Disclaimer: I do not own Moulin Rouge.
A/N: Welcome to my first Moulin Rouge fanfic. This first chapter is dark and angsty, but there will be many happy and romantic moments to come - if people like my story, that is. The basic plot line is that Christian has made a deal with the devil to save Satine's life, and the workings of this deal will be revealed as the story unfolds. Please, please review! It will inspire me to write a second chapter faster. Read on and enjoy!
Chapter 1: The Contract
The typewriter stared up at him, the keys mocking him with the story they yearned to capture. He hummed softly under his breath, a melody now broken by grief and regret. Another vague melody drifted through his open window, light and bouncy and in a completely different world. It came from the underworld, or so he imagined. The lights of the Moulin Rouge played across the night sky and made the stars dim by comparison. He sighed shakily and glanced down at his worn table.
Beside his typewriter there lay a single sheet of paper, the handwriting utterly beautiful and frightening.
What do I do? he asked himself, his indecision eating away at him. He looked over at the Persian elephant, so horribly dark and unoccupied. What do I do? Can I really ever move on from here? How many years alone...? I just can't do it. But can I really do this? Satine, I wish you could tell me.
He cried a little in the darkness there, but only a little. He scarcely had a tear left in him. The music in the distance was lively and upbeat, drumming in his ears and haunting him with memories. He bit his lip in concentration, trying to hear what his heart was telling him; trying to listen to the music it sang with every beat of his heart.
Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing?
He smiled as the ghost of her voice rose up in his mind. He could still see her on stage, her eyes sparkling like the diamonds she sang of so often before finding love. Her face filled his mind; the shape of her lips and the curve of her cheek. He envisioned the fall of her hair, its wonderful texture running through his fingertips.
Could it be that all of this tragedy, this anguish, might be reversed? The man who had presented him with this solution had spoken with such knowledge, and there had been a power in his voice that had unnerved the young writer. Somehow, it was not quite human. It seemed that such ideas and dreams of second chances were actually within his reach. At least, while the man had been speaking in his terribly charming voice it had. Now cold uncertainty gripped him, and he sat in doubt.
If I do this, than everything could right itself by the end. It would be completely different behind that final curtain. If I don't do this...
He closed his eyes and let himself be carried ahead of his time, using his vast imagination to see the outcome of this life he now found himself in. He saw lonely nights and even lonelier days, unending glasses of absinthe and blank pages of paper, his stories wilting inside him without a sun to make it grow. He kept picturing himself wandering around Paris, forever bound to it by love. He kept seeing the now empty dressing room in the Moulin Rouge.
He saw a world without Satine.
He realized that there truly existed no choice at all. The thought of going on when his soul would always be trapped here, in the lights of the city and the beat of the Bohemian music, was more than he could bare. He looked down at the contract, for that was rightly what it was. The letters blared up at him, beseeching him to lift the pen that lay beside it and sign his name. Urging him to lift the knife that rested in his lap and seal his decision with a single drop of blood.
Satine.
He lifted the pen and gently signed his name across the bottom, the ink flowing smoothly from the tip. When he was finished, he set the pen down and picked up the small dagger, its silver blade gleaming faintly in the moonlight. He put his thumb at the very tip, pushing down and splitting the skin there. He pressed it to the paper next to his signature, leaving behind a bloody fingerprint when he drew back his hand.
For a moment, nothing changed. The sounds of the ever raging party next door continued unhindered, and the music still came lazily through his window. His typewriter still sat unmoved with a blank page in its clutches, the room as silent and stuffy as it had been seconds ago. Across the way, Satine's room was still dark.
And then his vision began to blur. An overwhelming fatigue fell upon him, immediately zapping his strength and clouding his mind. He stood and nearly lost his balance, stumbling awkwardly over to his bed. The world spun around him, making him nauseous and dizzy, the colors of his apartment suddenly too vivid. He dropped onto the mattress with an exhaustion he did not understand, his surroundings already fading to black as darkness took him.
His last thought before he lost consciousness was of Satine, singing softly to him from the Gothic Tower.
A/N: I hope you liked the first chapter. Review and tell me if you did, or even if you didn't. I am not afraid of constructive criticism. Thanks!