When he was ten, he found a scrap of paper in an iron cage at a freak show.
When she was fifteen, she found him.
Sophia had a habit.
She liked taking in things nobody wanted.
Damaged books, music boxes with missing pieces, stray cats nearly frozen to death.
The bookseller said that the things she took home rarely failed to survive.
She didn't think she was kind.
She just thought that some things weren't broken yet. Nobody wanted them anymore, that was all.
Later, she stole a child from an iron cage.
She taught him to read and write, and how to tell the world apart into things that could be trusted and things that couldn't.
She thought she was raising a child.
,
The first thing Erik learned in the cage was not to trust anyone.
The second was to remember everyone who came near him.
Because coming close usually meant leaving.
But she was different.
She never called him a monster.
She never left a book behind and walked away.
And she never treated him like everyone else did, as something to be looked at.
She simply kept showing up, again and again.
Like some kind of unreasonable exception.
He remembered that she got cold easily, that she drank her tea without sugar, that she pulled her scarf up to her chin when she read.
These details meant nothing, yet he remembered them over and over.
They became a habit.
They became something he couldn't bear to lose.
Until one day, she disappeared.
He said, "Will you come back?"
She said, "I will."
He believed her.
And then he really did wait a long time.
Until the world grew quiet.
Until the very act of believing became dangerous.
She stole the monster from the cage and brought him home, then taught him to read and write.
Years later, he built an underground palace for her.
Then he locked her inside it.
[Phantom of the Opera fanfiction]
Theme: Being seen and finding redemption
