Madame Giry watched her daughter with growing concern. Tonight they sat in the drawing room, a rare evening off for the two. It was dim and rainy, and Meg watched the splatter on the window by her side as if mesmerized. Her needlework on her toe shoe lay forgotten in her lap.
Her mother was unused to seeing her daughter in such a pensive and lethargic mood.
Madame Giry knew, of course, the pressure Meg was under lately. The past three weeks she'd attended countless meetings at that cursed pub, hobnobbing with who knows what sort of rough laborers and sailors. Giry had accompanied her twice when she had the time, and while she sensed this Verron man was a learned and sincere fellow, the ballet mistress was far more concerned about keeping Meg away from the cruder sorts who seemed to come only for the free food.
Yet Meg never had eyes for any of them. Her attention was riveted to Verron on the stage, her hands fidgeting nervously at her sides as the man spoke.
Besides, the King of B – was proving a far more irksome and frustrating intrusion than any drunk barfly at a political meeting.
That must be what was troubling Meg now.
Trying to sound nonchalant as she shuffled the newspaper in her hands, Madame Giry asked, "Anymore visits from our royal friend today?"
"No," Meg replied in a listless voice. Giry did not miss the hostile look of poison in her daughter's eyes.
Meg's mood darkened at the mention of the king. She had learned more of him from Monsieur Verron, and her soul sickened at the very thought of the wretched old ruler. Before she'd been annoyed and distressed by his bothersome presence, but like most everyone who met him, she'd dismissed him as an overbearing but overall comical figure: harmless, idiotic.
But now….
Now she knew his indolent excesses led him to expand his country's influence to Africa, enslaving the tribes of C - and exploiting them in factories and plantations. Countless brutal executions and mutilations were committed on the natives in the king's name, his foremen carrying out a holocaust that was rarely spoken of outside the African continent. The king was clever enough, in the end, to bribe certain critics and politicians from advertising the truth. The ill-gotten fruits from this slave labor was how he financed his unofficial exile in style and comfort.
Were it not for a few missionaries bending the rules, and a handful of radical spies, Verron claimed even he and his associates would have little idea what was happening in the supposed free state of C –.
And if the full information was made public, would anyone here in Paris even really care? Once upon a time, Meg was sure the answer would be yes. She did not know anymore.
To think she once considered the Phantom of the Opera a monster. Now she was unwillingly courted by a true one.
She shivered and clutched her lace shawl close around her shoulders. She deliberately thrust the idiotic cruel face of the king from her mind, yet when she did so, another disturbing face arose in his place: Verron's. She saw him and the few laborers he was able to reach staring at him with hungry, hopeless eyes.
She also saw Erik, dismissive yet always there, by her side.
How to reconcile it all?
She at last addressed her mother. "Father was very political, wasn't he?"
Madame Giry blinked, always momentarily discomfited whenever Julien was mentioned. "Yes," she said without thinking. She frowned. "Why?"
Meg looked so pale, wan almost, but her eyes were blazing strongly. She leaned forward, her look penetrating. "You once told me he abandoned his old life not just for love, but because he thought it was the right thing to do."
Madame Giry didn't know why, but she was becoming strangely uncomfortable. "Meg, what's this all about?"
"Would you call him a radical?"
Giry swallowed.
She could lie.
She sensed unconsciously what telling the truth might do to Meg.
But….
Those pale eyes, unlike Julien's in color, but so much like his in their honesty, candidness, courage….
"Yes," she whispered.
And the mother secretly despaired as her daughter's lips tightened, her expression conflicted yet resolved at the same time.
The next day Meg strolled slowly down the catacombs of the opera house. Her face held the same grave, inscrutable expression as the night before.
She felt lost.
Every week she listened to him speak, and she heard others share their tales: mothers struggling to put food in their children's mouths, a construction worker disabled on the job and so dismissed, and victims of racial hate.
Every week she repeated it all like a parrot to the secret police.
The secret police: her friends.
The secret police: the men determined to bring down he devoted to helping the disenfranchised.
She shivered again.
She reached the lake. She stared into the black waters and did not recognize the miserable young woman staring back at her.
"Looking for something?"
She closed her eyes and for the first time in weeks smiled, though it was small and weak.
She turned around and Erik was there, taking her in with a sharp look of concern not dissimilar to the one her mother gave her the night before.
"Hello," she said simply.
She'd told herself she came down here to be alone, to think; but she knew now that all along she'd intended to see him.
He stood, as always, in the elegant posture of a trained ballroom dancer, his long cape wrapped around him like a bullfighter coiled and ready to strike. He wore his white half-mask.
She wished she could more clearly see his eyes in the darkness.
"Hello yourself," he answered. "You're troubled. Why?"
His words were direct, clipped: otherwise, she'd hear the worry in his voice. He was unsettled seeing his forthright, spirited little Meg brought down by some burden within.
His little Meg. When had he started thinking of her that way?
She inhaled deeply, considering her answer. She could tell he knew deep down what was tormenting her, that he sensed it each time he accompanied her to meetings, listened to her reveal all the next day to the police.
Yet she could not find the words to frame this coherently.
Instead, in a whisper-thin voice, she said, "I'm caught between doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, and the right think at the expense of…of…well, common sense, really."
Erik would always die a little inside at the sight of that slight head-tilt of hers.
He cleared his throat.
"Mam'selle, I know what you are referring to. I cannot endorse you doing said right thing, for you are correct: not only does common sense dictate otherwise, but you would be putting yourself in danger."
She eyed him closely. "Is that really so important?"
She gasped as his cold strong hands were suddenly digging into her arms. "Yes, damn you. Your safety is more important than anything."
She could very clearly see his eyes now: they were wide, wild, despairing. Obsessed. They gleamed searing blue and mournful brown in the twilight glow of the lake.
They both breathed heavily for several seconds.
Erik's throat was dry.
Had he…had he confessed everything to her in that one rash burst of passion?
Her eyes were full of soft wonder, but he couldn't tell if she understood….
At last she blinked. She cast her gaze down and away from him. She murmured, "I should go."
He stopped breathing for a moment. Then he gently released her.
He could say no more. Neither could she.
She turned from him and with the same slow steps as before, headed back to the surface.
His words stayed with her the rest of the night.
As she combed her hair for bed, she stared and stared at herself in the mirror.
She wouldn't presume…wouldn't dream…that he meant…that he meant that.
Surely he didn't.
Would it be so terrible if he did? Would it be so very unwelcome?
She swallowed and dropped her brush, hurrying to her bed. She wouldn't let herself finish that particular train of thought.
Meg Giry was never the type of girl to dwell on such absurd flights of fancy. Opera ghosts and the like, certainly, but romantic intrigues involving herself? No.
Yet as she blew out her candle and lay down to sleep, she stared into the darkness and thought.
Erik did not want her to help Verron. He wanted her safe.
The idea warmed the very core of her.
And yet, the nagging realization –
Erik cared about her for who she was – whether romantically (certainly not, certainly not, banish the thought) or platonically.
Cared about her. For who she was.
And just who was she?
There was not only Erik to consider: why did Christine love her, Cecile, Justine, Adele? Raoul?
Her mother?
Her mother –
Her mother once said Meg was much like Jules Giry, her father.
No, Julien Girard. The deserting ambassador.
The radical.
The hero.
Meg turned over.
If she was to stay true to herself, to the person the people in her life loved – if she was to stay true to her father's legacy – what other choice did she have?
The resolve from the night before returned to her. It steeled her for the morning.
Hermes Verron's office was a dingy little room in the mostly abandoned building where his party published their weekly periodical. He was sealing a series of letters when a soft knock on his door roused him.
He looked up and was pleasantly surprised to see Meg Giry standing there.
He stood with a smile on his face, ready to greet her, when her look stopped him.
The girl was deathly pale, her face empty of emotion save for the wildfire in her large eyes.
"My dear, sit down! You've had some sort of trouble?"
He solicitously took one of her little hands, leading her to the wicker chair in front of his small desk.
Yet she did not sit. She never took those staring, disconcerting eyes from him.
She waited a moment before speaking. An odd nervous clicking sound came deep from her throat before she spoke. "No trouble for me, monsieur. But you, you are about to be in a great deal of trouble. You must let me speak."
He studied her closely, quietly. Then he nodded his consent.
Meg felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing, but the friendly man before her. She had been plagued during her ride here with doubts, nightmares, images of the secret police, and of her mother. Of Erik.
Of the disappointment and terror she might reign down on them all.
Now, now, in this inelegant little room in the poorest part of Paris, looking into the fatherly fat face of Hermes Verron, Meg felt no doubt.
In a clear strong voice she said, "Monsieur, I have a confession to make to you. I have been spying on you for the French government. They know all that you have said at your recent meetings. But I am stopping all that here, this instant. Please. I want to help. Let me help."
She stood as prim and honest as a minister.
And Hermes Verron sat down heavily, all air seeming to suck right out of him.