CROSSOVER FIC: A Confluence of Theaters
Sep. 10th, 2005 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedishampooTitle: A Confluence of Theaters
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jedishampoo
Rating: Mostly PG, a paragraph or two of “R”
Summary: Wesley Wyndham-Price takes a few dangerous turns in a few theater corridors, and ends up meeting someone special. Time-travel, humor, a little romance, a little angst. 6446 words.
Author’s Notes: For the Crossover Ficathon atsarkastic’s livejournal. Assignment: fic must include Harry Potter-verse, het smut, HP-verse adults. Other fandoms: Buffy/Angel The Series, Horatio Hornblower, Phantom of the Opera, and a little Interview with the Vampire thrown in for good measure. I’ll admit, neither Angel the Series nor POTO are my fandoms, but I love a challenge. And I may have stretched the HP-adult requirement a bit...
***
Fred leaned in close to Charles, slow and inexorable in her innocent, unknowing quest to hurt Wesley. It happened; they kissed. Wesley watched. It looked good, very good.
Unwilling to tear his gaze away but just as unwilling to be seen watching, Wesley dropped the sword, turned and took a few quiet steps down the old theater corridor.
Words, voices behind him. Wesley didn’t want to be answerable to them at the moment. His hand found the knob of an old wooden door, and turned. It was unlocked. He ducked inside.
“Eeeeeee!!!!”
Wesley’s heart stopped a moment at the shrill feminine scream. Was it Fred, or Cordelia, perhaps, facing some new mortal peril in this cursed old theater? But it took only fractions of a second for reason to set in. The scream had been close, not from behind the door or down the hall. In fact, it had emanated from the woman who sat not three feet from him, staring at him with her hand over her heart.
They regarded each other for a few silent moments. She was older than he, dark-haired and attractive. Her dress was a marvel of historical intricacy. Made in the Georgian style, it hugged her upper body and forced a pair of still-firm breasts into a shelf at the top. The bottom half frothed about her seated form like a red silk and crinoline fountain. She sat before a mirrored dressing table covered with cosmetics and hairpieces. It was obvious she’d been preparing for a performance.
Then the stunned moments broke, became almost normal. The woman shook her head and laughed, pulling her hand from her chest to clasp it with the other in front of her.
“Young man! You gave me such a fright, appearing like that,” she said with a slight Yorkshire twang. “I didn’t even hear the door open.”
“I beg your pardon,” Wesley said, and uttered a small nervous laugh of his own. “I only came in here to--”
“I know what you came in here for, sir,” she interrupted in a drawl, and waved a finger at him. “And you’re quite good-looking, even if you are dressed a little oddly. But we haven’t been introduced, and I must tell you that frightening a lady in her dressing room is not the way to go about it.”
“But I wasn’t--” Wesley stopped speaking for a moment and straightened his posture to show his indignation. His hand, in reflex, fiddled with his necktie. “I didn’t mean--”
Wesley was interrupted again, this time by a voice through the door. “Miss Cobham! Are you well?”
“I’m fine, lad. I only saw a spider. It’s dead now,” she called to the man behind the door. Then she looked at Wesley with a glint in her eye that brooked no argument, and lowered her voice. “I’ll give you one chance to leave peacefully, sir. Will you take it?”
This was not the Los Angeles Theater for the Performing Arts. This wasn’t even the haunted ballet hall. This was someplace else entirely. But where? Wesley’s brain hurt almost as much as his heart. He spread his hands in a gesture of helpless surrender. “Just please, first, tell me where I am…”
“Where you are?” Miss Cobham leaned forward and squinted at him with sharp, intelligent eyes, as if trying to read his intent. “Young man, you are confused. You are in Drury Lane Theater, of course, in my dressing room.”
Drury Lane? Well, now Wesley knew the where, at least. The when was becoming the issue. But he didn’t ask the obvious question. There was magic at work here, and Wesley was a watcher, after all. He’d been around enough magical phenomena that it hardly frightened him at all anymore.
“I thank you, madam,” he said with a small bow, and backed away. Out the door, and then back the way he came, that was where he needed to go. He needed to find Angel, and Gunn. And Fred...
Miss Cobham gave him a small wave and turned back to her mirror. Wesley felt behind him for the doorknob, and twisted it, and backed into the hallway, shutting the door with a click.
But it wasn’t the hallway he’d left. This was a dark place which smelled of sewers, sewers older even than those of Los Angeles. The dank, dripping walls reverberated with distant music and laughter and a tinge of slightly hysterical feminine screaming. Another theater, then, but which? He wondered if those were the screams of someone he knew.
Wesley moved down the musty corridor at a slight jog, knowing that he was underground and therefore looking for a way up. Now and then he heard the click, click of nearby footsteps punctuating the distant music and the splash of his own shoes against the damp stone. He felt for the knife and the stake hidden inside his tuxedo jacket, reassuring himself that they were still there and within reach, ready for the moment when the owner or owners of the footsteps made themselves known.
After a few minutes his curiosity was satisfied. He turned a sharp corner and nearly ran into two dark forms that hovered in the murk. One was male, one female. Their old-fashioned evening wear was deepest black with accents of pure white, and their faces were beautiful and paler than moonlight and irretrievably cruel.
“What are you doing here?” the man asked him, in low, sensuous French. “Does Armand know that you are here?”
“Yes, yes he does,” Wesley replied in his own rarely-used French, thinking quickly. They didn’t look quite human, and that was slightly worrying. He took a step back and shook out the cloth of his jacket, loosening the weapons and bringing them close to hand. “Where is he?”
“He is lying, Francois,” the female said, glaring at Wesley with disdain. “Look into his mind. The poor human does not know where he is.”
The thought that they could read his mind was even more alarming than their non-humanity. “I am merely lost,” he said, backing away more quickly. The two... things... followed, grinning wide and showing sharp, white teeth. They eyed his neck with a primal lust.
Wesley was alone. He turned and ran.
The male vampire was swift; he clenched Wesley’s shoulder an instant later, squeezing hard enough to bruise. Wesley grabbed the hand and ducked, using their forward momentum to flip the monster over his shoulder. With one hand he grabbed at a crucifix in his pocket and threw it at the vampire, and with the other he grabbed the stake and drove it home into the vampire’s chest--
And nothing happened. There was no puff of dust. The vampire merely jumped to his feet, impossibly fast, the stake protruding from his chest and a slight trickle of blood staining the whiteness of his cravat. He held Wesley’s crucifix in his palm for a moment, looking at it, then laughed.
Behind him, the woman vampire cackled in glee. “You are foolish, little human, to bring such things to the Théâtre des Vampires.”
An entire theater of vampires was very bad. Wesley knew he was going to die. Despite his emotional pain, he found he didn’t relish the idea. There were still too many things to do, too many chances for happiness in the future--
Hoping beyond hope, he glanced left, then right. He spied a nearby recess in the stone walls. In its shadows Wesley could just discern the outlines of a door. There was a good chance he could make it in time, if only the door concealed another time and place in this dangerous confluence of theaters.
A desperate lunge; his jacket stretched as the vampires’ long nails grasped at it, but he and the jacket were through safely before they could kill him.
This time he found himself in a small stone room with a fireplace sunk into one side. The walls were old, like those in the hallway he’d just left, but the feeling of this place was different. The sounds of a tuning orchestra punctuated the stillness. Along with a small female gasp.
Wesley turned to his left, and beheld a beautiful young woman. She hadn’t screamed, and didn’t look very frightened. Her hands were clasped before her in a simple awe.
Wesley felt his hand move involuntarily towards his neck again. He stilled it, resting it instead on the pocket where he kept another crucifix, and waited for her to say something. She was lovely, slender and pale, dressed in an idealized peasant dress and soft shoes like those of a ballet dancer. Her hair was long, dark and wavy-- like Fred, his mind whispered-- but she was not one of the company they’d been watching in L.A.
“Have you shown yourself at last?” she asked in breathless French, not looking unpleased at the prospect.
French again. Wesley didn’t answer the question because he didn’t know how, but instead asked the one he needed to. “Is this the Théâtre des Vampires?”
“A theater of vampires?” she asked with a small nervous giggle. “How silly! No, this is the Opéra Populaire, of course. As you should know. You look much as I had imagined…”
Wesley took advantage of her odd distraction to turn and look behind him, seeking the door. Unsurprisingly but disappointingly, it was not there. He turned back to the girl. He wondered if perhaps she was stupid, to be so unfrightened in his sudden presence.
But in looking at her he found himself drawn by her eyes; they were oh-so-large and radiant, and held such an array of emotion—awe, trepidation, admiration, and above all, a dewy innocence, a sweetness of character. Not stupid but unlearned. Fred’s eyes, when they’d first met her, if she’d been raised in a place without the opportunity to expand her sharp intellect.
Wesley shook himself mentally. It was quite pathetic, the way his mind returned to Fred so often, even in the midst of this strange, interesting and dangerous situation in which he found himself. He supposed it was understandable, given his feelings and the shock he’d received on this night of all nights. But still, it was distracting and he needed no distractions if he were to find his way out of this opera house and back to Los Angeles.
He ran his mind over her last words, trying to acclimate himself to this new locale. “I am glad to have satisfied you. However, I need to leave. Ah. I see the door, over there. Thank you, Mademoiselle…”
“As if you would need a door! You, a wondrous being who can speak through walls and appear out of thin air,” she said, a hint of hysteria in her voice. “And you cannot leave! It is I, Christine Daae! Please…”
Wesley was already heading for the door when it flew open, and a pretty blonde girl rushed in. She wore a peasantish dress similar to Christine’s. “Christine! Come, it is nearly time! And the men who wish to buy the opera may be in the audience even now--Oh!”
She’d spotted Wesley. “Pardon me, Mam’selle,” he said, trying to push past her.
“Christine!” the blonde girl said, eyes wide. “You know you cannot entertain gentlemen backstage, especially before the show! What would Maman say?”
“But this is not a gentleman, Meg-- that is to say-- Oh, mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, looking at Wesley with an agonized, torn expression. “I must go, though I have begged you not to. If I do not dance as I am asked, then they will never give me a chance to sing, even after all our work.”
“All your work?” the other girl asked, confused.
“I will watch from the audience,” Wesley said, ignoring the blonde and humoring the brunette. The few moments’ distraction had given him time to think. She’d been expecting him, obviously, or someone like him. He wondered if she had cast a spell to bring him here, or if it had been mere coincidence. If it was the latter, he needed a chance to leave this room, to see if he could find the door or hallway that would return him to the LA auditorium. If it was the former, then he’d simply have to find a way to break the spell and return home through other means.
Or do whatever it was that he’d been brought here to do.
***
It had been a decent performance of Giordani, what he’d seen of it, anyway; the soprano had been a tad shrill during the Caro Mio Bene, but overall it had been quite listenable.
More upsetting than the diva’s shortcomings had been the realization that no matter what door he opened or what corridor he walked, he remained within the confines of the Opéra Populaire. He’d even tried to exit by the front door, and had only found himself walking the streets of late-19th-century Paris.
His modern tuxedo had not attracted as much comment as he’d feared. It was lucky that men’s evening dress had changed little over the last century or so. He had managed to find a small Watcher’s council stash at one of the usual addresses. Like menswear, the Council’s methods seemed to have changed little over the years. The small pile of local money and helpful magical objects and weapons had been protected by the same spells that had been-- were being-- used in the 21st century. He didn’t seek out the Watchers themselves; that paranoid organization would doubtless take unkindly to his presence or to his story.
So he was in a bit of a quandary as to why he’d ended up here, and how to return home. The small amulet he’d found in the stockpile had not detected any particular magic about his person, and Christine Daae did not seem the type to dabble in witchcraft anyway. Whether or not that was the case, his only option seemed to be to seek out Christine, the only one here who had seemed to expect him.
His time with Angel Investigations had taught him well how to conceal himself. Wesley made his way unobserved back to the little room where he’d first entered this time and place, and Christine was waiting for him. She was wearing what appeared to be a nightdress. She looked amazing.
“Now we can finally speak,” she told him without preamble when he entered. “Or would you perhaps like me to sing for you? Oh, what shall I call you?”
“It will not be necessary for you to sing, my dear,” he told her, though she hardly looked like a child in her filmy nightdress. The long white robe she wore concealed nothing, only accentuated her young, slim curves and turned Wesley’s thoughts in an entirely inappropriate direction. He wondered if he had been forever cursed to be attracted to slender young brunettes. “And you may call me Wesley.”
“Wesley? What an odd name for an Angel,” she said, and giggled.
Un Ange. Perhaps his coming here had not been coincidence after all. Could she have been seeking his friend and found Wesley instead? It had happened before, after all. “Angel?” he said, keeping his voice neutral.
“Oui! My Angel of Music.”
Ange de musique. That definitely didn’t sound like the Angel he knew.
“I have come from very far away,” Wesley said, carefully.
“Oui, I always thought so. Your accent—it changes all the time! Sometimes I hear a hint of the exotic East in your voice. And now, for instance, you sound almost... Anglais. But that, it doesn’t matter now,” she said, all earnestness. She held out a slim white hand. “We should go somewhere else to speak. The dressing rooms will be empty now, but comfortable. Come with me.”
He really had no other choice. Wesley took hold of her fingertips, and followed her through the hallways of the opera house. Her billowy garments were tantalizing, alternately concealing then revealing as they floated about her.
As she’d predicted the dressing rooms were empty of company. She led him to a chair, then despite his protests, knelt at his feet, draping herself on the arm of the chair.
“My father told me that an Angel of Music would guide me. And you have! But I never dared to hope that you would come to me in flesh, and that you would be…” she stopped, blushing.
Wesley wondered what she’d been about to say, then decided it was best if he didn’t know. He was distracted enough by the sight of her décolletage as it pressed against the fabric of the chair. “So you are saying you have learned much?” he asked, turning his mind back to the necessary intricacies of the situation.
“Oui. Soon, I think, Madame Giry will convince them to let me sing. Not the lead-- yet-- though I know how you despise Carlotta.”
Carlotta, the soprano. Wesley wondered how she’d known his opinion about the woman after only one performance. Christine wasn’t a telepath, or she’d know already that he was an imposter. If indeed he was an imposter.
“Your day will come,” he equivocated.
“I know,” she smiled. “I do feel naughty, being alone here with you. You-- and Madame!-- have always been so strict with me. But now that you have come at last, have appeared to me as you did, I know still that I am as safe with you as I have always been when we spoke only through walls. You were meant for me; it has always been there, in your voice. And my father predicted it. Oh, how I miss him.”
A light went on in Wesley’s brain. Someone had been tampering with this beautiful girl’s mind. Perhaps that was what he’d been sent here to uncover. It could be a demon, or even an unscrupulous warlock, as he was sure had been behind the events at the ballet.
Wesley wondered briefly if Angel, Gunn, and Fred missed him. No, he finally decided. They were fine on their own for now, as they’d already proven.
“I have been practicing so, in order that I may please you, and that I may be given my time, as you say,” Christine whispered. “Carlotta has been threatening to quit, but then she-- she is always threatening to quit. Perhaps this time it is for real. I know the Caro Mio Bene as well as she, and you have of course taught me the proper inflections. And I so long for the chance…”
She talked and talked, and all the while the lanterns and candles burned down and cast the room into a dusky, seductive smolder, and Wesley became more and more aware of the scent of her clean skin and hair, and the sound of her voice, and the sight of her luminous eyes, full of trust, and the taste of the excellent wine she’d provided. All of it penetrated all his senses at once. It was heady, and Wesley realized just how comfortable he had become, playing Angel a second time.
He was jolted from this dangerous reverie by a thump at the wall. Both of them jumped a little, Christine practically onto his lap, and as she laughed and her arms twined about his neck, Wesley realized he’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.
“You always say I talk too much sometimes,” she whispered into his ear. “Perhaps I have put you to sleep? Should I wake you with a kiss, as they do in the old stories my father used to tell me?”
Before Wesley could stop her she touched her lips to his. They pressed with a virginal and untested fervor, and were the sweeter for it, and Wesley found it immeasurably exciting. He was as perverted as her alleged mentor. He stood, suddenly, throwing his arms about her only long enough to keep her from falling to the floor, then releasing her as if she was a burning log.
“I-- I’m very sorry. I thought I heard another noise,” he prevaricated, panicked. “Perhaps we should go to bed, my dear. You to your bed, that is, and I to mine.” He stopped before he could sound even more moronic.
“Oh, I have been too bold,” Christine told him, taking a step back. Before she lowered her eyes he could see the shine of tears marring them. “Please do not shout at me again; I will leave. And please say you will continue to instruct me.”
Wesley felt like a monster, for more than one reason. “I would never shout at you, Christine. Again, that is,” he told her, and he meant it. Whoever had been trying to control her, and had shouted at her, would come to regret it.
She gave him a watery smile, then ran from the room.
Wesley left the dressing room not long after. He really had no idea where he himself was going to sleep. The Watchers’ stash had not included a bed. The money, however, would come in handy when he went to look for an inn and for some less conspicuous clothing.
He crept down the hallways of the opera house, hearing the noise of celebration emanating from the rooms he passed. Apparently not all the players were as chaste as Christine. He moved away from the sounds of revelry and found the front foyer, quiet for the evening. Until the voice came.
“You may not have her! SHE IS MINE!” the voice boomed, in English.
Undoubtedly this was the voice of the one who’d been trying to control Christine. Wesley halted, looked around, reached for his dagger. “I beg your pardon?”
“I SAID, SHE IS MINE! LEAVE OR DIE!”
“It seems to me she belongs to herself, or at least she should,” Wesley said, eyes searching every corner of the large foyer. The being could be anywhere. “You shall not hurt her.”
“I would never hurt her! But I will hurt you, if you come back. NOW LEAVE, SIR!”
“Show yourself!” Wesley yelled, but there was no answer. He waited for a few minutes, calling, but nothing happened, and there was no answer. The being, whoever it was, had left.
Wesley decided he would leave as well. He needed rest. He needed time and supplies to devise a spell that would uncover the being for good. He wondered if he should check that Christine was all right, but then decided against it. Presumably, wherever she’d run to would be full of other girls, other dancers like that Meg, who would watch over her as she slept. Wesley would return the next day with a solution and then she need worry no more.
***
But the Opéra Populaire was in some disarray when Wesley arrived the following day, spell-book and amulet in pocket. There were too many people running about the corridors for him to walk unseen. Such might be normal for the hours leading up to a performance, but this running about had an air of panic about it. Wesley felt a tightening in his heart, a worry that he might be too late.
“Where could she be?” he heard one female voice ask as he rounded a corner. He came face-to-face with a whole gaggle of girls in peasant dress, led by an older woman in black bombazine. One of the dancers was the little blonde, Meg, and she stopped and pointed at Wesley with a gasp and rounded eyes.
“Maman! That is him! That is the man I found with Christine yesterday! And now she is gone!” she cried.
All the other girls shrieked and backed away from him, but the older woman merely shushed them and shooed them off. “I will question him! Come with me, young man,” she said, and grabbed Wesley’s arm.
She dragged him to a dressing room not unlike the one in which he’d spent much of last night. She emptied it of performers with a waving arm and shut the door behind them.
“I am Madame Giry. Have you angered him? What have you done?” she asked without further preamble.
Wesley straightened, not a difficult task in his freshly-pressed tuxedo. “I have done nothing,” he told her. He decided to put her on the defensive. It was obvious by that “him” that she knew something. “Why? What do you know? What has he done with her?”
“It is the Phantom. He has taken her, but it was not yet time. She was not ready. You brought it on, with your meddling.”
Wesley was disgusted. This Madame Giry, whoever she was, obviously did not have Christine’s welfare at heart. “You were in on it,” he said. “What did the demon offer you? Money? Power? You were willing to sell that young girl’s life and hopes for your own gain, perhaps?”
“Bah!” she waved her arm at him in Gallic disgust. “You know nothing. I love Christine. She is like my own daughter. But this Phantom, this is his opera house, and he has been training Christine. She belongs to him.”
“She belongs to herself,” Wesley said for the second time in twenty-four hours. He leaned in close, steeled his eyes, and lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. “If you truly love Christine, tell me where they are and I will see that she comes to no harm. I will banish this Phantom. I am a professional demon hunter. And if you do not show me, I will. Find. It. Myself.”
The woman looked at him silently and consideringly for a few moments, then shrugged. “Christine will come to no harm. But I do wish her return. Carlotta quit this morning, and I wish Christine to sing, so I will take you there. But you will see, ‘demon-hunter’ or no, that you are making a mistake.”
“We will see,” Wesley only said, and followed her.
The woman led him down, down, into a series of passageways below the opera house that were dank and not unlike the sewers beneath the Théâtre des Vampires. She pointed to a small passageway full of water that led to a dark opening like a cave.
“They are in there. You may try to convince him to release Christine.” Her pinched face shone with doubt and disapproval. “Remember-- hold your hand at the level of your eyes.”
“At the level of my eyes,” Wesley repeated absently, trying to see into the dark hole. “Why?”
“That is all you need to know. Hold your hand at the level of your eyes.”
Wesley turned and glared at the woman. “I don’t need more of your riddles, woman! If you want me to help, tell me why should I hold my hand at the level of my eyes!”
Sighing and crossing her arms, Madame Giry glared back at him for a moment. Then her eyes showed a hint of surrender. “Because he will try to choke you with a wire, you stupid man!”
“Thank you,” Wesley told her, then stepped into the water, already focused once more on finding Christine.
***
The water was unclean, but didn’t stink as much as did the sewers under L.A. Wesley trudged through it and pulled out a candle he’d thought to bring with him, lit it and held it aloft. After a few yards the passageway flowed with clearer water, and the walls took on the scintillating sheen of an underground cave.
He spied a lightening of the passageway ahead and moved toward it. It led to an opening into a fantastic cavern, shining with candlelight and strewn about with furniture and exotic fabrics and tableware, all glittering like jewels.
The wire, when it lowered around his neck and hand, was not unexpected. It tightened as if pulled with great strength and Wesley dropped his candle into the water. He didn’t care. He didn’t need it anymore, anyway.
He clenched his fist about the tensed wire and gave it a hearty yank. It pulled free and slipped into the water, and Wesley heard a muffled curse from above. When he turned and looked up no one was there. Wesley pulled out his amulet and his dagger, holding one in each hand, and spun about the room, looking for the threat.
He didn’t spy a Phantom but he did see Christine, her long hair splayed out on a bed, her lithe figure dressed in the nightgown she’d worn the previous evening. Through the bed’s filmy curtains, Wesley tried to see if she was still breathing.
“Christine!” he called, and tried to run towards her, but was hampered by the water. Christine was either dead or too asleep to hear, and Wesley was too slow. A large, black-clad form leapt at him as he tried to crawl from the water.
They tousled for a few moments on the cave bank, each struggling to gain the upper hand. The figure was incredibly strong, but not inhumanly so. This was probably no demon or vampire. Wesley shoved the being away with a powerful kick to the stomach, then rolled to the balls of his feet to get a look at it.
It was a man, dressed in black opera clothing and wearing a white half-mask over one side of his face. His eyes were dark, angry and intense as they glared at Wesley across the few feet that separated them.
“Who are you?” Wesley asked.
“I will kill you, Englishman,” the man said, then leapt.
Wesley’s reflexes had been honed by years of demon- and vampire-hunting; he slashed out with his dagger-hand, smashing into the ceramic half-mask. It shattered and fell from the man’s face.
The man howled with fury as he backed off, crawling, and covered his bared cheek with one hand. Then, glaring with hatred, he lowered the hand to reveal a nasty-looking burn scar.
“Does my face not disgust you, Englishman?” the man spat. “Should you not run in fear? For I will kill you now.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Wesley said. How many times was the man going to threaten to kill him? Wesley pulled out his amulet, and chanted.
“Ixis! Dompneth! Valoramnu!”
The man started to take another leap at Wesley, hands outstretched like claws, but then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed in a heap.
Breathing hard, Wesley crawled over to the limp form of the Phantom and felt at his neck. His pulse was strong, and human. But he would be out for a day, at least. Wesley sighed in relief at the success of his spell, then stood and looked around. Christine was breathing, he could see that now, but still unconscious. Out of the corner of his eyes he spied a Venetian-style rowboat.
That would do, he thought.
***
“Where am I?” Christine did not wake slowly. She practically jumped to a sitting position in her bed as they watched. “Am I safe?”
“You’re safe. We’re here,” Wesley said, stepping past the disapproving bedside figure of Madame Giry to clasp Christine’s hands in his. Though she’d just woken her grip felt strong, and her eyes were gleaming, the picture of a young woman in the prime of health. Wesley felt little guilt, anymore, at wanting to be close to her in this way. He’d been so worried, and was worried still that not all her injuries had been revealed. “You look well, darling, despite all you’ve been through.”
“I feel very well,” she said, laughing, gazing at him with near-hero-worship. “Was it you who rescued me, my Wesley, my Angel?”
“Why, yes--”
“You will not be able to perform today,” Madame interjected. “We have closed the Opéra. Tomorrow, though, you will need to sing the aria; Carlotta has left us again, and the new owners are here.”
“Oh!” Christine seemed overwhelmed. Still, though, she did not release Wesley’s hands. “But what time is it? Surely we can reopen the opera. I am fine.”
“Not tonight,” Wesley said. “You need to rest. Can you tell us... did he... did he... hurt you?”
Christine looked down at herself as if taking stock. “I do not think so. Only-- Oh, Wesley, I must tell you. He sang to me, and I am so confused…”
“You need to sleep,” Madame Giry told her. “Come Mr. Wesley. We will leave her.”
“Please do not go, Wesley,” Christine begged him, both with her whisper and her eyes. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“I will stay for a few moments,” Wesley said, his voice brooking no argument. “She’ll need to talk. You should take care of that matter about which I instructed you.” Wesley had given the woman and the other opera-house managers information about where to find and how to restrain the Phantom.
Madame Giry huffed. “I will be back,” she said, finally, then swept out the door.
Wesley turned back to Christine. She pulled at his arms until he sat next to her on the bed. She looked didn’t look frightened, only confused, and unutterably lovely. Wesley was unable to resist.
“As I said, he sang to me in the voice of my Angel. But oh, the most horrible things! He had a doll, and it looked like me, Wesley! I did not know what to think.”
“Shhh,” Wesley said, rubbing her back to comfort her. He’d seen the doll. And several other things. Hopefully they’d have the Phantom locked up soon enough. “You’re safe now. But there’s something I must tell you. I am not--”
“You are not the Angel who has been singing to me. I know this,” Christine said. But her eyes as they gazed into his were clear, without the slightest accusation. “But you are still my Angel, Wesley. You saved me.”
And then she pulled him down and kissed him again. Her kiss was as sweet and innocent as it had been before, but that didn’t make it any less intoxicating or arousing. Wesley kissed her back.
Her body was soft and pliant as it squirmed beneath his, and Wesley simply sank into the kiss, into the pillow of her sensuous body on the bed, and enjoyed it. Did he not deserve a reward? Did he not deserve some small happiness, after all he’d been through?
Christine was young, yes, but fully a woman. She whispered to him that she was not afraid as he lifted her nightdress. Her firm, young breasts were tender, their skin silky as Wesley kissed them, and she whispered to him that she would never be afraid again, as long as Wesley kept touching her in that way.
When he finally sank his aching erection into her warm, tight flesh and she released a small gasp of shock, he realized that his fears had been unfounded. She was as innocent as she had been yesterday, that monster hadn’t harmed her, and when she arched her body beneath his and said his name, he knew she was whispering because she wanted him, Wesley.
As he thrust himself inside her, feeling the keen, lovely, friction build in its desperation, she was all women wrapped into one. Wesley had to remind himself that she was Christine Daae, not Fred, not Cordelia, none of the other lovely young women he’d wanted but could never have. She was Christine, and for now, she was his.
***
The new owners are here. I knew one of them when I was young. But I will sing for you, my darling.
The words Christine had said before they’d parted ran through Wesley’s mind as he sat in the forefront of the audience and waited for the opera to begin.
I will sing for you, my darling.
It was lovely enough music for Wesley. He barely heard the orchestra as it tuned, or the French chatter of the audience about him. But he did hear the rough voice as it spoke in his ear, and felt the hands as they wrapped about his upper arms, yanking him from his seat.
“I’m afraid you’ll ‘ave to come with us, sir,” the voice said, in Cockney English. “We’re Aurors, we are, and you’re under arrest. Come quietly , so as not to scare all the Muggles.”
Wesley froze for a moment at the words, and then stood and shook off the restraining grips. “Unhand me. I will come quietly,” he told the two youngish, black-robed men.
He was led outside to a carriage. The two men pushed him inside and sat on either side of him. Wesley leaned back against the seat but the carriage didn’t move. A voice from the shadowy interior across from Wesley spoke up.
“I’m Euphemius Schnookerton. I’m Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I daresay you’ve heard of us.”
Wesley crossed his legs and tried to still the slight fear he felt at the name. “I’m familiar with Hogwarts. However, I thought that Paris would have been under the jurisdiction of Beauxbatons, or perhaps the French Ministry of Magic and its Aurors.”
“Normally that’s so,” the voice agreed. The man leaned forward, and Wesley caught sight of a patrician nose, a thin mouth, and a dark, pointed beard. “However, we just happened to be visiting Paris when these two fine men caught a whiff of that spell you cast at the Opéra Populaire yesterday. What, didn’t think we’d catch you?”
Wesley crossed his arms. “I am a licensed Watcher. You can take this up with the Council.”
“But they wouldn’t know you, would they?” Schnookerton sighed, and his voice lost that edge of snark, became more kindly. “You’re a long way from home. Theaters are dangerous places, you know. It will take quite a powerful spell to send you back.”
Back to demons and Fred with Charles Gunn? Wesley really wasn’t sure he wanted to go. He voiced the thought aloud. “What if I don’t want to go back?”
Schnookerton waggled a finger at him. “You know you have to. If you’re really a Watcher, you know that already.”
It was true. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. Wesley stared out the window, at the opera house. The opera house, and the woman he would never see again. “Fine. Please get it over with quickly.”
“Of course, lad. Tempus accelerus!”
Quite a powerful bit of magic indeed, there, thought Wesley, before he felt a pull at his stomach and a blurring around the edges of his consciousness. Then he was standing in place, and reality was restored. The reality of the cursed ballet. The sword in his hands.
Fred moving towards Charles, pain anew.
THE END.
Please tell me what you thought!
Author:
jedishampooRating: Mostly PG, a paragraph or two of “R”
Summary: Wesley Wyndham-Price takes a few dangerous turns in a few theater corridors, and ends up meeting someone special. Time-travel, humor, a little romance, a little angst. 6446 words.
Author’s Notes: For the Crossover Ficathon at
sarkastic’s livejournal. Assignment: fic must include Harry Potter-verse, het smut, HP-verse adults. Other fandoms: Buffy/Angel The Series, Horatio Hornblower, Phantom of the Opera, and a little Interview with the Vampire thrown in for good measure. I’ll admit, neither Angel the Series nor POTO are my fandoms, but I love a challenge. And I may have stretched the HP-adult requirement a bit... ***
Fred leaned in close to Charles, slow and inexorable in her innocent, unknowing quest to hurt Wesley. It happened; they kissed. Wesley watched. It looked good, very good.
Unwilling to tear his gaze away but just as unwilling to be seen watching, Wesley dropped the sword, turned and took a few quiet steps down the old theater corridor.
Words, voices behind him. Wesley didn’t want to be answerable to them at the moment. His hand found the knob of an old wooden door, and turned. It was unlocked. He ducked inside.
“Eeeeeee!!!!”
Wesley’s heart stopped a moment at the shrill feminine scream. Was it Fred, or Cordelia, perhaps, facing some new mortal peril in this cursed old theater? But it took only fractions of a second for reason to set in. The scream had been close, not from behind the door or down the hall. In fact, it had emanated from the woman who sat not three feet from him, staring at him with her hand over her heart.
They regarded each other for a few silent moments. She was older than he, dark-haired and attractive. Her dress was a marvel of historical intricacy. Made in the Georgian style, it hugged her upper body and forced a pair of still-firm breasts into a shelf at the top. The bottom half frothed about her seated form like a red silk and crinoline fountain. She sat before a mirrored dressing table covered with cosmetics and hairpieces. It was obvious she’d been preparing for a performance.
Then the stunned moments broke, became almost normal. The woman shook her head and laughed, pulling her hand from her chest to clasp it with the other in front of her.
“Young man! You gave me such a fright, appearing like that,” she said with a slight Yorkshire twang. “I didn’t even hear the door open.”
“I beg your pardon,” Wesley said, and uttered a small nervous laugh of his own. “I only came in here to--”
“I know what you came in here for, sir,” she interrupted in a drawl, and waved a finger at him. “And you’re quite good-looking, even if you are dressed a little oddly. But we haven’t been introduced, and I must tell you that frightening a lady in her dressing room is not the way to go about it.”
“But I wasn’t--” Wesley stopped speaking for a moment and straightened his posture to show his indignation. His hand, in reflex, fiddled with his necktie. “I didn’t mean--”
Wesley was interrupted again, this time by a voice through the door. “Miss Cobham! Are you well?”
“I’m fine, lad. I only saw a spider. It’s dead now,” she called to the man behind the door. Then she looked at Wesley with a glint in her eye that brooked no argument, and lowered her voice. “I’ll give you one chance to leave peacefully, sir. Will you take it?”
This was not the Los Angeles Theater for the Performing Arts. This wasn’t even the haunted ballet hall. This was someplace else entirely. But where? Wesley’s brain hurt almost as much as his heart. He spread his hands in a gesture of helpless surrender. “Just please, first, tell me where I am…”
“Where you are?” Miss Cobham leaned forward and squinted at him with sharp, intelligent eyes, as if trying to read his intent. “Young man, you are confused. You are in Drury Lane Theater, of course, in my dressing room.”
Drury Lane? Well, now Wesley knew the where, at least. The when was becoming the issue. But he didn’t ask the obvious question. There was magic at work here, and Wesley was a watcher, after all. He’d been around enough magical phenomena that it hardly frightened him at all anymore.
“I thank you, madam,” he said with a small bow, and backed away. Out the door, and then back the way he came, that was where he needed to go. He needed to find Angel, and Gunn. And Fred...
Miss Cobham gave him a small wave and turned back to her mirror. Wesley felt behind him for the doorknob, and twisted it, and backed into the hallway, shutting the door with a click.
But it wasn’t the hallway he’d left. This was a dark place which smelled of sewers, sewers older even than those of Los Angeles. The dank, dripping walls reverberated with distant music and laughter and a tinge of slightly hysterical feminine screaming. Another theater, then, but which? He wondered if those were the screams of someone he knew.
Wesley moved down the musty corridor at a slight jog, knowing that he was underground and therefore looking for a way up. Now and then he heard the click, click of nearby footsteps punctuating the distant music and the splash of his own shoes against the damp stone. He felt for the knife and the stake hidden inside his tuxedo jacket, reassuring himself that they were still there and within reach, ready for the moment when the owner or owners of the footsteps made themselves known.
After a few minutes his curiosity was satisfied. He turned a sharp corner and nearly ran into two dark forms that hovered in the murk. One was male, one female. Their old-fashioned evening wear was deepest black with accents of pure white, and their faces were beautiful and paler than moonlight and irretrievably cruel.
“What are you doing here?” the man asked him, in low, sensuous French. “Does Armand know that you are here?”
“Yes, yes he does,” Wesley replied in his own rarely-used French, thinking quickly. They didn’t look quite human, and that was slightly worrying. He took a step back and shook out the cloth of his jacket, loosening the weapons and bringing them close to hand. “Where is he?”
“He is lying, Francois,” the female said, glaring at Wesley with disdain. “Look into his mind. The poor human does not know where he is.”
The thought that they could read his mind was even more alarming than their non-humanity. “I am merely lost,” he said, backing away more quickly. The two... things... followed, grinning wide and showing sharp, white teeth. They eyed his neck with a primal lust.
Wesley was alone. He turned and ran.
The male vampire was swift; he clenched Wesley’s shoulder an instant later, squeezing hard enough to bruise. Wesley grabbed the hand and ducked, using their forward momentum to flip the monster over his shoulder. With one hand he grabbed at a crucifix in his pocket and threw it at the vampire, and with the other he grabbed the stake and drove it home into the vampire’s chest--
And nothing happened. There was no puff of dust. The vampire merely jumped to his feet, impossibly fast, the stake protruding from his chest and a slight trickle of blood staining the whiteness of his cravat. He held Wesley’s crucifix in his palm for a moment, looking at it, then laughed.
Behind him, the woman vampire cackled in glee. “You are foolish, little human, to bring such things to the Théâtre des Vampires.”
An entire theater of vampires was very bad. Wesley knew he was going to die. Despite his emotional pain, he found he didn’t relish the idea. There were still too many things to do, too many chances for happiness in the future--
Hoping beyond hope, he glanced left, then right. He spied a nearby recess in the stone walls. In its shadows Wesley could just discern the outlines of a door. There was a good chance he could make it in time, if only the door concealed another time and place in this dangerous confluence of theaters.
A desperate lunge; his jacket stretched as the vampires’ long nails grasped at it, but he and the jacket were through safely before they could kill him.
This time he found himself in a small stone room with a fireplace sunk into one side. The walls were old, like those in the hallway he’d just left, but the feeling of this place was different. The sounds of a tuning orchestra punctuated the stillness. Along with a small female gasp.
Wesley turned to his left, and beheld a beautiful young woman. She hadn’t screamed, and didn’t look very frightened. Her hands were clasped before her in a simple awe.
Wesley felt his hand move involuntarily towards his neck again. He stilled it, resting it instead on the pocket where he kept another crucifix, and waited for her to say something. She was lovely, slender and pale, dressed in an idealized peasant dress and soft shoes like those of a ballet dancer. Her hair was long, dark and wavy-- like Fred, his mind whispered-- but she was not one of the company they’d been watching in L.A.
“Have you shown yourself at last?” she asked in breathless French, not looking unpleased at the prospect.
French again. Wesley didn’t answer the question because he didn’t know how, but instead asked the one he needed to. “Is this the Théâtre des Vampires?”
“A theater of vampires?” she asked with a small nervous giggle. “How silly! No, this is the Opéra Populaire, of course. As you should know. You look much as I had imagined…”
Wesley took advantage of her odd distraction to turn and look behind him, seeking the door. Unsurprisingly but disappointingly, it was not there. He turned back to the girl. He wondered if perhaps she was stupid, to be so unfrightened in his sudden presence.
But in looking at her he found himself drawn by her eyes; they were oh-so-large and radiant, and held such an array of emotion—awe, trepidation, admiration, and above all, a dewy innocence, a sweetness of character. Not stupid but unlearned. Fred’s eyes, when they’d first met her, if she’d been raised in a place without the opportunity to expand her sharp intellect.
Wesley shook himself mentally. It was quite pathetic, the way his mind returned to Fred so often, even in the midst of this strange, interesting and dangerous situation in which he found himself. He supposed it was understandable, given his feelings and the shock he’d received on this night of all nights. But still, it was distracting and he needed no distractions if he were to find his way out of this opera house and back to Los Angeles.
He ran his mind over her last words, trying to acclimate himself to this new locale. “I am glad to have satisfied you. However, I need to leave. Ah. I see the door, over there. Thank you, Mademoiselle…”
“As if you would need a door! You, a wondrous being who can speak through walls and appear out of thin air,” she said, a hint of hysteria in her voice. “And you cannot leave! It is I, Christine Daae! Please…”
Wesley was already heading for the door when it flew open, and a pretty blonde girl rushed in. She wore a peasantish dress similar to Christine’s. “Christine! Come, it is nearly time! And the men who wish to buy the opera may be in the audience even now--Oh!”
She’d spotted Wesley. “Pardon me, Mam’selle,” he said, trying to push past her.
“Christine!” the blonde girl said, eyes wide. “You know you cannot entertain gentlemen backstage, especially before the show! What would Maman say?”
“But this is not a gentleman, Meg-- that is to say-- Oh, mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, looking at Wesley with an agonized, torn expression. “I must go, though I have begged you not to. If I do not dance as I am asked, then they will never give me a chance to sing, even after all our work.”
“All your work?” the other girl asked, confused.
“I will watch from the audience,” Wesley said, ignoring the blonde and humoring the brunette. The few moments’ distraction had given him time to think. She’d been expecting him, obviously, or someone like him. He wondered if she had cast a spell to bring him here, or if it had been mere coincidence. If it was the latter, he needed a chance to leave this room, to see if he could find the door or hallway that would return him to the LA auditorium. If it was the former, then he’d simply have to find a way to break the spell and return home through other means.
Or do whatever it was that he’d been brought here to do.
***
It had been a decent performance of Giordani, what he’d seen of it, anyway; the soprano had been a tad shrill during the Caro Mio Bene, but overall it had been quite listenable.
More upsetting than the diva’s shortcomings had been the realization that no matter what door he opened or what corridor he walked, he remained within the confines of the Opéra Populaire. He’d even tried to exit by the front door, and had only found himself walking the streets of late-19th-century Paris.
His modern tuxedo had not attracted as much comment as he’d feared. It was lucky that men’s evening dress had changed little over the last century or so. He had managed to find a small Watcher’s council stash at one of the usual addresses. Like menswear, the Council’s methods seemed to have changed little over the years. The small pile of local money and helpful magical objects and weapons had been protected by the same spells that had been-- were being-- used in the 21st century. He didn’t seek out the Watchers themselves; that paranoid organization would doubtless take unkindly to his presence or to his story.
So he was in a bit of a quandary as to why he’d ended up here, and how to return home. The small amulet he’d found in the stockpile had not detected any particular magic about his person, and Christine Daae did not seem the type to dabble in witchcraft anyway. Whether or not that was the case, his only option seemed to be to seek out Christine, the only one here who had seemed to expect him.
His time with Angel Investigations had taught him well how to conceal himself. Wesley made his way unobserved back to the little room where he’d first entered this time and place, and Christine was waiting for him. She was wearing what appeared to be a nightdress. She looked amazing.
“Now we can finally speak,” she told him without preamble when he entered. “Or would you perhaps like me to sing for you? Oh, what shall I call you?”
“It will not be necessary for you to sing, my dear,” he told her, though she hardly looked like a child in her filmy nightdress. The long white robe she wore concealed nothing, only accentuated her young, slim curves and turned Wesley’s thoughts in an entirely inappropriate direction. He wondered if he had been forever cursed to be attracted to slender young brunettes. “And you may call me Wesley.”
“Wesley? What an odd name for an Angel,” she said, and giggled.
Un Ange. Perhaps his coming here had not been coincidence after all. Could she have been seeking his friend and found Wesley instead? It had happened before, after all. “Angel?” he said, keeping his voice neutral.
“Oui! My Angel of Music.”
Ange de musique. That definitely didn’t sound like the Angel he knew.
“I have come from very far away,” Wesley said, carefully.
“Oui, I always thought so. Your accent—it changes all the time! Sometimes I hear a hint of the exotic East in your voice. And now, for instance, you sound almost... Anglais. But that, it doesn’t matter now,” she said, all earnestness. She held out a slim white hand. “We should go somewhere else to speak. The dressing rooms will be empty now, but comfortable. Come with me.”
He really had no other choice. Wesley took hold of her fingertips, and followed her through the hallways of the opera house. Her billowy garments were tantalizing, alternately concealing then revealing as they floated about her.
As she’d predicted the dressing rooms were empty of company. She led him to a chair, then despite his protests, knelt at his feet, draping herself on the arm of the chair.
“My father told me that an Angel of Music would guide me. And you have! But I never dared to hope that you would come to me in flesh, and that you would be…” she stopped, blushing.
Wesley wondered what she’d been about to say, then decided it was best if he didn’t know. He was distracted enough by the sight of her décolletage as it pressed against the fabric of the chair. “So you are saying you have learned much?” he asked, turning his mind back to the necessary intricacies of the situation.
“Oui. Soon, I think, Madame Giry will convince them to let me sing. Not the lead-- yet-- though I know how you despise Carlotta.”
Carlotta, the soprano. Wesley wondered how she’d known his opinion about the woman after only one performance. Christine wasn’t a telepath, or she’d know already that he was an imposter. If indeed he was an imposter.
“Your day will come,” he equivocated.
“I know,” she smiled. “I do feel naughty, being alone here with you. You-- and Madame!-- have always been so strict with me. But now that you have come at last, have appeared to me as you did, I know still that I am as safe with you as I have always been when we spoke only through walls. You were meant for me; it has always been there, in your voice. And my father predicted it. Oh, how I miss him.”
A light went on in Wesley’s brain. Someone had been tampering with this beautiful girl’s mind. Perhaps that was what he’d been sent here to uncover. It could be a demon, or even an unscrupulous warlock, as he was sure had been behind the events at the ballet.
Wesley wondered briefly if Angel, Gunn, and Fred missed him. No, he finally decided. They were fine on their own for now, as they’d already proven.
“I have been practicing so, in order that I may please you, and that I may be given my time, as you say,” Christine whispered. “Carlotta has been threatening to quit, but then she-- she is always threatening to quit. Perhaps this time it is for real. I know the Caro Mio Bene as well as she, and you have of course taught me the proper inflections. And I so long for the chance…”
She talked and talked, and all the while the lanterns and candles burned down and cast the room into a dusky, seductive smolder, and Wesley became more and more aware of the scent of her clean skin and hair, and the sound of her voice, and the sight of her luminous eyes, full of trust, and the taste of the excellent wine she’d provided. All of it penetrated all his senses at once. It was heady, and Wesley realized just how comfortable he had become, playing Angel a second time.
He was jolted from this dangerous reverie by a thump at the wall. Both of them jumped a little, Christine practically onto his lap, and as she laughed and her arms twined about his neck, Wesley realized he’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.
“You always say I talk too much sometimes,” she whispered into his ear. “Perhaps I have put you to sleep? Should I wake you with a kiss, as they do in the old stories my father used to tell me?”
Before Wesley could stop her she touched her lips to his. They pressed with a virginal and untested fervor, and were the sweeter for it, and Wesley found it immeasurably exciting. He was as perverted as her alleged mentor. He stood, suddenly, throwing his arms about her only long enough to keep her from falling to the floor, then releasing her as if she was a burning log.
“I-- I’m very sorry. I thought I heard another noise,” he prevaricated, panicked. “Perhaps we should go to bed, my dear. You to your bed, that is, and I to mine.” He stopped before he could sound even more moronic.
“Oh, I have been too bold,” Christine told him, taking a step back. Before she lowered her eyes he could see the shine of tears marring them. “Please do not shout at me again; I will leave. And please say you will continue to instruct me.”
Wesley felt like a monster, for more than one reason. “I would never shout at you, Christine. Again, that is,” he told her, and he meant it. Whoever had been trying to control her, and had shouted at her, would come to regret it.
She gave him a watery smile, then ran from the room.
Wesley left the dressing room not long after. He really had no idea where he himself was going to sleep. The Watchers’ stash had not included a bed. The money, however, would come in handy when he went to look for an inn and for some less conspicuous clothing.
He crept down the hallways of the opera house, hearing the noise of celebration emanating from the rooms he passed. Apparently not all the players were as chaste as Christine. He moved away from the sounds of revelry and found the front foyer, quiet for the evening. Until the voice came.
“You may not have her! SHE IS MINE!” the voice boomed, in English.
Undoubtedly this was the voice of the one who’d been trying to control Christine. Wesley halted, looked around, reached for his dagger. “I beg your pardon?”
“I SAID, SHE IS MINE! LEAVE OR DIE!”
“It seems to me she belongs to herself, or at least she should,” Wesley said, eyes searching every corner of the large foyer. The being could be anywhere. “You shall not hurt her.”
“I would never hurt her! But I will hurt you, if you come back. NOW LEAVE, SIR!”
“Show yourself!” Wesley yelled, but there was no answer. He waited for a few minutes, calling, but nothing happened, and there was no answer. The being, whoever it was, had left.
Wesley decided he would leave as well. He needed rest. He needed time and supplies to devise a spell that would uncover the being for good. He wondered if he should check that Christine was all right, but then decided against it. Presumably, wherever she’d run to would be full of other girls, other dancers like that Meg, who would watch over her as she slept. Wesley would return the next day with a solution and then she need worry no more.
***
But the Opéra Populaire was in some disarray when Wesley arrived the following day, spell-book and amulet in pocket. There were too many people running about the corridors for him to walk unseen. Such might be normal for the hours leading up to a performance, but this running about had an air of panic about it. Wesley felt a tightening in his heart, a worry that he might be too late.
“Where could she be?” he heard one female voice ask as he rounded a corner. He came face-to-face with a whole gaggle of girls in peasant dress, led by an older woman in black bombazine. One of the dancers was the little blonde, Meg, and she stopped and pointed at Wesley with a gasp and rounded eyes.
“Maman! That is him! That is the man I found with Christine yesterday! And now she is gone!” she cried.
All the other girls shrieked and backed away from him, but the older woman merely shushed them and shooed them off. “I will question him! Come with me, young man,” she said, and grabbed Wesley’s arm.
She dragged him to a dressing room not unlike the one in which he’d spent much of last night. She emptied it of performers with a waving arm and shut the door behind them.
“I am Madame Giry. Have you angered him? What have you done?” she asked without further preamble.
Wesley straightened, not a difficult task in his freshly-pressed tuxedo. “I have done nothing,” he told her. He decided to put her on the defensive. It was obvious by that “him” that she knew something. “Why? What do you know? What has he done with her?”
“It is the Phantom. He has taken her, but it was not yet time. She was not ready. You brought it on, with your meddling.”
Wesley was disgusted. This Madame Giry, whoever she was, obviously did not have Christine’s welfare at heart. “You were in on it,” he said. “What did the demon offer you? Money? Power? You were willing to sell that young girl’s life and hopes for your own gain, perhaps?”
“Bah!” she waved her arm at him in Gallic disgust. “You know nothing. I love Christine. She is like my own daughter. But this Phantom, this is his opera house, and he has been training Christine. She belongs to him.”
“She belongs to herself,” Wesley said for the second time in twenty-four hours. He leaned in close, steeled his eyes, and lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. “If you truly love Christine, tell me where they are and I will see that she comes to no harm. I will banish this Phantom. I am a professional demon hunter. And if you do not show me, I will. Find. It. Myself.”
The woman looked at him silently and consideringly for a few moments, then shrugged. “Christine will come to no harm. But I do wish her return. Carlotta quit this morning, and I wish Christine to sing, so I will take you there. But you will see, ‘demon-hunter’ or no, that you are making a mistake.”
“We will see,” Wesley only said, and followed her.
The woman led him down, down, into a series of passageways below the opera house that were dank and not unlike the sewers beneath the Théâtre des Vampires. She pointed to a small passageway full of water that led to a dark opening like a cave.
“They are in there. You may try to convince him to release Christine.” Her pinched face shone with doubt and disapproval. “Remember-- hold your hand at the level of your eyes.”
“At the level of my eyes,” Wesley repeated absently, trying to see into the dark hole. “Why?”
“That is all you need to know. Hold your hand at the level of your eyes.”
Wesley turned and glared at the woman. “I don’t need more of your riddles, woman! If you want me to help, tell me why should I hold my hand at the level of my eyes!”
Sighing and crossing her arms, Madame Giry glared back at him for a moment. Then her eyes showed a hint of surrender. “Because he will try to choke you with a wire, you stupid man!”
“Thank you,” Wesley told her, then stepped into the water, already focused once more on finding Christine.
***
The water was unclean, but didn’t stink as much as did the sewers under L.A. Wesley trudged through it and pulled out a candle he’d thought to bring with him, lit it and held it aloft. After a few yards the passageway flowed with clearer water, and the walls took on the scintillating sheen of an underground cave.
He spied a lightening of the passageway ahead and moved toward it. It led to an opening into a fantastic cavern, shining with candlelight and strewn about with furniture and exotic fabrics and tableware, all glittering like jewels.
The wire, when it lowered around his neck and hand, was not unexpected. It tightened as if pulled with great strength and Wesley dropped his candle into the water. He didn’t care. He didn’t need it anymore, anyway.
He clenched his fist about the tensed wire and gave it a hearty yank. It pulled free and slipped into the water, and Wesley heard a muffled curse from above. When he turned and looked up no one was there. Wesley pulled out his amulet and his dagger, holding one in each hand, and spun about the room, looking for the threat.
He didn’t spy a Phantom but he did see Christine, her long hair splayed out on a bed, her lithe figure dressed in the nightgown she’d worn the previous evening. Through the bed’s filmy curtains, Wesley tried to see if she was still breathing.
“Christine!” he called, and tried to run towards her, but was hampered by the water. Christine was either dead or too asleep to hear, and Wesley was too slow. A large, black-clad form leapt at him as he tried to crawl from the water.
They tousled for a few moments on the cave bank, each struggling to gain the upper hand. The figure was incredibly strong, but not inhumanly so. This was probably no demon or vampire. Wesley shoved the being away with a powerful kick to the stomach, then rolled to the balls of his feet to get a look at it.
It was a man, dressed in black opera clothing and wearing a white half-mask over one side of his face. His eyes were dark, angry and intense as they glared at Wesley across the few feet that separated them.
“Who are you?” Wesley asked.
“I will kill you, Englishman,” the man said, then leapt.
Wesley’s reflexes had been honed by years of demon- and vampire-hunting; he slashed out with his dagger-hand, smashing into the ceramic half-mask. It shattered and fell from the man’s face.
The man howled with fury as he backed off, crawling, and covered his bared cheek with one hand. Then, glaring with hatred, he lowered the hand to reveal a nasty-looking burn scar.
“Does my face not disgust you, Englishman?” the man spat. “Should you not run in fear? For I will kill you now.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Wesley said. How many times was the man going to threaten to kill him? Wesley pulled out his amulet, and chanted.
“Ixis! Dompneth! Valoramnu!”
The man started to take another leap at Wesley, hands outstretched like claws, but then his eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed in a heap.
Breathing hard, Wesley crawled over to the limp form of the Phantom and felt at his neck. His pulse was strong, and human. But he would be out for a day, at least. Wesley sighed in relief at the success of his spell, then stood and looked around. Christine was breathing, he could see that now, but still unconscious. Out of the corner of his eyes he spied a Venetian-style rowboat.
That would do, he thought.
***
“Where am I?” Christine did not wake slowly. She practically jumped to a sitting position in her bed as they watched. “Am I safe?”
“You’re safe. We’re here,” Wesley said, stepping past the disapproving bedside figure of Madame Giry to clasp Christine’s hands in his. Though she’d just woken her grip felt strong, and her eyes were gleaming, the picture of a young woman in the prime of health. Wesley felt little guilt, anymore, at wanting to be close to her in this way. He’d been so worried, and was worried still that not all her injuries had been revealed. “You look well, darling, despite all you’ve been through.”
“I feel very well,” she said, laughing, gazing at him with near-hero-worship. “Was it you who rescued me, my Wesley, my Angel?”
“Why, yes--”
“You will not be able to perform today,” Madame interjected. “We have closed the Opéra. Tomorrow, though, you will need to sing the aria; Carlotta has left us again, and the new owners are here.”
“Oh!” Christine seemed overwhelmed. Still, though, she did not release Wesley’s hands. “But what time is it? Surely we can reopen the opera. I am fine.”
“Not tonight,” Wesley said. “You need to rest. Can you tell us... did he... did he... hurt you?”
Christine looked down at herself as if taking stock. “I do not think so. Only-- Oh, Wesley, I must tell you. He sang to me, and I am so confused…”
“You need to sleep,” Madame Giry told her. “Come Mr. Wesley. We will leave her.”
“Please do not go, Wesley,” Christine begged him, both with her whisper and her eyes. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“I will stay for a few moments,” Wesley said, his voice brooking no argument. “She’ll need to talk. You should take care of that matter about which I instructed you.” Wesley had given the woman and the other opera-house managers information about where to find and how to restrain the Phantom.
Madame Giry huffed. “I will be back,” she said, finally, then swept out the door.
Wesley turned back to Christine. She pulled at his arms until he sat next to her on the bed. She looked didn’t look frightened, only confused, and unutterably lovely. Wesley was unable to resist.
“As I said, he sang to me in the voice of my Angel. But oh, the most horrible things! He had a doll, and it looked like me, Wesley! I did not know what to think.”
“Shhh,” Wesley said, rubbing her back to comfort her. He’d seen the doll. And several other things. Hopefully they’d have the Phantom locked up soon enough. “You’re safe now. But there’s something I must tell you. I am not--”
“You are not the Angel who has been singing to me. I know this,” Christine said. But her eyes as they gazed into his were clear, without the slightest accusation. “But you are still my Angel, Wesley. You saved me.”
And then she pulled him down and kissed him again. Her kiss was as sweet and innocent as it had been before, but that didn’t make it any less intoxicating or arousing. Wesley kissed her back.
Her body was soft and pliant as it squirmed beneath his, and Wesley simply sank into the kiss, into the pillow of her sensuous body on the bed, and enjoyed it. Did he not deserve a reward? Did he not deserve some small happiness, after all he’d been through?
Christine was young, yes, but fully a woman. She whispered to him that she was not afraid as he lifted her nightdress. Her firm, young breasts were tender, their skin silky as Wesley kissed them, and she whispered to him that she would never be afraid again, as long as Wesley kept touching her in that way.
When he finally sank his aching erection into her warm, tight flesh and she released a small gasp of shock, he realized that his fears had been unfounded. She was as innocent as she had been yesterday, that monster hadn’t harmed her, and when she arched her body beneath his and said his name, he knew she was whispering because she wanted him, Wesley.
As he thrust himself inside her, feeling the keen, lovely, friction build in its desperation, she was all women wrapped into one. Wesley had to remind himself that she was Christine Daae, not Fred, not Cordelia, none of the other lovely young women he’d wanted but could never have. She was Christine, and for now, she was his.
***
The new owners are here. I knew one of them when I was young. But I will sing for you, my darling.
The words Christine had said before they’d parted ran through Wesley’s mind as he sat in the forefront of the audience and waited for the opera to begin.
I will sing for you, my darling.
It was lovely enough music for Wesley. He barely heard the orchestra as it tuned, or the French chatter of the audience about him. But he did hear the rough voice as it spoke in his ear, and felt the hands as they wrapped about his upper arms, yanking him from his seat.
“I’m afraid you’ll ‘ave to come with us, sir,” the voice said, in Cockney English. “We’re Aurors, we are, and you’re under arrest. Come quietly , so as not to scare all the Muggles.”
Wesley froze for a moment at the words, and then stood and shook off the restraining grips. “Unhand me. I will come quietly,” he told the two youngish, black-robed men.
He was led outside to a carriage. The two men pushed him inside and sat on either side of him. Wesley leaned back against the seat but the carriage didn’t move. A voice from the shadowy interior across from Wesley spoke up.
“I’m Euphemius Schnookerton. I’m Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I daresay you’ve heard of us.”
Wesley crossed his legs and tried to still the slight fear he felt at the name. “I’m familiar with Hogwarts. However, I thought that Paris would have been under the jurisdiction of Beauxbatons, or perhaps the French Ministry of Magic and its Aurors.”
“Normally that’s so,” the voice agreed. The man leaned forward, and Wesley caught sight of a patrician nose, a thin mouth, and a dark, pointed beard. “However, we just happened to be visiting Paris when these two fine men caught a whiff of that spell you cast at the Opéra Populaire yesterday. What, didn’t think we’d catch you?”
Wesley crossed his arms. “I am a licensed Watcher. You can take this up with the Council.”
“But they wouldn’t know you, would they?” Schnookerton sighed, and his voice lost that edge of snark, became more kindly. “You’re a long way from home. Theaters are dangerous places, you know. It will take quite a powerful spell to send you back.”
Back to demons and Fred with Charles Gunn? Wesley really wasn’t sure he wanted to go. He voiced the thought aloud. “What if I don’t want to go back?”
Schnookerton waggled a finger at him. “You know you have to. If you’re really a Watcher, you know that already.”
It was true. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. Wesley stared out the window, at the opera house. The opera house, and the woman he would never see again. “Fine. Please get it over with quickly.”
“Of course, lad. Tempus accelerus!”
Quite a powerful bit of magic indeed, there, thought Wesley, before he felt a pull at his stomach and a blurring around the edges of his consciousness. Then he was standing in place, and reality was restored. The reality of the cursed ballet. The sword in his hands.
Fred moving towards Charles, pain anew.
THE END.
Please tell me what you thought!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 04:06 pm (UTC)