Authors Notes: Sorry I've been so slow(don't kill me Suzie!), but I really got stuck with this chapter(damn adjectives!) ... Anyhow, here it is, we get a little insight into Evie's past, and the Phantom gets to be angsty again! I hope you like it. ^_^
Please review! :D
~ White Lily, Blue Ribbon ~
The Phantom was dumbstruck.
He said nothing but just stared at her. She didn't notice; she was looking down at her hands, which were busily picking away at the stitching on the sleeve of her dress. Her brow was furrowed in concentration- or frustration.
"I hate music." She muttered.
There was a long silence that followed, while she picked at her sleeve. Then the Phantom found his voice at last.
"- Hate-?" She looked up at him, the determined resentment in her eyes silently confirming his question.
He thought back to the first time he had seen her. He thought about the way her voice had soared almost effortlessly through the aria, a beautiful sound, trying to recall the expression on her face. He knew she hadn't been smiling. The look on her face had actually resembled…irritation?
What the girl had said made perfect sense, and yet, the Phantom just couldn't understand it at all. He simply looked at her with the most perplexed expression on his face. Then he frowned.
"How?" he demanded incredulously. She opened her mouth to say something then closed it, biting her lip and casting her eyes down. He could see tears stand out in her eyes as she recalled a memory, as she saw something that he couldn't.
"How Evie?" he repeated, softer now.
"It's none of your business!" she spat angrily and he fell silent, frowning in confusion and concern as she turned her back on him, moving to her corner and sitting. Her words stung a little and he half turned from her, considering disappearing, but the thought left just as quickly as it had come. He needed to know.
He quietly came to kneel beside her, amongst the blankets and cushions. She didn't protest, but turned her head so he couldn't see her face.
"Why do you hate music Evie?" he whispered gently. She shook her head, hand going to her eyes. Was she crying?
She turned to him, but her eyes were clear as she looked into his own, which were full of suppressed curiosity. She looked down once more, as if trying to remember something.
"I'm sure I must have loved it once," she began softly. "But I can't remember so far back." She looked back up at him uncertainly and he made a tiny gesture for her to continue. She hesitated, then began to speak again.
"Well- My earliest memories of music are of my mother making me sing... It was always the same thing, over and over again... until it had no meaning anymore," her voice gained a bitter edge.
"Until my voice was so hoarse I couldn't even speak... Then she would tell me I couldn't do it. That I'm not good enough."
Tears of anger formed in her eyes now. He understood now, but she hadn't finished yet.
"But she kept making me anyway. Every single day since I was old enough. I needed to reach the level she saw as 'good enough' if it killed me. Sometimes on a Sunday I wouldn't have to practise all day." She added, a little quieter.
"I'd go and play with the stage hand boys. She hated that. She said I was picking up their accent so I wasn't allowed to talk to them anymore. So she trained me to speak properly, as well as sing properly."
Somehow she had begun to totally open up to this mysterious stranger. No one had ever listened to her before, even the maestro who was the kindest to her of all the people she knew. The ballet girls preferred to talk, not listen. The Opera Ghost, however, simply sat in silence, gazing intently at her like she was a puzzle he wanted to solve. Listening.
He smelt of roses, and the pungent aroma made her a little dizzy as she told him everything.
"Sometimes I tried to run away." She said, her eyes blank and her thoughts far away. "But she would always find me." She said, her voice catching. "And-" she broke off, a few tears trickling down her face.
He could see now, as he looked intently at her, discolouration in parts of her skin. Bruises old and new, mainly on her hands, and some on her face. His eyes widened in understanding and shock.
Unwelcome images of his childhood assaulted him now. Of the travelling fair and the freak show. Of the knotted rope. He closed his eyes against them. When he opened them once more, she was looking at him questioningly. A thought came to him.
"Surely your father would have objected." If he had been the girl's father, he wouldn't have let the woman touch her.
She laughed through her drying tears.
"Who knows? He left us before I was even born." her words were dead. Like she had spent her whole life consciously not caring. Not caring, with all her might.
He saw the hurt and anger in her eyes as she spoke. This he understood. Understood far too well. His thoughts reached back to his mother. She hadn't loved him, he had been feared and loathed by her until the day they had parted. It had been the same with the people at the fair, the people that came to see him beaten and humiliated. And had laughed.
Then the Opera. Madame Giry, Christine, the only other family he had ever really known, had feared and hated him.
Christine… He had been so close… That was what hurt the most.
But he had still had his music.
He looked at the girl where she sat, her head cast down. When he had been her age, he had already begun to compose. In the day time he had played on his organ, and at night he roamed the opera house freely, it had been his domain, his playground.
It had been different at night, the air less dense and cloying than in the day, sweeter and fresher, alive somehow with that energy that one only found late at night. He had breathed it in, relished it. The deserted halls and stage had glowed somehow with blue light, once his eyes had adjusted. He had been sure things, creatures, lurked in the shadowy corners, and he had battled them in his mind. That stage had been transformed into so many things; castles, pirate ships, anything he had read of in the story books the young Madame Giry smuggled him.
Always playing on his own.
That was a difference between them. There had been no one to tell him what to do, unlike this child, Evie, who seemed to be her mother's slave. Not allowed to make friends with whom she wanted, forced to sing when she hated it…
She didn't even have music.
Maybe in teaching her he might reinspire the love for music she must have once had. But also by giving this child that gift, the greatest of all in his opinion, he might atone for his past mistakes. He might not be bothered when he dreamt, with images of the burning opera house, the look on Christine's face when Raoul had come to save her, the people screaming for blood…
He shook the thoughts away. No, this he wouldn't do for himself. This he would undertake only for the benefit of the young girl. Besides, he would undoubtedly be a much better tutor than Victoria, and this child could go so far...
He blinked himself back into reality and found that the little girl was staring at his face with a look of muted awe. He realised that as he had been remembering his childhood adventures in the Opera Populaire he had been smiling.
Not the smirks of satisfaction she had seen earlier, but a real, true smile that lit up his face with warmth. Something unfamiliar to her.
He felt slightly embarrassed, having been silent for a long time, but he shook that off and turned to her, looking her dead in the eye, almost business-like. He took her tiny hands in his, large, gloved ones. She jumped at the movement, but didn't shy away, probably out of sheer stubbornness. It was apparent he was about to try to make some sort of deal. When he spoke, however, there was no inflection of a question, he spoke as if his word were final.
"Let me teach you Evie. Let me train and prepare you opening night. When I am finished with you, you will be a greater success than any singer ever was. The heavens themselves will weep when they hear you sing. You will be cast in every leading role for decades in any Theatre in Europe." She looked away, her expression reluctant and she began to open her mouth to say something in protest, but he stopped her. "and, as Opera Ghost, I will ensure that Miss Victoria is aware you no longer require her lessons,"
That threw her.
"What?"
Slowly her eyes widened, and lit up in a way that made the Phantom smile in satisfaction. He said nothing, but the earnest look in his eyes confirmed her question.
"You can do that?" She asked quietly, timidly, her voice breathless with restrained hope. He liked this change in her, from a stubborn defeatist, it made her seem younger somehow. He laughed, easily now.
"My dear, I am rather disappointed in your lack of faith," He didn't sound disappointed, and she was having trouble keeping the smile from her face, "Have you forgotten already all I have done in the few short weeks I have been here? For one, I've persuaded your manager, Moretti to pay me a ridiculous amount of money" he laughed again, this time in bewildered amusement, as if he couldn't understand how a person could be so easily manipulated, "So that he can sleep without fear at night. You think I wont be able to scare your mother just the same?"
She grinned.
"Well I'm not afraid of you." She declared.
'Not yet' the Phantom thought a little sadly, but he smiled back at her.
"Then will you, Evie permit me to teach you to sing?" The offer was final now.
She laughed a little silvery laugh and curtsied mockingly to him.
"I would be honoured, oh famed Opera Ghost." She quipped. Then she looked at him hard. "Provided you keep your end of the bargain, of course."
"Of course," he said, standing, briefly shaking the creases from his cape. It had red satin on the inside, she noted with a smile. "Tomorrow night, after rehearsals, go to box five." He instructed. At his words she grinned.
"And then where to?" she inquired. She knew the secret of the chairs.
"You will see," he replied, smiling enigmatically. "I will take care of the matter of your mother soon enough." He then assured her, and was answered with a beaming smile and another curtsy.
"Until then, Evie," he said, half turning towards the door, then hesitated, looking back at her once more, with an indefinable expression on his face. He added, softly;
"Stay safe."
He disappeared before she could say anything more.
For a few moments she stared at the tunnel entranceway through which he had just left, then went back to her nest and sat down. She began again to pull apart the stitching of her sleeve, deep in thought. She wouldn't be able to hide here much longer. Soon she would have to go back and face her mother once more.
But this time, she didn't care. The Phantom of the Opera was on her side.