Dreams of Flying
Satine's Story
by She's a Star
Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge belongs to O Great Baz Luhrmann. However, a few characters I've made up are mine, and the story idea is mine, though there are a few fics out there that are similar...I started this aaages upon aaages ago.
Author's Note: Oooh, the revision. Rita has inspired me to revise one of my stories, and I've decided that DoF gets to be it. It wasn't all that great before, and my writing style has changed v. much, so I'm hoping this one will be better. *crosses fingers* Read on, my diamond darlings!
Also, this probably isn't historically correct, as the Moulin opened in 1889, but let's just pretend it was open longer than that, 'kay? 'Kay.
~*~
Chapter One: Alone
Emotions were dangerous.
Satine knew that with a certainty that most refrained from feeling about matters more trivial than the fact that the sky was blue and the grass green. All she'd known was pain and betrayal, and one could say that it had ruined her.
She would appear to be an average girl of sixteen, though perhaps a bit taller, if it weren't for her eyes. Liquid pools of sapphire sky, they never seemed to sparkle. They were unfeeling, hardened. Almost like staring into the eyes of a corpse. There was no emotion.
They were only eyes.
Satine was flawless.
Her family was anything but rich, and her face was never quite clean, her clothes always hardly better than rags, her hair always unruly. Yet when she walked down the street, the passersby stared and whispered amongst themselves about what an unusually beautiful girl she was.
Her skin was perfect ivory, looking as though it belonged on a little girl's porcelain doll rather than a living being. Long red curls cascaded down her back, a waterfall of fiery crimson. She was tall and thin, and yet her height did not make her look awkward in the way that it would many other young ladies. Instead she looked elegant, refined; more a goddess than a girl.
And then there was her eyes, so mysteriously intriguing, lacking any trace of any emotion.
Where Satine's beauty had come from, no one could quite understand. Her mother, Gwendolyn, was a pretty woman, with straight brown hair and a kind disposition, but nothing extraordinary. Her father, Peter, had reddish hair and a face that had been handsome once, back before Satine could remember.
Happiness was something that Satine had experienced only once in her life. It was only the faintest of memories, a trace of sweetness from a dying rose. It had been raining, and she was walking down the street in London, one hand in her mother's and the other in her father's. It had been perfectly sunny until, without warning, the sky erupted into thunder and rain.
Gwendolyn had burst into laughter, her gray eyes sparkling. Peter had wrapped his arms around her mother, and they'd exchanged a quick kiss before burying Satine in warm hugs.
It was the last time she'd seen the slightest trace of affection between her parents.
They'd moved to Paris soon after, her father positive that business offers would be pouring in. A tiny, derelict apartment in Montmartre served as home, and Satine had been smothered by promises that it would only be temporary, perhaps a year or two.
Or eleven.
Her father had slowly wasted away before her eyes; he slaved away long hours at a factory every day of the week, the pay barely enough to keep them all alive. The exhaustion was simply too much to bear, Satine had supposed. He began yelling at the both of them, and then yelling evolved into hitting.
He wasn't so bad, when he was sober. But after a year, he found himself turning to La Fee Vert, desperate for an escape. She teased him, she flirted with him, she danced and sang and destroyed every drop of kindness he'd ever possessed.
When he was drunk, his mind spiraled out of control. He often accused Gwendolyn of being unfaithful to him, of betraying him for a man called Edward that Satine had never heard of in her life.
And then the Moulin Rouge was born.
Oh, how she loathed the Moulin Rouge with a passion that those who saw her lifeless eyes wouldn't believe she was capable of feeling. He made it a habit of disappearing there until all hours of the morning, sometimes never returning.
Still, Gwendolyn kept the sweet smile on her face, and did all in her power to keep Satine happy.
Satine wasn't happy, of course; she never had been, but she pretended she was, for her mother.
"We'll escape from here one day, Satine," Gwendolyn promised each night, her voice sweet and reassuring. "Fly away. We'll go back to London and see plays each night, and you'll find a nice man and get married and be happy..."
Like you never were, Satine would always add silently to herself.
She would never dare to say it aloud.
One warm, balmy summer night, Satine sat beside the window, staring longingly outside at the stars. They danced through the sky, shooting and sparkling like diamonds.
Satine had never seen a diamond in her life.
What would it be like, the whimsical side of her asked, To dance across the sky?
Hush up, the logical side ordered. Why do you always go on and on about such nonsense? It's impossible.
And yet she still wanted to dance with the stars.
And have diamonds...all the diamonds in the world.
And to fly away...
Leave all this to yesterday.
Stop it, stop it, stop it! she ordered herself bitterly. You're going to destroy yourself with all your dreams of stars and diamonds and flying.
They're just dreams.
~*~
Later that night, Satine awoke from a dreamless sleep to the sound of coughing coming from her mother's bed. She sleepily waited for it to subside, but instead it grew more and more violent.
The pale moonlight leaked through the window onto the thin blanket that covered her mother, and Satine realized that it was covered in blood.
Her heartbeat increased, but she forced herself to remain calm.
"Mama?" she asked timidly, raising from the falling-apart chair where she slept and slowly making her way to her mother's bedside.
"Sa...Satine," her mother sighed as the coughing died, a weak smile on her face. Her voice was so weak, so very weak...
She was dying.
"You're leaving me, aren't you?" Satine asked emotionlessly. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she blinked them back. If she started to cry now, she'd never stop.
There was too much to cry for.
Her mother nodded, eyes sparkling with tears.
"You get out of here, Satine," she ordered. "You're a beautiful, talented girl...fly away from here."
"I will," Satine said promptly, not sure whether she was lying or not.
"And, Satine?" her mother asked, coughing a bit. Blood had colored her pale lips ruby red.
"Yes?"
"Fall in love," Gwendolyn said softly. "It's the most blissful thing in the world...just fall, Satine. Nothing else will matter."
Satine nodded numbly.
"I love you."
As soon as the words escaped Gwendolyn's lips, her eyes slowly closed, her shallow breath growing softer until they were nothing more than soft echoes in Satine's ears.
She was gone.
She was gone, and Satine was alone.
