Lachesis' Weavings
by AngelCeleste85
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!
Blame: I think this one goes entirely on my shoulders. ;-)
Setting: Right after ALW version.
Spoilers and other notes: This definitely is multiple chapters. I'm not saying another word.
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts. }}
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Ch. 3 - Beneath the Opera House
Stepping into through the mirror and into the tunnel that had brought her to this point, Meg later reflected, might possibly have been the bravest thing she ever did in her whole life up to that point: that, or the most foolhardy.
At the same time, she conceded that it didn't hold a candle to what followed.
~*~*~
It was as though she had been cast into the outer darkness: a slow, icy breeze stirred the long skirts around her ankles and her teeth chattered. She could hear glass shards crunching beneath the soles of her shoes. With the yellow flame of the lamp masked behind red glass, she could barely see anything beyond a ten-foot radius, but she remembered Buquet's words.
"You see more like this. I don't know why, Mademoiselle, but you do. White light, it glares into your eyes 'til you'd trip over your own feet much less the backstage, blinds you every time. The longer you keep it, the more you'll get used to it." She murmured the words as her memory played them back for her: he had been somewhat dull-witted, but quick enough to know most of what there was to know about stagecraft.
Trailing a hand against the wall helped calm her a little and gave her some idea of the serpentine nature of the passage. It was so dark, she could not help but feel claustrophobic, and she could barely keep track of the twists and turns. She had long since lost track of the time. Glass still seemed to crunch underfoot once in a while, but not at every step anymore and it didn't sound the way glass usually did: she bit back a scream when she happened to glance down right after the crunch had sounded again and found her slender foot in the middle of a rat's crushed skeleton: after that, the little dance was sure to watch the floor as assiduously as the walls. The only other sounds were the hardened soles of her borrowed shoes slapping the cold black stone smoothly, and the scratching and occasional chittering of rats that fled her approach. Frequently she disturbed some orb-weaver's web, several times their dislodged occupants landed on her shoulders or in her hair. More often, the spider-silk was old and thick with dust and damp, with the crumpled body of its once-owner somewhere in it. It added to her fear that the Opera House had become a tomb for the infamous O.G. Surely if he was alive he would have used the subterranean passages often enough to clear the cobwebs out.
{{ Yes, they turned left here and it was the wrong way. }} Meg recalled as she swept around a bend and found a t-intersection illuminated, faint and dull, in her angry red lamplight. {{ So they backtracked, and took the right fork, and that led them to the rock with the metal ring they couldn't get out.and that's the edge of the lake. and there's a narrow path on a ledge over it at the left end of the lake. }} Confident now that she had regained her bearings, Meg hurried down the right fork. {{ Sweet Mary, don't let me get lost now. dear Saint Christopher, help this traveler find her way! }}
It took longer than she remembered, for then she had been at the tail end of an angry mob with bright torches, but the myriad twists and turns did not lead her astray, for suddenly the scent of damp that had been growing became much stronger in her nose. She stopped just shy of soaking her feet, socks, stockings, tights and skirt in the icy waters of the lake and looked out. The far side of the lake, where she had found the Opera Ghost's mask, was his home but it was out of sight, beyond the power of her dark lamp to reach.
"Now," she muttered, determined not to let her fear of this place or the man she hoped still occupied it overcome her resolution to find him. "I've come this far. Where's that ledge?"
Clambering in even a thin cotton skirt over rough, damp rocks is no easy matter, and in shoes with hard, inflexible wooden soles makes it that much more difficult. Meg was agile, but also trying to keep as quiet as possible in case the dreaded Phantom actually was still around, and the hot lantern in her hand made moving very difficult indeed.
Meg counted it a triumph as the narrow ledge, barely wide enough for her to inch along on even on her toes, came into view a good quarter of an hour later. It wasn't so much a ledge as a groove, obviously cut by hand into the inner casing of the cellar, just high enough and deep enough to permit a booted foot some purchase. To Meg's surprise and delight, when she got closer she saw another, narrower groove set much higher and running parallel: a handhold. This, then, was the flywalk.
She found herself in an interesting predicament just then. She had made it safely to the flywalk, but obviously navigating this took some skill and the use of all four limbs. She would have difficulty taking the lamp with her, yet she could not leave it behind. The metal was hot: she winced, but there was nothing else for it.
Meg got up as close as possible to the flywalk and set her right foot and left on it. A simple granny knot sufficed to knot the shawl over her shoulders with a fair amount of tail hanging off the knot's ends. The lantern handle, she wrapped in one of these tails and gripped between her teeth before continuing.
The lamp wasn't as hot as she had expected, the shawl damped that a bit, but it was still warmer than she liked. She refused to look down at it or at the lake below her as she inched out. it was a long way to cross like this, barely hanging onto the wall.
{{ Oh God, don't let me fall, don't let me fall, I can't swim. }} In that moment, Meg Giry knew she was in more danger from her own action than from anything the Phantom of the Opera could do: she had not seen or heard any sign that he was alive this whole time. {{ Stop it, you big baby. You're willing to go alone to see if the Opera Ghost is alive or dead for true, and you're afraid of a bit of acrobatics? You've done worse trying to walk on the balcony railing at home and succeeded! One foot, now the other, one hand, now the other, just slide them in the grooves, that's it, foot, foot, hand, hand, foot-foot, hand-hand. good girl Giry! }} It became a litany in her head: foot-foot, hand-hand, navigating almost solely by touch, and suddenly she found herself back on solid ground.
The lantern was definitely too warm now and her shawl was starting to smoke, but she could not soak the singed corner in the lake because it would drip icewater down her front. Quickly she spat into it, or tried to, and found her mouth was too dry for it.
She looked over the span she had crossed. suddenly it seemed like she had crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean like that and her knees went weak. She laughed softly. Kneeling at the side of the lake, she supped a mouthful of water to her lips and drank, then another and spat that onto the scorched section of the shawl.
"At least it's dark gray, it won't show easily." She had to talk now, so she didn't scare the Opera Ghost if he was around. {{ Of course he's around, you silly goose. He knows everything that goes on in this place. He probably watched you crossing that flywalk and laughed. }} The thought was not the most comforting, but Meg preferred to think that the reason for her continuing to find a complete lack of evidence of life was that nobody found the Opera Ghost, or heard anything from him, unless he wanted to be found.
{{ What am I doing here? If he wanted me to find him he'd have made it clear by now, I don't even know where to look. He probably isn't home. Either that or he's pulling another hiatus like that six-month silence right up to the New Years' Masquerade. }} And yet, something inside Meg told her no, that she had to continue. There was a nagging sense inside her that grew stronger by the moment, had nagged her from the moment she'd heard that Christine, the Vicomte and the Phantom all had disappeared on the same night, and it said that not all was well.
Picking up the lantern once more she cast around quickly. Dim though the light was, it reflected off of the water by her side and off of the silver- gray casing. The dim rust light revealed nothing out of the ordinary. except for she knew what she would find.
There it was: a dark, gaping hole in the casing: Meg made her way towards it, keeping up a quiet stream of monologue that was intended to soothe her as much as any possible audience. That was the door to the Phantom's home. Meg didn't like to think of it as a lair, Christine had gone to great pains to make her understand that the Phantom was not just an animal like everyone seemed to think. No, not "the Phantom," or the "Opera Ghost," and not even the "Angel of Music." She'd named him. Erik. Erik's home, then. Though it had been out of range of her little red lamp, the gendarmes had brought the powerful spotlights down from the auditorium and trained them on the door in order to keep their unceasing vigil.
Or rather, they'd watched what remained of the door. The mob had wrenched away by brute force the clever concealing and rifles, axes and torches had destroyed the lovely oak door that had stood behind it. Looking at the charred, splintered heap of what remained, she couldn't find any of the brass fastenings so she knocked on the gouged, twisted doorframe instead.
"Is there anyone home?" The performer's voice quavered a little.
No answer.
"Hello?"
Silence. And yet she had the feeling she was not alone.
"All right, I did knock, but I'm coming in now whether you want me to or not, I hope you won't think me too rude, Monsieur. Monsieur Erik, isn't it? Christine said a lot of good things about you, when she said anything at all that I could understand." Meg knew she was rambling but she couldn't help it as she made her way into the damp and filthy interior. "Oh, my God."
The mob had trashed this once-elegant room, she knew, though she had left before they were satisfied. The lovely wood paneling on the walls, stripped. Anything valuable had been looted. The fireplace had rivers of wet ashes flowing from it and it brought tears to Meg's eye to remember Carlotta and the managers so gleefully burning all of those pages and pages of music that they had found. including the original score of "Don Juan Triumphant," which had vanished as mysteriously as the "ghost's" salary from the managers' office. The furor that had caused with Firmin in particular, yet it hadn't touched on the note that was left in its place. The man had literally jumped up and down, tearing out handfuls of hair!
It had been terrible, watching the managers and the diva prancing around in the torches' red light like demons from Hell, shredding this masterwork to confetti before starting a fire from the pieces right in the middle of the bared hardwood floor - of course the fine Persian rugs had been looted.
She could never have admitted it to anyone but herself, not even to Madame Giry, but Meg had rather liked it. She'd seen right off what it really was: Aminta was Christine's portrait, idealized and romanticized in music and words but still clearly Christine and just as plainly written specifically and only for her voice.
The thought struck her then. The Phantom had killed Piangi, in order to go up there and sing with Christine. Had the character of Don Juan himself been a self-portrait of Erik?
That cleared up quite a few things, and raised almost as many more questions.
She regretted not being able to save any of the destroyed music for him. Obviously he had spent years writing such a collection and she'd glimpsed a few of the pages: what she had seen was all astounding work. How long had "Don Juan" on its own taken him?
{{ I don't know what I did with my copy of the "Don Juan" score, maybe it's somewhere in my dressing room. I hope Jammes hasn't gone snooping and found it, or Maman. Or Sorelli, the ugly camel. But maybe Christine's is still in her room there. I'll have to look. It's worth saving. }}
All of this went through her mind as she searched: first the living room, then the kitchen, then back through the living room to that terrible room, Erik's inner sanctum. with the twisted, mangled heap of what had once been an organ and the dented metal coffin. She even checked inside the coffin, on the off-chance that. But no, Erik was nowhere to be found. It was clear that he had not made any effort at all to clean this place up: the ever- present spider-webs of the tunnels had made their homes here as well.
Dejected and yet relieved, Meg went out again into the living room and sank down into the massive black throne. It wasn't a comfortable chair for her at all, being much too large for her to set her feet on the floor or to sit all the way into it and absolutely devoid of cushioning of any kind, and badly scored and damaged from the petty fury of the mob: it had to be either metal or else some incredibly hard wood. But she curled up in it and rested her head on the arm, pillowed atop her own folded arms. This was where she had found the mask and tucked it hurriedly into her bodice. Everyone else had been so busy with valuables to plunder that nobody had seen what Meg tucked away: none of them had imagined that the "Opera Ghost" lived in such comfort beneath them until they actually saw it!
Something, a knot in the silky wood on the arm of the chair fascinated Meg and idly she toyed with it. Suddenly she felt something snap in the seat beneath her. Intrigued, she fiddled with the spot again and quickly felt the same thing. There was no mistaking it: there was a latch there that she had triggered. Meg wondered if maybe some of his wondrous music had escaped the destruction by his placing it in there. But how to open the compartment? She clambered out of the seat and tried it again.
The seat rose up, pivoting somehow on hidden hinges in the back of the chair. Looking in, Meg screamed, a sound that was strangled off in her throat almost as soon as it emerged, making it sound a croak.
It wasn't sheets of musical compositions at rest in the compartment revealed. It was the composer himself.
And he didn't look like he was alive.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Please let me know how you're enjoying this so far!
AngelCeleste85
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!
Blame: I think this one goes entirely on my shoulders. ;-)
Setting: Right after ALW version.
Spoilers and other notes: This definitely is multiple chapters. I'm not saying another word.
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts. }}
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Ch. 3 - Beneath the Opera House
Stepping into through the mirror and into the tunnel that had brought her to this point, Meg later reflected, might possibly have been the bravest thing she ever did in her whole life up to that point: that, or the most foolhardy.
At the same time, she conceded that it didn't hold a candle to what followed.
~*~*~
It was as though she had been cast into the outer darkness: a slow, icy breeze stirred the long skirts around her ankles and her teeth chattered. She could hear glass shards crunching beneath the soles of her shoes. With the yellow flame of the lamp masked behind red glass, she could barely see anything beyond a ten-foot radius, but she remembered Buquet's words.
"You see more like this. I don't know why, Mademoiselle, but you do. White light, it glares into your eyes 'til you'd trip over your own feet much less the backstage, blinds you every time. The longer you keep it, the more you'll get used to it." She murmured the words as her memory played them back for her: he had been somewhat dull-witted, but quick enough to know most of what there was to know about stagecraft.
Trailing a hand against the wall helped calm her a little and gave her some idea of the serpentine nature of the passage. It was so dark, she could not help but feel claustrophobic, and she could barely keep track of the twists and turns. She had long since lost track of the time. Glass still seemed to crunch underfoot once in a while, but not at every step anymore and it didn't sound the way glass usually did: she bit back a scream when she happened to glance down right after the crunch had sounded again and found her slender foot in the middle of a rat's crushed skeleton: after that, the little dance was sure to watch the floor as assiduously as the walls. The only other sounds were the hardened soles of her borrowed shoes slapping the cold black stone smoothly, and the scratching and occasional chittering of rats that fled her approach. Frequently she disturbed some orb-weaver's web, several times their dislodged occupants landed on her shoulders or in her hair. More often, the spider-silk was old and thick with dust and damp, with the crumpled body of its once-owner somewhere in it. It added to her fear that the Opera House had become a tomb for the infamous O.G. Surely if he was alive he would have used the subterranean passages often enough to clear the cobwebs out.
{{ Yes, they turned left here and it was the wrong way. }} Meg recalled as she swept around a bend and found a t-intersection illuminated, faint and dull, in her angry red lamplight. {{ So they backtracked, and took the right fork, and that led them to the rock with the metal ring they couldn't get out.and that's the edge of the lake. and there's a narrow path on a ledge over it at the left end of the lake. }} Confident now that she had regained her bearings, Meg hurried down the right fork. {{ Sweet Mary, don't let me get lost now. dear Saint Christopher, help this traveler find her way! }}
It took longer than she remembered, for then she had been at the tail end of an angry mob with bright torches, but the myriad twists and turns did not lead her astray, for suddenly the scent of damp that had been growing became much stronger in her nose. She stopped just shy of soaking her feet, socks, stockings, tights and skirt in the icy waters of the lake and looked out. The far side of the lake, where she had found the Opera Ghost's mask, was his home but it was out of sight, beyond the power of her dark lamp to reach.
"Now," she muttered, determined not to let her fear of this place or the man she hoped still occupied it overcome her resolution to find him. "I've come this far. Where's that ledge?"
Clambering in even a thin cotton skirt over rough, damp rocks is no easy matter, and in shoes with hard, inflexible wooden soles makes it that much more difficult. Meg was agile, but also trying to keep as quiet as possible in case the dreaded Phantom actually was still around, and the hot lantern in her hand made moving very difficult indeed.
Meg counted it a triumph as the narrow ledge, barely wide enough for her to inch along on even on her toes, came into view a good quarter of an hour later. It wasn't so much a ledge as a groove, obviously cut by hand into the inner casing of the cellar, just high enough and deep enough to permit a booted foot some purchase. To Meg's surprise and delight, when she got closer she saw another, narrower groove set much higher and running parallel: a handhold. This, then, was the flywalk.
She found herself in an interesting predicament just then. She had made it safely to the flywalk, but obviously navigating this took some skill and the use of all four limbs. She would have difficulty taking the lamp with her, yet she could not leave it behind. The metal was hot: she winced, but there was nothing else for it.
Meg got up as close as possible to the flywalk and set her right foot and left on it. A simple granny knot sufficed to knot the shawl over her shoulders with a fair amount of tail hanging off the knot's ends. The lantern handle, she wrapped in one of these tails and gripped between her teeth before continuing.
The lamp wasn't as hot as she had expected, the shawl damped that a bit, but it was still warmer than she liked. She refused to look down at it or at the lake below her as she inched out. it was a long way to cross like this, barely hanging onto the wall.
{{ Oh God, don't let me fall, don't let me fall, I can't swim. }} In that moment, Meg Giry knew she was in more danger from her own action than from anything the Phantom of the Opera could do: she had not seen or heard any sign that he was alive this whole time. {{ Stop it, you big baby. You're willing to go alone to see if the Opera Ghost is alive or dead for true, and you're afraid of a bit of acrobatics? You've done worse trying to walk on the balcony railing at home and succeeded! One foot, now the other, one hand, now the other, just slide them in the grooves, that's it, foot, foot, hand, hand, foot-foot, hand-hand. good girl Giry! }} It became a litany in her head: foot-foot, hand-hand, navigating almost solely by touch, and suddenly she found herself back on solid ground.
The lantern was definitely too warm now and her shawl was starting to smoke, but she could not soak the singed corner in the lake because it would drip icewater down her front. Quickly she spat into it, or tried to, and found her mouth was too dry for it.
She looked over the span she had crossed. suddenly it seemed like she had crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean like that and her knees went weak. She laughed softly. Kneeling at the side of the lake, she supped a mouthful of water to her lips and drank, then another and spat that onto the scorched section of the shawl.
"At least it's dark gray, it won't show easily." She had to talk now, so she didn't scare the Opera Ghost if he was around. {{ Of course he's around, you silly goose. He knows everything that goes on in this place. He probably watched you crossing that flywalk and laughed. }} The thought was not the most comforting, but Meg preferred to think that the reason for her continuing to find a complete lack of evidence of life was that nobody found the Opera Ghost, or heard anything from him, unless he wanted to be found.
{{ What am I doing here? If he wanted me to find him he'd have made it clear by now, I don't even know where to look. He probably isn't home. Either that or he's pulling another hiatus like that six-month silence right up to the New Years' Masquerade. }} And yet, something inside Meg told her no, that she had to continue. There was a nagging sense inside her that grew stronger by the moment, had nagged her from the moment she'd heard that Christine, the Vicomte and the Phantom all had disappeared on the same night, and it said that not all was well.
Picking up the lantern once more she cast around quickly. Dim though the light was, it reflected off of the water by her side and off of the silver- gray casing. The dim rust light revealed nothing out of the ordinary. except for she knew what she would find.
There it was: a dark, gaping hole in the casing: Meg made her way towards it, keeping up a quiet stream of monologue that was intended to soothe her as much as any possible audience. That was the door to the Phantom's home. Meg didn't like to think of it as a lair, Christine had gone to great pains to make her understand that the Phantom was not just an animal like everyone seemed to think. No, not "the Phantom," or the "Opera Ghost," and not even the "Angel of Music." She'd named him. Erik. Erik's home, then. Though it had been out of range of her little red lamp, the gendarmes had brought the powerful spotlights down from the auditorium and trained them on the door in order to keep their unceasing vigil.
Or rather, they'd watched what remained of the door. The mob had wrenched away by brute force the clever concealing and rifles, axes and torches had destroyed the lovely oak door that had stood behind it. Looking at the charred, splintered heap of what remained, she couldn't find any of the brass fastenings so she knocked on the gouged, twisted doorframe instead.
"Is there anyone home?" The performer's voice quavered a little.
No answer.
"Hello?"
Silence. And yet she had the feeling she was not alone.
"All right, I did knock, but I'm coming in now whether you want me to or not, I hope you won't think me too rude, Monsieur. Monsieur Erik, isn't it? Christine said a lot of good things about you, when she said anything at all that I could understand." Meg knew she was rambling but she couldn't help it as she made her way into the damp and filthy interior. "Oh, my God."
The mob had trashed this once-elegant room, she knew, though she had left before they were satisfied. The lovely wood paneling on the walls, stripped. Anything valuable had been looted. The fireplace had rivers of wet ashes flowing from it and it brought tears to Meg's eye to remember Carlotta and the managers so gleefully burning all of those pages and pages of music that they had found. including the original score of "Don Juan Triumphant," which had vanished as mysteriously as the "ghost's" salary from the managers' office. The furor that had caused with Firmin in particular, yet it hadn't touched on the note that was left in its place. The man had literally jumped up and down, tearing out handfuls of hair!
It had been terrible, watching the managers and the diva prancing around in the torches' red light like demons from Hell, shredding this masterwork to confetti before starting a fire from the pieces right in the middle of the bared hardwood floor - of course the fine Persian rugs had been looted.
She could never have admitted it to anyone but herself, not even to Madame Giry, but Meg had rather liked it. She'd seen right off what it really was: Aminta was Christine's portrait, idealized and romanticized in music and words but still clearly Christine and just as plainly written specifically and only for her voice.
The thought struck her then. The Phantom had killed Piangi, in order to go up there and sing with Christine. Had the character of Don Juan himself been a self-portrait of Erik?
That cleared up quite a few things, and raised almost as many more questions.
She regretted not being able to save any of the destroyed music for him. Obviously he had spent years writing such a collection and she'd glimpsed a few of the pages: what she had seen was all astounding work. How long had "Don Juan" on its own taken him?
{{ I don't know what I did with my copy of the "Don Juan" score, maybe it's somewhere in my dressing room. I hope Jammes hasn't gone snooping and found it, or Maman. Or Sorelli, the ugly camel. But maybe Christine's is still in her room there. I'll have to look. It's worth saving. }}
All of this went through her mind as she searched: first the living room, then the kitchen, then back through the living room to that terrible room, Erik's inner sanctum. with the twisted, mangled heap of what had once been an organ and the dented metal coffin. She even checked inside the coffin, on the off-chance that. But no, Erik was nowhere to be found. It was clear that he had not made any effort at all to clean this place up: the ever- present spider-webs of the tunnels had made their homes here as well.
Dejected and yet relieved, Meg went out again into the living room and sank down into the massive black throne. It wasn't a comfortable chair for her at all, being much too large for her to set her feet on the floor or to sit all the way into it and absolutely devoid of cushioning of any kind, and badly scored and damaged from the petty fury of the mob: it had to be either metal or else some incredibly hard wood. But she curled up in it and rested her head on the arm, pillowed atop her own folded arms. This was where she had found the mask and tucked it hurriedly into her bodice. Everyone else had been so busy with valuables to plunder that nobody had seen what Meg tucked away: none of them had imagined that the "Opera Ghost" lived in such comfort beneath them until they actually saw it!
Something, a knot in the silky wood on the arm of the chair fascinated Meg and idly she toyed with it. Suddenly she felt something snap in the seat beneath her. Intrigued, she fiddled with the spot again and quickly felt the same thing. There was no mistaking it: there was a latch there that she had triggered. Meg wondered if maybe some of his wondrous music had escaped the destruction by his placing it in there. But how to open the compartment? She clambered out of the seat and tried it again.
The seat rose up, pivoting somehow on hidden hinges in the back of the chair. Looking in, Meg screamed, a sound that was strangled off in her throat almost as soon as it emerged, making it sound a croak.
It wasn't sheets of musical compositions at rest in the compartment revealed. It was the composer himself.
And he didn't look like he was alive.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Please let me know how you're enjoying this so far!
AngelCeleste85
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~