Everything Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. Everything Phantom of the Opera belongs to Andrew Lloyd Weber, Charles Hart and Gaston Leroux.
Thanks to antiaol, bmango and hunterhunting for their help, commas and kind words.
Thanks also to JAustenLover and Durameter. Without them, this story would not exist.
Chapter 2: Think of Me
The first time Bella Swan tries out for her school's choir, she is eleven. She is still at a point in life where she expects success, and she does not entirely realize that her mother's expression is more of a grimace than a smile when she sings while doing her chores.
Standing beside the piano in her music teacher's classroom, Bella puts her entire heart into the audition song. Her voice is loud and strong, and she is confident that it is one her very best performances to date. Even before she has finished the audition, she can already picture how she will look up on that stage at the winter recital. She can see the look on all the other children's faces when she, the quiet, mousy Bella Swan is offered the big solo. She can taste what it will be like to be noticed.
To be beloved.
When the final roster is posted, Bella practically runs to the wall to look at it, her heart brimming with excitement and her lip held hard between her teeth as she splits her face with the wideness of her smile. Slowly, so slowly, the smile fades as her eyes lower and scan. Three times, she searches the list of names, until finally her quivering lip and the results of her blurry eyes cannot be denied.
Returning to her seat, she pretends it doesn't matter, and she is relieved to find that no one seems to have noticed her dejection. The thin veil of invisibility against which she has often rebelled is momentarily her friend, and she wraps herself in it as tightly as she can, clinging to it really.
At that particular moment, she doesn't want to be seen.
And she isn't. The rest of that year and the several that follow it, she lets that one of so many tiny rejections shape her into the kind of girl who hides behind her hair. She sits in the backs of classrooms and doodles and reads, talking only to a few close friends. At home, she listens to her mother's vivacious tales about taking life by the horns and nods and smiles and cleans.
She watches the world float by her. But more and more, as the years slip past, she realizes that the world is not watching her.
That no one is, really.
At age seventeen, Bella see her mother's eyes fill with love and wanderlust, and she decides that it would be better if she made herself scarcer still. She boards a plane in the desert to a place so very far away, and arrives in a dark, damp town, intending to make a new life in her father's silent house.
Her old habits are hard to shake though, and she shrinks from the attention her presence seems to garner. When people realize that she is less a shiny toy than she is a shy and quiet daughter, they leave her to herself, and before long, she is feeling even more invisible than before.
Everything continues in just that way for weeks, until one day she trips over her own feet and runs headlong into a wall. Rubbing absently at the bump appearing on her forehead, Bella lets her eyes drift over the fliers posted all over the bulletin board she collided with. And one, amongst them all, stands out.
Bella arrives in the auditorium with her heart in her throat and the flier clutched tightly in her hand. Ever since her rejection at the hands of a fifth grade choir teacher, Bella's voice has grown quieter and quieter, and these days, she rarely even sings while doing chores. But still, there is a certain something in the back of her mind, some image of herself, more confident and less hunched, dressed in something glittery. And standing on a stage.
When her name is called, Bella takes her place beside the piano, closing her eyes as the first few notes ring out. At her cue, she opens her mouth. Only, while it is her intention to sing her heart out, only the tiniest of whispers comes out.
And for the first time in years, people are looking at her.
And they are laughing.
Bella barely stops to grab her bag before she darts toward the exit, her hair down and her face hidden behind that all-consuming curtain of brown. She is almost at the double doors, so close to her escape, when a hand closes around her arm.
Startled, Bella squeaks out a wordless noise of protest, but then stops when her eyes meet another pair of eyes, warm and brown. And these eyes are not laughing.
Instead, they are inviting her in.
…
Forks High School's spring musical is the first one that Bella works backstage on, but it is far from her last. The girl who invited her backstage introduces herself as Angela Weber, and over the course of two months' worth of rehearsals, Angela shows Bella everything there is to know about managing a production. As part of a small band of shy, unassuming kids, Bella becomes at home with darkness and with being invisible for a reason. Clad all in black, she learns to wrestle with curtains and props, hefting sets and completely scene changes in the dark.
Her senior year of high school, she ends up becoming thick friends with her fellow tech crew members, and they pull off two small plays in the fall before the challenge of the big spring musical again rolls around. Bella watches the auditions for the musical from the wings, and for a moment, she lets fantasies of being on the stage wash over her again. They are idle thoughts, and ones that have no purpose.
However, when she hears that Mike Newton has been cast as the lead, those fantasies reemerge with even more tenacity. Bella has never had much interest in boys, and boys have never really noticed her. Mike has always been nice to her, though, and Bella finds something appealing about the shape of his mouth and the brightness of his eyes.
Moving deftly around set pieces, Bella again lets the idea of being out there on the stage drift idly over her mind. In the daydream, she is standing opposite Mike, the leading lady to his leading man. Only the obligatory kiss, when it comes, never ends, and they continue it in the stairwell and in his car and at the prom. It is just as she is flushing hotly from the idea of warm touches on her skin in places where no hands but hers have ever been that she trips, crashing unceremoniously into a ladder. Every eye in the theatre turns to look at her, but the only ones she sees are Mike's. For the first time ever, they are focused right on her, and for just that instant, she wonders if he can tell what she is thinking.
The hunger in his eyes tells her that maybe he can.
One day, as she is working out some knots in a particularly complicated bit of rigging, she hears heavy footfalls moving close to her in the dark. Her breath and heart both race, knowing that she is in a particularly secluded section of the catacombs that run beneath the stage. Readying herself to scream, she turns, but then she sees that it is Mike. All her defensiveness drops away, her cheeks hot, as he asks her how she is.
From that day on, Mike seems to find plenty of excuses to hunt her down after rehearsals, always meeting her in the secluded places where no one ever goes. In the dark.
The first time he touches her, Bella feels as if her skin is on fire, the pleasure of a hand on another hand setting her spinning. Soon enough, hands begin to wander, and then, finally, there is the heady meeting of lips on lips, a brush of tongue and the softness of another mouth breathing life into her own. It is Bella's first kiss, and for the entire week, it consumes her thoughts.
She is so distracted by it, in fact, that she does not notice that she is not the only girl that Mike is kissing, or that he only likes to kiss her in the dark. In the light of day, he becomes like everybody else. Unseeing.
And Bella, as always, is invisible.
On the last night of the musical's three week run, long after the play is done, Bella hangs around the darkened world backstage. Even as the hour grows late, she finds reason after reason to delay, skipping the after-party and sticking to the back passages beneath the stage where Mike has always found her when he has come looking for her before. And this time, he does not disappoint her.
There, in the dark world of props and costumes, Bella lets Mike take her clothes off, and she takes his off, too. With a joy she had never expected to find in the act of physical love, she gives him her body and her virginity, and he takes them both with gentle, kind touches. But even when she is at her most vulnerable, naked on a table, she is still cloaked in her invisibility, and Mike pushes into her without really seeing her.
She doesn't see him either when she doesn't come. Or when she refastens her shirt.
And as the lights come up, she knows that she won't see him any more.
…
All through college, Bella sinks deeper into a life lived well behind the scenes, watching the world as if it is just another show on another stage. She has lovers from time to time, but most of them are awkward boys that share her aversion to the spotlight, albeit for reasons of thier own. She never gives her heart away, and what's more, she never wants to.
Armed with a bachelor's degree in theatre production and stagecraft, Bella moves into a tiny apartment and a job building sets and working lights. She finds a home amongst the ropes and scaffolds, creating the illusion of life, and serving as a backdrop against which braver people act out all kinds of scenes.
And never does she ever become a part of them.
She has been working at the theatre for almost a year when she makes her first high-profile mistake. During an evening performance, Bella trips, sending an important set piece toppling, and it takes three people to right the thing, delaying the following scene for uncomfortable, unforgivable minutes. After the curtains have closed for the night, Bella finds herself sitting on a box beneath the stage with her head in her hands, waiting for the proverbial ax to fall.
When she is called into one of the big offices downstairs, she enters it the way she always does. Quietly. Tentatively. The director, Matthew, is sitting there, waiting. He ignores her at first, but eventually she clears her throat, and he looks up, bewildered, his grey eyes focusing on her as if he truly had not noticed her before.
By the time Bella exits Matthew's office, she is completely unsettled. There is the matter of having been so completely chastised, and Matthew left her with no room to doubt that she was lucky to still have her job. And then there is the other matter. The matter of his eyes and how they seemed to really see her. The matter of his mouth and jaw and his messy, jet black hair.
That night, she lets those images move through her mind as she is lying in bed, and there is a blooming warmth inside her chest as she thinks of him.
Warmth grows into heat the next day, when Matthew's smile graces the parts of the theatre he rarely frequents, his eyes connecting with hers there in the dim. Neither makes any pretense at hiding the attraction, and they fall quickly into bed together. Bella thrills at the pleasure of frequent, late-night rendezvous, both in the alcoves behind the set and in her bed, and for the first time, she feels the strings she has held so tightly to finally loosening around her heart.
Everything is perfect, really, until one particular night, a few months into their affair. They have kept it secret at Matthew's insistence , and for the most part, she has swallowed his frequent explanations about how the revelation that he is sleeping with a subordinate would make him look.
It is the closing night after a performance, and she finds herself with her legs open at the edge of his desk. He fucks her steadily, insistently, pausing only when she scratches hard enough at his back to risk leaving marks. For once, the pressure rising steadily in her body begins to crest, and she calls out too loudly in her fervor, and he is shushing her.
She does not know why he is shushing her.
After he comes, they clean up quickly and she moves to embrace him, feeling like something is off, but he pretends that everything is fine. Together but separate, they make their way upstairs to the cast party, Matthew's eyes cast down and his hands fumbling nervously in the pockets of his slacks.
He pulls the door open, holding it for her. Bella steps through, just barely managing to clear the threshold before she is all but bowled over, a tall, attractive and vivacious woman moving past her, and then this woman is wrapping her arms around Matthew. Kissing him.
He kisses her back.
Wishing she could blend into the wall, Bella watches the way she always does, the edges of her heart shattering with every motion, until finally guilty eyes meet her mortified ones. There is apology in them. But there is also the end of an illusion she hadn't even thought to try to put her hand through, she was so, so certain it was real.
"Sweetheart?" Bella's chest aches just a little bit more when she realizes that the endearment is not meant for her. Matthew prods the woman one more time, pointing in Bella's direction insistently before she finally can be convinced to turn around. "Lisa, sweetheart, this is Bella. She's part of our tech crew. Bella, this is my fiancee, Lisa."
Bella's mouth is dry as she looks at the hand extended out toward her. Lisa's face is open. Hopeful. Unsuspecting, even, and Bella hates her for her obliviousness. She hates her for her smile. Something hot and angry moves up through her, and for a strange and powerful moment, Bella considers being someone else. Instead of the woman behind the scenes, she pictures being the one to tear down a wall. To expose the illusion.
But Matthew is motioning, his eyes pleading. When Bella hesitates again, his expression changes, and then he is not pleading.
He is threatening.
And all over again, Bella remembers what he always said.
He is her superior.
And inferior does not even begin to scrape depths of how small she feels.
With a small noise of misery, Bella, tucks her pride and her hopes away. She does not shake Lisa's hand, but she does not spit in it either. Instead, she forces a thin, tight-lipped smile and says, "It's nice to meet you."
And when she steps away, she truly does blend in with the walls.
…
As it turns out, that autumn is a terrible time to be looking for a job, but Bella is relentless. She finds her gumption when she corners Matthew the day after the cast party, informing him that if he does not help her find work somewhere else, she will expose him, to his producer and to his fiancee. He promises to do what he can, seeming shocked that she is really leaving both the theatre and his bed.
And it is that tiny shred of hope she sees in his eyes that finally makes her hate him. She cannot believe that he thought she would still be content to sleep with him after uncovering his deceit, and she hates him for it.
Almost as much as she hates herself for not seeing the deception that was right before her eyes.
Finally, she locates a touring company looking for a tech who can move on short notice, and she speeds to the theatre to put her name in. When she discovers that the company is mounting a production of The Phantom of the Opera, Bella's enthusiasm doubles, delighted at the possibility of working such a high-profile, technically demanding show.
Threatening Matthew again, she gets him to pull a few strings, and Bella soon finds herself at the closed-down theatre where pre-production is already ongoing. At the interview, the producer mentions with great excitement that her references are excellent, and Bella snickers to herself.
She never intended to sleep her way into better positions.
But if she was going to get screwed anyway, then she figures she had might as well make the most of it all.
As she is leaving the producer's office, her signed contract gripped tightly in her hand, she happens to wander past a rehearsal already in progress. Bella knows better than to linger for too long, but for a moment she pauses, listening to the voices of the actors and actresses as they play out a climactic scene.
Slowly, she closes her eyes, letting herself drift on the whirl of notes, crescendoing higher and higher, until finally there is a long pause.
And then one voice.
One singular, perfect, heart-broken voice.
Bella's eyes snap open, trying to identify the source of the music that seems to have filled her entire body with warm sound and pure emotion. Only, when she looks up, it is clear that only one person could have made that sound.
One man.
And he is looking right at her.
In that moment, Bella feels something shifting beneath her feet, like some part of her recognizes a part of someone else. Like some part of her is really seen.
Unable to look away, she feels her gaze connect with that of the stranger, and for an infinite amount of time, she simply stares, lost in eyes the color of gold, set in a face carved of stone and pain. While the man appears to be young, there is something too about his countenance that seems as old as time, and all at once, Bella finds herself wanting to ask him about every single one of his years on this earth.
She wants to know him. She wants to be known.
And though she has spent her entire life in darkness and living far behind the surface of the world, Bella feels her foot begin to step forward, ready to bring her whole body into the light. Suddenly, she feels ready to step toward a stage.
At just that instant, though, the deep silence that had followed the final note of the song is broken, and motion erupts all around the theatre once more. Jostled by another performer, the man in whose gaze she had been lost is forced to look away, and Bella shivers with the feeling that she is adrift amidst the darkness again. Unseen.
With a palpable heaviness, Bella feels the curtains of the world fall back down around her. No matter how desperately she wills them upward, the golden eyes do not return to hers, and after a moment, Bella slowly drops her gaze to her feet. Fighting down the sting of disappointment that she knows so well, she turns. As she hurries toward the exit, the intense memory of connection shimmers like a mirage in the desert heat, and she allows herself to doubt what she had felt. To doubt that anything had really happened at all.
Emerging out onto the street, she tells herself over and over again that it was just her imagination – that the man only focused in on her because she made some sort of a noise, or because he was surprised to have an audience. She reminds herself that, for most people, being noticed is not a noteworthy event. She tells herself it was nothing. An accident.
But still, all week long, as she is sorting out the details around her change in jobs, she pauses often, getting lost in some intangible distance, staring at nothing and remembering something.
And every now and then, as she is packing to depart, she viscerally remembers the feeling of being seen.
After all, it is hard not to.
Especially when, for the first time ever, she is also intensely aware of the sensation of being watched.