A/N: I promise I'm not dead, and I haven't forgotten this story. I'm still acting, still working, still raising two amazing kidlets - I just get stuck really easily and I don't have enough extra time to bounce writing stuff off other people. Thanks to those who have stuck with me!
The italics within the quotes indicate dialogue spoken in French (because I REALLY don't speak it at all), and the italics without the quotations are basically thought bubbles.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE comment, critique, send messages, encouragements, what-have-you... They are so appreciated and anticipated. Validation is something everyone likes right? :D Happy reading!
Chapter 19
Her stomach growled and rumbled so loudly that Ang was certain the sound of it echoed against the stone walls of the passageway, and she slapped a hand across the flat expanse of the corset covering her belly. She should have eaten before she left, and she was feeling it now. She'd had little dinner the night before, and had skipped breakfast entirely this morning because of that... that... whatever-that-was between she and Erik. She hated how her chest clenched painfully at the close memory of just a few hours ago. Wrapped in his arms, given the fiercest kiss she'd ever received, then tossed aside as if she didn't matter.
Well, he'd gotten that part right, anyway.
She shouldn't be entirely surprised. Ang had spent her entire life being passed from person to person, house to house, family to family because no one deemed her lovable, or even tolerable.
She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.
Her lips curled in distaste as the Austen reference bounced around in her head. Stupid brain. Perhaps her life would have been better if she hadn't ever tempted anyone, ever. Being on the receiving end of countless assaults, sexual and otherwise, from the time she was a very small child to just months ago when Erik rescued her, was hell. And it wasn't because she was pretty, wasn't because she was asking for it as so many of her modern counterparts would insist. Nope, it was because she was weak, and worthless, and as they figured, what would it matter if they took what they wanted? No one else wanted anything to do with her. She should be thankful to be shown attention from anyone, at least that's what "Father" had insisted when she pleaded with him to stop.
Ang shuddered as the memory of his face faded into her mind's eye. With any luck, that sick, twisted waste of breath was dead, or better yet, jailed and treated as horrifically by fellow inmates as his children had been at his hands. There were a dozen in her past that had harmed her, but he was the worst monster of them all. Sadistic by nature, he enjoyed doling out punishments to his "nest of rats" as he called them, but many of the girls were abused in far worse ways than with a belt or a whip.
Naughty girls get punished.
The tell-tale signs of an oncoming episode bounced around in her chest, and she slammed the lid on those memories before they crept up into her conscious mind any further. She didn't need to revisit those, ever. If she could wipe her mind of them entirely, she'd do so without hesitation.
If there was one good thing about being stuck in late-19th century Paris, it was that she would never run the risk of accidentally seeing either "Mother" or "Father" again. Those particular monsters would never find her here.
She'd climbed four flights of stairs of varying length and height, and she still had no way to gauge how close she was to ground level. Erik had no map of the outlying tunnels, or if he did it was long gone and something accessible by his memory alone. It had to have been months since she first climbed her way out of the catacombs and found herself behind the mirror of the principal's dressing room; trying to remember the way now was impossible. Surely there had to be more than one way in and out. If the book was laced with truth, then Erik had several secret doors and passages to help him convince the people of the theater that he was, in fact, nothing more than a phantom, able to appear and reappear seemingly at will. Ghosts weren't real, and the Phantom was as flesh and bone as anyone else. But as a master of illusion, magic, and-come to find out- hypnosis, she wasn't surprised the townspeople of this superstitious era believed in ghastly spirits.
As she turned a corner, she pulled up short as an illuminated, glowing orb appeared several yards ahead of her down the dark, damp corridor. A gasp lodged itself in her throat and her hand flew to her heart; the wall at her side bore her weight as she collapsed against it as if that would help hide her.
The orb didn't move, didn't waver from its place, and Ang crept steadily closer, wide eyes not even blinking as she approached. Squinting, tipping her head this way and that, she almost laughed once she was within reach. A victim of her overactive imagination, the ghostly light had been nothing but a frosted glass globe with an oil wick burning inside. With no wind or drafts down here, the flame remained steady and the frosted glass made the entire ball light up. She snorted and rolled her eyes at her own silliness as she passed beneath it and trudged on her way, wondering what manner was used to keep them burning endlessly. Surely he didn't walk the labyrinth daily to light and extinguish the oil lamps. And why was she thinking about him again, anyway? She doubted he cared whether she lived or died, whether in his presence or away from it.
Ang didn't end up behind the mirror in the principal's room again. Instead, she came to a full dead end of stone. She would have turned to lumber back the way she'd come except for something that struck her as rather odd: a lit sconce in the middle of the wall. Eyeing it as the wheels in her brain turned, she hobbled toward the wall until she stood just beneath wrought iron piece, head tipped back as she stared up at it. She found her balance and reached up to gently tug on the bottom-most band of scroll work.
It held fast.
Only taking half a second to consider retracing her steps, she dropped her bundle to the floor, circled to put her back to the wall in a lean, and tried again. Fully closing her fist around the iron, she pulled much harder than before and prayed it wouldn't break away from the wall to drop onto her head. With a squeak of rusty hinges followed by a satisfying clunk, the sconce bent downward and the wall at her back shuddered. As she spun on her heels, her face broke into a smug and pleased smile. Her bundle was scooped up and slung over her shoulder before she set her weight against the wall to heave it along its gritty, little-used track.
The burst of sunlight that sliced through the darkness of the corridor surprised and delighted her! Real sun! She pushed and shoved until the wall had moved enough to allow her exit, and she quickly slipped through and into the warm blaze of a new morning.
"I made it!" she whispered to herself, her smile so wide her face ached.
She'd entered into a short hallway with a single door off to one side before it opened into an expansive and ornate room bedazzled with hand-carved wainscotting, gilded walls leafed with gold, and crimson velvet drapes that hung from the high domed ceiling all the way to the polished marble floors.
But first things first: she set her palms to the wall and returned it to its closed position. Erik deserved his privacy, if nothing else.
Her lower lip was held between her teeth as she crept away from the hall and into what looked like the main entrance lobby of the opera house. Off to one side was the largest and most elegant staircase she'd ever seen, with white marble stairs and a gleaming balustrade in red and green stone flanking it that swept upward to a high balcony, splitting in the middle to go two opposite directions. Carved, polished statues held enormous candelabras at the base of the stairs, and against half way up. The ceiling was hand painted to look like the heavens, filled with rosy clouds and majestic saints and angels soaring about them. Dozens of glistening chandeliers hung every fifty feet or so, and though none were lit, the hundreds of crystal pendants caught the sunlight and refracted it outward in every direction like thousands of starbursts.
The first time Ang was in the opera house itself, she hadn't spent more than a handful of minutes in the one dressing room, having fled through the window in the middle of the night before having had a chance to look around at all. Now, however, she felt like she had all the time in the world to revel in the splendor of the famous Parisian theater.
"You, there! What are you doing in here?"
The gruff voice of an angry Frenchman booming across the foyer had her ducking instinctively, spinning toward the source of the sound, half expecting to see the masked man from the world underground.
But no. While it was a man, it was decidedly not whom she feared. The man wasn't very old, maybe twenty five or thirty, and was dressed in the clothes of a day laborer: a simple pair of brown trousers, boots, a buttoned shirt with the sleeves cuffed to the elbows, and a vest over that with a cap perched back on his head. His tanned face held day old scruff, and faint smile lines branched out from brown eyes that peered from behind thin, round spectacles.
Her mouth opened to speak, but she stopped short. French, not English, she reminded herself. "I'm sorry. I was looking for... um..." Shit! What's the word? " The... the person who gets new workers..?" At the dubious brow he arched at her, she cringed. "I'm new to France and don't speak really good yet."
He man held her gaze for a long moment before he tugged at the brim of his hat, sweeping it from his head, running a rough hand through unkempt brown hair before he plunked the cap back into place. "My name is Gaston."
"...Gaston?" Ang grinned, biting back an amused snort. Noooo...oooone's... slick as Gaston; no one's quick as Gaston-–Stop it! Ang fought against the chuckle threatening to spill from her lips as the song played in her head.
The man's brows narrowed in tedium before blandly replying, "But as I hate my name, I go by Gus." He continued. "I work backstage during shows and on the weekends. I'll take you Monsieur Remy, see if he has time to see you." He pivoted smoothly and briskly lead the way away from the grand hall to a different part of the theater altogether, where they must have kept offices.
"What is your name, Mademoiselle?"
Real name or fake? She opted for the truth. "Um... Angelique Chanson."
"Angelique Chanson?" he repeated, his thick accent making her name sound even more romantically ridiculous than usual.
"Yeah... I mean, oui."
She heard him snort. "Are you a singer, too?"
Ang blinked hard, pulling up short for a split second before lengthening the crutches' stride to keep up. "What?"
"You should have picked a better name."
"What do you mean?"
He glanced over his shoulder at her as he led the way. "You're looking for a job at the Garnier, and you're new to France. Your name sounds like you picked it. Everyone is going to assume you are here because you want to be part of the ensemble."
She groaned inwardly. Guess that answered the question about where her parents' families were originally from. "Well... I didn't pick my name, and I don't want to be part of the ensemble. I prefer to be called Ang instead of Angelique. I can sew, and I know how to use...um...ropes and heavy bags behind the stage, and lights in front of the stage. I worked in a theater back home. In America." Explaining the job she had in the 21st century in broken French to a man in the 19th century was almost impossible!
"That explains the accent."
"Accent?"
"Yes. It's horrible."
Ang scowled and shot daggers with her eyes at his back as he walked, hating that he said the same thing Erik had when they'd met.
"Why use crutches?"
Her brain reeled. What the hell was a bequilles?!
Her silence gave her away and Gus cast another look over his shoulder at her, slowing his pace finally. "The things under your arms. Crutches."
"Oh! I hurt my leg in an accident."
He stopped walking entirely at that and spun to face her. "Can you work? The managers won't hire someone that can't work."
"Yes, I will work. The accident was when I was a child. It has never made me slow before." Of course, she always had a fake leg in the past, but she'd jump over that hurdle once she came to it, once she secured a job. "Please, help me. I have no money, and everything I have is in this bag. I will do any work you have. Please."
Kind but sharp brown eyes assessed her, and she couldn't help but plead with her gaze, just barely checking her urge to flat out beg. Finally, he rasped a palm across his jaw and sighed. "I'll see what I can do. Come on."
Ang mistakenly thought that M. Remy was one of the managers in charge, but in fact he was their assistant. The managers weren't in, but he said she could begin work as a washer woman in the laundry department, and perhaps do some light costume repairs as they was needed. It wasn't glamorous, but she happily accepted it! It was a start, and at least she would be getting a paycheck of some kind. She left the office feeling as if a boulder had been pushed off her shoulders. A relieved smile was already on her lips when she stepped out of the secretary's office, and was surprised to see Gus leaning his shoulders back against the wall, apparently waiting for her.
"Well?"
Her smile deepened a little. "I will clean costumes and fix them when they need it. At least for now, until I can prove that I can do more."
He didn't smile, but his eyes twinkled just the tiniest bit as he straightened. "I figured as much. M. Remy has a notorious soft spot for a pretty face."
Ang's brows shot up before a deep flush crept into her cheeks.
Gus pretended not to notice and relieved her of her bag, slinging the makeshift pack over his own shoulder before setting out back the way they'd come. "How close are you staying to the theater?"
Silence answered his question and he looked back, her sheepish, guilty expression revealing her reduced circumstances. "You don't have a bed, do you?"
She shook her head.
He heaved another sigh and tipped his head back as if asking for strength from the heavens. "You're a lot of trouble already." But even in the foreign language, she easily picked up the teasing attitude that laced his words.
Gus had picked up a lantern along the way before heading deeper into the passageways behind the stage. His strides remained long, but she noticed that he never pulled too far ahead of her, his steps slow and loping as if to ensure the pace remained comfortable for his disabled charge behind him. He didn't offer any further conversation so Ang followed suit, keeping her mouth shut and her focus on maintaining her balance and ignoring how much the crutches bit into the soft flesh of her underarms.
The theater above ground was as confusing as the catacombs beneath it! She kept glancing behind her as if the way would be magically written on the walls. It wasn't. Looking ahead at where they were going didn't seem to help her sense of direction, either.
"It isn't much, but it's mostly clean, and you'll have your privacy," Gus remarked as he put his shoulder to a door and shoved it open. His arm held the light aloft, illuminating what could only be described as a long-forgotten utility closet. Abandoned cobwebs occupied the corners of a ceiling low enough for her scant height to reach. There was a dented metal bucket overturned against one wall and a scraggly looking broom whose brush was missing most of its straw. An iron loop jutted from one stone wall, a holding place for a lit torch, she realized as she studied it. Shockingly, there was only trace amounts of dust on the floor and walls, perhaps because it had been locked behind a door for God-only-knew how many years. Ang took a small step inside.
"What does a room like this cost?" she asked wryly.
Gus snorted. "Pretty cheap, I'd wager."
He was right. While it wasn't the lap of luxury, it was relatively clean. She doubted anyone even knew about the closet, so it was likely she wouldn't be disturbed while she slept. And, best of all, there was no Phantom to give her orders or manipulate her here. She turned and smiled gently. "Thank you, Gus."
He turned the lantern over to her, an answering smile twinkling about his eyes. "You're welcome, Ang."