­­Notes: If this chapter looks familiar, there's a reason for it. It originally appeared in a slightly different version as a stand-alone fic; months later, I decided to expand upon it by writing Le Temps Perdu. I know a few people have seen it around in its original form. I've changed it in some ways now to fit the larger context of the fic as it currently stands.

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Marcille had it easier than most new girls. No need to worry about inadequacy; she'd stunned everyone into submission as soon as she sweetly stepped through the door, and she picked up on our ways quicker than anyone expected. I doubted she realized it herself, but there was something about her that evoked awe. The girl was making a name for herself before she'd even taken a name. And so when she started asking around about living arrangements, nobody snubbed her. Marcille had been staying in the dressing rooms since she had arrived, not counting the odd hours she spent in various artists' flats.

"Polka Dot says she's got a room not too far off," she coyly told me one day. "I'm thinking I might stay with her for a little, just until I can afford my own. I'd rather not stay backstage any more than I have to."

I theatrically narrowed my eyes for a moment and stayed silent until her delicate face shifted in a parody of concern. "Is that not a good idea?"

"It's fine, if that's what you want." I had been twisting a fiery strand of her hair around one of my fingers, and tugged it lightly.

She laughed a little bell-like laugh. "I don't know of anyplace better." One of her eyebrows arched expectantly.

I pretended to think for a moment. "I do have a place of my own, y'know. It's closer than Polka Dot's and just as decent."

Marcille smiled.

So that was how we came to share the room. When work was through, we'd sleep during the day, peeling off layers of ruffles and frills, unlacing each other and gratefully slumping into chairs, wiping makeup off on rags and going to bed, exhausted and curled around each other for warmth. Even then, wan-faced and exhausted, she was incandescent--hardly fair, since I always looked ghoulish by that time. But I couldn't force myself to mind it all that much, seeing as I could easily have sat for hours watching the play of the firelight on her vivid hair. It was like living fire itself, or lava, a tongue of pure flame.

Hell, I still can't describe it, so there's no point in tripping over my tongue. I was never good with words, but she was enough to make me wish I was. It was better that way, anyway. If any other the other girls ever found out Nini Legs-in-the-Air was getting fucking poetic over a lump of hair, I'd never hear the end of it. I had my reputation to think of.

At the Rouge, Marcille got better by the day. She was skilled, picking clients up in the palm of her hand and artfully toying with them to suit her fancy. She kept her real name for a while, declining any suggestions. When I confessed to her that Nini wasn't my own name, she began to reconsider. As a joke, I suggested Satan, since one of the artists had said the other day that she was devilishly charming. For her part, she thought Satin was more fitting; I snorted and told her it was prissy. Eventually, she settled on Satine, which wasn't even a word. "The devil in satin," she purred experimentally, and as stupid as the phrase was, the way she said it made me shiver in her arms.

I found out later that Majesty had been taking bets on how many weeks we would stay on. She must have lost a lot on that one; serves her right.

We went on for far longer than a couple weeks. It lasted two years, even though we still had our separate customers to see to. Hard for anyone to believe, especially me, but for two goddamn years things kept on.

Things changed over that time, like always, while we remained constant. Scarlet died a grossly appropriate death via scarlet fever. Hyacinth came to spend more time coughing than performing until the one overcame the other and she collapsed on the floor--no one noticed it till the end of the night, when they found her cold as clay and covered with footprints. Siren cracked her skull open when the ropes gave during her act--there was talk for a while that it was no accident--and Creola was knifed by a client. Other dancers left or faded, and new girls came to take their places: cold Tarot, shuffling cards almost too large for her doll-sized hands; intense Juno, whirling through seemingly every dance known to mankind; serene Tartan, wearing her sister's ashes in a pouch at her waist… 

But more earthshaking than anything else was what happened to Genevieve. She was Harold's pride and joy, the leading lady; the only one privileged enough to call the elephant home. And she was found poisoned one evening shortly before her act began. According to Babydoll, who had been with the Rouge from the start, she had been a star from day one. Delicate-featured as a child, with hair that curled down to her hips in a honey-colored curtain, Genevieve had the unearthly beauty of an angel or a mermaid. She had never chosen a nom de guerre for herself, and instead of bogging down her path to success, the quirk had hastened it, setting her even farther apart from the rest of us.

Satine had viewed her with an odd combination of awe and condescension, as if she admired Genevieve but knew something she didn't. "I could do that," she had murmured once, watching from behind the mirrors as Genevieve sang the house into a dead silence from the middle of the floor. "Before long you'll be twice that famous," I had assured her, the words leaping out of my mouth before I thought them.

When Genevieve was found dead in her dressing room, they called it a suicide, and Satine didn't understand.

"She had everything," she burst out, wringing one hand like an indignant child and clasping mine so tightly with the other that it numbed my arm. "She was beautiful, famous, rich. Why should she want to die?"

I never did come up with an answer to that; there wasn't time. Genevieve was lying blue-faced in a silken puddle on the floor, and outside the audience was waiting for her to sing them spellbound. After I'd pried my hand from Satine's, kissed her cheek, and sardonically told her to wish me luck (she didn't; instead she said, "Please, Nini, don't do anything"), I left the distraught gathering at the dressing room and went out instead. There was some laughing and muttering from the patrons when they saw me, and Théophile wouldn't play the piano until I'd stood there for several seconds making desperate faces, but things smoothed out once I got started. My voice wasn't as strong as Genevieve's had been, but I could hit the right notes. And, I discovered, I could do acrobatics at the same time. It went over a hell of a lot better than I'd expected.

So much better that, once Harold bawled me out afterward for taking things into my own hands, my new act became a regular one. I was on top again, sometimes performing alone, sometimes with the Argentinean who'd helped boost my name in the first place, but always going home to Satine. "You'll be such a star you'll forget all about me," she said once, and even though she meant it as a joke I spent ten minutes proclaiming that would never be the case. By the time I'd finished, she had fallen asleep.