A/N: Yes, this has been posted on the "Phandom" community on LJ before, because I also write under the handle Mask and Mirror. So, there you are.
Disclaimer: All characters, etc. from Phantom belong to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Mezzo
It was strange, or so little Meg considered it, that following a monster through an underground labyrinth of miasmas came to her as a logical action. Strange that, though she moved with the utmost swiftness possible when there was only the light of a makeshift torch and she could not see the rats scurrying across her feet, that she was unafraid. Strange that, though she had heard every story of his treachery since she was a little girl, she was more than a little excited. But then, thought Meg, a pair of pants could do wonders for a girl.
She reached a wall, felt its damp bricks with her thin fingers, and slowly moved down its length until she had found the adjoining corridor. She slowed her speed, but her breath quickened, rising high in her chest.
She took time to speculate what all this was, and where she was. Surely she could not still be within the Opera Populaire, despite its confusing and undiscovered lengths. The lake beneath the stage was common knowledge to nearly all who set foot within the house, but this, these mazes within mazes, the odd shaft of moonlight through a grate in the wall, the water oozing down the walls, all was alien territory.
And yet, one pervading thought was overtaking her consciousness, and it was a thought that would have sent her dear friend into fits of horror at the mere idea.
Meg slowed her steps, and then stopped in the driest spot she could find, for she was no longer alone.
Five feet above her head, feeble light illuminated a square of tunnel, but the window was too high for her to see out to the street. No matter. What concerned her was the darkness before her.
"Leave now, before you can't find your way back," said a voice. Behind her. She wheeled and searched the dark in vain. She stood in place, almost imperceptibly crept her hand to the dagger shoved haphazardly into her belt. She opened her mouth, and the sound of her tongue clicking against her teeth reverberated down the empty, echoing passages.
"You can't hurt me," she tried, though she barely heard it herself.
"I don't have to," the voice replied. She knew that voice. It had not haunted her these years, but she had heard it time and again in her mother's stories. "You don't know how many have perished in these tunnels. How many lost, forgotten carcasses you stepped over in the past minutes."
Meg felt the blood rise to her face, and she turned round again. His voice was everywhere at once, how could she ever have hoped to find him on her own, when even her mother dared not traverse the nether regions of the opera house?
"They're right behind me, that mob. They're coming for you."
"They are not, petite Giry. Don't lie, it doesn't suit you." For one second, the briefest of moments, and while her head was clouded in fright, a hand was on her waist, and a knife slicing through her belt. Her dagger was gone. "And neither does this," he said, and she heard the muffled thus of her weapon, tossed in some mossy corner.
"And for that matter, this underground hell suits you not at all. Mother would not approve, and who would I be to question her?"
"Please," she said at last.
"Please?" she heard in his echo of her word. "Please what? Help you return?"
Silence, but for the shaking of her hand as she supported herself against the wall.
"That is not what you want. You want my help out of the shadows, but your current predicament means nothing to you."
"Shadows?" It was her turn to echo.
"You are lying again. But I don't think you know it."
For another split-second, she felt a touch, like a hand lifting her hair, and at once she was reliving her life spent in the wings: the watchful eye of her mother, the hopes and failures of the ballet chorus, and the overwhelming, always overwhelming talent of Christine.
"She lived in a darkness only I could comprehend. You understood her as much as you understand where you are just now. None of you…"
She had stopped shaking. She took one step, then another, until she had left the patch of moonlight behind her.
She reached out her hand, palm up. Within it lay a white half-mask.
"I've always wanted to be a singer."