A/N: What possessed me to attempt a Gone with the Wind/Phantom of the Opera crossover? All I can say is, inspiration works in the strangest ways, and this idea suddenly popped into my head while I was contemplating an Erik-Carlotta humor piece (don't laugh! I was going to have her chew on his mask thinking it's made of white chocolate—hey, she did eat her hat in Hannibal!)

Edible masks aside, I will be basing this story on the movie versions of both works, since first of all they have such memorable faces and performances, and second of all, the timeline of the GWTW movie flows so perfectly into the timeline of the POTO movie. Scarlett is sixteen at the start of the Civil War and twenty-eight by the time she separates from her husband, making the year 1873—roughly three years after the events in Phantom.

Hope you guys don't think I'm too crazy for attempting an Erik-Scarlett story…and if I do seem that wacky, hey, remember that I'm the same author who came up with the so-very-brilliant idea of goosing Erik!

And now let's begin, shall we? Here's a prologue to serve as a sneak preview of things to come, as well as introduce the character of Scarlett to those who haven't seen the movie or read Margaret Mitchell's epic book.

Mrs. Rhett Butler of Georgia, née Scarlett O'Hara, was not a beautiful woman, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm.

The infamous Phantom of the Opera, née Erik, cut a seductively arresting figure, but few members of the fairer sex could still be held spellbound by his sensuous charisma when face-to-face with the grotesquely scarred portion of his profile.

Scarlett had once loved and hated with a fiery ardor deemed scandalous and unladylike by polite society.

Erik's all-consuming passion and murderous rage had often driven him to the brink of madness and despair.

Scarlett embellished her beauty with apple-green silks which accentuated her pale green, tip-tilted eyes.

Erik enshrouded himself in expensive black, hiding behind a cloak of dashing mystery.

Scarlett was selfish, strong-willed, and ambitious enough to occasionally slip into the clutches of ruthlessness.

Erik was possessive, moody, and cruelly vindictive in his vengeance against the world that had wronged him.

Scarlett was quick of temper and tart of tongue beneath her façade of a well-bred Southern aristocrat. Yet, without batting an eyelash, she could also turn heart-meltingly charming—if that were to best suit her designs.

Erik had never set out to charm: instead, he seduced, he overwhelmed, he terrorized—and he murdered.

Scarlett was haughty in her knowledge of her winsome looks, and secure in her power and her impressive bank account.

Erik had no illusions about his disfigured appearance, but the air with which he carried himself in his underground catacomb of darkness was the imperious air of a king.

Scarlett had lost the one man she'd finally realized she cherished above life itself, all due to her stubborn blindness and her fruitless clinging to girlhood fantasies.

Erik had heartbrokenly released his Angel on Earth, so that instead of being bound to his black soul, she might instead make a match with one whose face and heart were as fair and clean as hers.

On that fateful spring of 1873, Scarlett and Erik, though separated by an ocean, were as one in their shrewdness and their determination, wielded the same irresistibility over the opposite sex…and had both recently lost the loves of their lives because of their own weaknesses.