Disclaimer: I do not own Moulin Rouge
A/N: Hi everyone! Thanks to all those who reviewed my last chapter, and to those who intend to review this one. I know my time between updates has been growing later and later, but with the holidays over I should have much more time to devote to my fics. Hope you all had a safe, happy holiday, and that you're ready for a bit more of Ballad.
Chapter 18: The Devil You Know
The hall was desolate except for a few sparse visitors, walking vaguely from one point to the next through the mild hum of voices coming from the stage. Sunshine seeped in the windows and hung lazily on the air, though to Christian the light looked slightly murky with its dust particles revolving aimlessly inside the beams. A faint, stale odor hovered around the old tapestries and decorative curtains.
Satine was down on the stage somewhere, rehearsing her lines and slipping gracefully between the other actors. He made certain that he went unnoticed, trying futilely to block out her voice when it echoed up to him. He resisted the urge to indulge himself with a brief glance in her direction, knowing it was imperative that he stay focused; if Satine were to fill up his senses, it would be utterly impossible.
No one stopped him or asked of his business. Most of the staff was preparing for the performance later in the week, the one starring his Satine - and the one that would mark the place of his deadline. There was too much concentration floating around for anyone to observe his presence.
When at last he stood before the door, he was heartened to find that his nerves had abated a little. He glanced briefly up the corridor before knocking, the sound reverberating with a thick and strangely sharp resonance . There were footsteps inside and a few hurried whispers, and then the door creaked open to reveal a brown, squinty eye.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't the aspiring writer," the Duke said with a small smirk, opening the door to reveal more of the tiny office; Val rested in a chair behind the desk. "I've heard a great deal about you. Struck up quite the business arrangement, I hear. I've seen you lurking about the theater a few times, and around a certain young actress -"
"I don't believe we've met before," Christian interrupted, his eyes never leaving the figure at the back of the room. "But thank God that there isn't time for us to be properly introduced now. I need to speak with Val alone."
The Duke's expression changed rapidly, morphing from a look of amused smugness to one of extreme insult. He opened his mouth to reply, no doubt highly affronted, but Val's cool and collected voice drifted in between them. "You were just leaving Duke. What excellent timing."
With a sour look on his face the Duke swept down the hall, making a point of bumping into Christian as he passed. Christian felt the smallest stab of envy as he watched the Duke's figure recede, left to face his fate alone within the windowless walls of the room before him. He entered the office and faced the door as he shut it, feeling almost as he had on the night Val had visited his apartment: he was closing the lid on his own coffin.
"Christian," Val said behind him as smoothly as a lover, and with a split second to regret his decision, Christian turned warily at the sound of his name. "How truly touching it is to have you come visit me. I was planning on stopping by any day now to discuss a few last minute arrangements, but now you've gone and saved me the trouble."
Christian tried to respond and found that his throat had closed up, making him feel faint and in desperate need of air. The dark file cabinets and the pastel walls seemed to be suffocating him with their contrasting colors.
I have to do better than this, he thought, opening and closing his sweaty hands. I was doing fine before I walked in; I just need to remember why I'm here. It's for Satine. Just keep her in mind, in my heart.
"I need to discuss something with you," he began, and then something clicked in his brain. "Wait - what last minute arrangements?"
"Oh, just a few odds and ends to clear up," Val replied, standing up and coming around the front of the desk. With great force of will, Christian remained where he was. "I need to know, for instance, where you will be at midnight on Saturday. Of course, I have an idea, but just to be sure…"
When Val trailed off with a meaningful stare, Christian said softly, "You know where I'll be. Here. At the performance."
"As I thought," Val said with a curt nod, and then he reached inside his coat pocket with one pale, long fingered hand. "There is also a little issue I wish to address, one that displeases me profoundly, and one that I am deeply sorry to have discovered."
For a single, rather absurd moment, Christian thought that he was about to pull a pistol from his pocket, but what Val produced was even worse than he could have imagined. It was the contract, looking pristinely white and clean against its elegant black ribbon. Christian felt the blood pounding in his ears even as he wondered if the rest of it had not been drained completely from his body, his skin growing colder by the second. Toulouse.
How could he have left the contract with his best friend, knowing what a beacon it was? How could he have put Toulouse in such danger? How did he keep doing the wrong things?
"I'm very disappointed in you, Christian," Val said, clicking his tongue in an almost parental manner. "We had a deal, a set range of limits and expectations that were to be upheld - but I find that I am the only one upholding them. To become incensed at your situation, to despise me for your fate; all this I could understand. But to steal from me? How terribly unacceptable."
"What have you done?" Christian asked breathlessly.
"What have I done?" Val whispered, and suddenly his eyes seemed over bright, as though he were looking straight through the young writer and out into the streets of Paris somewhere beyond. "No, no, no, Christian…what have you done?"
He grabbed the front of Christian's shirt and shook him roughly, an expression of disgust and contempt spreading across his face. When Val released him he fell into the door, managing to stay upright but feeling the jolt of it penetrating his bones. Anger welled up inside him, a startling emotion in his current situation, yet one that he welcomed gratefully. It only held out for a moment, however, and then Christian stared up into his face.
Val's skin had become slightly transparent, fading out to reveal a horrid face of sharpened fangs and mangled flesh below. The eyes seemed to be bleeding from the crimson irises, and there were insects crawling incessantly over his clothes, over the furniture, scrambling across the now darkened room and up the walls to cover the ceiling…
The vision lasted only for a second, (only as long as Val had permitted him to see, he was sure), and then everything slipped back into its simple settings. The walls were bare and unadorned with bugs, the desk and chairs as routine as in any other office. It had been so fleeting that Christian wondered if he hadn't possibly imagined the whole thing. But the slight electric charge that seemed to pulse in the air around him suggested it had been more than just a vision.
"How do you keep doing the wrong things?" Val inquired, echoing his earlier thoughts word for word. Christian could only gape. "Indeed, it seems you have quite a knack for making the wrong decisions. How am I to trust you to do my bidding for all eternity, Christian, if we have to start our long partnership with such a black mark as stealing? Not to mention dragging your friend into all of this, which was quite a selfish move on your part. But what really astounds me is the complete abandonment of your resolution to Mademoiselle Satine. You threw away her chance for happiness, and your own chance to save your soul, without so much as a backward glance."
Christian was breathing so fast that he couldn't feel it, the evaporation of his anger leaving him momentarily vulnerable to his rising fear. He took a step closer to that smirking face and asked, "What do you mean? What chance to save my soul? You never said a word about this."
"Of course I didn't. You think I would tell you such a secret? How would I stay in the business with that kind of work ethic?" He turned back toward the desk and Christian started at the two glasses of whiskey that had not been there a second before. Val offered him the first glass, which he declined, and then continued, "Yes, you see, all who sign such contracts as yours do so out of a purely inescapable selfishness, but the chance of redemption still lingers. To perform a selfless act such as the one you intended, to give Satine her happiness in exchange for your own misery, was something that troubled me deeply, for it would have atoned the sin of selling your soul. But now that you have given into your desires, you damned yourself a second time, and Satine as well; by taking her you broke the rules of your own contract, and took away her happiness. Now the object of making her happy or unhappy is no longer any of my concern."
"What do you mean?" he asked, though some vague part of his mind already knew. The question barely made it out through the tears that were pouring down his face. He was trying desperately to stay calm, but his heart felt physically sick and diseased with Val's words.
It had all been for nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was as though he were holding Satine's limp body in his arms again behind the curtains of the Moulin Rouge, all hope and contentment for the future irrevocably lost. That same horrific comprehension was settling over him, the sense that he was surrounded on all sides by the vacancy of a forever without warmth; that he had taken a great fall. What had he done?
"What have you done, Christian?" the devil asked him, and laughed. Christian winced at the sound. "You've made my job quite easier than I could have ever hoped for. You procured your own damnation by not just one but several selfish acts, and have now paved the way for another contract with another available soul."
"The Duke," Christian whispered.
Val smiled wickedly. "The Duke. He now owns both the Moulin Rouge and the Bouffes du Nord theater. His contract also insures that he will possess any other establishment that Satine participates in, and her whereabouts are to be known to him at all times. She will remain in perfect health, but because of you Christian, she no longer has to be happy, and she won't…because she loves you." Val leaned in, and the demonic vision flashed briefly before Christian's eyes. "You played right into my hands."
"NO!"
Without thinking he launched himself at Val, his rage so consuming that the images before him were bathed in a reddish hue. He met only air at the point where Val's body should have been, falling through the nothingness and connecting painfully with the floor. He heard laughter above him and looked up to see Val standing over him, his face filled with malicious glee.
"No time for that, Christian! You have more pressing matters that need attending," Val said, and the door behind him opened of its own accord. "Or have you forgotten the other person you so neglectfully wronged?"
Christian stared at him out of his wrath and anguish for a full minute before it hit him. "Toulouse," he whispered, and without another glance at Val he took off out the door and up the hallway, his mind filled with horrific images that his heart was loath to accept.
He crashed through the front doors, not noticing the soft blue eyes that wandered up in his direction. From behind him he could hear Val laughing again, the voice no longer carrying its sinisterly sweet tone, but sounding as deranged and inhuman as the vision Christian had seen in the office.
The laughter followed him out of the theater and into the streets, the thundering of his footfalls not enough to drive away the haunting sound. The tears came relentlessly, every drop holding the image of the clearest blue eye or the loveliest rose lips, a little piece of the paradise he had pushed to ruin. He saw him in every window as he rushed to Toulouse's apartment, in every sliver of glass and puddle of water; around every corner the devil was there, taunting him with the consequences he had never considered.
He was beginning to realize just how soundly he had forged his own prison.
A/N: Oh dear. Seems the devil had a trick up his sleeve the whole time. And what has happened to poor Toulouse? I guess this would be considered a cliff hanger, in which case I will try to update as speedily as possible. Reviews, please.