Work Text:
“Don’t get me wrong,” Christian says to Satine from his current position of reclining on the grass, arms crossed behind his head and staring upward, watching the clouds rolling by, “I love my friends a lot—and I don’t feel anywhere near as alone as I used to—so I’m beyond grateful for them. But, I’m discovering that it’s hard to write as well without my inspiration nearby. The songs only ever seemed to come pouring out of me around you.”
Christian sits up and dusts himself off, blades of grass fluttering to the ground. “Thank you for listening. You’re so easy to talk to; always have been. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m okay, but I miss you. And I don’t think that’ll ever change.”
Christian takes a deep breath before he turns to the left and looks—he doesn’t like to look until he absolutely has to—at Satine’s headstone. He presses his lips to the cool, rock solid surface of it—so unlike the woman herself—tracing the outline of her name with the tip of his finger. His tears brim over, the way they always do, and splash on the headstone. Christian has long ago stopped trying to keep them from falling.
“And I still love you. Until my dying day,” he reminds her of his promise. He makes sure the flowers he’s brought are situated as nicely as he can manage before leaving, starting the long walk back home, hands in his pockets and head down. He still likes Paris, but even the scenery feels different now that Satine’s gone, and Christian is no longer full of that same excitement any longer, the need to look, to take it all in. He knows he shouldn’t—that she wouldn’t want him to—but he lives in his memories, mostly.
Christian doesn’t always feel Satine here; he feels her when he walks by the building that used to be the club, at Toulouse’s, when his friends convince him to leave the self-imposed isolation of his room and spend time with them, when he writes, when he sings, but not here. But she’s buried here, so it feels wrong not to visit. Christian doesn’t know how this all works or where Satine has gone, but he visits in case she is here, waiting for him. He doesn’t want her to think he’s capable of forgetting.