Twisted Every Way(Phantom Of The Opera Fic)

Chapter 1: A New Start

((Hiya! This is a long one guys XD  Hope you all enjoy, and as always please vote and leave constructive comments. I read every one. Thank you all. Also written in 6th grade so😬🤣))

Gustave had listened for what seemed an eternity to the rising and falling of thunderous voices. The shadowy figures of the two men engaged in fierce discussion by the fireplace, dueling and bargaining back and forth, back and forth. 

Now they had emerged again, faces forlorn.

"Something has changed." Gustave thought, a chill running down his spine.

"Is it mother?" he asked, his tone iced with fear.

Gustave thought with a chill of the pale eyes that looked at him so helplessly on the docks that fateful day. He trembled at the idea of the guns, and screams, tears and fear. 

"Your Mother is stable, for now. Thank heaven for that. But Gustave, you-
you are no longer my jurisdiction," Raoul said sternly.

He turned to leave, his eyes looking away from the heartbreak he had caused.  The Vicomte was a proud man, too proud to say when he was wrong, let alone explain his actions. And yet still, he possessed a heart, one that found itself uncertain in these trying times. 

Gustaves small but strong hand gripped his sleeve tightly. "Please don't leave me."

Raoul, with tears in his eyes, removed the hand from his sleeve forcefully and walked away. 

Torment wracked Gustave's body and nerves.   

His mother had wanted this. 

She had wanted them to be a family, her, the masked man and him. 
  
Raoul had no place here but he couldn't belong anywhere else.

To Gustave; He was still his father.

Gustaves mind paced frantically, too absorbed to notice Erik's wary eye from across the room. What if his mother died? Would that be the start of a captive eternity? Trapped in the dark which had once intrigued and now terrified his young mind?

Gustave took a shaky breath and ran to Erik, holding him tightly as tears flowed easily and stung his eyes.

"It's all my fault." Gustave said tears stinging his eyes.  

"You should rest," Erik stated slowly, his voice monotone and stern.

Gustave gave no reply. What more was there to be said? His mother lay ill, the Viscount gone perhaps forever...was this to be his life? A dark melancholy of music that he would never escape.

The stranger of a father embraced him and held him tightly.

"I want my mother." Gustave sobbed grasping tightly to his father's waistcoat.

 Too similar, were the tears streaming down his sons face, too alike those sunken, sleepless eyes of Eriks youth. 

Erik shuddered at a memory of himself, tangled in thistles, pain coursing through every fiber of his being. Holding on for dear life to Nadirs coat, he had not been much older than Gustave was now.

Now here the boy stood. Here his son stood, crying, hurting, his heart also breaking from what was out of any control.

Erik's eyes looked warily to the room across the hall, the candlelight peering through the crack every so slightly. A dying flame of his love shut behind a barrier.

"Come," Erik said with a sigh. "Time to sleep."

Gustave frowned, his small face contorted and twisted in the shame of being different.

"I don't usually," Gustave whispered. "I do, to please mother. But I like the night. I'd like to be awake. Sir."

Erik looked him over and sensing he spoke the truth gave a small nod.

"If you do so quietly, you may play downstairs. Should it serve to ease your troubled mind young vicomte."

Gustave in slowly steady stride played his soul. 

Minor chords ringing out across the whole of the building. And as his fingers found the keys, found the words to say silent prayers, he dried his tears.

It pained Erik greatly to see anyone in unjustified sorrow so he let him play.

And in every note, every rise and fall, he grew to know the boy.

Grew to love him. Grew to adore his Christine even more than he would have thought possible.

The notes seemed to float off the page and echo in the air with every measure. Minutes fell into hours, still, Gustaves eyes were on the piano,

Eriks on his beloved. 

Soon the sullen pair heard the clock strike Four.

Erik traveled to the piano and lifted with ease the fragile tear worn figure.

"I must finish," Gustave protested in a mummer. 

Erik didn't smile, perhaps he didn't remember how anymore, but the feeling was there. Pride. He saw himself in that pointgnatly stubborn expression Gustave now wore. 

Though with that pride came fear. What other of his traits were yet to reveal themselves in the small boy?

Should Christine leave him...

No, he quickly pushed that thought from his mind. Gustave was to have his Mother again. He would pay anything, do anything to secure that fact.

Anything for his Angel of Music.