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Many days past. Melissa was rarely at home. At first, I was worried when she kept disappearing at different times during the day, but when I found out what she was doing, I sat back and let love do its thing.
Mat was rehabilitating Melissa to the World of Light. This was where she truly belonged, no matter how much she rebelled against Mat's persistent and consistent attempts at getting her to smile. The Realm of Shadows was no place for a beautiful mermaid princess like her; such darkness would mess up the natural prescence of light within her, causing her to grow demented and heartless, and I was the last the person who wanted to see her turn into such.
One late autumn day, I was sitting on the sand of my grotto in quiet meditation, staring at the water as I thought to myself. 'I wonder what it would be like if I had been kidnapped instead of Melissa,' I thought. 'I'm a sea-witch, even if I'm the good kind, and so darkness is a part of my day-to-day life. The darkness is present but not dominant most of the time, but sometimes it's hard to resist the urge to live to torture the people who have wronged me.
'Lelouch is one of those people who causes my resistance to weaken. He came to me in the disguise of someone whom I had looked up to. He used my feelings of respect and slight affection to his own advantage and left me to pick up the pieces of my broken heart. If he had done that to Melissa...... I don't think she could've beared it.'
Would she have had my reaction if she found that Lelouch had made her forget me by giving her a kiss? What would she have thought if I had been laying beneath his exposed body instead of her? All these questions and more ran through my brain as I sat on the shore. Then, it came to me. I would take Melissa aside and ask her about her experience with the New-Age Angel.
When Melissa came home that day (She and Mat had gone out to a waterfall for a picnic, which was just as well because Mei Li had needed some serious private time to practice "Il Muto".), I did not greet her with my normal hug and kiss on her cheek. I just continued preparing that night's dinner: shrimp cocktails and "mocktail" cosmos. Dinner was passed in relative silence; I questioned Mat about how she had behaved on their outing and told the collective company what my "friend", Mei Li, had done at Jareth's operahouse that day. Melissa sat silently and stirred her cosmo.
After Flet and Jet had cleaned up (It was their turn to do dishes that night.), I came up and put a hand on her shoulder. Her red eyes (They had once been blue.) turned up to look at me. "What is it?" she asked. "Something's up, isn't it? Normally, you're bombarding me with affection and friendship until I wish you would stop already. Why the sudden change?"
"I need to talk with you about something," I told her. I looked toward the kitchen where Mat was talking with the boys and said in a lowered voice, "Preferrably where the guys can't intrude on us."
"What do you suggest?"
"Let's take a bath together. I need one anyway and you need to wash the lake water out of your hair. Besides, we haven't talked in over a month."
Bubbles floated around us as I sank into the tub with a triumphant "Aaaaaaaaaaah!" The water was just the right temperature this time; thank goodness that geothermal heating isn't hard to find when you live near underwater volcanic activity. Melissa seemed hesitant. "Come on in," I beckoned, with my voice and my hand. "The bath is fantastic."
Melissa put her feet over the side of the tub and dipped her hand in the water. She cupped a handful of the soothing stuff and tossed it at me. As I looked away to avoid getting it in my eyes, I heard a splash.
I looked towards the place where Melissa had been, but she was gone. Immediately, I started getting worried; I had lost Melissa once and I didn't want to think about losing her again. A white shape was approaching me in the water, coming closer and closer. I scooted back against the edge of the tub and made to grab my towel when I saw bubbles rising from beneath the white mass.
Melissa resurfaced in a torrent of giggles. "I gotcha!" she said. "Don't scare me like that!" I said, trying to hide my embarrassment at jumping at the slightest reminder of Lelouch.
"Sorry. It's just that you look so funny you're scared. rofl "
"I'm glad to see you still have a sense of humor. You were acting so emo, I thought Lelouch had robbed you of more than your just skin color."
She swam up next to me, sat down in the water, and silently gazed at her tail. (It must've appeared when she had slipped into the bath and thereby allowed her to scare me.) "All joking aside," I said as I put my arm around her, "let's talk."
I started by questioning her about the first time I had seen her and Lelouch together. "Where exactly did he take you, and how did he do it? Did you feel or see anything strange down there?"
"I hardly remember anything," she said. "I was unconscious for most of the journey. The things I do remember were a white horse, sprialing down a staircase as if burying into the earth, and then a boatride across an underground lake. Lelouch, even though I didn't know him at the time, guided me to his underground home, his haven of darkness.
"After the boat ride, we disembarked and he sat me down and knelt before me. He told me that he was neither ghost, nor angel, nor genius, only Lelouch and that he loved me. (In a different time, I would have been excited to hear about this visit. But now, my fingers began to twitch from the anger that began to creep over me. I shoved my hands into the water to hide it.) I petted his head as he wept into my lap, probably from the ecstacy of being in my presence. An A-minor chord resounded in the cavern and I began to sing "Phantom of the Opera" in the hopes that he would stop being sad and join with me in song."
"Did he?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
"Yes. He even danced with me. We twirled around the cave together as if we were floating on air instead of standing on solid stone. As the music rose higher and higher, so did the passion in our harmony, until all broke loose when I reached the last high note. (I could still hear them now. Even I had to admit that they had sounded beautiful together.)
"When the music stopped, so did we. We stared at each other and smiled for a long while. During that time, I thought about how the 8 heartbreaks I've suffered here had left me torn and shattered and how I finally felt at home inside Lelouch's sanctuary of darkness. Yet in the midst of being safe at last, I felt unworthy of him. He was so beautiful, so cultured, so..."
"Unlike the guys who dumped you before he came along?"
"Yeah. (Even though he had shattered my heart, I could not deny that he was an Adonis and a gentleman, when he felt like it.) He sat me down again and the "Phantom's Lair" scene resumed again. He explained how he had brought me to the kingdom of music and how he had needed me with him, to serve him, to sing, all for his music."
'Just like his ancestor,' I thought. 'Lelouch, you have earned your middle name. I swear, you are Erik reincarnated.'
"You can probably guess what happened next right?" She didn't have to say anymore; I began humming a few bars of "Music of the Night" in a teasing voice. I kept on doing it until Melissa dumped water on me and soaked my hair. "Hey!" I shouted. "That's not very nice."
"Neither was the vision that Lelouch showed me when we got into bed for the first time together." What the hell?! "Don't worry, I was still in my white gown and he had his boxers on. He touched his face to mine and showed me a circular room in a far off castle. You and Mat were there and so was a blond man whom I had never seen before." (Hmmm... apparently, Jareth wasn't the only all knowing person in our Phantom story.)
"You mean Jareth," I said. "I guess that's a perfect tie in to a question you were going to ask me. (Jareth had come up a lot in my conversations with Mat and the boys lately. I knew Melissa would have been curious at some point.) "Yeah, I went to his castle one day after a week or two since your disappearance. I was having no success in finding you, so I thought I had better call in some help. He had proposed an offer to let me be his items supplier and I thought that I could oblige as well as ask about you.
"Jareth, being the omnipotent king that he is, guessed the nature of my visit and took me into his study, the circular room that Lelouch showed you. He showed me and Mat a vision of you and Lelouch dancing together."
"Lelouch showed me that too. You broke down on the floor and started crying, you silly "phan"girl." I looked away from her. Did she have to rub it in my face, especially when I knew what happened next? "Sorry, that was insensitive for me to say, particularly because Jareth kissed you afterwards."
I blushed deeply, but I turned back to her with a straight face. "Did Lelouch show you anymore?"
"No. I was grateful that he had taken me away from you. Since you had eventually started kissing Jareth back, I told him that you didn't understand the meaning of being true in love."
"Funny thing. I had a dream that same night about saying that to him too. Does he have lithe limbs, atheltically toned abs, and violet eyes?" (I knew what her answer would be, but I still wanted to ask.)
"Yes! Wait, how did you know what he looked like when he laid beside me during our first night together?"
"This may seem strange, but I think I saw through your eyes. You were still in control of your mind, but I was granted access to your senses. I've only heard of the closest of companions, or the strongest magicians, being able to do it or to grant someone else that kind of access to their own thoughts. I never had a dream like that again, so it must be really rare to be in a situation like that."
She made to ask me further about this wonderous feat of magic but it could wait until another day. I bade her continue her story. "Well, after a few days of living in apparent bliss with him, I got curious to see what "Lulu" was hiding underneath his half-mask."
"You must have forgotten that you don't do that unless you want be hurt. I've grown used to the reaction, having seen it so many times (I'm a Phantom fanatic. So what?), but I still get a little scared when I hear him yelling at Christine."
"He did that to me too. He grabbed my wrists and dug my fingers into the shrivelled and dead part of his face. He implored me, in the voice of a madman, to tear off his face, his permanently scarred mask. I admit, that was the one time when I was afraid of him."
"You little prying Pandora," I said thoughtfully, ruffling her hair. "It was stranger than you dreamt it would be, wasn't it?"
"Indeed. Especially when Lelouch shared his "Don Juan Triumphant" with me and also when he told me about his Geass."
Uh-oh! A little red-flag went up in my head saying, "She said the word that cost you your memories." I ducked my head under the water and swam towards the center of the bath where it was warmer. Melissa followed quickly behind, and when we had reached the center she asked, "Why are you acting like me all of a sudden? According to you, I'm the one who's supposed to be "emo", not you."
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that I've been exposed to the Geass personally, even though I don't exactly know what that is."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, after the night where I saw Lelouch and you in bed together, I went down to walk on the sea floor. You'd never believe it, but your brothers rescued me from an underwater volcano. Okay, Zero would have left me there to die on account of my having legs, but still your brothers came to save me."
"My brothers?! You didn't tell them anything about where I am did you?!"
"Of course not, not more than I need to anyway. I just told them that you had been abducted by the Phantom and I needed more information. They gave me a big portfolio of stuff about Erik Legrange and I perused through it as soon as I got back to the grotto. Among the documents, I found a locket on a gold chain made out of a ruby with a mother-of-pearl fairy on the front and the lyrics for "Learn to Be Lonely" on the back of it. It also had a picture of what I assumed to be a young Erik Legrange and his family inside.
"During an incident in my research, the locket fastened itself about my neck and wouldn't come off. I called Jareth over to have a look at it since it was obviously fairy made. He took me into the Realm of Dreams to help me search for answers to my questions. Since I knew I wouldn't find Erik in the real world (He had left me about a year ago, after being my vocal teacher for two years.), I sought him in a place where anything was possible.
"Sure enough, I ended up in a part of the Realm of Dreams that looked exactly like the graveyard where Christine had gone to see her deceased father. Jareth hadn't turned up beside me, so I thought he had given me the slip. I sat in silence until I heard a voice call out to me, the "wandering child." What I thought was Erik's voice carressed my ears and promised to heal the scars your Angel had left when he took you from me.
"Jareth found me as I was ascending the stairs to the mausoleum in front of me. He had ended up a few sections away from me and thought that I had gotten lost on the journey. He stared into my eyes with a glance that begged forgiveness; I was about to give it to him, with his arm wrapped around me protectively, when a figure dropped down from above us. I pushed Jareth away, urging him to run, drew my sword, and I engaged in battle with this hooded figure all dressed in black."
"Wait, so now you swordfight?"
"Mat taught me the basics while you were gone. If magic ever failed me, I wanted to be able to defend myself against Lelouch. I won't go into all the details of our battle, but the figure was on top of me, his rapier raised to stab my heart and end my suffering from losing you, when Jareth distracted him by saying not to do it.
"Erik's face was revealed when he turned to Jareth and barked at him to stay out of it. He leaned into my face and asked me what I was doing with his Majesty; he didn't recall me having any boyfriends before then. I told him, no swore to him, that upon my honor as his student, Jareth was engaged to another woman. When I said these words, my romantic feelings for him, however weak they were, blew away in the winter wind.
"Erik demanded of me the locket that I had discovered. He said it was the last thing his mother had given to him before she had disappeared from his life forever. I felt such sadness and pity for this "Phantom" figure that I embraced him as if he would shatter if I ever let go. Then..."
"What? What did you do?"
"Do you really want to know?" She nodded. "I kissed him." She opened her mouth to say something, but I stopped her. "I didn't know it was Lelouch at the time. I wasn't thinking of anyone but myself when I did it, not Jareth, not Mat, not even you. Looking back on it, I feel selfish and shallow for having done such a thing."
I rose to the surface, hanging my head. When Melissa came up beside me, she swam over to me and put her hand around my shoulder. I guess it was my turn to be consoled. "What happened after the *gulp* kiss?" she asked.
"Jareth took me back to the real world," I told her, "and he told me the story of how Lelouch came to his kingdom and he taught him the art of seduction."
"Funny. Lelouch told me the same thing when he was telling me about how he got his Geass. I won't go into the details, but I could hardly believe him when he told me that his ancestor was actually Erik Legrange."
"I had the same reaction when Flotsam told me. He had heard me mutter it in my dreams and told me about Lelouch when I woke up." Was it my imagination, or did my cheeks get hotter as I thought about him, and I don't think it was from the bath-water? "So, what exactly does the Geass do anyway?"
"It gives him the power of absolute control over someone. His victim has to be in a certain range of sight, and that also counts for looking into a mirror to see behind him, and they have to be in direct eye contact with him. He can force them to obey any command he issues if those conditions are met; he demonstrated it to me by ordering a bird to chirp a lullaby. The "Power of the Kings" is so powerful that his mask serves the dual purpose of both hiding his face and suppressing this power."
Now I knew how Lelouch had made me forget Melissa. I had stared directly into his eyes in order to show him that I was being honest with him, and it was in that moment that he had given me a silent command with the Geass. The kiss had sealed the deal as better assurance that I would do it. If I hadn't felt like an idiot before, I definitely felt like one now.
"So, what did you do after Jareth had told you Lelouch's story?"
"I went on a quest to find the Spartan Cloak that Jareth wanted. On the first day of my journey, I met a man in the woods who had golden eyes. I had the nagging notion I was missing something as I stared at the "fallen god" I had come in contact with. He seemed to know about my dating hyadis, which I had taken for you, but I couldn't remember who I had taken it for at the time.
"He pulled me in close to him and as he gave me information that would set me on the right track, I got a good smell of his hand. I say smell because of how strange its odor was. It was like freshly mowed grass and rotting flesh."
"Sounds like how Lelouch smells almost, except for the grass part."
"That's what I thought was strange too. It was like a mixture of old death and new life. I found out that he was neither alive, nor dead, but an immortal soul trapped in a human body. That's all I found out though because after he pointed me in the right direction, he jumped into the trees and disappeared.
"A few nights later, I met him again on the edge of Sunset Town. He told me that I wasn't using my powers to their full potential and also the birds told him that I was straying down a path that would lead me deeper into the darkness. The barn owl, meaning Jareth, was especially worried about me because he feared a confrontation about the new information I would recieve. After telling him that he could thank Jareth for nothing, he told me to sleep on it and took his leave. Before he left the circle of flame, he told me his name: Phoenix Rose."
"Sounds like this guy is quite the useful guy. What's he look like?"
"Average height, for a man, so about 6 ft., long raven hair, pale skin that smells of death and life, not to mention honey-colored eyes. He's too old to be youthful, but he's not yet middle aged, around thirty I guessed just from appearance but he's lived for far longer than that I know.
"Anyhow, I found out why I was forgetting you that night when I fell asleep. I dreamed about bein in total darkness, all alone and forlorn. The grief in my heart moved me to sing a song about the endless night around me. I heard Erik's voice calling to me and I ran to embrace him; when I put my arms around him though, he did not embrace me back. I looked up and saw that it was Lelouch that I held in my arms!
"I shrank away from him as he chastised me, nay slandered me, about how easy I had been to fool and how willing I had been to let him cast his Geass on me. I braved him hitting me and pulling my hair, trying to hide my disgust at myself and also to show him I was stronger than he. Your angel had used me to his own advantage and I had thrown all caution to the wind and let him just because of his eye color."
"You must have been mad about that."
"That's putting it lightly. I felt rage towards this horrible person begin to spread throughout every fibre of my being. Normally, I would have suppressed my temper, but this anger felt so right that I let it spread through me like warm honey.
"When the feeling receded, I towered over him by at least three inches. I told him in his own voice, 'If I can't remember her in my mind, I'll remember her in my heart. Just as I'll remember you, Erik Phoenix Legrange.'" Before you ask, Flotsam told me Lelouch's full name the night I went to the Realm of Dreams.
"My dream dissolved and between my fading sleep and the evening sky, I glimpsed my reflection. Erik was staring back at me, mask and all; he told me that I now could see the true extent of my powers. In order to make sure that the shapeshifting in my dream hadn't been just there, I tried it again. Sure enough, that warm feeling came again and I successfully transformed into the Phantom. So, what happened with you?"
"The days passed like usual, Lelouch going out for a while or retreating into the solitude of his music, and me being left to my own devices. One night however, I had a dream about killing Mat and then when I woke up, Lelouch actually asked me to do it. I felt obliged to obey him, since I loved him and I knew it wouldn't be good to betray his trust. I went along the rooftops of Sunset Town, searching for Mat. I actually killed a couple of guys who asked me what I was doing; it felt good in the spur of the moment, feeling like I actually had power to rebel against the sex who had done me wrong, but looking back on it, those men were mad martyrs to my wrath. They hadn't done anything to provoke me.
"After running around a little more, I eventually found Mat. He told me Lelouch was trying to brainwash me and that my hands were stained with blood from his hands. I didn't believe him and tried to defend lulu's honor by engaging in battle with him."
"You don't have to continue with that," I said. "Eventually, Aoi and I came onto the scene and I blasted you away from him with a ball of magic. I'm sorry again for doing that, but I didn't know it was you. The Geass command came into full affect the night I got my shapeshifting powers. When I tried to think about you as I fell back asleep, I found I could remember nothing about you. When Lelouch said your name, I finally remembered the mermaid princess you had once been, but I couldn't make the connection between her and what you look like now."
"Did you eventually remember me?"
"Yes, but I think you forgot me in the same moment. Mat had gone off to train in the darkness and Flotsam had swum out to prevent me from forgetting you completely, on Phoenix's orders. Aoi picked up Mat's sword, which he had left for her to use along with his light magic, and said that you were lost to us forever. I didn't understand her, but Flotsam immediately understood what she meant: you had forgotten about Mat and everyone who had caused you pain, but most importantly me.
"I grieved along with the furious storm that came that day as the connection your old self and the new finally materialized. At the end of the day, I was so drained from the lack of food and sleep I had gotten that I fainted from fatigue on the boardwalk. I found out from Flotsam when I woke up that I had caught a cold from being out in the rain all day."
"I thought sea-witches couldn't catch colds. Anyway, I got all weepy and desperate after lulu and I got back to his lair. The pain of the heartbreak finally hit me and I wanted him to make it go away. After going out for some air, even though I didn't stay long because it was raining and Mat was out there, I had him cast a spell on my heart. Just like you said, I forgot about you, Flotsam and Jetsam, all the boys who broke up with me, my father, not to mention *gulp* Mat.
"Lulu warned me the affect of the spell would be strong. I was in a coma for about a week after that."
"Before you tell me what happened," I said, cutting her off as we swam back to the side of the tub (The center was getting a little too hot for me.), "let me tell you what happened with me. Flotsam brought me home to recover, and after a few days back of rest and rejuvenation, Jareth called me out to talk about my 16th birthday party. (I witheld the information of Sarah's disappearance because it wouldn't do well to worry her even more. Plus, I suspected that Lelouch had kidnapped her in the dead of night because he was angry that I had remembered everything, despite the potency of his Geass.)
"I brought him back to the grotto. Flotsam approached to show me the lotus blossom he had made. I judged it pretty good for amateur work, considering he had never seen a lotus before. After calling Jetsam to my side, I crystalized it so it would never break or fade. Jetsam then doused the blossom with a potion that looked like callomine lotion and the lotus went from a lifeless, black mass to a thriving flower with yellow petals with pink tips. Remembering who the blossom was for, Flotsam made it for you, we whispered 'Remember your friends.' into the petals."
"I actually remember that flower. I found it when Lelouch was taking me on a tour of the garden outside of the operahouse. He took me to see the cherry blossoms, which I had never seen before then, and he planted another one of his beautful kisses upon my lips. We had shared many before then, but that kiss felt particularly good because of where we were and also because my heart was under his influence.
"He left me near a pond with a waterfall while he went to see off to some important business elsewhere in the garden. The blossom came floating up to me as I was dipping my toes in the water. I picked it up, even though I didn't like lotus blossoms, because I wanted to show Lulu how pretty it was. When I leaned in to smell it again, I heard your and Flotsam and Jetsam's voices say "Remember your friends."
"Bits and pieces of memories that Lulu had erased came back to me. I remembered my father, my break-up with Jordan, even you and Mat. I couldn't remember either of you completely, but I kept seeing things that reminded me of you throughout the rest of that day. When I asked Lulu about what I had remembered, I saw an expression I had never seen on his face before: complete and utter horror. He told me to forget about him mentioning Mat and to focus on getting used to being awake again.
"The next night, he asked me a question. He had known me for a while and he knew that he loved me, so he was curious about it."
"What exactly was "it", the question he asked I mean?"
"He said we were past the point of right or wrong and he had-"
"Wait! I know what you're going to say. I'm hoping I don't sound prying when I say this, but I have one final question for you: Are you still a virgin?!" I was scared about mentioning this part, but I felt I was entitled to know what really happened. (This was the reason why I hadn't wanted the boys around.)
"Don't be silly. Of course I am," she said, brushing my now sopping hair out of my face. "Trust me. I was just as scared about seeing him like that as you are now. Actually, I wanted someone to kill me before I died of fright and embarrassment, so no, I was actually more scared than you. Lulu calmed me down with his touch, and even though he undressed me before we got into our bed together, I felt completely calm. I felt as if I could melt into his flesh he was so warm. (I had felt that feeling a few nights ago when I had that dream about Erik making out with me.)
"He wanted to take it slowly since we both new to this whole "sex" thing. I layed against his chest, as if I was asleep, and smiled."
"You don't have to tell me anymore. His stargazer showed me everything. I saw you lying aginst him like that; him when he turned over so he was on top of you and the covers slipped down; I even heard you laughing."
"That all happened. I felt like I was going to pass out when he was on top of me like that. I was just about to when I heard someone ask, 'Lelouch, why?'"
"That was Jareth, asking of the heavens why history had to choose this time, this man, you as a woman, to repeat itself. Lelouch didn't let us see anymore; he splayed his hand and the purple crystal I had found while exploring Jareth's operahouse, which he had chosen as the venue for my party, shattered into glittering dust."
"So my flash vision of you, Mat, and Flet and Jet watching me wasn't just a dream. I recall a similar crystal shattering from just inside our bedroom. Lulu spent the rest of the night comforting me and reassuring me that I was safe with him."
"You sure he didn't do anything else to you?"
"I'm still a virgin aren't I?"
I smiled as I grabbed my towel. "I'm glad we had this talk," I said as I got out of the tub and slid into my slippers. "We should do this more often. Do you remember what is always observed in a bathroom?"
"Privacy?" Melissa asked as she got out after me.
"Exactly. What happens in here stays in here, and that goes for this conversation too. I swear upon my honor as your friend, and a self-taught sea witch, that I will tell no one of what was exchanged between us. But..."
"But?"
"You have to promise to tell me if you have problems like this ever again."
"Fair enough."
We exchanged not another word after that. I wrung out and brushed my hair, brushed my teeth, and changed into my red silk nightgown again. I went to bed, even though it was only eight o'clock, and fell asleep at once.
 srs diva 2011 xxl · Sat May 09, 2009 @ 01:48am · 2 Comments |
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