Never

by She's a Star

Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge belongs to Baz Luhrmann.

Author's Note: It just came to me as I was looking at Gedia's blog. *shrugs* No clue why. So this can be dedicated to her. :)

~ * ~

I wonder about her sometimes.

Surely you can't blame me...how could I not?? After all, her name still dances through the air in nearly every conversation, even though she's been dead almost twenty years. The legendary Sparkling Diamond, the gorgeous Satine.

I know that I shouldn't be jealous. The poor girl's life surely couldn't have been as easy as some make it sound. Yes, she was surrounded by diamonds and the finest of everything, but could that truly make up for surrendering your body to a different man every night, knowing all the while that love is nothing more than an impossible dream?

And yet, how would you feel if you were in my position?

Christian talks of her night and day. I know he doesn't mean to; I know he wants me to think he's forgotten her, but it's so painfully obvious. He can't hide that he still loves her more than anything.

More than me.

Sometimes he succeeds at creating the illusion that he truly doesn't care anymore. We talk of anything and everything, of life and death and art and love.

Love is the dangerous topic.

When we speak of love is when he falls back under her charms, when he is reminded that his heart will always belong to her.

The worst of all is at night. Can you even begin to comprehend how it feels, to lay in the arms of the person you love more than anything else in the world and hear him mumbling someone else's name in his sleep?

He can never make it through a night without speaking of her.

'Satine...Satine, darling, I'll never forget you. I'm so sorry. I still love you. I don't love her, I don't care for her. My heart is yours and only yours until the end of time...come what may.'

Come what may.

Those three words still bring tears to the eyes of the prostitutes and bohemians who lived during the courtesan and penniless poet's whirlwind romance. It was their song, penned by Christian and sung on their last night together, in the first and last performance at the grand Moulin Rouge theater.

In all our years together, I've never heard him sing.

He doesn't sing anymore, now that she's gone.

He died along with her, leaving me stuck with the spirit of a man I never truly knew and took into my heart out of pity.

And now, out of some sick twist of fate, I need him just as he needs her.

And I will never have him...just as he will never have her.