Hope you enjoy!
Meg woke the next morning to the sunlight streaming through the windows. For a second, she didn't know where she was, but then, it all came flooding back to her: Don Juan, the chandelier crash, Christine's abduction, her separation from the Opera House. She began to cry softly, wishing for her mother and her friends. Why?! How?!
After a few minutes, she slowly got out of the bed and went to the closet, and picked out a simple dress and dressed herself, not really caring what she looked like today. From the look of the sun's position in the sky, Meg presumed she'd slept in late, the second time she'd recently done so and woken up in a place she wasn't familiar with. She cautiously went down the stairs and found a breakfast set out for her, as well as a note from the bishop saying that he was conducting a Mass in the church. Meg gratefully sat and ate, slowly becoming more awake. When she was just about finished, the bishop appeared from his Mass.
"Good morning, mademoiselle. I trust you sleep well?"
"Yes, I did. Thank you so much for providing me lodging."
He waved her off, "It is no trouble at all, my dear. But, may I ask, what do you plan to do now?"
She shrugged, feeling more worried than she let on, "I'm not sure. I haven't got any money."
The bishop held up his index finger, disappeared into a room for a minute, and came back with a tiny coin purse, offering it to her. Meg waved him off and protested that she couldn't take the money, but he insisted so much that she accepted, thinking it polite to do so.
"You need this money more than I do at the moment," he said, matter-of-factly, "It will come in handy, soon. And I recently helped out a young man who was in a similar state to the one you're in. I hope I helped him out. Now, please," he said, gesturing upstairs, "if you're going to find new lodgings, please take some clothes with you. I have plenty of donations coming in. No, no, no, I insist!" he told her, before she could protest. Meg thanked him profusely, and went upstairs and began to pack a suitcase she found in her room with various dresses.
When she came back downstairs again, she couldn't thank him enough for his generosity. The bishop merely smiled.
"God smiles upon you, child. God bless you!" And with that, she thanked him again and took her leave of the place, suitcase in hand and coin purse safely stored away, looking for a suitable place for a job and lodgings. The only thing Meg knew though was ballet and a secondary education. She supposed she could become a governess or join a theater troupe.
She wandered around for a while, trying to find that suitable place. She saw various types of people during the day, including rogues and law officials. But after a while, it really was like God was smiling upon her, for she found a sign on a building that read, "Théâtre-Italien." Bracing herself, Meg went in and found a middle-aged lady at a counter. She told her her situation and said that she was an excellent ballet dancer. The lady nodded and said that they did have a ballet troupe here that she could join, and also lodgings. She thanked her, signed up, and took her belongings to her new dorm. The girls she met were relatively nice and went by names such as Jeanne and Annabelle. They introduced themselves and told each other their stories of how they each arrived here. When Meg said that she was from the Opera House, all of the girls gasped and asked her rapid-fire questions. She was reminded of when she came back from the Phantom's lair.
"But, the Opera House, practically all of it was burnt down! There are only a few rooms left, but everything is damaged and only some people escaped! However did you manage it?"
Meg decided not to tell them that she went into practically the sewers and escaped, but she did tell them that she got very lucky, which was true. And soon, Meg got used to life at the Théâtre-Italien. It was a lot different at first than the Opera House, though there were some Carlotta-type figures mixed in, there was only one manager there, a man named Jacque Peru. The ballet instructor, the woman at the counter, Madame Gigi instructed the girls very differently from her mother, but it was not necessarily bad.
Sometimes, Meg would go past the ruins of the Opera Populaire and shake her head with sadness and regret, but there was nothing to be done. People went inside from time to time trying to salvage items for auction. Other times, she would wander around and look for Christine, Fantine, their lovers, and her mother, but to no avail. This surprised her: surely, they wouldn't be far from Paris? Well, Christine and Raoul, maybe, but where could have Fantine and Rene gone? Meg didn't even want to think about what could have happened when she watched her disappear from her. She would shudder and move on.
On occasion, she would spot someone who looked fairly like Christine, Fantine, or any of the other ballet girls from the Opera House, but when she got a closer look, it would be someone she had never seen. Eight years passed in this fashion, dancing at the Théâtre-Italien and searching for her long-lost friends. When Madame Gigi became too old to teach during the first three years, Meg was elected to take over. She had a fairly good knowledge of ballet by this time, and would try to combine the techniques of Madame Gigi and her mother, sometimes throwing her own into the mix. She would sometimes think about contacting Christine and Fantine, but there had been no time for the exchange of addresses, and they never appeared in any newspapers.
Other than that, she hardly thought about her old life. She had long ago accepted the fact that her mother had disappeared from her life, and as for the Phantom of the Opera, well, he just became a fable to her, an occurrence that happened when she was young. She lived a comfortable middle-class life, albeit lonely. She had never tried to fall in love, for every man she saw was either a scoundrel or a policeman. Besides, she wanted to stand on her own two feet, as she had been doing. She was beginning to remind herself of her mother, teaching ballet and living without a husband. She had never felt the need to have children, anyway. She was content with her standard of living and counted her blessings for finding the bishop on that unforgettable night.
The only thing that bothered her was her occasional nightmares about that night. She would wake up and scream or begin to cry, then consequentially having to reassure everyone that she was fine and did not need a doctor.
There was one night, though, that broke the norm of her everyday routine. She had finished her ballet lesson for the day, had done her errands, had eaten, and had gone to her room, not feeling the need to socialize much, as all of her ballet friends from the theater had moved on. She was sitting quietly in a loveseat doing a cross stitch, when a knock came at her door. She stood up and opened it and one of her ballet girls, Clarice La Roux stood outside her room, looking uncertain.
"Excuse me, Madame Giry, but there is a man who wishes to see you downstairs." Meg raised an eyebrow at her.
"What man? I have no gentlemen friends!" The young girl blushed.
"He says it's urgent and needs to see you immediately." Meg sighed and shook her head, confused and curious, and went down with Clarice. Sure enough, a man was there to see her. He was a little older than her, with curly, black hair and a heavy coat over a suit, as it was winter. He looked at her a bit wildly.
"You are Meg Giry, are you not?" She raised another eyebrow.
"Yes, I am, monsieur. How do you-?"
He looked both relieved and frustrated at once, grabbing her arm and saying, "Forgive me, there's no time to explain!" as he ran out the door with her shouts of, "Hey! What are you doing?! Let me go!"
"Quiet, madame, please! You have to trust me! It's urgent!"
"Where are we going, pray tell?" she asked with a hint of sarcasm.
"The hospital! Quickly, hurry up!"
"The hospital? Are you implying I'm in need of a doctor? I'll have you know-!"
"Fantine!" he said, in response, and that's all she needed to hear, doubling her pace and running through the night with the stranger.