It smelled like home, the moment she stepped through the door. Sweat and cloth and dust and paint and leather and liquor and sex and electric wires, that was the familiar perfume of the Moulin Rouge.
Satine leans against the wall as soon as she shuts the door, certain she can still feel Jack on the other side.
You're dying, Satine.
You died in my arms.
"No," she whispers, eyes squeezed shut. It didn't bear thinking about, none of it. She scrubs at her forearm, where Jack had last touched her. She had to reorient herself now: she was home, and no one had missed her, and two months had not passed here, in her own time and her own dear city. What had she been doing before she got lost up here? Marie had revived her ("Oh, these ridiculous costumes!" Satine had said to the crowd of worried faces, smiling), and Harold had checked in on her, and she'd shown off her red dress -- "Smoldering temptress?"
Everything's going so well.
The Duke. She couldn't keep him waiting, it was up to her to make him invest. She gathers up her skirts and begins heading out, refusing to look back. (Maybe it's all still there. Maybe he--)
"You're a human being, Satine. You have free will. Nothing is inevitable."
"This involves money. Of course it's inevitable."
Satine thinks she must have been very light-headed to have gotten herself all the way back here, in this obscure corner of the hall. A few simple wrong turns, that's all that happened. Left here, right at the light fixture, past the dressing room--
"Miss Satine!"
She whirls around, a dancer's instinct. "Chocolat!"
It's been two months since she's seen him. He wouldn't know that, but she's never been so glad for his face. Without thinking, she throws herself on him for a hug. He's huge; he encompasses her completely. "Are you feeling well?" he asks, stroking the back of her head.
"Yes," she breathes. "Yes, thank you." She steps back and composes herself. "I never got the chance to thank you, for catching me."
"It was harrowing, watching you fall." In his eyes, the gravity of the event still lingers. It's still fresh for him.
She smiles, feeling ineloquent. "I'm glad you were there."
They say nothing for a moment before she looks down and straightens her dress again. "I have to go -- the Duke, he's expecting me." Chocolat watches her.
"What are you doing all the way up here?"
"Nothing!" she answers, too quickly. "Nothing, I just... got turned around, that's all. I wasn't thinking as I went." She smiles at him again. "How long has it been since the Diamonds number?"
"An hour, I think. Zidler's got them back at the Melée."
Satine nods. "Right, well... how do I look?" She strikes a pose. It's not so hard, slipping back into this personality, this routine. Chocolat grins.
"Enough to feed us all for a year. Now go."
She slips past him, a hand on his shoulder. She hurries through the back halls, through a warren of secret passages that one learns only by growing up here. The summer air washes over her as soon as she steps outside. The chill in her chest loosens its hold a little. Why would she have wanted to stay there, after all? It was February in Milliways. Who wouldn't trade it for this?
Her wrist brushes against the doorframe; an emerald bracelet presses cold against her skin. She looks down at it, but she doesn't take it off.
The Elephant looms in front of her. Someone is inside, she can see as much through the filigrée. There's no time to think, less to lose. Within the minute, she's at her own door. It occurs to her that perhaps the dress isn't enticing enough -- that sheer black ensemble, that should do beautifully. Instead of going straight to the bedroom, she opts for a quick costume change in her closet. She doesn't let herself pause: the dangers of reconsidering are too great. (And why should she? That place was awful for her -- unnatural, and the people -- her ethic, it was in shambles. A job to do--
"I have a job to do, Jack. I'm a courtesan. I can't afford to love."
"Yes you can. It's just not me who you can afford to love.")
There's no time for that.
When she opens the door, her sense of purpose is firm, and completely intact. Seduce the Duke, let him sleep with her, money for a pantomime of affection -- the whole operation is quite simple. He's standing there, his back to her, and she doesn't allow herself a single moment of recoil when she recognizes something in the man's looks.
"What are you? A ghost?"
"If you're not the Duke, then who are you?"
"I'm the poet who wrote the play you performed in. The one you loved."
He hasn't noticed her yet. She knows him for a fraud. There's still a chance to to chase him away, to find the Duke, whoever he was, and afterwards to hunt down Toulouse and skin him alive for throwing this boy into her path.
"There was no way around it. We were made for each other."
"You're a human being, Satine. You have free will. Nothing is inevitable."
Fate, as they say, hangs in the balance. She considers her options. This man has told me that I died in his arms. Why would I do a thing like that? She thinks on the look on his face when she found him sitting at the Bar, when he fainted and cut his hands on glass trying to get away from her; when he sang to her, when he sang...
There is a saying about curiosity and dead cats. Satine knows this: she knows more, perhaps, than any other woman in Paris about what she could choose and what she could avoid. She knows that Jack Driscoll is three years away from being born, and perhaps only a door's thickness away from her at any given time. She knows that something dreadful could be coming, hand in hand with a word she knows she's never allowed herself to truly know. One foot moves forward.
"This is a wonderful place for a poetry reading." And the other. "Don't you think?"
Christian turns around, his hat in his hands. His face is bright, awed, whole. Satine studies his eyes. I wish I could make you see it. I really wish I could.
With one smooth motion, and without looking back, she closes the door and steps toward him again.