A/N: I suppose I'd best to get the warnings out of the way at the first-- this story deals with a non-explicit F/F relationship. The two characters are original ones, based on the you see briefly during Zidler's Rap. One of the women is dressed in a man's suit, and the other wears a beret, and they sing Entertain us. There are also mentions of bisexuality and voyeurism, but once again, absolutely nothing explicit. All other relationships are canon, but if you think you'd be offended by this, please do us both a favour and don't read. This is a very different thing for me to write, so I hope you'll be kind and leave a review if you enjoyed it and would like it to continue. Blame my plot bunny and muse. It's all their fault.
All I Once Possessed
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?
Amy Lowell, Autumn
November 4, 1902
Her roses are still here. Cracked, brittle, and dry-- an occasional careless touch will shatter the edges of a petal. They are a dark red-brown tinged with black, like blood that has dried on a white gown. Once crimson, once vital and glowing with the dew that gathered pearl-like on the blossoms, now faded into a shabby memory. It's a metaphor that my writer's soul just can't resist, I suppose.
I sigh, and take another sip of the warm milk. It calms insomnia well enough, but the taste isn't much to speak of. In the recesses of my heart, I can hear Marguerite mocking me. She never would have succumbed to sleeplessness. She was always strong; ruthlessly so, I say now that she's gone. How she would have laughed at my polite description of her! The words she would say ring clearly in my heart, even though it's been nearly two years since we last spoke. I can still hear her, you know. I wonder if Christian can conjure up Satine's voice as easily as I can Marguerite's. I smile at that thought, albeit a little sadly, and take another drink from my lukewarm teacup.
Come and drink champagne with me, darling! Leave that dreary stuff and do-- oh, what does Harry say? Live a little bit? Clichéd and fairly useless, but this her careless voice calls to me from my memory. Can't I see her even now, wrapped in a dirty linen sheet, smiling vaguely at me as she takes another slow drag on her cigarette? I close my eyes, anchoring myself to the world as she continues to wave me closer in my mind. Her gestures are quick and tender, just as they were in reality. My memories of her are so vivid that I sometimes start to find that my bed is cold without her beside me. It isn't pain, not any longer, just a stunned sense of apathy.
How I miss her.
I pour the rest of the milk onto my potted blossoms suddenly, my wrist turning as if beyond my control. The liquid flows out into mother earth as if coming home, a stream of bleached lifeblood. With exquisite care, I rinse the fluted cup and place it on the embroidered cloth I made in those months after. My fingers trail across the raised depiction of a shepherdess. She smiles up at me cheerfully, nothing like Marguerite's cruel, tight-lipped smile. I sewed her golden curls and rosy cheeks, a gossamer dress that waves in the imagined drifts of summer breeze, a bonnet that lies smoothly against her hair. After.
After. That's what I call it now. I painted these cups then, you know. Roses and lilies now bloom on that cold china in a parody of life. I don't know if Marguerite would even recognize the flat now, with all the domestic changes I've wrought. I can visualize that encounter, my bitterly light words, the bored expression on her own face.
For a year, Marguerite-- a year-- I couldn't write, I say angrily. I sewed dresses and curtains, braided rugs, perfumed soaps and trimmed hats. I spit the words at her. They are pretty occupations, ones that she and I used to scorn when we were lovers. When we spent sweet nights in each other's arms, when she used to caress me in her terrible, beautiful way.
I have several lovely hats now, I continue, my tone ostensibly that of idle millinery gossip, but I know she can hear the edge beneath it. She knows my voice, my former love. She shrinks back into her chair, but her expression does not change. Smoke curls from the cigarette in her fingers. She remains silent. Her slim legs are crossed, so I can see the filmy black stockings she still wears. The turn of her ankle is as graceful as ever.
My favorite, dearest, is a pretty silver-grey straw with silken white roses. It goes beautifully with a smart new poplin. Stainless white and beautifully woven, so that it shimmers just slightly. I bought some grey silk the colour of my hat a few days ago, did you know that? For a sash, something to freshen it up just a bit.
I stop my imagined tirade, my breath coming faster in spite of my best efforts to remain unaffected. It is useless to pretend that I don't long for her still. The flush that burns on my cheeks as the thought of her kiss is proof enough of that. I glance over at the bed in spite of myself. I burned all the blankets when she left, watching the crimson satin burn in the purer flame with a grim set to my mouth. Her scents were permanently intertwined with that fabric. The insinuating perfume she wore, that cold oriental smell that I cannot taste without growing pale. I want her some nights, so desperately that I turn into my white sheets and weep for the burning need that manifests itself in my limbs.
Perhaps Christian is right, and it is time. And yet it seems too raw to even consider such a thing. To write our story; to admit to the world that yes, my lover betrayed me, left me, abandoned me.
The paper he brought for me waits on my hardwood desk. It is still wrapped in the silk ribbon he tied around it after placing it next to my untrimmed pens. I glance over at it, my mouth twisting in spite of myself. My strange friend knows me all too well. He knows that I will come back to the page, in spite-- or perhaps because of it all.
I go to the papers, as I must. I could no sooner turn away from them than I could Marguerite's open embrace. I let my shawl fall to the floor, and take up my pen. This will be an alien story to most minds, far too controversial to be published. It is the story of a love that waxed and waned under the cool eye of life, and a love that, if set to burn, would have consumed us all.
The men at the Moulin, they called us The Twins. We were just two women, after all-- two creatures slim of hip and hands, with soft masses of ginger hair. Our eyes flashed identical storms of darkness towards the unfortunate customer, or softened equally in moments of tenderness. The only difference between us was I dressed like a man to warn them that I wasn't the one to have your way with; you could only watch me. My other half, as they called her, wore a glittering chemise and petticoat under her short coat.
The Bohemians called us Belle and Aimeé. She was beauty; I love. She modeled for the artists of Montmarte, while I wrote poetry about the ideals of our beautiful movement. Toulouse-Lautrec himself did a painting of Belle in the last years before his death. I have a few sketches from it tucked in my portfolio. It portrays a slender woman, her face sharp, drawn with fine lines and rich lips. Occasionally I will trace the form of her, my belle, my fingers lingering over the faded page, trying to recall the warmth of her skin against mine.
The few women that we developed relationships with used careless endearments. Honey, dearest, lovely, darling. I was Sweetheart,' she was Baby.' We were curious creatures in their eyes, strange, wayward children that gave them what they needed so badly that they found their ways past their wealthy husbands (who were often occupied with a whore in the next room) and gave us their almost-love. I never felt more fulfilled-- or degraded-- than after a night with a woman at the Moulin.
To each other, we were simply Marguerite and Anne. Two women. One love.
This is our story.