A tale for Madame Giry

[mirandafan]

I'm dieing to read some. I'll start us off, if you all keep it going? ;D
This takes place after the Chandlier crash...

The Opera house was without use now. After the fire, it’s foundation was weaker. More dangerous. He watched her move through his court with perfect grace. Something he’d loved about her. Grace, and kindness. She was the only one that ever worried for him. Ever attempted to understand his anger. She was afraid of him now. He could see the difference in her presence. But even that didn’t stop her from offering to find him a new home.
It was long ago, but he’d developed this desire within him, hidden so carefully, years before Christine was even born. He could recall sitting at his organ with her, her head on his shoulder as he’d play his music. She would say he had a great talent. She didn’t know the songs were written for her. She’d had a family then. A young child, a husband.
If he’d shown his desire now, after ignoring her for so long, would she see it for what it was? Or fear it?
She looked at him, her eyes wet with unshed tears. That seemed to never go away.
“We must go now. They’ll be after you. This is the first place they’ll come.”
He truly didn’t care if they came for him.
“Wait,” He took her hand as she started past him, struggling with his things heavy in one clenched fist.
“Erik, no,” She glared at him from over her shoulder, not bothering to fully face him. “We must go, now!”
Madame Giry, always strong at will, and ready to take charge of a situation. He couldn’t help but smile.
“Erik,” She sighed, letting his things rest so she could now face him. She held each of his hands in her own, looking up at him, seeing right through the mask he wore. For it was no use to someone who knew him for what he truly was. “I’m so sorry for bringing you here. For hiding you. It was all I knew to do. I was afraid that they’d hurt you. That they’d lock you up in another cage. And you were so happy for so long. What happened?”
He’d cracked. He’d finally cracked. Erik shook his head at her inquiry, moving his hands so that he pulled her own toward his chest. Her body moved closer as a result.
“What’s become of me isn’t your fault. But you can’t keep protecting me.”
“You can start again,” She insisted, letting herself lean in to him. “People only know you as a Phantom.”
Erik shut his eyes, feeling her head rest against him. He breathed her in. He held her for the moment, and then he pulled away, almost violently.
“And then, where would I stay? What would I do? How would I hide my deformity?”
She touched his mask, and he flinched. She would not pull it from him, not even in their privacy. She knew better. She respected him to much.
“You’ll stay with Meg and me. We will help you get on your feet. Start again.”
For a moment, they stood like this, at the banks within his layer, her face close to his, her hand touching the slick surface of his mask. His hand came to her waist. He felt the fabric of her dress under his rough fingers. Then, she turned away.
“We must go, now,” This was with a gentle forceful tone. And she spoke it with full fury

[Incapability]

I wrote this aaaaages ago. Might even be posted on ff.net, not sure.

-----

„Sold!“

The auctioneer’s shout shot through the dusty air and the dim light of the dilapidated Opera House.
The old woman with her face hidden behind a black veil flinched as though she had received a punch. Not only was her mind being flooded with painful memories since she had set foot inside the Opera, but she had always had a strong aversion for yelling.
The next object, a poster from ‘Hannibal’ , combined these two things in a most macabre way.

She let her mind wander back to a time when the stage had not served as a podium for an overweighed auctioneer, when the red velvet seats had still gleamed in splendour, along with the golden figures and the countless candles.
She remembered the buzzing life both on the stage and behind it. She remembered the divas she had seen during her many years at this place, with their airs and graces, the stage workers who had often got way too close to her ballet girls and suffered the consequences in form of a very displeased ballet mistress. Not many of them had tried twice.

She thought of how she had trained her girls for countless plays, and how often the results had been disappointing. None of the girls had been willing to make sacrifices for success, not one had ever wanted to actually risk bleeding feet. All they had thought about was giggling and having a nice time. Not even her own daughter had been an exception.

With pain she remembered the incidents that had led to the Opera’s downfall. She clearly recalled the terrible feeling of helplessness that had threatened to drown her back then.

As if her thoughts had awakened the demons of the past, she suddenly noticed the old man in the wheeled chair and acknowledged his presence with a slight nod before turning her attention towards the next object to be sold.
Again, she had to fight to maintain her composure, to hide the sadness and despair she had felt as she watched her past being sold to the highest bidder. She had not been here for many years, but when she had heard of the auction, she had felt obliged to come and bid the place a final farewell.

The monkey … words could not say what this monkey had once meant to her. Without thinking she raised her hand to bid for it. She was determined to save at least one part of her past.
But then she met the face of the old man. His eyes were pleading. Against her will, she felt her heart melt with compassion. She quietly shook her head when she was asked to bid again.

The joy in his face as he received the monkey was beyond words. At that moment she realised that together with this monkey, she had given up the Opera and her whole past. Once again, her mind raced back to bleeding feet, to raving applause, to whirls of colours and breathtaking illusions.

Then, it was over.

It was all over. She was no longer a ballerina, nor was she a ballet mistress any more. She had already turned to leave her past for good when she heard the next object being announced, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

She had been wrong. It was not over yet.

Next for sale was the chandelier.

[mirandafan]

Very interesting! Can't believe I haven't found it on Fan fic Thanks. ;D

[mirandafan]

I'm in a Madame Giry kind of mood today This is a small bit in which I try to explain (within my own thought process) why the Phantom says so often that no one has ever cared for him, when it seems to me that Madame Giry cared very much.

Music blaring, echoing, through out the opera house. Their voices intertwined, put perfect together, in tone, and in each note. They sang with passion, approaching one another high above the audience, and the stage. Madame Giry gripped the curtain with a hand, straining to watch. Had she bought this upon them? Was it her actions all those years ago, and all those that followed it, that finally took them truly past the point of no return? For here they were. Standing face to face. He took her then, clutching her body against his as they faced the crowd, so blinded by their lyrics that it looked as though they stood alone.
It was amazing. The amount of fear and the amount of passion. Had the Madame neglected to show the Phantom so much attention, that he had to go to such extravagance? He spoke in his songs as if no one had ever cared for him. She always had, but she never showed it. She never spoke it. She’d assumed he’d known what she thought of him. Instead, she left him feeling empty and alone. Hiding him in the dark, protecting him, had made feel like a shunned monster.
The music took a rest. The audience seemed perched on the edge of their seats. Tension grew. And then Christine tore the mask from the Phantom’s face.

[Tosca]

That, and the others before it, were completely beautiful. *tear*

[mirandafan]

;D this is another Giry story I am working on...it's long. maybe to long anyhoo, I got the idea whilst reading the original book, in which, I think the characters come off a little wierd.

I love the line, "Do you think we've eaten her?" when the where abouts of madame Giry is questioned. makes me laugh.

The Phantom of The Opera- adaptation of Gaston Leroux novel (not my characters, or original story)

Chapter: Is It The Ghost?

The Paris Opera House stood 22,000,000 pounds in the center of France. By now the 1861 architecture had survived fifty years. In it’s basements, flooded trenches created broken islands, dark and dimly lit only by several candles. He stood amongst the atmosphere, always wearing proper opera dressing, shielded inside a black cape, with a bright red lining. This mysterious figure wears a mask. Only half of one, white as a ghosts face, glowing as if it was all that stood amongst a black background. Thus creating the image of a phantom.
“The Phantom of the Opera,” A drunken man slurs, leg propped up on a chair, eyes unevenly scanning the girls huddled before him. “Has no face. His remains are nothing more then a Skelton figure, and melted mask of death.”
“What happened to him?” Meg Giry asks, sitting at the mans feet, amongst the other ballet girls.
He looks down at her, his breath stinking of gin. “The stories speaks of a fire, that consumed this Opera house years ago, before it stood so tall, and so heavy. Before it was even an opera house. He was consumed, trying to rid the place of it’s occupants.”
Madame Giry, standing in the doorway of the dressing room, frowned at the old mans blubbering. “Girls,” She announced in a thick French drawl. “Why are you not ready for rehearsals?”
Several small heads turned toward her, and the young ladies rose to their feet, their dresses brushing one another as the scuttled cross the floor, offering a curtsey as they passed the Madame though the open door and toward the stage. Her eyes traveled across each girl as she passed, resting sternly on her own daughter.
Meg was just a small girl, the youngest in training. The likeness of her mother, she was thin, with long blond hair, that curled at it’s ends, and bright, innocent, blue eyes. She followed the flow of girls toward her mother, Madame Giry, whom stood tall in the doorway, black dress touching her shoes, cane held in one hand, and her hair braided down one side, long enough to hang like an open rope to her hips.
Once Meg was out the door, Madame Giry looked at the man before her. A word to describe him, stuffy. “You should watch your choice of words, Joseph Buquet.”
The man shrugged, peering down the spout of his empty liquor bottle. “They’re stories. No harm done, lover.”
Touching the knob of the dressing room door, she glares at the man before pulling the door shut. The girls stand huddled on the stage. It took a few steps from the dressing rooms to reach the corridor. This led down a narrow hall, to the backstage area, which was open, props and costumes hung and scattered amongst unfinished backdrops.
Madame Giry makes her way through, her steps diligent, as she herself was a well trained dancer once upon a time. Entering, she finds her class watching just beyond the chandelier. Her eyes follow their stare to the Opera Box five. Nothing is visual to sight. She beats her cane against the floor just once, and their attention is once again turned toward her.
“Is it the ghost?” A slight whisper echoes just enough to be caught by her ears.
“It must have been,” He own daughter replies.
Madame orders the girls with slight gestures of her hands, but her attention is often shifted toward the box five. Yes, she can see now, a slight visual movement.
Like Meg, Antoinette Giry had grown up at the Opera House dormitories. She had trained as a ballerina here, she had performed in many productions. A director of one of her programs had fancied her at some point. Monsieur Gaston, a dignified older man in his late twenties, as she was but a young teenage girl at the time. They courted, and after their marriage, she left the Opera house.
It was not long after their only child turned seven that her husband met tragedy, and died. And so here she returned, and became a teacher, bringing her daughter up within the arts she had left behind. It was not all she left behind when she’d left her roots in the middle of Paris France.
Her eyes fluttered quickly back toward her young students when the glare of a white mask appeared in the darkness, piercing down at her from box five. The stage was wide, the girls spread out with room between them as their legs, in thick white stalking, kicked on demand, tiny ballet shoes pointing up ward.
Antoinette felt her breath catch in her chest. It had been a long time since she’d left the Opera behind. And it had not been so long since her return.

“You defend my presence against drunken rants, and yet you do not look in my direction,” His voice was course. The view from box five was clear, close, and flattering to stage scenery. From the edge of the box, he dropped an envelope. It fluttered, the thick red stamp of a skull heavily pressuring it to hit a seat on the floor of the Opera, and then slide protectively into its crease.
Antoinette caught this just at the corner of her eye, and did not turn for a direct viewing. From box five, she appeared smaller then what he remembered her. Up close, she was not as tall as him, but the way she held herself, she towered. He let shadows once again engulf him, no longer interested in the going ons at the stage front.

Rehearsals went on much longer then what it normally seemed to. Perhaps it was the anticipation. Once the girls had retired, Madame Giry took the stage steps, and entered the floor of the building. The seats were in waves before her, the levels climbing like a steep mountain side. She made her way to the row just beneath box five, looking up at the empty seats before searching the row for the lost letter. It took but a short time to spot it, and she immediately snatched it, tearing through it’s thin paper to release the thin writing paper within.

Mme Giry,
It is thrilling to see your return to my humble house of Opera. I am curious to know of your where-about’ these past many years. It will be even more a thrill to speak with you again.
Love,
Erik
The Opera Ghost

A breath again, and she looked around the room before her.
In memory she could perhaps admit that her action of fleeing the Opera house so suddenly was wrong of her. Especially after the sacrifice Erik had made to get where he was, and with all she had done to get him there.
Tucking the letter into a pocket of her skirt, she slowly made her way back on stage, taking her cane from where she left it, against the presence of a chair, and wrapping a black shawl around her shoulders. Another gaze at the open seats, boxes, and isles. No sign of the ghost. She walked the way to the dormitories.