12/3/07 edit! OK this story will be on hiatus for a bit... or continuing to be on hiatus so I can work out the story a bit and fix some mistakes. I'm thinking I will redo the last part after the flashback arc maybe consolidate a few chapters shrugs who knows where I will go with this. I apologize to all those who have been reading and waiting patiently for a new update, DON'T WORRY I should have something new up soon ( I better considering I have about 5 pages worth of outlined story to put into story mode lol). So until then Happy Holidays!

Ratings for: Violence, Language, Adult Content (at least I think it's Adult Content), Substance Use (it's not the opera house without some of that hee hee ) And just over all safety on my part... don't want some person to message me saying I put too mature of material in the story . better safe than sorry.

Ok this is my first attempt at a fic and in all honesty i started over 2 years ago and yeah it's still a work in progress (what can i say school can be tough!) but yeah i'm open to any pointers when i get through putting up everythingthat i got. (which isn't too much after this) but flames are allowed (i like constructive critism(i know i probably spelled that wrong but eh who cares) ) hope you like the story!

Prologue

As the hot tears ran down his face, he told her no pleaded with her to stay after she returned only to say goodbye. He proclaimed to her with his comforting and now sorrowful voice, "Christine, I love you." She simply looked at him with pitying eyes and returned to Raoul. As they slowly drifted out of sight he sobbed to the empty cave,"You alone can make my song take flight. It's over now, the music of the night!" He knew the mob was coming soon and that if he didn't leave soon, he would be killed. He didn't want them to destroy all he worked so hard to complete, but then he had built it for Christine. In a sudden wave of sorrow, realizing that she would never come back, he picked up the candlestick closest to him and destroyed the mirrors of his lair. They brought only grief and memory, they had shown his ugliness to himself and reminded him daily of it; they would never show Christine admiring the dresses he would have bought her, but the most painful thing about them was that they were his gateway to Christine. Countless times he had visited her through the dressing room mirror, so many times he taught her to sing from behind that mirror, or to bring her across the lake to his home. The memories overwhelmed him,he destroyed every shard of glass and mirrors he could find. The mobs yells and footsteps were almost upon him, when he finally overcame the sudden outburst of rage. He walked to the one mirror that had been his passageway to the outer world, to Christine. He pulled aside the tapestry and looked back at what had been his home, his sanctuary and then took his first step on his long, lonely journey into the world. Just as the curtain closed on the empty mirror frame, the mob came to a halt in the Phantom's lair; all shocked to find that it was a reality, he was not a myth.

Main Story

(Same Day)

Meg Giry slowly walked forward out of the crowd and to the organ. She picked up the pale mask that had been laid on its face, she didn't know why but she felt a sadness in her heart for this creature living under the opera. She stopped the mob from destroying anything more than what was already ruined and told them he had left the place and that they should leave this place as it was, out of pity for the Phantom. As the mob left, for reasons she didn't understand, Meg went back to the old organ and gently picked up the mask and then she brought it back to her room with a feeling of sadness in her soul.

He wandered in the streets of Paris, his still unmasked face, hidden in the cloak he had worn in Don Juan Triumphant that previous evening, quietly wept as he found his feet taking him to the place where he had been a slave to the mocking and jeering of the gypsies. The feeling of being alone came over him again as the memories of the beatings and the hatred ran through his mind.. His only comfort during those horrible items had been his rag doll monkey, put together with the straw, cloth and coins that had littered his cage. He suddenly realized that he had left two of his most precious possessions at the cave: his music box and … his mask. He decided that they were probably destroyed in the rage of that angry mass that had been hunting him, but decided that he must try to at least retrieve what was left of these two special objects before it was too late. He would not get into the Operra as he had done in the past, because of the intense search to find the Phantom before he killed again. He whispered solemnly to the night, "I was defending my own or Christine's honor and safety. I have never been nor ever will be a random murderer. However, they will never see it that way. He needed the help of his longtime companion, madame Giry, to find a way around the people of the opera house and back into his sanctuary.

Meg Giry often found herself sitting at the organ in the abandoned lair after a few weeks from the Phantom's dissappearance, attempting to play some tune or sing along with the songs that she already knew to play. But she never went there out the mask at her side. She was beside herself with her emotions most of the time, she knew she didn't want the Phantom, a murderer, to come back and kill again, though secretly she wished he would return to this cave under the Opera House. The visits became the highlight of her day; she often wanted to go down there on some evening and find him sitting there at the piano, playing one of his pieces, like Christine had described him as always doing before she left. But she knew that it would probably never happen, he would have gone far away by now, chasing Christine and Raoul to their new home in England, where they planned to open their own theatre, where Christine would be the star. Meg gave a heavy sigh when she thought of her mother, who decided to go with them," Those Englishmen know nothing of Ballet as I do." she told Meg weeks before. She said she would leave only when Meg was ready to take over for her as the ballet instructor. She often chided Meg about going down to the lair as often as she did. "It is not safe for young Mademoiselles as yourself to be down there." Madame Giry told her countless times before, but she couldn't resist the urge to travel through the mirror into her own realm of music and tranquility.

The play was about to begin as the hooded figure approached the steps of the old opera house while the rain pounded all around him. He had waited weeks for the inhabitants of the building to have calmed into thinking he was gone for good. His plan had apparently worked, for a man came out of the theatre offering an umbrella to this strange man. He merely waved it away and entered into the warm dry interior of the Opera Populaire. The grand hall was full of the aristocracy and upper class of the Parisian society, making it easy for him to blend into the crowd so long as his hood remained up. He worked his way to a panel hidden beneath the elegant stairs, and with the grace and skill of a magician, moved the panel aside and stepped into the long dark halls he knew so well and disappeared from the large crowd preparing to see the new play, Faust.

Meanwhile, Meg listened intently to the hustle and bustle of the backstage predations', in anticipation for the girls' first performance. Her mother had left a week before and left Meg in charge of the chorus girls. The knots in her stomach tightened as she awaited her, yes, her ballet dancers to perform for the first time. She realized that the opera was about to start because the audience's chatter had increased. She had turned to give her girls one last piece of advice before their opening number, when out of the corner of her eye, a hooded figure weaving rapidly between the stagehands, as though he were looking for someone. The hood had turned toward her and upon noticing he'd been seen, he vanished. She rushed to the spot where she had last seen him but there was no trace of him left and apparently no one had seen him but her. A sudden thought came to her as the knots tightened a bit more, "It couldn't be, could it?" she murmured under her breath.

Yeah yeah i know it'sshort but i don't really have a lot to work with right now... and i'm just hoping i'll be able to finish this. lol well see ya soon!

(oh yeah and thank you phantomluver4ever1 for pointing out my memory lapse in the time thing i completely forgot to put it in there but i fixed it now.)