Haha, back again. Isn't it nice to have this done (somewhat) regularly now! Woot. Yeah, okay, I know, I'm still to blame for taking ages in the first place.
Oh, and...I SAW THE PHANTOM MOVIE!!! I have to say, I wasn't expecting it to be all that great, you know...nothing beats the musical...—and true, I still prefer the musical. But let's just say, despite any criticisms that came to mind...I (and three friends, who I'd all too phabulously introduced to the Phantom in the first (phirst, lol...okay, no more) place) ended up sobbing helplessly at the end and throwing the uneaten popcorn (uneaten 'cause I'd been so immersed in the movie :P).
Well, the popcorn-throwing was at the very NOT-matching song they stuck in randomly at the end.
Anyways—more about what I thought of it in my profile. On with the story.
Lise had never been so bewildered and frightened. Her mother seemed to know this man, it was all too obvious: she'd shown only relief at seeing her daughter once again, and—she could hardly bring herself to even think it—her mother hadn't seemed concerned about her safety in the hands of...of that...man. Again Lise's brow furrowed in intense confusion and concentration. Who was he?
But her mind wandered again to her mother's unusual behavior. She'd gone into the wings to come up to her—but now this ghost of a man had left her side, and she could hear whispers in the darkness to the side. She heard no scream, no cry of surprise or fear...her mother was simply talking to this man. It made no sense...surely her mother would have mentioned him, if she'd expected to see him here? But still, although her mother hadn't seemed mortally afraid, there was still an icy suspension in the air, the nature of which Lise could not identify. What was this connection between this strange, mysterious man and her own mother—the Phantom and Christine?
Now the whispers grew noticeably louder, cutting into her thoughts and drawing her attention. She tentatively crept forward on the beam, wishing desperately to figure out what in the world was happening, and when her mother would come rescue her. The dark of the side of the stage, the end of the beam, loomed nearer, and Lise saw, to her relief, a railing at the end of it; barely visible in the darkness. Thinking of the security of the railing, the danger of her current position became sharper in her mind, and she wavered for a moment, her heart racing. The wood upon which she stood was so thin...and what if there were a weak spot near the end, and it collapsed?
Now this fear preoccupied Lise's mind more so than anything else going on; this immediate danger even pushed out the thought of the Phantom for the moment. She realized she was no longer trembling, but shaking tremulously, so much that now tremors were running through the wood itself. She was feeling even more desperate and breathing shakily, the view swimming before her eyes; and the truth that she was the only one up there on that dangerous board with no one to catch any such fall—bluntly said, were she to falter, there'd be no chance of rescue—gave her a mad urge to lunge for the railing. And she did so—stumbling along the ledge, she leaned forward, teetering on her toes, reaching her hands out for the bar of the railing—
Just as she'd gotten a tight grasp on the cold metal bar, she realized she hadn't moved forward enough—she'd simply fallen forward—and her feet swung sideways, off the board completely. It was unbelievable, like a tale completely invented to frighten the acrophobes—she was hanging solely from her hands from the metal bar, her feet dangling queasily a good way above the hard floor of the stage.
She let out a shrill scream of intense surprise and mortal fear, barely maintaining her conciousness: indeed, the scene was swimming before her eyes, swirling and twisting, her eyes fixed by a somnolent blur. Her hands felt damp and slipped along the length of the bar...
It was at that moment that her mother came rushing back into view, having heard her scream. Christine too let out a cry, but wasted no more time: she immediately rushed back to the wings to the ladder. But she'd forgotten exactly where it was—her hands fumbled along the wall in the dark, searching for the only lifeline, the only way to her daughter.
Yet even as she feverously and blindly swiped at the wall with her trembling, pale hands, she felt a sudden breeze behind her and a black shadow moving fast along the passageway. Only moments later, she looked up and saw the dark shape and fluttering cloak of Erik, already three quarters of the way up the ladder.
There was no more she could do there—so she sped once more out onto the stage, arriving just in time to see her Angel pulling their daughter to safety, and disappearing once more down the ladder. Moments later he appeared just on the threshold of the stage, on the border between the darkness of the wings and the openness of the stage. He gently set Lise down, and Christine could have sworn his eyes were full of concern—worry—and relief as he observed his daughter.
Lise, in the meantime, was still in a complete daze. One moment, she'd been teetering on the edge of her life, and the next, she was being swept down to solid ground, and was standing between the two most opposite people to have ever entered her life: the one for whom she felt the most love, comfort, and security; and the other...the one whom she felt the most fear. Yet she found she didn't have any certain urge to draw away from the nearness of this ghost...what was it about him, all of a sudden, that made him seem suddenly more of a familiar, yet still mystifying figure? Lise put it to the fact that he'd just saved her life up there; he couldn't be so bad then, after all...
Her senses sharpened suddenly. She rushed into her mother's arms, the both of them shaking furiously with waves of relief. The two remained in their embrace for a long while; comforting themselves from each of their most recent traumas.
Finally Lise drew away, feeling already better—and now the silence was overbearing. The situation was unthinkably awkward: this man who had once seemed so dangerous and intensely frightening to Lise had just shown compassion and saved her, and now was standing meekly at the side, watching the reunion of mother and daughter. And there was a question Lise wanted to pose to her mother, but couldn't put it to her any less bluntly since the man in question was standing just beside them.
"Mama..." she whispered carefully—though there were still audible tremors in her voice—"who...who is he?"
Christine froze. Of course, she should have been expecting this. But...what to say? Certainly not the truth...not now, anyway. That left her still at a loss for words.
As for Erik, he still stood in the same position as before, unmoving, showing no reaction or emotion to any of the happenings. What had he just done? he pondered to himself, in a state of confusion he'd never experienced before. He'd just demonstrated the compassion that, long ago, he'd promised he'd never, ever show...demonstrating that compassion to another person, a person other than Christine...he'd hardly have thought it possible of himself. But, after all...this wasn't merely some 'person other than Christine', after all...it was the result of his only passion, for Christine...it still seemed so unbelievable to him...
And even as both Christine and Erik's thoughts drifted away once more, leaving them completely aware and awake to the present reality, the silence remained. Lise looked to her mother, then, more reluctantly, to the man on her other side—but standing farther away—and back to her mother again, waiting for an answer—but one she now realized probably wouldn't come right then.
Finally the man—the Phantom—spoke.
"This...business...will not be left unfinished," he murmured, casting a lingering glance at Christine. "And, it is now in my interest to ask a small favor, in return..." He did not finish his sentence, but Christine knew what he was saying was that he was owed something for rescuing Lise.
"We shall meet as usual." He paused, then added—"Little Lotte."
A simple enough phrase, but one, for Christine, that evoked such memories...
Again, yeah, it was short. But it's about 1 AM here. (Don't ask why I always write so late, maybe it's something to do with the Phantomness of the nighttime.)
R&R!
