Work Text:
Wednesday, March 30th, 1892
After I came to, Maestro had told me I had been out for two weeks. At first, I thought he meant I had been locked in my room for two weeks.
He actually meant I had passed out for two weeks straight.
Not to mention the two other times I had passed out, which added to at least a day and a half unconscious. Every day since, I had been wondering the same thing: How can a simple lack of music end in losing consciousness for half a month?
At least I had gotten my violin back, but my parents’ behavior wasn’t any better. I guess I should’ve expected that. Why would they give me more independence after I had gone insane? Sometimes, the oppression was mental, but sometimes, it was physical. Maestro would sometimes go up to me and hug me for almost 3 minutes. I didn’t understand. I guess he missed me?
There is so much to him I’m only now realizing exists.
My violin was actually my grandfather’s, at first. My mother’s father, Gustave Daaé, was a famous Swedish violinist back in his time, and when he died, Maman kept his violin, until I began learning the violin and Maestro restored it himself for me. I got so much from my grandfather; my name, my talent, my violin, and my love for it. I sometimes wish I got to meet him.
I felt like he wouldn’t have treated me like something fragile. All I needed right now was someone who didn’t treat me like I was something fragile.
Right now, I was sitting in my room, drawing. One might think I had had enough of my room by now, but it was still the only place in the house that felt like it was truly mine. Probably because it was, but I also liked that I could tell my parents not to come in if I wanted to.
A knock sounded. “May I come in, Gussy?”
“Yes, Maman.”
Maman ducked under the entryway and crossed the room to sit on my bed. “How have you been?” she asked.
“Alright,” I muttered.
“You sure?”
“Yes, I am—”
“I’m only saying this because what you went through can take a toll on anybody, not just someone with sensory sensitivities. I am not trying to patronize you.”
I stopped short and looked up at her, my face trying out a lot of different emotions before it settled on gratitude and I dove into her arms.
With one hand on my back and the other around my head, Maman ruffled my hair. “It’s okay.” Suddenly, she looked up. “Would you like to know something?”
I contemplated what her offer could really mean, and came up with nothing. “Okay?...”
“What you said just now reminded me a lot of your maestro. I’m not saying this to be mean, but he used to immediately assume the things I said to him were either pitying or cruel and he would get so mad at me for it! You sounded exactly like him.” She laughed.
“And…why is this relevant?” I asked, confused.
“It’s not, it just surprises me sometimes how much you share with him.”
“Why would he do that?” I remembered vaguely when I was younger that Maestro would snap at me often enough that I asked Maman one day why he did that. I must have been about three. Most of the time, it was when I asked about why he wore a mask sometimes and didn’t other times, why his face “looked like that,” why he had two different hairs (I didn’t understand wigs back then), or why he had scars. He was so nice most of the time and I remember it confused my toddler brain. She told me that he wasn’t used to my simple curiosity, and before us, questions about his face usually ended in something mean. She said that if we treated his deformity as a part of him and loved it along with the rest of him, in time, he would learn that we meant no harm. I remembered asking confusedly why we wouldn’t, because it was still just his face, and I remember seeing tears beginning to well up in her eyes when I said that. To this day, I still wasn’t sure why.
“Because…” She trailed off, then regained her confidence. “Because, before I married him, he was not very used to kindness. I know I’ve told you that before. He learned to put up a defense mechanism so the constant cruel comments wouldn’t get to him, and he had it up for a very long time. Most of his life. I was the first person to love him unconditionally and he had never had that before, so he viewed my love as something foreign and possibly dangerous. He also didn’t want to believe it was real, because he wanted to protect himself if it turned out not to be.
“It’s the same thing with his face. Before you and I, and the Girys, nobody had ever looked at his face and loved him despite it. I used to tell him I thought his face was beautiful, and he would either snap at me or tell me I was delusional. It took a lot of perseverance, but Madame Giry, your Aunt Meg and I taught him to not only let us love his face but to love it himself. We tried our best to raise you to see it as normal, and I think we did a very good job. I’m really glad about that.”
I interrupted her. “So that’s why you cried when I asked why we wouldn’t treat his deformity as normal!”
“What—when did this happen?”
“It was a really long time ago and I asked you why he snapped at me a lot when I asked about his mask, his wig, and his face. You told me basically a dumbed-down-for-toddlers version of what you just said, and you said that if we treated his deformity as a part of him then he wouldn’t snap at us as often, and I asked why we wouldn’t, because I didn’t see any reason why his deformity was different, I just wanted to know how he got it and why he covered it sometimes and didn’t other times, and you started to cry when I said that.”
She stared at me, dumbfounded. “Gussy, you were—you were three! How do you remember that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I kind of just remembered it when you told me just now how I reminded you of him.”
“Wait, while we’re on that topic, when did you actually learn what a wig was? Because I remember you asking once why he had two different heads of hair.”
I looked her in the eye and we both cracked up. After at least two minutes of uncontrollable laughter, I answered her question. “About…five? I was newly five, I think, and Maestro showed me how he puts it on. I was in awe. I don’t think he knew I didn’t know what a wig was, because when I exclaimed that he didn’t have two different heads after all, he stared at me for a solid minute and then burst out laughing.”
“Okay, I really wish I had seen that,” Maman said through tears, then sobered up. “Would you like to talk about present-day Maestro now? We don’t have to, I just know your relationship with him has been kind of rocky, and I don’t know if you want to get some stuff out of your system or just rant. I promise I won’t judge—unless you curse, that is.”
I scoffed. “I say goddamn one singular time—”
“Gustave,” Maman warned.
“Right, sorry.” I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe we just need to talk, him and I.”
“That would probably be good.”