Mua ha ha, bet none of you were expecting this! dodges flying bricks don't worry, we will get back to Etoile, Erik, Verrill, and our dear Vicomte soon! But first, a little interlude, inspired by a single line in Susan Kay…

>>>Edit- my my, I have been neglecting reviewer questions! I appologize!

Queen Ame- Etoile is the french word for star. Verrill is derived (I believe) from the French word for truth. So I do indeed enjoy playing around with names -p

MEG GIRY

I sat in the wings—sat, because standing had quickly grown painful—and forlornly watched the rehearsal. I should be on that stage, I thought. Not sulking back here. The dancing of the other girls looked more dismal than usual, and many missteps caught my readily nitpicking eye. I had no desire to watch the performance that night, particularly considering that the diva La Carlotta was supposedly going to attempt to sing the role of Queen of the Night over a cold, which wasn't exactly something I wanted to hear. But I would have put up with it; I would have put up with anything if only…

A sudden pain shot through my right ankle, causing every muscle in my body to suddenly go rigid, and a soft gasp to escape my lips. Luckily, no-one heard me over the over-zealous accompaniment and the all-too-pounding feet of the dancers. As soon as it began to dull, I shifted my position and rubbed it gently, wiping away the solitary tear that sat on my lip.

I had been good, maybe even great. That much was obvious; all too obvious, in fact. I thought I could do anything, no, I knew I could do anything. I had been the leader of my row since my first year at the Opera Garnier, and a soloist since my second. I was well on my way to becoming a famous prima ballerina. I had none of the natural awkwardness attributed to most girls of my age, and while the other ballet rats pranced, I was able to soar. I had quickly gained the attention of the managers who had replaced Debienne and Poligny, much to the dismay of the other girls and the current prima ballerina La Sorelli, who thought me too childish to even consider competing with for the role. But I knew that I had more potential than she had had. I was younger than her, and could already perform all of the same moves, but one…

She may have possessed the affection of the Count, the patron of the Opera, but the count had turned up dead the same morning that his younger brother and my friend Christine Daae had fled Paris, and the managers had resigned shortly after. Though I knew that it was rather cold of me, all the while I was thinking one thought: this was the time for me to show whoever took over that I could dance rings around La Sorelli.

For the most part, I could. Everything she did, I could do and better, but for one thing. One move that I knew would take me several more years of flexibility training to be able to execute properly. But several years was too long, especially when I received an opportunity that would take hundreds of years to come again.

Sorelli was stricken with an awful bout of flu, and unable to perform that night. My rather haggard looking mother walked through the dressing rooms of the corps du ballet, talking with Gabriel and the new manager, Pierpont, in a low and distressed tone. Stopping the application of my makeup, I turned an ear toward them and away from the raucous girls who were horsing around, hiding alcohol and even some ill-reputed substances at the sight of the ballet mistress, music director and manager. I could just barely pick up what my mother was saying. "No, messieurs, not even she can do it. None of them have the training required for that routine…you'll simply have to cut it from the performance."

I glared into my mirror. Of course, my mother could support Christine Daae, but when it came to me, her daughter, she had nothing but shadowy criticism. It had always been that way. No matter how good I was, my mother, in her prime, had been better. She had been the prima ballerina at this very opera for a month…

I decided to take my fate into my own hands. Maybe, just maybe, I could squeeze the immensely difficult routine out of me, just once, just to prove to this manager I was the correct material for his prima ballerina. I was silk: younger, more graceful, prettier, more charismatic then the gaudy tulle of Sorelli.

Jumping in front of them, I said, all of my fear floating away, "Let me dance for you, messieurs. Then you may decide whether or not I have sufficient training."

Pierpont looked liberated. "Yes! Of course! Perfect! Absolutely Ideal-"

"We will meet you on the stage in fifteen minutes," said Gabriel curtly, cutting him off. My mother gave me a look that could have set fire to a stone. I smiled cheekily back at her, as I nodded my concession to Pierpont and Gabriel. "Excellent!" said Pierpont. "Oh, God in heaven, I thank thee! There is surely some divine intervention tonight, eh Gabriel? The girl is perfect! Absolutely perfect! A little flower, an angel…" Gabriel looked quite pained as the pair exited.

My mother grabbed me harshly on the shoulder, surely leaving a bruise that would show through my costume. I scowled at her. "If you aren't going to help me, I'm going to help myself!"

"Meg Giry, you cannot dance that routine! You know it! How many times have I told you that if you go too far, you will dance yourself off the edge of a cliff? From such falls, child, there are no second chances. You can end everything with a simple twist," she accented this with a hand gesture, "of an ankle, tear of a ligament. It takes hardly anything, hardly anything at all. Will you risk all that for a chance? I thought I had taught you better than that."

"If I never take chances, I will always stay where I am. I'm good, Mother, as good as you were, much as you're loathe to admit it. I want to do something with it. I can be the greatest there ever was!"

"Yes, Meg," my mother, "you are as good as I was. Better! But I was also so audacious. I also wanted to dazzle the subscribers of the Opera Garnier. And look where I am now! Because I went to far…and fell!" She rapped her walking stick against the floor to accent this point.

My mother, as I have mentioned, had been the prima ballerina, for a month. The same month that she discovered she was pregnant with me. She had been having aches and pains, and her menstrual cycle had not come in over four months, so she finally decided to consult a physician.

That night, she was supposed to dance an extremely difficult solo at a gala that was to be attended by all of the crème de la crème of Paris, and even some foreign royalty, and the American president. The physician warned her against dancing with these aches, but she simply could not turn down the performance. Her rival, a picturesque blond with twice the looks and half the talent, would have danced the solo in her place, and this she simply could not allow.

So, she squeezed her swollen belly into her costume, and danced the solo anyway. But in the middle, she was racked with a sudden spasm, and fell awkwardly, breaking her leg. A clumsy ballerina then trod on it, and my mother blacked out, and had to be rushed to the hospital.

She could never dance the same way again. In fact, she had difficulty walking for many years, and had adopted the assistance of a rather heavy stick. I had seen her try to dance, every once in a while, when all the limes were dark and she was about to close up the opera. She would run through old routines on the dim stage, a shadow of her former grace and talent. Because of these observations, I presumed she no longer truly needed the walking stick, and was quite sure she simply liked the menacing sound it made when she banged it on the floor. My father left her after her career had ended. He had no use for a failure, especially not a pregnant one.

But that night, I knew that that would not be my fate. It couldn't happen. Not to me. Not to me.

Like mother like daughter.

"From the beginning, please, monsieur Gabriel," Pierpont instructed the music director delightedly, as I focused on the routine I was about to do. The music started, and I suddenly became acutely aware of the exact quality of every note, the precise resonance of every chord. I felt hot plasma running through my veins, and I moved through the introduction of the routine as effortlessly as I laced up my ballet slippers. I was having the best night I had had in ages. Everything was going right.

Every move fell perfectly in to place, right up until the climax of the ballet. That one move was coming. The one I had never landed. It was coming…it was here.

I gathered all of my strength, bracing myself. My muscles worked like a finely tuned violin, moving with acute precision. I had done it. I was going to land it perfectly. It was perfect! Perfect!

But it couldn't be! Something inside me cried out. I had never done this before. There was no way it would happen. The liquid fire pumping through my body turned tepid, and then icy with doubt. A twitch occurred somewhere, a twitch that was just barely sufficient to flap a butterfly's wing. But it was enough to send me sprawling. I felt the bone in my ankle shatter as I fell.

All I could remember after that were hands, many pairs of hands, and my mother's cries, and my shame, oh, the shame that ran down my face in hot, unsuppressed tears, and then waking up in a hospital bed.

"She won't dance professionally again," said the cold, impersonal voice of the quack doctor, and I cried in my mothers arms, as she ran her hands through my soft, disheveled curls.

"You were right, mother….you were right…"

Coming out of my reverie, I realized that the girls were at my personal favorite part of the piece. They were making an awful mess of it. I saw Jammes, the new row leader make a horrible, stupid mistake. The type of mistake I never would have made. My mother rapped her cane mercilessly against the floor, and shouted at her, along with several of the other severely errant girls, and the music started up again.

I had been running odd jobs around the opera now, trying to make ends meet again for myself and my mother. We had to make adjustments in our lives on my greatly diminished salary, as if my inability to perform was not enough. Now, I was forced to hobble after La Carlotta backstage with her throat spray, and listen to her shout about how slow I was to whoever would listen, and how we needed crew members that were not crippled. It was rather unpleasant. I had also assumed most of my mother's boxkeeping duties of the infamous box five. The new manager had recently started selling it, and the Opera Ghost had not appeared in months. My mother seemed quite upset about this, for reasons she refused to disclose. Intrigued, I spent a lot of time limping about the box, checking for evidence of the ghost, or my mother's correspondence with him. I found nothing, but it did not matter. None of the ballet rats would have listened to tales of any of my finds anyway: they had all been avoiding me since my injury. I figured Sorelli had fed them some rubbish about me being bad luck. I would have done the same had one of them been in my place.

I had no idea what I would do with the rest of my life. I had ignored my mother's insistence to learn other skills as a cushion for my dancing career. I had never been interested, or good, for that matter, at anything else. As I eyed the accompanist, I remembered the train wreck that was her attempt at getting me piano lessons. I had never practiced, preferring pirouettes to pianissimos, commands written in French rather than Italian. Now, I wondered what might have happened if I had worked half as hard at piano as I had at dance. Perhaps, I could have been as excellent as Christine claimed her dark maestro to be.

Heartened by this idea, at the end of the rehearsal I staggered down to the orchestra pit, rather than preparing box five, and began to play, the intro to an aria I remembered.

My good mood went down faster than I had on that fateful night. I was awful. I couldn't remember half of the notes, and those I did remember, I couldn't play correctly. Compared with me, the mediocre accompanist at the rehearsal may well have been Mozart!

I glared at the ivory keys. They grinned up at me maliciously, teasing, taunting. I slammed the lid down. Now I had a new direction in life. I would conquer them, no matter what it took. If I could not stand, I would perform sitting down.