A soft rain plinks against the metal L'amour sign outside his cracked window. It counts every second that progresses on this grey afternoon. A terrible clock that marks the agonizing passage of time, moving Christian farther and farther from his last happy moments. His last moments feeling love and completeness.
He wonders if Satine has seen this past year.
Christian, despite the named connection to a dogma his father believed so wholly in, is unsure if Heaven exists. Or Hell, for that matter. But if it does, he wonders if Satine, wherever her place in the cosmos, has seen him.
Seven months of nothing, he thinks. Wallowing in bottles and watching as faces he had come to rely on scattered in the gust of wind the Moulin Rouge blew out as her doors shuttered. Utterly pitiful. Christian hopes Satine has not seen who he has become.
Because he knows that no matter the tragedy that has ruined him, knowing Satine had seen his descent into desolation was so much worse. She had asked for him to live, and here he is. Squandering the life he has. Asked him to tell their story, yet for nearly a year, he has kept it inside. Let it fester and repeat like a dream, too lovely and Shakespearean to ever be real.
He isn't sure what will kill him faster; the unending grief or the unfulfilled promise.
For her, he finally removes the cloth covering his typewriter. Blows the dust into stale air, and sits. The words all rattled about in his head, but he can't bear to set a page in his Underwood. Letting the dream find reality once more on paper seems too much to bear.
Quickly, Christian stands. Hears the scrape of wood against wood, the chair nearly falling. A turn of heel and his coat is on. Choosing to drown the sorrow another day instead of facing it is all he can do.
One day, sitting on the floor of his disheveled flat, it all comes to him.
The mess of recollections refuse to content themselves in the dark closet in his mind. They cry for release. For one last breath in Montmartre before they wither. Christian, despite his reluctance and despair, obliges.
He stands above his desk. Hovers around in reluctance, holding himself in a tight embrace lest he crumble again. At last, he lets himself sit. Absorbs whatever leftover inspiration he left in his chair last. Index fingers rest on keys, taking in the heft and feel again.
Writing is a muscle that has deteriorated, but one he can build again. As Toulouse has paint, he has words to express everything inside.
Keys tack, tack, tack in a melancholy rhythm as he manages to keep his eyes dry enough to read the page by moonlight. The first of many words. A beginning of a story; of facing his wounds head on.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.