Disclaimer: Moulin Rouge isn't mine. If it was, I'm not so very sure that I'd write fanfiction about it.

Author's Note: Haven't written anything Moulin Rouge-ish in ages, but felt suddenly compelled to. So . . . this is pretty much overly poetic and it makes no sense and is rather blah, but . . . oh well. I wanted to post something, so here something is.

Whee.

*

            She is a dark sort of creature, and it is a wonder that he does not see it.

            She lives in different shades of red: ruby sheets, scarlet lips, sanguine hair and coughs tainted with crimson. Diamonds sparkle like artificial stars on her fingers, 'round her neck; all the words she speaks are lies, every motion is rehearsed carefully before performed.

For she is always performing, whether or not there is an audience.

            She dreams sometimes, delicately, because she knows if her hopes grow too strong, they might, so easily, shatter.

            She has already seen too many things wind up broken.

            He loves her when he shouldn't, and in his naïve mind is so convinced that everyone else is wrong, that what they have is pure and true and right and therefore the rest are tainted, damned, and of no concern to him. He sees no grey – everything is divided. Good and bad. Black and white. Saints and sinners.

            Then what is she?

            Maybe in his eyes she's some sort of angel. Maybe she is ethereal and graceful and good. Maybe he has woven his words around her so convincingly that even she believes she is something more than a worthless harlot who is coveted after now but whose grave won't be visited, who won't be showered with tears and roses.

            It seems such a simple love story on the surface, for those who are content to coo and cry over the timeless beauty of it all. He loves her incontrovertibly, she loves him though she shouldn't, and together they dance on stars and weave melodies like spun gold.

            But in truth, it is not beautiful. It is fierce and desperate and ugly and cold, and eventually he will rue the day he ever chose to fall in love with her. He will buy her roses, spending so long picking out the perfect bouquet, running his fingers distractedly over smooth petals; he will step into the graveyard and walk slowly, his footsteps far too loud, his breath suspended in icy clouds in front of him, and he will realize, dazedly, that he is young. Barely twenty-five, and already his world's been torn apart – already he will spend the rest of his life mourning a woman who wasn't, in retrospect, as very remarkable as he always saw her.

            Somewhere along the line, he will forget the magic and begin to see the colors – the greys and reds.

            Or so the skeptics say.

FIN