As much as she loved you, she wasn't used to it. I didn’t get home from the Opera House until late in the night. She got the lonesomes so bad she couldn't stand it. Uh...she went away for a little...back on the stage again.”

“In Paris?”

“Ohh...other places. Mostly Paris. Uh, standing around here talking, the spiders will be gaining on me. Be cobwebs in here thicker than before. Come, sit. Listen while I play for you. Did you know I wrote this song?”

“No.”

“I did. That’s why I wanted to teach it to you, but it was not to be. These aren’t just notes, there’s something hidden in the music. These notes here, they represent you. They find their way into every song I play. This phrase…this is your mother.”

“Are you in the song?”

“Somewhere, but it’s not important. You and your mama are all I can hear when I sit down to play.”

2. Erique becomes creepily obsessed with you, a young woman who works in the Opera House and reminds him of Christine’s mother. He may or may not have been able to marry Christine’s mother, but he loved her greatly all the same. He tragically lost her either through her death or her falling out of love with him, and has since never been able to get over her. You encountered him a few times in the foyer, on the stage, or outside the Opera, but that’s all. You were so busy with your daily work that you didn’t have much time to acknowledge him beyond a polite hello in passing. Erique was deeply offended and driven into taking further action with you after being criticized by Signor Ferretti for his love of you. He believed that Ferretti spoke out of turn and dared to insult not just him, but you as well.

“Claudin, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re a fool. A man of your age might secure a young girl like her if he happened to be the director of an opera company, but a poor violinist…”

How dare he doubt your love or the piano concerto he wrote for you! He may be a man of forty-eight years and past his prime, but you never treated him differently from other men just because of your significant age gap. You smiled at him in passing, happily accepted all of his courting gifts which he spent a fraction of his fortune on, etc. It was Signor Ferretti who was the fool for failing to see how deeply he loved you and how you loved him in return! Unbeknownst to Erique, you mistakenly thought his anonymous gifts were from another potential suitor, a handsome man who was closer to your age. You’ve never thought of Erique in such a way, but he’s too delusional in his fantasies of you to realize this. He secretly has a marble bust made in your likeness that he keeps in his room so he may gaze upon your lovely face while he’s composing. But soon the marble bust isn’t enough. He needs to have the real thing.

Following his first act of murder and tragic disfigurement from the acid, he begins his reign of terror as the Phantom. He steals the master key to the Opera House and, with that key in his possession, he can open 2,500 doors! To say nothing of thousands of closets and cabinets. He can hide everywhere, the entire police force couldn’t find him here. He unlocks your door and sneaks into your bedroom while you sleep. You’re in such a deep slumber that you barely stir while he strokes your cheek, moves your hair out of your face, and presses his nose against your skin to inhale the sweet scent of your perfume. Oh, his love! His wife! He leaves you with a brisk kiss and disappears back into the sewers. He has such big plans for you! Wonderful plans!

You start to notice a man’s shadow following you, but it always disappears before anyone else can see him. You start to hear a man’s voice speaking through the walls. From what he says, he sounds lovesick and it creeps you out. You try to warn others but no one else believes you except Vercheres. You develop insomnia and deep feelings of paranoia because of your fear and anxiety. When an opportune moment presents itself, Erique kidnaps you and takes you to his underground lair in the sewers, drugging you to ensure your cooperation. While you’re asleep, he puts a wedding ring on your finger and a matching one on his own. His young bride is a vision! So very beautiful, so very lovely!

“You’ll stay here with me, my wife, won’t you? It’s been so lonely without you but you’ve returned to me at last, haven’t you? We’ll be together forever. Now you’ll sing for me, and I’ll play. It’s beautiful down there. Beautiful. Come now, my darling one.”

“There's a piano in the Opera foyer. Let's go there. You play, and I'll sing for you.”

“But you don't understand. We can't go back there ever. It was I who made the chandelier fall. I for you, my love. But I warned them. I told them there'd be death and destruction if they didn't let you sing. Come. See? Didn't I tell you it was beautiful? You didn't know we had a lake all to ourselves, did you? They've poisoned your mind against me. That's why you're afraid. Look at our lake, dearest. You'll love it here when you get used to the dark. And you'll love the dark, too. It's friendly and peaceful. It brings rest and relief from pain. It's right under the Opera. The music comes down in the darkness, distills it, cleanses it of the suffering that made it. And it's all beauty. And life here is like a resurrection.”

He forces you to play along with his deluded fantasies, often believing you’re his lost love and calling you by her name. You’ve tried to tell him you weren’t her, and sometimes it works. In his moments of lucidity, he calls you by your real name. Those hours or days are much more bearable for you. Other times, however, his behavior is unpredictable and trying to break him out of his fantasies has yielded disastrous results that have frightened you terribly. You’ve had to tread very carefully not to set him off because his personality can flip at any moment. Claudin as the Phantom talks in an extremely gentle, husbandly manner to you and almost never raises his voice to anyone, which makes him even more chilling with the murders he commits.

“Is that any way to talk to the father of your children?”

“Children? What do you mean children? We have only one child.”

“No, my darling. We have many children.”

“My god, what have you done? Tell me, what have you done?!”

“Would you like to see our daughter? Would you like to see our Christine? Would you?”

“Yes!”

“My darling daughter, your mother has returned to us. Come, give her a kiss.” He’s kidnapped at least three children; a boy, a girl, and an infant. The girl resembles Christine when she was a child. Same colored hair hanging in ringlets, same eye color, same porcelain pale skin and red cheeks. He’s trying to recreate the family he wanted but could never have before Christine’s mother either left him or died. Oh, God.

3. Unbeknownst to either of you, you’re Christine DuBois’ twin sister and are both daughters of Erique Claudin. You were separated at birth after your father put you both up for adoption. Your mother was dead or otherwise gone, and Erique was clueless when it came to raising two girls. While Christine is an aspiring singer and sings in the chorus, you’re an aspiring ballerina and dance in the ensemble. Despite your respective talents, neither of you are given much opportunity to shine. You’re both kept to the background and overshadowed by the prima donna and prima ballerina. You both encounter Erique a few times in the foyer or on the stage or outside the Opera. He showed concern for Christine when he noticed she wasn’t on stage during the Act Three curtain call and asked if she was sick. Similarly, he does the same with you when he notices you’re missing from the stage. Why weren’t you there? Forgive him, but he’s been here so long that you - everybody and everything connected with the Opera is so much a part of his life. You weren’t ill, were you? You’re not in any trouble? Oh, it’s impertinent of him, he knows, but uh…

When Erique suffers an injury to his left hand that prevents him from the use of his fingers and negatively impacts his performance, he’s dismissed from the Paris Opera Orchestra. He no longer has the means to anonymously support either of you. Claudin has secretly spent all his fortune on yours and Christine's education, and he has no money left to go towards his forced retirement. He has to withdraw his financial support from both of you only for a little while, just until he can secure another position. But Signor Ferretti refuses to tutor Christine any further without proper compensation and your ballet instructor is the same. Why should either of them assume Claudin’s burden after he spent all his money on the two of you? The girls mean nothing to them.

But your careers mean more to Claudin than anything else. Neither you nor Christine can afford the lessons on your own. A month’s salary wouldn’t be enough to pay for one of your lessons. Desperate to provide for his darling daughters, he hopes to have his piano concerto published and receive a substantial advance for it. But a misunderstanding leads to Erique committing his first murder and getting his face burned by acid. This sets off a series of unfortunate events that turns him into the Opera Ghost. A man would do practically anything for the love of his daughters, even murder anyone who would get in the way of their careers.

He later tampers with Biancarolli's drink to make her fall asleep and unable to sing. Christine, her understudy, has to take her place on stage. Erique also sabotages the current prima ballerina by putting glass in her ballet shoes or otherwise breaking her feet/legs by creating a terrible accident on stage so that she cannot dance and you have to take her place. He’ll help both of you reach your full potential and you’ll become a great and famous ballerina, as Christine will become a great and famous singer. Biancarolli, who suspects that Garron and Christine are responsible for drugging her, orders Raoul to arrest them. The prima ballerina suspects you of causing her injury and orders your arrest as well. But Raoul says he cannot because there’s no evidence. Biancarolli and the prima ballerina both say they’ll forget the affair only if both you and Christine are replaced as understudies and your performances are not mentioned in the papers.

Both Biancarolli and the prima ballerina are later murdered, along with their maids. They’ve been strangled to death by the Phantom to make room for the unsuspecting Christine and you to take their places. He later kidnaps both of you and takes you down to his lair in the sewer tunnels, revealing that he’s your long-lost father and you’re sisters. Words cannot express how sorry he is for disappearing from your lives and not being able to watch you grow up. If he could’ve raised his daughters himself, he would’ve kept you both in a heartbeat. But he didn’t have the means to raise two girls alone, and needed to give both you and Christine your best chance. So with a heavy heart, he gave you both up to be adopted by other families when you were only a few months old. Now reunited, he wants all three of you to be together forever. A happy family, as you should be.

“You’ll stay here with me, my children, won’t you? It’s been so lonely without my girls but you’ve both come to me at last, haven’t you? Now, Christine, you’ll sing for me. Y/n, you’ll dance for me. I’ll play. We’ll be together forever. It’s beautiful down there. Beautiful. Come now, my little ones. There, you’re not frightened now, are you? You know I’ll not harm either of you, don’t you? How could I harm you? I’ve always helped you. Haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, you’ve always helped us.”

“Of course I have. Biancarolli knows. The former prima ballerina knows. She wouldn’t let you sing. She wouldn’t let you dance. They didn’t know how much I love you. Now they know. But it doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters except us. Now you’ll sing and dance all you want, but only for me. You will, won’t you, my darling daughters?”

“Of course…Father.”

4. You were born into a wealthy and well-connected family. Your father took the family on a tour in Europe where you were introduced to an English-born Parisian hostess, with whom you bonded. She was a stimulating hostess who didn’t care for her appearance, and while her ideas didn’t always agree with those of her guests, she was incapable of boring anyone. Her behavior was exasperating and eccentric and she had little respect for upper-class women, whom she regarded generally as inconsequential. She generally rejected female company and spent her time with male intellectuals. She made an exception, however, in the case of your family and you in particular. She demonstrated that women could be equal to men, an idea that you hadn’t learnt from your mother.

You were respectful of your family's opposition to you working as a nurse, only announcing your decision to enter the field. Despite the anger and distress of your mother and sister, you rejected the expected role for a woman of your status to become a wife and mother. You worked hard to educate yourself in the art and science of nursing, in the face of opposition from your family and the restrictive social code for affluent young women. After being confronted by two potential suitors who demanded you choose between them, you chose neither and pursued your nursing career unhindered by marriage prospects. You’re now working at the Opera House, as a literal theatre nurse. You take care of the performers and other staff in cases of fainting spells, accidents, sickness, or injury. Unlike your predecessor, you’re young, beautiful, and sweet-natured.

You met Erique Claudin and knew him only as a violinist in the orchestra. You encountered him a few times in the foyer or on the stage or outside the opera, but that’s all. He seemed eccentric but harmless. But over time, you found yourself wanting to take care of him. You’d notice how he’d keep odd hours and would hardly eat anything. Why doesn’t he get himself something to eat before the opera instead of keeping himself up all hours? You notice he has the same soup night after night, week after week. The Opera House staff gossip, falsely believing that his overdue debts is caused by him being a miser, and they complain about it.

“What that man does with his money is none of our business. If he wants to hoard it and starve to death, that’s his affair. But we hear he hasn’t paid his landlord for six weeks, and that’s as long as they’re going to wait before they toss him out onto the street.”

“What if he hasn’t any money? Maybe if they’ll be patient only just a little longer…”

“He hasn’t any money? After working for the Paris Opera all these years? What nonsense! What does he expect to do with his money? Bury it with him? If he does, they’ll dig him up and steal it. If he thinks he’s going to add a few francs to his fortune at the expense of others, he’s very much mistaken.”

An artistic genius he may be, but he wasn’t well-learned in the arts of the kitchen. He didn't do much more than toast cheese over bread and add a slice of already cooked meat to it since he couldn’t afford much else. So you cook him better, more savory meals using whatever’s leftover in the restaurant and still fresh enough. There was a roast chicken in the pantry and a previously made broth you found on the stove, so you made do with what you had. You made him another soup, but one that was full of cooked meat and vegetables. Sitting beside it on a plate was a chicken sandwich. You were unsure if he even drank tea, but still made him a cup with sugar cubes and cream on the side in case he wanted to add either.

Erik devoured the whole thing in seconds. Quickly setting the bowl of soup aside, he picked up the sandwich and savored the taste of the chicken, bread and mustard as it all came together inside his mouth. When that was finished, he happily over-sugared his tea and drank it down, feeling contently full for the first time in years. You worried he’d get a stomach ache and make himself sick from eating so fast, but you’re glad he enjoyed it. It seems he doesn’t eat a great deal, and that worries you. He should be eating and sleeping well since he works so hard. He’s very grateful to you.

“You’ve been very kind, you’ve been very patient. You’ll be rewarded for it, I promise you! Now please leave me alone.”

After Erique suffers an injury to the fingers of his left hand, he can only play simple melodies perfectly. He goes to you for help and you examine him. While you may or may not be able to determine the cause, you offer to provide physical therapy sessions, free of charge. You know he can’t afford medicine, but maybe this’ll help him a great deal. Perhaps his injury is only temporary, perhaps it’ll get better, but the aim of the Paris Opera is perfection. It’s with a heavy heart that the managers have Erique dismissed from the Orchestra. He’s been with the Opera a long time - twenty years. You wish you could do more to help him. You’re happy to care for him and he’s happy to play music for you in return, to show you his progress following your physical therapy sessions. He never sought more than a casual acquaintance with you but you become friends and, despite your significant age gap, you fall in love.

But then he commits murder and acid is thrown in his face, driving him to go into hiding in the labyrinthine sewers of the Opera House and begin his reign of terror as the Phantom. In his desperation to protect you and repay you for your kindness and time spent devoted to helping him convalesce, Erique would do anything for you, even murder. He’s so desperate for love and friendship that he may even kidnap you. Fortune had smiled upon him the night that you came to the Opera House, and he had savored every moment he had shared with you. You were his loyal caregiver and companion, when so many others had cast him aside. You had cooked for him, talked to him, and even laughed with him whenever he managed to gather the courage to tease you about something. You even allowed him to snuggle close to you as you read - never before had he enjoyed reading so much as he did with you. How could he possibly let someone come and take that away from him now? His darling daughter, Christine, will never care for him in his old age, but maybe you can. In your years working as a nurse, you’ve probably seen lots of gruesome and grisly injuries such as gunshot wounds, infections, amputations, etc., so he hopes you wouldn’t faint or reject him upon seeing his disfigured face. Even if nothing can be done for the acid burns he’s suffered, he still dreams of spending the rest of his life with you by his side.

One of my Passion Projects that I am still (slowly) working on. Maybe by sharing it here, it can find a bit more love. Anyone want a Leroux-Based Erik trying to figure out how to care for a kid, alone?? Synopsis:

When tragedy befalls the de Chagny family, the Ghost of their past is forced return from the shadows. In the ten years since Erik last saw his beloved Christine, and as they are finally reunited, her life slips away. Shattered, Erik is now left to raise the son he never knew he had. Together, Erik and Charles struggle through their new reality and their grief over Christine.

If only it were that simple. Those behind the de Chagny murders are now hunting down the sole ‘heir.’ The only way to protect Charles is to solve the mystery. In doing so, Erik discovers more of Christine’s secrets that she never had a chance to tell him. Snippet from Chapter 2:

Upon his majestic horse as black as the night around them, Erik broke from the forest to become the wall between mother and child and those who would harm them.

“You!” one of the men exclaimed, as their horses skid to an abrupt halt. “How–?”

“You cannot be rid of me so easily, Monsieur!” Erik’s sonorous voice echoed around them. “Your companions extend their grave invitations to you!”

“We have no qualms with you! Be gone, and we’ll spare your life!”

I personally don't think there is any kind of split between the two.

I just see Claudin as a man who was under an intense amount of strain and finally hit a breaking point and snapped. And the primary objective of his life (to see Christine succeed and for her to learn the truth about their relationship) turned into an obsession, and he would stop at nothing to make it happen.

Yes.

Yes, I did.

Yeah, I'm just thinking about the moment after Christine's big solo moment. There's probably a good two hours left in that Opera, so it's more of a curious thought about what happened between scenes, if that makes sense.

Right! I remember that now!

I read through it so quickly when I first got it, I really need to take the time and go through it thoroughly.