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Once in a While
November 2006
A/N: I’m honestly not in the best of moods right now. Passion fuels writing for me, and this idea has been on my mind all day. Actually, I’m a tad disdainful of it because it caused me to not pay attention and that could be a contributor to why I’m in a bad mood. But that’s a long story, and I’m not going to get into it. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about Phantom of the Opera and Meg’s behavior at the end of the movie…so here it is.
On that note, I have NOT seen the Broadway version. All I have seen or know of is the movie, which according to my choral director at school sucks compared to the Broadway performance of it, but my parents won’t let me go to New York for the choir trip at the end of the year so I won’t be seeing it for awhile. From what I’ve heard, the basic story lines are the same, except – if I’m not mistaken – the chandelier crash is during the second act? I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. If it does, this is based on the movie.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Phantom of the Opera; any version or form of it. (Did you know that back in the 1930s it was actually just a movie, and not originally a musical? Well I didn’t.)
Please review. Like I said, I’m not in the best of moods. Note. It won’t be a…happy ending. Happy enough considering the storyline itself. It may…get a bit angsty. Regretful. You can decide that for yourself, though.
Props to the story “Who is this Angel?” because it inspired me to write a PotO story. It ROCKS, you should all read it.
Meg stared down at the white, almost skeletal mask in her hands. It had been a few weeks since that night…
The night when everything changed. When the chandelier crashed. When the Phantom finally seemed to snap, right along with the cords that held the giant beauty together. When Christine was finally forced to choose whom she would stay with – where she would be for the rest of her life.
In the light of the sun, or the shadows of the dark?
It was the night where the Phantom finally realized what Christine’s true feelings were, even though it pained him to do so.
Meg finally saw where exactly it was the infamous feared, admired, despised Phantom of the Opera resided; where his beautiful music was written and played, where he slept and ate and thought up the amazing thoughts he seemed to think.
She had seen his mask, lying forgotten. He hadn’t taken it to…wherever it was that he was going. As she sat in the desk chair, a candle burning brightly next to her, she wondered whether his leaving the mask was a sign that he would finally come to terms with his disfigurement, or if he had just been so desperate to rid himself of a place so drenched in memories of Christine that he hadn’t taken the needed time to get it. Or maybe he’d wanted to leave something, some object that embodied him and who he was, as a reminder that despite his absence his legend would always be there.
The legend of the Phantom of the Opera.
Because the mask did embody him. Rather, what he thought he was.
He always considered himself the darkest of dark, unpurist of the pure. He always dressed in black. White is always associated with purity, innocence. His mask was white. Christine was, in a way, white. So naïve. It was also half of a mask. Half of a being. Half of a man. He was so convinced that he was a monster.
Her eyes focused downward towards the mask, her mind began to wander into the past.
She had grown up at the Opera House, grown up with the mysteries and stories of the Phantom and what horrors he would bring about. She had always found herself fascinated with the stories of him, of why he would feel the need to hide himself from all view. The realization that her mother, knowing of her little…infatuation, actually knew much about the Phantom – more than anyone else, at all – and even more than that, where to take Raoul when he wanted to search out Christine, was slightly angering.
After that night…Don Juan’s failed opening performance…many people had failed to return to the Opera House. Raoul had taken Christine immediately to his parents’ home, obviously not wanting to stay there any longer despite the Phantom’s letting them go. Her own mother, after living there all the years of her life, wanted to leave. It seemed that affection for the place was outweighed by the pain of the memories of it.
The managers had long since left, after the chandelier crashed and the fire began to spread. Carlotta had been one surprise – one pleasant surprise – out of the whole ordeal.
The death of the Phantom’s latest victim had struck a chord deep down in her. It seemed that she had finally realized there was more to life than hitting the high note or having the most expensive looking gown. While she was really not anymore nice, she was much more quiet and accepting of the things around her. The last Meg had heard of her, she had moved on, to Italy, Spain, London…away.
Away from the memories. Away from everyone else.
Away from the Phantom of the Opera.
Erik.
She had finally convinced her mother to divulge some of the secrets of the Phantom’s past. Meg could sense that there was more, much more to the story…but she supposed some things were her mother’s own, some things she might never know. But, for the time being, she was okay with that.
The candle light played on the smooth face of the half-mask. She fingered it thoughtfully, her long white fingers stretching across its front. She had never shown this to her mother.
Madame Giry, finally admitting that her age was getting to her and much too tired of the memories that rang tauntingly around the Opera House, took up an apartment in the town, very close to Raoul’s family home. Meg wondered if this was coincidental.
Meg, for the time being at least, seemed to switch her living quarters. Her mother had started up a small, amateur ballet school, giving lessons to small girls. Young girls, girls who would not require the intense training ballerinas of Meg’s standards. She only did this three times a week and Meg helped her. It was not bad work; she actually found that she enjoyed helping the little girls. Between the ages of four and seven, they were all very nice and giggly, very naïve. It was refreshing, actually. There was never an absence of girls to teach, either; the simple name of Giry was enough to impress parents. She was known for her excellence in ballet and its instruction, from the not-so-ancient days of Opera Populaire. Business was so good, in fact, that her mother bought the apartment above theirs, so one could be fixed up for ballet and the other for people to live in. The new apartment had two bedrooms, one for Meg and one for her mother.
Between the three days a week she helped her mother, Meg went back to visit Christine. Shortly after, she and Raoul had wed, eager to put the past behind them. Three months later, Christine was expecting, and had asked Meg to visit often.
The girls were still very close, as always. Christine enjoyed the company, as Raoul went out during the day to help his parents with business, and anyway they had fun planning out the new baby’s room, toys, clothes, names…baby things that might bore men. Raoul in particular. But of course, this was just one more thing the two young women laughed about.
While life wasn’t bad, it was actually quite nice, she never could stop her mind from straying to the mask in her drawer. She had two rooms; one with her mother, and one in the Victomte’s house. The one at Christine’s had been a guest room, richly furnished. The desk was where she kept the mask.
She also couldn’t keep her mind from straying to the owner of the mask.
Where was he? Was he okay? She was afraid to talk to Christine about it, not that she’d know. Christine seemed genuinely happy with life, with her new life. She never used her voice in song anymore, unless it was humming to herself quietly. Meg caught her singing a lullaby to herself one day, when Christine thought she was alone. She was in the empty room, the room set to be the baby’s nursery. Meg could tell that Christine loved Raoul, and he loved her; it was in the small gestures, the soft smiles and the gentle touching of hands.
But sometimes, she wondered…wondered if the Phantom’s – Erik’s – song haunted Christine at night, like it did Meg. Wondered if Christine regretted her decision. No, a voice in her head said, it was obvious that she didn’t.
Meg sighed. She missed the Opera. She didn’t care for singing that much, but oh how she loved the dancing! While it was life-fulfilling and content work, teaching young girls how to dance, she missed the advanced dances she was able to do. She missed really stretching her muscles, making moves it took her weeks, months, years even to perfect.
She missed the Opera itself, actually.
Sighing again, she put the mask back in its drawer. Tomorrow was a busy day; she would be helping her mother and Christine, going back and forth. She needed her sleep.
As she closed her eyes, if she had been listening and paying attention properly, she would have realized that she was humming to herself as she went to sleep. She would have realized she was humming the song of the famed and feared Angel of Music.
He heard a cat’s meow somewhere in the distance but ignored it. He had a purpose, this night, unlike other nights of torture he’d endured, haunted by the music …the music of –
No. She was forgetting about him and he should forget about her. Remembering her would only put him in even a worse state.
His feet hit cobblestones – the nice ones, and he was alerted that he was in the nicer part of town. Where the Opera House was.
The tall building, once a majestic figure in the city’s village square, stood cold and looming in the absence of light. A few lone streetlamps cast shadows on it and he could see its features.
He glared at the magnificent building. He had tried to run. Tried to get away, drown out the sound of her voice singing its farewell. Tried to drench his memory with alcohol, so he might forget. It didn’t quite work.
He figured that maybe, just maybe, it might help if he said farewell formally to the old place. He tried not to think that it was because this was where he’d been his happiness and that despite all that he’d said about not loving anyone, he had grown attached to the building itself, to what it stood for him and his life.
Quietly, he stole into the building, knowing where to step even without light. Without the presence of anyone, he was free to step into the house, step onto the stage and view the empty seats.
He walked in through the doors the audience would go through and walked briskly down the aisles. He was walking, completely unaware of the mess around him, so when his foot hit something hard he was caught completely unaware and almost fell. Glaring down at the object in question, he reached down and felt with his hands a torch.
Picking it up he felt around the base. At the time the Opera House had been in before it had been shut down, technology was just starting to pick up. The torches were oil-activated; much like gas-lamps. He hoped there was still oil in it and was met with a grim satisfaction when a soft gold glow lit up the small three-foot radius around him.
Funny, how after so long, he had been hoping for light.
Glad he could not see his own reflection, he pointed the light downward, now watching where he was going more closely. Debris littered the aisle, debris that grew worse as he headed closer to the stage. His breath caught in his throat as the small beam of light fell upon the stage. How horrible it looked.
And it was all his fault. The charred remains, the charcoal grey color of the stage itself; the gaping, ripping hole right in the center. Where he had dragged -
Never mind.
Cat like reflexes still intact, he jumped up onto the stage, not bothering with the stairs at the sides. He walked slowly to the hole, his footsteps echoing around the empty Opera House. If he was anyone else, he’d find it eerie. But, he was the Phantom of the Opera.
Using the soft glow of light to see down into the hole. Doing some quick thinking, he jumped down in one swift movement of swishing cloth. He landed catlike at the bottom and made his way back into his dungeons, going on impulse and not quite thinking his actions through. Unusual for him it may be, but he was wild tonight. He did not care.
As he went down the passageways he lit the lamps with the one in his hand, until he arrived at the dungeon.
The dungeon. His home.
The mask.
Frustrated, she flung the covers off of her and sat up, her feet coming to rest on the cold wooden floor. She glanced at the window – the sky was just turning a pale shade of pink. Dare she? Dare she go-?
Her eyes fell on her ballet shoes. Something deep inside her flared – some passion, some emotion she couldn’t quite place, but whatever it was it led her, fueled her, and she jumped out of bed. Before she knew it, she had street appropriate clothes, her shoes, a hat to hide her face –
-And her hand on the knob of her door. Here, she faltered. Could she go? What if someone were to come in and see her missing; what would they think? What if something happened to her? Sure, it was almost day, but who knew who could be waiting near the door, just waiting for someone to come along, for the opportune moment.
She glanced back into the room, her eyes falling now on the desk drawer. Her hand curled into a fist around the bone-white object in her pocket. Again, that passion fueled her, and her hand turned the knob. Before another thought could cross her mind, she was out the door, down the hall, out of the house and down the street.
Her feet were automatically taking her to the building she’d lived in for most of her life, where she’d grown as a young woman and a ballerina.
Her home.
The light coming in through the windows was just enough so that she could see. This area of the Opera House wasn’t so bad, so affected by the fire. But as she walked into the house, looked down at the stage, she cringed. The seats near the front were almost completely destroyed, as were some of the boxes close to the stage. The stage itself was charred grey, with a large gaping hole in the middle. As she walked down the aisles, she was now staring down at her own feet, avoiding the debris in the middle. The carpet became charred and scratched as she got closer to the stage. With a sad sigh, she turned, walking to the stairs that led up to the stage. She stepped lightly on it, afraid that the floor might give in. She was tiptoeing toward the hole, starting to peer down it, when suddenly she heard a noise.
Spinning around, her frightened gaze found the cause of the noise. She almost screamed, had she not been so surprised. Her eyes met those of Erik, the phantom, standing right behind her, a menacing look on his face.
Cloaked in shadows, his eyes fell upon a blonde young woman, stepping carefully down one of the aisles, much as he had done hours ago, except she didn’t hit the torch lying on the ground. He saw her pained expression as she saw the stage and its condition, her sigh as she stepped up onto it.
He saw her step cautiously toward the hole, and felt he should stop her. She was coming too close to his feelings.
Stepping forward, he inwardly flinched when his foot hit some bit of glass on the floor. She spun around, startled, right as he stepped up behind her.
“Who are you?” he said rather than asked. His first night here and already there is interference? He knew God must have hated him, but this much?
“M-meg,” she stuttered, still obviously shaken up.
“Meg,” he repeated, a bit smugly. “What, do you not possess a last name? Are you a woman of the streets, come to find some shelter?”
“Meg Giry,” she said angrily. He’d struck a chord. “The daughter of the woman who took you in!”
The smug smile on his face drooped off. He had much respect for Madame Giry. He would not insult or injure her daughter...Yet.
“You should not be here,” he said, turning away. “I have much respect for your mother, Mademoiselle. But that will not save you for much longer if you continue annoying me. Leave.”
“And why should I?” she said defiantly. “This place is as much of my home as it is yours. My whole life, I grew up here. Maybe I’d like to stay.” While her eyes remained squinted as she stared down the Phantom, she was inwardly shocked at her words. Stay?! Of course not! Why would she want to stay? And yet, a voice in her head – or maybe it was her heart – said that maybe…maybe she would like to stay. For a little while.
The Phantom squinted back. What? Did she really say that? Did she really mean that? He was confused. And he did not like being confused.
“And you would want to stay because…” His voice held a little bit of a disbelief, an angry disbelief and smugness all wrapped up into one.
“Maybe-” she stopped, staring around her. “Maybe I’d like to fix it up and reopen?”
Once again, the expression drooped off of his face. She had a way of stopping him in his tracks and making him rethink himself. While he did not enjoy being bested in the slightest, he enjoyed the battle of minds. He had not had one of those in a very, very long time.
“Really.”
“Yes, really,” she said, once again defiantly.
He stared at her, analyzing her meaning and her thoughts. “Fine, you want to stay and rebuild? Go ahead. But do not bother me.”
Her mouth dropped open. “O-okay then.” He turned to go, and she watched him, confused. Why had she won that so easily?
As he walked away, he realized with a start that she had not flinched once at his completely uncovered face. Once he was alone, he stopped to stare down at the floor, unseeing. How could this be? She was…different.
Different from everyone else. He felt some odd feeling at that moment. What was it that that girl could evoke in him?
But after a few weeks of enduring each other’s company, she confronted him. He was in Christine’s old room, with the mirror. She did not notice at first the rose in his hand, clutched tightly, or his pained and annoyed expression. “I really think if you’d help, we could get this done!” she said angrily.
“I never said I wanted to rebuild the place,” he said smoothly. “I just tolerated your presence here.”
“But it could be even greater than before!” she said now, almost pleadingly. “It could return to being such a wonderful place! And maybe some of the old cast can come back-” before she’d cut herself off, she knew she'd gone a little too far. She knew whose face, whose name, flashed across his mind just then.
But he did not react how she would have expected him too. She would have expected him to react angry, shouting, mad, throwing things – but no. He glared at her.
“You are foolish,” he said. “I suggest you leave.” And he turned to go.
If he hadn’t turned to go, he would have seen her sudden look of despair but also of realization. Before she had time to think about what she was saying, before she had time to think of what might happen –
“I love you.”
He stopped walking, as if completely frozen by her words. Slowly, he turned around, and on his face was a smile – though it was completely void of any happiness or joy. It was bitter, ironic, and immediately her stomach sank. She knew that whatever it was he was about to say, she most likely would not like it.
“Love? You jest,” he said, his tone matching his expression.
“No,” she said. “Ever since…” she stopped, and started again. “Christine wasn’t the only one who heard you coaxing her to sleep when she was young.”
That surprised him. Her admission shocked the bitter look right off of his face. She could always do that. She continued. “I knew…after I heard…I knew there was something more to you than what everyone said. I knew…” She stopped, staring into the distance. “Against my mother’s wishes I went down to search for you and Christine. I-I found your mask, and I kept it. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Wondering where I was? Where a hideous monster like me could possibly go after that?”
“Wondering whether you were okay,” she said softly, looking at him gently. She did not take the bait, as she might have normally. Now was not the time. It would make more of an impression…make him believe her more…if she didn’t sink to his level. Whether he knew it or not.
He stared at her. A realization seemed to come to him. “I cannot love you,” he said finally. “I did not think I could love at all. Then Christine…” he trailed off. “A part of me will always belong to her. You know that.”
“I wouldn’t have spoken if I didn’t know that,” she said, almost defiantly. “Of course I know.”
He frowned, obviously confused by her meaning. “You know? And you would still- you would still love me? A monster, who won’t even love you…and you would love me.”
She met his eyes openly and nodded.
He nodded once, accepting this. “I cannot love you like you may love me,” he said. “But I certainly will try.”
She smiled an almost ironic smile. “That’s all I ask of you.”
He started and gaped at her. She dared - ! But he noticed the gentle smile on her face. She meant nothing by it. He wondered now if she even knew…knew what had happened…
She probably didn’t. For once, he smiled back, and her smile seemed to brighten and intensify. She bounded up to him and slipped her hand in his. The rose that had presently been there was knocked out, but the look on her face said she didn’t mean it. She looked at him a little wearingly but he only squeezed her hand, not even looking down but staring straight ahead.
For once, when one of his roses fell to the ground, it didn’t seem to cleave his heart in two. The rose was not directly intended for Christine...but oh how he'd thought of her as he held it closely in his hand.
For once, he felt at peace, Meg’s small hand held in his large but nimble one.
For once he thought that, just maybe, he could enjoy being loved and not wearing his mask. For once, just maybe, he might be able to forget Christine.
Once in a while.
XXX
A/N: Well how did you like it, my pretties? Okay, so it wasn’t as…non-happy-ending-ish as I thought it’d be. I figured the “I can’t love you” part might shake you guys a little. Honestly if I weren’t in a mood right now, it’d bother me too. I don’t like half-way happy endings. I want full blown, “I love you with all my heart”“I love you too, let’s go ride off into the sunset” endings. So, this is different for me. Way different. In fact, if I were a reader and not the writer, this ending would probably piss me off. But, considering the story line itself, I think this fits. At least a little.
And I apologize for the abruptness of it. It was kind of weird and hurried there in the middle, yes? But I am soo tired right now I won't go back and fix it. If I'm going to do that, why not make a multi-chap fic? NO! I've not the patience! So please cheerest me up, my darlings, and review!!
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