A/N - My apologies for the lengthy wait between chapters. Summer holidays and family events have taken me away from this stubborn story.
Though he had taken every precaution, Erik found leaving Paris easier than expected. The neighbourhood surrounding the theatre had been deserted the night he emerged from the cellars. The smell of smoke from the fire still hung heavy in the air. Most importantly, no one stood guard.
He traveled light, secreting money and valuables on his person, a cloth bag slung over his shoulder. He was unaccustomed to the plainer, itchier day clothes and he longed for the smooth fabrics of his opera dress. But the deep darkness of the countryside welcomed him like a long lost lover, quieting his superficial discomforts. After so many years underground, the outside world was a shock to his senses. Moving only by night, he stayed away from the main roads and kept to the forest, re-learning the world of nocturnal creatures, his brethren.
Erik gradually made his way to the coast reaching the port city of Le Havre in the pre-dawn hour. The rolling farmland gave way to a coastal clime and he breathed deeply, relishing the fresh salty air, his wilted spirits lifted just a little. For the first time in a very long time, Erik could see beyond his bruised and bitter heart into the future and not see the crushing loneliness of his recent years. The sea had brought him solace and the promise of adventure as a younger man and it could do it again. He was ready for a new life.
He confidently entered Le Havre in the early morning, heading straight to the docks with the intention of booking passage on the next available ship. Sailors and dock hands bustled about but all gave him a wide berth. A group of men loitered about near enormous shipping containers and one especially burly man gripped the local newspaper, the others stared at him.
"Bonjour, monsieur." the man with the newspaper called. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
Erik's chest tightened. "Non, monsieur. I do not believe so." he tried to steady his voice and calm both himself and the unwelcome man. But his breathing grew heavy and everywhere it felt like the people were now staring at him.
"Are you sure, monsieur?" the man sneered and started towards him, Erik glimpsed the blurry image of the Paris Opera on the front page and recoiled. The men laughed and turned away, their forward friend retreating to his place.
"They know who Erik is." he muttered, plowing blindly through the growing numbers of people. "Eyes everywhere, all of the eyes, seeing Erik unseen by Erik..Erik must hide." Fighting the desire to dive into the harbour, he forced himself to continue on despite the icy burn of a million eyes watching him. "Erik must hide."
Erik ducked into the first tavern he saw.
He leaned against the door for a moment, attempting to regain some calm. The tavern was empty save for the rough looking bar maid. She regarded Erik warily as she slowly wiped the same spot on the bar over and over. With renewed resolve, Erik tugged the front of his jacket to smooth it and strode to the table in the far corner. After a moment or two of obvious deliberation, the woman dropped the cleaning rag and sauntered over with a mug and a pitcher of ale.
"What can I get you, love?" she poured the ale and slid the cup over to him. Her tone suggested that she had no interest in what he would like.
"Just bread and some cheese, if you have it, madam." Erik pitched his voice lower, letting the sweetness wrap around her and settle. Her eyes widened in surprise and then she smiled at him; she bobbed a quick curtsy and hurried away to fulfill his request.
Erik settled with his back to the wall and studied the wood grain of the table. Anxiety still sat in a ball in his stomach but he could at least breath again. His stomach did not settle with the cold meats and bread she brought; the early morning sun poured through the dirty windows, dust motes floating gently to the nearest surface. Once away from the reach of his voice, the bar maid had resumed her wary surveillance. Erik picked the hard bread apart, his slender fingers deftly creating a tidy pile of crumbs.
"Wary bar maids are the least of my problems." Erik considered creating a tragic accident to explain away the mask. He tossed several coins onto the table and gave the woman a slight bow then slipped out. She could keep the change.
Erik continued his search and found the ticket offices without further incident
An uncomfortable line of questioning and several lies later, Erik had his one-way ticket to New York. The ship was not due to depart until sunset and he decided to rent a room, finding one at another tavern some distance from the waterfront. He needed to hide until it was time to leave. The low ceiling of the room made it uncomfortable to move about it, as tall as he was, but it was simple and clean; a suitable place to lie down and wait for departure .
The cloth bag sat next to him on the bed, containing the only things he had brought with him from the opera house: a single change of clothes, his black mask and a battered sheet of paper; an old composition, a lullaby he had written to sing to Christine years ago. She had loved it and asked for it often until -
"Until I had to ruin everything by falling in love with her." he muttered. "Will she sing it for her children?" Erik wondered, an image of Christine appeared unbidden, but this Christine had been softened by motherhood, and held a baby sleeping in her arms as she hummed the melody her Angel had written. The baby of Erik's imagination was perfectly formed, with a sweet nub of a nose and long eyelashes lay upon silken cheeks. A golden cloud of hair gave the baby a halo. Blonde hair like its father. "Christine's children with the fop." Erik re-folded the sheet music and tossed it back into the bag, willing himself not to cry. There had never really been a chance for love with Christine; no little children of their own. There would never be children for Erik in any life he could imagine.
Erik rubbed the fabric bag between his fingers, the smooth texture conjured the face of another woman, Meg Giry, the little cricket and night to Christine's day. His cheek still tingled where Meg had placed her kiss with two gentle fingers, willing and kind. A kindness he would hold in his heart. Erik wondered how the little Giry had fared upon her return to the world and fervently hoped she had kept silent. Though his heart had been softened by her kindness, it would had been safer to kill her But Erik did not kill little girls.
"Women.. Erik would not kill women." he corrected, his face growing hot beneath the mask.
None of it mattered now. When the afternoon began to wane toward sunset, Erik returned to the docks to the ship. The crew eyed him suspiciously and then hesitantly tore his ticket in half and after another heart stopping minute, allowed him on board. Other passengers drew away from him, clutched their children or their sweethearts closer but mostly left him alone. It would be a long week or so at sea if they raised the ire of the scary masked man. Erik stood at the railing as they departed, watching the French coastline slowly disappear as they sailed out of the harbour. He took a deep, cleansing breath, filling his lungs to brim with the salty sea air. As he exhaled slowly, Erik visualized ripping up his past like ruined composition paper, throwing every memory of the Paris Opera, Christine and his love for her into the ocean, to lie forgotten forever beneath the waves.
Meg clenched her jaw and attempted to keep calm as Christine's lady's maid twisted and yanked Meg's unruly hair into submission, jabbing hair pins in as she went.
"One might think that Aimee does not like me." she thought ruefully, gazing at her pale reflection in the mirror, trying to center herself. She was sorely tempted to slap the maid and twist her hair. Aimee did not like anyone, if Christine were to be believed. Particularly trashy actresses who pretended far above their station. A hostile maid aside, life at the Chagny mansion was quiet though tense. Meg longed for the day she and her maman could leave.
"And when I can do my own hair again." she grumbled as Aimee jabbed in the final pins and gave her head a pat.
"Mademoiselle." the maid bobbed a small curtsy and vanished before she could say anything. Meg deflated, slumping forward to lean on the dressing table. That longed for day would be soon as Madame Giry had secured them positions at a dance school on the outskirts of Paris. Her maman had danced there as a young girl, years ago, and seemed happy for the chance to return. It also provided a small apartment at the school in exchange for looking after the boarders. Butterflies fluttered in Meg's chest when she thought of being an instructor but getting away from the Chagny's seemed like a promise of paradise. As dearly as she loved Christine, if Meg had to give her opinion on one more place setting or another fabric swatch, she would scream. "Please, dear God, do not let me act like that when I am engaged." Meg sighed. "Time for breakfast."
She trudged heavily down the stairs on purpose, tired of being graceful and light. It took way too much energy to be the delicate dancer all of the time. Her ankle had mostly healed and following breakfast she would spend the late morning much as she had every morning since the physician's all clear: running positions at the barre her mother had devised. Meg rounded the corner into the breakfast room, muttering her good mornings as she went straight to the sideboard, loading up a plate of whatever. She hadn't paid much attention to what she'd been eating lately. She really didn't care, the chewing prevented the others from talking to her much. She had been sleeping poorly. Erik haunted her dreams last night as he had every night since she awoke here.
There was a peculiar flutter in her chest when she thought of her time underground. He had seemed so startled by her kiss though it was not a real kiss and she wanted to know how it would be to kiss him for real. Chloroform aside, he had been the perfect gentleman with her.
She stuffed her mouth with cold ham and glanced up at her breakfast companions. Raoul sat at the head of the table, his face grave but his blue eyes shone with triumph. Christine had gone white, her brown eyes dull, she had lost any of her usual animation.
"It is him?" Christine whispered. Madame Giry's hand lay upon hers in sympathy, though herself perfectly composed and serene. Meg chewed slowly and gave her mother a questioning look. Madame Giry shook her head slightly. "Not now."
"I'm sorry, I'm not feeling quite well." Christine said so quietly Meg had to stop chewing to hear her. Her friend rose from her seat and left the room, Raoul excused himself hastily and followed her out. Meg swallowed.
"What was that about?" she asked while reaching for the biscuits. Madame Giry slid a page from the morning newspaper across the table to her and snatched the biscuit from her hand.
"You have been eating too much."
Meg glared at her mother and looked down at the paper, skimming its contents. She saw nothing out of the ordinary until she reached the bottom. It jumped out like a jack-in-the-box.
Erik is dead.
She swore that her heart had stopped but fought for a calm expression in front of her mother, who was watching her very closely.
"Erik? Our Erik is dead?"
"Oui." Madame Giry folded the page neatly and slipped it into a dress pocket. She seemed far too satisfied.
Disbelief descended over Meg. "This is really true?" her mother nodded slowly and rose to leave the table.
"I'm not going to ask how you know this for certain. But I don't believe you."
"Meg -" her mother warned.
"No! I don't! This is absurd." Meg looked regretfully at her half eaten breakfast. Her enthusiasm had evaporated. "I fear my eyes were larger than my stomach. Excuse me, maman." she mumbled, quickly leaving the table and hurrying back to her bedroom, ignoring her mother calling after her.
Erik was dead.
Erik is dead.
Entirely dead.
It couldn't be true.
Meg sank onto the bed, hugging herself tightly. Her vision seemed grainy, the patterns and colours in the oriental rug swimming and twisting before her eyes. Her heart ached terribly.
"You promised to never seek him again, Meg Giry."
And she had mostly intended to keep that promise. But Meg had not counted on seeing Erik in her dreams every night; and every day, every corner contained him and every shadow was him.
"What a damn waste." she stomped her foot on the floor, sending a stack of books on the floor toppling over. The tears came quickly, fat and salty and dripping from her chin. She was still skeptical but still she wept, for all of the music he would never write. Her mother had was lying, she must had been responsible for that announcement in the paper. Who else but she would have known his name? Christine would not have done it, would have never thought of it. Meg pulled on her boots and angrily laced them up. Erik's existence seemed to be God's cosmic joke. With the gifts he had been given, Erik should have commanded the admiration of all of them. But his face was twisted, branded with a demon's kiss, dooming him to the fringes. "Are you laughing now, God?" Meg glared at the sun pouring in the windows. In a flash, she slipped into the hallway and down the stairs and out the front door before anyone noticed.
Meg marched through the city without a concrete idea of where to but eventually found her way to Rue Scribe, a place she had tailed her mother to before.
The journey to the lake was much easier via the Rue Scribe thank through the levels of the theatre. Her belly roiled with the dread of expectation, there were certain to be traps along the way to deter the curious, but the walk was uneventful and she emerged in the echo-y cistern. The shore was as gloomy as she remembered it and utterly silent; a small boat bobbed gently in the water on the near shore.
"Maestro?" Meg called, her voice dying far across the water. "Erik?"
Meg climbed into the boat and awkwardly began rowing across. "I'm a dancer, not an oarsman." she huffed, gradually propelling the craft to the far shore. She found a lantern beneath the seat and lit it with the matches she had brought with her. The acrid smell of smoke greeted her arrival and she hopped onto the shore. After a moment to catch her breath, Meg slipped into the house on the lake to be greeted by splintered furniture and scattered books; pages torn, wall hangings ripped and burned. Shattered glass littered the hallways and other rooms and white feathers from the mattresses and pillows fluttered as she passed.
"Erik?" she called again, moving through the underground home, her heart growing heavier with each step.
"Could Maman have been telling the truth?"
Returning to the sitting room she sank to the piano bench, one of the few pieces still intact in the ruined room. She set the lantern next to her and examined the floor in front of her. Sheet music written in a childish hand was strewn at her feet, some pages crumpled and others with scorch marks. Meg picked up a few pages, caressing the paper lightly, as though it could connect her to the composer.
"Well that's unfortunate." she murmured, rubbing at the blots of red ink at the bottom of the last page. Meg spun around and placed the pages upon the piano, plunking slowly at the melody line. More blots of ink were splattered over the lower octaves of the keyboard. Her forehead creased in a frown.
"This isn't ink.."
She leaped away from the piano so quickly the bench fell over, taking the lantern with it. The sheet music fluttered to the floor.
"Blood." Meg squeaked, snatching up the lantern before she began another fire. Her eyes darted around, finding more of the dark splotches on the Persian rug.
"This is his blood?" she sank to the floor like a stone, her eyes burned fiercely but the tears would not come this time. If Erik were dead, then why was there not more blood? Even she knew there would be more in a man's body than what was here. "Let him go, Meg. Dead or run away, give him peace."
She gathered up the fallen music and slipped the folded paper into her skirt pocket. There would be no more of the Phantom's strange and haunting music. At least not here in Paris. Meg took a deep breath and wandered out to the shore. Erik would not want her to stay and weep for him anyhow.
Dead. Whether he was or not, Meg needed to convince herself that he was gone.
"Dead to me.. he is dead to me.. Erik is dead."
She rowed away from the house on the lake and made the trek to the surface slowly.
"You cannot love a ghost, Giry."
Erik was dead and with one last aching thump, Meg's heart died too.
** End of PART ONE **