A/N: Thanx to you three who are reading! And Moonjava, I already know you! Cool! I'm not a lone ranger. Anyhoo, here's the next one.

1Chapter two - The Past is Dead...well, not Quite

Four months later...

Madam Giry had finished getting dressed. When she opened the door she found Meg hopping towards her. In her hand she held a small piece of paper flapping wildly as she ran. "Mother! Mother!" She called with an enormous grin pasted on her face. Meg nearly overran her in an attempt to stop on her stockings. "Christine is coming! She's coming back from her honeymoon to see us! She's coming back to the opera!" All was said in one breath.

"She is?" Madam Giry asked getting excited also.

"Yes, she sent me this note. See?" Meg handed her mother the letter. Madam Giry opened it up and began reading it while Meg awaited an answer.

"'My dear friend Meg,

'From that happening several months ago, I and Raoul were wedded as you know. We went out on our honeymoon. It was wonderful. I'll tell you about it later. But on that same note even after our small vacation from the world, Raoul insisted that I take some time off from the opera. He's such a worry. I finally convinced him that I was ready to go back. And since our honeymoon, something wonderful happened that I wanted to wait 'til I could tell you and others in person about it. That is why Raoul and I are coming the seventh which is tomorrow judging that it'll take a day for this letter to arrive. It is indeed a wonderful surprise. It shall change our lives forever.

'Yours truly,

Christine '

"That is wonderful news."

"Yes it is! Oh I am so excited, I don't know if I'll be able to focus on my singing this morning. What do you think the surprise is?" Meg exclaimed.

"I haven't the slightest idea," Madam Giry said with a smile. "Well, let's get to breakfast, shall we?"

"Yes, let's," Meg replied as she took Madam Giry's arm and looped it through her own in the way one might when taking someone to a dance. They walked through the narrow hallway together and passed Carlotta's room, door ajar, catching the diva's attention. She rushed to the door.

"What are you two doing?" She asked in her Spanish accent.

"We're off to breakfast," Meg replied with a cheery smile. "Aren't you coming?"

Carlotta shrugged and blinked. "I'll be along." She noticed the paper in Meg's grasp. "What is that?"

"Oh this? It's a letter from Christine. She says she's coming back to the opera tomorrow. Isn't that exciting?" Meg encouraged inhaling and awaiting the burst of positive energy about to erupt from Carlotta.

Carlotta didn't exactly respond in the way Meg would have hoped. There was a burst of energy alright, but not the kind she was expecting. Carlotta began screaming words in a panic and sentences much like, 'the toad's coming back?' or 'Just when life was getting good!' and so on and so forth. Madam Giry pushed her daughter on ahead of her and hurried on before the scene got violent as it looked like it would.

They got to the dining room that was better than one might expect in an opera house, but not quite as classy as one in a castle or such. It consisted of a long wooden table in which the entire opera cast and crew sat at while eating. There was also a small table off to the side if two wished to converse away from all the others. Most of the residence had already seated themselves in their usual spots. One or two people acknowledged the Girys' entrance but not many. Meg lightly seated herself in her usual spot to talk to Piangi and Madam Giry took her seat by her side as breakfast began.

OOOOO

Some of the newer recruits were practicing their parts on the stage before tutors. The entire theater was dark but the stage lights just like a real night at the opera. Up on the catwalks above the stage the phantom lurked around. He had gotten back into inventing, writing, and keeping the opera house intact behind Andre and Firmin's backs. The other night he noticed that the performance was almost ruined by a faulty knot in the ropes above. Though he sat in his usual seat - Box 5 - he could tell by the ruffles in the curtains, the faint huffs, the nasty looks Carlotta was giving to the ceiling that something was going on with the way the ropes were set up.

The phantom checked rope after rope but none proved to have any flaws. Then he spotted one right in the center of all of them hanging down. It was strung through some other looped ones. "That would throw it off," the phantom told himself while reaching for it. Involuntarily, he leaned across the railing. The knife that had been resting there was pushed off. "No! That'll give me away!" He snatched the knife out of the air. Blood streamed from the cut and dribbled down his fingers. He stifled an angry groan through his teeth as the drops dripped off of their tips.

Down below, Alissa practiced her lines one of which was a very high and loud note that was to be preformed in the center of the stage with her arms spread out. The blood splashed in her palm and she looked at it in confusion.

"Sorry!" The phantom called down as if he were just a stage hand. Alissa looked up. "Paint."

She looked back down at her hand and brought it to her nose to sniff it. It wasn't paint...it had a certain tingle to the scent. Something clicked inside Alissa's mind. She had never seen that stagehand with such an odd face-half flesh, half a reddish colorwith mutated skin covering it. She looked back up but the hired help was gone.

OOOOO

The conversation had crossed over from harmless jokes to deep subjects put so lightly one might have thought they were still talking on the weather and such. They especially were inclined to teasing the features of the phantom. And if the banter was classified into a kingdom, Joseph Bouque was the king. He cracked the most jokes, scared the most easily flustered women, acted out the most scenes. Of course no one was bothered by it, why should they be? The phantom of the opera was gone. But then why was Madam Giry suddenly feeling guilty about conversing on the matter?

She found herself slouched in the chair shrinking away from the cruel fun poked towards the phantom. Even Meg, her own daughter, was engaged in their happiness. Her oatmeal was no longer appealing and her stomach seemed to tie and retie in knots. Somewhere along the line, Meg noticed her mother's behavior and asked a completely innocent question.

"Mother, are you ill?" She asked observing Madam Giry's pale complection. Madam Giry was about to dismiss this accusation but then decided to take up the opportunity to leave the cruel room.

"Yes. I feel rather unwell. I'm going up to my room for a rest." With that, Madam Giry pushed the chair out from under the table and walked silently up the stairs.

The phantom sat behind a large statue staring out at the city below. The scenery had become one of his favorites when Christine left. He could see the people. He could sense them, hear them, and be remotely connected with them as they hurried on their way. One of the more interesting sights was when two lovers met in the park and nearly tore each other apart while kissing, hugging and the like. He smiled even as he thought. Didn't they have any thought that small children might be walking by? Or even just pedestrians!

Another phenomenon, like that of this morning, was when the sun cut through the fog of night and truly became a day. Colors that no artist could capture painted the sky and he couldn't help but marvel.

"That's something I will have to teach myself," he mused. "Drawing." The phantom didn't have time to dwell on this as the roof door swung open and he was forced to stay low.

In reality, Madam Giry didn't go to her room to rest like she said she would. She had run to the roof in hope that she could outrun the emotions that chased her. When she made it out of the labyrinth, and stopped for the first time moving to the roof, she felt the emotions catch up to her and strike her down. She got down on her knees, bowed her head in her cupped hands, and cried. Not a droning, annoying sound like that of Carlotta when she went into one of her many drama queen spells, but very petit little sobs with many tears clouding her eyes.

The phantom knew that Madam Giry was and always had been, from her first day there, a very strong spirit. She didn't cry unnecessarily, she didn't overreact on any occasion; something truly spirit breaking must have happened in order to get her to burst out like this.

"Oh God, why can I not forget it?" she sobbed out in small whispers to the Lord. "Everyone else has forgotten it. The phantom is gone, why can't I accept it?"

Whoa, hold on there. 'The Phantom'? She was crying over...him? He listened closer.

"I suspect that it's my bleeding heart that's kept me tender to this subject for so long. I cannot see why no one understands what he had to go through. Ever since I found him at the circus, being beaten, tortured, emotionally scarred–I felt a certain sting of pity that no other girl there did. They simply laughed on cue at the supposed entertainment. I never realized that the world could be so cruel, and I especially didn't realize that the world would take it all out on him."

The phantom slid quietly down the side of the statue until he came to rest on the ground. She was there? She had pity? Only one person in that crowd of scornful people had pity on him?

"With the exception of your Son, not one man has been able to take on all the cruelty of the world. But, my goodness, did that poor man come close. I'm surprised that he lived and thrived all this while. I know I would have ended it a long time ago. I do not see why You drove me to free him from that place when he had a painful life here as well. Why didn't you choose a more wealthy woman's heart to soften? One who could have adopted him into love? Maybe then he wouldn't have been so hurt."

The phantom tried to cover his ears leaving blood smeared across his cheek. This was too much information to learn at once. She kept on confessing. According to her, there was nobody there to judge her, so she continued to pour out the secrets of her heart - secrets that until now had been locked away. He pressed his ears harder to tune out her clear sobbing voice that was now talking to the heavens instead of her lap. The phantom couldn't take anymore of this. He stood up and went out the door - walking so quickly and quietly that she didn't sense anyone was there until the door closed.

Madam Giry wiped a tear and went over to see who was behind the door. She opened it and looked every which way - even above the doorframe. No one was in sight. She closed the door and noticed a splotch of red something on one of the walls nearly level with her head. It was vaguely a hand print and some rubbed off on her fingers as she felt the surface of the concrete. Madam Giry rubbed the contaminated fingers together a little while and then smelled it. Blood.

to be continued...

A/N: It's been easier to write this fic than some of the others for some reason. I wrote this one in roughly a day. Zum, I hope this stroke of good luck stays, I love it. No writer's block! woohoo! Next one should be up pretty soon, it's already half writen. I can't decide when I want to expose them to eachother fully yet. I don't want to rush it, you understand.