Now with 13 percent less Errors.
If anyone cares, I have discovered the step-sibs have been messing with my computer.
WARNING:
The FADA (Fanfiction Addiction Detection Agency) has come to the conclusion that this story can be highly addicting. The Author cannot be held responsible for drops in the reader's grades due to new chapters. Large doeses of Requiem can lead to dependence. The Author is not responsible for withdrawal symptoms which can occur when author fails to update speedily enough.
Check my Author Bio here on fanfiction for updates about photos I took of the Opera House if you are interested.
Sorry for the delay, the real world sneaked into my life and started beating me over the head with my keyboard, insisting I work on my paper for history. Really I thought it was quite rude, I mean you all are much more excited about this new chapter, more excited than anyone is to hear me ramble about the Rosenberg case. Anyway, so yeah with that out of the way we can get on to the new chapter below. How about it?
We interrupt this authors note to announce that April 8th is my 18th! (well wishes and presents are, of course, welcome :-D) W00t w00t! I don't wholly know what I have planned in the real world but it will involve being out late at night and hopefully getting presents from my friends. Anyway I thought I would announce that to all of you as an excuse for lateness of the next chapter. I'm TURNING EIGHTEEN YAY! You may now return to your regularly schedualed author's note.
Before let me just say one thing. I don't think the rats, any of them no matter how good had homes in the Opera, hence my having Megan live outside, but Leroux keeps contradicting himself on this point and I have looked all over the bookstore but I can't find any history books on what it was like at the Opera in the time period so if you do know of any books on that topic I would love if you could leave me the title and author in a review so I can go look them up and find the answers to more than a few questions. Thanks, okay now you can go onto reading.
Wait! One more thing! I'm a little ashamed to bring this to light but I'd rather do it rather than let a reviewer do it.
In
the book they did give a description of Meg. Dark eyes, dark hair,
and a "swarthy" complexion to her skin which was in most
places stretched tight over her "poor little bones".
Slightly different than mine. I had originally used the description I
did not because of the movie (when I saw the musical I had nose-bleed
seats I couldn't tell what their Meg looked like) but because of
this: Christine had dark hair and light eyes, and I wanted to make
megan the opposite so I wanted her to have light hair and dark eyes,
when I called her eyes green it was two reasons, I saw dark green
eyes when I said it and two I orginally had someone doing
illustrations but they weren't as dedicated as I was and only got one
done. In that she'd given Megan green eyes. So rather than brown I
made them dark green.
I know I've made a rather large blunder, one which I was trying to avoid. So I would like your opinions. Should I go through and change Meg to look as she did when Leroux wrote of her? I mean I'm not talking about changing her personality which he was vague about when he did mention her. That would stay the same. Its just she sounds so old and tired when he describes her looks, I want her to be this young, vibrant thing. Arg, I don't know so I lay the question before all of you. What do I do?
The Baron grinned to himself as the sounds of the horses rushing across the cobbled streets reached his ears. He'd gotten done with the negotiations earlier than he had planned by a few days, enough that he was going to be able to get home in time to see the end of the Opera. He wasn't sure he could make in time for her part but he could go to the dancer's lounge after and that was something. Beside him was his new buisness partner. A trader from India with a rather large merchant company dealing mostly in tea. The young man had money and means but no brains. The Baron had brains enough to know an easy deal when he saw one and he was quick to assure the young man that together they could continue the prosperity his company had enjoyed while the Indian boy's father was in charge.
The young man may not have a mind for business but he was well read. He had studied in England and in Rome and due to that he was devoutly catholic in spite of where he was raised.
The Baron had at one point explained Megan's status to him and amended: "She may be only a dancer but I will make her a Baroness kings will be jealous of." Especially coming from India where the caste system was so desperatly clung to the Baron had expected the boy to tell him he was marrying below himself. But Akbar had just tilted his head and shrugged.
"Castes don't matter in the church. All women are descended from Eve." He had shrugged. "An Emperess and a Brothel girl, both are born of a sinful mother and therefore are sinful creatures. Men have a duty to find a woman and remind her of the ways of the church or they would all be nothing but brothel girls." He had been startled to say the least but the Baron had a short attention span and was soon busy pointing out the sights as they drew nearer to the Opera House. He pointed out houses of the Noble families and the shops he thought his servants might shop at.
It was just before the last Act that they entered the Opera. The Baron had no worries though. That little singer-friend of Megan's...her husband had rented out Box Five, always would, and yet the two never even came to Paris anymore. So without consulting an Usher he and Akbar made their way to the haunted box. Not to say that even had he known the rumors the Baron would have had the sense to stay away. Erik heard the Baron's drunken laughter from down the hall and hurried into the walls before the two burst into his box. Though he did not know the dark-skinned man he knew the Baron and he settled back. The thick-headed pig would probably think he was hearing voices and be too daft to realize that was a bad thing should Erik try to do anything.
Erik instead retreated away from the pilfered box, assuring himself that should he do anything and it happened to get through that thick skull the Baron would relate the tale to Meg and she would certainly know whom it had been trying to torture her precious Baron.
As he walked though the dark passages he assured himself that he didn't want to have to deal with Meg when she was angry because she had inherited her mother's stubborn streak and her father's shameless American pride. However, deep in the dark passages of his mind, kept in the same locked off parts as memories of Italy and the gypsies...memories of the Sultana...was the thought that it was because of him that he didn't want to anger Meg. He didn't want to hurt her, he didn't want to see her cry, he didn't want to see her anything but happy.
Thoughts like that were safeguarded even from him. HIs subconscious knew to hide them with those horrid memories until he was strong enough to deal with them. Even then it was not considered healthy to repress things so fully but Erik was barely sane as it was, no one could deny that, not even him. As such what sane bits of him were left decided to work to keep his fragile mind held together by any means.
Megan had a different look upon things than that. She handled things as they came and if a burden was too much for her she tried to shoulder it anyway. She had taken on her father's responsibilities when he died, and now that her mother was unwell Megan had shouldered those responsibilities as well. And an unknown voice whimpered in the night.
She could not tell if it was Little Meg or if it was Megan but some part of her cried in the dark of the night when no one could see her tears. A part of her prayed, and hoped and wished for someone to hold her, someone to help her. Just one person. One person who could hold her and tell her that it would all be okay. Someone who, on these cold and lonely nights, would hold her and tell her that they didn't expect anything of her, that she could dance and smile and that would be enough. Her mother didn't expect much but Meg's happiness was never an issue. Her marriage however, was. "You will be a great woman someday Megan, marry an Emperor! You will have everything you could ever dream of and more Mon petite." Her mother always said whenever Meg's future was brought into the conversation.
It was because of this, of this feeling of weakness hovering just below her uncontested strength that Meg opted to avoid the crowds that night. She saw Magdelena, a younger petite rat but still too young to try for main rolls, and asked her to pass on the message that Meg was feeling sick and was going home. It wasn't until she was dropping down from the iron tree that Meg realized she'd just lied. However it wasn't long after that thought that she realized she really didn't care. Erik wanted to be protected, people would hurt him and her if they knew the truth and so she lied to protect two lives. She hoped that God would understand. Erik deserved the one nice thing she could offer because in a moment she was going to find him and when she found him she would ask something which would probably kill the fledgling friendship which was budding between them.
It had to be asked though. She had to know and they had to have trust for trust's sake if this friendship were to grow. She just hoped he would realize that before he killed her or turned her away, for she did not doubt that he could very easily kill her, she just hoped that he wouldn't. She had made the decision to ask and she would ask him about his childhood, no matter how often she second-guessed herself as she approached his home.
To say he was surprised that Meg showed up in his home rather than going to the Dancer's Lounge would be an understatement. He was sure that with her Baron back in Paris she would be off with him, doing whatever normal couples do when they've been seperated for a while. Instead though she was standing in the middle of the elegant room he had meant for Christine, still in her costume and smiling almost hesitantly.
"Megan." He nodded, never really one for normal greetings. She seemed a little bit more sure when she smiled now and she sat herself down on the setee that was at the foot of the bed. For a few moments after she mumbled back a greeting she just stared at her skirts and fiddled with them with long, pale fingers. Then suddenly she looked up, determination once more shining through her green eyes. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath,
"When I was little my father always promised that he would save up money and take me to the ocean. I've never seen it before but he has. He came from a small French settlement near America when he was young. But he never ended up taking me. So I hope someday I can still go. He used to say that it stretched farther than you could see and no matter what you could never see both ends at once. I don't know how ship captians navigate if it all looks the same." She spouted suddenly. Erik blinked slowly and then sighed softly.
"Thank you for that thrilling story Megan, I don't know how I survived without the knowledge." He was being rude, he was angry with her, about the Baron though he hardly knew how that was her fault. Still he was angry and he was the Phantom of the Opera. He could do whatever he liked.
"What was your childhood like?" She asked, sounding as though she hadn't heard his harsh remark at all. He was startled that his anger hadn't driven her running like a scared little rabbit, so startled that it took a moment for her question to register in his mind. Why would anyone, least of all a little Ballerina want to know about his childhood? He was certain she was doing these things just to confound him, doing things without rhyme or reason, things done just to confuse him. He didn't like not having all the answers and so someone like Megan who shouldn't be anything of interest at all being able to confuse him only served to confuse him more, which inevitably lead to him becoming very, very angry.
"Why the devil would you want to know!" He exploded, startling himself even though he wouldn't show it. Megan winced in her seat and bit down hard on her lip, he saw a tiny drop of crimson well to the surface and then she licked her lips nervously and it was gone.
"Well, I don't know I suppose because it seems unfair for me to know all the stories people tell about you at the Opera all my life and then when I finally know you I don't really know you, because I still just know the stories and the only difference is that you're a real person I come and talk to sometimes."
Why had he ever wanted to teach her to read? He had been planning on asking her about it the next time he saw her. He was going to tell her that it was the duty of the Managers but since they had all the sense of one like Carlotta the duty should fall to him to make sure that people like Megan were well schooled in things other than just dancing. Suddenly though he wanted nothing more than to boot her out of his home and never let her back. She was more devil than he that was for certain. Worming her way into his life, making him feel like he owed her his life when he didn't even want to live his damned life!
"You want to know? You want to know about how my mother was too terrified of me to even beat me? Of how I traveled alone and scared across continents until I found myself in a palace with a Sultana who would only dote on me when I could prove myself adept at killing? You want to know all the horrid details of the torture I suffered in all my years alive? Is that what you want Megan? Gory details of exactly why I wanted to be left to die! Details I'm left to remember now because you insisted on keeping me alive when it was none of your buisness to stick your nose in; yet like a woman you did anyway!" He shouted, advancing on her until his hands rested at the foot of the bed, on either side of her, keeping her pinned and caged there. She sat for a few moments and he was so close he could see that there were tiny flecks of gold hidden in the color of her eyes.
"Yes." The word was a single breath. So low, so perfectly soft that it brushed against his skin and yet he could barely hear it. He certainly didn't understand it when he heard it and though it was what he defined as a sign of weakness his confusion must have shown on his face. "Yes Erik I want to know all about you." Still soft, still quiet, and still impossible to believe.
"Why?" Erik, the Phantom of the Opera was at a loss. What made it worse was that that loss was at the hands of a young member of the corps de ballet who couldn't even read. Megan, on the other side of things, was just as surprised. She knew he was brilliant, more than that though she lacked the words to describe more than simply brillient. However if he was as smart as all that shouldn't he understand why she wanted to know more about him.
She knew she didn't understand entirely but she knew that it was something akin to friendship. She was friends with Christine and as such she and Christine knew next to everything about the other. This feeling she had towards Erik was different than that, and invovled a tightness in her chest and the feeling of her stomach dropping away from her but still it was enough like friendship that her reasons for being "nosy" should be evident. She explained it in surprisingly simple terms which held great power over the man who still had her trapped against the settee.
"Because I care about you." She said, then she sighed and looked down to where her hands were curled up in her lap. "I care about what happens to you in the future and so it is only sensible that I should care about what happened to you in the past." A beat. "Isn't it?" She looked up at him through soft bangs that curled and brushed against her forehead. Erik stumbled backwards and fell into a chair. His hand, shaking slightly, pressed tight against his forehead and he sighed heavily.
"I was born in a small town in Italy..."
San Remo was a small town, a few farms that barely scraped out livings and a couple homesteads of the people who worked on those farms. As usual in small towns everyone's buisness was never just their buisness and instead because the buisness of everyone in town. So when a young woman became pregnant out of wedlock, it wasn't long before everyone in town knew about it.
The priest was torn, he knew that she had committed a sin but to tell the town that God thought it a sin would condemn the girl and the child to death. It did not help that she didn't know the father. However if he embranced the mother and child then God might become angry with him.
It had only been four months since the discovery when he came to the girl early one morning to talk. To tell her that if she repented and sought to love only God for the rest of her days that maybe she could atone for this horrible sin she had commited. She asked what would happen to her child and the Priest told her that God would have mercy on him because it was not his fault that his mother had sinned.
Of course the question of if it was a girl or not never came up. Sons were what people wanted and they never joked about the curse a girl brought to a family.
The girl came to live at the small church, donning the habbit of a nun and beginning her atonement. The child was born in the fall on the pagan Holiday of All Hallows Eve when witches thought the dead to rise from their graves. This was, in itself a bad omen but the priest especially tried to assure people that a child cannot help when it is born and that God surely wanted them to celebrate something other than a pagan holiday.
The sight of the child was certainly enough to make the priest doubt himself. Half the child's face, maybe a little more, was twisted and puckered, like burns almost. The people of the village, though not the brightest, were quick to say the child had already been kissed by the flames of hell. He was half of the devil that was certain.
Surely, they said, the devil had seduced their poor daughter and thus brought this horrible burden into the world. It was there to do his dirty work and should be destroyed. The priest, coming from a small town was sadly superstitious enough to believe such outright lies but he was smart enough to quote that only God was pure enough to judge who was a sinner and who was not. So the child's life was spared.
This was probably a worse fate for the little child. His mother detested him for several reasons, mostly the reminder he was of her sinful youth.
The truth was she, and the rest of the town, feared him. They were so sure that he was at least part devil that they felt that he would, at any moment, turn on them. That he would be their downfall into hell.
The child knew nothing of this, saw only his mother recoiling in horror; felt only the rocks thrown by the other children striking him. The only way he could even get his mother to face him was if he work a scrap of cloth covering the majority of his face, and because he was a child, seeking only his mother's love and attention he did so, he wore the horrid mask and he bowed and scraped and worked his fingers to the bones at the church trying to atone for sins he couldn't even name.
His mother died when he was twelve and since the town would not let him attend her funeral he left before her body was even cold. Walking through the larger towns until he reached a port. He got passage on a ship acting as a rat catcher and there, among men who worshiped the waves and money he learned to defend himself, learned to fight, to fence, anything anyone would take the time to teach him. He even learned to swim like a fish and how to sail. It was a better time than he had in the small town though he was still considered a bad omen. But a bad omen was ignored when it ate next to nothing and could pull more than its own weight.
He was fifteen when he left the ship. The old captain had died and the new one was less tolerant of the boy in the mask. They left him alone in India. Not that he was ill-prepaired. He could speak Italian and French, learned from the sailors on the boat, he couldn't read or write in Italian but he could in French and he had quite the stock of German curses. He was though, too much of a gentleman to use them for the most part.
India was more of a home than any other place had been. Here many people covered their faces, true they did it to protect themselves from heat and sand it still made Erik fit in like never before.
That's right. He had been named aboard the ship he had called home. Kurt, a german, had come across the ship in a card-game with a Swede and it was for that Swede that Erik was named. Both had come to Kurt seeming like a burden and ending up a blessing. Erik of course didn't know that anyone considered him a blessing. Captains showed love to their crew by pushing them harder and giving them more responsibilities. It was the way of the sea but it would have been nice if someone had told a scared little boy seeking praise that.
In India Erik did well for himself until he was caught stealing. He had grown cocky, thinking that he had learned all there was to be learned from the men he sailed with and he had tried to steal something large, and something expensive. It had ended poorly and it had to end poorly in a country where the penalty was to cut off his hands.
But the Sultana, a young little girl, younger even than Erik, was bored. She liked to instead pit criminals agaisnt her guards or other criminals in fights to the death. Erik was given a dagger and little else. He was however allowed to keep the punjab lasso he had aquired.
It had, at this time, been ten years since he had seen the ship and the men he sailed with and in that time Erik had learned the language here and he had become a master at something called "the punjab lasso". It was very similar to the lassos used in America to wrangle cows but this was shorter and more flexible cord, specifically for killing a man, not entangling a wayward bovine.
They laughed at Erik as he fought feebly against the guard and when it seemed that the pale stranger was about to lose a hiss filled the garden and the guard lost, choking and strangled to death by the same mysterious stranger.
The Sultana was entertained for the first time in a great long while and so Erik was kept around, teaching her the lasso and fighting for her whenever she wished. In return he was treated like a king, or should I say Sultan, and could have anything he wished for. So he continued to learn. He learned to build and he learned to design what would be built, he learned the instruments of the land and he learned to torture. He became the trap-door-lover and he became the king of magicians, able to trick even the brightest of men into believing the most foolish of things.
He built the Sultana a grand torture chamber and stood at her side as she watched men go mad within.
Then the Sultana grew bored of him and he was forced to escape once more, this time running to Paris where he found work as a mason. He was commissioned to help build a grand opera house and he worked tirelessly. Even when the rest of the country went to war he continued to work, designing the Opera House with trapdoors that didn't need to be there and expressing his twisted genius in ways mortal men can still not fully comprhend.
When construction was complete he remained there and the rest...
Well the rest can be remembered by a small girl clinging to her mother's skirt as her mother came to work at the newly built Opera as a dancer.
NOTE: Firstly I would like to say, if you wanted more detail I'm sorry and maybe if it is requested I will put it in later, but remember, this is all supposed to be told, narrated by Erik. I don't see him as the type to reveal every little detail, instead revealing just enough to try and make Meg see why he would rather just die. So, I dunno I liked how it went and I hope it lived up to your expectations. On to other things. My description of the Punjab Lasso is off for a reason, if you noticed. You see, the only thing I could find even slightly about the "punjab Lasso" was saying that it wasn't really a lasso at all, it was a long thin rope with an iron ball at the end, sort of like a killer yo-yo if you will. Anyway as it happens in Leroux's novel sometimes he is said to have the lasso hanging like a noose from the iron tree and sometimes they say its at the foot of the tree. I suppose when one wants to stick as close to the original as possible its a bad choice to start with Leroux but I'm not leaving you all just yet so I decided to pick one way of the lasso and stick with it. So its a thin, tight rope the you use like a lasso all cowboy style. If someone can find something on the real lasso show me it.
Also in relation to his life. I did apprently miss large chunks Erik's life. I rather like this better but I'm going to look for where it is discussed in the Canon and yeah I may have to change it, a glaring error like that bothers me. If I do decide to change it, I'll warn you and I'll try to keep as much of it as I can. Updates will be posted.
Sbkar: Wow! You left so many kind reviews, its people like you who made it massively difficult to concentrate on work. Anyway, you asked why Meg didn't just pawn the gifts he offered, I assume in there is the condition that she should actually accept them as well. That's a really interesting question and I had considered that but then I remembered the time-frame. Back then you didn't accept gifts from men unless they were courting you. To do so would be highly improper and would tarnish her name. As a ballerina she was already looked down upon and with a mother like hers (though a guess on my part) who thought she would one day be an empress I thought thusly: Madam Giry would train Meg to be very proper, as well mannered as Madam Giry could teach someone to act. Which would mean that even if Meg and the Baron were a couple it would be improper to pawn the gifts.
As you can tell I love love love answering questions, especially good ones.
Aleema-darkrose1: Thanks, I mean I know she was a horrible person but all these authorsthough their stories are amazingseem to equate being a bad person with being a bad singer. I just don't like that. But I suppose I can't blame them, usually I'm one of the ones who hasn't read the book.
Purplepeopleeater: so long and thanks for all the fish!
Quixotic-feline: I love hearing from you, you've always got just the right thing to say. Firstly, your review on chapter nine? I was grinning for days. Even on the rare occasions people like one of my stories on fanfiction and I start getting a lot of reviews, they never seem to be literate reviews. Not to say anything against the joy of being complimented. Anyway, that you and so many other people are capable of expressing what they like about my story with more than itS AwEsomE U hav eto Right moooore!111!1...Well it certainly makes my day. And what you actually wrote, I've never even dreamed of anyone talking about one of my stories with such high praise. Thanks so very much for that. Thanks also for agreeing with me on the Carlotta thing, I mean I really shouldn't complain because some of these movie (or musical) based stories are really well written, its just that I mean I really liked Carlotta's character, it was what I was originally going to make Sorille like (that obviously didn't happen) but still. Anyway I hope you liked the new chapter nine just as much (though it wasn't as new as I thought it was going to be) as you thought you would and I am happy that I was missed .