TITLE: Reincarnation
A/N: Ok, so this is a pretty weird little fic. I admit it. But, honestly, how many ways are there to tell the story of Satine's death and Christian's response to it? Just go with it, and tell me what you think; I'd really appreciate it! All constructive criticisms are very welcome!
The terrific genius Baz owns the Moulin Rouge and Enya owns the lyrics to 'Only Time'. The only thing I own is a taped copy of Moulin Rouge and my cool Cold Adventure Obi-Wan, neither of which I'll give up without a fight. If you want them, come and pry 'em out of my kung-foo grip!
Who can say when the roads meet,
That love might be,
In your heart.
And who can say when the day sleeps,
If the night keeps all your heart?
Night keeps all your heart...
What could a hopeless girl like her have to do with religion? The only thing she had believed in was money - cold hard cash, slipped into her pale palms at the end of a hard night's work. Money bought the things she and every girl like her needed to survive - the food, the makeup, the costumes... but in the end, all the money she had ever made in her long and famous career couldn't save her.
And now, she thought with wry humor, religion had taken her back here. She saw the streets below from her rooftop perch, and imagined that if she could just spread a pair of angelic wings wide she could glide through the open window into Christian's dark garret... but since she wasn't an angel, she didn't have that option. Instead she stood, stretched her long limbs to their full extend, pulled against the loose shingles of the roof with her claws, and strode towards the edge.
She had never believed in reincarnation. At the very least she believed in some sort of heaven, one which neither she nor her coworkers would ever reach. She expected to burn eternally, if there was such a thing as hell. However, it seemed the cosmic deities had played one last cruel joke on her - she was alive again, full of memories, but in a form that could never express them.
Satine was a cat.
She was an orange angora-type cat, to be specific. Covered in a coat of silky auburn fur of mid-length, with a tail like a banner, she was quite the aristocrat. Her spirit had somehow embodied the near-lifeless skin of the cat, inflating its crushed carcass and giving it new breath. Satine would have rather stayed dead.
Then again, there was something mysterious and to her liking about prowling Monmarte's narrow streets as a true child of the night. Her green eyes caught even the tiniest movements of the town's residents, from the lesser prostitutes wandering the larger roads dejectedly to the massive rats that infested the cheap apartments. Satine was proud that she had actually caught one of the huge rodents; it had been quite a struggle, but in the end her dagger claws and finely-tuned muscles won out. There was almost an element of a dance to the kill...
Thinking back on the incident, she shuddered in self-loathing. She hadn't actually eaten the rat, mostly because the smell was more off-putting than a man's bad body odor. She was living well off the scraps fed to her by the town's residents - mostly the half-drunk 'children of the revolution' who regarded the fine feline as a kindred spirit. She had even paid a visit to those who had known her in life: Tolouse, Harold, the Argentinian. She had yet to find a way up into Christian's closed-off garret, but it wasn't for lack of effort - she had been up as high as she could get every day since she had mastered her new form.
Over a year after her death, though, being a cat was starting to get old. Monmarte's feline residents weren't too friendly towards her, except for the big tomcats. They made more advances on her than any man ever had. She generally settled them with hissing threats and a lot of angry snarls, but more than once she had turned tail and ran. Such was the life of the most beautiful cat in all of France.
One diversion she remembered with particular relish was her visit to the Duke. The filthy man had hired one of the city's less reputable prostitutes, and it had been easy enough for Satine to smell her way to the room that they were occupying. With her narrow shoulders and agile grace it had been the work of a moment to wriggle her way under the house and through a partially opened doorway. Completely ignoring the various noises - she had heard them all before - she had launched herself onto the Duke's exposed back and latched her needle-sharp claws into his pallid skin. He'd screamed in pain, a high-pitched feminine scream, and had reached back to tear her off. She hissed as loudly as her tiny frame would allow and had sunk her sharp little teeth into his knuckle, drawing plenty of blood. He nearly flew off the bed, shaking his hand and dancing around in mad rage and pain as she clawed her way up his back and onto his greasy head. She had yowled and hissed loud enough to wake the dead, all the while clawing at any exposed skin she could sink her little claws into.
Eventually he had managed to tear her from his bloodied scalp. She had kicked and bit, snarling and spitting like a mad thing, until he had dropped her out of sheer agony. His hands looked like sides of raw beef. Once she had hit the floor she headed promptly for his very expensive suit and tore it to pieces. Before the Duke could hit her with any damaging object she had streaked out the door and into the night, feeling very satisfied with her handiwork. The disgusting taste of the Duke's vile blood had been quite worth the pain and embarrassment she had caused him.
Now she found herself without a purpose. Blessed and cursed in the same instance by her human intelligence she was unable to occupy herself with normal cat activities. She slept for most of the day, spent the early evening begging for scraps, and wandered around in the dark of night, left only to contemplate the shambles of her former life. For the first time in either life, she felt ashamed. She felt ashamed that she couldn't have found an alternate way of living, ashamed that she had let herself be used, ashamed that she hadn't tried hard enough to find an outlet for her talents in acting. It was all over now - what could a cat do about any of it?
The sun slowly rose over the soot-darkened rooftops of the city, illuminating Satine's fiery coat and giving her the appearance of some sacred feline demigoddess. It was in the light that she saw the means of climbing to her lover's previously inaccessible garret - from this newly-explored rooftop she caught sight of a particularly small gap that she could easily bridge with a single leap. The eagerly set off, tail held high, pulse racing. She couldn't speak, but she could curl up in his lap and purr, sit beside his typewriter and inspire him to write...
She didn't even plan the leap to his garret. Her golden body sailed across the open space like a comet and hit the opposite ledge with exquisite grace, her delicate pink pads clinging to the dirty surface like glue. From there it was only a series of swift leaps between window ledges to reach his... she ignored the gasps of the building's other residents as the majestic animal landed like a feather outside their windows, then leaped away as swiftly as she had come.
The golden cat sensed something was wrong, even before she climbed up onto his window ledge. His tattered curtains fluttered like wraiths through the open space, partially obscuring her view into the dark room. It was eerily silent; Satine's finely-tuned feline ears couldn't even hear her lover's breathing. She stepped cautiously into the room, leaping down off the windowsill and onto the floor, which was covered in a thick coat of dust. Typed sheets of paper littered the floor, many of them covered in red ink. She approached one of these sheets and read it with difficulty, adjusting her eyes - ill suited for reading - to the fine print.
"While the party raged on upstairs, I tried to write - but all I could think about was her."
A lump formed in Satine's throat even as a deep purr rumbled up from her furry chest as she recognized the manuscript before her. It was their story, typed and finished, hand-bound lovingly and covered in tear marks. But... where was the author of it? Where was Christian? A sudden cold fear struck Satine as she noticed the empty bottles of alcohol littering the floor, the thick cobwebs that obscured the typewriter... if he had finished their story, he must have had to use the beloved Underwood, but the dust atop it was obviously weeks old.
It was then that she recognized the scent assaulting her delicate nose - it was the scent of death. She fearfully rounded the mattress on the floor, terrified of what she would find, and all her worst nightmares were confirmed when she saw the body sprawled among the typed papers and bottles. She gave a howl of pain and ran up to the still, cold form and gently nosed his hand, willing him to rise up and stroke her... but he would never rise again. In a desperate fit of disbelief she licked his cheek, tasted the salt of long-dried tears, smelled the familiar smells of his skin, once so warm to the touch...
~-~-~-
When the owner of the building came in a few weeks later to check up on one of her boarders, the young writer who hadn't paid his rent, she found the door unlocked. She walked in to the cooing of pigeons and other city birds that had made their roost there, and typed papers lay strewn everywhere, blown by the wind. The window was open and the garret was cold and drafty, and for a moment the women thought that the young man had left his garret and run to avoid paying the rent. Then she spied an odd sight, one she would ever forget - the body of the young man lay prostrate on the floor with a small, lithe orange car curled up on his lifeless chest. When the woman reached down to pick the animal up and shoo it out, she found that it, too, had died, but she could find no cause of it.
Only the angels in heaven knew what had happened to the strange little feline. Satine had died of a broken heart that day when she found Christian's body, just as her lover had only a little while before. Some of the citizens of Monmarte, those that still remembered the glory-days of the Moulin Rouge and its star, the Sparkling Diamond, would tell strange tales about the spirits that haunted the streets below the lonely garret. They spoke of the ghost of a young man who would walk down the street singing, followed by a beautiful orange cat. When the odd pair reached the gates of the Moulin Rouge the cat would leap into the man's open arms and both would vanish, leaving the eerie voice of a woman sighing on the wind...
"And I can't help loving you..."
A/N: Ok, so this is a pretty weird little fic. I admit it. But, honestly, how many ways are there to tell the story of Satine's death and Christian's response to it? Just go with it, and tell me what you think; I'd really appreciate it! All constructive criticisms are very welcome!
The terrific genius Baz owns the Moulin Rouge and Enya owns the lyrics to 'Only Time'. The only thing I own is a taped copy of Moulin Rouge and my cool Cold Adventure Obi-Wan, neither of which I'll give up without a fight. If you want them, come and pry 'em out of my kung-foo grip!
Who can say when the roads meet,
That love might be,
In your heart.
And who can say when the day sleeps,
If the night keeps all your heart?
Night keeps all your heart...
What could a hopeless girl like her have to do with religion? The only thing she had believed in was money - cold hard cash, slipped into her pale palms at the end of a hard night's work. Money bought the things she and every girl like her needed to survive - the food, the makeup, the costumes... but in the end, all the money she had ever made in her long and famous career couldn't save her.
And now, she thought with wry humor, religion had taken her back here. She saw the streets below from her rooftop perch, and imagined that if she could just spread a pair of angelic wings wide she could glide through the open window into Christian's dark garret... but since she wasn't an angel, she didn't have that option. Instead she stood, stretched her long limbs to their full extend, pulled against the loose shingles of the roof with her claws, and strode towards the edge.
She had never believed in reincarnation. At the very least she believed in some sort of heaven, one which neither she nor her coworkers would ever reach. She expected to burn eternally, if there was such a thing as hell. However, it seemed the cosmic deities had played one last cruel joke on her - she was alive again, full of memories, but in a form that could never express them.
Satine was a cat.
She was an orange angora-type cat, to be specific. Covered in a coat of silky auburn fur of mid-length, with a tail like a banner, she was quite the aristocrat. Her spirit had somehow embodied the near-lifeless skin of the cat, inflating its crushed carcass and giving it new breath. Satine would have rather stayed dead.
Then again, there was something mysterious and to her liking about prowling Monmarte's narrow streets as a true child of the night. Her green eyes caught even the tiniest movements of the town's residents, from the lesser prostitutes wandering the larger roads dejectedly to the massive rats that infested the cheap apartments. Satine was proud that she had actually caught one of the huge rodents; it had been quite a struggle, but in the end her dagger claws and finely-tuned muscles won out. There was almost an element of a dance to the kill...
Thinking back on the incident, she shuddered in self-loathing. She hadn't actually eaten the rat, mostly because the smell was more off-putting than a man's bad body odor. She was living well off the scraps fed to her by the town's residents - mostly the half-drunk 'children of the revolution' who regarded the fine feline as a kindred spirit. She had even paid a visit to those who had known her in life: Tolouse, Harold, the Argentinian. She had yet to find a way up into Christian's closed-off garret, but it wasn't for lack of effort - she had been up as high as she could get every day since she had mastered her new form.
Over a year after her death, though, being a cat was starting to get old. Monmarte's feline residents weren't too friendly towards her, except for the big tomcats. They made more advances on her than any man ever had. She generally settled them with hissing threats and a lot of angry snarls, but more than once she had turned tail and ran. Such was the life of the most beautiful cat in all of France.
One diversion she remembered with particular relish was her visit to the Duke. The filthy man had hired one of the city's less reputable prostitutes, and it had been easy enough for Satine to smell her way to the room that they were occupying. With her narrow shoulders and agile grace it had been the work of a moment to wriggle her way under the house and through a partially opened doorway. Completely ignoring the various noises - she had heard them all before - she had launched herself onto the Duke's exposed back and latched her needle-sharp claws into his pallid skin. He'd screamed in pain, a high-pitched feminine scream, and had reached back to tear her off. She hissed as loudly as her tiny frame would allow and had sunk her sharp little teeth into his knuckle, drawing plenty of blood. He nearly flew off the bed, shaking his hand and dancing around in mad rage and pain as she clawed her way up his back and onto his greasy head. She had yowled and hissed loud enough to wake the dead, all the while clawing at any exposed skin she could sink her little claws into.
Eventually he had managed to tear her from his bloodied scalp. She had kicked and bit, snarling and spitting like a mad thing, until he had dropped her out of sheer agony. His hands looked like sides of raw beef. Once she had hit the floor she headed promptly for his very expensive suit and tore it to pieces. Before the Duke could hit her with any damaging object she had streaked out the door and into the night, feeling very satisfied with her handiwork. The disgusting taste of the Duke's vile blood had been quite worth the pain and embarrassment she had caused him.
Now she found herself without a purpose. Blessed and cursed in the same instance by her human intelligence she was unable to occupy herself with normal cat activities. She slept for most of the day, spent the early evening begging for scraps, and wandered around in the dark of night, left only to contemplate the shambles of her former life. For the first time in either life, she felt ashamed. She felt ashamed that she couldn't have found an alternate way of living, ashamed that she had let herself be used, ashamed that she hadn't tried hard enough to find an outlet for her talents in acting. It was all over now - what could a cat do about any of it?
The sun slowly rose over the soot-darkened rooftops of the city, illuminating Satine's fiery coat and giving her the appearance of some sacred feline demigoddess. It was in the light that she saw the means of climbing to her lover's previously inaccessible garret - from this newly-explored rooftop she caught sight of a particularly small gap that she could easily bridge with a single leap. The eagerly set off, tail held high, pulse racing. She couldn't speak, but she could curl up in his lap and purr, sit beside his typewriter and inspire him to write...
She didn't even plan the leap to his garret. Her golden body sailed across the open space like a comet and hit the opposite ledge with exquisite grace, her delicate pink pads clinging to the dirty surface like glue. From there it was only a series of swift leaps between window ledges to reach his... she ignored the gasps of the building's other residents as the majestic animal landed like a feather outside their windows, then leaped away as swiftly as she had come.
The golden cat sensed something was wrong, even before she climbed up onto his window ledge. His tattered curtains fluttered like wraiths through the open space, partially obscuring her view into the dark room. It was eerily silent; Satine's finely-tuned feline ears couldn't even hear her lover's breathing. She stepped cautiously into the room, leaping down off the windowsill and onto the floor, which was covered in a thick coat of dust. Typed sheets of paper littered the floor, many of them covered in red ink. She approached one of these sheets and read it with difficulty, adjusting her eyes - ill suited for reading - to the fine print.
"While the party raged on upstairs, I tried to write - but all I could think about was her."
A lump formed in Satine's throat even as a deep purr rumbled up from her furry chest as she recognized the manuscript before her. It was their story, typed and finished, hand-bound lovingly and covered in tear marks. But... where was the author of it? Where was Christian? A sudden cold fear struck Satine as she noticed the empty bottles of alcohol littering the floor, the thick cobwebs that obscured the typewriter... if he had finished their story, he must have had to use the beloved Underwood, but the dust atop it was obviously weeks old.
It was then that she recognized the scent assaulting her delicate nose - it was the scent of death. She fearfully rounded the mattress on the floor, terrified of what she would find, and all her worst nightmares were confirmed when she saw the body sprawled among the typed papers and bottles. She gave a howl of pain and ran up to the still, cold form and gently nosed his hand, willing him to rise up and stroke her... but he would never rise again. In a desperate fit of disbelief she licked his cheek, tasted the salt of long-dried tears, smelled the familiar smells of his skin, once so warm to the touch...
~-~-~-
When the owner of the building came in a few weeks later to check up on one of her boarders, the young writer who hadn't paid his rent, she found the door unlocked. She walked in to the cooing of pigeons and other city birds that had made their roost there, and typed papers lay strewn everywhere, blown by the wind. The window was open and the garret was cold and drafty, and for a moment the women thought that the young man had left his garret and run to avoid paying the rent. Then she spied an odd sight, one she would ever forget - the body of the young man lay prostrate on the floor with a small, lithe orange car curled up on his lifeless chest. When the woman reached down to pick the animal up and shoo it out, she found that it, too, had died, but she could find no cause of it.
Only the angels in heaven knew what had happened to the strange little feline. Satine had died of a broken heart that day when she found Christian's body, just as her lover had only a little while before. Some of the citizens of Monmarte, those that still remembered the glory-days of the Moulin Rouge and its star, the Sparkling Diamond, would tell strange tales about the spirits that haunted the streets below the lonely garret. They spoke of the ghost of a young man who would walk down the street singing, followed by a beautiful orange cat. When the odd pair reached the gates of the Moulin Rouge the cat would leap into the man's open arms and both would vanish, leaving the eerie voice of a woman sighing on the wind...
"And I can't help loving you..."