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Description
Christine was a prelude to true love, and this meeting is a prelude to the first kiss with that true love....

Loose sketch from a scene in my fanfiction in progress, Of Stone. For, which I believe is evident, but at any rate, the Phantom of the Opera (mainly ALW version, though a lot of the background I will supply in the fic will be faithful to Gaston Leroux and Susan Kay). Erik with Odette, a partially deaf former ballet dancer who has taken shelter in a convent since the passing of her mother and a very traumatic run in with some cruel men. Erik, since the explosion of events surrounding Christine Daae, has been hidden in the catacombs beneath this selfsame convent, per the planning of good friend Antoinette Giry and her daughter Meg. He eventually runs across Odette...perhaps I will at least post their meeting scene, which is meant to be slightly touching and darkly humorous:

‘Fear can turn to love—you’ll learn to see, to find the man behind the monster, this…repulsive carcass, who seems a beast but secretly dreams of beauty, secretly…secretly…’
--Erik, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera”

Human curiosity and animal instinct clashed within Odette when she saw her unexpected companion. Ultimately, the desire to study him forcefully stuffed the impulse to dash into the opposite direction into some dark nook of her mind. She was fascinated.
It was a man, little older than forty, she guessed, though she had no way of being certain in the shadows.
He was tall and slender, as though his contours had been whisked on a painter’s canvas with one narrow but decisive, inky black stroke. To his thinness there was indeed unquenchable energy and an enigmatic but potent presence—a power like distant thunder, like a dark warning embodied. When she could bring herself to lift her eyes from his black-cloaked frame, she drew a soft gasp at his face—schismed down the center by an unfinished porcelain mask, cold and immaculate and expressionless as an icecap over a lake. It was not even this peculiar adornment that took her aback, as much as the face itself: The half of it that she could see was pale and exquisitely…handsome? No, more like beautiful. Like ivory. Like the highest, softest, sweetest note of an opera as it lingers at the top of a scale just before the listener, with an elated heart that begins to sink, realizes that the song is almost over and the beauty almost spent. Yes, an evanescent face, a martyr’s, a ghost’s, and neatly framed by lush, raven black hair.
But this intruder was no ghost, because of his eyes: In them lay the most arresting aspect of his being. They were too alive: A bright steel blue that somehow was capable of both frost and blistering, electrical heat. Restless light crackled in his irises, expressing a pledge to cling to the private misery of existence if only to spite the world that apparently, by the tight clench of his jaw and the gracefully suspicious, liquid crouching and arching movements of his spine, despised him.
Bitterness: God, he was beauty contaminated by bitterness.
And then he spoke, and she discovered that no sense of awe she had yet felt stood in comparison to her shock and reverence now. It was a voice like dark golden honey . . . yet an enunciated hiss, a schoolteacher’s upbraiding or a snake’s sneer before the strike. . . yet a purring seduction . . . from everywhere and yet distinctly from his own disapprovingly pursed lips. His bright white teeth and dark eyebrows reminded her more of some black fox or alley cat than a human.
“The lady is shocked, I see,” he cooed contemptuously.
And it was then that Odette realized she had been staring at him for over five minutes without courteous interruption. She gasped. “Oh, Monsieur, I…I don’t know . . . how I can hear you.” She frowned, suddenly taken aback by her realization that somehow he was as audible to her as if she had no affliction of partial deafness. “I have lost a good deal of my hearing, you see . . .an . . . accident a year or so ago . . . ” Vaguely, entranced, she pointed at her ears, stiffly letting her arms return to her sides when she discerned comprehension in his swiftly changing facial expression. She was stunned to see genuine, though cautiously understated, pity in his gaze. He was clearly careful with his emotions, kind or otherwise.
“You are deaf?” His lips perfectly formed the words, but his voice must have retreated to a quieter range, for she had lost the capacity to hear it. She saw vastly understated but pure anguish in his eyes. For her? “I am most . . .sorry to hear that, Mademoiselle. . . ?”
Somehow the inability to hear that mystifying, thrilling tenor profoundly afflicted her, and she was embarrassed to feel actual tears of frustration in her eyes as this stranger with the mask and the voice like an instrument of God beheld her with his quiet, gentle longsuffering. “Odette is my name. Please,” she barely heard herself gasp, “speak up, Monsieur. I really could hear you a moment ago. I don’t know how, but it . . . it was . . . please speak up.”
He started violently and seemed to catch himself exhibiting such a benevolent expression to a stranger. A mixture of keen pleasure and alarm filled that exquisite face, and he stepped back a pace, though his torso leaned towards her, a gesture of intrigue and ambivalent longing. “You like the sound of my voice, do you?”
Immediately she heard him again, and whatever shocked or pleased look her face now sported caused him to actually smile. It must have been a rarely practiced gesture, because it was slightly lopsided and far more candid and unbridled than his previous expressions and gestures. Oh, but it was beautiful, like the rest of him. Not quite tame, not quite earthly. Odette smiled too, reveling in this, vaguely aware of her stupidity when she should be running from such a peculiar person alone in the darkness.
Again the masked man caught himself being too emotionally demonstrative, and frowned fiercely at his own apparent lack of restraint with his unlikely intruder. “You should be more careful, you know . . . Odette. I could be a murderer.”
How had he violated her very thoughts? There was smugness in his words and in his wildly bright eyes that now made her flesh squirm under her dress. The awe of the moment was now most definitely past.
“You are right, Monsieur . . . whomever you are . . .” she began, inching backward, tightly clutching the rosary that one of the sisters had given her when she had first arrived at their convent.
“Erik. Erik is my name,” he rather blurted it, and once again scowled at himself, as though he had never intended to be so openly informative. Oddly, a surname did not follow. It seemed he had at last harnessed his self-restraint, producing a cool and stony effect in the revealed half of his visage.
“Monsieur . . . Erik . . . do pardon my intrusion. I should in fact go.”
He loomed towards her and her heart vaulted into her throat. But his words were calmly cordial. “No such intrusion, really. I have not seen someone react so . . . pleasantly . . . to the sound of my voice in over two years. Merci, Mlle Odette . . . ”
“I . . .see. Well.” She continued to back up the staircase. He was groping for a surname, too, she knew, but she was hardly going to relinquish hers, either.
“Well,” he echoed with another unintended and slightly puckish grin, watching her.
Pointedly, he halted where the cool light of the upstairs wine cellar began, as though the feel of anything but night against his pale skin might actually hurt. Perhaps she had met a vampire. No, foolish. No such hellish demon would have looked at her with such real compassion when she admitted the affliction of her ears. But still . . .
She realized she was simply staring at him again, that her movement had ceased precisely when his had.
The mysterious M. Erik bowed at the waist, as though, in the manner of some prim, harsh governess, to prompt the slightly daft child in the front row of class that it was time to scurry out of her desk and towards her maison. His tone was concordantly cool and vaguely amused. “A bientot, Mlle Odette.” Ruminative crinkles formed under his sparkling eyes . . . the resultant expression of which not quite sadistic, but disconcertingly . . . .scheming.
She could not tell if he was really pondering something about her manner or countenance or if it was merely another of his oddly potent tools of psychological persuasion. Either way, it was a bit intimidating. She felt reduced from a woman to an amoeba, and from her nervousness came a smidgen of indignation. She inhaled sharply, face reddening in the darkness with her resentment, suddenly feeling the need to stand her ground.
“Do come again,” the prowler tacitly continued. Was that sarcasm? And then, more forcefully, when she found herself once again arrested by the clarity of his voice in her ears, he waved a black leather gloved hand at her and barked, “Go on, then!”
Odette jumped at the new impatient strength in his voice. Recovering, she nearly scoffed at such a brazen gesture. This eccentric fellow had best not wait too long for her return, or it would make for a lonely and dull vigil! “Of course, monsieur,” she retorted flatly, turning on her heel and continuing up the steps, utterly terrified but certainly not willing to offer him the satisfaction of a backward glance.
What most startled, and, ultimately, irritated her was her masked stranger’s deliberately audible laughter, chasing her all the way up the steps, ceasing only when she had emerged fully into the light: laughter that was neither condescending nor cruel, but, in some bizarrely familiar way . . . affectionate.

That's it Enjoy!

Description
Christine was a prelude to true love, and this meeting is a prelude to the first kiss with that true love....

Loose sketch from a scene in my fanfiction in progress, Of Stone. For, which I believe is evident, but at any rate, the Phantom of the Opera (mainly ALW version, though a lot of the background I will supply in the fic will be faithful to Gaston Leroux and Susan Kay). Erik with Odette, a partially deaf former ballet dancer who has taken shelter in a convent since the passing of her mother and a very traumatic run in with some cruel men. Erik, since the explosion of events surrounding Christine Daae, has been hidden in the catacombs beneath this selfsame convent, per the planning of good friend Antoinette Giry and her daughter Meg. He eventually runs across Odette...perhaps I will at least post their meeting scene, which is meant to be slightly touching and darkly humorous:

‘Fear can turn to love—you’ll learn to see, to find the man behind the monster, this…repulsive carcass, who seems a beast but secretly dreams of beauty, secretly…secretly…’
--Erik, from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera”

Human curiosity and animal instinct clashed within Odette when she saw her unexpected companion. Ultimately, the desire to study him forcefully stuffed the impulse to dash into the opposite direction into some dark nook of her mind. She was fascinated.
It was a man, little older than forty, she guessed, though she had no way of being certain in the shadows.
He was tall and slender, as though his contours had been whisked on a painter’s canvas with one narrow but decisive, inky black stroke. To his thinness there was indeed unquenchable energy and an enigmatic but potent presence—a power like distant thunder, like a dark warning embodied. When she could bring herself to lift her eyes from his black-cloaked frame, she drew a soft gasp at his face—schismed down the center by an unfinished porcelain mask, cold and immaculate and expressionless as an icecap over a lake. It was not even this peculiar adornment that took her aback, as much as the face itself: The half of it that she could see was pale and exquisitely…handsome? No, more like beautiful. Like ivory. Like the highest, softest, sweetest note of an opera as it lingers at the top of a scale just before the listener, with an elated heart that begins to sink, realizes that the song is almost over and the beauty almost spent. Yes, an evanescent face, a martyr’s, a ghost’s, and neatly framed by lush, raven black hair.
But this intruder was no ghost, because of his eyes: In them lay the most arresting aspect of his being. They were too alive: A bright steel blue that somehow was capable of both frost and blistering, electrical heat. Restless light crackled in his irises, expressing a pledge to cling to the private misery of existence if only to spite the world that apparently, by the tight clench of his jaw and the gracefully suspicious, liquid crouching and arching movements of his spine, despised him.
Bitterness: God, he was beauty contaminated by bitterness.
And then he spoke, and she discovered that no sense of awe she had yet felt stood in comparison to her shock and reverence now. It was a voice like dark golden honey . . . yet an enunciated hiss, a schoolteacher’s upbraiding or a snake’s sneer before the strike. . . yet a purring seduction . . . from everywhere and yet distinctly from his own disapprovingly pursed lips. His bright white teeth and dark eyebrows reminded her more of some black fox or alley cat than a human.
“The lady is shocked, I see,” he cooed contemptuously.
And it was then that Odette realized she had been staring at him for over five minutes without courteous interruption. She gasped. “Oh, Monsieur, I…I don’t know . . . how I can hear you.” She frowned, suddenly taken aback by her realization that somehow he was as audible to her as if she had no affliction of partial deafness. “I have lost a good deal of my hearing, you see . . .an . . . accident a year or so ago . . . ” Vaguely, entranced, she pointed at her ears, stiffly letting her arms return to her sides when she discerned comprehension in his swiftly changing facial expression. She was stunned to see genuine, though cautiously understated, pity in his gaze. He was clearly careful with his emotions, kind or otherwise.
“You are deaf?” His lips perfectly formed the words, but his voice must have retreated to a quieter range, for she had lost the capacity to hear it. She saw vastly understated but pure anguish in his eyes. For her? “I am most . . .sorry to hear that, Mademoiselle. . . ?”
Somehow the inability to hear that mystifying, thrilling tenor profoundly afflicted her, and she was embarrassed to feel actual tears of frustration in her eyes as this stranger with the mask and the voice like an instrument of God beheld her with his quiet, gentle longsuffering. “Odette is my name. Please,” she barely heard herself gasp, “speak up, Monsieur. I really could hear you a moment ago. I don’t know how, but it . . . it was . . . please speak up.”
He started violently and seemed to catch himself exhibiting such a benevolent expression to a stranger. A mixture of keen pleasure and alarm filled that exquisite face, and he stepped back a pace, though his torso leaned towards her, a gesture of intrigue and ambivalent longing. “You like the sound of my voice, do you?”
Immediately she heard him again, and whatever shocked or pleased look her face now sported caused him to actually smile. It must have been a rarely practiced gesture, because it was slightly lopsided and far more candid and unbridled than his previous expressions and gestures. Oh, but it was beautiful, like the rest of him. Not quite tame, not quite earthly. Odette smiled too, reveling in this, vaguely aware of her stupidity when she should be running from such a peculiar person alone in the darkness.
Again the masked man caught himself being too emotionally demonstrative, and frowned fiercely at his own apparent lack of restraint with his unlikely intruder. “You should be more careful, you know . . . Odette. I could be a murderer.”
How had he violated her very thoughts? There was smugness in his words and in his wildly bright eyes that now made her flesh squirm under her dress. The awe of the moment was now most definitely past.
“You are right, Monsieur . . . whomever you are . . .” she began, inching backward, tightly clutching the rosary that one of the sisters had given her when she had first arrived at their convent.
“Erik. Erik is my name,” he rather blurted it, and once again scowled at himself, as though he had never intended to be so openly informative. Oddly, a surname did not follow. It seemed he had at last harnessed his self-restraint, producing a cool and stony effect in the revealed half of his visage.
“Monsieur . . . Erik . . . do pardon my intrusion. I should in fact go.”
He loomed towards her and her heart vaulted into her throat. But his words were calmly cordial. “No such intrusion, really. I have not seen someone react so . . . pleasantly . . . to the sound of my voice in over two years. Merci, Mlle Odette . . . ”
“I . . .see. Well.” She continued to back up the staircase. He was groping for a surname, too, she knew, but she was hardly going to relinquish hers, either.
“Well,” he echoed with another unintended and slightly puckish grin, watching her.
Pointedly, he halted where the cool light of the upstairs wine cellar began, as though the feel of anything but night against his pale skin might actually hurt. Perhaps she had met a vampire. No, foolish. No such hellish demon would have looked at her with such real compassion when she admitted the affliction of her ears. But still . . .
She realized she was simply staring at him again, that her movement had ceased precisely when his had.
The mysterious M. Erik bowed at the waist, as though, in the manner of some prim, harsh governess, to prompt the slightly daft child in the front row of class that it was time to scurry out of her desk and towards her maison. His tone was concordantly cool and vaguely amused. “A bientot, Mlle Odette.” Ruminative crinkles formed under his sparkling eyes . . . the resultant expression of which not quite sadistic, but disconcertingly . . . .scheming.
She could not tell if he was really pondering something about her manner or countenance or if it was merely another of his oddly potent tools of psychological persuasion. Either way, it was a bit intimidating. She felt reduced from a woman to an amoeba, and from her nervousness came a smidgen of indignation. She inhaled sharply, face reddening in the darkness with her resentment, suddenly feeling the need to stand her ground.
“Do come again,” the prowler tacitly continued. Was that sarcasm? And then, more forcefully, when she found herself once again arrested by the clarity of his voice in her ears, he waved a black leather gloved hand at her and barked, “Go on, then!”
Odette jumped at the new impatient strength in his voice. Recovering, she nearly scoffed at such a brazen gesture. This eccentric fellow had best not wait too long for her return, or it would make for a lonely and dull vigil! “Of course, monsieur,” she retorted flatly, turning on her heel and continuing up the steps, utterly terrified but certainly not willing to offer him the satisfaction of a backward glance.
What most startled, and, ultimately, irritated her was her masked stranger’s deliberately audible laughter, chasing her all the way up the steps, ceasing only when she had emerged fully into the light: laughter that was neither condescending nor cruel, but, in some bizarrely familiar way . . . affectionate.

That's it Enjoy!