A/N: Back with new updates! This chapter has... fluff. You have been warned. Why I put it in? Well, just because I wanted to. It doesn't really serve much purpose in the story, except to fulfil my never ending craving for fluff. Heh.

Nikki1991: You ask, and I deliver! I promise there will be a little more of Meg in the upcoming chapters (not any time soon, though, but she will appear more).

Savannah White: The show has only just begun! Let it go on! -cracks whip-

zita teren: Gosh, what a lovely long review! I adore long reviews, so let me have a go at answering yours...Every Monday is right, and I'm so glad you like the story, and yes, I do love responding to my reviewers! I can safely say for sure that Erik will most definitely not be having any romantic feelings toward Christine! The idea for this story... I'm not too sure about it, but it was during my POTO craze, and one afternoon after reading almost every story published on FF, I thought, hey, why not write my own? I suddenly thought the name Amelie was really pretty, and voila, a story was born. Originally, because I wrote it in a moment of inspiration, I dashed out about 5 chapters in a go without planning. I did a little bit of planning, but veered off course with all the new ideas I had. I've currently written up to chapter 34 in my computer, and planned up to chapter 40 or so, but I'm not sure if I'll stick to that plan! As for how long the story is, you can be rest assured it will at least go up to chapter 40, since I've already planned up til there haha.

Lydia the tygeropean: Thank you! -hug-

Masked Man 2: I do so enjoy snippy Reyer too! He will probably play an important role sometime in the future, so yay to more Reyer!

Wild Concerto: I know, Madame Giry was secretly thinking, "HAH. You wish she would come back" with a smirk on her face. I already wrote Erik's reaction to Raoul for a later chapter, but I'm not so sure that I made it convincing ): And for all the Meg lovers out there, more Meg will be coming soon!

Many thanks to zita teren & leftartist for the favs/follows!

Chapter 30: The Day of the Debut

Paris, 1896

Amélie pushed open the doors to the employee's entrance, if only to get a breath of fresh air. The opera house was in chaos, and understandably—Carlotta had stormed out, Christine Daae was to play her part, and the new managers were in an uproar over the note that had been delivered to them overnight from the Opera Ghost, demanding his salary for the month. Between the huge rush in the opera house to alter Carlotta's dress to fit Christine's small stature, the gossip spreading like wildfire amongst the members of the opera house, and the uncertainty of it all, Amélie felt rather overwhelmed. She leaned against the doorjamb, breathing deeply. Two more deep breaths, and in I go again.

A movement at the corner of her eyes made her turn her head to look, and she saw a dark-skinned man striding off. Amélie tilted her head curiously. Dark-skinned foreigners were few and far between in Paris, and this man stood out even more obviously from his brilliantly embroidered robes and the strange cap that sat atop his black hair. As Amélie looked at the retreating form of the man, he happened to turn around, and caught her gaze with a pair of jade-green eyes. Then, he hurriedly turned and strode off, as though he had not wanted to garner her attention. Shrugging, Amélie closed the door, and headed back into the dark corridor.

A large hand seized her wrist, and Amélie found herself pushed against the wall in one swift, fluid motion.

"What—" She struggled wildly, attempting to wrench her arm free, but the hand held onto her tightly.

"Careful, little girl. Stop moving. You would not want me to get a little more rough… a broken wrist is goin' to be hard to explain." A rough voice rasped into her ear, and Amélie froze.

Joseph Buquet stepped back slightly so that the light peeking in from the glass panels on the door streamed over him, allowing Amélie to discern his identity. He leered at her.

"What do you want, Buquet? Unhand me immediately! This behaviour is most unbecoming!" Amélie snapped at him, trying to jerk her arm free again. "Take your hands off me at once you—"

Her words were cut off as he slapped her roughly, his blow cutting open the corner of her lip. Amélie felt the pain, and hissed in anger, sneering at him.

"I warned you not to move, little girl. Don't you dare to try anythin' or I'll really be gettin' nasty." Buquet tightened his grip on her wrist. "I just want to know a few things, and you'll be free to go. Where does the ghost live, and what hold does he have on you?"

"Do you think I will tell you that?"

She bit back a whimper as he slapped her again.

"Listen, girl. That 'ghost' has seen the last of his days. Interferin' with my affairs, and threatenin' my job by dropping props and backdrops onto the stage whenever he wants to? It ain't happening again! Now you'd better tell me what I want to know, or you might not like what I do."

Amélie had only a few seconds to think, and no idea what to do. She could not overpower Buquet on her own, that much was certain. I cannot believe I am even thinking of doing this. But Buquet's increasingly tight grip around her aching wrist gave her no choice.

So she pressed herself up against him, and forced a woebegone expression on her face, praying that in his drunken state he would not notice the disgust on her face. "Oh, I couldn't tell you, Joseph. He'll get me, he will. He might even hurt you!" She allowed her bottom lip to tremble and her words to waver. Please, please, let him fall for it.

The lecherous man paused for a moment, clearly distracted by the feeling of a young ballet rat pressed up against him. "Tell me where he lives, and he won't bother you any more…"

"Really? I… oh I couldn't! You could be hurt by him." I sincerely hope he does. Except I refuse to see Erik's hands dirtied by your blood.

He smirked, and eyed Amélie, grinning to reveal dirty, yellowed teeth. "Want me to be your hero, little girl? I can save you from the big, bad ghost."

Amélie almost rolled her eyes at how easily his ego had been stoked, but forced herself not to give the game away. "I… could you release me first? My wrist hurts so badly. I will tell you where he lives… but oh, you have to promise me that no harm will come to me. If he finds out I told you, he could kill me!"

Using her free hand, she clutched onto Buquet's arm despairingly, looking up at him with large eyes. He looked suspicious for a few moments, and hesitated, before releasing her wrist from his grasp. "Alright, girlie… you tell me where he stays and I'll make sure no harm gets to you. Maybe we can even spend some time together… alone…eh..."

He leered another smarmy grin at her, and Amélie bit back her disgust. She leaned closer to Buquet, pretending that she was about to whisper the answer into his ear. She could see his dirty unshaven skin and smell the stale alcohol on his breath. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, spikes of adrenaline driving her actions. She just had to grit her teeth and do it…

"Eat dust, Buquet!" She yelled, swinging her arm back and bringing it forward to punch him in the nose as hard as she could. He gave a shout as her fist connected with hard bone, and fell backward, knocking his head on the wall in the narrow corridor. Amélie yelped in horror at what she had just done, and scarpered off, running as fast as she could.

As she ran helter-skelter through the corridors, clutching her aching fist, she closed her eyes in horror and grimaced.

I just punched a man. I just punched Joseph Buquet.

He's never going to let me off. I just punched him!

What if he goes after Erik instead?

A hand snaked out from the shadows and pulled her into a dark alcove. Amélie screamed; the situation was only all too familiar, too similar to what had happened only moments ago.

"Hush, Amélie." A soothing, deep voice said into her ear. "It is only me."

"Erik!" She whispered, clutching onto his lapels blindly, frantically, in the dark. "Erik!"

"What's wrong, Amélie?" He sensed that something was wrong, had known that something had seemed strange from the way she had been running wildly without looking through the corridors.

"I just punched a man!" She whispered, a little hysterically, and Erik wondered if she was going mad.

"Amélie, you are not making any sense to me right now. Is there likely to be anybody in the dormitories right now?"

She shook her head. All the cast members and ballet rats were likely to be in the theatre, having last minute costume alterations, adjustments to their choreography, or just simply gossiping about the previous day's events. Sighing, Erik took her by the hand and led her to her dormitory room, locking the door firmly behind them.

In the light of the dormitory room, he could see her split lip, and his eyes widened. He grabbed her chin, tilting it toward the light so that he could see better.

"Amélie, how did you injure yourself?" He asked, his voice strangely choked.

Her only response was to giggle hysterically. "I punched him, Erik!" She clutched her stomach and bent over in laughter. "I punched him… you should have seen the look on his face when I hit him!"

She balled up her fist to demonstrate to him how she had swung it at Buquet, and then winced. Her knuckles were sore, and already small bruises were forming on her skin.

"Buquet." Erik's voice was dead and cold, his guess accurate. Amélie nodded slowly. His lips thinned, and he pushed her to sit down on the bed, before kneeling down before her, to inspect her lip.

"There's medicine in the drawer over there." Amélie whispered, a little nervous over their close proximity and how Erik seemed to be staring at her mouth. He got up agilely and quickly and walked over to the chest of drawers she had pointed to.

"I'm going to kill him, you know." He said conversationally, simply, and Amélie had to wince at how calmly he had said it. "He hurt you."

"Please, Erik, I do not want any more blood on your hands." Amélie clutched his arm when he walked back toward her. "Erik, you told me this would be your chance to start anew. Please do not stain this new beginning with blood."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "He threatened you, Amélie. He hurt you."

"Promise me.", she urged him. "You can do anything you want to him, but do not kill him, Erik. You are not a murderer, no matter what you think of yourself."

He said nothing, but when she prodded him with her finger, he looked away from her and nodded. Amélie's shoulders sagged in relief—for a few moments, she had thought that he would deny her that promise, that he would go ahead with his promise to kill Buquet anyway.

"Thank you, Erik."

He silently poured medicine onto a cotton bud and reached forward to dab at her cut lip. Amélie gave a loud yowl in response, and his face softened. He grasped her chin to keep her face steady as he methodically cleaned her bloody lip. Then he placed the bloody piece of cotton aside, and picked up her bruised fist, inspecting it.

"I should really teach you how to defend yourself, Amélie. Some lessons in self-defense would not go amiss.", he muttered, mainly to himself.

"Whoever would I practice on? You?", she murmured, too distracted by the way his thumb was stroking the bruises on her knuckles to think of any other reply.

XXXXX

Christine sat in her dressing room. It was strange to be thinking of it as her dressing room—it was Carlotta's, really, but since Carlotta had stormed off in a diva fit, Christine was now sitting in the prima donna's dressing room.

It was a strange feeling. A mixture of different feelings. A myriad of fear, nervousness, excitement, and other unnamable feelings. Triumph, even. Triumph, because she had sang like her Angel had told her to, and she had done it—she would be singing on the stage of the Palais Garnier.

There was to be no going back now. Christine knew that the moment she stepped onto that stage, she would never go back to being a ballet rat again, to be part of the chorus singing in the background while the prima donna sang center-stage. No, Christine Daae would be the one standing in the middle of that stage. Her Angel had promised her that, and she believed in him, just like how she would attempt to believe in herself.

There was a knock at the door, and the wardrobe mistress entered with some of her assistants. They had spent much time altering Elissa's dress to fit Christine, and now they held it in their hands, a magnificent contraption of red and green and gold, dripping with finery and adornments. And for tonight, that dress would be Christine's.

They helped Christine into the dress, and sat her down before the dressing room table, pinning and curling her hair into an elaborate updo, with ringlets tumbling down her back. They powdered her face and painted her lips with rouge. When Christine looked into the mirror, she did not see the meek, timid Christine Daae—she saw Elissa. Yes, she could do this.

A knock on the door came to inform them that there was only fifteen minutes until the final production of Hannibal began. The wardrobe mistress bustled out of the door with her assistants to help the other cast members with final touches on their costumes, leaving Christine alone in the room.

Being alone in the room triggered a rising wave of nerves and tension. It somehow made it that much more real—that in a matter of minutes, she would be on that stage before an audience of hundreds. Her palms began to sweat.

Christine sat down by the mirror, taking deep, steady breaths in an effort to quell her rising nervousness. She had not been nervous before, but now it seemed that she had suddenly become unbearably nervous.

"Are you nervous, Christine?" His familiar voice sounded through the walls of the room, and immediately Christine got up happily, relieved.

"Angel! You are here!" She looked around the room, though she knew that she would not be able to see him. "I thought you would not come."

"I will always be there with you, Christine." He said gently. "I will be with you as you sing on that stage for the first time tonight, and I will be there with you when you become prima donna."

"Do you think I can do this, Angel?" Her voice quavered a little, and she tamped down the nervousness. She had promised him that she would believe in herself, and she would not be nervous.

"You know that I think you can do it, Christine. I have told you many times before." He said it almost patiently, even though he had indeed said it to her before. She had just needed that reassurance again. His belief in her talent was comforting.

"Tell me what happens after this, Angel." Christine said eagerly.

"You will sing perfectly, as I know you will. And you will replace Carlotta. After the audience hears you sing tonight, they will be so enthralled with you that Carlotta will lose her standing as prima donna. And when you are prima donna, you will sing my music, my opera, that was composed for you and only you to sing. My music, and your voice, will be made known to the world." He told her, spinning a fantasy story out for her, something that she could grasp onto and work toward.

"It will happen, Angel." She promised. She heard him chuckle, and the sound warmed her heart.

"I do not doubt you, my dear Christine."

He called me his 'dear' Christine. Christine did not know why, but the little endearment made her heart leap. Blushing furiously, she sat down again and clenched her fists in her lap.

"Will I get to see you for the first time after tonight, Angel?"

"Perhaps."

Christine was about to protest, about to beg her Angel to let her see him, but a knock came on the door, and the stagehand called out the signal that there were five more minutes to the show. Christine took a deep breath.

"I should go now."

"Wait, Angel! No, I need you with me, please do not leave!" The nervousness that had faded with his presence came flooding back in one big rush, and Christine rubbed her clammy palms on her dress.

"Christine." His voice was chiding now. "I meant only to leave you so that you can prepare for the performance. When you sing, I will be with you, but you must know that you have to be confident. You do not need me with you. You have your talent."

She bowed her head in remorse. "I will make you proud, Angel."

He said nothing, but she thought she felt him smile, felt his approval.

She was determined to succeed, and yet she was nervous. He had once told her that there would never be a situation where she would feel no fear, but that true bravery lay, not in a lack of fear, but rather in conquering that fear, triumphing over it. Tonight, she would put his words to action.

When the stagehand knocked on the door one final time, Christine stood, and checked her appearance in the mirror once more, before gliding out of the room gracefully.

Tonight, she was not Christine Daae. Tonight, she was a songbird, and she was Elissa.

Christine stepped onto the stage, the strong stage lights shining down upon her young face, and waited for her cue to sing.

A/N: Yay for Erik-peptalks and boo to drunk stagehands! Stay tuned for next week. As usual, please read/review/follow/fav/let me know what you think! (: xx hazel