Disclaimer: I don't own POTO but I do own most of the funny stuff in this post and I'm exceedingly over-proud of myself for this one. I had a lot of fun writing it and hope you have at least as much reading it.

Author's Note: Heartfelt thanks to ichigoV13 for becoming the 10th reviewer to post #6 (they're just so short I can't bear to call them "chapters") thus making me feel like enough people have read that it's time to go ahead and post the next bit. Additionally, it just coincidentally worked out that several of you (ichigoV13 included!) asked why our narrator is called Daroga if what we learned in Leroux's original is not exactly accurate. Lo! And Behold! THIS NEXT PIECE REVEALS IT! As to my grasp of the Persian language, it's purely nil, but I learned a little something from IG over at DeviantART that he says HE learned from a Persian friend of his, and this chapter could not have been written without that essential little bit of knowledge. If you get a chance, please visit IG (Iron Gibbet) at DeviantART and read his wonderful comic that also deals with the original Leroux novel and some amazing things that happen involving Erik approximately 100 years later. It's really fantastic (and sometimes he has contests for fanfiction writers, so if you're a writer, all the more reason to check it out!) Anyway, without further ado, here's part 7!


By that time I already had my ridiculous nickname, which is neither name nor title in Persian. That, too, is something Erik originated, apparently while he was working up to being able to cry on cue. He came up with it one afternoon out of the blue. "Daroga," he said, looking directly at me as though I were supposed to recognize the sounds for meaning.

"What does that mean?" I asked him.

"You ought to know," he said, "since you're Persian."

"Half Persian," I corrected him. "And I don't know what it means. You know I don't speak Persian. And neither do you!"

"It's Persian," he'd insisted. "That much is certain." He paused for thought a moment. "It's Persian for chief-of-police," he said decidedly.

"No, it isn't," I insisted.

He smiled that patronizing smile that I had seen him give both tutors and parents. "Isn't it? How does one say 'chief-of-police' in Persian, then, if you're such an expert?"

Well, he had me there; I hadn't a clue, but I certainly wasn't going to admit it to him that easily. I had no idea what daroga meant, if it was Persian or not, or how one said chief-of-police in the language of my mother's country, and it embarrassed me to be put on the spot this way. I allowed myself to get angry with him for it. "Stop making fun of my mother's ancestry!" I shouted at him to cover my embarrassment. I turned and stalked away.

He followed me, the same way I had seen him follow a girl or two on occasion. Except for me there was true sincerity in his voice. "I'm sorry, Rasheed," he said. "Truly I am. Please believe me. I wasn't making fun of you. I didn't mean it that way." I ignored him, walking fast. He lagged behind and called out, "I have the deepest respect for your mother!" I continued to ignore him for fully half a block.

Suddenly he was at my side again. "Please," he said. "You're my best friend. I don't know what I would do without you." I wouldn't have stopped if it hadn't been for that hitch in his voice. It was the just the faintest hint of a suppressed sob. It was so faint I doubted it, and I was still angry. I resisted him even as his jaw quivered.

"You don't know what you'll do without me? Well, I suppose you'll find out soon enough!"

He coughed. At least, that's what he would have me believe, but I was certain of the badly concealed sob beneath it and I turned back. "I'll think about it," I told him. Then I turned and ran from him before there was time to feel sorry enough to forgive him.


When I burst through the door that evening I ran straight to my mother without even greeting my father first. "What does 'daroga' mean?" I asked her outright without even offering her the courtesy of a good day.

She looked at me, baffled.

"Da-ro-ga" I said. "It's Persian, isn't it? What's it mean?"

And then she laughed, and I felt my face turn hot and I knew that I was red, despite my dark skin. Mother ruffled my hair and corrected my pronunciation.

"So it is a word then?" I could not decide whether or not I was horrified that Erik knew my mother's language better than I did.

"A phrase, really," she said. "It's a lie."

"What's a lie?" I glanced at my father, who shrugged back. Mother was really laughing now. "It's a lie," she said. "Daroga means 'it's a lie.'"

"Oh," I said. What more could I say? Oh. I couldn't stop smiling after that, though, for Erik was wrong.


I'll never forget the look on his face the next time I saw him. He was wearing his best apologetic face, hanging his head and looking up at me as he waited for me to accept his whined apology. "You don't know Persian, you moron," I said instead.

His apology was over with my last word. His head snapped up to face me and his eyes glittered dangerously. "I don't have to speak your language to destroy you," he said.

I was not afraid of Erik. I stared him down and said cheerfully, "You don't know what 'daroga' means. I bet you don't know any Persian at all!"

He fairly growled at me at that. "Oh really?" he sneered. "Then tell me little Persian, what does it mean?"

I gave him my most studious look. "Daroga," I said, "means 'it's a lie.' For example, if you said to me 'I speak Persian,' I might respond 'daroga,' because, it's a lie that you know any Persian at all.

Erik didn't have time to look insulted. The laugher overtook him too suddenly. He did manage to squeak, "Oh, that's just perfect," but then he said nothing else for a very long time.

Really, you haven't lived if you haven't seen Erik laugh. He put his skinny hands on his knobby knees and threw back his head and guffawed. Then, just as he seemed about to catch his breath he tried to speak to me and dissolved into a fit of ridiculous giggles. It was such a silly sight to behold that I found myself chuckling as well, more quietly though, and into my hands, as I was quite shy and rarely showed emotion, certainly never made any loud sounds as Erik was doing.

For some reason, my attempt to suppress my own laughter sent Erik over the brink, for a moment later he was pointing at me and shaking uncontrollably as he laughed soundlessly, scarcely able to breath. Then he attempted to suck some air quickly through his vacant nose and the resulting ridiculous noise, far more amusing than a nosed-person's accidental snort while laughing, got him going yet again. He ended with a descending sigh and began rubbing his protruding ribs as though in pain. "You're trying to kill me," he said with a mock serious expression. Then, after a deep calming breath, "Is that really what it means?"

"Indeed."

He bit his lower lip with his crooked front teeth and fought back a fresh round of giggles. "Really, Daroga," he barely managed to use the word without losing it, and I noticed that his pronunciation was far more correct than my own, "that is far more fitting than I had ever hoped. Oh yes. That is most certainly your new title."

I frowned. "What will people think of me, going around with a nickname that suggests I'm dishonest?"

"Stop worrying, Daroga!" He was using it quite naturally now, as if it had been my name all along. "We'll still tell everyone it means chief-of-police."

"But that's a lie," I burst out automatically.

"That is rather the point," he said condescendingly, but I ignored it because... well, because Erik was my friend and for all my posturing a few days earlier, the truth is, I couldn't imagine my life without him. I could live a lie if it meant that Erik would always be my friend. "Oh yes," he began again pushing his hair back dramatically so his strange face was oddly accentuated. "I was so ugly that my mother couldn't bear to look at me, so she sold me to a traveling gypsy sideshow. It was with the gypsy sideshow that I traveled to your country."

I rolled my eyes. I had never even been to "my" country, but there was no turning back once Erik embarked on a story. His voice took on the familiar lilt it did when he was fabricating a tale and I listed raptly as he told how he ran away from the sideshow and grew to adulthood in the streets of the Persian capital before eventually coming to live in the palace of the Shah.

"And then, you magically became young again," I interjected, pointing at Erik, who had not yet reached his fifteenth birthday.

He pointed at me. "You are a true genius, Daroga! It is true! I was a great magician in your country! That is how I came to the palace of the Shah. I was the Shah's personal magician. No. No! Not the Shah! The—" he paused. "What is she called?" He snapped his fingers at me. "Not the Shah but the—"

"Sultana?" I don't even think that's the right term to be honest, but it came to mind, and I uttered it.

He snapped his fingers again. "That's it! I became the personal magician of the Sultana."

It was here that I gave up trying to be the voice of reason. After all, what fun was reason? I allowed myself to laugh.

"I make you laugh, do I? Oh, how I used to make the Sultana laugh! It was unfortunate for me, though. The Shah suspected I had done far more than make her laugh...." He winked a deep-socketed eye at me and dropped his voice low. "I was sentenced to death you know."

I shook my head at his wild imagination.

Erik continued, pointing at me. "Your father was the chief-of-police, a position which you were to inherit. He was to capture and put an end to me. But we had been friends in the palace of the Shah when we were young."

I let the fact that we were still young now be ignored. Whatever. Erik voice took on a commanding tone; he could have told me the emperor was a goat, and I'd have believed. I afforded him the luxury of a smile.

"I made you smile often when were boys," he said. "It is why you spared my life and brought me here to Paris...."

What can I say? We were young and frivolous, and every young person needs to embark upon fantasy. I certainly didn't expect at the time that we'd be retelling a variety of versions of that ridiculous story as adults some twenty years later.


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