Come What May
A.N. Yes, I know it's been way too long. Thanks for the reviews.
Disclaimer: I don't own Moulin Rouge.
Cassandra sat at the top of the stairs for hours, until the guests had left for their hotel. Once she was sure everyone was gone, she slowly went downstairs, working out what to say to her parents.
"Whatever you do, don't cry" she thought to herself. She knew she had to keep her emotions in check. She could have a very strong temper at times and she didn't want to say anything too hurtful to her parents.
She found her parents in the kitchen, cleaning up after the dinner. She stood outside the kitchen door and listened in a bit. It was always helpful to know what was going on before entering a situation. Cassandra had to pick the perfect moment to let them know she was there.
"See, Christian? It was a good idea to invite them. I think the dinner went very well." Satine said as she washed off yet another dish.
"Yes, it went very well. Except…" Christian's voice trailed off.
"Except for what?"
"Except for Cassandra's question at dinner, the one about how you met Harold. He almost gave away a little too much information."
"Oh, Christian, you worry too much. I'm sure Cassandra still doesn't know anything about how I met Harold."
This was the moment. Cassandra opened the door and stood in the doorway, arms crossed with a serious expression on her face. "Guess again" she said.
Before Christian or Satine had a chance to respond, Cassandra had launched into the carefully prepared statement she had worked out on the stairs. "How could you have done something like that, Mom? All my life you've been telling me to respect myself and never let anyone even look at me in that way and tonight I find out that when you were 13 you were selling yourself?"
Christian and Satine exchanged looks of panic, and then Satine held up a hand to let Christian know she would handle this. She attempted to do son in the calmest, most rational way possible. "Look, Cassandra, I'm sorry. I'm not proud of what I did but I had no other choice. Harold was the only one offering me any sort of work at all and a girl has to eat somehow."
Cassandra didn't buy the excuse any more from her mother than she had from Toulouse. "You mean Harold was the first one to offer you work and he offered you the best payment plan. You didn't have to live in the lap of luxury. You chose that. There were probably plenty of other things you could have done…"
"Cassandra, you weren't in Paris back then. There literally was no other way, especially for an orphan like I was."
"Oh, so the fact that you were an orphan makes it alright? Stop making excuses, Mom. And stop trying to hide everything from me too. Stop trying to turn everything into a fairytale bedtime story. Just stop!" Cassandra could feel her emotions getting the best of her, so she turned and ran upstairs to her room. She flung herself onto the bed and cried for awhile, and then got an idea.
On the other side of the room, in her closet, she saw the empty suitcase from her family's trip to England the previous summer. That was it. That was the answer. She would run away. No, she was not running away. Running away from home was too young for her. She was escaping. She got out a pad and pencil and left her parents a note:
Dear Mom and DadI've decided that I need to get away for awhile to think about everything. I don't know where I'm going yet-I'll be getting on whatever train or boat my money can buy me a ticket for. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine.
She left the note in plain view on her desk, quickly packed the suitcase, and began to devise a plan on how to escape her room without her parents seeing her. As she was trying to figure out how far it was from her window to the ground, she heard her parents' voices in the hallway.
"Satine, calm down. She was going to find out eventually. I'm sure tomorrow everything will be alright."
"How can you say that? Everything is not going to be all right! She knows now, Christian. How can I even face her now? "
"Satine, she's just a child. She'll understand when she's older. She thinks that Paris back then is like America now. It's all she's known." He wrapped his arm around Satine's shoulder. "Your still her mother. She'll get over it soon enough. Don't worry about it."
Cassandra went back to her window, grabbing her suitcase on the way. That was the last straw. She hated when her parents tried to justify making her feel bad by saying that she was "just a child" and that she would "understand when she's older."
Cassandra threw her suitcase out the window, and then carefully slid out the window herself onto a well-placed tree. As she made her way down to the ground, she thought to herself "They don't think I understand what their life was like? Fine. I guess I'll just have to educate myself on the subject."
And with that, Cassandra began her journey to Paris.
A.N. Ok, once again, I know that these updates take way too long. Now that I sort of have a plot going things should be a little faster.