AN: Thanks so much for the suggestions! They all inspired me how I could shape the rest of the story with bits and pieces of those ideas. So now I pretty much have it all plotted out in my head, with the exception of a few details. But it's all good. (Oh, and it may seem like Raoul bashing here, but it's really not. I love the guy. I just think this is how he would react to the situation.)

CHAPTER 21

"Seriously, did you see that part where the red haired woman found out that her older sister was actually her mother? That was so shocking!" Erik said, still insisting to Emmy as they walked to the studio that the soap opera he had just seen was the best story in the world.

"Yes, Erik, it was completely fascinating," she sighed. "But we ourselves have to be shocking now, so…I would say get into character, but in your case the phrase is 'just be yourself'…"

"Of course," he nodded as they entered the auditorium set, climbing up the spiral staircase on the stage. For once, they got started almost as soon as they were in the middle of the bridge.

"Alright, Gerry, I trust you know what to do," Joel said briefly then went straight to "Three, two, one, action!"

The scene actually took more takes than they expected because either Erik didn't have exactly the right expression (hard to do when he couldn't move half his face) or Emmy ended up laughing in the middle of a take at his discomfort with the rubbery material. And after they finally got that part down, it took Erik forever to cut through the chandelier rope with one slice.

"How on earth I did this before, I'll never know…" he muttered, hacking again.

"Maybe it's because you were actually angry."

He shrugged. "Probably."

By the fifth take, the rope was weakened enough that he could actually cut through the rest for that one, split second shot. Then came the fun part.

"Alright, now it gets interesting," Joel announced. "You guys are going drop through a trapdoor about fifteen feet and land on this mat under the fake fire."

"I thought we had stunt doubles for everything like that. Even Kevin—Buquet's actor, had a stunt double for the hanging drop," Emmy whispered to Erik. He just shrugged. He had done this before with only straw to land on and was just fine.

"So yes, you guys are doing your own 'stunts'. Though this is hardly dangerous," Joel chuckled to himself. Erik nodded, wanting to get on with it already.

"Alright, going to drop in five, four, three, two…"
Emmy's heart immediately stopped when there was no longer wood beneath her feet. At the same moment, Erik pulled her to him and she clung to him for dear life. After only a moment of a sick, stomach turning sensation, they landed on a thick mat with a thud. It only stung a little on her side, where she landed.

"I've always hated falling…I can't even ride most rollercoasters…" she muttered, staggering to her feet. Erik helped her steady herself, chuckling a little.

"Hopefully, this was the only take they needed of this."

Erik turned to the small ladder beside them and they climbed back out. Emmy gave a half hearted thumbs up to the small audience, who gave an even smaller applause.

"Good," Joel said simply, then moved onto the next few shots of extras again, since he had decided there wasn't enough filming of their reactions to Don Juan.

Emmy went backstage to find either a wall clock or someone with a watch, being shadowed, of course, by Erik. Pretty soon, she found the former, which read that it was 6:00 PM.

"No wonder I'm hungry…" she murmured. "I didn't think it was that late. Did you, Erik?"

He shook his head. "I suppose we're done for today. We might as well go somewhere for dinner."

Strangely, as they were starting to head towards the studio door, Miranda Richardson came to them with a Chinese takeout bag.

"Oh, hello Emmy, Gerry," she said, as if she was surprised to see them there. "We just went out for dinner and I thought since you were working and couldn't come, I'd bring you this."

Emmy immediately gushed, "Oh wow, thank you! That's so nice of you!"

Miranda smiled a little and nodded, handing her the bag. Erik raised a brow, thinking this suspicious, but didn't say anything aside from a polite word of thanks.

"You're welcome," said Miranda, turning to leave, but then she stopped. "Oh, would you do me a favor?"

Ah, here it comes…thought Erik, resisting the temptation to roll his eyes.

"Sure," said Emmy.

"Can you look around and see if you can find my laptop? It's in a grey case with my name on it and I can't remember where on earth I put it," she said, then chuckled. "I must be getting old…I have someplace I need to be so I can't search for it now, but I need it by tomorrow morning."

"Yeah, of course," Emmy agreed, sweetly as always. Miranda thanked them profusely and then left through the doors.

"We might as well eat first, before it gets cold," said Erik, taking the bag then looking around for a place to eat it. Emmy followed him as he wandered around backstage, where the majority of people seemed to be slowly making their way towards the exit.

"How about here?" asked Emmy, stopping Erik in front of what looked like a break room.

"Perfect."

As Emmy bought some sodas from the vending machine inside, Erik opened the to-go boxes inside to find fried rice and some generic beef lo mien. Once again, he had no idea what he was looking at.

"It's like Asian spaghetti, Erik," she told him. He nodded like he knew that all along and took a can of soda from her, attempting to open it. At this point, he knew how, but actually doing it was still tough. Trying not to laugh at him, she popped it open for him then put the lo mein between them and started on her half.

After taking a sip of the carbonated syrup, Erik asked, "How much did this whole thing cost to make?"

"The movie?"

"Yes."

She looked off, thinking. "Um…I think about 70 million…"

Erik almost choked on his drink. "70 MILLION?"

"Yeah, that's actually low budget, since this is an independent movie. You know, no big name studios like Universal or Castle Rock or something helping us out. Warner Bros was going to do it but then The Really Useful Group bought them out…Andrew spent six million of his own money to pay for this, you know…" Emmy started to babble, but then noticed how confused Erik looked. "Sorry. It doesn't really matter."

He just smiled and nodded, then hesitantly started on the lo mien as well.

"Kind of greasy," he said, grimacing. Emmy grinned nodded, mouth still full. When she swallowed, she said, "It can't be much worse than all those burgers you ate on your first day here."

"Ah…don't remind me of that!"

They continued talking and eating (Erik had decided just to have the fried rice and pick out pieces of beef in the noodles) for the next 10 minutes. When she had finished, Emmy stood up.

"Where do you figure that laptop is?"

About then, the door behind her slammed shut, making her spin around and Erik jumped to his feet. They started shouting in panic when the knob twisted, the door being locked.

"What the hell? We're in here!"

Whoever it was had long gone, and there was no window on the door to even see who the culprit was. But the light filtering in from the hallway disappeared, and a moment later, the lights within the break room turned off, leaving only the bluish glow of the vending machines.

"Seriously….Really. That just happened. Really?"

"Yes, Emmy, someone did in fact just lock us in here and turn off the lights. Really and seriously," Erik said dryly. She glared at him.

"Aren't you shocked about this?"

"Of course I am, but I'm not in denial about it!"

She just rolled her eyes and went to the door, shaking it and shouting through it, "Is anyone there? We're locked in!"

After trying this for a few minutes, she turned around and sank to the floor, arms around her knees and looking at the floor. Noticing her distress, Erik walked over.

"Everyone will come back in the morning, it'll be fine. We'll get out..."

"I know, I'm just…" she trailed off, shaking her head. "Why? I mean, we were obviously in here, the door was wide open and we were talking. It wasn't a mistake."

"Maybe it was someone's idea of a joke."

"Yeah, that's got to be it," Emmy sighed. "Lame joke."

Erik nodded in agreement and sat down next to her. "At least we aren't going to be hungry while we find a way to occupy ourselves for twelve hours," he joked in an attempt to make her feel better. It seemed to work since she smiled a little.

"That's true…"

"So what do people of 2004 do to pass time?" Erik inquired. She chuckled.

"Really lame games. This one is actually like the beginning of a popular middle school game…"

"What game is that?"

"7 minutes in heaven."

/

Christine had been patiently listening for ten or so minutes to Meg's suggestions as to why Gerry might want to stay in Erik's body and politely telling her why those reasons weren't valid. At last, she came up with a slightly reasonable idea—well, half of it was.

"What if he wants a fresh start because he is tired of the superficiality of his own culture and finds you to be different than women he has met before, someone with depth?"

"You mean him, falling in love with me? Ridiculous."

"Why not?" Meg shrugged, optimistic as usual. "The Vicomte fell in love with you."

"Yes, only because he knew me from when we were children. Otherwise, he wouldn't have even looked twice at me," Christine sighed. "Actually, he didn't even recognize me until I replaced Carlotta in Hannibal, remember?"

Meg bit her lip. "You really think so?"

The brunette nodded. Thinking a moment about whether what she was about to say was a selfish thing or being a good friend, Meg decided to go ahead and spit it out.

"Are you sure you want to be with someone like that then?"

"What are you saying?" Christine said, eyes a little wide at the suggestion. "That he only cares because I became famous? I only stood out when I was famous. I'm sure it was like you told me when he passed by, he just didn't see me…"

"Maybe…but I would notice my childhood friend more quickly if I was in a close proximity to them rather than if I saw them from a distance on stage."

Christine looked away, thinking quickly for a comeback. "But it was my voice he must have recognized, since we had both grown so much since we were children…"

"Voices change over time too," Meg replied quietly.

Having no more statements to challenge Meg's suggestions, Christine stood. "I had better get back to Gerry then, make sure he isn't fighting Nadir or something. I'll see you soon. Perhaps tomorrow."

"Alright. I'll most likely be here again."

Christine smiled and made her way back where she had came from as sneakily as before (though she saw no one this time). By the time she got about halfway there, she could hear echoed shouts and a few slams and thuds. She immediately rushed in the direction of the noise as fast as she could.

When she arrived on the upstairs balcony across from Madame Giry's office, she found her and Nadir watching in shock as Gerry dodged jabs from a sword, wielded by an enraged Raoul.

"Monsieur le Vicomte, please, you don't know what you're doing!" Nadir said, grabbing his arm and trying to hold him back, but he was pushed away.

"I know exactly what I'm doing!" snapped Chagny, still frustratedly trying to slash into Gerry as he shouted, "I'm trying…! To..! Kill an insane…! Murdering…! Monster who kidnapped my…! Fiancée!"

Christine kept a very safe distance away from the swinging blade and made sure she was out of Raoul's direct gaze, so he would have to turn around when she made herself known.

"Stop it!"

As expected, he spun around in shock to hear her voice, but only for a brief moment before he went back to his attack. His distraction had still given him a disadvantage, as Gerry had fled down the stairs and the Vicomte chased after him, followed by the others.

"Nadir is right, you don't know what you're doing!" she insisted pleadingly, finally deciding she had to tell him sometime or another. "It's not him!"

"What are you talking about, it's not him, no one else in the world looks like this!" Chagny huffed, now almost running around in circles trying to catch up to Gerry.

"Seriously! I'm not him!" Gerry panted when he had evaded a slash by dodging behind a statue. Raoul only paused for a moment at the strange accent before continuing.

"This is one of your most pathetic tricks! Tricking her into thinking you're someone else just by changing your voice? Ha!"

Christine sighed and called out, "Raoul! Don't you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"In the lair, how he was acting?"

"Yes, so? He's insane! Insane people act strangely!" he barked, now very out of breath from chasing Gerry around the lobby. When he stopped for a moment, he realized that it was odd that he was just chasing the man with a sword instead of actually combating him, since the villain he knew had always been prepared for a fight. It was also odd that the masked man hadn't simply disappeared through a trapdoor or made some other illusion to escape. In fact, he was just standing a safe distance away from him with his hands held out in front of him defensively.

"None of us can explain it to you when you're busy trying to kill me!" Gerry said exasperatedly.

Narrowing his eyes with his sword still pointed at his opponent, Chagny glanced at the others.

"Fine! Someone explain this to me!"

Everyone was silent for a moment.

"He won't believe it," Madame Giry said with a roll of her eyes.

"Probably not," agreed Gerry. Christine slowly approached Raoul until she was right beside him, looking at him sincerely.

"Something unexplainable has happened and all we know that this is not Erik-"

"Erik? So the creature has a name?"

Christine sighed, not bothering to argue with him about the 'creature' statement. "Yes. If you kill this man, you won't have succeeded in anything aside from murdering an innocent person. This man is NOT a murderer, he did NOT kidnap me, he's not even in love with me—"

"I saw him do all of those things with my own eyes!" Raoul insisted, afraid that either everyone around him had gone mad or worse, it was himself who was insane.

"Yes, so did we, but that was Erik. Now it is someone else in his body, and Erik is now in his body, somewhere else."

All the others nodded, affirming this. Raoul looked at them all in disbelief, deciding that they were definitely the insane ones.

"Are you serious?"

"I told you he wouldn't believe it," Madame Giry said.

Gerry glanced around on the floor, shifting back ever so slightly when he spotted what he was looking for. Noticing this, Christine quickly rushed beside him. She smiled apologetically at Raoul, who was now even more in shock.

"Raoul, I'm really sorry about this."

With that, Gerry stamped hard on the almost invisible release to the trapdoor, and they disappeared down below, with the door closing shut before Raoul could jump in after them. When they realized they were in the torture chamber, Christine looked around at the rapidly spinning mirrors, overwhelmed.

"Where are we?"

Gerry groaned. "Damn…didn't think about that.."