A/N: More? Yeeeeeees.
Meg and the shadowy figure that was the Phantom darted down the street, Meg kept glancing over her shoulder, only to see smoke billowing lightly from a building farther...and farther away.
"Where are we going?" Whispered Meg, though Erik was way ahead of her.
The street came to a fork, and Erik took off down the right side without stopping for a moment to consider, and Meg followed, though she had been warned never to go this way.
The street lamps here were lit, but they were so faint, that they cast an eerie glow over the pavement. Meg assumed they were entering a more shady part of Paris...she had never ventured far from the Opera House without her mother so her stomach fluttered in fear at each shadow that passed, and each screech of a nighttime animal. She felt a droplet of water on her head, and looked up, noting for the first time, the clogged gray black sky. Another drop hit her nose.
Erik finally stopped his flee from the Opera house and waited impatiently for Meg to catch up. She took in her surroundings with a frown. They were under a rickety roof, that housed what looked like an inn. But the only letter left on the sign nailed haphazardly to the door was an "n". The wooden panels that should have made a wall, were oddly strung together, so she assumed the inn was prone to leaks.
"You can go in there for tonight. I will return in the morning to hear your plans for rescuing her. If your not here when I return...well...I will find you eventually..." Erik said, his eyes shifting rapidly, looking behind Meg.
Thinking the statement was a joke, Meg laughed nervously, though she knew Phantoms probably didn't make jokes too often.
"Quickly, someone will see you." He said now more urgently. And she saw he was serious.
"I'm not going in there!" She yelped. "Just look at it! Plus I have no money either so..." she dismissed the thought. But Erik reached into his brown bag which held his sheet music, and procured a few bills which he thrust into Meg's hand.
"There are worse places you could be." He said with a glower. With a dramatic swish of his cloak, he set off down the road. Leaving a baffled Meg standing under the dripping roof, for the rain had begun to steadily pour.
"Where is he going!" She cried in frusteration. Grimacing at the thought of entering the building...if you could call it a building, Meg toyed with the idea of running back to the Opera house. Her mother would be terribly worried by now, trying to find her in the midst of the crowds that saturated the outskirts of the theatre. But the warning of the Phantom won her conscience. What did he mean...I will find you eventually? Meg knew it couldn't be good, so she screwed up her face and turned to open the door to the "n".
It was darker in there than it was outside, in the twighlight hours of Paris. Here, only a flickering lantern served as light. It rested on a dusty wooden desk. Behind it, a squat man who looked as though he had shaved with a butter knife sat with his feet up, snoring rather loudly, Wearing a rumpled pair of trousers and a shirt that Meg couldn't decipher the color of, and a green cap which looked as though it had seen better days. He actually reminded her a lot of that Joseph Buquet...may his soul rest in peace, she thought.
She noticed quite a few empty glass bottles scattered around the floor and on the desk at the Inn man's feet. And as Meg took a step towards him, she heard a crunch under her foot, more glass presumably. She put her hands warily on the desk and cleared her throat, hoping the man would fall out of his drunken stupor, as she saw another bottle being helplessly strangled in his hand.
"Excuse me!" Meg whispered, leaning in slightly, when he did not budge, she said a bit louder, "Excuse me sir!" Nothing.
Letting out an exasperated sigh, Meg looked around, then yelled, "Excuse me!" The man woke with a start and his beer bottle went crashing to the ground no doubt created quite a hazard to those in bare feet.
"What is it? Geez you didn't haf ta yell." He growled, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Then he looked up and saw who was his awakener. "And what, may I ask, is a little miss doin' in these lowly parts of Paris on a night like tonight?" He muttered in a low raspy voice, nodding his head towards the door, which then as if on cue blew open letting in a gust of wind along with the rain. Meg scrambled to shut it.
"I, just need a place to stay tonight please." She handed him the money Erik had given her. The man grumbled as he counted it, and handed Meg a key.
"You get our finest room miss, number 243." He said, and Meg stared at him. "That way," he motioned behind him to a stair case that looked as though it would crumble away at any moment. He jotted something down on a notepad in front of him, then w
"Thank you." Meg took off up the stairs. She didn't know how her room number could be 243, as she wasn't sure there could be three rooms in this hole of a place. Let alone 243.
Once at the top of the stairs Meg crept down a yellow hall, to room 243, which was next to room...146? She just shook her head and opened the door.
There wasn't much to describe inside the inn room. A small bed was the centerpiece, next to it, a wooden box with a lit lamp sitting in the dust on top of it. In the corner, next to the window, there was a chair that was possibly make out of a few sticks.
Meg sat down on the Bed, which, not to her surprise felt like concrete beneath her. She sat facing the window and unlaced her black knee high boots. As she pulled them off and threw them in the corner, the door burst open behind her, and she gasped, whirling around to see who the intruder was.
But it was only Erik who had barged in.
"I apologize, miss." He said, quickly shutting the door behind him. "It seems my other hideout has been found. Police are swarming about trying to find me, I had to come back here."
"But how did you get in?" Meg said but immediatley wanted to eat those words. First of all, he was a master in lurking and sneaking about, and second, the entire army of France could walk into this inn and not be noticed by the man downstairs at the desk. "Nevermind." She added.
Erik nodded and unfastened his cape, letting it fall to the ground. Meg looked around, not knowing what would happen next, for this was just a little awkward.
"Well I suppose you should get some rest Miss Giry, for much of Paris will be searching for you and myself tomorrow and you'll need your strength to run." He said as he sat down in the stick chair and looked out the window.
"I doubt anyone except my mother will be searching for me. You maybe, but I'm just a chorus girl, no one will care of my dissapearance." She said, looking down at the floor.
"Oh yes they will!" Erik said, his voice oddly filled with a strange sort of glee. "Everyone will think I have kidnapped you, and fled..." He said, as though reciting some plot from a story.
"I see..." Meg said, a little worried.
"Meg, how do you plan on winning Christine back for me?" Erik turned back to Meg, who still sat on the edge of the bed.
"I suppose, I was going to talk to her, bring her a rose, tied in a black ribbon from you perhaps. Something romantic, no more one way mirrors and mind control. Trust me, that is not the way to a woman's heart." Meg tried to laugh at comment, but the Phantom was back to looking mournfully out the window.
"Why did she go?" He whispered. Meg pretended she hadn't heard him and rolled onto the bed and pulled the paper thin covers over her. Falling into a light sleep, she fell onto her side.
Only two hours later, she awoke, to find Erik still wide awake, a grimace on the side of his face that was not hidden by his mask.
"Erik?" She called. "Would you like the bed now? I could...um...sit there if you wanted to rest."
"No, just go back to sleep Meg...I'm quite all right here." He answered, not breaking his gaze upon the wall.
But Meg could not go back to sleep now, she sat up on the feather of a pillow and looked curiously at the phantom of the Opera. Who though, still had his mask, did not seem so phantom-like. All those years she had witnessed "accidents" and mishaps, Meg had been the first to know who had been the cause of them. "It's him! He's here! The Phantom of the Opera." She would whisper to Christine. Meg always knew he existed, though other chorus girls did not.
And here he now sat before her, a wreck who pined for his lost angel of music.
Then suddenly she remembered something Erik had said earlier, something about owing his life to her mother. Madam Giry...
"Erik, how do you know my mother?" Meg blurted her thought.
He frowned, making his rigid expression deeper. The room was in silence for a moment or two before the Phantom began to speak. He surprisingly recounted the entire tale of Madam Giry rescuing him from the traveling fair so many years ago. Never once making eye contact with his audience. Meg sat in horrid fascination listening to the heartwrenching story.
"Your mother saved me from the evils of the humans, but she did not save me from the evils of love. Or rather the lack thereof" He finished.
Meg didn't know what to say. She let out an "ah" that didn't nearly sum up what emotions she had mixing in her stomach at the moment.
"Not quite the best bedtime story I assume?" Erik muttered, then began to softly hum a tune that Meg did not recognize. But his haunting voice, however quiet it was, soothed her into a deep sleep.
