Persian drabbles, part ii

Jan 13, 2007 14:11

The second part of several for drabbles about the Persian for stories_100. The object is to write one 100-word story about each prompt. I'm just putting these here, once again, to keep my stuff in one place.

Title: Call to Prayer
Character: The Persian
Prompt: 011. Faith
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: The Persian has faith, but not in the abstract.

Mecca seemed so far away, the curve of the Earth rendering the traditional gesture even more abstractly symbolic than it was. This was not the same ground Mohammad had tread, though the Moors had come close. But he felt no kinship with any of them; he’d been Persian by birth and by skin but not by temperament. His exile, when he reflected upon it late in the night (or early morning, when the adhan should be calling), was as much self-definition as anything was.

Pilgrimage and charity seemed like human qualities, not merely Moslem tenets, and he strove for those.

Title: Game
Characters/pairing: The Persian.
Prompt: 015. Sorrow
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: The Persian contemplates Erik during his confession.
Author's Notes: Again, shippers and non, this can be interpreted any way you like.

He told himself he was too pragmatic for sorrow. That what he felt was merely sympathy, and misplaced at that. The man before him-don’t look, daroga!-was another mission completed, crisis averted. Mercy was only a religious habit to be followed.

Erik was still the most dangerous creature he knew.

But the churning of his stomach was not due to fear. He could control that emotion. Nor was it pity, for he had long since spent that currency.

His sadness was not only for Erik, he realized. It was for himself; for the loss of such a magnificent beast.

Title: Sides
Character: The Persian
Prompt: 022. Enemies
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: He knows what side he is on. Both.

“Why can’t either of you just hate him?”

The young man was at the end of his tether, but he was not without a point. The Persian wanted to turn and face him, but his little lantern would not illuminate this.

“He is the enemy of everything decent and good,” de Chagny continued.

“Yes, but he is also my friend. And his own enemy, most of all.” Devils and angels alike could not be contained in such categories. He smiled bitterly at his choice of words. Wouldn’t Erik love to hear him say that?

“Then what can you possibly do?”

Title: Daroga
Characters/pairing: The Persian
Prompt: 025. Strangers
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: What's in a name?

He knew every one of their names. Those he’d never met face-to-face, those French names with their curious missing letters, they were all in his book. And in his mind, for one never knew when such information would be useful. And yet none of them knew his.

He’d told a few, in the beginning, but they had never been able to pronounce it. Sometimes they spoke of him, but he was always “the foreigner.” “The Persian.”

A stranger.

“Daroga. I’m displeased at finding your miserable hide back here.”

He smiled. It was not his name, but it was close enough.

Title: City of Lights
Character: The Persian
Prompt: 048. Run
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: The Persian comes to a decision about Paris. This and the next two occur one after the other.

He could not recall the number of countries, cities, train stations he’d been in. They were all recorded in his little book, of course, but scratches on paper were all the imprint they made. Nothing chased him. No one watched him. And yet he ran.

To Paris he was mostly indifferent; people here had been through a war, did not trust foreigners. At Gare d'Austerlitz he stood below the timetables. Perhaps he ought to head south again.

A tall figure hailing a cab caught his attention. “Place de l’Opera,” he heard, and something within him shifted. He was so tired.

Title: Respite
Character: The Persian
Prompt: 049. Hide
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: He is not broken; merely bowed.

It was dark, the first time he opened the door to the flat. Lock and hinges protested in concert, but beyond there was silence. After the clatter of foreign tongues and second-class railway cars, silence was welcome. The fact that the gas wasn’t on seemed only vaguely inconvenient, and light from the busy street breached the grimy windows enough to keep from barking his shins. The last occupant had left a worn armchair, and he sat in it wearily. He watched nothing. He wanted nothing.

It was the end of the road. An end to running.

A place to hide.

Title: Angel of Death
Characters/pairing: The Persian
Prompt: 055. Spirit
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: The Persian visits Apollo's Lyre after that night.

The wind muttered through the metal strings of Apollo’s lyre. Sunrise, and only the lingering shadows suggested what had gone on here that night. He lay back against the cold stone and imagined what Erik must have felt, looking down upon the children’s heads from on high.

Had he been crouched here, rat-like, listening at keyholes? He preferred to imagine him with cloak outspread like bats’ wings, mask torn free by the wind and sailing, eyeless, to the street below. The words of the boy’s plan, the girl’s betrayal, flung against his ears like licking flames. But still free, somehow.

Title: The Edge
Characters/pairing: The Persian
Prompt: 060. Drink
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: Even he has his weaknesses.

The gravel skittered under his feet as he stumbled along the embankment, the water itself barely visible beyond the curious moisture in his eyes. Don’t fall in. He’d done that before. Perhaps he’d done it again, not knowing. Where had he miss-stepped? The man was a monster. Irredeemable. Unlovable.

It was this city’s fault. These people, and their damned wine, that put such doubts in his mind. He knew why he sheltered the fiend. When sober he could formulate several cogent arguments for not leading the search party himself.

But now that he wasn’t, he could think of only one.

Title: Market Day
Character: The Persian
Prompt: 066. Rain
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: Commitments are made, and the scene is set. No, there's no Erik, but a little background never hurt anyone.

The water running down his collar did nothing for his stiff neck. But food was required, and a bed, and some kind of libation.

The sun hid itself, and he had not faced Mecca in months.

The bazaar-the market, he corrected himself-was just the same. Pleading mothers, suspicious glances and bargaining. He hadn’t a grasp of the larger numbers yet, and a vendor had to repeat the total three times. “Merci,” he said, and the Persian felt eyes follow him down the street.

He shaved his beard when he got home, wet hair clumping in the cracked washbasin.

Title: Immunity
Characters/pairing: The Persian
Prompt: 069. Thunder
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: Discoveries have their own price. And questions always lead to more.

The storeroom became his base of observations. Christine’s removal to that remote corridor had been suspicious, and he remembered well Erik’s connivance.

But he had forgotten the Voice. He attended each lesson with the purpose of discovering Erik’s intent. He left each one with a pounding heart and a head full of irreconcilable memories. The Voice was like an electric current applied to his skin, like the short he’d accidentally discovered in some project of Erik’s. Erik had laughed. Then, the Voice had no power over him.

Perhaps it was his own guilt, but somewhere he had lost his immunity.

Title: Al Shira
Character: The Persian
Prompt: 072. Fixed
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: The Persian looks up and back.

The stars were the most familiar thing about Paris. Erik had given him lessons in astronomy when court life became too gruesome to discuss; here the constellations showed the distance he’d traveled, but were recognizable.

“It has a companion, you know,” Erik had said. “Sirius is a binary system. They’ve just discovered it; two stars that revolve around a shared center of gravity. Never touching, but bound just the same. Amazing, the things science can learn by extrapolation.”

From the roof of the Opera, he could see them. The brightest star in the sky and its hidden partner, forever entwined.

Title: Duet
Characters/pairing: The Persian
Prompt: 079. Truth
Word Count: 100
Rating: G
Summary: The Persian and Erik dispute the Persian's motives.
Author's note: As with many of these drabbles, it is less important *what* exactly Erik is insinuating the Persian wants and more about the Persian hiding some ulterior motive from even himself.

“Erik! You must tell me the truth! What are you planning? What will you do to her?”

”The truth, daroga? What has truth to do with you or Erik? You lied to the sultana for me, did you not?”

“Yes, but that was-“

“A misjudgment on your part. What right does that give you here?”

“The right to know what you’re planning.”

“Why?”

“So I can protect…”

“Ah-ah, daroga. Why should I give you the truth, when you cannot give it to me?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

“Then you are either a fool or a liar.”

fanfiction: drabbles, fanfiction: phantom of the opera, phantom of the opera, fanfiction: persian

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