Work Text:
What is fame worth if she is bound by the shackles of performing off the stage? The facade of false love, when her heart belongs to Christian?
All you need is love. He always told her that. And maybe this once it can be true.
So she packs her things and runs.
They never find out that the Duke was going to have Christian killed.
That night, when the Duke forced himself on Satine, she appeared at Christian’s flat in tears, begging to leave this horrible place. Damn the show. Damn the Duke. Damn it all.
“What about your things?” Christian asks.
“I’m afraid if I go there, he will be there, waiting for me.”
“Alright,” Christian says, kissing her forehead gently, rubbing his thumbs on her shoulders. “Then we’ll go. Now.”
They take the first train out of Paris, ending up in a small village in England. Christian spends his days working as a scrivener and Satine as a tailoress, Christian continuing to write his poetry and Satine busking in their evenings as they hold onto their passions.
They have a tiny little house in the village, the cheapest one they could get with their meager funds. It didn’t keep the cold out well and had more than a few rickety pieces of wood that needed replacing, but it was home.
Satine grows sicker as the days pass and so does Christian. They’d been making love for so long, it was inevitable that he developed the consumption too, and they spend their numbered days together, in love and in each other’s presences.
Satine passes first and Christian considers taking his life just to join her sooner, but he knows that she would want him to live, no matter how long it would be.
He gathers all of his poems and sends them to Toulouse.
Publish my poems. I don’t care if not a single soul reads them. I just want them out in the world. I want our love out there in the world.
Thank you for everything, dear friend.
Christian dies at his typewriter, writing yet another poem about Satine.
His poems gain fame post-mortem, his love palpable in his words, and their love lives on even as they’re gone.