Title: "How I Used To Be"
By: "Toulouse Lautrec" (wow, am I a fan or what?)
Rating: PG-13: contains blood and is completly disturbing. Oh, and there's swearing...at least what *I* consider swearing.
Genre: Angst. All hail angst.
Disclaimer: All I own is a very worn out copy of the Moulin Rouge VHS. Toulouse and Christian and Satine belong to that Baz guy. (But I'd be willing to buy Toulouse!!)
Summary: After the big party, Christian finds Toulouse in a strange state of mind and tries to help him through it. (Need more explanation? All in good time.)
Christian was exhausted. He had moved into a new home, gotten a new job, met new friends, found his true love, played a massive trick on a rather stupid duke, and partied all night, all in one day. The party in Toulouse's garret had died down a few hours before, and all the guests were gone by the time Christian got around to going to sleep. All was silent upstairs, downstairs, outside, inside, to the left, to the right, shake it all night... ugh. He needed sleep, and badly. With a loud yawn, Christian crawled into his bed. He was asleep in mere seconds.
~~~
Satine... she was so beautiful, her hair so luxurious, her figure so full... sure she had the type of "experience" his father wouldn't approve of, but she was willing to let it all go, her whole past, just for him.
He smiled as she leaned up against him, her arms stretching around to the back of his neck, holding herself closer, pushing herself against his chest, her face getting closer as well, until their lips almost touched. So entangled, she started whispering endearments between her little moans as she kissed him. She needed him, he needed her, it was so perfect...
Suddenly she was gone from his grip, she sunk to the floor before he could catch her and shattered to a million pieces, a million sparkling diamonds. She tinkled along the floor, cracked, broken... crying...
~~~
Crying...
Christian awoke with a start, and found himself sitting up in his bed, sheets pooled around his waist. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then he sighed. A dream, all a terrible dream. Well, maybe not SO terrible, the first part wasn't all that bad...
If only she would stop that damned crying.
Wait a minute.
Christian shook his head and forced his eyes to focus at the floor. No, it hadn't been a dream.
There were shards of glass scattered all over his table, on his floor. She hadn't shattered... but something HAD.
That crying... so quiet, almost sounding as if it was being restrained, or smothered by a pillow.
Christian swung his legs out of bed and placed them carefully on the floor, making sure not to step on any glass.
Surely something... someone... was the source of those quieted sobs.
He looked up at his ceiling, noticing for the thousandth time that there was a hole there. Had to get that fixed sometime. Someone could get hurt. Like his head, it hurt... no more parties, especially not the kind that Toulouse thr—oh...
Christian steadied himself and tiptoed his way through the glass. The ladder was still where they had left it, bridging a world of chaos with a world of... more chaos. So much chaos, it made you wonder how any of those bohemians could survive...
He shook his head again. Mind, stop wandering, you're drunk as hell and I care far too much for you to let you go off on your own.
One step up. Two steps higher than he normally stood. Three rungs off the floor. Four and he could look over the jagged edge of the hole.
This was as far as he wanted to venture tonight. Periscope-like, he scanned the room, looking for the source of the crying.
The place was a mess, but Christian could tell that the broken glass was a recent addition to the catastrophic appearance of the apartment.
...Success! What other... celebrate but... slipping... no...
Now where was that... oh, there he was, cowering in a corner, his face buried in his hands. Christian couldn't help but feel sorry for the little man. Surely he had broken his last bottle of Absinthe and was mourning its loss. No problem there. He blinked a few more times and his eyes worked their way out of his alcohol-induced bleariness.
...Crawling... demands...why...
Something wasn't quite right.
...Right? It was never... the fairness... helpless... situations...
Not that anything was EVER right in that squalid little attic, but something was disturbingly off.
Christian stared a bit harder and was confused to see Toulouse's cane under a table. Now why would it be there?
...Skidding to a... crutch... what it really... escaping...
He blinked again, looked back at the figure hunched into the corner. It was all so confusing. His mind wouldn't be able to take much more actual thinking. He climbed up one more rung on the ladder and leaned his elbows on the edge of the hole.
...Glass...who cared...curling up... shutting down...
He wanted to call out, ask what had happened, have the mystery solved in one easy little conversation so he could go back to sleep, maybe pick up that dream just a little before where it left off... But he was frozen in place, too tired to move up or down, too tired to stop staring at Toulouse, even when he started moving, wiping at his own tears, smearing them across his face.
...Cruel, always cruel... just once... give up...
Too tired to react when he realized that the tears were red, the tears were blood, the tears were mixing with the blood, his face red, red as Satine's dress, but this was no time to think about her. Too tired to even notice the way he moved, shifted, turned, reached... grabbed. Too tired to do anything but watch, in the way that people watch movies; wide-eyed, unmoving, only watching, knowing there is nothing they can do to stop them from going into the room where the axe murder is hiding.
...Make them care... forget it all... end it...
A sudden break in his paralysis, a surge of action. He scrambled up the final rungs, across the floor, avoiding the glass, falling to his knees even before reaching him, sliding in next to him, snatching it out of his hands, grabbing him by the shoulders, looking right in his eyes, all in one motion, one moment, one swift smooth sweep, unbroken, unstoppable, unblinking.
Toulouse didn't look all that surprised at Christian's sudden arrival, didn't look surprised when he was grabbed, didn't look at all. His eyes were tightly shut, like the eyes of a child making a wish with all his might, all his being.
He found, somewhere in his deepest reserves, his voice, high-pitched, worried, angry, disbelieving, worried most of all, because blood doesn't get on someone's face, not that much blood, not by accident, not at all. "What are you doing?"
He didn't open his eyes, didn't speak. He slumped. That's all.
...Forget it, just... enough...ENOUGH!
Christian's worry overcame everything else, fogged his vision, clouded his judgment. He shook the smaller man, trying to make him respond. "Toulouse! Hey! Come on!"
The response was to be pushed away, bloodied handprints on his wrists. "Weave me awone." A bit raspy, but a response nonetheless. He turned away, curled into a little ball, ignored Christian's presence, let the tears come again.
Christian looked confused, looked around the room, looked for a broom. In the darkness, he quietly swept up the glass, his eyes on Toulouse, still in the corner, crying again, little wracking sobs, confusing little sobs, from a confusing, sad little man. Christian stopped sweeping when he reached the table.
...Who needs this anyway? I'm...
He kneeled, reached under the table, and fished out the cane. Why would it be under the table? He glanced over his shoulder at Toulouse, who had managed to wedge himself so tightly in the corner that the wall looked like it melted into the floor. He had his hands over his face again, and though he couldn't see it, Christian knew that face was covered in blood, and though he didn't know how it had gotten that way, he figured he should do something about it. Standing, he placed the cane on the table and went to the tiny kitchen in search of something to help with.
...So dark...