Yep, this is a chaptered fic. It's a multi-narrative, meaning that there are several corresponding, yet separate stories going on at the same time (though the stories are all connected, as you'll see). If it's confusing, I apologise- this piece is highly experimental (I'm actually using it as a practice run of the style for an original novel I have planned).

The main characters in this fic are: Liberty (Marianne), Travesty (Christine), Tattoo (Marguerite) and Juno (Cecile). Babydoll and some other Diamond Dogs also feature heavily (you'll see how). Cyber-cookies to anyone who gets the historical reference in Liberty's name.

Disclaimer and dedication: Don't own Moulin Rouge. This chapter is dedicated to Rosemarie-ouisama for first suggesting that I write a multi-chaptered fic.

Cigarettes and Petticoats

All her life, Marianne had been taught to love the republic and despise the bourgeoisie. At the age of five she could be seen dancing around on the dusty floors of her father's bookshop, singing la Marseillaise in her clear, babyish voice, wincing as her brothers slapped her for getting a line wrongor not singing with the appropriate expression. Customers would laugh and clap and remark how clever she was, while Marianne finished with a flourish and flashed them a sweet, ignorant smile.

If asked why her family was so devoted to a time that was long past, Marianne would not have been able to answer. When he was sober Marianne's father had told his children florid tales of the Revolution, describing the storming of the Bastille with the appropriate amounts of blood and heroism while his children listened, wide-eyed. When Marianne's father was drunk he would rant and rave, asking God why he had been landed in a time when nothing supposedly happened, with two brainless clots for sons, a dead wife and a useless daughter.

When their father fell into another rage his children would steal books off the shelves and hide in the dusty corners of the attic, a sole candle serving for both warmth and light. Never having been to school and otherwise seeing few children, they were swept up into their father's historical fantasies and worshipped everything to do with the Revolution. By the age of nine Marianne could quote famous passages from the works of Voltaire or Rousseau off by heart, which she did without conviction. Her brothers would whine and moan about their misfortune of having been born a century late for the Revolution. Marianne would whisper under her breath about liberté, egalité and fraternité and not know what a single one of these words meant.

For a few years Marianne's father seemed like a god to her. However, as she became older Marianne began to lose her respect for him. Her older brothers could valiantly jump about the room with shouted cries of Ça ira, ça ira, but Marianne was the one who had to clean up her father's mess. When her father lost his temper one night and beat his daughter with a hot poker, twelve-year-old Marianne began to quietly rebel. "Liberté," she would weep into her pillow as her scars slowly began to heal, gradually beginning to understand what the word actually meant. Freedom.

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As a child, Christine had been the embodiment of l'enfant terrible. She ran about the Quartier Latin dressed in a pair of raggedy men's pants and instead of a skirt, challenging the Parisian street children, the gamins, to various verbal and physical battles. Her skin was tinted brown by the sun and covered in everything from ink to sawdust. If spotted on the street she could easily have been mistaken for a gamine herself, until she opened her mouth and revealed at least a rudimentary education. A spectator would have been provided of further proof of her not living on the streets when her mother erupted from the house to claim her daughter, each yelling and kicking each other's shins.

While her chest and hips were still undeveloped enough to be mistaken for a boy's, Christine's tomboyish habits were disapproved of but tolerated. As the pants and shirt began to fail to disguise Christine's femininity, her parents began to thrust skirts and dresses at her and demand that she stay indoors. Christine, never having been a submissive girl, would protest wildly with increasingly creative arguments. She would escape into the Parisian streets whenever she could despite her mother's protests that she should act as a good doctor's daughter ought to, until one summer the boys with whom she had until recently had arm wrestles also began to realise that it was a girl whom they were dealing with. Suddenly they began to mind their manners around her, to look down as she approached and warn her of puddles in the street. When one of the older boys blushingly presented her with a daisy and tried to kiss her cheek, Christine stormed off in disgust, vowing never to play with the gamins again.

Mistaking this new development for an acceptance of Christine's femininity, Christine's mother began another desperate attempt to turn her daughter into someone she could bear introducing to her friends. Christine grudgingly learnt to pour tea and sew pretty designs on a hanky, and she may have even resigned herself to the fate of a single young lady if it hadn't been for a rather amorous baker's boy some years later.

When Christine thought about it later, she actually found it rather funny. At the point at which her father found her, the baker's boy's lips had just touched hers and she was about to pull back in order to give him a resounding slap about the face. Dr Devreaux didn't take lightly to his fourteen-year-old daughter doing God-knows-what in an alleyway with some boy, and after receiving a strong verbal earbashing Christine was out on the street without an idea as to what had just happened.

Ever the resourceful girl, Christine shrugged off the indignity of being thrown out of her home, and, instead of knocking on the door and begging to be let back in, turned about and headed wherever her feet would take her.

"So you ended up here by accident," the girls would say to her later.

Christine would smile darkly and return to brushing her hair or putting on her makeup. "Not exactly."

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Marguerite had been a dockside prostitute from the age of thirteen. She had drifted into her mother's profession more as a matter of course than misfortune, as the waterlogged slums of Calais didn't present many other options. Never having been taught any form of manners before, Marguerite quickly gained a colourful form of gutter talk that she would spout at the slightest provocation, making her an instant hit with the sailors. Tall, street smart and cunning, she had achieved a reasonable amount of notoriety by the age of fifteen, and it was at this time that she began saving her earnings for having intricate designs inked on her body.

The sight of her multi-coloured arms and legs took her fame to a whole new level. Soon sailors began to seek her out amongst the other whores, and Marguerite would entertain them with a sort of lofty scorn. In addition to tattoos, Marguerite would also spend an indecent sum of money on drink, not that this made her any different from anyone else on the docks. But as her drinking habit grew she slowly began finding herself short of money, and immersed herself in stealing. At first it was only little amounts of coins stealthily liberated from the pockets of her clients, then she began to take money and precious objects from houses and sell them on the thriving black market. It was a dangerous pastime, but Marguerite was meticulously careful at first.

She went on undetected for a year, until one day she made the mistake of trying to pickpocket the leader of one of the smuggling gangs. The leader in question had grabbed her around the neck and begun to pull her behind a house, obviously intending to both teach her a lesson and have a fuck for free at the same time. However, Marguerite hadn't worked the streets of Calais without knowing how to defend herself. A swift knee to the groin and bite to the hand was enough for Marguerite to tear herself free, and she bolted through the streets and alleyways to her garret, swearing violently all the way in the knowledge that she had just made matters much, much worse for herself. Had she remained still she might have gotten away with just a severe beating, but now that she had personally smashed the gang leader's most prized possession, half the under-world would be searching for her within a few days.

Any other girl would have panicked at the idea of being at the mercy of a gang without any plausible protection, but Marguerite was the sort of person who remained incredibly cool under pressure. Scraping up as much money as she could find in her mouldy garret, she packed up her meagre possessions and headed to the apartment of the concierge, where she dictated a letter to her cousin in Paris. Dear Caroline, the letter read. I'm coming to Paris. No need to ask why. Meet me at the train station. Marguerite.

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When a seamstress in Monmartre gave in to scarlet fever and left her two children penniless, her eldest child, a boy, saw this as the prime occasion to rid himself of his kid sister once and for all.

"I've got to earn a living now, so won't have enough time to look after you, Cecile," he attempted to reason as his sister cried in desperation, her mop of golden curls sticking to her face in raggedy tangles. "It would be silly for you to stay with me… I wouldn't ever be home… Besides, you're old enough to look after yourself, there's kids out there on their own who are younger than you…"

This, if anything, made Cecile cry even harder, until her brother could no longer bear it and held his hand over her mouth to stop her. "Alright, fine!" he hissed. "Look, I'll take you to one of Mama's friends, how does that sound? You can help her sew skirts and stuff. That way you won't be alone. How does that sound?"

That was how, one rainy day, Cecile found herself at the back door of her mother's workplace; a very strange building with a glittering windmill on the top. She watched the bright red wings turn slowly despite the absence of much wind, while her brother spoke to a dark skinned man at the door and asked for someone named Elsa. Cecile was pulled out of her reverie when a flustered woman in her late forties came to stand in the doorway, with a very disapproving look on her face.

"Yes, what is it?" she snapped in thickly accented French.

Cecile's brother grabbed Cecile by the shoulder and thrust her into the woman's view. "Here. My little sister. Our mother's dead. Claudette. I think you knew her, she worked here as a seamstress."

Immediately the woman's facial expression softened. "Claudette… Yes, I did know her. Helped me with my French, she did. I heard that she died… I'm very sorry."

Cecile's brother muttered something incoherent. "Can you look after my little sister? She can sew and help you with your French. I'll give you money every month," he added hastily.

The woman smiled down at Cecile before averting her attention back to Cecile's brother. "Aren't you worried? This is not the place for a child. She could end up working as a…" She pointed up at the windmill above them.

Cecile's brother shrugged nonchalantly and once more pushed his sister forward "Couldn't care less, really," he admitted.

The woman frowned. "If that is your attitude, I guess I have no choice… What is the girl's name?"

"Cecile. She's ten."

"Well then…" The woman reached for Cecile's hand. "I'm Elsa. I hope that you will be able to help me."

Well, that was just the prologue, so I promise the action (and the plot!) will pick up next chapter, because that's when the story actually starts.

Constructive criticism is GREATLY appreciated. This prologue was excruciatingly hard to write, I'll admit. It'll be easier for me to write the main body of the story. Marguerite (Tattoo)'s story caused me most trouble (she's such a hard character to write!).

Historical references and translations:

La Marseillaise: The current French national anthem, but it began as a rallying song during the French Revolution (it originated in Marseille, hence it's name).

Liberté, egalité, fraternité: The underlying 'values' of the French Revolution. The English translation is liberty, equality, fraternity.

Ça ira, ça ira: rallying cry of the French Revolutionaries. Translates literally as "It will go, it will go."

See you all next chapter! But until then, please review.