See Right Through

by She's a Star

Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge belongs to Bazziekins (mwahahaha), and 'Naked' belongs to Miss Avril Lavigne.

Author's Note: When I first heard this song, it reminded me perfectly of Satine, so I decided to do a fic. Whoohoo! Unfortunately, writers' block has attacked me so it kind of...sucks. What a surprise. I've been working on it from time to time for over a month, and it's a bit...blah. Will ya be nice and review anyway? *smiles sweetly*

~*~

"Chickpea, it's absolutely marvelous!"

Harold Zidler's booming voice filled Satine's ears as he burst into the hall where she'd been 'practicing' one of the love scenes in Spectacular Spectacular with Christian.

Those things needed to be worked on quite often, you see.

"What is, Harold?" she asked, immediately pulling away from Christian and wiping the smeared lipstick from her mouth.

Harold studied them quizzically for a moment, and Satine added in a tone of breathy nonchalance, "We were just rehearsing. The Argentinean's fallen asleep again."

"I see," Harold said, sounding unconvinced but not pressing the matter any further. "Well, that can wait until later, sparrow! It's finished!"

"What's finished?" Satine asked, impatient laughter escaping her lips.

"Your dressing room, of course!" Harold exclaimed jovially. "And it's positively spectacular! That duke certainly went all out, that's for sure!"

"Wonderful," Satine responded faintly, struggling to keep the sarcasm from her tone.

"Come see it now, pumpkin!" Harold urged. "You're going to love it!"

"All right," Satine agreed, forcing a smile. She turned to Christian and informed him coolly, "We shall continue this later, Mr. Claremont."

"Yes, Miss Satine," Christian responded quietly, fixing his gaze on the floor. Sighing inwardly, Satine followed Harold out of the dance hall and up the stairs to the door which led to her dressing room.

A sign proclaiming her name in bold letters hung on the door, giving off a faint aura of importance. Chuckling to himself, Harold threw open the door.

"Ta-da!" he cried, gesturing with flourish.

It certainly was beautiful, especially when compared to the back of the can-can dancers' bedroom that had served as her dressing room before. A canopy bed covered in pastel sheets stood in one corner of the room, and paintings covered the walls. It was clear that furnishing the room had cost a fortune.

"Do you like it, Chickpea?"

"It's beautiful," Satine responded lightly, knowing that she hadn't answered his question but hoping he wouldn't notice.

"I-"

"Harold!"

Looking panicked, Marie rushed into the room.

"Harry," she said, "One o' the girls is threatenin' to slit 'er wrists again. You'd better go calm her down."

With a heavy sigh, Harold followed Marie out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

Satine was alone, and now had to fight to resist the urge to destroy the whole damned place. She wanted to smash the mirrors into a million pieces, to rip the fine silken sheets to shreds and throw the bottles of expensive perfume out of the window.

But of course she couldn't.

She knew she couldn't.

She couldn't do anything, it seemed, but look gorgeous and parade around as though she had no emotions.

It was always the same.

Her reflection stared back at her in the mirror, blue eyes dim and lifeless. How she longed to be back in Christian's garret. It was tiny, poorly furnished, and Satine's favorite place in the world. She didn't have to pretend there.

She was only herself.

Not here.

Here, she was constantly pretending.

"I wake up in the morning," she sang softly, her voice cutting through the silent air like a knife. "Put on my face...the one that's gonna get me through another day."

Without the makeup, she knew she wasn't as beautiful as people thought. Would she really be so desirable, if her lips weren't a seductive scarlet, if her eyes weren't lined in dark shadow? No.

Without the makeup, she was just Satine, and just Satine wasn't good enough for anyone.

"Doesn't really matter how I feel inside," she continued. "This life is like a game sometimes."

The second she'd stepped into the Moulin Rouge, that was what her world had become. A game, an endless game of pretend. If you were a courtesan, your soul was immediately reduced to nothing. You were a body, a possession, something that could be bought.

Nothing more.

No one could ever love you.

Or at least, that was what she had thought....

Until Christian.

"Then you came around me," she continued, a smile blossoming upon her face and seeming to bring life into her features. "The walls just disappeared...nothing to surround me, and keep me from my fears."

For so long, she'd trapped herself in the Sparkling Diamond facade, claiming to herself that the Moulin Rouge had destroyed her. But when Christian had come, he'd somehow shown her how to live again, how to love.

And that's when she'd discovered that the only person keeping her from living was herself.

"I'm unprotected," she sang out, her voice growing lighter and more hopeful with each word. "See how I've opened up? You've made me trust."

Satine had never really trusted anyone since she'd come to the Moulin. Harold seemed the perfect father figure, always laughing and joking with her and affectionately spilling out pet names. But she knew that Harold would hurt her in an instant, if he thought that it would profit business. She couldn't even begin to have the tiniest bit of faith in any of the other dancers or prostitutes: the dearest wish of most of them was to rip her apart, limb from limb.

But she knew that she could trust Christian. He would never hurt her.

It seemed he could do nothing but love her.

"I've never felt like this before," she breathed, allowing herself to collapse onto the bed and study the swirling cream-colored ceiling. "I'm naked around you...does it show?"

Absently gnawing on a fingernail for a moment, she continued.

"You see right through me and I can't hide...I'm naked around you..."

To have someone see her for what she really was had always scared Satine. Even as a child she'd pretended, afraid that she couldn't live up to the expectations of her parents. She'd never cried, never showed the tiniest bit of emotion. Instead she kept it all inside, and she still had.

Yet, now, with Christian...

"It feels so right."

Nothing had ever felt truly right to Satine before, not in the way that this did. The only other feeling she could remember experiencing that was even remotely like it was in some ways exactly the same and in others the complete opposite. It was when she'd gotten her first piece of diamond jewelry from Harold, along with a jovial promise that the necklace certainly wouldn't be the last.

Breaths soft and trembling, she'd lifted the necklace to her throat and clasped each end together. A strange sort of numbed completeness had come over her, something that both thrilled her and scared her at the same time. She hadn't been able to place what the feeling was at the time, but now Satine knew.

She was being trapped.

Tied down.

Her wings had been clipped in that single moment, and all she'd seen was the radiant sparkle of the jewels that encircled her long neck.

She fingered the bare skin where the necklace had once fallen, singing softly to herself.

"I'm trying to remember why I was afraid to be myself and let the covers fall away."

Fear was a dangerous thing, but it was something that Satine had cowered at the prospect of her entire life. She hadn't really realized it, but she'd always been afraid of everything. Of poverty, starvation, pain, jealousy....

But above all things, love.

She'd been so scared of love.

It seemed so foolish now. Love had saved her, had granted every wish that she'd yearned for each night without truly admitting that she'd wanted anything more than diamonds and men she didn't care for.

"I guess I never had someone like you to help me fit in my skin..."

Satine sometimes wondered what it would be like, if she hadn't confused Christian with the Duke. Each time, she felt sickened, grew dizzy; life would have been so terrible without him. When he told her she was beautiful, he looked beyond the dark lipstick and heavily lined eyes, staring straight into her soul. When he kissed her, it was because he loved her and not because sin had sunk her teeth into him and forced him to do things he knew he'd regret.

He loved Satine, not the Diamond: a feat that no one had appeared to accomplish until now.

She stared around the dressing room for a moment more, feeling strangely detached from the fine things that surrounded her. Yes, on the outside she was the Sparkling Diamond, only deserving of the best, but on the inside, she was only Satine.

And all she wanted was Christian.

She didn't need anything else.

"My dear?"

Satine spun around at once to see the Duke standing behind her, eyes glinting with a strange sort of pride.

"Do you like it?" he asked, a crooked smile making its way across his face. "I made sure that it was a dressing room fit for a diamond."

"And that it certainly is, my darling duke," Satine responded truthfully.

And perhaps, she added silently, A diamond could appreciate it.

"Shall we resume rehearsing? The Argentinean has regained consciousness."

"Wonderful," Satine said lightly. "I'll join you in just a moment."

"All right, my sweet," the Duke said, smiling before he turned and left the room.

With a tired sigh, she locked eyes with herself in the mirror.

"I'm so naked around you," she sighed, trying to envision Christian standing next to her. "And I can't hide...

You're gonna see right through, baby."

FIN