Title: Mirrors
Author: Amy Fortuna (amyfortuna@yahoo.com)
Rating: PG
Fandom: Moulin Rouge
Archive: Please ask.
Spoilers: For Moulin Rouge.
Summary: It's interesting how Satine is reflected in mirrors so much in the movie, isn't it?
Notes: This is an official I-noticed-this-on-the-second-viewing fic. Just a shortie. :) Also the first of the twenty thousand Satine POVs that have exploded into my head. I don't generally do female characters, but for the lovely courtesan...I can refuse her nothing.

*****

I want to be an actress. More than anything. And so I learn how my body acts, in every situation. How I smile, the lines of my frown, what angle I should cant my hips at to get the best reaction, just how wide to open my mouth when I sing.

I am surrounded by mirrors, my own image flashing back at me a hundred -- no, a thousand -- times a day. I know how to pout, in a million different ways to send a million different messages. I know what smile to give Toulouse's newest protégé to both make Toulouse happy and tell whatever adorable gutter rat he's dragged in that he's got no chance with me. I also know how to smile a very different smile, the one that pulls men to my feet, drooling.

I know how to act. But somewhere in all this, I've forgotten who I was before I felt so driven. What was I like as a child? Did I know who I was? Was I anyone at all? Or have I always been like this, studiedly desperate, searching, reaching, dreaming with a radiant passion? Is this all there is?

I've had to make my body into a tool. To do that, I also had to make my heart into iron. Is it worth it, this dream of acting before Presidents and kings?

I stare into my own image in the mirror and sigh, already knowing how I will look. Am I merely my image, or is there something deep inside me that has never been touched? Do I still have a heart?

When will I begin to live again?

END