"I heard Christine was crying in her dressing room," whispered a ballerina.

"Well, I heard it's because the Opera Ghost kidnapped her and had his way with her," replied her young friend.

Madame Giry hissed for silence. It was getting more and more difficult to find truly dedicated girls.

Phantom paid little attention to the conversation and tried to focus on the crowd. For some reason, that was a very difficult thing to do. They seemed to swim around in front of his eyes, so that he saw the same few faces wherever he looked. They were so familiar, but he couldn't place them.

At last, he shook his head in an attempt to clear it and turned to survey the cast and crew. Although it felt like trying to swim through quick-dry cement, he had finally come to terms with the fact that there weren't enough of them. Not for a place this size. Between the extras, the actors, and the ballerinas, there shouldn't have been nearly enough stage hands to finish what needed to be done. And yet, everything got done somehow.

He started to go back to puzzling out the audience, and his gaze landed on Christine in her page's outfit as she feigned a kiss with Carlotta's character. She'd always hated that outfit, even to the point of a loud blow-up with the director that it be dyed dark grey. While sky blue wasn't as bad as pink, she hated pastel as much as…

…as…

There was a name there if he could just remember it. With a disgusted snort, he tried to remember what he had been thinking about, but it was gone. He wasn't surprised, but he was encouraged. He had remembered something important, he felt. Something about his life before waking up. Maybe next time, he could avoid being distracted by a name, and he'd actually retain the memory.

He jumped along with everyone else as a loud, booming voice echoed across the hall. "Did I not instruct that Box Five was to be kept empty?"

He spared a moment while the cast shared his sentiment about the voice's owner, then went chasing after the real Phantom…the Opera Ghost. The acoustics were oddly bad considering how well the opera house had been…

But then, they weren't in an opera house, were they? He shoved the thought away and went back to the business at hand: getting up the ladder to the flies as quickly as possible. It seemed to take far less time than it should have considering the vaulted ceiling, but the Opera Ghost was nowhere in sight. He thought the voice had been coming from there somewhere. With a mental curse, he slid back down to check backstage. What had made him think his quarry was up there in the first place?

He ran all over the backstage, but that nagging voice in his head only grew louder as it commanded him back to the stage and the catwalks. Eventually, left with no other possibilities, he went back.

One of the stage hands should have been up there, he knew. He even knew who it would have been, although how he knew was beyond him. He had just decided to give it up when a weight landed behind him and something began to cut off his air. "Think you can stop me?" whispered a harsh voice.

A witty remark sprang to mind, but all Phantom could manage was a choked gurgle.

"I have to kill someone here," the voice continued. "It was going to be Joseph Bouquet, but you'll do just as well. That's just how it has to be, you understand. I'd say it was nothing personal, but…well…it is."

He couldn't breathe, and he was getting lightheaded. In a sudden burst of inspiration, the boy forced himself to relax and stop fighting. He still couldn't breathe, but the noose loosened just a hair's breadth. After a moment, it loosened a bit more as the Opera Ghost adjusted it to not take his head off when he was dropped to the stage.

Phantom took extremely shallow breaths, as painful as it was, and tried to think. In a few minutes, he was going to be pushed off of here. At that time, it wouldn't matter that he had fooled his captor into thinking he was dead; his neck would snap like a twig.

Down below, he could hear the emergency intermission reach its climax, and then he was falling. He closed his eyes as the stage floor rush to meet him and willed himself to do something, anything. He was a ghost, wasn't he? Ghosts could fly. He heard the screams as the audience saw a hanged corpse before he realized that his fall had stopped. He pried his eyes open.

They didn't see him, of course. They saw the body of Joseph Bouquet, who was supposed to have died there. He chanced to look up, but his would-be executioner had gone. After a moment, he realized his tether had dropped loosely to the floor and pulled the noose from around his neck. He saw Christine and Raoul run off somewhere and fought off the compulsion to follow them. She was probably just terrified, and there was nothing he could do, anyway. Instead, he drifted slowly toward the ground, took two steps, and fell to his knees as the last several minutes caught up to him.

He really was a ghost; a real one. The Opera Ghost had sounded surprised to see him. He decided that he must have died the first time he'd been caught in that noose. He felt the other half of his mind give up in frustration, but what else could have happened? It was the only logical answer.

No, it wasn't. But that still didn't help him. He looked around, then stood and left the stage. He needed to think, and all the screaming was too much of a distraction. A scene much like the one he was avoiding crept into his mind. The Phantom of the Opera stepped from a mirror…and Christine…but it wasn't Christine…was it?

"This isn't real," he said. He rubbed his throat and tried again. "None of this is real."

Still nothing happened. He was discouraged. He thought for sure that knowing it was a spell would break it, like it had…

Two black holes, a flash of light off metal, and behind that, a pair of ice blue eyes…

Silver.

He shuddered involuntarily and glanced around, as though he expected her to appear. But with the name, his memory of her returned, and the stage seemed a little more faded. He could almost see what was behind it.

That was it, of course. Her near-constant toying with his mind must have given him some resistance against mental intrusion. Between that and the fact that he was half ghost, he was only partially under the spell.

"This isn't real!" he yelled, daring the Opera Ghost to come find him. His memory may have still been in fragments, but he knew what was going on. Now, if he could just make himself heard.

The screaming stopped. He noticed Christine and Raoul come back; they looked much happier. After a moment's thought, he followed the soprano to her dressing room. Meg was already there, concern written in her every movement.

The school musical…that's what started all this. The Phantom…the other Phantom, at least…would be fixated on Christine. There had to be a way to protect her. He stared at his hand as though it might suddenly reveal all the answers.

Lost in thought, he didn't notice when the door opened behind him until Christine walked through him. He jumped as an electric shock passed through him, and the two girls stopped.

"Is something wrong?" Meg asked worriedly.

Christine looked around, blinking in the ghost boy's general direction. "I…I…" She shook her head and shuddered. "I'm sure it was nothing. Come. The show must go on."

"It doesn't have to," Phantom called after them. Christine faltered, as though she heard him but chose to keep walking. He sighed and followed them.

The audience…wasn't as big as he thought. It was still difficult to focus on the myriad faces, but he could tell that much, at least. They looked like an illusion, like the Opera Ghost had taken a few people and projected their images everywhere he looked. And he knew them. Those were his friends…there was his family…and over there were a few people he didn't like…and he couldn't remember any of their names.

And then he realized why. The members of the audience never had names. Only a few of the stage hands had names. If they weren't important to the production, they were known as "Man Enters from Stage Left" or "Third Ballerina from the Right". Phantom had been a member of the crew, not the cast. He hadn't needed a name.

Then he caught up with his thought process. "I was alive," he said to no one in particular. "I am alive." He grinned as he realized that the voice in the back of his head hadn't bothered him in some time. There was something else nagging at him, though. Something rather pressing…

He heard a soft chime from somewhere above and jumped out of the way just as the chandelier crashed to the stage. There was no restraining the audience; they had already been scared enough by the sudden presence of a dead man. Even though no one was hurt, they screamed and ran as fast the people in front would let them. Even the cast scattered like sheep, except for Christine. She stared at the fallen lights with a haunted expression, then walked calmly from the auditorium.

The world faded to black.