Chapter Text
Christian hadn’t grown old. Days turned to weeks; weeks turned to months; months turned to years. The years went by, his memories grew old, his friends grew old. It became a joke between them. By the time he was thirty he still looked young as he did at twenty. Under the beard he still had that baby face. Even facing war hardly scarred him. But he made friends as dear to him as the ones he made at the Moulin Rouge. He cried tears when he got BCG. When he was nearing forty, and age was starting to wear on the friends left in this world, he still looked two decades younger. He published their story then.
He turned fifty and watched the pages of the first edition start to turn brown. At sixty, he lost more friends than he did in the decades past. He no longer fought that war. But he watched them hunt his friends, watched them be slaughtered and taken away, while he escaped and escaped and survived. He carried their book with him all those years. The war ended. He broke down when he learned of Streptomycin.
When he was seventy, they stood three strong, new friends and old. They carried their years when they walked, crooked and slow. But the lines were just barely starting to paint his face. Guess we know now who Lady Fate’s favorite is, they joked. When he was eighty, he stood alone at their graves, their book in hand like a Bible. The brown edges had started to curl. Time had gone on. She’d forgotten him, left him there on opening night.
*
He moved on. At some point the memories stopped hurting. He no longer cried at the thought of Satine. The wound in his heart in the shape of their love scabbed over. The wound healed like a hip heals badly after an injury. He was okay, but every so often, it would twinge in old, never-quite-forgotten pain. His thoughts of her grew rarer. He started life again.
The world changed. Slowly at first, but ever quicker.
He climbed out of poverty. Made a name for himself. He never was incredibly well known, but it was enough to get by. Experience some privileges, even. See the upper echelons of the city he had spent the many long decades of his life in.
He fell in love again. She wasn’t the same as Satine; he never expected her to be. In many ways she was quite the opposite. But in all the ways that mattered, she was exactly the same.
So his heart ached when she smiled like that, but mostly he felt joy, so oddly reminiscent of that year of 1899. She was passionate about her dreams, the same as Satine. She was never a great singer, and her dreams were of academia, not the stage. But she believed with her full heart in their love.
He supported her through the many years and trials of her doctorate. Stayed in the lab with her more nights than not. Learned a thing or two himself without even meaning to.
He told her of himself, of Satine, when they were to be wed. Makes sense now why you act like such an old man, she told him, and kissed him sweeter than she ever did before. ‘Course I’ll stay with you.
They said their vows the summer of 1969.
When I knew Satine, we used to say, ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.’ You taught me how to love again, and I promise to love you in return. ‘Till death do us apart.
The celebration was small, but oh so grand. They danced and sang, and for the first time in six decades it didn’t hurt. He remembers looking at his friends, at his wife. He had found love again.
He knew he’d lose them again, logically. The realization set in by the time he was nearly a hundred and looked barely thirty. They’d been married a decade and she was starting to look older than him.
I knew I’d go before you, she said. I’ll never have to know a world without you, though, will I? She held his hand tight, the light hit her hair just right, the brown curls looked gold and for a moment, he thought he was looking at an angel.
They never had any children. They’d tried for years. They’d dreamed of nurseries and names, of family outings, shared life and wonder and love. It was nearly a decade-and-a-half when they received the news. She and him — neither of them would ever be able.
It’s okay, she said, the stronger one of them, as always, when they’d finished crying. It’ll be alright. You’ll still be in the world when I’m gone to remember our love. You’ll simply have two stories to tell. She smiled, held his head, and he kissed her palm.
I will. It was an agreement, but it was also a promise.
His new friends lived longer than his from the Moulin Rouge did. A combination of affluence and improving medicine that the consumption-ridden poverty he came from never would have allowed. They grew older, but he stayed young. You age so well, they started saying by the third decade he’d looked nearly the same. His wife laughed along with a knowing glint in her eye. He felt his love only grow, as nostalgia set in.
He’d lived through his second turn of the century when she came home with the biggest grin he’d ever seen and a poster in hand.
Moulin Rouge!
‘Truth · Beauty · Freedom · Love’ the tagline read. And there, at the very bottom:
Based on the novel by Christian Wright.
He doesn’t really know if he laughed or cried that day. The actor looks so much like you, don’t you think? she laughed. She saw his tears, quick as ever to wipe them away. We don’t have to watch it, of course, love.
No … no, let’s watch it, he said. That movie was the first time he cried about Satine in more than forty years. For two hours, he felt he’d nearly had some version of her back. He was sobbing by the end, he thinks. But she just kissed his forehead and held him.
He got a couple more years with her. But she died young, too. It wasn’t young by the standards of his first twenties, but life had become so much longer. It shouldn’t have been her time yet. But she left this world, and his love was gone once again. So he sat down to write their story. To remember her too. And the first edition of the book joined the ancient, aged tome of his first on the shelf.
He’d learned how to grieve, after almost thirteen decades of life. So he let himself feel the anger and the sadness, but he let himself accept it too. It was the fifth anniversary of her death that he found his first grey hair. He hadn’t quite believed it to be something he’d ever see.
He went by her grave. He brought her flowers, as he did every year, and he talked. Told her about the newest of his life. Stayed for hours, and by some miracle, found the courage to do what he hadn’t had the courage to do for a hundred-and-ten years.
He found Satine’s grave. Picked up some flowers for her. Red as the dress she’d worn that very first night they met. And he laid them by her grave. He traced his fingers over the etched-in-stone numbers of her life.
18 February 1876 – 21 April 1900
Twenty-four years she was in this world. For one year she was in his world. For a hundred-ten he’s remembered her.
So he sits by her grave too, and for the first time in decades he talks to her. He tells her of the world that’s changed, of the lives he’s lived, of the wife he’s had the Fates’ blessing to know.
“Our life was wonderful, Satine,” he says, hoping maybe her spirit listens from the heavens. “Now I get to remember the both of you.”