A/N: As many of you might know, I (Jeeves) am a big Phantom of the Opera fan. This is my first attempt to tell the story in the way I always thought it should be told. This is primarily my creation, but I give an appreciative nod to my best friend and co-writer Wooster, who is assisting in the writing of this Phic (and is, as she adds, "amazing beyond all belief"). Acknowledgements also go to Lordsummerisle and ThrowStuffAtAlex for their assistance in editing and their devotion to myself and Wooster. Thanks for putting up with us, boys!

Disclaimer: No trespass is intended upon the works of Leroux, Kay, and Lloyd Webber. I retell their tale with the utmost reverence to the original works.

Prologue

Chicago, 1966

Nothing about the birth had felt right to Madeline. Though her later recollections of it were undeniably skewed by the results, it could not be denied that the circumstances surrounding that night had contained an eerie trace of ill-fortune and inevitability. The birth had gone smoothly, more so than was natural for a first birth: especially for one of such questionable health as a lowly prostitute who lived in the streets of rough-and-tough Chicago. As it was, even through the haze of pain she was unnerved by the ease of the delivery. So when the sick hush fell over the room as her last push delivered the baby screaming into the world, it was with a sense of fatality rather than anxiety that she asked what was the matter with the child.

Not a word was said in reply as the nursing staff bustled about, looking anywhere and everywhere but at the newborn and its mother. The doctor in charge cut the umbilical cord with a carefully emotionless expression and, after cleaning and wrapping the baby, handed it wordlessly to the mother. Madeline took one look at the swaddled form in her arms and cringed in revulsion and fear.

It was a baby boy, with a thin layer of fine black hair, his face contorted with the anguish of being transported to such a large, terrifying world. But the features of that face made his innocent cries seem more like the inhuman cries of a demon. The right half of his face was that of a normal child, but the left…his left side was shriveled and skeletal, the nostril collapsed, the lip bulbous, the ear wasted and misaligned. The child's eyelids momentarily opened and it looked upon the face of its mother with asymmetrical eyes of a peculiar yellow-gold. In that moment, seeing her reflection in the eyes of this…this thing that she had produced, she wished fervently that she had never carried the aberration to term.

As its face arranged itself in a grotesque parody of a smile, she placed her weak, slender fingers around its throat in order to send it back to the sulfurous pits of hell from whence it came. She had only begun to squeeze the breath out of its tiny throat when the doctor wrenched it from her grip. She fell back against the bed, defeated.

The doctor was not sure what horrified him worse: the mother's actions or the child's appearance. He checked the babe's pulse and, finding him unharmed, ordered a nurse to remove him from the hateful gaze of the mother. He then turned to the nurse in charge of the paperwork and dictated, "Born 4:32 AM, June 6th, 1966, Child: Male, Ten pounds, two ounces. To be placed into immediate foster care."

"What about a name, sir?" the nurse asked, glancing nervously between him and the mother. Madeline was staring into the distance, her expression glazed.

"Just give him my name: Erik," the doctor responded, avoiding the nurse's gaze as he exited the room. The last thing he heard was the mother's hoarse declaration, "You should have let me kill it."