The following day was Sunday, and was your day off. You'd originally intended to spend your day doing something, anything really, but you couldn't make yourself get up. Despite Christine's kindness to you yesterday, you couldn't forget the look on Pierre's face. As if mocking you, your promise to Christine echoed in your head, reminding you that you couldn't just lay around forever.

You didn't let it force you out of bed immediately though. Instead, you moped about in bed nearly all day. The only thing you did at all was finish the first book you'd found about the Dark Prince and the servant. By the time you reached it's end you only felt sad, it again reminding you of something you'd never find.

Finally dragging yourself from bed, you quickly washed in the washrooms cold shower and dressed yourself. It certainly woke you up, but didn't do anything for your mood. You decided you needed something warm and comforting, so you headed to the kitchen wrapped in your green blanket. It was late October now and was getting cold rather quickly. You wondered if you'd have to remind Monsieur Martin about the heating again.

Reaching the kitchen, you looked at the small stock of food you'd purchased and decided on making a soup. It would be perfect for the chilly weather. You began to sing while you started your soup. It was a song your mother had always sang while cooking. As you were singing you skinned the vegetables and cut the chicken, and stirred and stirred and stirred. When your arms grew numb from stirring, you sat at the cooking bench and read from your next selection, Pride and Prejudice. You let its familiarity comfort you. Reading it in the warmth of a kitchen that smelled of soup, wrapped in your mother's knitted blanket reminded you of home, of a time when you were happy.

Over an hour you stirred the soup, waiting for it to be ready. By the time it was, you were starving. You hadn't exactly eaten breakfast. Again you dished up two plates, not one. If you were going to get a chance to speak with him, you needed to lure him out. You added a large piece of warm bread to the plate, and carried both out to the auditorium. After setting one plate on the stage within view, you crept into one of the theater boxes to wait. You didn't think he'd appear if you sat on the stage waiting.

As quietly as you could you ate your soup and bread. It was heavenly, although it didn't taste exactly like you remembered it. Maybe you were missing something. After you finished your meal, you pulled out your book to continue reading. It had taken him a while to collect the plate last time, so you suspected you'd be waiting for a good amount of time.

What you didn't realize was that you'd be waiting for hours on end. Many many hours. Your watch read 10 by the time you started yawning and then read 1 when you woke up hours later. Shoot, you'd fallen asleep. Looking towards the stage you saw the plate was gone.

"Damn it," you breathed. You better get up and turn out the rest of the opera house lights and go to bed, especially if you needed to get work done tomorrow. You stood up and stretched. Your limbs ached a bit from falling asleep sitting up.

"I take it you were waiting for me?"

You screamed and grabbed your book, ready to swing. You located him, standing in the dark corner of the theater box. Amusement danced across his face as he watched you.

"Don't scare me like that!" You yelled, putting your hand against your chest. Your heart was beating like a drum.

"So what is it you wanted?" He asked, his tone very much let's-get-this-over-with and I-have-places-to-be.

"I... I wanted to thank you for saving me twice, although I might argue the first time was your fault." That hadn't been the right thing to say you realized then. He didn't look particularly happy. "And someone asked me to deliver a message for you."

"Mm," he hummed, "let me guess, Monsieur Martin? What demands does he have of me?"

"No, it was Christine actually."

He suddenly looked like you'd stabbed him, like his entire being had been ripped open, and his vulnerabilities shown to the world. But most of all, he looked sad.

"She asked me to tell you that she's sorry. She thinks of you often."

The last part wasn't exactly something she'd said, but you could tell it was true when you'd spoken with her. You could see it in her eyes. He remained silent, looking at you and nowhere at the same time, like memories were replaying behind his eyes.

"You were in love with her, weren't you?" You asked. It took him a while to surface from his memories and for many seconds he was silent.

"Yes," he finally replied, voice dark. "It seems society deems us unloveable."

"Us? What do you–you saw?" You asked, suddenly feeling very embarrassed. No, you were mortified. "You-you were watching me? Spying on me?"

"Spying?" He spat almost angrily. "This is my opera house. I just wanted to make sure he didn't hurt you."

His gaze softened, if only for a moment, and you felt your heart squeeze in a way it hadn't before. You struggled with what to say.

"Will you show me?" You said, barely above a whisper. "Will you let me see?"

Your arm raised towards him slowly. He hesitated for a moment, like a war was raging within himself, but in the end he turned away. You didn't have to hide your disappointment because seconds later a large smash was heard from somewhere near the grand foyer. Your annoyance and surprise at the sound were enough to blanket the disappointment you felt when he turned away. You understood that you didn't know one another, trust one another, but you thought that since he had seen your face, perhaps you deserved to see his too. Him allowing you to stay at the Opera Populaire untaunted should have been enough, but you felt yourself wanting more.

You left the theater box you were in to trace the source of the sound and the Phantom did not follow you, at least not where you could see. As you reached the foyer you realized that you had forgotten to lock the front doors when you saw two severely drunk men brawling on the floor. What had broken was a bottle.

"You two should not be in here," you said, trying to help one of the drunk men off of the floor.

"You're not the boss of me!" He tried to swing at you, but missed by several feet.

"Hey, Marc don't try to hit a woman," the other drunk man said, his words very slurred.

"Wait," the one guy stilled and squinted at you very hard. He nearly fell over in the process. "You're a woman?"

"Yes, now get out before I beat you both with a broom."

To show you meant it, you walked to your cart of cleaning supplies and withdrew one of the brooms. You swung it around so the bristles were by your head. They both threw their hands up in defense and allowed you to shoe them out without needing to use your broom. You locked the door behind them with your set of keys, and turned around to clean up the glass.

"I suppose you're watching me now?" You called, as you swept the glass into a dustpan. He gave no response, but somehow you knew he was there anyways.

~

The following morning you finished polishing the grand foyer and staircase before returning to the restaurant to polish its floor. It took you quite a while to move all of the tables and chairs to one side so you could polish unhindered. Once you finally finished the floor you thought you might as well spend the rest of your day polishing the tables and chairs with the furniture polish you'd purchased. Everything you'd purchased recently, you'd been using extremely sparingly, afraid of returning to the hardware shop anytime soon. You didn't know what you'd do if you had to see Pierre again, or even worse, speak to him.

You shook your head, trying to make the thought go away. You tried not to let it ruin your mood that was slowly lightening. At least your work helped keep you busy. After you finished with the polishing, you covered each table with the tablecloths you'd found stocked in the kitchen. The restaurant almost looked opening ready, and you smiled at your achievement. The only thing that needed to be done was setting the tables. Using the silverware, glasses and napkins from the kitchen, you set each table. In the end you were a few knives short and took out a piece of paper to add them to the list of items the Opera needed before opening. It was one of the many lists you carried in your pocket now.

Your next task for the day was to clean and polish the chandelier while repairing it to the best of your ability. You figured it would be easier to do when it was on the ground than when it was hanging by the ceiling. When you walked into the auditorium you found a large piece of plaster was laying on the stage in chunks. You looked up to find another piece of the ceiling missing from where the chandelier's chain cleaved a jagged cut through the ceiling.

You returned to the theater room a moment later with a broom and dustpan to clean the mess before you got started. As you bent down and began sweeping a clinking noise drew your attention away. You looked towards what you assumed was the source of the sound, the chandelier, but saw nothing. You resumed your work for another few moments before the clinking sound met your ears again, louder this time. As you turned to look at the chandelier again your eyes widened. A very gangly raccoon was now climbing up the chandelier from the orchestra pit.

"How did you get in here?" You asked, exasperated. You didn't think raccoons lived in France let alone opera houses. Maybe the Phantom didn't mind sharing his home with a raccoon, but you certainly did.

Upon hearing your voice, the raccoon looked at you before scrambling down from the chandelier. You assumed it was scared and was going to run away, but instead it started sauntering towards you.

"Woah, no no no."

The raccoon did not take no for an answer, even as you backed away. Within seconds it charged and latched itself onto your leg. You let out a very loud shriek and shook your leg aggressively.

"Oh my god, get off! Get off!"

It continued to climb even higher on your leg, using your skirts as grip for its sharp nails, even as you continued to shriek and try to shake it off. Your only saving grace was your broom, which was still in your hand. Giving up at your leg shaking, you began beating the raccoon with the room. It finally let go and slinked off to the orchestra pit, but not before turning to hiss at you, as if you'd ruined it's fun. From somewhere nearby a deep laugh echoed, and you felt your face scrunch.

"That was not at all funny!" You yelled, still brandishing your broom weapon. "I could have used some help!"

"Help with what?" An unfamiliar voice asked and you quickly adjusted your hair over your face before turning to locate the person. It was a young man in very dirty clothing with a tool belt around his waist.

"Oh uh, nothing. Just talking to myself. Who are you?"

"Oh, sorry for not introducing myself. I'm Jean-Paul, but most people just call me Paul. I'm here with the construction crew. They're waiting out in the foyer. What should we get started with?"

You raised your wrist to look at your watch. It read 4 pm. There were only a few hours left in the work day. Why were they here now?

"You're a bit late," you said finally.

"Ah, yeah. Sorry about that. We got held up at our last construction job, but we figured we should at least come here to introduce ourselves and survey what needs to be done."

"Oh, well thank you for coming then. I'll follow you and you can introduce me to your crew."

The young man lead you from the auditorium into the grand foyer where his crew was waiting. It was a group of almost 15 men and every single one of them had tracked mud across your freshly polished floors. You tried very hard not to let your annoyance show on your face.

"Hey guys this is Y/N. Monsieur Martin put her in charge and she's going to tell us what needs to get done."

He then looked at you expectantly, clearly wanting you to say something to his crew. You self consciously adjusted your hair and apron again before speaking. Many of the men did not look happy they'd be taking orders from you.

"Bonjour Monsieurs. It's nice to finally meet you all. Now there's a lot of stuff that needs to get fixed but I've made a list in order of location and importance–"

Before you could even finish one of Paul's men grabbed the list from your hands before you could even begin to read it off. Paul looked a little bit annoyed at his crew mates behavior but said nothing. You clenched your hands and took a deep breath.

"But," you added, beginning to smile, "first I'll need you to deal with the rabid raccoon in the orchestra pit. And try not to track mud on my floor again."

Their faces fell and you secretly felt a little joy at seeing their misery. You had said rabid just to get a rise out of them. From where he secretly watched your interaction with the construction crew, the Phantom cracked a smile.