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charleygirlTitle: Beyond the Green Baize Door 11/?
Author: charleygirl
Word Count: 2536
Rating: PG
Genre: General, Drama
Characters Involved: Christine Daae, Madame Giry, Erik the Phantom
Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is the creation of Gaston Leroux but probably these days copyright to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Summary: How the ballet mistress met the Opera Ghost.
Author's Notes: In the musical we're not told how Erik and Madame Giry came to meet. This is my version.
THE DARK ANGEL
It was some time before Christine calmed down. Madame Giry sat her on the little sofa in the corner of the dressing room and handed her a handkerchief; taking a seat beside her she waited patiently for the soprano to compose herself. Across from them, the full-length mirror did nothing more than display their reflections without so much as a ripple in the glass. Erik had not remained for even a moment.
“Who is he, Madame Giry?” Christine cried at last. “Who is my Angel?”
“I am not sure it is my place to say, my dear,” the ballet mistress replied uncomfortably.
“But you obviously know him, you deliver his letters! Please, Madame Giry!” Christine caught hold of one of her hands and held it tightly. Her brown eyes were wide and imploring. “Everything has changed and I don’t understand - ”
“Very well, very well.” Antoinette patted her pupil’s fingers and sighed. “But you must realise that I made a promise years ago never to reveal his secrets. He will not be pleased that I have told you.” He would be angry, very angry, but she had warned him what would happen. Sooner or later such a web of lies would begin to unravel, and here was the first loose thread.
“Where did he come from? How long has he lived down there in the darkness?” asked Christine. She was still trembling, and Madame Giry rose to retrieve a shawl from the armoire. The poor girl was still wearing little more than her lacy white dressing gown, and when the shawl was wrapped around her shoulders she clung to it as though to a lifeline.
“To the former, I do not rightly know. He is a magician and an architect as well as a gifted composer; I believe he had some hand in the construction of the Opera, though he has never revealed how large a role he played. Your Angel is a genius, Christine,” Antoinette told her, “He would have gone far had the world treated him with kindness.”
Christine looked at the floor, her fingers plucking at the plaited fringe of the shawl. At some stage during her underground journey she had lost one of her slippers, and her stockings were streaked with mud. “His face...” she whispered.
“You have seen it?” Madame Giry asked, astonished. It was no wonder Erik had left in such a hurry if that which he feared most had occurred. She knew that he would never have revealed his deformity to Christine; if she had found out by some other means then he must be devastated.
The little soprano nodded miserably. “I only wanted to know who he was. I thought my Angel would be so beautiful...”
“Beauty is more than that which we see,” Antoinette said sharply. “Erik has suffered because too many believe differently, because they judge by appearance alone.”
“Erik... you called him that earlier.”
“Of course. It is his name, the only one he has now. He was not always your Angel of Music, my dear.”
“I don’t think he will want to be my Angel any longer,” Christine said, her voice shaking with the threat of more tears. “Not after what I’ve done.”
Madame Giry sat down beside her once more and took her hands. “I doubt that. You mean more to him than you realise. But you must be patient, Christine. Erik is not a man who trusts easily.”
The unhappy girl pulled away, bending her head so that her face was hidden by her untidy curls. There were cobwebs caught in them; Antoinette wondered what Erik had been thinking when he dragged Christine through the tunnels to return her to the world above. When she spoke, Christine’s voice was muffled. “Then he will never trust me again.”
“Oh, my dear.” Madame Giry squeezed her shoulder.
Christine glanced at her from behind her hair. “He trusts you, Madame. Why is that?”
________________________________________
Antoinette bit back the scream that welled in her throat as the dirty, laughing faces pushed their way into hers, their owners’ rank, wine-soaked breath stinging her nostrils. One of them pawed at the pocket of her coat, finding her purse, while the hands of another roamed to places she would willingly have harmed him for touching had she been able. She thought of Meg, her little Meg, left alone in their lodgings while she ran out to fetch the bag she had left in her office. It should have been a trip of a few minutes, but it had become a nightmare. She prayed silently that these men would not make her daughter an orphan.
“Just take the money and go,” she told the roughs who surrounded her. “I have nothing more!” A strange surge of pride flooded through her when her voice barely trembled.
“Oh, I think we’ll take the cash and anything else we fancy.” The ringleader, a repulsive little individual with greasy black hair and stained teeth, grinned. “What d’you think, lads? I say we have a little fun!” His hand found its way up her thigh, and Antoinette inwardly cringed. She steeled herself for what was to come...
...and was quite suddenly aware that there was another presence in the alley, one which had appeared silently and unnoticed by any of them until that moment. A dark figure, barely more than a shadow shrouded in a thick cloak and a hat whose wide brim was tilted over his face, loomed up from the mist.
“I say you leave this woman be and crawl back under whatever filthy stone from whence you came before I decide to take matters into my own hands,” a voice, low and melodious and as sharp as a rapier, hissed, improbably sounding as though it were near Madame Giry’s own ears even though its owner stood six feet away.
Slowly, the two thugs standing behind the man who had first attacked her turned to face the newcomer. One of them smiled. “What we got ‘ere, then? Don’t look like no gendarme to me,” he declared.
His companion nodded, and with an unspoken agreement they began to advance on the shadow. Before they reached him the moon took the opportunity to emerge from behind one of the lowering clouds, stopping the men in their tracks. One of them stared, mouth open, while the other exclaimed,
“For the love of God, look at ‘is face! What the hell is that?”
Antoinette looked as well, and was startled to see that the stranger seemed to have no face to speak of: one half lay in deep shadow while the other gleamed white in the moonlight as though made entirely of bone. The man chuckled, a sound which made a shiver race down her spine. “I advise you, messieurs, it would be a mistake to take me on. Leave now while you still have the chance and while you still have breath in your lungs.”
There was confusion as the two thugs looked at each other and then at the repellent creature who still held Antoinette. He glanced over his shoulder at the stranger, who stood quite still with the mist curling about his cloak. “Just get rid of ‘im,” he ordered. “What are yer, a pair of women?”
“But - ” one of them began, only to be interrupted by a sneer.
“It’s two against one – ‘e don’t stand a chance. Get ‘im out of ‘ere and dump ‘im in the river. The body’ll never be found.”
Until low tide, Antoinette thought, but his words seemed to reassure his companions. Once more, they advanced on the stranger and now she could see that they had knives in their hands. She held her breath as the dark man remained perfectly still until they were no more than two feet from him. Then, faster than Antoinette’s eyes could follow, a length of thin cord snaked from his hand and wrapped around the throat of the nearest of them. A blade clattered to the floor; there was a horrible choking sound and an even more dreadful snap, and the stranger pushed away the limp form of one attacker and turned his attention to the other.
The man, terrified by the fate of his companion, tried to run, but the dark figure was too quick for him. In mere seconds, he had been dispatched in the same practised manner. Antoinette stared, in equal parts disgusted and astonished by what she had just witnessed. Her rescuer stepped over the bodies of the two roughs and approached the last, who still stood with his body pressed up against hers, pinning her to the wall in a revoltingly intimate position. There was no mistaking his intention, and it seemed he still intended to follow it through despite the deaths of his friends.
“I suggest you release the lady, monsieur.” The stranger’s voice was as smooth as silk, though it had a dangerous edge. “Immediately, unless you wish to share the fate of your associates.”
“I don’t think that’ll be ‘appening,” the thug said, letting go of Antoinette to reach inside his tattered jacket. “And d’you know why? ‘Cause I ain’t as stupid as them!” He whirled around, taking the stranger by surprise, and struck out. There was the dull crack of bone hitting bone and a grunt from the man who had been hit; the next moment there was another sound, impossibly like that of china shattering upon the floor.
A roar of fury came from the stranger and he straightened, drawing himself to an impressive full height from which he loomed over Antoinette’s attacker. He reached out with long, thin fingers and grasped the man by the collar, pulling him close. As the moon appeared once more, the thug looked full into the stranger’s face and froze. “God in Heaven,” the man whispered.
“Oh, no, monsieur. God deserted me years ago,” the stranger said softly. “It seems He has done the same for you.”
“What... what are you?”
Antoinette caught the flash of teeth in the dim light and realised the stranger was smiling. “For you, the Angel of Death,” he replied, and moved his fingers to the man’s throat. The thug gurgled, eyes wide and bulging. “I do dislike killing with the bare hands. So very messy.”
The man’s arms flailed as his air supply was gradually cut off – the light flashed from the blade of a knife he had concealed in one hand and Antoinette cried out a warning but it was too late. With a shout of pain, her rescuer crumpled, releasing the last rough, who took to his heels without looking back. For several seconds she stood as though frozen before reason returned and she hurried to his side, trying to ignore the cooling bodies of the more unfortunate of her attackers.
“Where are you hurt?” she asked, fingers searching instinctively through his layers of clothing. He tried to bat her hands away but he was already weakening; he sagged to his knees and Antoinette found herself struggling to keep him from sliding onto the dirty floor of the alley. His hat had fallen in the scuffle and she could see his face at last, or at least his profile: gaunt but distinguished, with deep-set eyes and a prominent nose... and then he turned, and she was immediately transported back several years to a fairground outside Paris and to a darkened tent proclaiming Miracles of Nature and Human Oddities, to a cage in which a man stood playing the most beautiful music on a violin, a man with the face of a rotting corpse...
Her hand flew to her mouth and she must have gasped for her rescuer lifted his head despite the pain and obviously encroaching unconsciousness. His eyes, one blue, one dark met hers and a distressed howl escaped his lips as he recognised the horror there. He instinctively covered the disfigured side of his face with his bloodied fingers but he was not fast enough; she had seen. “My mask,” he whispered, fumbling around on the filthy floor with his other hand while Antoinette tried to support him. “Where is it? Where is it?”
She recalled the sound of breaking china, and beyond him could make out the gleam of something white amongst the mud and straw. “I think it is broken.” He tried to pull away from her but she held on tight. “Please, let me help you! Let me get you to a doctor - ”
He shook his head violently. “No. No doctors. It is only a scrape along the ribs.”
“It looks worse than that to me, monsieur. If nothing else, let me help you home. Where do you live?”
“Live?” He blinked at her in confusion, the blood loss beginning to take its effect upon his senses.
“Yes. Where is your home? Is it far away?”
Antoinette stared in amazement when he lifted his hand once more and pointed shakily to the Rue Scribe entrance to the Opera Populaire. No, not to the entrance, the gate in the wall beside it...
________________________________________
“He allowed me to help him down to his house in the fifth cellar,” Antoinette said. “Of course, it was not quite as comfortable as it is now, but I managed to stop the bleeding and patch him up. Thankfully he was right and that horrible man had missed all his vital organs, but he was weak enough to need my assistance. Of course, he did not want to allow another into his sanctuary, but I convinced him eventually that he could trust me.”
Christine sat wide-eyed through the ballet mistress’s recitation, clutching a cup of the tea Madame Giry had made when it seemed that her story would be a long one in the telling. She made no mention of the men Erik had killed that night; though he had been defending himself and her, it would not help Christine now to know that her Angel was a man capable of murder. As far as Antoinette knew, he had not killed again in the years that had followed, despite the dire threats which sometimes rang through the theatre. The blood on his hands had long since dried.
“Once he was well enough to look after himself, I heard no more from him for several weeks. And then, when I returned to my office one evening after a very long practise session, there he was. The door was locked, and it seemed as if he had appeared by magic. Later I learned of his secret passages, but at that moment it appeared to be almost miraculous. It was then that he asked me to be his messenger, a go-between for him with the manager. He offered terms which were beneficial to us both, and so I accepted.”
“It is all so incredible,” murmured Christine.
Madame Giry took the teacup, its contents now stone cold, and placed it on the tray with the others. “You will soon learn, Christine, that Erik is probably quite the most incredible man who ever lived,” she said, adding silently, but that is not necessarily a good thing to be, especially when you would give your all just to be normal...
Author: charleygirl
Word Count: 2536
Rating: PG
Genre: General, Drama
Characters Involved: Christine Daae, Madame Giry, Erik the Phantom
Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is the creation of Gaston Leroux but probably these days copyright to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Summary: How the ballet mistress met the Opera Ghost.
Author's Notes: In the musical we're not told how Erik and Madame Giry came to meet. This is my version.
THE DARK ANGEL
It was some time before Christine calmed down. Madame Giry sat her on the little sofa in the corner of the dressing room and handed her a handkerchief; taking a seat beside her she waited patiently for the soprano to compose herself. Across from them, the full-length mirror did nothing more than display their reflections without so much as a ripple in the glass. Erik had not remained for even a moment.
“Who is he, Madame Giry?” Christine cried at last. “Who is my Angel?”
“I am not sure it is my place to say, my dear,” the ballet mistress replied uncomfortably.
“But you obviously know him, you deliver his letters! Please, Madame Giry!” Christine caught hold of one of her hands and held it tightly. Her brown eyes were wide and imploring. “Everything has changed and I don’t understand - ”
“Very well, very well.” Antoinette patted her pupil’s fingers and sighed. “But you must realise that I made a promise years ago never to reveal his secrets. He will not be pleased that I have told you.” He would be angry, very angry, but she had warned him what would happen. Sooner or later such a web of lies would begin to unravel, and here was the first loose thread.
“Where did he come from? How long has he lived down there in the darkness?” asked Christine. She was still trembling, and Madame Giry rose to retrieve a shawl from the armoire. The poor girl was still wearing little more than her lacy white dressing gown, and when the shawl was wrapped around her shoulders she clung to it as though to a lifeline.
“To the former, I do not rightly know. He is a magician and an architect as well as a gifted composer; I believe he had some hand in the construction of the Opera, though he has never revealed how large a role he played. Your Angel is a genius, Christine,” Antoinette told her, “He would have gone far had the world treated him with kindness.”
Christine looked at the floor, her fingers plucking at the plaited fringe of the shawl. At some stage during her underground journey she had lost one of her slippers, and her stockings were streaked with mud. “His face...” she whispered.
“You have seen it?” Madame Giry asked, astonished. It was no wonder Erik had left in such a hurry if that which he feared most had occurred. She knew that he would never have revealed his deformity to Christine; if she had found out by some other means then he must be devastated.
The little soprano nodded miserably. “I only wanted to know who he was. I thought my Angel would be so beautiful...”
“Beauty is more than that which we see,” Antoinette said sharply. “Erik has suffered because too many believe differently, because they judge by appearance alone.”
“Erik... you called him that earlier.”
“Of course. It is his name, the only one he has now. He was not always your Angel of Music, my dear.”
“I don’t think he will want to be my Angel any longer,” Christine said, her voice shaking with the threat of more tears. “Not after what I’ve done.”
Madame Giry sat down beside her once more and took her hands. “I doubt that. You mean more to him than you realise. But you must be patient, Christine. Erik is not a man who trusts easily.”
The unhappy girl pulled away, bending her head so that her face was hidden by her untidy curls. There were cobwebs caught in them; Antoinette wondered what Erik had been thinking when he dragged Christine through the tunnels to return her to the world above. When she spoke, Christine’s voice was muffled. “Then he will never trust me again.”
“Oh, my dear.” Madame Giry squeezed her shoulder.
Christine glanced at her from behind her hair. “He trusts you, Madame. Why is that?”
________________________________________
Antoinette bit back the scream that welled in her throat as the dirty, laughing faces pushed their way into hers, their owners’ rank, wine-soaked breath stinging her nostrils. One of them pawed at the pocket of her coat, finding her purse, while the hands of another roamed to places she would willingly have harmed him for touching had she been able. She thought of Meg, her little Meg, left alone in their lodgings while she ran out to fetch the bag she had left in her office. It should have been a trip of a few minutes, but it had become a nightmare. She prayed silently that these men would not make her daughter an orphan.
“Just take the money and go,” she told the roughs who surrounded her. “I have nothing more!” A strange surge of pride flooded through her when her voice barely trembled.
“Oh, I think we’ll take the cash and anything else we fancy.” The ringleader, a repulsive little individual with greasy black hair and stained teeth, grinned. “What d’you think, lads? I say we have a little fun!” His hand found its way up her thigh, and Antoinette inwardly cringed. She steeled herself for what was to come...
...and was quite suddenly aware that there was another presence in the alley, one which had appeared silently and unnoticed by any of them until that moment. A dark figure, barely more than a shadow shrouded in a thick cloak and a hat whose wide brim was tilted over his face, loomed up from the mist.
“I say you leave this woman be and crawl back under whatever filthy stone from whence you came before I decide to take matters into my own hands,” a voice, low and melodious and as sharp as a rapier, hissed, improbably sounding as though it were near Madame Giry’s own ears even though its owner stood six feet away.
Slowly, the two thugs standing behind the man who had first attacked her turned to face the newcomer. One of them smiled. “What we got ‘ere, then? Don’t look like no gendarme to me,” he declared.
His companion nodded, and with an unspoken agreement they began to advance on the shadow. Before they reached him the moon took the opportunity to emerge from behind one of the lowering clouds, stopping the men in their tracks. One of them stared, mouth open, while the other exclaimed,
“For the love of God, look at ‘is face! What the hell is that?”
Antoinette looked as well, and was startled to see that the stranger seemed to have no face to speak of: one half lay in deep shadow while the other gleamed white in the moonlight as though made entirely of bone. The man chuckled, a sound which made a shiver race down her spine. “I advise you, messieurs, it would be a mistake to take me on. Leave now while you still have the chance and while you still have breath in your lungs.”
There was confusion as the two thugs looked at each other and then at the repellent creature who still held Antoinette. He glanced over his shoulder at the stranger, who stood quite still with the mist curling about his cloak. “Just get rid of ‘im,” he ordered. “What are yer, a pair of women?”
“But - ” one of them began, only to be interrupted by a sneer.
“It’s two against one – ‘e don’t stand a chance. Get ‘im out of ‘ere and dump ‘im in the river. The body’ll never be found.”
Until low tide, Antoinette thought, but his words seemed to reassure his companions. Once more, they advanced on the stranger and now she could see that they had knives in their hands. She held her breath as the dark man remained perfectly still until they were no more than two feet from him. Then, faster than Antoinette’s eyes could follow, a length of thin cord snaked from his hand and wrapped around the throat of the nearest of them. A blade clattered to the floor; there was a horrible choking sound and an even more dreadful snap, and the stranger pushed away the limp form of one attacker and turned his attention to the other.
The man, terrified by the fate of his companion, tried to run, but the dark figure was too quick for him. In mere seconds, he had been dispatched in the same practised manner. Antoinette stared, in equal parts disgusted and astonished by what she had just witnessed. Her rescuer stepped over the bodies of the two roughs and approached the last, who still stood with his body pressed up against hers, pinning her to the wall in a revoltingly intimate position. There was no mistaking his intention, and it seemed he still intended to follow it through despite the deaths of his friends.
“I suggest you release the lady, monsieur.” The stranger’s voice was as smooth as silk, though it had a dangerous edge. “Immediately, unless you wish to share the fate of your associates.”
“I don’t think that’ll be ‘appening,” the thug said, letting go of Antoinette to reach inside his tattered jacket. “And d’you know why? ‘Cause I ain’t as stupid as them!” He whirled around, taking the stranger by surprise, and struck out. There was the dull crack of bone hitting bone and a grunt from the man who had been hit; the next moment there was another sound, impossibly like that of china shattering upon the floor.
A roar of fury came from the stranger and he straightened, drawing himself to an impressive full height from which he loomed over Antoinette’s attacker. He reached out with long, thin fingers and grasped the man by the collar, pulling him close. As the moon appeared once more, the thug looked full into the stranger’s face and froze. “God in Heaven,” the man whispered.
“Oh, no, monsieur. God deserted me years ago,” the stranger said softly. “It seems He has done the same for you.”
“What... what are you?”
Antoinette caught the flash of teeth in the dim light and realised the stranger was smiling. “For you, the Angel of Death,” he replied, and moved his fingers to the man’s throat. The thug gurgled, eyes wide and bulging. “I do dislike killing with the bare hands. So very messy.”
The man’s arms flailed as his air supply was gradually cut off – the light flashed from the blade of a knife he had concealed in one hand and Antoinette cried out a warning but it was too late. With a shout of pain, her rescuer crumpled, releasing the last rough, who took to his heels without looking back. For several seconds she stood as though frozen before reason returned and she hurried to his side, trying to ignore the cooling bodies of the more unfortunate of her attackers.
“Where are you hurt?” she asked, fingers searching instinctively through his layers of clothing. He tried to bat her hands away but he was already weakening; he sagged to his knees and Antoinette found herself struggling to keep him from sliding onto the dirty floor of the alley. His hat had fallen in the scuffle and she could see his face at last, or at least his profile: gaunt but distinguished, with deep-set eyes and a prominent nose... and then he turned, and she was immediately transported back several years to a fairground outside Paris and to a darkened tent proclaiming Miracles of Nature and Human Oddities, to a cage in which a man stood playing the most beautiful music on a violin, a man with the face of a rotting corpse...
Her hand flew to her mouth and she must have gasped for her rescuer lifted his head despite the pain and obviously encroaching unconsciousness. His eyes, one blue, one dark met hers and a distressed howl escaped his lips as he recognised the horror there. He instinctively covered the disfigured side of his face with his bloodied fingers but he was not fast enough; she had seen. “My mask,” he whispered, fumbling around on the filthy floor with his other hand while Antoinette tried to support him. “Where is it? Where is it?”
She recalled the sound of breaking china, and beyond him could make out the gleam of something white amongst the mud and straw. “I think it is broken.” He tried to pull away from her but she held on tight. “Please, let me help you! Let me get you to a doctor - ”
He shook his head violently. “No. No doctors. It is only a scrape along the ribs.”
“It looks worse than that to me, monsieur. If nothing else, let me help you home. Where do you live?”
“Live?” He blinked at her in confusion, the blood loss beginning to take its effect upon his senses.
“Yes. Where is your home? Is it far away?”
Antoinette stared in amazement when he lifted his hand once more and pointed shakily to the Rue Scribe entrance to the Opera Populaire. No, not to the entrance, the gate in the wall beside it...
________________________________________
“He allowed me to help him down to his house in the fifth cellar,” Antoinette said. “Of course, it was not quite as comfortable as it is now, but I managed to stop the bleeding and patch him up. Thankfully he was right and that horrible man had missed all his vital organs, but he was weak enough to need my assistance. Of course, he did not want to allow another into his sanctuary, but I convinced him eventually that he could trust me.”
Christine sat wide-eyed through the ballet mistress’s recitation, clutching a cup of the tea Madame Giry had made when it seemed that her story would be a long one in the telling. She made no mention of the men Erik had killed that night; though he had been defending himself and her, it would not help Christine now to know that her Angel was a man capable of murder. As far as Antoinette knew, he had not killed again in the years that had followed, despite the dire threats which sometimes rang through the theatre. The blood on his hands had long since dried.
“Once he was well enough to look after himself, I heard no more from him for several weeks. And then, when I returned to my office one evening after a very long practise session, there he was. The door was locked, and it seemed as if he had appeared by magic. Later I learned of his secret passages, but at that moment it appeared to be almost miraculous. It was then that he asked me to be his messenger, a go-between for him with the manager. He offered terms which were beneficial to us both, and so I accepted.”
“It is all so incredible,” murmured Christine.
Madame Giry took the teacup, its contents now stone cold, and placed it on the tray with the others. “You will soon learn, Christine, that Erik is probably quite the most incredible man who ever lived,” she said, adding silently, but that is not necessarily a good thing to be, especially when you would give your all just to be normal...
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Date: 2011-11-01 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 06:08 am (UTC)