A/N: There is nothing to say!
Rivulets of light dripped into the inn room, gently waking Meg from her dreamless slumber. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, memories of the night before coming back to her slowly. The sleeping form of the Phantom sat still in the corner of the room. Meg recalled the story he had told her last night, of his childhood and his relations with her mother, and sighed in pity.
Meg got up and retrieved her boots from the place she had flung them last night. Trying not to make a sound she put them on and stood to look out the window. Nothing particulary interesting. A pigeon pecked at the cobblestone ground one story beneath her, and a man with a suitcase rolled across the scene.
Erik woke then, quite peacefully. Meg turned to him and mumbled "good morning." He did not answer though Meg didn't dwell on that.
"I should go find her now, I am certain she will be with Raoul." Meg said, taking notice of how Erik cringed at the mention of the Vicompte.
"The crowds around the theatre should have diminished by now." He added. "You can go ahead, I will follow behind you." Meg didn't question him, and she exited the room. She checked to see if the coast was clear for her masked companion. It was, save for a hungover man sprawled against the door of room 201, three doors down from her. Meg ducked back inside her room to tell Erik that he could come along, but he wasn't there. She beheld then, the moth-eaten curtains billowing benevolently as the window had been opened in silence. Meg shrugged at Erik's refusal to use normal transportation when there was no reason not to.
She made her way downstairs past the "lobby" desk where the man still roosted upon the unlucky chair, which seemed to cry under the pressure of his mass. Out the door she went, onto a street full of puddles, remnants of the rainstorm the night before.
Meg could see the Opera House in the distance over the array of broken down houses on this hapless unihabited road. She quickened her pace, and came upon the theatrewithin minutes. It was astounding to her, that poverty dwelled only a mile from the prestige of the world renounded Opera Populairetheatre.
Police and other men were clustered in front of the building. It seemed they were doing their best to clear out rubble and bodies from the disaster. She felt a twinge of guilt as she saw two burly men carry out another person, dressed in a brown suit that was covered in ash. He was dead, and she was now in cahoots with the person who had inadvertently killed him. But then again, her mother was too. She supposed the apple didn't fall far from the tree, the pity trait ran in the core.
Meg was staring into the blackened hole that had been the entrance to her home from behind a tree on the other side of the street. She did not notice a shadow creep up on her from behind. She was jolted when someone placed a hand on her shoulder and spun around. She found herself facing her mother, wearing the same gown as the night before, though her hair had been cast from its elegant updo into a frizzy braid, adorned in jewels whichwere fallingoff like cheap sequence now.
"Mother!" Meg gasped and hugged her tightly. She braced herself for thescolding that would surely follow. But it never came. In fact, her mother took her hand and pulled not too gentlyher from her stance across the road. She stopped behind one of the great pillars near the Opera House.
"Mother! I have seen him! The Phantom of the Opera! Except his name is Erik in actuality, and he knows you, and me! He told me all about his wretched life at the traveling fair and how you rescued him after he killed that horrid person who whipped him. And now I'm going to help him win Christine back because he doesn't seem all that bad...well other thanthe whole killing people bit but..." Meg said in one breath. She waited for her mother to object. If she did, Meg planned to escape into the trees, for she was a much faster runner than her mother. But the reprimands didn't come.
"I know Meg, I told the police you were missing in the fire, and they think you are dead." Madam Giry told a perplexed Meg. "They also believe Erik is dead, killed himself. So with both of you presumed "dead" your task will be much easier to accomplish." She continued in a brisk voice. "You cannot be seen, quickly now!"
But Meg was still confused, "Mother what task?" She asked.
"Christine and the Vicompte are to be wed soon, perhaps this week, after all the fuss over the Opera House dies down.You must stop this, for she does not love him, she loves her angel and always will. Go now, into the Opera House to collect your things. Your dormitory was only partially destroyed. Fetch a cloak at least to stay hidden, then go to her. Remember, you are dead, dead people cannot be seen!" Her mother said to her in a breathy voice, glancing over her shoulder at the policemen who stalked every which way and that only a few yards away from her and her daughter. She shunted Meg towards the entrance without another word.
Without thinking, or looking back Meg dashed into the building and forced herself past the rubble and debris that still fell lightly from ceiling. She hoped that the blue fabric she saw underneath a block of wood did not house another dead body. She whimpered and moved a plank that had landed diagonally. It was hard to find the hidden staircase that lead to the dormitory hallways, but she found the escarpment amidst the littered floor.
As she turned to face her old home, she saw the glass from windows that had imploded, piles of ash caked the floors. Meg coughed, inhaling the cinders and she staggered into the room which had once been hers, along with some other chorus girls including Christine, until of course she had become the star, inheriting the grand suite of the prima donna. It had been amusing to watch La Carlotta have a huge dent in her ego because of that.
The mattresses near the charred door were blackened, and the floor was burnt to the point that it might fall through if Meg did not step lightly. But halfway down the long room it seemed as though the fires had ceased, for the area that had belonged to her was fairly clear.
Making haste, Meg opened the grand wardrobe that she had shared with a couple other girls. She took out a plain white shirt with long sleeves, and laid it on the dusty ground. She then proceeded to load her other items of clothing on top of it. Tying the arms together, she had formed a sort of knapsack that she could fling over her shoulder.
She also found inside, a few cloaks, she chose a black one that probably belonged to Eliza Hebert. Another chorus girl, who was probably the finest dressed extra around, as her father was in the real estate business and had made a fortune selling farming land in Lyon. She was merely here singing at the Opera house because she had nothing else to do with her boring life. For she was not the brightest spark. Meg wondered, as she donned the cloak what had become of her last night, she had been one of the dancers in the Point of no Return scene. Meg hoped with a quick prayer that she had dodged the chandelier's crash into the stage.
Footsteps could be heard coming this way, Meg heeded her mother's warning to not be seen, and unbolted the huge glass window closets to her. She could fit through it easily enough. She turned around so she faced the center of the room, and she started to climb outside. She grasped the ledge and looked down. It was quite a ways to the grassy ground. But there was a tree only a foot away from the windowsill. She could perhaps reach over and retreat to the ground.
But the owner of the footsteps had rounded the corner and entered the dormitory. "Anybody in here Francois?" He grumbled, before taking in the sight of Meg hanging onto the windown ledge for dear life. Her head shrouded in black material, and a sack slung over her shoulder. It did not look good on Meg's part.
"Thief!" He bellowed, and more footsteps thundered upon the floor. "We've got another one!" He roared, stomping across the room and seizing Megs scrawny wrists, heaving her upwards so that her cloak fell back off her head. "Think you can take advantage of this disaster do ya? Climb over dead bodies and see what you can take huh?"
Another man entered the room, presumably Francois. He seemed to be a theatre patron who had escaped the accident, as he was dressed in fine brown slacks and a white silk shirt soiled with dirt and ash. Maybe he had cast off his jacket to make searching easier. Upon seeing the frightened blonde chorus girl in front of him, he yelled at the man who had taken hold of her.
"She isn't a thief Gus! She's only a chorus girl, stop! You'll break her wrists!" He pulled back Gus' arm and he let go of his firm grip on her. Meg scrambled to take hold of the ledge again, but her fingers slipped. Gravity was against her as it is for most people. She felt her stomach miserably rise into her throat and she soared backwards screaming. A branch on the tree she had wanted to climb down sliced her right arm, right through the flimsy fabric of her white shirt.
Her groan of pain was cut short as she hit the ground with a thud and her head smashed against the trunk of the tree. Her cloak floated around her, drowning her limp body in black. Her thoughts went blank, and it was as though she was back in the sewage hallway of the Opera House. She lay at an awkward angle for a moment before the men at the window began to call down to her.
Suddenly, a figure shrouded in his cloak darted out from no where it seemed, and rushed to Meg's side. Erik who had been loitering outside, hiding, waiting for Meg, placed a hand under Meg's head, making sure her neck had not broken. Then he quickly ungloved one hand and pressed it against her neck at the pressure point.
She was still alive.
He cast an enraged look up at the men in the window who were frozen in shock at the scene before them. Those deep cold eyes could put fear in the hearts of the strongest men. Erik put one arm under Meg's neck and another under her knees, and lifted her with ease. He slunk back into the vast cavity of trees to the right flank of the Opera house.
