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.
Other notes: Don't worry about the swearwords in here, most of them are rather archaic anyway and we wouldn't have a second thought about them, but in those days they were quite powerful oaths. Meg can get away with saying these because she's a petite rat, a dancer in the ballet corps, and would have picked up some rather foul oaths in the course of her career in the corps. She only uses them though, when she's alone or thinks she's alone, can you imagine Madame Giry letting "God's bones" (one of the worst) slide unremarked?
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts. }}
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Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85
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Ch. 4 - A Spark of Life
To Meg's credit, she didn't scream this time. She gasped, and backed away several steps.
"Oh my God." She reached a trembling hand into the space where the body of the man who called himself the Opera Ghost lay, curled into a fetal position in the bottom of the chair. Nothing jumped up and bit her as she half-expected. {{ Of course not, you goose, this is reality, not another opera! Dead men don't jump to life in reality. }}
Meg looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. This obviously was where he had hidden himself away from the mob weeks ago, had he even moved since?
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, I tried to get here before now, but I couldn't."
She knelt down and it was with a trembling hand that she stroked his hair. It was fine and soft, if what was left of it was almost completely gray: he didn't feel like someone who had lain dead for two weeks undisturbed. For that matter. he didn't smell like it, either. {{ Not that he smells like lilacs anyway but - }}
Meg's brow furrowed in thought.
{{ Could it be? }} She didn't dare to finish that thought.
Obviously the man had not been taking care of himself recently, his hair was matted horribly and heavy with dirt and oil to the point where Meg was not sure of its true color or length. He wore black pants and a plain white shirt, worn and wrinkled badly, neither very clean but serviceable, apparently not his best formal attire like that which her mother had always seen. His skin was not much paler than the wrinkled cotton and paper-dry to her touch, especially where thick salt trails marked the tracks of tears. The awful thing was how shrunken he seemed. Once his presence, just his aura, had pervaded every niche and nook of the Opera House from the lowest cellar to Apollo's lyre: it was a stark contrast to this bundle of too-thin limbs and too-tight skin, a shrivelled husk that once was a man and was now just a corpse with a weak pulse and a slow, shallow breath, that lay on its side in the darkest corner possible.
It was then that Meg noticed the faintest movement of breathing.
"No way," she whispered, making the sign of the cross once again. She checked his pulse at the throat gingerly: weak, erratic, but there was one. A spark of life remained in him, dying though he had to be. "My God! He's still alive, somehow!"
Meg ran outside, fumbling at the knot of her shawl as she went. When she reached the lake, she plunged the fabric in and carried the whole sopping thing back into the house, not caring that the icy water got all over her borrowed dress as well as what was left of the scorched and water-warped flooring. The man needed water, and needed it fast.
He was so light and emaciated that it was almost no effort at all for Meg to drag the man to a sitting position. She wiped his lips. Thin and almost as pale as the rest of his face, with a wet corner of the shawl and then his cheeks and forehead. Her trembling hand shook even harder as she touched the ravaged left side, but for all the reaction she got he might as well have been stone, or dead.
{{ I've got to get him out of here somehow. But how, and where? }}
Christine had told her about the room Erik had readied for her: the eggshell-white walls and the boat-shaped bed, the rich wooden furniture filled with lovely clothes that were all precisely her size, the baskets of flowers everywhere, especially red roses, and every basket obviously arranged carefully to carry special meanings though most she could not begin to decipher. The mob had never found it, or the concealed entrance to it, but Christine had told her everything about the room. It was one of those things that two girls close to one another talked about: Meg had thought it incredibly romantic.
{{ If I can find it, it'll serve a different purpose now. He's got to get better somewhere, I can't very well haul him up to the Opera House! Now where did she say to find the knob to that dadratted door? }} Between taps on the panel she was certain her friend had meant, she risked glances over her shoulder at the motionless figure in the bottom of the black throne behind her. {{ I don't care how many people he killed, I can't just leave him to die. I had to come and be sure, and leaving him now means I'm a murderess too. Oh, where in blazes is this door - there! }} Meg was much fiercer in the privacy of her own mind when agitated than she thought she would ever be out loud: Madame Giry was death on girls using that kind of language.
Soundlessly the hidden door slid open to reveal a pitch-dark room. The air inside felt dry and slightly warmer than the rest of the house, and if a little bit stale it smelled like lavender instead of rot and mildew and wet ashes and soot. Meg pulled a splinter off of one of the wooden wall panels and raised her dark lamp: almost instantly she caught the red glint of light off of a wall sconce. {{ And right next to the doorway, too, what luck! }} She unhooded the lamp, letting white light glare into both rooms, and set it on the night-table it revealed. Going back to the lamp she'd found, she turned the little stub that she thought would raise the wick, and unaccountably the whole room flooded with light!
"Oh, my," the dazzled young lady, half-blinded, whispered. "How did he do that, I wonder?" Her sight was already returning, though, and she shook off awe to turn the other knobs on the three other lights the first had finally discovered. "At the very least you made it a lot easier for me," she said briskly to the still figure in the chair when she came out. She eased his left arm over the back of her neck and put her own right around his shoulders and under his other arm.
"Monsieur, I don't know when the last time you ate was, but you're skin and bones and you still feel like an elephant hanging off my back," Meg grumbled good-naturedly. Half-carrying, half dragging the unresponsive man into the bedroom she pushed him rather unceremoniously onto the bed that had to have been Christine's. Another trip out sufficed to get the shawl, still very wet, which she reapplied to his face and hands.
"Honestly, I don't know how I got into this predicament, Monsieur," she said, pulling up a chair beside the bed. "Really I don't. I came down because I was worried about you, and expected the Opera Ghost to either be dead or moved out. Instead I find a sick man and I have no idea where to even start nursing you. I don't have time for that, either, Maman will kill me if I'm late for any more rehearsals!" She wrung another corner of the shawl out onto his parched lips, and paused in her monologue as his lips parted on their own to let the precious liquid pass. "Better. My God, you must be thirsty. Hungry, too, I'd bet. I don't have any food, but there's a lake full of water right outside, you know. I'll be right back, there's got to be a cup in there somewhere in that mess of a kitchen that they left behind. Don't go anywhere," she chided the limp man.
To her amazement, there was a metal cup, badly dented but sound enough to carry some water, and a badly chipped ceramic bowl as well. A careful search even turned up a silver spoon, tarnished green with the damp. All three were filthy, but they were all she had. {{ Maybe there's some soap to wash these off with in Christine's room? }} In short order she'd found everything she was looking for, returned all of the newfound utensils to a semi-clean state and was spooning water into the Phantom's mouth.
"Oh, good grief," Meg exclaimed suddenly, dropping the spoon to clap both hands to her rapidly reddening cheeks. "I'm going to have to bathe you and I have no idea how to manage that without. oh, God's bones." It was funny enough that she had to sit back and laugh. "And if I don't close that door, we're both going to freeze, so I'll be back in just a moment." She closed the door, noticing for the first time the heavy bolts on the inside. {{ Bolts? Inside? Christine didn't tell me about that. What kind of man is he, anyway? }}
"Those bolts are going to have to go," she murmured. "I can't be here all day, every day, but I expect to be able to get in here to take care of you when I do! Jeez, if you went over that flywalk any time you wanted to come out and haunt us, you're braver than I thought. So is Christine, if you made her do that, too!"
Meg sighed and continued giving him water little by little. Maybe it was just her imagination, but he did seem to look a little better - not that any amount of water would help his face, she realized sadly - and she fancied his breath and pulse were a little stronger.
"I'm too tired to go back up there now, I just got out of rehearsal and you know how Maman drives us like slaves. And I can't leave you right now in any case. If you need anything, even the next room wouldn't be close enough for me to hear you and anyway, it looks like you can't speak right now. God, this is embarrassing," she added in an undertone to the ceiling, "but I guess I'm going to have to stay in here with you tonight. Mother will have my hide, she always does if I decide not to go home with her at night, but I'm old enough not to, now, and I'm a ballet dancer: everyone expects that kind of thing from the petite rats." So Meg unfolded the shawl to air-dry in a corner, turned all the lamps almost all the way down, and put out the flame in the dark lamp before sitting down again in her chair. Settling her head on her arms and her folded arms on the bed at the sick man's side, she went to sleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Well? Does it suck, does it rock? I know it's a little slow in getting going, that's why I posted three chapters at once, and this one now, but tell me what you think! Don't worry, you'll hear from Christine again soon. I hope I get to hear from *you* sooner, though!
AngelCeleste
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.
Other notes: Don't worry about the swearwords in here, most of them are rather archaic anyway and we wouldn't have a second thought about them, but in those days they were quite powerful oaths. Meg can get away with saying these because she's a petite rat, a dancer in the ballet corps, and would have picked up some rather foul oaths in the course of her career in the corps. She only uses them though, when she's alone or thinks she's alone, can you imagine Madame Giry letting "God's bones" (one of the worst) slide unremarked?
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts. }}
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Ch. 4 - A Spark of Life
To Meg's credit, she didn't scream this time. She gasped, and backed away several steps.
"Oh my God." She reached a trembling hand into the space where the body of the man who called himself the Opera Ghost lay, curled into a fetal position in the bottom of the chair. Nothing jumped up and bit her as she half-expected. {{ Of course not, you goose, this is reality, not another opera! Dead men don't jump to life in reality. }}
Meg looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. This obviously was where he had hidden himself away from the mob weeks ago, had he even moved since?
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, I tried to get here before now, but I couldn't."
She knelt down and it was with a trembling hand that she stroked his hair. It was fine and soft, if what was left of it was almost completely gray: he didn't feel like someone who had lain dead for two weeks undisturbed. For that matter. he didn't smell like it, either. {{ Not that he smells like lilacs anyway but - }}
Meg's brow furrowed in thought.
{{ Could it be? }} She didn't dare to finish that thought.
Obviously the man had not been taking care of himself recently, his hair was matted horribly and heavy with dirt and oil to the point where Meg was not sure of its true color or length. He wore black pants and a plain white shirt, worn and wrinkled badly, neither very clean but serviceable, apparently not his best formal attire like that which her mother had always seen. His skin was not much paler than the wrinkled cotton and paper-dry to her touch, especially where thick salt trails marked the tracks of tears. The awful thing was how shrunken he seemed. Once his presence, just his aura, had pervaded every niche and nook of the Opera House from the lowest cellar to Apollo's lyre: it was a stark contrast to this bundle of too-thin limbs and too-tight skin, a shrivelled husk that once was a man and was now just a corpse with a weak pulse and a slow, shallow breath, that lay on its side in the darkest corner possible.
It was then that Meg noticed the faintest movement of breathing.
"No way," she whispered, making the sign of the cross once again. She checked his pulse at the throat gingerly: weak, erratic, but there was one. A spark of life remained in him, dying though he had to be. "My God! He's still alive, somehow!"
Meg ran outside, fumbling at the knot of her shawl as she went. When she reached the lake, she plunged the fabric in and carried the whole sopping thing back into the house, not caring that the icy water got all over her borrowed dress as well as what was left of the scorched and water-warped flooring. The man needed water, and needed it fast.
He was so light and emaciated that it was almost no effort at all for Meg to drag the man to a sitting position. She wiped his lips. Thin and almost as pale as the rest of his face, with a wet corner of the shawl and then his cheeks and forehead. Her trembling hand shook even harder as she touched the ravaged left side, but for all the reaction she got he might as well have been stone, or dead.
{{ I've got to get him out of here somehow. But how, and where? }}
Christine had told her about the room Erik had readied for her: the eggshell-white walls and the boat-shaped bed, the rich wooden furniture filled with lovely clothes that were all precisely her size, the baskets of flowers everywhere, especially red roses, and every basket obviously arranged carefully to carry special meanings though most she could not begin to decipher. The mob had never found it, or the concealed entrance to it, but Christine had told her everything about the room. It was one of those things that two girls close to one another talked about: Meg had thought it incredibly romantic.
{{ If I can find it, it'll serve a different purpose now. He's got to get better somewhere, I can't very well haul him up to the Opera House! Now where did she say to find the knob to that dadratted door? }} Between taps on the panel she was certain her friend had meant, she risked glances over her shoulder at the motionless figure in the bottom of the black throne behind her. {{ I don't care how many people he killed, I can't just leave him to die. I had to come and be sure, and leaving him now means I'm a murderess too. Oh, where in blazes is this door - there! }} Meg was much fiercer in the privacy of her own mind when agitated than she thought she would ever be out loud: Madame Giry was death on girls using that kind of language.
Soundlessly the hidden door slid open to reveal a pitch-dark room. The air inside felt dry and slightly warmer than the rest of the house, and if a little bit stale it smelled like lavender instead of rot and mildew and wet ashes and soot. Meg pulled a splinter off of one of the wooden wall panels and raised her dark lamp: almost instantly she caught the red glint of light off of a wall sconce. {{ And right next to the doorway, too, what luck! }} She unhooded the lamp, letting white light glare into both rooms, and set it on the night-table it revealed. Going back to the lamp she'd found, she turned the little stub that she thought would raise the wick, and unaccountably the whole room flooded with light!
"Oh, my," the dazzled young lady, half-blinded, whispered. "How did he do that, I wonder?" Her sight was already returning, though, and she shook off awe to turn the other knobs on the three other lights the first had finally discovered. "At the very least you made it a lot easier for me," she said briskly to the still figure in the chair when she came out. She eased his left arm over the back of her neck and put her own right around his shoulders and under his other arm.
"Monsieur, I don't know when the last time you ate was, but you're skin and bones and you still feel like an elephant hanging off my back," Meg grumbled good-naturedly. Half-carrying, half dragging the unresponsive man into the bedroom she pushed him rather unceremoniously onto the bed that had to have been Christine's. Another trip out sufficed to get the shawl, still very wet, which she reapplied to his face and hands.
"Honestly, I don't know how I got into this predicament, Monsieur," she said, pulling up a chair beside the bed. "Really I don't. I came down because I was worried about you, and expected the Opera Ghost to either be dead or moved out. Instead I find a sick man and I have no idea where to even start nursing you. I don't have time for that, either, Maman will kill me if I'm late for any more rehearsals!" She wrung another corner of the shawl out onto his parched lips, and paused in her monologue as his lips parted on their own to let the precious liquid pass. "Better. My God, you must be thirsty. Hungry, too, I'd bet. I don't have any food, but there's a lake full of water right outside, you know. I'll be right back, there's got to be a cup in there somewhere in that mess of a kitchen that they left behind. Don't go anywhere," she chided the limp man.
To her amazement, there was a metal cup, badly dented but sound enough to carry some water, and a badly chipped ceramic bowl as well. A careful search even turned up a silver spoon, tarnished green with the damp. All three were filthy, but they were all she had. {{ Maybe there's some soap to wash these off with in Christine's room? }} In short order she'd found everything she was looking for, returned all of the newfound utensils to a semi-clean state and was spooning water into the Phantom's mouth.
"Oh, good grief," Meg exclaimed suddenly, dropping the spoon to clap both hands to her rapidly reddening cheeks. "I'm going to have to bathe you and I have no idea how to manage that without. oh, God's bones." It was funny enough that she had to sit back and laugh. "And if I don't close that door, we're both going to freeze, so I'll be back in just a moment." She closed the door, noticing for the first time the heavy bolts on the inside. {{ Bolts? Inside? Christine didn't tell me about that. What kind of man is he, anyway? }}
"Those bolts are going to have to go," she murmured. "I can't be here all day, every day, but I expect to be able to get in here to take care of you when I do! Jeez, if you went over that flywalk any time you wanted to come out and haunt us, you're braver than I thought. So is Christine, if you made her do that, too!"
Meg sighed and continued giving him water little by little. Maybe it was just her imagination, but he did seem to look a little better - not that any amount of water would help his face, she realized sadly - and she fancied his breath and pulse were a little stronger.
"I'm too tired to go back up there now, I just got out of rehearsal and you know how Maman drives us like slaves. And I can't leave you right now in any case. If you need anything, even the next room wouldn't be close enough for me to hear you and anyway, it looks like you can't speak right now. God, this is embarrassing," she added in an undertone to the ceiling, "but I guess I'm going to have to stay in here with you tonight. Mother will have my hide, she always does if I decide not to go home with her at night, but I'm old enough not to, now, and I'm a ballet dancer: everyone expects that kind of thing from the petite rats." So Meg unfolded the shawl to air-dry in a corner, turned all the lamps almost all the way down, and put out the flame in the dark lamp before sitting down again in her chair. Settling her head on her arms and her folded arms on the bed at the sick man's side, she went to sleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Well? Does it suck, does it rock? I know it's a little slow in getting going, that's why I posted three chapters at once, and this one now, but tell me what you think! Don't worry, you'll hear from Christine again soon. I hope I get to hear from *you* sooner, though!
AngelCeleste