A/N: I just watched Beauty and the Beast, and I feel all mushy inside. (Yes, surprisingly, it was my first time watching the Disney movie.)
Anyway, here is chapter 16 right on time, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter too (:
Savannah White: You've no idea how happy I am that you like this story so much! It means a lot to me! Aww Erik will always remember his childhood friend.
Spirit of the Opera: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter!
Wild Concerto: Christine will be appearing, but I don't think I'll make her role that big. I agree with you that the likelihood of Erik choosing Christine right about now seems highly unlikely and totally out of character, given the way I've chosen to write Erik and Amelie's relationship.
Masked Man 2: I see what you mean, and that was my original intention with Amelie, but I think there may be some room for Christine in my story. We'll see how that goes! It's going to be many more chapters until she appears. Thank you for all your support -hugs-
Pineapple3000: I hope that's a good reaction! Hehehe.
TheSanguineMoon: I noticed the 3rd person thing in the novel too! I thought it was pretty unique. I'm glad you enjoyed the story! (:
grandma paula: Thank you so much! (:
Chapter 16: Unravelling Secrets
Paris, 1893
"Amélie-Rose, if you're not going to put your heart into ballet, you might as well leave the room." Madame Giry declared crossly, after Amélie had stumbled yet again, for the fifth time that morning. Amélie flushed embarrassedly at having been called out, and dipped a quick curtsey.
"I'm sorry, madame. I will pay more attention."
"You should have done that from the very start of the lesson," Antoinette remarked, before tapping her cane on the floor. "Once more, girls. And one, two…"
Amélie was rather distracted throughout the whole lesson, stumbling occasionally and having to flinch apologetically when Madame Giry glared at her yet again. When the lesson was over, she rushed out of the room quickly before Madame Giry had a chance to hold her back to chastise her, running helter-skelter through the opera house until she reached Box Five. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and made her way eagerly over to the grocery basket on the seat.
It was empty, and her heart sank.
Amélie picked up the basket dejectedly, and slowly, slowly trudged back to Madame Giry's apartments. Madame Giry eyed the downcast girl with a sharp eye, and making sure nobody was around, quickly ushered Amélie in and locked the door.
Once safe from prying eyes and ears, Madame Giry rounded upon Amélie.
"Is something wrong, Amélie?"
"No, madame, everything is fine." She handed Madame Giry the basket, but Madame Giry was having none of that.
"I've known you since you were crawling around on the floor, Amélie, and I daresay I know you quite well. You twist your fingers when you lie. Now what is it?"
Amélie glared at the offending digits, and quickly placed her hands behind her back instead. Madame Giry looked at her questioningly. Amélie decided then that Madame would probably be the only person who could possibly help her. Who else could she ask for advice from? She could just imagine the ballet rats gossiping about her mystery friend, and shuddered to think of the outcome. Yes, Madame Giry was her only option.
"Oh madame, I made him angry, and now I do not know what to do!" Amélie clasped her hands together in a pleading gesture toward Madame Giry. "Please, please say you'll help me talk to him!"
"Whatever could you have done that made him angry?" Madame Giry frowned. "The Erik I know values friendship greatly and it is of my opinion that he would not do anything to harm the friendships he holds dear."
"Oh, that is the problem exactly, Madame! He is afraid that I will stop being his friend after I know his past, as childish as that sounds!" Amélie declared. "It is not as though I have a brilliant past of my own. Why, my own parents cast me out onto the streets when I was a baby!"
"You did not ask him about his past, did you?" She asked the question, even though she already knew the answer. Amélie's sigh only confirmed the suspicion she had. Antoinette eyed Amélie grimly. The girl was curious, perhaps too much for her own good, and Antoinette had been dreading the day that her curiosity would go beyond the generous boundaries Erik had set for Amélie and Amélie alone. "Amélie, I have told you time, and yet time again, that Erik is… not to be trifled with. Why can you not let the man remain a mystery, and his past remain a secret to you?"
"Oh, madame. Is it too much to ask that he allows me to be his friend, at the very least?" Amélie crossed her arms, returning Madame Giry's stare. "Nobody should have to lead a solitary life, hiding beneath an opera house. Nobody deserves that." And with a sniff, Amélie marched off, her nose in the air.
XXXXX
Paris, 1894
Two whole weeks passed, with Erik remaining as silent as nothingness. The new year came and went, and Amélie spent the celebrations glum and sulky, worrying over how Erik was doing, or whether he was still angry with her.
Amélie was not quite sure how a man could live within an opera house and know everything about it in such great detail without having been discovered before, but she was getting a little annoyed. Her notes to him, tucked into corners of the opera house that she knew he frequented had been ignored. They had not been ignored in the sense that he had not read them at all, but rather, the notes had been taken from where she had placed them, with no reply in return. The passageways that she knew about had been sealed off, making a foray into his territory by herself completely impossible. It made her a little angry that he would be ignoring all her sincere apologies and pleas for them to put the past to rest. She did feel guilty about having crossed certain lines, but she certainly was not going to wallow in her guilt forever.
It was time to confront him, whether he liked it or not. Amélie set her jaw in a determined scowl as she made her way to Box Five, striding forward purposefully.
She looked around to make sure that nobody had seen her enter the box, and then shut the door firmly, breathing in the musty air. She came up here so often, every week, that the box was beginning to feel a little more homely. Nobody dared to enter the box because the rumour went that the Opera Ghost haunted the box, and all who dared to trespass would meet a terrible end. To Amélie, it was merely a place where she could meet Erik in the opera house, a place where she could deposit her letters to him, and a place where she could happily receive a response from him to one of her letters. She sat herself gingerly in one of the seats, running her hands over the smooth velvet.
"Erik?" She spoke softly, but her whispered voice echoed in the box, bouncing off the walls as though a million tiny Amélies were calling his name. There was silence as she had expected. She sighed.
"I know you're probably not listening to this. I'm not sure if you're even here in the first place. And even if you're not here, you'll probably hear this somehow, won't you, the formidable Opera Ghost?" Amélie smiled wryly despite herself. It was a long running joke between the two of them. She liked to tease him about his presence in the opera house as an indomitable, fearsome spectre. His exposed cheek always turned a very becoming shade of red whenever she did so.
"Anyway, it does not matter. Perhaps after you hear this, you'll still continue to ignore me, but I have to say it. You know I'm not the type of person to keep all my thoughts bottled up inside, Erik." She took a deep breath. "So, I'm taking my chances."
"How long are you going to lock yourself within your own cage, Erik? How long before you choose to leave the cocoon you wove around yourself? How long will you force yourself to live in solitude?"
"A butterfly leaves its cocoon a million times more beautiful than the creature that wove the cocoon, mademoiselle. The Opera Ghost, on the other hand, will remain ugly forever." A familiar voice, so soft and yet strong at the same time, whispered from behind her. Amélie did not bother to turn around; she knew that he would not be behind her anyway. Even so, her body tensed. She had not really expected him to be present, to be listening, despite all her bravado at the start.
His voice was harsh and clipped, but Amélie took his willingness to even respond to her as a start.
"Is that what this is all about, Erik? The mask?"
There was a long, painful silence, and Amélie feared that she had gone too far yet again.
"Perhaps I am young, Erik, and I do not understand the pain you went through in the past. I do not even know what you went through, and so I cannot understand. I cannot sympathize. I cannot pity. No, you probably do not even want pity. I would think not. Well then, I won't show pity. But at least I'll be able to understand a little better."
"You would understand?" He laughed. It was a bitter, metallic laugh, harsh and unforbidding. "You? You would only be horrified at the monster that manifests from your childish dreams."
"Yes, me!" Amélie snapped. "At least I would try to understand. You, on the other hand, Erik, simply refuse to allow me to try."
And suddenly he was there, before her, so quickly that she had no idea how he had appeared. She jerked backward in her seat, surprised, and he smiled thinly.
"How quickly you recoil already, sweet Amélie." He leveled her with a ferocious glare. "One can only imagine how you will react upon knowing my secrets."
"Do not presume what you do not know, Erik." She returned his glare.
"Oh, I know. I know." In one swift moment, and without warning, he ripped off his mask before her waiting eyes, exposing his ravaged face to her.
And in that one instance, Amélie flinched.
It was merely human reflex, an innate human reaction. It was simply a natural response when one was taken by surprise, by something unexpected. It was not meant to deride, to jeer, to mock.
And in that one instance, Amélie saw, a very quick, very fleeting moment of sadness in Erik's eyes, so brilliant in the canvas of his ravaged face, before he quickly jammed his mask back on again, his shoulders shaking.
He had seen the flinch. He had interpreted it as fear, as disgust.
"You, who would understand." His musical voice was melancholy. "You!"
And then it changed into the harsh, bitter voice of before. "I should have known better! Those who so self-righteously assure themselves that they will be able to understand, to sympathize, are in the end, nothing more than hypocrites themselves. And now you have seen the monster, Amélie, the monster behind the mask. Am I not fearsome? You must have many more questions to ask, don't you? What happened to me? Was I born like this? Is this my true face? Do I haunt children in their nightmares, perhaps, this ugly face you see before you?"
His voice was getting louder, and slightly shaky, and definitely more agitated.
"Do keep quiet, Erik!" Amélie hissed at him. "You're behaving like a fool!"
He stopped short in his tirade. "What?"
"Firstly, your voice is getting louder, and unless you want somebody to discover that the feared Opera Ghost is actually a rather tall man who is being quite ridiculous at the moment, I suggest you keep your voice lowered." Amélie said quietly. "Secondly, my reaction was one of pure reflex. What do you expect, Erik? You took me by surprise, and I reacted accordingly."
He snorted. "I find that hard to believe. After all, you are not the first person to have reacted this way. Indeed, I must applaud you. Greater men than you have had much more adverse reactions to me."
Amélie rolled her eyes, unable to stop herself. "You can believe whatever you want to believe, Erik. I only ask one thing: will you finally, finally, tell me whatever you've been trying to hide from me all this time? I want to know, Erik. I don't want you to hide behind closed doors any longer."
"No." His voice was obstinate, yet it wavered slightly. "No. You'll only run."
He backed into the shadows again. "They always ran."
His voice was a scarce whisper, but Amélie could feel the raw pain that fringed the edges of his spoken words, as though someone had taken a blunt blade and scraped it over many times, cutting deep even before the old scars had fully healed.
"I won't run. Don't you trust me?" Amélie took a step forward, toward him. She reached out and batted wildly in the darkness until she found his arm, taking it gently. "I just want to understand better. Tell me, Erik."
In the dim light, she could see the emotions play across his face, while the side covered by the mask remained cold and impassionate as ever, a piece of lifeless porcelain. Slowly, so as not to startle him, Amélie raised her hands to the mask.
The reaction was immediate, almost as though it was a reflex action, honed so many times that it was nothing more than an innate response. His hands flew up so quickly to grab her wrists that Amélie was surprised.
"Don't touch the mask." Each word was punctuated with force.
"I want you to take it off, Erik. I want you to look me in the face, and tell me about yourself."
Before he could open his mouth to object, she pulled her wrists free and poked a finger at his chest indignantly. "I won't run, I won't scream, I will not be frightened. Erik, please do stop repeating the same arguments over and over again. You trust me, don't you?"
He remained silent, but Amélie knew his resolve was faltering. She raised her hands to the mask again. "We will stay here in the shadows if it makes you more comfortable." She whispered. "I can't see clearly in the dark, and I'm not going to run. I will not run, Erik."
This time, he allowed her to gently unhook the mask off his face, and for the first time in uncountable years, Erik saw not horror or fear in her eyes, but acceptance and steely determination.
A/N: As usual, please read/review/favourite/follow/let me know what you think! Have a good week ahead! xx hazel