Author's Note: Some context for this ficlet would be after the Duke goes all psycho on Satine during "El Tango de Roxanne". I imagine something like this to have occurred from the time she is saved until she sees Christian again. I hope you enjoy this one, and I'd love any feedback you have to offer!

Satine races to him, unable to stay in the room any longer. It smells of blood and uncured lust, of disappointment and naked fury. It sickens her, the memories that are steadily forming in her head. She still feels the Duke's spidery hands pulling at her flesh, as if she's truly the china doll of the Moulin Rouge. She hears his ragged breaths at her ear, greedy and angry enough to take until he is satisfied. She sees Christian's fleeting gaze below her window and the poorly concealed envy that they contain. It will never cease to amaze her that envy was the extent of his emotions. Where was the disgust, the judgement, the sheer contempt that she'd been brought up all her life to withstand? How is it that this sparkling diamond, the most beautiful courtesan in the Moulin Rouge could be used over and over again, and never be seen as ready to dispose of in his eyes?

As she runs, she feels the jewels she'd been so careful to snap into place fall away from her. Diamonds are the most ironic of all them all. Anklets, bracelets, earrings, hairclips. How strange it is to actually feel richer as one by one, they all drop to the floor.

Christian's door is the life vest that she has been seeking in her ocean of misery and self-hatred, and she pounds on it with ardent fists. In seconds, rationality floods her core, and she places her slender fingers on the handle, turning it vehemently in an effort to be behind it, warm and safe once again in the arms of the man she knows is waiting for her.

She seems to tumble out from behind the great wooden barrier, reaching out for him before he can even acknowledge her presence. She can't help but slam herself into him, eager for the impact, the feeling of solidity of reliability beneath her fingertips as she grasps onto his shirt, burying her tear stained face into the warmth of his chest.

She mumbles something about how she couldn't go through with it, her words escaping her lips as pathetically broken murmurs. Even to her, the words are barely enough to be strung together into coherent thoughts. She'd seen him, she tells him, trying to steady herself against his shoulders. She looks up at his all-forgiving eyes, and he tells her that he's not at all angry with her. He tells her everything is going to be okay.

She pushes his arms away.

How dare he be so good to her, how dare he see past the layers of filth and worthlessness that she has not even yet begun to come to terms with. She is suffocating in his sincerity, in the ocean of promises she knows he intends to keep.

How much easier it would be if he just left her.

But somewhere inside, she knows that his absence would shatter her. She knows that it's not what she really wants. So she throws her arms back around him, and rests her head once again in the firmness of his chest, her eyes tightly shutting themselves so they won't have to meet his gaze.

She feels her chest start to heave once more as she thinks of the second part of her soliloquy, the climax of the story that she knows she must reveal. She tells him that the duke had seen the way he'd looked at her from far beneath her window, and worse, the way she'd looked back at him. She tells him that the duke knows, and that any sense of morality perished along with the prospect of their romance. Hell hath no fury like a man deceived.

Satine tries to pause as she thinks of what to say next to Christian, but her heart and mind are working too quickly to be in tandem. She blurts out a sweet message of her affection, her love for him, and recedes into the familiarity of darkness. She mumbles words about how she cannot stand to pretend anymore, because the lies are gnawing at every inch of her body, and she is growing weak. She lifts her head and repositions it, desperate to be enveloped by Christian's strength and undying affection. He wraps his arms around her, sensing her urgency, and she revels in his touch. It scares her to know how close she was to a different sort of touch, one that had succeeded in violating her beyond words despite its failure to materialize.

Satine feels herself being released, and she stands, unsteady on her own two feet for a few moments. She watches as Christian gestures to the man in the hallway to help her get her things. They're leaving. She observes, hardly objecting, as the world surrounding her seems to blur into an unsettling haze. She meets Christian's eyes, bright with hope and invincible optimism. The cynic within her watches him with laughter. She is a courtesan- a marked beauty whose feet will never take her past the doors of the Moulin Rouge. She will die a slave to the colorful world beneath the streets of Paris. But the romantic within her that she has only recently come to know tells her to jump for once in her life, and leave the possibility of a safe landing up to chance. It tells her to trust in Christian, in herself, in the miraculous thing they have between each other that has somehow survived the catastrophe they've put it through.

She listens.

And for a moment, it seems like it just might work.