Chapter 1-

I've debated whether or not to mention my name, only because of the repeated threats on my life by members of the other side of the schism.

I've also debated whether or not to mention my nearly life-long love affair with a woman that was supposed to be completely out of my reach.

But after much consideration I've decided that I must. No one will believe me, right?

I am a white faced woman. I am nameless.

Lately, it hasn't bothered me that I'm completely unknown to the authorities. That everything anyone would want to know about me is conveniently stored in one healthy file.

But it bothers me that it doesn't bother me.

It could be that I've had my head underwater for too long. I've been too distracted by my love for a woman that's so out of reach; too taken by this obsession that I can't concentrate on the other failures of my life.

It began with kissing, I remember, the wants and fears so palpable that her tongue has the power to push my head back; our hands clawing at each other's breasts, at each other's souls; I know I can see and feel the darkness of the room in so many more ways than one.

She must love me. I know she loves me.

It's just the constant doubt that's always coming up to tear at my heart, this certain guilty aura around her that glows in this darkness….

And she forces her fingers into me, and we cry out in a way we've never cried before because we can feel and remember so much when we do this; and I'm taking her hands out from inside me and watching the way her lips glisten in the light coming in from the window.

"Can he hear us?" She whispers while she turns her head towards the door; overeager.

The necklace of pearls she was wearing breaks at that moment, falling on my chest as she shifts her body to a position beside me.

"You know he hasn't,"

And we stare at each other, and at the bedroom door, lying there wondering if he could be outside listening.

I know what she wants is someone who can protect her. I know it's all she's wanted from anyone she becomes involved with- a simple kind of protection, a chivalrous sort of trust.

I suppose the thing that must be bothering me at this point is the fact that I can't be this protector, this person that has the ability to save her from anything; to cement this love in stone.

She wants a knight, a big, strong, valiant knight that'll come and sweep her off her feet and hold her every night forever.

I suspect she believes the knight's masculine arms are much more assuring than mine.

But this angry love, this vexatious sex that we so willingly share with every opportunity; it takes us in. It makes us understand that there is so much more to life than pleasing the Count and an audience; so much more than VFD and remembering lines.

I just pray that she understands this.

Because I've come to feel she's only there for me at night. And it sickens me that we must live this way; shrouded in darkness and white make-up; filling demands and interpreting code like some unending machine. It makes everything so shielded from effortless happiness I know we both want to feel.

The Troupe blames our emotions on themselves. The fact that we don't eat much of anything after burning libraries; the fact that we never get out of bed after murdering children for their family's fortune.

They think the reason that the love of my life, the one thing I feel for her being the only thing that keeps me from killing myself- is distraught because of her parent's death fifteen years ago; this, this is what makes me believe that this life, this calling, isn't for me.

It's the fact that they think we're siblings.

That this is the reason we hold each other after a kidnapping.

That this is the reason we keep the Count from taking more money than he needs from the Snicket family account.

That we were somehow humbled from the murder of our parents, of our siblings.

But the Troupe has never known the truth.

About their own evils, their own senseless tasks, my own limitless love to a person so deeply unexpected. This, my dear Lemony, is why I must empty my every emotion onto this stark white paper. Why I don't flinch when the typewriter reaches the end of the line, rather I push it back and start over again. This is why I need to tell someone what the hell is going on.

And I lean in to kiss her, to temporarily quiet the truths I've fought so hard to expose.