I do not own PotO nor do I profit off this story.
STOP! DON"T READ THE STORY!
...if you haven't read my story Tears of Joy. This is an AU of an AU I wrote years ago. In it, Meg is late which leads to an extremely severe, other-end-of-the-spectrum tale than mine. Yet again, This is a story off Tears of Joy, in which Meg Giry finds the phantom early and becomes friends, and then lovers with him. In ToJ There is sex, singing, dancing, a damnable duke, at least two shopping sprees, confusion, and cliff hangers all told in a comedy of errors fashion. I have been feeling depressed lately so I wondered what would have happened if I tweaked my story even the slightest.
Meg was late.
The floor collapsed beneath her slippered feet, and sent the blonde girl tumbling head over heels into the yawning black abyss that the cracked floorboards revealed. Her landing was abrupt, slamming the petite femme flat on her back, breathless. The girl's head hit last, and cracked audibly against the cement that broke her fall. Lights and colors flashed sharply, brightly, in front of her closed eyes, and scrambled her thoughts. For a moment she lay there, stunned, as she gasped for breath and tried to catch thoughts that swam and slipped like minnows through her fingers. Where was she . . . ? Who was she . . . ? Panic set in, before she remembered.
Meg. Her name was Meg and she was here at the opera house. The Paris opera house. She was touring the back room, following her friend . . .
Her friend . . .
Meg sat up slowly, clutching her head, and squeezing her eyes shut. She was here at the Opera Populaire in Paris France, following her friend . . .
Christine! Of course, it was so clear! Her brunette friend Christine, beautiful, talented Christine. She was following Christine and someone . . . someone stopped her so she snuck to the back of the opera because . . . Well, she couldn't quite recall, but that trivial detail meant nothing. She remembered her name, and Christine's, and all she needed to do was find her way through the twisted labyrinth of basements back to the ballet rats' apartment on the upper floors. Then she'd tell Christine all about her unfortunate lack of grace for a ballerina and send the usually somber brunette soprano into gales of laughter. It was a good plan, especially since Christine hadn't laughed in such a long time, ever since . . .
Black oblivion threatened, and Meg clutched her head tighter, curling into a ball to belay it. Fainting was definitely an option. Her head felt huge and cottony and she was wrong about something . . . After the episode passed Meg slowly uncurled from her fetal position and gradually sat up fully. She opened her eyes, and they adjusted to the light slowly. She could see nothing but black, but there, to her left was blacker . . . a wall! The blonder dragged herself carefully over to it and leaned back. She best take things slow, after all, Christine couldn't laugh at a corpse could she? Meg smiled briefly, but they clapped a hand to her head again as an ache hit it.
No! Christine wouldn't laugh, she'd be worried about . . . about something. No, about someone . . . Someone dark and evil. Meg shook her head and moaned at the pain it caused. No, not evil, she knew that. Christine was just silly, a child really. Erik would never hurt her . . .
Erik!
A flood of pain shut her eyes and she lost what little focus she gained.
Oh Erik! She was wrong, she hadn't been following Christine, that was years ago, when they were children, when she first met the dour Phantom of the Opera with his voice of an angel and learned of Christine's naivety. No, she was confused. The blonde ballerina nearly laughed but stopped. Any noise what-so-ever sent symbols banging in her brain. Well, that would be difficult to endure especially since Erik was going to teach her the higher notes today. He had always had faith that her lower timbre voice was capable of those notes.
She best hurry, or he'd get wrapped up in one of his operas and he'd forget about her . . .
Lost in his operas . . . he'd done that before. He'd given up on her and her heart was breaking truly it was. She loved him and he didn't love her and she was doomed. Despite the jagged shards of pain that hit her she sobbed quietly. Meg gasped in breath, feeling as if her throat was lined in glass. The air was ice cold and burned like fire, and her blood rushed through her faster and faster, as fast as her thoughts as she remembered. Oh gods! How could she stand this? This pain, it had filled her since the night she was late for her singing lessons with somber Erik and found him, mussed and lost in his own world. It was then she realized how much she cared for him, and knew he could never want her back. She panted in, trying to get enough air, there just wasn't enough air! It left her body that day and hadn't come back and she desperately, wildly, just wanted a decent breath!
No, she was confused again. She wasn't following Christine, or on her way to visit Erik, that was so long ago. And the pain was unendurable, but she could live with it, now it was more like a comfort than anything, after all, she had loved Erik for years. What really would kill her was when he stopped coming to her. He chased her halfway across the world and she fell into his arms. But no . . . it was wrong again. Meg sobbed in confusion. What was so wrong?! These memories popped behind her eyes like a half-remembered dream.
Two girls, one complaining and one glaring at the first in a carriage as they shopped.
A name, Edward, it whispered through her brain and hissed past her lips, but no face came with the name.
Arabian nights, with silken skeins and hot flesh.
Pirates and their bounty, the sun and the sea and the sex!
With no sense of time, no order it flashed through her, jumbled frames of her smooth pale body and long blonde hair tangled with a well muscled dark-haired man. Erik! With his sardonic brow and white half-mask, who wrung pleasures from her endlessly. He played her like a harp and he was a genius harpist. Erik, laying in bed beside her, drawing music on her back, Erik, playing with her hair, Erik asleep beside her so alone, so venerable it brought a prickle of tears to her eyes. Erik . . .
Erik . . .
Meg couldn't handle it. She couldn't stop it. None of it made any sense, but it all fit. It fit but was wrong, it was so wrong! What was wrong?! She dropped her head back, smacking it against the wall she leaned into, wincing and crying out. It felt good to cry out, to verbalize her pain so she screamed in frustration and fear and pain! Because she was in pain, and no physical pain could come close to watching Erik take Christine. He made her his and she was alone, she was so alone! She burned and froze and exploded and imploded all at once, at the same time and she couldn't BREATHE! Someone let her out! She couldn't breathe. There was no air down here!
She stood and swayed with pain, ignoring the thick, liquid trail seeping from the back of her head. She needed to get out, because she was so confused and hurt and it was her, but it . . . it was wrong! Her eyes were open but she wasn't seeing anything, so she banged her hands again the wall. It echoed hollowly, and collapsed at her next blows, bent backwards and fell.
And shattered.
It wasn't a wall! It was glass, her eyes were focused now, and she could see in the gloom. She was in the mirror room which was familiar but not, and terrifying. Her eyes traced the cracked and destroyed glass, following the trail all the way into the secret room. It was secret she knew, and she hated it because Erik said it was where he . . . where he . . .
And then stopped, her life stopped, her heart stopped. Her breath froze in her lungs and she was sure the earth stopped moving, because there he was. Erik. It was he, undeniably. There was the mask, held loosely in one hand. The hand that wasn't holding the sword that skewered him through the chest, through his white poets' shirt. Her mind broke further. There was no blood, but it would be better it there were. There was no blood because skeletons couldn't bleed. And that's what he was, a skeleton, patches of mummified flesh clinging balefully to his skull, his ruined face now totally equal, because there wasn't any flesh.
Meg tilted her head back and screamed.
~_*_~
"Meg? Meg honey, are you okay?" A smooth female voice asked. Meg drifted toward consciousness slowly, her mind trying to avoid the terror of its last conscious thoughts. A cool hand touched her brow. "There you are sweety. Its okay, I'm here now."
"Mom?"
Yes, it was her mom, her real mom, and it was so obvious! Her name was Meg Turkin. She was thirteen years old. She and her mother and her father went on vacation to Paris, France. They were touring the remains of the opera Populaire, which was so boring that she skipped off the path and then fell through the age-wearied floor boards. She was Meg Turkin. Thirteen years old and it was 2009. Meg opened her eyes and sobbed, before flinging herself into her mother's arms. As the young girl cried in relief, the doctor, her father, and the proprietor of the remains of the opera Populaire talked quietly outside the door.
"-terribly sorry." The proprietor apologized again.
"No, Ms. Fevre, she wasn't supposed to leave the tour group." Her father shook his head. Ms. Fevre, a thin woman with a worried look and mousy brown hair nodded.
"Yes, but I'll pay expenses, just the same." She shook her head. "A death trap, that's what that place is. Is the little girl okay?"
"It's just a bump really." The doctor reassured them. "Head wounds bleed terribly. Mr. Turkin is it? I could have sworn she said her last name was Giry . . . "
"What?" Mr. Turkin noticed Ms. Fevre's stiffening. The woman paused, seeming torn between her desire to be honest and her desire to run away from his question. "Please, Ms. Fevre. You know the name?"
"Yes, yes, of course I do. Everyone knows the name Giry. Madam Giry was the ballet instructor, ages ago, when my grandfather ran the Opera Populaire." Ms. Fevre nodded to herself and spared a glance at the girl, beginning to fall asleep in her mother's arms. "Terrible way to solve a mystery, a young girl like that falling in the lap of death, as it was . . . "
"What do you mean?" Mr. Turkin asked. She met his gaze steadily and then sighed.
"Yes, I supposed you should know." Ms. Fevre looked past him as she continued. "Madam Giry had a child, a girl child by the name of Meg. Yes, like your daughter. She was petite, and blonde, and a beautiful ballerina. When the chaos of the Phantom of the Opera nonsense began she was right in the middle. You see. He was blamed. The Phantom was. He was blamed when she disappeared."
"Meg Giry?"
"Yes, Meg Giry. Up and gone, right under their noses. They found her weeks later. It was the smell. She had fallen through the floorboards not to far form where your daughter tripped. She broke her leg you see, in the fall. Died quickly, I imagine. Or hope really. It's too much to imagine a child lost beneath the floors like that. In any case, she was found and beneath her was a passage that the phantom was using to secret the young Madamselle Daee away from her bed at all hours. They hunted him down like a dog, but lost him in the basements. There were seven you know, basements that is. A while later they found his home. He'd made a wonderland with the refuse of the Opera house. Like a rat. Another chase, and after that . . . nothing. He was gone. Young Miss Daee was married off to some Viscomte in the end. That was that, except no one ever heard from the phantom again. I guess it was too much to imagine he got away." Ms. Fevre grabbed her purse and moved to leave, before pausing and looking back. "Makes one wonder though, doesn't it?"
"Wonder what?" Mr. Turkin asked, following her gaze to his pigtailed daughter, asleep on the bed.
"Wonder what would have happened had little Miss Giry survived."
FIN
A/N:: Okay, there it is. If Meg Giry was late and missed the Phantom. Basically, she landed about twenty minutes after Christine and Erik disappeared. She tried to move in the darkness and managed instead to break her leg. She bled to death, and no one was the wiser. So, yeah . . . don't know why I wrote this and if you are sitting there, confused as hell, then obviously you haven't read Tears of Joy. Short versions? All the memories were of Meg's in ToJ. I kind of think the spirit of Meg haunted his body, weeping for what could have been, a twilight zone sort of thing, you know? So, they found the tunnels ahead of time, hunted down the Phantom and someone managed to shank him, before running away. The Phantom dragged himself into his secret place and died there. Gloomy huh?
There's my one-shot!