The Final Overture (A Phantom Of The Opera Story)

Scarred by Fire

"Gustave!" Erik screamed, pushing through the crowd in the city square, rushing to the small hospital. Gustave had only been living with the phantom for a year. After Christine's death, Raoul left, leaving Gustave in the care of his real father.
"Oh please be okay! Please be fine! Don't let the fire have gotten you as it did the others!" The phantom sang.
While at school, somehow the building had caught fire. Three kids were pronounced dead, but nobody knew which ones yet. As soon as word caught wind, Erik rushed to the hospital where the children were taken.
"I've already lost your mother, don't let me lose you too!" Erik begged.
He burst into the hospital doors.
"Gustave Vicomte!" Erik demanded to the nurse. Gustave's name was not yet legally changed.
"This way." The nurse glanced at Erik, The Phantom of The Opera, the man still known as Mr. Y, and gave him a sad, sorry look. She led him down the small hallway. She opened the door labeled 'critical care.'
"It is bad, sir." She said pitifully.
Erik ran to Gustave's side. "My son." He gently held a hand. "My Gustave." Gustave's face was bandaged, only slits for his nose and mouth. Much of the right side of his body was bandaged as well.
The nurse stood silently in the corner of the room. "Might I fetch the doctor to tell you exactly the damage?"
"If you may." Erik muttered.
A moment later the nurse returned with a doctor.
"Hello, Mr. Y." The doctor, a solemn sort of man, said.
"Will he live?" Erik asked. That was the most important thing.
"I believe so, but..." the doctor paused, "The right side of his face, most of his body, in fact, will be horribly scarred. Most unfortunately disfigured."
"As long as he is alive, that is all that matters." Erik went back to his son's side. Gently holding the unburnt hand.
Erik stayed at Gustave's side, day and night, until after almost three weeks, he was able to bring him home.
"Father." Gustave said, as his father sat in a chair next to his bed, "What-what will look like when we take these bandages off?"
"I don't know, Gustave." Erik answered softly.
"I won't be the same." Gustave said sadly.
"No, not on the outside." Erik comforted his son, "But don't forget the beauty underneath."
"It's there, the beauty underneath." Gustave echoed.
Three days later, Erik removed the bandages from his son's face.
"The Doctor said I wouldn't be able to see out of my right eye." Gustave said, then covered his left eye, "He was right."
"Gustave," Erik moved to hand him a mirror, "Do not get upset."
"Is it-is it that bad?" Gustave muttered helplessly.
"Here." Erik handed his son the mirror.
Gustave looked into it. The entire right side of his face was a mess of scars and tender flesh. His eye had been burned, and where there used to be and iris and pupil there was only white. His lips swelled on that side, a result of his body hyper healing. The same went for much of the right side of his body. His hand was scarred, as was his leg.
"I'm haunting." Gustave said, holding back tears, lightly touching his face.
"No." Erik said encouragingly "You are still beautiful."
The conversation was left at that. The next day, Erik brought a black mask into Gustave's room. 
"Is this for me?" Gustave asked. The mask covered the burnt half of his face, only slightly covering his top lip.
"I thought it would make you feel better." Erik answered.
"Thank you. It is beautiful." Gustave put the mask over his face. "Simple, yet beautiful."
"I thought it may make you feel better." Erik smiled weakly at his son.
"Father." Gustave said.
"Yes." Erik trembled. After a year together Gustave was calling him father. It was foreign. It was music to his ears.
"I don't want to return to school." Gustave looked down at the foot of his bed, away from the phantom.
"You don't have to." Erik promised, "I'll teach you here."
The only reason Erik had ever sent Gustave to school was to let him properly learn to be social, to make friends, so he could be somewhat normal. But Gustave was not normal. He was gifted. He was talented. He was one of the few who could see the beauty underneath.
The Phantom kept his promise. Gustave never did return. He instead studied under his father, learning the arts more intimately, and advancing his knowledge more thoroughly. Each year, as he grew, Erik crafted Gustave a new mask, a beautiful black, so dark it was like looking into the void.
Gustave was almost the perfect image of his father. Masked, cloaked. Music was a part of him, and he a part of music. The only thing he did not have was a desperate, passionate, and practically doomed love. Gustave almost hoped to never be in love, to never care about someone more than himself. He saw what that kind of love did to his father. But also, a part of him, a small, shrieking piece of Gustave yearned for a love as passionate as his father's. This other piece of him wanted to know that he would die for another person. To choose someone, who isn't part of your family by blood, who you don't have to love, is what Gustave wanted. Gustave scared himself. He yearned for something he could not control. He yearned for a feeling, but that feeling would turn to a yearning for a certain person. Gustave was once again inept in the social world. He separated himself from people, almost entirely. Yet, he wanted to find this irresistible, irreversible love. Gustave would find a love like this. He would find a tumultuous and endearing, a cursed and blessed, a beautiful and chaotic love, so urgent it would set his heart aflame, the same way the fire of the school house had.