Come What May
A.N. I know, another long wait. I'm deeply sorry. Thanks for the reviews and for your patience.
Disclaimer: I don't own Moulin Rouge.
After Cassandra spoke, everyone at the table looked up from their meal. Christian and Satine looked at each other with a panicked look on their faces.
"Well, my dear, I met you parents when they were living in Paris. Your mother, you see, was working for…"
Christian didn't like the way Harold's sentence was going, so he interrupted with "Harold, could Satine and I see you in the hall for a moment?"
Although he was not sure why, Harold followed Christian and Satine out into the hall.
"Christian, what is it?"
"Look, Harold, we don't…that is to say…we're not ready to…"
"We don't want Cassandra to know about the Moulin Rouge yet." Although Christian was the poet Satine seemed to have an easier time getting the words out.
While Harold, Christian, and Satine debated the topic in the hall, Cassandra continued eating with a satisfied smile on her face. Even though she had no information (well, other than that her mother had worked for someone) she had struck a nerve. She had gotten her parents nervous; they knew that she wanted to know and that the bedtime stories weren't going to be enough anymore.
When Harold sat down again, he quickly changed the subject to how good the turkey was. Cassandra's question had been dropped from the conversation, but it had not been dropped from the minds of everyone at the table.
After dinner was over, Cassandra retired to her bedroom (typical for an adolescent) while her parents visited with friends. She planned on coming down later on and possibly catching one of the guests alone. Suddenly, she heard a knock at her door.
Thinking it was her parents coming to reprimand her for asking the question at dinner, she said "Come in" and braced herself. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Toulouse walk in and sit down in a chair next to her bed.
"I think I can tewl you what you want to know" he said. "You want to know about the Moulin Rouge, don't you?"
"Well, I don't need to know the whole history of it. I just want to know what my mother did there, and what happened that made her want to come here. I mean, why would you leave Paris to come to a little suburb like this? I know she was sick, but…"
"Oh, so you do know about her consumption. Yes, we were all very worried about our sparkwing diamond."
"Sparkling what?"
Toulouse realized that Cassandra had never heard her mother called that name before. He leaned back in his chair and prepared to tell her a very long story.
"Sparkwing diamond. It was your mother's, well, it was wike her work name. Your mother was quite the cewebrity, you know. "
Cassandra nodded. "She was a dancer, right?"
"Oh, is that what they have been telling you? Well, she was a dancer of sorts; that is, she was a performer. But she did much more than dance. She was our head courtesan!"
There was that word again. "But what is a courtesan? I've seen that word before in…hey, maybe you can tell me what this is!" Cassandra grabbed the old script out of her desk and handed it to him.
"Oh, my…I didn't realize your mother kept this. Did she give this to you?"
Cassandra looked at the floor and said "Well, not exactly. I kind of snuck up into the attic and found it in a trunk." She was expecting to be scolded for this, and was surprised when Toulouse broke out in laughter.
"Oh, I should have known! You're just like your mother used to be, always sneaking around."
It was beginning to occur to Cassandra that Toulouse did not have a very good sense of what was and was not appropriate to say to children. Not that it bothered her. "So, what is it?" she asked. Maybe Toulouse would give her actual answers.
"Well, my dear, this is a script we used back in Paris. Your father wrote it, and your mother starred in it."
"Oh, this must be the play." Cassandra thought to herself. She remembered from the bedtime stories that her parents met while putting on a play, one that her father wrote and her mother starred in.
Toulouse went on to tell her the entire plot of the play. This didn't hold much interest for her, because she had already read the script. "But that doesn't answer my question. How did my parents get from being there to living here?"
"My dear, this answers more questions than you might think."
"What do you mean?"
"Cassandra, this play is basically the story of your parent's first year together, except it's set in India."
"Who thought of that, anyway?" India seemed like such a strange place for a play to be set to her.
"Your father. I wanted it to be set in Switzerland."
Cassandra flipped to the last page of the script. She saw the words "Come what may, I will love you until my dying day."
She sat back in her chair and prepared to ask Toulouse a few more questions.
A.N. I know, I know. It's been too long. I'm sorry! Things have been getting nuts. My school musical has started rehearsals and I'm fast approaching my driver's test. Please review! I will try not to let the next chapter take so long.