You

by She's a Star

Disclaimer: It just ain't mine, I tell ya!

Author's Note: A little spur-of-the-moment Satine vignette thingie as she prepares to go tell poor Christian that she doesn't love him. Much angst, much sap.

*

I don't love you.

You make me smile in a way no one else can. You soothe my tattered soul, you lift me from my dismal life and dance with me across the stars.

I don't love you.

You're just a man, just like all of the others. It doesn't matter that your gaze is still enamored when I'm free of makeup, plain and raw and nothing more than a lost little girl in the big bad world.

I don't love you.

You've held me while I've cried, you've kissed my hair and brushed away my tears with callused fingertips, promising that tomorrow we'll fly away into a glorious sunrise. You never lose hope, even as our days grow numbered, even as I drown deeper in the heartlessness around us.

I don't love you.

You invent silly love songs for me just to hear me laugh. You dance with me when no one's watching. You want to when they are. You kiss me like we have forever, forever standing still.

I don't love you.

You pretend to hate it that I'm taller than you. You throw my high heels out windows and adapt foolish Argentinean accents and try to type softly in the mornings so as not to wake me even though the ideas rush over you and you yearn to hear the obnoxious 'clang-clang' of your typewriter keys.

You are my soul.

But that has withered away, dry rose petals cowering under a merciless, scorching sun.

Satine loved you.

Satine is dead.

I don't love you.

I can't love you.