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.
See I made spiffy warnings. Blame it on my upbringing. I've taken way too many legal courses and now I'm...crazy. CRAZY LIKE A LAWYER! Mwa ha ha.
Sorry this took so long, but originally I had the chapter written where Meg and Erik finally...found each other for lack of better wording--scary when the author has to say that--but then that didn't work, it seemed rushed, stilted even. So I went to my little notebook and rewrote some things and I'm happy now. Enjoy.
Also I don't know if any of you have noticed but on the main page on the right side they're offering free downloads of something called "OpenOffice" I suggest downloading that while it's free. I wrote this chapter there and I love it to bits. It's about a thousand times better than word and it is really user friendly. Also in movie news, there's an arty film out--or it was out a few weeks ago maybe its gone by now--called "Layer Cake" and if you have a chance or see it on pay-per-veiw or in blockbuster...its a bit violent but it's awesome. I really liked it. "Batman Beyond" not so much, but just for a few plot holes. It was cool for a batman movie. Sorry, just thought to share those opinions. Now you can enjoy.
flammis acribus addictis
means: Doomed to the devouring flames
Megan was not sure if she was grateful for the book anymore. She had started reading it when she got home and had only been twenty pages into it when she'd had to snap it shut, too embarrassed to continue. She wasn't sure she would ever look at a bathtub the same again. Her mother was still in the hospital so she was alone at the house. Megan could not stand it, in the middle of the first night she had wrapped herself in a coat with a small satchel filled with her things. She headed to the Opera House and stood at the Rue Scribe side, Erik appeared quickly enough and asked what she thought she was doing. "I don't like being alone in Mama's and my apartment. It's terrible, all I can do is think about her all alone in the hospital. I haven't anywhere else to go and I was hoping, that maybe, you would let me stay with you. Just until Maman gets out of the hospital. I know you've already done so much for me, more than I can ever repay."
She did not yet know how she was going to pay for her mother's hospital bills and she did not yet know that Erik had paid for them in full already. Erik looked her up and down; a young, slim ballerina standing alone under the light of a streetlight on le Rue Scribe in her nightgown and wrapped in a large coat. Her hair was mussed as though her precious Baron had gone further than a few dinners and—as he glanced to the dip of her gown—shinning trinkets. He told himself, as his eyes caught on the gem that hung in the dip between her breasts, that he was just staring at that gaudy trinket the Baron had picked. It was not the sort of thing to give Megan. She needed silver and onyx or the dusty, rose colored pearls he had seen working on the ship. Dark, almost the color of blood but creamy, just like peals always seemed to be, she needed dark colors and vibrant colors. Not hazy sparkling things.
When he realized where his thoughts had trailed he wasn't sure if it was worse than staring at her chest in the way that the stage-hands did to women, even Meg at times. At least that was a normal thing, something plenty of people would do, something normal people would do, deciding that she needed different jewelry seemed too personal. It was the task of a lover and he was most certainly not Megan's lover, nor would he ever be, because he was in love with Christine. He was now, and forever. Love didn't die if it was for real, surely after living a in this Opera House for so long he should know a thing or two about love. He may never get it in return but he was definitely in love with Christine and love was until death in the Operas. Therefore love must be until death in life, for Art took after Life.
"Fine, you may stay with me, but only until your mother recovers enough to return home. Then you're going back there." He told her firmly. She didn't know that he had paid her bills, and he would not tell her, she would not know until the doctors told her and then they were instructed to tell her that someone rich had merely donated money to the hospital to be used for patient's bills. He wasn't sure why but he didn't want anyone to know that he had paid for Madam Giry's operation. A tiny portion of him, the one he could not silence no matter what he tried, suggested that Meg would get the wrong impression. Or maybe, it pressed further if he couldn't shut the voice out with music, she would get the right impression before Erik accepted the fact. That would make Erik the last to catch on, it would take him longer than an un-educated little rat and that was an affront to his pride.
Pride was one of the last things Erik had, living down in this world of shadows, darkness and persecution. He had managed to cling to his pride through it all, and so he would not be shown up by Meg. He would find out what these strange feelings were, a tightness in his chest, a shallowness of the breathing…He would find out what they were, he would put a name to them and then he could get Megan out of his life forever and he could go back to his coffin and his opera and dreams of Christine.
He took her down into his realm and into his study where there was a fire burning and books to be read. The tension in Meg's body released the moment they entered the study, the room where she and Erik had spent so very much time. She had so many good memories of this room. In this room she had been happier than she'd every been in her life, short thought it might have been up to this point. She looked around and something settled in the far corner of one of the familiar shelves caught her eyes. She glanced to Erik and then back to the book. With the grace she had managed to learn from being a dancer she jumped, enough to catch her fingers on the book. It and three others tumbled to the floor with her and she heard Erik snap at her from the fire. "If you would like a book on a higher shelf would you please ask me and desist from destroying my library?" It was a common phrase from him, always following an incident like this one.
"I'm sorry Erik, but I wanted to see this book closer and I didn't want to bother you for it." She told him softly, holding up her tiny prize. He glanced at her and stood, walking to her side and helping her up.
"This is in English, you won't be able to read it." He told her simply. It was not an insult, nor was it meant to be one; however Erik was not the most experienced at speaking to others. No matter how well he may be able to write an Opera. Megan learned early on that there were things he said which may come as harsh but in the end were never meant to be as cruel as they could seemed. Megan glanced at the cover.
"I like wild west stories. My papa used to get books…not thick ones like yours but small ones almost like magazines about a man named Wild Bill." She told him flipping the book open so she could read the title. The cover was much too worn to read. It was by a man named Arthur Conan Doyle. Erik looked at her through his mask, taken by surprise.
Something that happened much too much around Megan.
"You can read English but you couldn't read French?" He asked. She looked at him startled.
"I speak English as well, enough to get by at least." She carried a French accent and had a tendency to slur the words together like in French, but she spoke English. He continued to stare at her strangely and blink in a wide-eyed sort of way. She shrugged and turned back to the book. "My parents originally intended for me to move to America when I was sixteen and dance there. They thought that I could do better with just myself there. But when Papa died Mama spent the money they'd saved to send me there." She explained, almost as though it were nothing.
Erik could only frown and wonder. He had always wondered what normal families were like—having long ago learned that not all mothers shunned their children and called them the spawn of Satan—and he had always thought they were tight-knit. He had planned to be that way with Christine and their children. They would be a happy family. He would love his children no matter what they looked like, and he had thought Christine would be the same. He had never known a family filled with normal—even maybe attractive people—members could ever have problems. Ones like he could tell Megan and her mother had. He could tell, by the sad look in her eyes—eyes he knew too well—that she wasn't happy with memories of the idea of moving to America.
"I never wanted to go, but they didn't care about that. I was their daughter and I had to have better than they did whether I wanted better or not." She explained, shrugging her thin shoulders. "I didn't mind, they only did it because they loved me so much, even if it didn't seem like it sometimes." She paused, closed the book and sighed heavily. "I'm sorry I shouldn't be complaining about it, your childhood was so much worse than mine and you never complain about it, and here I am complaining about something that's not even going to happen anymore." She rapped her knuckles against her forehead. "I'm so selfish sometimes."
She dropped to the floor near his chair, her customary spot in this room. She wasn't like a puppy sitting at his feet, she sat there to be near him. Not that she could tell him that. She said it was so she could ask him questions when she didn't know a word, or couldn't understand a sentence. It had been a long while, longer than she could count, since the start of his lessons, but she still made mistakes. Sometimes on purpose, just so he would come to her side, lean over the book, and make her work harder at sounding out the words.
Only then did he allow her close enough to smell him, and she loved the scent he carried.
A soft scent that was of books and flames and ink.
A bit like Reyer and her father's scents combined. It was strange but familiar, unknown but comforting. She reveled in it and she did what she could to smell it. However he still didn't really trust her, and still refeused to let her get too close to him, emotionally or physically. He actually reminded her of the main character in Sorelli's book. A cold man, locked away in his own little world. He shunned poor Fifi no matter what she tried, but Fifi was a strong woman, raised by her father alone. He had taught her to never give up and her life on the street had taught her many ways to gain a man's attention.
Megan was stubborn, she seemed to think that if she was stubborn enough it would make up for any of the other things she was lacking in, and she felt there were quite a few…She had decided, after more thinking than she was used too, that she did love Erik. Maybe more than was safe for her since she could never have his heart in return.
Upon having realized that she was in love with Erik she'd found it much easier to come to another conclusion as well. She realized that no matter how she may love the mysterious man who refused to show her his face, he would never ever love her in return. Even if he didn't love Christine anymore she'd fallen between the cracks in the Rue Scribe. She was just the little rat who he'd taught to read because he owed her a debt. Of course, all of this was negated by the fact that he would never stop loving Christine.
She knew the equation backwards and forwards. To win the phantom's heart she had to first wait for his unending, undying love for Christine to fade into the shadows and let loose its hold on his heart. Once that was done she had to build his trust in her, a task made more difficult by the fact that his trust in Christine had been so unjustly placed. He had trusted her and look where he had gotten. Alone and hurt while Christine, terrified of him and thinking him a demon, ran off to marry a silly count obsessed with fashion and never see Erik again. Meg had nothing against the man, he was attractive, but he was a child. He was silly and he had been babied as a child and Philippe had always done it all for him. There was no comparison between Erik and the new man in Christine's life.
Still, once Megan could gain Erik's trust she then had to make herself to be more than just a petite rat in his eyes. Possibly the only way she could do that would be to become Prima Ballerina, something Megan had no faith in herself to do, let alone while Sorelli was still Prima Ballerina. Either way somehow she would have to become more than herself, not just to everyone, but to Erik especially. Once that was done it was only the small task of confessing her feelings to him—feelings he would hopefully return—and then it was just a matter of dealing with the fit her mother would no doubt have.
There were no ways around it, at least none that Megan could see.
She was left not knowing what to do, but she wouldn't try to make herself stop loving him. She would love him. It didn't matter since her mother wouldn't approve of anyone who was not an Emperor and there was no way an Emperor would love her. She was safe from a loveless marriage, and she was safe to waste her heart on Erik, no matter the pain it would leave her in, which she didn't mind. She was a dancer. Passion and pain seemed as one in her mind. At least this way she would never have to hear that she wasn't as good as Christine. She was all too aware of it as it was.
Megan fell asleep leaned against the arm of his chair, the Sherlock Holmes novel she'd picked up was open in her lap, a page short of the final answer to whatever mystery she had been reading. He took the book first, folding it closed slowly and placing it on the small bookcase which stood to the side of the fireplace. Originally he'd put the music sheets he'd absconded with here but now there was a shelf that only held five books at the moment. Most were children's books and now the English novel. They were the books he considered to be Meg's. She knew to look there for her books, not that she realized their placement there labeled them her own exclusively.
He knelt beside her and touched her shoulder. She moaned gently and shifted, looking at him through blond lashes. "Erik?" His name was a coo, a moan on her lips and it hung in the air between them. She shifted and almost toppled over. "Tired." She groaned.
"I'm sure you are Megan. It is almost morning." She said something else that slurred together. He helped her to stand and stood beside her as she shuffled to the bedroom. It was now solely her own, he never thought of it as Christine's bedroom or whatever it may be, it was just Megan's. No one else's, even if the looks of it didn't suit her. She needed dark and vibrant colors.
But that, once more, was thinking that could get him in trouble.
He stood at the door and watched her tumble into bed. He approached and with long, deft fingers—the fingers of a pianist—he untied her boots, pulled them off and dropped them on the floor, followed by her socks, and then he scooped up her feet and moved them under the thick, pink covers. She looked so small laying in bed, her hair tussled around her, her lips apart ever so slightly. Hazy pink covered her cheeks from sitting so near to the fire and her lips were slightly damp from the bad habit she had of chewing on them while she read. He lifted the twisted covers, intending to pull them up to her shoulders but paused for a moment. He was so used to being rejected, neglected and forgotten. So used to not being trusted. Here she was sleeping in his home once more. She was delicate, pretty in a peasant-girl sort of way. And she trusted him. Trusted him in a way Christine never had. He was so close to her he could feel the heat of her flesh almost burning him. Just a little more, a breath, a heart-beat...
He should his head hard and dropped the covers as though they had bitten him. He tried to be pure with Christine, he'd tried to be pure his whole life, having little else going for him when it came to women. However, no matter what a fan or an author wants to say he was a man and men have desires that do not wish to be forgotten, they build and press and beg to be let free. Passion cannot be simply denied and ignored. Passion, that sort of passion that Erik should know about being it is talked of in so many Operas, and him living in the most famous Opera House in the world. He should know a think or two about passion, about how it builds like a fire, stoking itself and waiting until it can burst free and consume a person wholly and completely.
Lust had been ignored his whole life, it wouldn't have mattered what woman it was, the reaction would have been similar, but Erik was still so confused about what happened when he was near the little dancer girl that he was sure it was something she, personally, had done, or something he had done wrong that he could only retreat to his coffin and his organ, that is his pipe organ. It was a world he was familiar with, a world he understood with little to no effort. Little to no pain.
Erik was scared and he had long ago learned that when he was scared the best thing to do was fall back on safer emotions like anger or to simply hide away from the world, throw himself into the Opera he had spent so much of his life composing.
Composing as a means of running away from emotions he couldn't understand. Refused to understand. Because, after all, emotions were dangerous.
Especially now. He had decided to die loving Christine even if she would never love him in return, so these emotions which came against his will confused and infuriated him. No, they didn't confuse him, he just…he just needed time and they would go away, he could make them go away. He just needed time. There was nothing he couldn't do alone. Megan just confused him because she was not telling him the whole truth. There had to be a reason she kept coming down here and interrupting his solitude. There was a reason, a cause and once he knew those and understood those things he could bury these feelings and ignore them. He could get back to his Opera, to his world after Christine and with Meg; because once he understood it wouldn't matter if she bothered him anymore.
He knew she wasn't on a dare from the other ballerinas, he knew it wasn't to prove anything to herself or anyone else. Maybe it was to spite her mother, maybe it was an adventure, or maybe she wanted her life to be like an Opera. It didn't matter, he just wanted to know. He wanted to understand and to know and to be alone in the dark once more, a twisted gargoyle, an angel burning in hell, begging for forgiveness and eternally hated just the same.
Forensic-Photographer711: Well I'm glad you liked Sorelli. She's sort of a character who motivates other characters to do what needs to be done. Madam Giry, thought lovely is not very motherly so I couldn't see her dispensing advice and Meg's father was dead so I needed a character to give that sort of advice and it fit very well from Sorelli. Don't worry. Even with her lover dead she gets a happy ending. Meg is confused, confused but stubborn and...quick to act. It is good you noticed, as it does come back later.
Nekkyou Hiryou: I try to respond to all my reviews, I use it as an encouragement for you to leave more. Since I really mean it when I say you guys make this story. You give me encouragement when I'm blocked and you make me feel better when Erik's being a stubborn, spoiled child and everything I have him say sounds stupid. Yay for summer and good luck in senior year. From my experience, I had more fun senior year than all my other years combined. (Minus evil math teachers and awful Legal Projects that take much too long,) I hope it works out just as well for you. As to NaNoWriMo I have tried. I don't sign up on their site but I try for the goal just the same. The first year I tried was...three years ago and I wasn't a very good author then. I described too few things and what I did describe I took too much time doing and all my characters were either copies of other characters or mary-sue's. The second year I got sick in the middle and lost too much time making up school work to finish. I ended up with maybe 20k words. And they weren't good words either. The last year I got closer. But I spent too much time going back and changing things, and I argued with the opening chapter for about two weeks. I got about 39-42k. Closer. But this year I'll be in college so we'll have to see if that makes it easier or not...As to where I am going, of course I'll tell you, University of Iowa. Which, if you're interested, has the best creative writing program of any college in the country.
Kate Norris : You're always so kind to me I end up smiling like a fool every time I read your reviews. Sorelli is a fun character to write so I LOVE when people enjoy her as well. Telling me that I raise the bar is so kind. I worry about maybe using too many characters but I try to include the other people since the Opera was almost like a mini-city of itself and the story--GAH! almost gave away my surprise ending. anyway I'm glad you like it so much and I too wish it could go on forever as well. It's so much fun to write, especially with kind people like you reading it and offering me compliments and encouragement.
SoulPoet: I do actually have a whole plot and I have a whole notebook filled with ideas of what is coming. I hope it's a compliment that my story is unpredictable, but if it's not I'm sorry. The plot is basically two people from wholly different worlds trying to find each other. It's hard to give you something to look forward too without giving away the surprises and twists. If it really bothers you though I could always email you or even talk over AIM if you like? I do have a firm idea of where I am going and what's going to happen, it is just that sometimes when I write them out things don't work or I get insperation for something else. So I try to be loose with where I am going.
Kim Sparrow: Ah my own personal bodyguard! I'm touched. Well I added addiction warnings at the beginning so they shouldn't come after me but if they do, I'll know you have my back!
Quixotic-feline: going back and reading your review actually helped me come to a realization. This chapter wasn't working and wasn't working and then I read what you said and it was like "CLICK!" it all made sense. You're right. The mushy declarations and that...chick-flicky trashy romance stuff won't work for a couple like Megan and Erik, It's not even that they are over-used (which I don't deny that they are) but it doesn't work like that in real life and to top it off this is Meg and Erik, you have to be careful. I've got it all planned out though and I hope it won't be too anti-climatic. (actually not at all) I want to appease everyone. Anyway, thanks for your advice it really did help me and I hope that the end, as it comes, lives up to your expectations. I've never really been more motivated to do well just for grades but to please such kind readers...I really want this all to be perfect and so I hope it works out in the end. Also I do so adore the phrase "gag-me-with-a-spork" I just hope my story doesn't induce such a reaction.
Almost Funny: I wish I could hug you. You always know the right things to say. I sit here and I do so want to just bring Erik and Meg together and let them finally be happy after so long, but you give me the courage to take it slow. I had to take a step back and look at the human side of Erik for this chapter and I desperately hope it didn't look like I was trying to include a sex scene without actually including a sex scene. I was trying to show that Erik was human, because he was. You can't just expect him to live in a cave his whole life and be okay, he's a man, there are urges there, it's just a matter of showing how he deals with them. I hope I got that across, I'm a bit worried I didn't. Is that bad? To tell my readers I'm worried about how they will react to something? Oh well if it is, you guys giving me advice is what will leads to this story being as good as I hope it is and you all say it is, so I hope it worked.
Darth: Yes, I did borrow the ear-boxing from you, I had hoped, and am glad you don't seem to have minded. Good luck on your approaching exam! The fan thing will come back again, but it didn't quite fit in this chapter so we'll have to see. Also, to your suggestion for re-wording that section, I appreciate it (as I think I stress much too often) and agree with it. I've said before that I'm going back over old chapters and fixing small things, grammar and spelling and descriptions that don't fit or things I would like to add, so thank you for pointing it out and I agree, it sounded a bit backwards didn't it?
Aurda-the-Stange, texasgrrl, Julia, and Alexis, thank you so much for your kind words and support. I love you all to bits! You reviewers all make my life better. I'm addicted to the support, suggestions and attention.