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"You're still not telling me everything, Antoinette," said Erik beginning to grow irritated with her avoidance of his question. "It will only make me angrier when I hear it from one of the ballet girls because of those new false details they will add in. You are doing the man no favors. What did he say?"

That certainly wasn't what he'd been expecting to hear, but he hadn't been quite certain what he'd been expecting at all. He turned his head so that she could only see the masked side as he felt his face flush from embarrassment. Perhaps he really should learn not to pry when she made it obvious that she did not want him to. One of these days he might learn, but living the way he was had never really required him to grow up.

He still acted like a child with some of the pranks he pulled, but he could almost instantly turn around and act like the mature man in his early thirties that he was. Sometimes he was the lonely little boy who did naughty things simply because he wanted attention, and other times he felt completely indifferent to the world around him and everyone in it. More and more, though, he was beginning to crave that attention. The world seemed like it was passing him by without so much as a passing glance, and he really was beginning to feel like a ghost.

No one except for Antoinette remembered the "Living Corpse", and in a few decades who would remember the Phantom of the Opera? He wanted to feel like he really existed, and the only way for that to happen seemed to be when he was pulling one of his pranks. The ballet girls would scream out about the Opera Ghost and skitter away, and Antoinette would mutter under her breath "Erik". It was the only time he seemed to exist as a human. Perhaps he would have even forgotten his human name if he didn't have Antoinette there to remind him of it every now and then as she chastised him for some misdeed. She'd used some of the same speeches on his as a child that she used on Meg, and as she was admonishing her daughter he would hide in the shadows and quietly mouth along. No, he'd never really grown up, but everyone around him had.

Growing older meant that there were problems couldn't be solved with just a silly prank or two. There were things that required much more serious consideration, and he was slowly coming to realize this. He couldn't simply ignore what had happened with Christine. Those notes he'd sent would ensure that he was unable to ignore what occurred since he'd set everything into motion, and now Buquet was calling Antoinette a whore as well as accusing her of adultery. He couldn't just laugh all of this off, but he felt so ill-equiped to handle any of it.

He was a genius, but until now the opera house had been his own private world where he made all of the rules. Suddenly the outside world was intruding upon it in every way he could imagine, and it was imposing its rules on him. He didn't know how to respond. "I...I'm sorry for prodding you," he said slowly, turning to face her now that his blush had faded. "It really wasn't my place to push you into telling me, but I would rather hear it from you without all of the embellishments that everyone else would add. Is there anything that I can do?"

"I can always count on you, Antoinette," he whispered before disappearing once more into the darkness. He had many things that he needed to think over, and he seemed to have very little time to make a decision on any of them. He had to deal with Christine and her little fop suitor, the new management, Carlotta and her enevitable return, and now he had Buquet sticking his nose into places it certainly didn't belong.

Pulling the photograph out of a hidden pocket in his cloak, he studied it for a minute. It was almost hard to believe that the woman in the picture and the woman he had just finished talking to were the same person. Mourning the death of her husband had aged her beyond her years, and it had hardened her even farther than that. He found that as he thought about it he missed the woman in the photograph.

That was not to say that she had ever been like the silly little ballet girls that was always giggling and gossiping about things they only half understood. No, even as a child Antoinette had been a no-nonsense kind of girl, so it seemed almost fitting that he had been an incorrigible prankster. He had always been the one to make the normally straight-faced young girl raise her hand to hide a smile as the other girls shrieked in excitement and fear. Later she would always admonish him for his misbehavior, but often times she would be unable to keep from smiling or complimenting him on a particularly clever trick as she left to return to the dormatories. Those days were long gone. Antoinette had changed. That was proof of the life that she had led, but he had not changed at all it seemed. He still played his little pranks, but now they brought fewer and fewer smiles to Antoinette's tired face. The lack of change in him was proof of the life that he had not led. "I'm so tired of this," he mumbled as he put the photograph away and began the treck back to the house beyond the lake. "I'm tired of being the Opera Ghost. I'm tired of watching other people live their lives. I want my own life to live that's not filled with shadows!"


((I think we're on track to continue with the main storyline. All we need is Raoul and Carlotta...I don't know if she has returned yet, but someone may NPC her until the pesron who claimed her come back (hopefully). I'll go give our Raoul a little kick in the pants to let him know he needs to come back in.))

Andre's head turned from that blasted note to the young Viscomte, looking quite angry and displeased; he felt his headache double. Well isn't this another pleasant surprise....deducing that any anger from their honored patron might mean...well, disaster for them. He turned to face their patron wondering where he had been all this time (of course he daren't ask) for he hadn't seen him since his horrid little excursion in from within box five. Andre's face jerked for a second thinking again of the incident, and badgering himself for letting his mind slip so, but he still wondered where the patron had run off to in such a hurry. He had been heading towards the dressing room (which he found out only from asking his honored associate, himself being too much in a drunken stupor to remember), and now he demanded for the inquiry of the little ballerina he wanted to visit, who obviously hadn't been there the night before. Of course he couldn't imagine who wasn't there last ni-

"You mean Carlotta?" Firmin blurted, quite sure that he had thought of something before M.Moncharmin.

M.Moncharmin scowled at his associate in silent chastisement. What stupid thought! He was going to say he couldn't imagine who wasn't there last night besides the silent and shy Christine, who hadn't shown up at the parties at all that night, and (as Moncharmin could almost feel the red ink throbbing beneath his fingertips to remind him of it's presence) was now missing...Of course a new missing diva would upset the patron; it would be bad for business and bad business for them was always a hole in the wallet for their patron. Yet, if the patron had also read the paper to discover Christine's dissapearence why had he run to the opera house, the one place the paper assured she was not.

"Well how should we know?" Andre quipped.

"What's all this nonsense?" cried Firmin, quite confused.

M.Moncharmin looked down at their patron waving his letter angrily as to prove their innocence as both the managers paced towards the wealthy accuser, "Of course not!" How they could blackmail themselves? but this started to worry Andre if the people hiding behind the face of this "O.G" had connections great enough to reach people like their patron, well that certainly wasn't a good sign, and the first sign that he had had at all to signify that this was not only a dangerous threat (indicated by Carlotta's incident) but a seriously large and extensive one (indicated by the horribly confusing incident that was unfolding before them.)

The two managers met the patron on the stairs of the glorified Opera Populaire-oh if only people knew the daily drama unfolding! They might just abandon the tickets they'd just bought to watch the two new managers and their patron sweat! Of course refunds were always a nasty little nightmare for our two managers, so they rather preffered to keep the whole thing underwraps...but speaking of sweating, Moncharmin noticed that the Viscomte De Chagny was looking awfully pale and agitated. Andre felt the young patron had a promising future in business if he felt so much nervousness towards missing a profit but Moncharmin judged the situation wasn't bad enough to be showing such obvious physical exertion...

"We're in the dark!" Firmin said in almost an empathetic tone, noticing as well the patron's disposition.

Moncharmin gave a sideways glance at his associate, he obviously didn't share the view the point.

"Monsieur, don't argue- Isn't this the letter you wrote?" Raoul said in a desprate attempt to find out what was going on. He rished up the stairs and handed Andre the letter. Maybe they had just misunder stood him, or just plain trying to deny their little trick on him.

((*tries to perform cpr on the thread* don't die damnit!!))