Welcome! This is my first attempt at a serious, multichapter phic, so I hope that you enjoy it...The muses finally decided to be kind to me. I, quite frankly, am surprised.

Don't worry, Catty. We'll stop soon.

...well, that wasn't very nice.

It's fairly normal for her, though...

That is true.

So! What do you need to know about my phic? Well, it's basically an alternate-universe thing...same story, only with a different female lead (my OW) and secondary male co-star (my OC). It's the biography of the OW, starting with her birth and ending with her death. The universe is a mix of Leroux and ALW, with some hints of Kay...Leroux!Erik, only with hair, and slightly more sane. I'm not going to reveal her name yet...you'll have to read on to find out.

Disclaimer: Erik, Nadir, Darius, Carlotta, Ayesha, and the general story are the artistic property of Gaston Leroux, Susan Kay, and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Anyone you didn't see in the originals is the artistic property of, well, me. Rating subject to change.

Let the phanphic--BEGIN! -whisks back the curtains-

Prologue

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show..."

--from David Copperfield

Call me a hero if you wish. Hero or villain, angel or fiend, an innocent flower or a scheming harlot. I have been painted as many things, a saint, a martyr, a siren...even the embodiment of Sin itself is amongst them. It depends on the point of view of the storyteller, I suppose--and there were many narrators in my story. However, I suspect many of the most influential will not see this manuscript. These old bones cannot move very far any more, I fear.

So why do I write?

I am not trying to plead my innocence for any crime I may have committed, as some of you may readily claim. No one is completely innocent. In our lifes we are all guilty of our various violations of the Commandments, be they lipping off to a parent or oppressor, crushing an insect or a spirit, breaking a vase, a promise, or a heart. We cannot "be perfect, as your Father is perfect"--those who seek perfection are bound to be bitterly disappointed.

Nor am I recording my life for future generations. Christoph, Michaela, Robert, and even little Carina are all too busy with their own lifes and families to care about the simple well-being of their old mother, let alone all the excruciating details of her bleak--although certainly never boring--and quite frankly useless life. If future generations want to read this, then they are more than welcome to do so. This is by no means a diary, something under lock and key filled with girlish dreams of a world filled with sugar and cream and fairy-tale endings, fairies and sunlight and fat pink carnations...and escape from the harsh blood reds and ugly words of life.

Not to say that life was entirely horrible for me. I laughed, danced, sang and dreamed, loved and was was loved back tenfold. I had enemies, but also comrades, friends and lovers. I made horrible mistakes, but I spent every day I breathed trying to correct them. I even lived in upper-class comfort for a time. But as many say, "There is no rainbow without rain," and I am indeed, no stranger to the rain.

For you see, I was more than one person. In the minor sense, yes, I was an actress, but my non-fictional identity in life was uprooted and replanted anew, not once but twice. From early childhood I was encouraged, commanded to abandon my self and become an entirely different person, adapt to a new life in a matter of days...just to have it all torn away at early adolescence, and to rebuild it all by hand. Oh, my dear, if only you knew...

Some of us go through our entire lives masked, playing our different roles so convincingly we forget which is the true self and which the facade...until looking into the mirror, we see only a mask. His was literal, mine figurative, but all the same, we were both living a masquerade. Perhaps that was why I was drawn to him...we were each other's looking-glass. We saw only the truth in one another's eyes. Don't get me wrong, I loved my Ben dearly, but there has not been a day since I left my earthbound angel that my ears have not been full of his sighs. I can still remember that one song, the last one he taught me before my looking-glass was shattered...

Were we cursed or blessed?

Amongst these pages is my unmasked self--all of it, not just the "nice" qualities. Read them, and form your own opinion of this poor broken shell...

I'd sign my name, but I'm not sure what it is anymore.

Well, that's the Prologue! The Review button is below...I have high expectations for this phic. You know the drill, and I shall be back with the first chapter soon.

Yours most sincerely,

--C.F. & Co.