She Saved Us All

By She's a Star

Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge belongs to Baz Luhrmann.

A/N: I watched the second half of Moulin Rouge today for the seventy billionth time, and at the end when Satine and Christian come out onto the stage, they had a shot of Nini that got me thinking...she actually looked a bit sympathetic, and the idea for this popped into my head. This definitely isn't like the other Nini fics; it's not full of her signature cold, biting sarcasm. Quite the opposite, actually. Veeery much the opposite.

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We all had different reasons for hating her.

She was stunningly beautiful. Her voice could have belonged to an angel. Her costumes were the most elaborate; her hair was the silkiest; her face was the most flawless. She had more diamonds than all of us lowly can-can dancers put together. She was always refined, always elegant, always above us and always everything we couldn't be.

But when you really stopped to think about it, it all boiled down to one thing.

We were all jealous of her.

And that, really, was everyone's reason. It wasn't because of her perfect appearance or amount of riches or the fact that she lived in the lap of luxury.

No, it was jealousy.

I hated her more than I'd ever hated anyone in my entire life, and the people I'd met had never been good ones. After all the things that people have done to me, you'd think that I'd loathe someone else with the most passion. But I never did.

It was always Satine.

Always the Moulin Rouge's beloved Sparkling Diamond.

And then something happened, and suddenly we all had an advantage over her, we were all better; she fell in love. A courtesan in love is good enough as half-dead and living on the streets, and we all knew it. We would snicker at her and gossip about her and make up different glorious ways of letting it slip to the Duke that he wasn't her one and only.

In the end, it was me who had the honor of giving her little secret away.

Never in my life have I ever felt more powerful, more triumphant than I did at that moment. The look of absolute horror and painful realization on his face gave me the most smug satisfaction that anyone could ever feel. He looked crazed, insane, murderous; I could tell right then and there that the Great Mademoiselle Satine's life would no longer be the bed of roses that no one in our line of work deserved.

I suppose I wanted it to ruin her...to tear her apart, to destroy her soul.

Though I never really suspected she had one.

A soul, I mean.

I didn't expect for her to be heartbroken; after all, courtesans weren't supposed to have breakable hearts. Our hearts were made of stone...perhaps even iron. They were unbreakable.

She was the Sparkling Diamond.

She was supposed to be the strongest of us all.

But on opening night of the production, I passed her dressing room to see her collapsed on the floor in that extravagant, glittering Hindi Sad Diamonds dress, shaking with sobs.

Her sobs still echo through my mind to this very day.

It was the strangest thing I'd ever experienced...I'd never felt more awkward, and I couldn't even begin to place my finger on why. I hated her, after all. I wanted her to feel the worst pain imaginable.

But the second that those golden doors swung open to reveal her and the writer, years of utmost loathing faded away in mere seconds. Makeup ran down her tearstained face, and her face was so full of emotion that she'd never dared expose before. That expression of raw pain, hopeless grief, has been eternally etched into my mind.

And then as they began to descend the stairs and she fell into a heap on the floor, shaking in sobs of distraught, I loved her as I've never loved anyone before. Lying there so broken and despondent, she symbolized every one of us. She was no longer the regal, aloof Sparkling Diamond; she was a lost little girl, yearning desperately for someone to hold her, to guide her out of the cruel dark world that we've been eternally subjected to.

Right then, I saw so much of myself in her. She'd felt the same pain I had; she, like myself, had been crying for so long on the inside that she couldn't even consider the possibility of happiness. Every difference between us, between all of us dancers, disappeared. No longer were we considered by rank, by how much the men liked us.

We were all the same.

After being trapped for so long, how could we be anything else?

I could feel my own heart breaking as the writer delivered the sitar player's lines, each word drenched in a terrifying sincerity. All my hope seemed to leave with him as he made his way towards the door, and then Satine began to sing.

They made their way into each other's arms again, and for the first time in my life I saw what true love was. Happiness engulfed me in a way it hadn't in longer than I could remember, and every single dancer, every single Bohemian in the production sang joyfully as they circled the lovers.

With one last proclamation of Satine and Christian's undying love, the red velvet curtains swung shut, and for a fleeting moment I actually had faith that there could truly be a happy ending for them.

For all of us.

But that was all reduced to a foolish dream when those uneven, shallow breaths escaped her lips, followed by that ruthless cough determined to tear the world apart. We all watched the lovers' last moments together in silence, not moving, barely breathing. It was the most beautiful, bittersweet thing I've ever experienced...something not a single one of us could even begin to understand. We'd never dared break the rule, and as they shared a last kiss I realized how grateful I was to Satine. She'd shown us that it could be done, that anyone could fall in love. All you had to do was have faith; believe that you could fly.

We stood there for what felt like hours; perhaps it was, perhaps it was only minutes, just watching the penniless poet sob hysterically, slowly rocking her lifeless body back and forth in his arms, begging her in desperate whispers to come back to him.

That night, I cried for the first time in as long as I could remember. I didn't attempt to hide it; I just stared, transfixed, and let the tears stream down my cheeks. The Argentinean came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, giving my cold body the slightest sensation of warmth. He kissed my cheek softly, and I could feel the tears on his face mingling with my own.

We'd both always considered ourselves outshone by her; she was the Diamond when I had longed to be for so long, and while he starred in the play alongside her, he would never have gained the fame that was guaranteed to her. Really, she'd always been better than both of us. Than all of us. She deserved everything in the world, and now she was gone.

Watching the broken writer cry over his lost courtesan, the words that she'd sung before on the stage, so radiant and glowing with happiness and life, rung through my mind.

'One day I'll fly away...'

And she did. She hadn't given the Duke his ending, and she had escaped from the cold, emotionless facade that she'd been forced to keep up for so long. On that stage, she'd just been Satine. Nothing more, nothing less.

Fly away...

We all could now...she'd kicked down the door that had held us back for so long. I would. Not for myself. Not for the Argentinean, despite the fact that he'd somehow involuntarily found a place in my heart.

But for Satine.

Because really, she saved us all.