V. To the Dungeons
Poling the boat along the flooded corridor, Meg wondered if this really was the right thing she was doing. Helping the Phantom! The Phantom needed no help, or else he would not have been the Phantom. And just because her mother seemed to be worried… Her mother had the tendency to worry about things requiring not the least of such feelings. Moreover, she had no idea where in this labyrinth he was exactly, where she should start looking for him.
Those… others… might as well find her first.
She shuddered at the idea, quickly banishing the thought from her mind again.
Her mother would have something to say about this if she found out, and there was no doubt she would. There was only so long one could go looking for something, which Meg had vaguely claimed before hastily pulling on the Phantom's things, then coming down here. Her mother would have something to say to this, and this for certain.
Part of her was eager to turn back by now, but the other, probably boldened by wearing the Phantom's shirt and trousers, was determined to go on. If she could not help him much, then she might at least be able to distract those intruders long enough for him to finish the job.
Again an idea she did not want to ponder any closer.
Suddenly a voice came from everywhere, whispering to her, "Where are you going, little one?"
At first she froze in shock, almost dropping the pole, but then realized who it must be, and relief flooded her with warmth. "Where are you?" she inquired back, looking around her eagerly. Her surroundings were visible clearly enough, illumined not only by the pair of lanterns in the boat's prow, but also by a few pale rays of grey light, falling into the cellars through narrow slits near the ceiling. The corridor seemed to be broadening ahead, the light increasing. There were niches in the walls, above iron bars set into them, but none of those niches around her held the Phantom, as far as she could see.
"I'm watching you…"
"Yes, I know", Meg answered impatiently, leaning on the pole while turning her head this way and that, "but from where?"
"Here." Very suddenly his partly masked face appeared directly before hers, just a hand's length from her own, so that she was looking straight into his eyes at once, only that it was upside down. With a terrified squeak, Meg fell backwards, sitting down on the bench behind her hard. The pole slipped from her grasp, and she could snatch it back up just in time before it rolled off into the water. "That", she panted, " was mean!"
He only grinned at her, hanging from a single iron bar across a wide opening in the ceiling by his knees, dangling slightly, with his arms crossed and appearing very much at his ease. While his clothes, black trousers and white shirt, just like hers, were completely dry and hardly crumpled up at all, his hair was a moist tangle, as if hastily rubbed more or less dry and then not combed, just left at that. When he was hanging upside down like that, it seemed rather longer than she had guessed it was. "Won't you come up?" he suggested, a slight tone of mocking in his voice.
"How?" Meg asked, getting back to her feet and rubbing her backside angrily.
"Get the boat towed first."
Following his instructions, she fixed the boat to one of the iron bars above the water's surface and stowed the pole in one of the niches, then, with some difficulty, brought the boat into a position with its length across the corridor's width. "Right. What now?"
"You either jump up from where you stand and grab that bar I'm hanging from, or you climb up along the sides."
Meg considered the possibility of jumping briefly, but immediately dismissed it again because the bar in question was rather high up. "I think I'll try a side", she said, though doubtfully. Those niches were rather high up, too. "How do I reach the ceiling from there?"
"You'll have to jump, too, only sideways."
"It's way too far", Meg protested. "I'll never get up there!"
"You might at least try."
Meg sighed. She would not give up that easily. Since both options involved leaping up, she might as well do it straight away, without any attempts at climbing which might well turn out to be failures in the end. Suddenly the boat felt rather unsteady below her feet, and she feared that if she missed the bar and fell back down into it, it might well keel over and roughly deposit her in the cold water. But she would at least try. She would try.
Leaping up as hard as she could, she missed the bar beside his knee by a mere inch. Steeling herself for an uncomfortable plunge into the water as she fell back down, she suddenly found herself hanging in midair, with his arms around her middle. "Wouldn't want you to come crashing down on the deck like that", he remarked, his voice sounding somewhat muffled from somewhere at her stomach. "Right, I'll lower you back down –"
"Not a good idea", she said, looking down.
"Why?"
"Because the boat moved over towards the side when I jumped. There's only water beneath me."
From the movement against her waist, she could tell that he was shifting around his head, trying to locate it. "Can't see a thing", he muttered into her shirt. "But I think if I swing you over a bit and let go at the right instant –"
"You just said you couldn't see a thing!" she protested. "You'll just drop me into the water!"
"I won't!"
"You will!"
Muttering a curse which would surely have had her mother at least raise her eyebrows warningly, he shifted his grip on her, squeezing her uncomfortably tight. She seriously wondered how long he would be able to hold her. "Hold on to me", he ordered, probably thinking just the same.
Meg did so, wrapping her arms around him. It did not make her feel much safer, only a bit less foolish. This was the most awkward position she had ever been in with a man, it occurred to her, and she had been in plenty of awkward positions with men during ballet practises and performances. None of those had ever felt that awkward.
"I'd try and lift you up", he said, "only you're a bit in the way."
"So what am I supposed to do about it?" It was all his fault! Meg wished her mother were here to box his ears… but then again, better not. Her mother might well find that Meg needed her own ears boxed just as well for coming down here on her own.
"Now listen, the water is not that cold –"
"No!" Meg shrieked, and the only thing which kept her from fidgeting with anguish was the fact that he might drop her even sooner if she did. "It was cold enough yesterday!"
Again he cursed to himself, and Meg feared that he would drop her anyway, however hard she protested. Then, suddenly, he said, "Here's another idea. Can you climb up?"
"How? And up where?" This was absolutely insane, and the craziest situation she had ever found herself in! If she had not been in danger of landing in the icy water any minute, she might have laughed at the grotesqueness of it all.
"Up me, of course", he replied impatiently. "Or do you see a ladder somewhere? Come on, that damn bar can't be that difficult to reach from where you are!"
Meg felt her arms growing numb rapidly. Any move the Phantom made, even the heaving of his ribcage, growing heavier with the time passing, might loosen her hold on him and make her fall. His grip on her was still firm, but his breathing was ragged now. He was growing tired, too. Looking up, she saw the bar above her, dark and rusted. Maybe if she tried to reach it with one arm… Then she would have to hold on to him with one arm only, which probably wouldn't work. But it was the only chance she had, he was right about it. No ladder in sight, indeed.
However, climbing up along him would be something so awkward that it made the blood pound in her cheeks. She only hoped that nobody would ever find out about this.
"I'll try", she informed him. "But don't you let me fall when I let go!"
He muttered something affirmative that was lost in her shirt.
Very carefully, she released him with her right arm, for a moment feeling herself sagging down before his grip grew firmer, and she felt muscles tense and move under his shirt as he pulled her further up. Reaching out, she tried to grab the bar, stretched as far as she could, but it was too high up still, her fingers only grazed it. "I – can't – reach – it!" she panted.
Shifting below her, he doubled his efforts, managing to haul her up a little more. "Try – again", he breathed, obviously as much out of air as she was. Again she stretched, at the same time trying not to hack her chin into his groin – he would surely drop her if she did that –, and this time her hand closed around the bar, which was cold and slippery to the touch. "Got it!" she exclaimed.
"Hang on, then", the answer came from below, through gritted teeth, by the sound of it.
Now she had a hold, bringing up her other hand was not that difficult anymore, although there was a moment, while swinging up to put her other hand in place, when she dreaded that she would slip and lose her hold. He released her with a grateful sigh, and for a glorious second she just hung there from the bar, filled with pride at having managed to reach it after all – but then it dawned on her that she would have to pull herself up somehow to gain access to the chamber above, and she seriously doubted that she would be able to. "What now?" she asked, downcast. He would have to help her again, but she was reluctant to ask him to. He might be annoyed by it, after this embarrassing manoeuvre, and moreover, she was too proud to beg for help.
Anyway, it was his fault, he had talked her into this, so it was his responsibility to get her up safely now!
He edged away from her, then somehow managed to bring himself up, and as Meg turned her head to see what he was doing, she saw that he now held on to a bar along the edge of the opening with his hands. "Here's a suggestion", he said.
Meg considered it. Of course, there was yet another bar along the opposite side, too, the one she was facing, but there was no way she could hook her knees around it, because it was too close to the edge. But maybe it would work as well if she just managed to get her legs up through the hole? "Very well", she said, trying to sound as calm as possible while her fingers began to hurt. "So you swing yourself up –"
"Actually", he interrupted smugly, "it was pure muscle work, but you can always try it the less elegant way if you like."
Meg snorted indignantly. Should she tell him that Raoul's manners were a lot better than his? Considering her current situation, she rather quickly decided against it. "Alright, you did it with your incredibly muscular stomach, and I'm very impressed with you. And what do you do now?"
As she turned her head again to face him, she saw that he was still grinning. "Watch", he said.
It looked like one swift twist of his body, and already he was sitting at the opening's edge to her left side, dangling his booted feet lazily. "You do that. Got it?"
Meg had certainly gotten the general idea, but he had been much too fast for her to know the details. That arrogant show-off! She betted that he had spent years learning this. But she did not want to give him another chance to be smug, and moreover, she feared that her hands were going to slip on the bar soon, so she swung up her legs with clenched teeth, at least managing to move them up onto the cavity's floor at the second try.
"You should always be able to support your own weight" the Phantom said lightly. "You ought to at least manage to pull yourself up somewhere…"
"Don't you dare tell me I have to lose weight or something!" Meg snapped at him, still without success trying to find a way to pull herself up through the opening completely. "For if you do… I'll kick you where it really hurts!"
"Then I'm not in any danger currently", he stated calmly, "because there's no endangered part of my anatomy you'd reach from down there."
Meg gritted her teeth. Who did he think he was? Yes, of course, he was the Phantom, but that gave him absolutely no right to behave like this, even if he thought it did! Apparently he was convinced that it only was necessary to be a gentleman if he felt in mood for it, or if there was no option he would be going to enjoy more, and that he could poke fun at her all he liked, even if her fingers were starting to get all sweaty, about to slip from their hold, and she was in danger of plummeting down headfirst… "You could at least help me!" she squeaked as one of her hands glided off the bar, making her stomach lurch with the expectance of the fall.
And there he was, just as if he had never just sat and watched her struggle, pulling her up through the opening easily and cradling her in his arms like a scared child. "Quiet, little one", he muttered soothingly. "I'm not going to let you fall."
Panting, Meg rested her head against him for a moment before she remembered herself and tried to sit up, ignoring the incident as well as she could. She had never realized how much her heart was racing while hanging there, in that accursed hole in the ceiling.
Helping her up, he said, in a very conversational tone, "Incidentally, don't let the dead body scare you."
"D…dead body?" she spluttered, involuntarily sinking back into the arms supporting her. She got a grip on herself immediately, yet stayed in her position a little longer, because it was quite comfortable. And besides, this way there was no dead body she could see, just his face above her, and she found that this was, apart from his irritating mask, rather nice to look at. She wondered briefly if he might get any more protective if she pretended to swoon now, but then dismissed the idea, because she did not want him to believe that she was a weak-minded coward.
"Our sneaky little green-eyed friend", he replied grimly, helping her to sit up and gently pulling her away from the hole in the small chamber's floor although it probably was quite obvious to him that she did not need it. "He'll creep around my Opera House no more."
Dread battled curiosity inside her, and before long curiosity gained the upper hand. "May I see?"
"I'm not sure if this is such a nice thing for you to look at", he said doubtfully.
"But thanks to you, he's hardly the first I'll see", she objected.
"There's quite a bit of blood, too."
Oh. Now this was something she had not seen before. "I don't mind", she assured him. What kind of man – or creature – was that green-eyed fellow? Somehow she had the idea that if she could not connect those eyes to a man, and, even better, to a man who was dead, they would not stop being in her nightmares.
"Well, if you are sure about this…" He shrugged and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "He's over there, in the corner." And with a mocking little grin, he added, "Feel free to faint, I'll be there to catch you."
Meg almost laughed out loud. Now this was something she had heard before, from her ballet colleague Xavier when he had tried to flirt once, not that long ago. "Looking for a reason to snuggle, are you?" she retorted, answering his grin.
"Me? I wonder where you got the idea", he said innocently, so innocently that Meg expected him to start twiddling his thumbs any moment.
"I don't think I'm going to faint", she decided to stand the game on its head, "but if you feel like it, I'll be there to catch you."
His one visible eyebrow rose slightly. "I'll consider your generous offer."
If her mother could hear her now... She would certainly not appreciate what was going on here. But Meg wondered herself if this really was a good idea, flirting with the Phantom of the Opera in a dark chamber in the cellars where nobody ever came – apart from him, of course – and right beside a dead man, who had recently given her the worst scare she remembered, once again in a man's clothes, which had even belonged to the Phantom originally, and having come here after mumbling something entirely insufficient about looking for some item as an explanation for her mother. Her mother would box her ears for sure this time... if she wouldn't rather have her hide in strips, that was.
Shaking her head, Meg tried to shake off the uncomfortable premonition about what her mother would have to say. Of course she would have to say something, but she would do so whether Meg dwelled on it now or not, so she had better choose not to dwell on it any longer, at least not until a confrontation with her mother forced her to. Maybe she was going to be in trouble for this, but then she might at least enjoy now what was going to give her trouble later.
Beaming at the Phantom, she said, "I'd like to see the dead body now, please."
