One Day I'll Fly Away (Nini)

One day you'll fly away, sweetheart? Oh, Satine, you're a dreamer. Don't we all want the same thing as you? Weren't we lured here by promise of wealth, clothing, food, and maybe even love? Don't we all want to escape the Moulin Rouge? You're not special, Satine.

You don't know that I'm listening to you. You think I'm upstairs at Toulouse's studio, getting screwed by Chocolat or the Argentinean or someone; there is someone new every night for me to fuck, isn't there? Same with you. You're no better than I am. Let's face it, Satine, we're both whores.

"One day I'll fly away, leave all this to yesterday." You sing. I'm not going to lie; you do have a spectacular voice, a pretty face.

I suppose that is why Harry put you first, isn't it? You're the all-around talented whore at the Moulin Rouge. You can sing, dance, and give a man his money's worth, right? Well, can't I do the same thing? I'm tired, Satine, tired of being the second choice, lurking in your shadow all the time.

We started out the same way. Both of us were poverty-stricken young girls, hungry, sick from living on the cold streets of Paris. We were even friends! Do you remember that, Satine? We banded together, Satine and Nini against the world.

So now when I tell myself I hate you, my mind wanders to those days when it was just you and me, trying to survive. I try to keep in mind how close we were then, and how innocent. It was before Harold Zidler, before the Moulin Rouge, before the Sparkling Diamond and the Diamond Dog were split apart by money, greed, and jealousy.

"Why live life from dream to dream and dread the day when dreaming ends?"

Dreaming's ended, Satine. How can we dream of better things when there's nothing else for us in the world but prostituting our bodies to men? I stopped dreaming several years ago. It wasn't worth it anymore. I'm going to waste my good days at the Moulin, high-kicking and drinking until I end up like Marie. So will you. By the time we escape this place, we'll be old, undesirable. We who were beautiful and wanted, paid for, will become street women, faded images of what we used to be.

I hate you for that. I hate that you will probably be taken away from here to live with someone who loves you or at least will provide for you, and I'll stay, wishing it were me. I'll grow old and diseased and drink myself to death.

People will never remember Nini-Legs-in-the-Air after she's gone, for Nini- Legs-in-the-Air was always in the shadow of the great Satine.

I hate you for that, too! You greedy bitch, taking my rightful place in the spotlight, bewitching and fucking men I should have been bewitching and fucking!

"One day I'll fly away; fly, fly away." You look out over the Moulin Rouge, towards the starlit city of Paris, wistfully. I can feel your longing to leave, for that feeling is in my soul, too. It's painful, isn't it? I know exactly how you're feeling, for still we're Sisters of the Underworld.

You are my sister, not by blood but by feeling. We're so alike, and no one sees it. I hide my true self behind the icy wall and bitchy demeanor, but truly, I long for love just as you do.

I cannot hate you.