Disclaimer: I don't own Moulin Rouge or anything akin. Although I am from Argentina :D.
"Where love is for the highest bidder, there can be no trust. Without trust, there is no love! And jealousy will drive you mad." -El Tango de Roxanne.
Walking on Avenida Pacifica. Feeling rather ill, in the tight black dress and corset. Black heels click-click-click against the pedestrian only flagstones of the avenue. It's not cold, but it feels cold. I can feel the cold.
"Roxanne." A gravely, commanding voice at my back. I stop, but I do not turn. I know who the voice belongs to.
"Roxanne!" he barks. I move my head a fraction to the left, to show him I have heard. He glares. The cold comes from his eyes, two black tunnels full of nothingness and everything. Frightening black tunnels that I cannot quite meet. I focus on his chest, notice that his shirt is buttoned oddly. Exposing the berry brown of his skin; the albino whiteness and purply blackness of the many scars. I wince.
"You don't have to turn on the red light," he says, mournfully. Despite myself, my mouth twitches into a cynical smirk. Face forward again, march a few more steps. Click-click.
"You walk the streets for money!" he shouts, stopping me again. This time I face him. The fury that has been concealed in his face up until this point is emblazoned on his stark features. It makes me gasp in surprise and fear.
"You don't care if it is wrong," he steps closer, I step back. "Or if it is right." I turn.
"You're-"
"Roxanne!" he is roaring, grabbing me by the arms, swinging me around in the middle of the Avenida.
"You don't have to wear that dress tonight," He tells me. "Roxanne...you don't have to sell your body to the night."
His face is a contorted mask of anger, pain, and yet somehow more mournful than anything. Breaks my heart into a thousand fragments of glass and iron...shattered in the gaping pit of my stomach. Yet somehow my voice is steady.
"Roxanne," softly, more gently than I've ever heard him say anything. Gravel cradled on a soft pillow. I close my eyes.
"Roxanne." I let a shuddering breath leave my throat. We are standing on the Avenida Pacifica, and I can feel the chill. Perhaps from the slowly descending rain upon my skin. Or his hands, the size of mallets, cold as ice, pulling to me to his burning flesh. For several moments, we stand this way.
"This doesn't happen." I say finally.
"What?" he asks.
"This," pull away, walk backward two steps. "Doesn't happen."
Walk away, click-click-click of heels on pavement. It begins to rain harder, harder. My makeup blurs, dribbling down my face like tears. Run across the Avenida, run from his embrace and his chill and his jealousy. Jealousy. Jealousy.
"Roxanne!" I can hear him scream.
"Jealousy," I breathe. "Will drive you..."
A mallet-hand spins me around, catches me firmly by the wrist. I cannot feel the other.
"Will drive you-" Steely press of the knife against my bare back. We are dancing in the street, passionate in the last moment.
A small, sharp pain. A muted gasp. A crumpled body upon the floor, blood flowing from its back.
"Mad."