Hey all, finally back, I told you updatea would be hell and yet I've never liked a chapter more.
For some reason Sorelli came and beat me over the head with my keyboard, demanding something more than I had planned for her.
I wanted her to be a Carlotta (movie-style) for the ballerina's.
That's not what she had in mind and I actually really like her. Go figure. She's decided to become an important character in this little Opera thing I have going. As usual many comments at the end. My new friend Darth Gilthorn gets mention here because he's been very kind in alerting me to the fact that the internet speaks its own version of languages. I should put those latin titles in binary or hardcore 1337, something I actually understand. Bah. Anyway, I'm going to go back now and fix the chapters he mentioned and hopefully he'll continue to correct me when he sees errors.
Other note now, one relating to the crap I typed down there.
Othello the opera didn't come out until 1895, obviously long before this story. So why did I make that mistake when normally I am so careful about dates and Operas (hence why I couldn't make the Opera Carmen, which would have been PERFECT!) did I make such a mistake? Well Leroux made the same mistake. That whole scene (speech wise) is from the book and I copied it word for word, so I left the Opera as it was and pray you won't mind terribly.
That night I missed Christine.
Finally I was back to my coffin, back where I belonged and I could only lay there and stare at the ceiling, seeing the black shadows dance and twine around a background of more black. Black on black and still it held my attention fast.
And somewhere in the silent blackness I could only feel the pain of every memory that was Christine. Each memory was a fragile glass piece of intricate designs and when she left. When she chose Raoul's childish love and perfect face over me. No, I let her go, but still, the pain was there. Every last memory had shattered and buried its sharp edges into my heart. With each tortured pulse every memory burned. Leaving me with nothing, so even now I could only toss and turn, sleep hovering at the edges of my mind, refusing to take me into its comforting embrace, and embrace second only to death. Oh! How I wished for death, especially now that Christine was gone forever.
It wasn't as though I had been surprised when she left. I had known for a long while that she would not stay, that she would fight as hard to leave me as I would fight to keep her, and I knew that because I would do anything for her I would free her too. She would smile with those empty-sky eyes and say something and I would feel that rending pain within my chest that was not matched and I would let her go. I could tell you the exact moment that I knew I was going to give her up, down to the moment, to the second.
The blink of my eyes that changed my world.
After that moment I had continued trying for her heart, but it was futile and I knew it. A dying man grasping at a puddle of water that was drying up before his eyes.
There was no hope-not that I ever had hope in my cursed life-and I stuggled to keep her mostly because I knew I would die without her and Don Juan was yet unfinished. It was still unfinished now but I had other things pressing on my stuggling mind. I was reaching for sleep, clawing at it, begging it to come to me and instead I was back in my home that night, back at my organ in this very room, the organ that was a few meters away. She had been standing on my left.
'Let's sing opera songs.' I knew I mocked them, claimed that the contemporary public had no taste in Opera. It was true, in a way. I did not like them, the people themselves, but the Operas that those people turned out were fine. I don't know why I tormented them so, probably because I was so far above them that to like the same things as them would be to debase myself.
Funny that, a man burning in Hell fancying himself above anyone. Still though, it was true. I fancied that I was far above them, more intelligent, and let's face it, there was no denying it. Those people who gathered night after night in my Opera House knew nothing of art, they liked what they liked because they were told to like it. Few people in the Opera's could appreciate art the way it was meant to be appreciated, and so I mocked their Operas.
We sang the duet from Othello, a favorite of mine because I would like to be like Othello. I would be anyone but who I was. She sang better than ever, better than times before and better than anyone could ever hope to sing in the future. I wanted to pretend that it wasn't angst and terror that gave her that inhumanly angelic quality, I liked to think it was anything that could eventually turn to love, but even then I was desperate, grasping at any shreds of hope I could find and clinging to them as though my life depended on it.
Which, I suppose, at the time it had.
I did not feel her tear away my mask, I heard her scream though. A cry that stopped time and rang with emotions that there are no words for. 'Oh,' She gasped, all the breath she held in her lungs bursting forward and out in a rushing gust that emptied her, 'horror!' She cried, like a child crying out at a nightmare. Because I was a nightmare. I was a living corpse and she was an angel. I had no right to have one such as her look upon me. 'Horror!' As though the cry had not sliced through my heart and soul the first time she wailed it again, and a third time even, filling the air with her moans and turning my remourse and sorrow into fury and anger. How dare she!
I had told her not to touch my mask. It was all I asked of one so perfect as she. Don't touch my mask, don't look upon my face. I was furious and that fury ripped from the depths of my soul, filling the air and drowning out her moans and wails, drowning out all the sound around me. I was screaming and then she took a step back. I stepped toward her, reaching out, and there, the moment I knew I had lost her. I reached for her and she stepped back, falling against the wall and then dropping to her knees, trying to shield herself from me. There was no sorrow left, there was anger and I wanted her to suffer. If she was so damned curious I would answer all her questions. 'Look! You wanted to see. See! Feast your eyes, make your soul drunk with my cursed ugliness. Look at Erik's face Now you know. It was not enough for you to hear me. You wanted to know what I was made of? You women are so curious.' I shouted at her, ranting on and on and on until I lost track of what I was saying. And now, seeing that moment played again and again in my mind I realized how similar it was to the things I shouted at Megan when I had learned she had seen my face. With Christine, while she had not seen my face I could make her love me, I knew I could make her return.
Megan, I realized with a harsh laugh that echoed around me, I had forced her away. Christine I had to beg and coerce into following me down here. Megan found her way here on her own, returned of her own accord, when all the phantom asked of her was never to return! I didn't understand it. When I asked for help, when I recieved help it didn't matter...
People do not help their fellow man unless they get something they want in return.
Megan had not told the other rats about her traveling down here, I was a memory best forgotten to the Opera House.
She did not want a better part. In fact I think she would have turned down a lead roll if someone got it for her and she could not work herself to that postion. She had seemed so proud speaking of all the work she put into being second best. A mere runner-up.
She didn't want money, she wasted her money on me when all I wanted was to die.
And now I couldn't even do that. After all my years of dragging myself through life I still could not die. It seemed suddenly like death was so very far away; a pleasure I may never be allowed.
She wasn't keeping quiet in hopes of saving that Baron of her's. I think that she cared less about him than I did, not that I knew much of that particular pair. I couldn't even have told you his name if you asked. But, all these things that it was not and I was merely out of ideas, I still did not know the answer to the question I so desperately sought. It wasn't this, it wasn't that, it wasn't anything I could think of.
So what was it that brought her back here, time and time again when even her mother had abandoned me, when I could offer her nothing because she wanted for nothing? I didn't know and I didn't like not knowing.
She was a simpleton, a foolish ballerina who couldn't even write her name properly.
She was a silly child and yet she somehow baffled me. I needed to solve the mystery that was Megan Giry, I needed to solve that mystery so I could deny her whatever it was that she wanted and be on with my death. Because until I solved that mystery I couldn't die. I couldn't let someone who could only dance, who knew only mediocer dancing best me, the great Phantom of the Opera who had made Paris's finest quiver in their boots. I would not be bested by someone who would never move beyond being second best. She couldn't move beyond it because she was still a child, an innocent like Christine had been and I had learned something from Christine.
You cannot change an innocent if they don't want to change. She knew Raoul and her father and music, I could not force my way into her life even if I loved her more than Raoul ever could, because even music became too much for her and in the end was pushed out of her simple life. Megan, an even simpler creature than Christine had ever been, had no hope of changing. She was now as she would be forever. Of course, though loath to admit it, I didn't realize who she was at the time I made that statement.
With Megan and Christine pushed free from my thoughts my body was still too repulsive for Morphius to claim and my traitorous mind wandered instead to thoughts of before the Opera House, thoughts before the little Sultana and the rosy hours of Mazendaran. To my time before. My mother, the years spent in Italy before I rushed across India and stumbled upon the rosy hours of Mazendaran. I could recall every horrible detail of every horrible year of my life and as I lay there whimpering for sleep they played back for me, my own private opera.
'A woman can only dance like that when she wants to show the man she loves her soul. I dance like that for Philippe. Now more than ever because he can see every movement. I wonder though, your Baron is away, whom was it that you were dancing for?' I did not understand why I had said such a daft thing to Megan Giry of all people. I was certain she thought it me who gathered the rats together to hate her, that was not true. Mon Philippe, he was watching me now, always, I could feel it. He was watching me and I was just waiting until I could be with him again.
So much had happened, so much sadness had suddenly invaded my life. I acted the part of a wilting flower, the little girl who grew into this body but did not fit it. It was all an act and Philippe had known that somehow. I had raised my four brothers when my mother died, I had taken care of our worthless drunk of a father and I danced every chance I got. I send them money even now but I do not see them ever. They are a part of my life I have opted to forget. I am no longer Sorelli Gustave, I am La Sorelli, Prima Ballerina. And Meg will show me up one day if it kills her. I can see that determination in her.
It may have bothered me once, to see how hard she worked, how much more she worked since she did not have to raise four boys.
No longer though.
Philippe was going to marry me. Raoul was almost of age and he acted a child but Philippe was sure that if the boy was abandoned he could sustain himself quiet well. Even though he was prone to bouts of weeping like a little girl. But Philippe was going to leave, pack up in the night and move the two of us to America. We would get a home in New York and he would form a business and I would dance at a theater. We would be like a couple with no money at all though we both had enough to live on for our entire lives.
At least...that was what we whispered to each other in the night. We both knew, in the light of day, that the promises were weak, feeble things that would never hold. And now with him gone I knew even less of what to do. I had never been one to shy from work, I just knew what I wanted and how to make other people do it for me. Now though I didn't know what I wanted. So I supposed I would dance until I was too old and then move somewhere far away, somewhere no one had heard of and I would live out my days being me. Finally.
I had only ever been me when Philippe and I sat together in my apartment drinking tea and laughing. When I was a child I was Mama Sorelli, the one who took over when mother went to sleep and never woke up. I was gentle most of the time and I was tough when I needed to be. When I was here, at the Opera I was La Sorelli, the greatest dancer who had ever walked into these-
I already mentioned that.
You will have to forgive me.
I wonder if you can go mad from a broken heart? Either answer you give I think its happening to me. Since I lost Philippe I've barely been able to remember anything and I am prone to repeating myself.
I wonder if you can go mad from a broken heart?
Oh there I've done it again.
But I am La Sorelli, I am much too strong for that, even when I am a wilting flower to men who fawn over me and flood me with jewels I am too strong to go mad. Though, after so long of doing everything that society dictated, and after doing everything that my family demanded, I should think I would love to be selfish and just allow myself to go utterly mad.
Stark.
Raving.
Mad.
I won't though. Promises I make to myself are the ones I always break. I promised myself that I would find a way to marry Philippe. I promised myself that I would not miss my family who had tried to stop me from dancing. I promised that I would not fall in love with anyone, least of all one who was twenty years my senior. I had promised I would not fall in love with the Viscount De Chagny.
Those all fell through.
'A woman can only dance like that when she wants to show the man she loves her soul. I dance like that for Philippe. Now more than ever because he can see every movement. I wonder though, your Baron is away, whom was it that you were dancing for?'
Why did I say that to Megan?
Perhaps because she was so like me. Strong, much to strong to show how weak she was.
My heart was like glass, so easily shattered. It was why I liked toying with men, hurting them before they could, inevitably, hurt me. Philippe had found my weakness easy enough, broken all my carefully built defenses and held me as I trembled when I realized I loved him. He was why I could be so emotional on stage. Because he was there, ready to comfort me. And now, now that he was gone I knew that he could comfort me even in the middle of a performance. I danced all the harder.
Megan was a mystery though. She was tough like I was, hid away her heart behind false bravado. That and a childishness. A childishness that wasn't real but one so well placed that maybe it fooled even her. Just the same it was there to keep her from having to face the harsh reality of life and I did envy her that. However love was one of the most dangerous parts of reality and I did not know whom had managed to get beyond defenses that even held her away from her true feelings. Maybe I said it to torture her. To try and shatter those damnable walls so she had to suffer as I did.
I glanced to the ring I used to cross when I was superstitious. I supposed I still was but in different ways. I spoke to Philippe, long conversations as I lay in bed unable to sleep. Silly jokes as I readied myself in the mornings.
Or that was just the madness seeping through? I had stopped touching the horseshoe and I had stopped crossing over my ring because in the end they hadn't warded away the Phantom. But of course that horrid devil couldn't harm me, oh no, and OH how I wish he had. I would rather I was dead and lost somewhere below the Opera House rather than Philippe.
Without a proper burial he would wonder the Earth and the worst of it was that I wanted him to. If Philippe wondered this world, then he could always be near me. And I hated myself for how selfish I was even with him. Because if around him my true self showed, then that meant that I really was this horribly selfish little child who had been spoiled by getting everything after growing up with nothing.
Darth Gilthoron: Aahhh I've chewed your ears off and spat them out only to chew them up again with all my inane chatter and yet I'm talking to you AGAIN? I can't help it. I loved the review that much. I figured to keep the latin titles and will change the ones you mentioned. I may do what you did and make different books, and for the second book pick a language I am better with, maybe lines from Carmen even. Hmm...rather a clever idea that. Hmph...we'll see.
dreamspeaker-jt: Oh god I am so sorry I spelled your name wrong in my last note. Just for that this whole chapter is dedicated to you! Its yours. I'm glad to hear how much you like my writing, it makes my day to hear comments like that.
Aleema-darkrose1: Thank you! I feel horrible when I dedicate so much time to stories and the people rush what should be such a tentitive relationship. I won't bore you like I fear I may have done with Darth Glithoron but I tend to babble. Anyway, I am glad someone appreciates it because so many people kept asking for fluff and I'm sitting there, thankful they like my story but wondering why they want to rush it. I mean...Erik was madly in love with Christine. You can make him and Meg fall in love easily enough, the evidence of the relationship is there, but still you can't rush it, its too fragile. So thanks, I fear I did talk to much but hug have an Erik plushie and enjoy!
Meir-Brin: Firstly I want to thank you that you meantioned my staying in the time period. I did so much work trying to figure what things would work and what wouldn't and then realized that I might just be the only one who cared. massive hug I took your advice about the editing, though since I did it in chunks I may have sort of killed the point. I realize I get carried away with myself sometimes. sighs Anyway love for the suggestion, sometimes I need someone to beat some common sense into me. I'm glad you're one of the few who doesn't beg for fluff, it makes me feel bad when I can't offer it to my readers, but I just can't rush them and I'm glad you trust me. That means a lot. That you see the humanity of Meg made my day. Erik thinks himself a monster and Christine was such a doll I felt Erik needed someone ultimatly very human to balance him out.
Quixotic-Feline: Your review left me with few scraps of sanity. Wanna know what happened this week? 12 pages for school. TWELVE! If you hadn't offered what advice you had I do think I would be huddled under my desk whimpering even now. I hope that my brain wasn't too torched to write a decent chapter and make up for the wait all of you had to suffer. I am glad you liked Sorelli's comment, I was surprised myself when it came out.
Rowensage, Erin-21, Serendipity, Mind-game (you have no idea what a junkie I am), Kate Norris, Entr'acte Sprite, Almost Lost Hope6, Nekkyou Hiryuu, and Oh La La Love; You all rock I love you all so much and I wish I could find you all and give you big hugs and your own private Erik's to smother with love.