Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognizable. The song lyrics are from "Come What May" which is from, well, the movie.

"Come back to me…and forgive everything!" Her voice echoed through the theater and sliced its way to Christian's heart, forcing him to stop. He tried to move but his feet didn't want to. It seemed that her siren song would trap him there in the Moulin Rouge, with her.

Only to suffer when she breaks your heart again, a voice whispered in his ear. He realised these were his own thoughts.

"Seasons may change," she continued in that irresistible voice, "winter to spring, but I love you until the end of time."

There was silence now. Christian took a deep breath. He could turn around and go back to her, they could pretend everything was alright. But he couldn't just ignore the way she had broken his heart. He couldn't ignore the feeling of fear that told him she would do it again. He remembered that she was a courtesan. And he…well, he was a penniless poet, and what could he offer her?

"Come what may," he whispered. No one else heard it. His feet began to move forward again and from behind he could hear the sound of someone beginning to sob. He raised his chin and blocked the noise out.

He hesitated at the door.

Satine's broken voice came to him from the stage. "Come what may."

Christian was on the brink of turning around. His hand was hovering just above the doorknob, the words of their secret love song caught in his throat. And then—

"No!"

It tore from his throat and brought him to his senses. Forcefully, he pulled open the door and strode out into the cold and the snow, leaving the Moulin Rouge and the woman he thought he loved—the woman he thought loved him—behind forever.

The letter was slipped through the crack underneath his door in the early hours of the morning.

Christian had gone straight to his garret and thrown himself upon the bed the previous night. He hadn't wanted to think about what he had done and what it could mean for him and Satine. Shortly after he had fallen asleep.

He woke up as the sun rose and remembered that night's events. He began rushing around the room, throwing his things in a bag. It only occurred to him when he was half-way done that he had no money to get anywhere farther than the River Seine. He had thrown the last of his money away on Satine. He closed his eyes and tried to think.

Nothing came to him. He opened his eyes and groaned in frustration. And then a white piece of paper on the floor by his door caught his attention. He bent over and picked it up.

"What on earth…?" It was a letter. Christian unfolded the paper and began to read. It said;

Christian,

I am writing you out of necessity and I hope that this letter finds you before you leave Paris. Shortly after you left the Moulin Rouge Satine passed away. She was dying of consumption. You must not be angry at her, however. She did not know until the night before Opening Night. Her funeral is yet to be determined. I will be at the Moulin Rouge if you require information.

--Harold Zidler

The short letter impacted Christian with such force that he had to take a seat on his bed. Satine was dead. He had pictured a thousand endings, a thousand what ifs. There were the happy endings where he stayed with Satine and everything sorted itself out perfectly, and he had wondered if he was throwing that chance away. Then there were the miserable endings in which his heart was broken over and over again by her. And there were the endings where he left her and did his best to move on before any true damage was done.

He wondered what he would have felt had he gone back to her, given his heart to her again, only to have her die shortly after.

Christian placed the letter on the bed. He knew the answer; it would have nearly killed him.

"I made the right choice," Christian said aloud. The words did not sound confident, but they did sound forced. He bit his lip. "She would have broken my heart. I made the right choice." This time there was enough confidence for Christian to start to believe it.

He glanced at the letter again. The letter was an invitation of sorts to attend the funeral. But even as the thought entered his head he found himself answering it with a resounding no. He would not go to Satine's funeral.

If I have to move on, he thought, I need to start now.

"One moment," Christian whispered, looking up at the ceiling. Tears began to form in his eyes and he tried to blink them away. "One moment of silence is all you'll get from me this time." The silence that followed allowed him to think of her. Then it was done with and he found he could be silent no longer.

He took a shaky breath and began to talk. He wasn't sure if it was for himself or to Satine, wherever she was, but he had to say what he was saying. He felt a need to justify himself. "I gave you my heart and you broke it. Perhaps we would have fallen in love again, perhaps our love would be stronger if I had gone back…but I have no need for heartbreak and I stand by what I said. I made the right choice. I'm sorry, Satine."

He crumpled up the letter and then stood up, taking his small bag of possessions and slinging it onto his shoulder.

There was a world waiting for him. He opened the door and found Toulouse staring back at him, having been about to knock.

"How could you?" the painter whispered through his tears. "Why did you leave her? I thought…I thought you believed in love!" He was becoming angry. Christian took a step back.

"I made the right choice," he stammered, but with Toulouse standing there the statement came out much weaker than intended.

"What ever happened to 'the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and to be loved in return', Christian?" Toulouse cried. "She might have broken your heart, but I thought you would have found yourself the luckiest man in the world to have experienced such love at all. I see I was wrong about you! You don't know anything about what love is worth!"

These words filled Christian with so much doubt that it was painful. He stared at the painter, trying to ignore the feeling that he was being torn apart on the inside. "I thought so too," he whispered, "but we were both wrong."

"You made the wrong choice," Toulouse whispered. "She loved you."

"No!" A cry cut through the air and Christian fell to his knees. The sob turned into a scream, and suddenly Christian had his head in his hands, a man in agony. Toulouse did not know what to do.

"Christian," he tried, too shocked to be angry anymore, "it will be alright. You can move on. You will have another chance."

"No," Christian sobbed, not looking at Toulouse. "It's too late for me."

"Christian—"

"Leave me here!"

Toulouse made to say something else but instead turned around and left, silently mourning the loss of a young man's innocence.

But Christian, who had returned to his garret still sobbing, felt as though he had lost much more than his innocence. "I hate this!" he screamed. "God, Satine! I tried to keep myself from this and you manage to break my heart anyway!" The sobs grew harder. "Just end it now, please!" His request was unfulfilled, however, and he was left to grieve alone in his room.

Toulouse was upstairs and for another hour he heard Christian sobbing and screaming and crying. And then there came a time when he heard nothing but silence.

The silence did not end.