Author's Note: I apologize in advance for my freakish fixation on Gorecki. I've been planning to use it for this purpose in this fic for a while, but didn't think of it until after I'd posted the first chapter of the original version. Yay.
Chapter Two: Death
The tears glittering in Satine's eyes pained her. They stung like a thousand tiny needles, plunging into the jaded orbs of blue, and yet she didn't allow them to fall.
"Tears form behind my eyes," she breathed softly, a hint of a song spilling from her lips as she studied her mother's corpse with an unwavering gaze. "But I do not cry..."
An involuntary shiver shook her entire form, and she wrapped her arms around her shoulders in an awkward gesture that did nothing to revive the extinguished flame in her soul.
She didn't know how long she sat there, staring transfixed at the mere shadow of the only kind person Satine had ever known. Words poured through her mind, so many words; bittersweet and filled with sorrow, an emotion more powerful than she should have allowed herself to feel.
Goodbye to you...goodbye to everything that I knew...
A hint of a golden sunrise had already cast itself over Paris skies when her father returned, the stench of alcohol on his breath as he laughed drunkenly at jokes only he seemed to hear.
Satine ignored him, eyes still fixed on her mother.
"What're you doin' up?" he slurred. "Yur s'posed to be sleeping."
"Your wife is dead," Satine responded evenly.
Stupid laughter escaped his lips, and he took a swig from the seemingly ever-present bottle of absinthe in his right hand. "What're you talking about?"
"She's dead," Satine repeated simply.
Peter crossed the room in a surprisingly swift movement for someone under the influence of alcohol, and wrapped one firm hand around Satine's thin wrist.
"Don't lie to me, girl," he snarled, blue eyes locking with Satine's.
"I'm not," Satine replied, voice frighteningly devoid of emotion. "See for yourself."
She watched blankly as he released her and slowly made his way to his wife's bed.
"What's all this blood?" he asked, confused.
Satine didn't answer.
And it hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time...
He sank down onto the bed, lightly caressing Gwendolyn's cheek as though she would break at any moment.
"Gwen," he mumbled, panicked laughter escaping his lips as a desperate smile spread across his face. "Gwen, it's me...it's Peter, it's me. Wake up."
The tears were back, stinging her eyes until she was forced to squeeze them shut.
Tears form behind my eyes, but I do not cry...
Do not cry...
"Mon cherie," she heard her father whisper. "Please, please open your eyes. I'm sorry I've been awful. I'm so sorry..."
Do not cry...
"I know that I wasn't as good to you as Edward could have been," Peter mumbled. "But I always tried, Gwen. God knows, I always tried. But you were always so beautiful and I never felt that I was making you happy, and it depressed me so awfully, and..."
He paused and looked up at Satine with desolate eyes, bloodshot and filled with tears.
"C...could you leave us alone, for just a minute?" he requested, sounding like a naive child, frightened to make a request. It seemed impossible that he was the same man who had used his hand against her mother so many times, and had sometimes hurt her as well.
He had, Satine knew now, always loved Gwendolyn. These weren't just the nonsense ramblings of some drunken fool.
And so she obliged, rising with a shaky breath and silently leaving the apartment.
She knew she wouldn't return.
And when the stars fall, I will lie awake...
"Do you remember our song, Gwen?" she heard her father ask as she shut the door quietly behind her. "You always had the most beautiful voice..."
You're my shooting star.
She was about to leave, to make her way to the lobby and step outside, when she heard the soft beginning of a song, shaping itself from her father's voice.
"If I should die this very moment, I wouldn't fear, for I've never known completeness like being here..."
The tears that had been threatening her all night returned, and this time she didn't blink them back.
Instead, she listened.
"Wrapped in the warmth of you, loving every breath of you...still my heart this moment, or it might burst."
Tears streamed down her cheeks now, but they were obedient, silent tears, merely dancing down her face and not causing her to shake with sobs.
"Could we stay right here until the end of time? 'Till the earth stops turning? Wanna love you 'till the seas run dry."
The memory of her parents embracing in the rain filled Satine's mind, and as she listened to her father's tearful rendition of their song, she finally understood what love was.
"I've found the one I've waited for..."
And now she knew.
"All this time I've loved you and never known your face..."
Oh, how she knew.
"All this time I've missed you, and searched this human race..."
Regardless of what she'd promised her mother, she could never fall in love.
Her father was sobbing now, choking out the words through his tears.
"H...here is true peace," he sang, voice so pained that it seemed his very soul was being ripped away from him. "Here my heart knows calm...s...safe in your soul, bathed in your sighs."
Love could only destroy you.
Satine wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a breath before turning and walking out of the apartment building and into the darkness of night.
* * *
In the end, it wasn't absinthe or whiskey that had destroyed Peter Devereaux.
Wanna stay right here until the end of time, till the earth stops turning...
It was a force more powerful than any alcohol could induce, a force more powerful than hate, greed, jealousy, anger...
Gonna love you 'till the seas run dry...
Love.
I've found the one I've waited for...
More than anything he'd loved his wife, and now she was gone, dead.
And inside, he was now dead as well.
The one I've waited for...
Songs Used:
Goodbye to You by Michelle Branch
Gorecki by Lamb
