She is not beautiful, but she is striking, Girard thought as he watched Anahid dance.
A haze of uncertainty and anticipation clung about the year 1863 in the great palace of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar. The 32-year-old shah was entering his fifteenth year of rule, and his reformist ideals coupled with his brutal punishment of perceived traitors unnerved his populous. Globally, Great Britain had seven years before waged war on him for reclaiming land in Afghanistan, which was too close to British-occupied India for the empire's comfort. Such unfettered
initiative in a leader then so young disturbed even the officially neutral French empire.
The young Persian king felt an instant kinship with this Frenchman Julien Girard. Scarcely five years younger than Naser, Julien was the youngest ambassador to Persia in his country's history, and his youthful inexperience contrasted with his canny ability appealed to Naser. Although Julien was almost three months into his stay, this was the first time Naser was able to persuade him to join the shah for a night's formal entertainment.
Julien Girard was a svelte young man whose bearing bespoke his formal education and rigid upbringing. His handsome face held both a look of boyish youth and dignified agelessness. Fair-haired with blue-gray eyes, he had a candid way of assessing a room that made people look at him initially with approval—but when they studied him more closely, they were vaguely put off by the unsettled dance of his eyes that were constantly skimming over people and objects, always in motion, always as if looking for something better, more satisfying, more true.
These eyes were now focused on Anahid, watching her dance.
She is not beautiful. Handsome, perhaps, in an unconventional way. But she is not beautiful. His gaze never left her whirling form.
He stood in what he could only describe as a ballroom. It was a vast open space with gilded pillars. The evening breeze floated in through lilac veils, incense lacing the air. A bendir drum and chang harp accompanied Anahid's dance. She moved with pinpoint precision on the king's elegant rug in the center of the great room.
Julien's mission was primarily one of maintenance. Beyond the usual negotiations for trade, the instructions he'd received indirectly from Napoleon III were to express the emperor's sympathies to the shah in regards to Persia's plans for expansion—while expressing with utmost tact that France absolutely would not budge in their own territories should Naser's ambition expand even further. So far, Julien knew not what to make of the young shah. He was a strange contrast of the old and the new. He held reformist leanings and was a well-read young man. He was particularly fascinated with Europe, constantly asking Julien about the latest technology, literature, and art in Julien's home country. He often expressed his hope to visit there, which would make him the first modern Persian monarch to do so.
Yet in a second those intelligent and overeager eyes could flash with malicious haughtiness as he ordered the death of a dissenting Bábí. In short, he spoke with liberal fervor but acted with brutality —something that reminded Julien dolefully of the French court.
Despite his youth, Julien was a favorite of Napoleon's. He had spent most of his early education in the streets, handing out pamphlets, crying for reform, gathering others to his cause, singing the praises of the brave and steadfast third Napoleon. Yet an uneasy jadedness entered the once revolutionary heart of the young Girard. The fervor that expelled him from his own noble home, leaving him disowned, had caused France's new emperor to embrace him. It was this
same emperor that helped quell that fervor almost completely when nothing in society seemed to change for the better—never for the better.
He couldn't help the cynical burst of bitterness in his breast when he recalled that his family only agreed to reconciliation when Napoleon became more and more conservative, and when they heard the news of Julien's ascension to his lofty position of ambassador.
It was true that recently Napoleon showed signs of leniency, relaxing his more conservative measures and even inviting back exiled citizens into the country. But Julien scoffed at the idea this came from a crisis of conscience; more likely a crisis of advisers and a rebellious populous that quailed at the thought of war in Prussia and needed some sort of positive reinforcement.
Julien struggled with his borderline treacherous feelings toward Napoleon and his innate desire to execute his job well. Yet on this evening such thoughts were far from the young man's mind. Tonight, he watched Anahid dance. He was trying violently to dismiss her from his mind when her black eyes met his for an instant as she turned—and his throat went dry, his chest clenching painfully.
Quiet figures clothed in black, indistinct, walked slowly around the circumference of the room, they too watching Anahid. Girard noticed that these indistinct figures followed Anahid wherever she went, her own shadowy ghosts. No one else ever deigned to notice them, ignoring them as though they were invisible specters that only Julien was privy to.
She twirled, the gold coins on her bodice and skirt jangling together. Their sound melded charmingly with the harp.
Anahid Najami was exactly Julien's age and looked older. She carried her tall form with majestic grace, her fierce black eyes staring luminously out from a strong-featured face with prominent bone structure. All her features were long: her straight nose, her full lips, those black eyes. The chestnut strands in her raven hair turned to fire in the candlelight. Her hands, feet, and limbs were also long; her tawny arms wrapped around her revolving frame like scarves caught in a spinning wheel. Her grave face, too, was long, and though it held no beauty the way Girard understood it, he could not tear his eyes away. His heart beat more insistingly than the bendir.
She was the shah's favorite dancer, despite the fact there were younger and more conventionally beautiful girls that begged for the king's eye. She was another example of Naser's unique liberality. She was considered an independent woman, someone who had studied abroad and mastered several languages and dialects, and could hold her own in political conversation.
Plus, no one possessed the versatility and talent Anahid did when it came to dance. She was an expert in classical court dances along with the Kereshmeh, Bandari, and she was even proficient in Western dances such as ballroom and ballet (both Western and Eastern versions). Naser sat now on a cushion with shining eyes staring in light satisfaction as Anahid gave him a soft smile full of mystery as she gyrated, a smile that instantly made Julien's cheeks turn to flames and an unexpected hatred for Naser fill his breast.
Her mother had been a Turkish refugee with Persian and Mesopotamian blood, he learned. Her father had served as the chief of police, or daroga, under the reign of Naser's father. Anahid's unconventional education and upbringing put her in an invaluable position as go-between for Julien and the shah. Naser assigned her as Julien's unofficial envoy. She made the usually solemn Julien laugh out loud the first time they met at a more informal gathering than the present one, when she mimicked perfectly the dialect and slang of a typical Parisian grocer.
He hated that he could never look away.
He would watch as her eyes, glittering, would sometimes leave the faces of those she conversed with at court, and swim to those indistinct figures dressed in black—Julien at last learned they were part of Persia's secret police force, never speaking, never truly seen by the petted gentry in the palace.
After her father died she'd lost all her contacts within the police, she told him. He resented she took him for such a fool.
He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding when Anahid with a swift bow ended her dance and the music stopped. He didn't know he'd still been staring transfixed until he started when the shah's hand shot out and clutched his arm.
Julien swallowed a grimace when he noticed that the shah's eyes—which could be so thoughtful, contemplative—held instead the look of brutality. Naser grinned. "Wait, my dear friend, until you see what I have next!"
With an excited wave of the hand, he signaled to Anahid. For the first time Julien noticed a suppressed look of irritation cross her face. Still, she bowed stiffly again and exited the hall.
The shah leaned back on his cushion. "You'll see," he said to Julien.
Anahid re-entered, leading a figure behind her.
The figure was that of a tall and slender young man. He was dressed all in black, save for a white silk mask that covered vertically one half of his face. Julien leaned forward a bit, narrowing his eyes as he gazed at the exposed side. It was eerily pale, almost as pale as the mask. The half of the lips Julien could see were grotesquely swollen, almost inhumanly so, and seemed permanently formed into a lewd, sensual sneer. He possessed very little hair, yet he was quite young, Julien thought; fifteen at the oldest.
Anahid pronounced one word: "Erik". Another bow, and then Anahid slipped silently away. That was another skill of hers: despite her powerful presence and striking looks, Anahid could become so quiet, so still, she would make you forget she was there, turn as invisible as the black figures circling and circling...
Erik stepped forward to the king. "Great shah," said the most hypnotically beautiful tenor Julien ever heard from a man. With the grace of a trained dancer, Erik dipped into a low bow and then presented, seemingly out of nowhere, a Punjab lasso.
Naser laughed heartily, eyes sparkling.
Julien looked for Anahid. She was not smiling with the rest of the court.
For the next fifteen minutes Erik amused the assembly with various awe-inspiring tricks. First the lasso was very large, then it was small; then it was completely knotted, then it was straight; then it whipped out like a cobra and coiled itself around the shoulders of a shrieking and giggling concubine.
In spite of himself, Julien was enthralled by the graceful sleight of hand the boy possessed.
He felt the shah bat at his arm again. He pointed enthusiastically to the mysterious boy. "Look, look!"
From the same unknown place he stored the lasso Erik now produced an ornate hand mirror. "A good shah always knows what's on his subject's mind, my liege," Erik said. "Let us study the faces of those assembled, shall we?" He started singing an ethereal song in a Persian dialect so ancient Julien could not recognize it. He sang in such a pure voice it unwillingly brought tears to the Frenchman's eyes (he later learned this was an original composition of Erik's, 'The Ballad of Mirrors'). With long slender fingers, Erik unhooked something in the mirror so that it dangled on its hinge, then with his gloved hand he set it spinning.
First the fat laughing face of one of the advisers suddenly appeared. He was sitting at the opposite end of the spacious room. Julien froze. Such a trick was unearthly, surely...then, a lovely concubine, disappearing embarrassed into her fan. Then three more, then four more surprised and delighted subjects appeared in the looking glass. Then Julien's own taciturn face, that turned beet red and earned a good ribbing from his royal host.
Finally the mirror reflected Anahid's face- a face full of the saddest resignation in the world.
The sight of her seemed to shame both the shah and Erik, for the king signaled to Erik that it was time for the finale. Sustaining the highest note Julien had yet heard from a human voice, Erik spun the mirror twice more. The first spin reflected Erik's own face with its mask, then-
Terrified screams and gasps filled the hall.
Julien staggered.
The countenance in the mirror made him think for a quick moment that the spinning glass opened the gates of hell.
A demon stared out.
The half of Erik's face the mask hid was now revealed. Dark red caverns twisted the chalk-white face, the distorted swollen lips like those of some deep-sea creature. Above them one nostril looked almost melted, spread above his philtrum. Patches of his skin were corpse-white, others like yellowed parchment. And always the dark red caverns, that large star-shaped indent on the side of his skull, exposing what looked like brain tissue but was simply more discolored, distorted skin. His good eye was dark brown and beautiful; his other was a blue so pale it was almost white, the pupil an angry pinprick.
Julien didn't think something so hideous, so deformed, could live and breathe in real life.
Yet he didn't miss the deep sorrow in the mismatched eyes, the bitter intakes of breath that stuttered out at those assembled from that devil's mirror.
Still under the censuring influence of Anahid's gaze, Naser did not take as much satisfaction as he'd hoped from the performance. He still put on a good show, forcing a laugh and clapping markedly. "Good, good!" Suddenly determined to prove his reformist and humanitarian credentials, he stood and slapped an amiable hand on Erik's shoulder. "I saved this man from a degraded life in a sideshow outside your native France, monsieur. Now he is invaluable to me, not only as an entertainer, but as an architect and an adviser." Julien noticed that this kindly shah dared not look his hideous adviser in the face. "Wise beyond his years." Another pat, and the shah returned to his seat. "Thank you, Erik. Anahid, be so kind as to show him out, please."
Possessing the same sad grace from before, Anahid with almost motherly care led Erik out by his arm. Even she could not stare directly into his face.
Julien noticed the black figures were gone.
Sleep did not come easily to Julien that night. After nearly three months he still had not fully acclimated to the scorching dry heat or the rich food at court, and that combined with the perturbing images from the shah's soiree kept him jittery through half the night. When at last a light sleep fell on him, he dreamed of shadowy figures singing in ethereal unison, a whirling mirror reflecting faces that looked like a grotesque cross between Napoleon and Naser's, Erik's deformed
countenance with Julien's own eyes, and Anahid, Anahid, Anahid.
His eyes flew open with the preternatural sense something just happened. He sat upright, listening to the salty hot breeze that flowed through the gold-embroidered curtains. Perhaps it was just the sound of his own panting breath, but he felt sure that he heard the quick whisper of footsteps below his window.
All at once they stopped, and he heard hushed voices. One was a woman's. He put his back to the wall by the window and peeked through the gauzy curtain.
He could not see clearly through the darkness, but he had her form and gestures memorized so well by now that there was no doubt. The figure beside her was tall and slim, and clutching his shoulder as if injured. Anahid shushed her companion when he suddenly let out a sharp laugh, like a drunken madman. They disappeared into the shadows, hurrying away.
Julien pulled on his clothes quickly. Working purely on instinct, he lit his lantern and stepped out into the hall, slipping past the guards' notice.
He touched his fingers to the cold pavement below his window, feeling the damp red spots he found there. Blood. He was comforted remembering it was Anahid's companion that appeared wounded, not she.
He extended his arm holding the lantern so he could see farther down the walkway and noticed that the droplets of blood traced a trail around the corner of the palace wall.
He did not question his motives. He followed the crimson path.
The lantern burned mellow in the deep black night. He turned at every rustling sound, only to register it as the warm breeze stirring the Cyprus leaves bordering the palace walkway.
All of a sudden the trail ended, in the middle of the walkway by the palace's East wing. Julien turned to the right, studying the grass by the pavement. No sign of blood there, or footprints.
He was mystified. Then something about the square of pavement the blood ended on caught his eye. He bent down, putting the lantern on the ground to better see.
The blood seemed to trickle down into the cracks. Julien hesitantly lifted a hand and knocked lightly on the surface. Then he stood up swiftly. Hollow. The panel was hollow.
Crouching again, he ran his fingers down the groove of the panel. He stopped once his fingers caught on something that felt almost like a button.
Swallowing drily, he pushed.
With a soft whooshing sound the panel rose, allowing Julien to slip his fingers further down the grooves and lift it. A trapdoor.
Luckily there was no creaking to be heard: the work of a master. Dimming his lantern, Julien peered down to see the top of two heads below, sitting at a table in a small cell.
He recognized the part in Anahid's hair and the scant traces of Erik's.
Julien cupped his ears to hear what their quiet voices were saying.
"Stop that ghoulish laughter," Anahid said in a low voice. "You could have been killed."
A dark snicker. "Yes, I do believe that was the assassin's goal, my dear." Julien heard Erik hiss, taking in a breath. "I know you're angry, Anahid, but must you take out your frustration while sewing me up?"
So that was what Anahid was looking at so intently, her head bowed. She was sewing up the wound in his shoulder. She muttered something that was either an apology or another scolding. Either way Erik simply snickered again.
"You should have let me kill him," Erik said in an easy voice, as if it were simply something that came to mind.
"That shows how young you are," she answered drily. "Knocking him out like I did will only anger him. Killing him would incense his fellow assassins in the force. I think we'll have enough trouble from their end as it is."
"How did you know they were after me?"
"I knew it was coming. I knew for certain it was tonight when they disappeared after your performance." There was a long silence.
At last Erik spoke. "They'll know you saved me," he said quietly.
"I suppose they will," she said in a voice so soft Julien almost didn't hear it.
In a sad sing-song voice Erik asked, "And what are we to do about it, hmm?"
"May I be of assistance?" It took Julien a moment to realize it was his voice that spoke. He stared down with a surprisingly composed face at the upturned ones of the two below. For perhaps the first time in both their lives, Anahid and Erik were taken aback, momentarily speechless.
Then Erik opened his mouth wide—from what Julien could see of it behind his mask—and emitted such a loud barking laugh that it resembled a wild hyena's more than a man's.
Anahid ferociously pressed her hand to his mouth, hissing, "Shh! Shh!" With graceful dexterity, Julien swung himself inside and closed the trapdoor behind him before any chance wanderers outside could hear that hysterical fiendish laugh. He climbed nimbly down the ladder into the cell.
He stood before them.
"Well?" He asked.
Anahid recovered herself and raised an arch brow. "Well?" She answered back. "What do you want, monsieur?"
"To spy on us," Erik nearly giggled. "To report us to the shah!" He burst into another inhuman laugh. Anahid's fathomless black eyes met Julien's.
Blue-gray and remote like a winter pool's, she thought.
"No, I don't think he shall," she said with the realization of certainty.
"No, I shan't," Julien said in a tone of inarguable finality. He fished into his pocket for a cigar. He lit it and leaned back against the wall. "Still, I wouldn't mind an explanation."
Anahid closed her eyes and sat silently for several minutes, apparently battling an internal war. Beside her Erik finished dressing his wound—a knife wound, Julien assessed from what he could see of it—as the deformed boy whistled a nonchalant tune.
At last Anahid opened her glorious eyes again.
She is like a statue of a fallen goddess, kneeling in the wreckage of war.
He blinked the thought away.
"Very well, monsieur," she said with a half smile. "I will tell you all."
Her father and refugee mother trained her in the art of subterfuge, of intrigue. When they died, she was recruited by the shah's family to work for the secret police, transmitting messages from her contacts either through her dancing—a quirk of her hand to the left could mean death, to the right that the papers were in the study- or through any means she had up her sleeve. It was work that took her often out of the country, completing her education.
One such trip about three years ago took her to the outskirts of France near Lausanne. She was masquerading then as a French laundress, and decided to blend in with a crowd gathered for a large traveling fair that had come to the city. Tumblers, conjurors, human oddities, and the like. She walked unimpressed among the villagers until she came upon a much advertised event: "The Demon Genius."
At her pronunciation of the title, Erik's whistling faltered, his finger freezing at the needle. With a shiver, he continued as she picked up her narrative again.
A man, locked in a cage—but no, a boy. A mere boy. It was hard to tell because he was so tall—and because of the distorted face- but he was a boy, nonetheless.
Others screamed at his face. Some jeered and threw bottles. Anahid only stared with tears frozen in her eyes as the circus master extolled Erik's genius locked away behind the facial deformities. As she watched, the boy began to sing. It was the voice of an angel, a pure angel...trapped in a cage, with scars on his back...
It didn't take much effort to convince the young shah to contrive an escape for Erik. Anahid knew he needed a new architect. When she described his skill and his face, spies were sent at once to free the boy, with Anahid standing guard. "I...pictured a different sort of life for him. A life where he could exercise his skills in the arts, in architecture." She motioned to the cell they were sitting in, the trapdoor above. "All this he designed, and all built within the space of but
three years. He was not even thirteen when I found him. I pictured-"
Julien jumped as he heard Anahid's voice right behind him, saying into his ear, "I pictured everyone living happily ever after with myself crowned as empress. Hee hee!"
A bemused look crossed her face. "He has also mastered throwing his voice. An unconventional form of ventriloquism."
Before Julien could answer, Erik spoke for him with Julien's own voice seemingly coming out of the Frenchman: "Intriguing, mademoiselle!"
Anahid shook her head wearily and continued. "Since then...well, I won't go into detail. But the shah wants him dead. And I no longer wish to lead a life such as this, it has no charm anymore, believe me. What's done is done. I suppose we shall both face our judgment tomorrow for evading the assassin."
"She says so casually," Erik sneered. "Knowing full well it will lead to both our deaths to present ourselves. That's what she's led me to: nothing but death."
She regarded him sharply. "Yes, and you'll take it like a man."
At this juncture Anahid stood. She approached Julien and spoke to him in a low voice. "May I speak to you outside?"
She turned to Erik. "Lie down. You need rest." She indicated a small cot Julien hadn't noticed before.
Julien could just barely make out Erik's mismatched eyes as they studied him. Erik at last nodded his assent. He carefully watched the two ascend the ladder.
They found a remote trail through an enclave of Cypress trees, Persian yellow roses lining their path, glowing eerily in the dark night.
Anahid stared into the sky, rubbing her arms. "I didn't want to describe what he's become in front of him, talking of him like he wasn't there."
Julien waited a moment before speaking. "And what has he become?"
She pinned him down suddenly with eyes full of frightened fire. "If nothing is done soon, he will become a monster."
There was nothing to say in reply.
She turned her face away, walking briskly now. "When Erik first entered his court, Naser treated him well, recognizing his genius, letting him work honestly. But then..." she drew in a deep breath. "The shah is not completely to blame. He took the throne too young, and is still easily led. The little sultana, who is now too sick to move, along with some old miscreants who still crowd the court are mostly at fault. Once it was discovered what lurked beneath the mask, they pressed the shah, demanded that his 'freak' be trotted out for their amusement." She shook her head. "Naser resisted for a while, but I saw their enthusiasm take hold of him as well."
"Don't think that's unique to the Persian court," Julien said bitterly. "I can easily see my fellow noble Frenchmen indulging in such exploitative behavior as well, including my fine emperor. It was a French sideshow you rescued him from, after all."
"Yes, perhaps it was to be expected. But it seemed to...break something in Erik, who thought he'd escaped that sort of degradation. It poisoned his soul. Soon he was volunteering his services for more...lurid purposes."
She shivered then, her eyes to the ground. "I first learned what his genius had turned to when the maze of mirrors was completed."
"Maze of mirrors?"
She shut her eyes. "I remember that day...the shah eagerly gathered us into the vault below the palace, below the cells you just saw. He led us into a narrow room with a long window in front of us. The window looked down into a pit, surrounded by multiple mirrors. In...in the pit were three men, dissenting Bábí." She licked her lips, her eyes frozen in the fear of recollection. "Erik...Erik pulled a lever." She all at once threw her hands over her face. "It was terrible, terrible! Believe me, monsieur, I am no shrinking violet who faints at the first sign of danger! I've earned my iron will and can withstand much, but this! The mirrors, they...they started spinning, it seemed..."
"Like tonight's demonstration," Julien murmured.
She nodded numbly. "Yes. Only instead of reflecting people, the glass reflected a desert scene, filled with tigers that would pounce on the dissenters, or snakes ready to strike. That was harmless, really, but then—the window—I felt it and my hands almost burned—he-he was suffocating them. He created a desert for them to die in, showing them images of water they could never drink. As long as I live I will forever hear their screams!" She let out a staggering breath. "Finally, finally the dissenters confessed whatever crimes the shah wanted them convicted for. They were released and granted a quick death."
Julien felt a chill that had nothing to do with the warm breeze.
She suddenly grabbed his arm and they were but a breath apart. Her eyes were wild and beseeching. "Yes, Naser turned him into an assassin. But please, please—don't think of him as beyond redemption! You see...I've seen him. Seen him nurse an ailing songbird back to life, take it to his bosom like a babe and give it life again. Seen him lie and help children escape who were under scrutiny for treason. I think he can still be saved. The shah has decided he's become too reckless—you saw his behavior just now, heard his laugh—and that he knows too much. He's amused by him, but he wants him gone, dead. Tonight was a grand finale to honor Erik—before sicking assassins on him."
"What of the boy's family?"
She shrugged, sighing. "He has none that will claim him. He ran away from home while still a child, which is how he was captured for the sideshow. He's implied he comes from a noble family, but not one that acknowledges a face such as his." Julien never before saw such tender appeal in her face. "Please, sir, try to show some compassion to one who's lived a life without any."
Julien found it difficult to answer when she was so close, when her loose dark mane was almost touching his cheek.
"And you?"
Her smile was infinitely sad and beautiful. "I meant what I said. I'll face whatever I have to. But monsieur...you are a kind man, I've seen it. I saw your sorrow as you gazed at his face tonight. Surely...surely if I present myself to the shah as a traitor, that would be distraction enough for you to spirit Erik away, to-"
She froze as he clutched both her arms. She stared at this face, more handsome than any she'd ever seen, his keen eyes stormy and sincere. "I will save him. I will take him wherever you will. But I will not abandon you. You come or I do nothing." Again, there was no room for argument in his tone, none.
Her voice was low. "You do realize that such an act will certainly make you not only an enemy of Persia but of your own country as well."
She could not understand the strange smile that flickered across his features. The grotesque face that was both Naser's and Napoleon's, he thought. Yes. Leave it. Leave it all behind.
He gazed at her passionately. "In exile...for you?" He pressed her lips to his, kissing her madly. He pulled away to gaze at her, running a gentle, revering hand over her waves of hair. "Gladly."
A slow, mischievous smile formed on Anahid's grave face as well. "No," she whispered. "Not for me. With me."
And she pulled him to her again, and they kissed once more, shaded by the Cypress trees.
A/N: Welcome to my headcanon backstory/sequel to the events of the stage show! This is strictly ALW musical based (not movie based, though I may borrow some details here and there). I'll use Leroux to fill in certain blanks, but character interpretations and plot points are all ALW-centered, filtered through my crazy brain. I haven't read Susan Kay's Phantom (I know, I suck), but I kinda feel like I have since I've read so much great meta about it and, well, I've shamelessly wiki'd it. So that might be unconsciously where I got the idea of assassins driving Erik out of Persia.
I am not at all what you'd call a history buff, but I am trying here. Even though I'm including real figures like Naser and Napoleon, this is basically a historical au, where the Opera House is not the Palais Garnier of history but the Opera Populaire of the ALW universe. I'm still going to mention real historical things here and there, but please be kind if I muck anything up. If it's a huge glaring error, call me out on it, but otherwise you might well go mad trying to correct every little..."liberty" (i.e. big fat mistake) I make. Just as long as it doesn't take you out of the story, let sleeping opera ghosts lie!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
Oh, and of course: I own nothing, nothing I tell you! ALW/Gaston Leroux/Fancy People Who Aren't Me own the rights.