Disclaimer: None of this is mine, all the characters, setting, ect. belong to Darren Arronofsky and Fox Searchlight Pictures. I'm not getting paid: I write for fun, not money.

The first thing that seeped into her awareness was pain; a simultaneously aching and stabbing pain that originated at a point deep within her abdomen and snaked merciless tendrils to her feet, her head, crisscrossing and curling around each other, encasing her body in a web of agony. She couldn't surpress the groan that escaped her lips, only then becoming aware of the fact that her teeth had clamped down around something hard, something that forced its' way past her lips and down her throat. Her eyes flew open in panic, squeezing momentarily shut against the harsh glare of the overhead lights, and she began to gag against her body's invader.

"She's awake!" She heard, and then a plump, rosy complected woman dressed in sterile green scrubs appeared within her field of vision. "Nina? Nina?" she said. "I need you to relax, it's just a tube to help you breathe, we're taking it out now." A strong pair of hands held down her wrists; another held her ankles. Her back arched as she felt the tube slide its way past her throat and out of her mouth, and she fell back, coughing and retching, her sliced abdominal muscles screaming in protest. Almost instantly something was slipped into her nostrils. The coughing fit subsided, and Nina Sayers finally felt some measure of lucidity creeping back into her muddled brain. She was in….a hospital? Yes, this was definitely a hospital room, albeit one that was unfamiliar to her. She looked at the woman, and for the first time noticed the name badge that she wore. Sandy, RN, it proclaimed, under the logo of Roosevelt Hospital.

"What happened?" Nina croaked, dimly noticing that her throat felt like sandpaper.

"You're in the ICU," Sandy chirped, bustling around the room. Nina pressed the controls on the bed to raise herself into a sitting position. "You were brought here right after the surgery." The woman's incessant peppiness was beginning to grate on Nina's nerves, but she supposed it came with the territory of being a nurse in an intensive care unit. "You sliced your gut up something fierce, but the docs were able to patch you up. That Mr. Leroy of yours brought you here right after the performance."

Performance? What performance? Nina struggled to make sense of the woman's words for a moment, but then the floodgates of her memory opened, and image after image began to assault her battered mind.

Being cast as the Swan Queen, her shock and elation after she was sure that the role was going to Veronica. The horror of the word WHORE smeared on the bathroom mirror in garish red lipstick.

Dancing, struggling through endless nights to tap into what she needed to inhabit the duality of her role.

The hallucinations that became both increasingly vivid, and increasingly terrifying.

And Lily. Lily, casual, sensual, seductive Lily with the I-don't-give-a-damn attitude, the girl whom Nina had been so sure was out to destroy her.

But in the end, she hadn't needed to, had she? Nina had done that all on her own.

She remembered dancing with Lily at the club, and the fury of finding her dancing Nina's role the next morning in rehearsal.

She remembered fighting with Lily after finding her in her dressing room, smashing her body into the mirror, struggling to free herself from the fingers that wrapped around her throat in a vice grip. She remembered viciously plunging a shard of broken mirror into Lily's midsection, and the terrified, choked sobs that escaped from her own throat as she watched Lily cough up blood and gasp her last breaths.

And then, Lily coming to her in her dressing room, congratulating her on her performance, the moment of horrifying clarity as she realized that Lily had never been in her dressing room, she had, in fact, stabbed herself.

And finally the elation of knowing that she had achieved what she'd been working towards since she was a child; that elusive, hypnotic, transcendent quality known in the ballet world as perfection.

Nina reached a hand, the one without the I.V. hookup, under her hospital gown and felt the pressure dressing that wound its way tightly around her abdomen. She closed her eyes in horror, and with a groan sank back down onto the sheets. She had been perfect.

And if she hadn't actually killed herself to achieve it, she had come goddamn close.

"Oh, honey," Sandy murmured, seeing her distress. "It'll be alright, there's no permanent damage done. We'll have you back up and dancing again in no time."

Did Nina even want that anymore? Of course she did, ballet was her passion, her whole life.

And very nearly her death.

"That's up to Thomas."

"What's up to me?" Thomas Leroy strode into the small room. Even now, off the job, he exuded an aura of fierce determination and a manipulative, almost malicious cunning. It seemed to ooze from his every pore, knocking Nina breathless as his presence filled the room.

"Nothing, Thomas," She said tiredly. She was still in pain, and her energy reserves were rapidly ebbing.

"How are you feeling?" Thomas asked. Nina couldn't tell if he was genuinely concerned about her, or if he was simply disappointed that his grand production had lost its' star.

"Fine. I'm fine, Thomas." Nina replied, beginning to bristle.

"Look where you are, Nina. You're anything but fine." Thomas countered bluntly in his thick French accent. Nina tried to contradict him, but found that the words tasted bitter on her tongue before they had even formed on her lips. "Why did you do it?" Thomas asked.

"I-I don't know. I was confused….." Nina stammered. "I just wanted to be perfect."

Thomas blew out a frustrated sigh. "You almost fucking died to be perfect." Nina felt his eyes on her, and a hot blush crept up her face under his scrutiny. "Look," he continued. "You were perfect. You were absolutely perfect. You learned to be the swan. Now, you have to learn how to contain her. That's something I can't teach you."

Nina opened her mouth to ask him what in the world he meant- there was no way on Earth she would actually be dancing the part again, would she?- when Thomas answered her question for her. "In six months we're doing an encore performance of Swan Lake. That should be more than enough time for you to recover and to train up again. You've shown me that you have the talent it takes to be the company's principle. Now show me that you have the fortitude." He turned around and walked towards the hall. As he reached the door, he turned to her. "It's time to put your life back together again," he said softly. And with that, he left, closing the door behind him.

Nina felt like screaming until her lungs bled and her throat was raw. There was no way in the world he could put her through this again, was there? She had almost given her life for this part. That was more than enough, she decided firmly. It wasn't until later that night that she had calmed her tumultuous emotions enough to weigh her options. She was sick; last night's performance had made that painfully, and very nearly lethally, obvious. She had run from her demons for most of her life, and yet, they had chased her anyway, chased her until she had almost died. Was it possible that dancing this part one last time was the way to face them? She hadn't considered that before. Of course, there was the other possibility. Her mind had fractured under the strain of dancing the Black Swan. She wasn't sure that she could endure six more months without it shattering completely. And yet….And yet, hadn't she just admitted that she needed to face down the demons that had been plaguing her, since even before she was cast as the Queen? Hadn't she just admitted to herself that dancing the role again just might be the way to do it? She had learned to inhabit the Swan. If she could learn to contain her…. Perhaps Thomas Leroy was right. It was time to put her life back together again.