Author note: Basically, Modern Day AU. What if Phedre had been born in 1981 Paris? It's crack AU, you have been warned.

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I was born in Paris, in the blessed year of 1981. My mother was reformed prostitute who had found a traveling salesman to tend to her needs. She had no desire to keep around a daughter whose eye made all the teen counselors think she beat me – or maybe she didn't know what to do with me.

In the end, she took me over to Place Pigalle and left me with one of the pimps there. They were grooming me to be one of the girls over at the Moulin Rouge. Dancing on stage from 8 to 11, wriggling in a rich man's bed the rest of the time. It was a strange life, that, but it wasn't bad. They looked at me strangely because I liked cutting my arms with razor blades, in secret. I could still dance, though, so they didn't seem to care all that much. As long as I was still fit to bring in the dough when I was old enough...

Except for how they never got there. One day, Monsieur Delaunay came to visit. I remember that he was gentle and sweet, sweeter than anyone had ever been to me at the Moulin Rouge. He looked at me just once, and he didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with me. He didn't wait, though, and took me with him.

It was strange, what followed. One tutor followed another, until he could send me to school. He made sure I had extra credit in dancing, in music, in tumbling. He followed my language studies closely. The memory games we played were odd and curious, but I took to them easily.

When I was sixteen, he took me to a party. He said that I shouldn't be afraid of leaving with one of the people there if I felt like it, and I did. I dated that man a while. He liked beating me before we had sex, and I enjoyed every moment of it. He started to trust me. Then he would say things. Monsieur Delaunay took them all down when I repeated them. He was a terrorist, I found out.

And the woman he worked with was the most beautiful one I'd ever met.

She had a dungeon in her mansion. She also owned half of the Trust Exchange, thanks to her deceased husbands. Monsieur Delaunay knew her well, and he got us an invitation to one of her bashes. When she kissed me, I didn't resist.

I never could resist Melisande Shahrizai, after that.