A/N: Alright, for a little backstory, yes I messed with the timeframe quite a bit, to make Meg around 7 or 8-ish and Erik around 13 or 14-ish. Somewhere in there. And of course, we all know how little kids are...


Erik watched her from deep in the shadowy corner as the little girl danced playfully around the storage room as if it was a ballroom, picking various masks at random from the open crates.

"Hehe, look at this one!" Meg Giry giggled out loud, holding a silver mask with huge pink feathers up to her eyes and twirling in the mirror before putting it down

"You cannot hide behind the masks forever" an ominous voice boomed

She whipped around and smiled even brighter, "Erik!"

"Meg." He replied calmly, hardly helping to smile a little himself

"Oh Erik, take that thing off!" the girl ordered, reaching herself for his mask, "You look ridiculous"

"You know why I wear it" he chided jerking away from her reach.

"And you know that I only judge you by appearance when you wear that thing!"

At last, she peeled the stupid-looking mask from Erik's face, her face smiling with triumph.

"We go through this every time, Meg" he growled.

"Exactly, so you should be used to it by now, and you know what comes next."

He sighed, "Yes, I do…" and allowed himself to be dragged by the hand to the full-length mirror.

"So say it with me, 'It's not that bad'." She insisted

"Why do you have to do this to me, Meg?" he demanded

"'It's noooot… iiiiit's nooooot…'"

"Every time-"

"'Jiiiit's noooot thaaaaaaaat…"

"'It'snotthatbad." He finally gave, mumbling the words in a slurry of syllables.

"See? You did it! Soon enough, you're going to start believing it! And, I have something to help you!"

With that, she disappeared into a mountain of crates, reappearing moments later with a porcelain object cradled carefully on her fingertips.

"See, I figured, that maybe if you didn't look so darn silly with your mask, you'd be more" she shrugged, "Confident, I guess."

In her hands was a mask, but not just any mask. It didn't uselessly cover only his ruined eye, or unhelpfully cover his entire face in a suffocating manner. It was half of a mask that covered all of the important parts and didn't bother with being any more useless than it had to be.

"H-How does it go on?" Erik stammered, astonished.

"Here, let me help you"

With the audacity she kept, the girl lifted his wig clean off his head, revealing random tufts of dirty blonde.

"Hold this" she ordered, shoving it into his hands and taking the mask from him. "See, if you hook the wire like this and then" she took the wig back, "Arrange the wig like that- ta-daaah! Go check yourself out!"

Erik stared into the mirror.

"Now, repeat after me, 'iiit's noooot-'"

"'Not that bad'? For all that you are annoying- Meg you're a genius!"

Overjoyed, he lifted her right off the ground, swinging her around in his embrace.

"Thank you, Meg… I've never felt this way before, so… so…"

"Confident!" she filled in.

"Yes, that! I feel confident!" he cried with excitement.

And that was how the final piece of the Phantom of the Opera came to be.


A/N: Thanks for reading, reviews appreciated!