Author's Note: Thank you to all that reviewed, faved, followed. It means the world! Here's something we've all been waiting for...
Your servant,
G.P.
Divest thyself, O Soul, of vain desire!
Bid hope farewell, dismiss all coward fears;
Take leave of empty laughter, emptier tears,
And quench, for ever quench, the wasting fire
Wherein this heart, as in a funeral pyre,
Aye burns, yet is consumed not. Years on years,
Moaning with memories in thy maddened ears—
Let at thy word, like refluent waves, retire.
- Mathilde Blind, Nirvana
"Father, what are you-"
The Phantom was on his feet in an instant, glaring a look of icy hatred and betrayal between us. He shook his head, and from the little light in this room, I could see his eyes were red and raw. A short twitch of his wrist and the Punjab lasso flicked itself off my arm, leaving a small welt where it had been.
He seethed, pointing at Melody as if she were a pile of unwashed laundry, "What is that?"
I could sense her trembling behind me, taken aback by his coldness. "This is Melody Logan, Father, and you haven't the right or reason to talk to her like she isn't here."
My father's eyes seemed to burn into me like white-hot needles burrowing through the skin. His tone was pure mock, and his thin lips twisted. "You disobeyed me, my boy... I've known about this for some time, make no mistake...but for you to have the gall to bring your disobedience, your impudence into my domain is inexcusable."
I rang a cruel laugh out of my lips, throwing giving giving a damn about what he thought of us into the pyre of my mind. "Father, I have fallen in love!"
He recoiled from the last word like I'd slapped him. I continued, my volcanic rage erupting from my mouth into a belting shout. "You've done worse for love! I can't believe you; you're prepared to stand there and lecture me about disobedience when you burned down an opera house, killed people, stole, and extorted for a woman you didn't even win at the end of the night?!"
His eyes widened, but I could feel his own anger mirroring mine. I decided now that if he sprang at me, I needed Pepper to run. Because even if he was pushing fifty, he was undoubtedly faster than her.
"What, Father? You think I didn't know?" I opened my hands wide, a grand gesture and partially to get him to focus on me instead of the body behind me. "I've studied you. Since I was a grieving ten year old boy looking for something real to cling onto, I've used you as my master mold, my idol... And look how well that turned out...especially lately."
His eyes sharpened at that, despite my tirade. He rubbed at the bridge of his fake nose, creases in his forehead pushing up his mask. The pain and grief that chased each other across his face was palpable, and I tried to unsee it to no avail.
"You're not in love, Gustave." He said under his hand. "Your experiences with love align perfectly with your experiences of pain, same as mine."
"And what exactly is that supposed to prove?" I challenged, taking a shaking Melody's hand and I could feel her nervously glancing between father and son.
The Phantom leveled his eyes with mine, crossing his thin arms over his chest. "That you haven't a single damned clue what real love is. It's about selflessness, not using someone to prove any sort of point or to achieve some life goal. It's about art; improving upon the readily available canvas and adding your paint to create a masterpiece. How can you be certain this..." He peered around me at Melody, eyeing her daintiness. "...girl, won't hurt you?"
"My love isn't unrequited, for one." I shot back.
My father rolled his eyes, his voice thick with melodrama. "Yes, yes, do try to prove your point without bringing the focus on me. Come now, I taught you better than to use ad hominem."
"Look, what is your answer?" I was beyond frustrated at this point; I wanted a verdict and I wanted it this instant.
"I've no reason to believe that this girl is worth your attention," His tone was even colder now, and he stepped forward, to where our foreheads almost touched despite his freakish height. "And if you were half as wise as your mother, you would take her out of my sight."
His face looked ancient suddenly, all exhaustion and deep crevices-like lines. He was old and tired and bitter. I wanted to shout, I wanted to hurt him just as badly; but all the longer I stared as he returned to the organ...I couldn't say a word. He threw more words over his shoulder, barely loud enough for me to hear. "Go. Go now and leave me."
I didn't have to be told a second time.
"The park. Take us to the park."
Pepper watched as his eyes flashed with pain, still reeling herself from what she'd just experienced. Dr. Gangle's eyebrows furrowed across the carriage. "Sir, you gave me orders to take you to the opera…."
"You heard me, Gangle. The park…." Gustave repeated, giving an unsaid please to his friend with those sorrowful cinnamon eyes.
Dr. Gangle, who Pepper could sense cared about him greatly, merely nodded knowingly, and placed a hand on the younger man's shoulder. He weighed each word before he dared speak it. "Young master...I know not if this will help, but the man who raised me...though he was not my real father, he was a good man. And every time the little luck we had ran out...he would say this…" The quirky way his face makeup moved as he spoke made Pepper smile. "Tough times never do last...tough people last lifetimes."
Pepper was soon learning that the most freakish of people, which Dr. Gangle certainly fit the bill, were the best of people. She decided that once one allows themselves to see past the surface, the water underneath in a person's soul was just fine. But she had bigger problems, bigger questions floating about in her scattered mind. She wanted to say that what Gangle said was beautiful, but her eyes refused to leave the broken-hearted boy sitting beside her.
Gustave was silent the whole trip. All fifteen minutes he hunched over in his seat, propping his elbows on his knees and with his face in his hands, blocked by fingers and black hair. Pepper rubbed her gloved hand on his back. Her heartstrings were being tugged from her chest watching him, his shoulders would give a shake every few moments and she knew he was tearlessly weeping. She had never seen anyone who, on the outside, seemed so sure of himself and so strong and fearless...so torn down and deteriorated like this.
As they braved the rain crossing into Manhattan, she mustered the nerve to reach higher on him and gently brush his hair in the back from where he'd jostled it out of place. Suddenly, he removed a hand from his face and took her hand, holding the back of it against his cheek. She felt wetness there, as well as coldness.. She understood. Pepper admired Gustave's strength...and now he would need her to be strong for him, to be his anchor while he rode the waves of this...this mixture of depression and anxiety and disappointment and loss.
Soon they heard the cracking of the wheels going over the wooden bridge that led them into Central Park. He stirred, his back straightening slightly. Dr. Gangle announced that they had arrived.
Pepper, whose conversations with the Trio were entirely composed of her constant inquisition about Coney Island, Phantasma, them, and anything else she could be curious about (which was in abundance) and their eager replies, spoke up. "Hi, um...can I call you sir?"
"Please," Dr. Gangle's eyes softened, holding up a hand. "Call me 'friend'. And you needn't say it. The Trio and I will be nearby."
He maneuvered his unusually tall frame out of the carriage with surprising grace, and allowed them some privacy. Only when the master of ceremonies left did Gustave lift his head. But he was not grieved...he was angry.
"Are you alright?" She dared, afraid he may explode, and then scolded herself for her idiocy. "Goodness, stupid me- I know you're not...I suppose it's safe to say he hates me, huh?"
"Not you, no…" He corrected glumly, "He hates me…."
"Please don't say that..."
Gustave gave a weak noise of annoyance. "And why not? There is no evidence to the contrary."
"Of course there is," Pepper couldn't believe he'd talk like this in front of her. Her little ginger eyebrows pulled together indignantly, "I know a loving parent when I see one. He's put a roof over your head, food on the table and even if it didn't turn out how we wanted, his only concern was you. He wanted to make sure I was enough to make you happy, worth your time."
"Makes little difference...He's so wrong about you... He wouldn't hear a word about the idea of us being together..."
"Is it because I haven't anything to offer you? Because I'm poor?" She was terrified of the answer, staring down at her empty gloved hand and it stood as a reminder of all that held her back.
Gustave shook his head. "He's tasted desperate before, he's hardly one to discriminate..."
"Then what is it?" She asked herself aloud, her eyes grim and her mouth curled into a hopeless frown.
"I told you before, it doesn't have anything to do with you..." He whispered, looking out the window wistfully.
Pepper followed his gaze. It was a gentle rain, barely a downpour. The Trio were a short walk away, taking refuge on a bench beneath a great dogwood tree, the slowly dying branches shielding them from the weather. Dr. Gangle and Squelch were conversing airily, about what Pepper didn't know. Miss Fleck was fast asleep, leaning against Squelch's massive arm as means of a pillow. One could almost forget she was a woman with her peaceful, childlike form. No one had to look very hard to see a family on that bench.
He shifted next to her, tightening his overcoat around himself and passing her own coat to her. She looked up at him in confusion. "Gustave?"
"I want to make tonight special, even if the beginning was awful," He declared, taking her hand.
The moment the carriage door opened, Dr. Gangle leapt from the bench. The tall man hastily opened an umbrella to shield the pair from the rain, and Squelch carried Miss Fleck over, refusing to disrupt her slumber. Pepper's heels clicked as they hit the wet cobblestone, leaves cluttered the edges of the walkway and the smell of trees and green made the Irish girl smile.
"Miss Logan and I are going for a walk," Gustave told them, standing only partly under Gangle's umbrella, the shoulder of his raincoat exposed and slowly getting wet. "Alone."
"No trouble, sir. We shall await your return here," Squelch said dutifully, the aerialist still in his arms before he gently laid her inside the carriage.
Gangle handed his umbrella to Gustave, whispered something low to him and then slid in after Squelch with a friendly wink to Pepper. And then, they were alone together in Central Park. Pepper recalled their first meeting together as he held out his arm for her to take. She did so gladly, and they began their trek.
The rain provided the most perfect company to them; she'd always seen the rain as an orchestra, a body of pure sound in itself. It had a mood, it had emotion, and it had its own story to tell. As they walked to nature's music, she recalled a rain not long ago...It was the night before she'd met him. She had brushed her hair and applied salve to her birthmarks, and wondered if she'd spend forever alone. Sure, she was fine with being alone. Alone kept her feelings unhurt. Alone kept her safe. Alone kept her without distraction. But…she didn't like being lonely.
She sneaked a short glance over at Gustave, as he stared around with a pensive expression. She remembered her first thoughts of him...She'd been so shy towards the boy who'd rescued her, the one with the manners and talked like he'd leapt off the pages of the Bronte books she stacked on her desk. Now, she couldn't imagine herself not talking to him. He was her closest dearest friend...although she barely thought of him as just a friend, gazing onto that sad face. He was so beautiful, in soul and on the skin.
I've no reason to believe that this girl is worth your attention.
The Phantom's voice, ethereal and haunting, rung in her ears. She looked quickly away from his son. He was right...As much as Gustave would deny it and try to reassure her, it was true. She didn't deserve him. She didn't deserve to hold as much as a second of his attention. Who was she, anyway? She was a poor Irish girl who just so happened to be a decent enough soprano to star in a choir he just so happened to enjoy. She was nothing like Christine Daae...She clung onto the thought of her idol, her brow furrowing.
"Melody?" Came Gustave's voice, with urgency and concern. She hadn't realized she'd stopped dead in her tracks. "Melody, are you alright?"
"Nothing, I'm okay." Pepper raised her head and smiled; she did this often, at home. "Look!"
She ran ahead of him, and dipped through the drenched tendrils of a willow. As he shuffled through, she could tell he didn't buy her facade. She tried to look cheery, smoothing her hair down. "Isn't this incredible?!"
"Melody Logan, I know when you're lying to me, love." He did that thing with his eyes, crinkling at the outer corners and she could not help but think of how handsome he was. "What were you thinking about just now?"
She hesitated, biting her lip. He was worried now. "You're thinking about what my father said...aren't you?"
The short silence made the rain seem louder, an easygoing chatter to a shouting roar.
"Gustave…" Pepper said sharply, her expression hardening, "What exactly happened to your mother?"
The playful concern drained from his face. He interrogated under his breath, his eyes wide, "Why would you want to know that?"
"Because…"
Pepper bit her lip. This was the question dancing around in her head since she met Gustave. She spoke very quickly then, closing her eyes and forcing the words from her lips before she changed her mind to say anything at all.
"Because every time I mention her you have this look like you'll never be happy again, like you'll never wake up and greet the sun with a smile when it rose. Like you'll never love again. And that has to have affected your father and your relationship. And that's complicated because you and I are so...close, and I'm so terrified that loving me will tear your family apart, and eventually you will get so frustrated that I second-guess myself so much to say 'I love you' to you that you'll leave me-"
"-Oh for God's sake-"
Within a single moment, Gustave tossed the umbrella aside and gathered Pepper up in his arms, walking outside the willow's reaches with her crushed to his chest. He used her surprise to keep her still; the pouring rain slicked their hair to their foreheads, drenching their clothes to the skin, but Pepper's skin was electric where he touched her. Before she could say a word in protest, he crushed his lips to hers.
I do not know what I was thinking. But I daren't take it back now. The first thing I noticed was that her lips felt soft and warm and wet, and that her body seemed to conform to the lines of mine so perfectly that my knees soon became weak. She was so small, so fragile and yet, in the ways her bare hands (I didn't notice her taking her gloves off) clung to my raincoat, pushing it aside so she could shove her hands beneath the material and around me...She was strong. Boundlessly strong in spirit. I kept an arm around her waist and another under her left thigh, both of her legs around my hips and hooked in the back.
Weeks of restraint and self-control led to this brief period of pure freedom. I wanted to touch all of her, every inch and kiss every freckle, every birthmark - memorize the star charts they created. Every constellation, every star would not be left forgotten.
It was minutes before I took us back under the shelter of the willow, and let her down from me, but when I tried to release her, she pulled me back. She made it clear she was not done with m-ouch! She bit my lip! She tugged me closer by my waistcoat, wishing there to be no space between us and neither did I, my hands drawing her near by her waist. She was not the shy girl I met. If my blood sang the music of the night, hers sang with the music of the rain.
My Melody, my beautiful, sweet Melody...Our fiery kisses slowly smoldered into slow promises of love and passion into each other's lips. Until finally we parted, staring and blushing. She had more freckles on her nose than I realized, and as I tried to count them, she turned away. She laughed.
"What a day..." She breathed, her flush growing redder until those freckles disappeared.
Propriety returned at last, and I felt light-headed, as if intoxicated. Giddily, I smiled. "I think I'd better escort you home before I have a good idea."
The goofy grin that I was rewarded with put the lights of my home to shame.
"Listen Melody..." Her grin evaporated at the caution in my voice, "I will tell you about my mother...but not today, not tonight. Is that enough for you? To promise you the information when I'm ready to tell it?"
She nodded, and caught me off guard by hugging me. "Gustave...of course."
What did I do to deserve her?
When I returned to Coney Island, the anxious feeling of before filled filled my veins with electricity. Before I could talk myself out of it, I marched down into his domain. I didn't care that I was still somewhat wet.
If I am to make this right, I must do this now.
He was wearing the same clothes, the compositions on the floor hadn't been moved. I barked, "Father, I am sorry for what I said earlier but what you said about-"
"Enough." He said in a low voice, and and I saw a piece of newspaper in his hand, his eyes were red and raw...
"Father?" Fear crept into my stomach and iced it over. Tears were on his cheeks.
"Read." He ordered.
I was handed the newspaper. Across the top was the headline:
FIRE IN QUEENS KILLS THIRTY.
I saw Madame Giry's full name, Meg's and the words "dead", "burned alive" and "no escape" in the same paragraph.