A/N: Look everybody! I'm not dead! And neither is this fic. Oh, the wonders of reincarnation.

I was having some technical difficulties (and by some I mean a Vietnam of computer errors) and I just kinda decided that this fic wasn't worth the trouble and to screw it and be done, but then I got a few where'd-it-go?! messages and my dad finally fessed up and paid someone other than himself to fix it and the planets realigned and this fic is officially back on. :D

Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine.

X O X O X

Amelia Chase was as lovely as ever, poised waves of raven hair framing her lovely features, poised smile and blue-green eyes mirrored so elegantly in her son.

"Lord, you came out lovely! You look so much like him when he was young, a carbon-copy, darling; everything but the hair. Now who'd you get that from?"

The milkman?

Chase couldn't speak. He hadn't seen his mother in ten years and he'd never seen her like this, so young, so pretty, so alive. Why did it take death for her to finally live?

Amelia lifted one painted porcelain hand to her child's face, slowly coiling a loose stand of gold hair around one elegant finger. A slow smile flickered upon her lips, a slow inward smile so often emulated by her progeny. Her hand traced down his left cheek to a small, barely-visible scar just under his eye.

"Where'd you get that?" Her whisper was so much more powerful than any scream to escape her lips.

Finally his throat cleared, his stomach unclenched just enough, just enough to speak.

"From you."

Amelia drew her hand back quickly like a child with its hand on a stovetop.

"I am sorry about that, darling. I really am," she drew a slow earnest breath, "sorry."

"I know."

She intertwined her right arm with his left while checking a watch that wasn't there on her free wrist.

"Oh dear, I am terribly late for the ball. I never could manage time very well." She snuck a quick glance at her son's reveal-nothing expression. "I go to AA meetings now, you know."

"You never went to meetings."

"I suppose not."

Chase swallowed, a new pit at the bottom of his stomach. "You're still-"

"-a desperate, old drunk? No dear, I'm just an alcoholic." A pause. "Of course, I don't drink anymore."

"Then how-"

"I am what I was, darling, nothing more, and nothing less." She smiled a wonderful, warm-you-from-the-inside-out smile and began to walk, her hooked arm bringing Chase along for the ride.

"Your father's around here somewhere. I've no clue where, but then again, I never do." Her hand fluttered outward, indicating to nowhere and everywhere all in one sweet motion. She shot him an all-knowing sideways look. "I've looked in on you from time to time, darling. You've done well."

"Has he?"

She shook her head sadly. "I wouldn't know. There's this theater where you can watch your life, past or present, and since I don't really have a present, I've watched you some, but not everyone can do that." She took a slow, elegant breath. "It hurts, Robbie. Sometimes it hurts like hell."

"More than life?"

"It's different, darling. It's a whole other life. I'd probably drink this away too if I could find the gin. Vices don't disappear. Thank God your soul doesn't either."

"Ya," Chase muttered, looking straight ahead into endless sea of people ahead, "Thank God."

"You met him yet?"

"Who, God?"

"Yes, darling, you'll have to meet him sometime. You're probably not dead enough yet." She smiled again, looking out ahead. "Oh look, there's Daniel!"

"Daniel?" Chase asked slowly.

"Daniel!" Amelia called, waving a tall red-haired man over. "Robert, this is Daniel!"

The man smiled, stooping slightly. Chase doubted he was less than seven feet.

"How do you do?" He asked quietly, bowing deeply, a faint hint of an unidentifiable accent tingeing his words. "New boyfriend, Mel?"

"Lord no, he's my son!" Amelia beamed. "Doesn't he bear a striking resemblance?"

"To his father maybe."

"Lord, Daniel, you're an ass." Her voice was sweet, light, offering her other arm to the man. A crooked smile filled his lips as he took it, the soft satin of her gloves brushing his faded black suit jacket, just a little too short in sleeves.

"Daniel died in a Nazi air raid in World War II. Isn't that a divine way to go?"

Chase glanced at his shoes (shoe...where'd the other one go?) with a new-found interest. He had no idea how he was supposed to react.

Oh yes, it's simply marvelous. I died a good, bloody death too, you know.

Suddenly a new question filled his mind.

Was he dead?

It was like a dream, a deejay vu of long-lost memories. He was walking blindly, an empty eggshell, hollow and fragile, breakable to the last. The usual hurricane of emotion raging through his mind was silent, still.

This peace was strange without fear, without the doubt of actuality.

Why did this feel so real while nothing in this dream could ever come true?

"Oh look darling, there's Holly!" Amelia exclaimed cheerfully, turning to Daniel, "let's catch her before she runs off to that dreadfully boring husband of hers again."

She carefully unhooked a long, thin arm from her son, smiling politely, beginning to walk away called, "I'll see you soon, my dear."

"When?"

"Soon," she called eyes radiant in the brightly lit room, "we only have forever and that's not very long at all, is it?"

Chase nodded slowly, not entirely sure what he was agreeing with, turning away from them.

"Oh, and Robbie dear!"

"Ya?"

"Be careful in the masquerade! Everyone is as they seem."

Everyone is as they seem?

What kind of reason was that to be careful?

And who the hell was ever as they seemed?

Chase looked around slowly, unsure of what he was seeing.

Everyone around him had masks; perfect porcelain replicas of the owner's face, every fault and feature mirrored in a ribbon-lined façade, unpainted and pale, so fragile in their awkward fingers.

Tawdry costume jewelry hung heavily around the necks of ladies both trashy and fine, a few daring ones weaving pale plastic gems into their hair.

Laughter rung out like bells, coating the room with a sort of light air that usually had Chase gagging. It was a sort of starlit paradise of some forgotten socialite, a savoir of dying wishes drowning in silk and satin and pink campaign.

He thought he escaped this life.

He wished he had a mask to hide behind, some mateegra beads to hang himself with.

Where would suicide land you in the afterlife?

Would, could the ax fall, the floor drop, the house burn?

Sacreligious didn't even begin to describe.

Suddenly Chase didn't feel like being around these people, around any people. He pushed his way through the crowds of souls nowhere near as lost as he. He didn't belong here. He didn't belong anywhere.

His shoes were ugly.

His shirt was stained.

His socks didn't match.

It was people like him that should be colonized, social lepers diseased with themselves.

Where were his pills?

What was the treatrment for self-loathing?

He needed to get out. He needed out.

A door, an out lay ahead.

He needed to get out.

Everyone is as they seem.

Was he?

The door was cool beneath his soft palms, the smooth polish light as air.

Push the boundries.

Break on through to the other side.

It was a hallway, long and narrow lined with mirrors at all anlges, framesless and faintly smudged. A rusty, slightly crooked door barely hanging on its hinges at the other end forty feet down illiminated by a flickering, faded EXIT sign; its dusty, red-orange radiance reflected down to the glass floor benath his feet, the scene lacking nothing but innocence.

He needed to get the hell out of this place, back to Earth or life or wherever he wasn't.

Ne needed out.

His footsteps didn't echo. His heartbeat didn't sound. His breath lay caught in his throat, just behind clenched teeth.

He was getting out.

His eyes stayed glued to the floor, tracing his steps between his half-polished shoe and dirty sock with the hole in the heel. Slowly his head lifted, still unsure if they wanted to see his own reflection.

Something was wrong. His reflection was off.

He stopped walking to look himself over.

Nothing seemed too flawed.

He turned to walk again and...

No, wait. It was impossible.

Did his reflection just wink?

He was seeing things. He must be seeing things.

"I'm not crazy," he said a bit too loudly, his voice echoing slightly. His reflection's lips didn't move.

Maybe I am crazy.

He started to walk, tracing the mirrored walls with his fingertips.

He was going to get out of here if it killed him.

Maybe it already did.

He was shaking, his hand barely steadied beneath the tarnished, false brass doorknob when he felt a foreign hand close around his wrist, a bitter-tasting rag slide past his teeth, burning in his mouth, bile rising through his throat to meet the gag.

This was no way to fall.