(no subject)

[fairytaleknight]

[Before: "Drosselmeyer killed them," Fakir breathes. "And he used me to do it."]

The first gray shock is turning into anger by the time Fakir finds his way to the Milliways ballet practice room. Fakir wants to pour his rage into leaps and fouettes, to dance until his mind and body are one, utterly focused on the demands of each step.

Unfortunately, Fakir's initiation wasn't even a full day ago, and his legs and feet have not recovered from sixty-four hours spent standing.

Begin at the beginning.

Fakir grips the barre and moves into first position. If he can't throw himself into a sequence of leaps, he'll throw himself into the warmup drills.

Comments

[reallyaduck]

Duck's been looking for Fakir since losing him in the bar. (It seems like she's always looking high and low for somebody, these days.) She had every intention of dragging him back home, to get a proper night's sleep in his own bed --

-- but now she's caught in the doorway, watching Fakir move his exhausted body through the discipline of the doors, struck still with the same wistful fascination as when she sees Rue at rehearsal.

Even after three days of deprivation, he's got the focus she can't ever see to master. It's painful to watch him, and beautiful, too.

[fairytaleknight]

Holding the barre, Fakir enters a sequence of battements tendus en croix: to the front in fourth position, the side in second position, and to the back in fourth position. He feels his hips aching, and his blistered toes sting as he sweeps his right leg across the floor. He welcomes the pain; the more pain, the clearer his mind becomes. Again. Again. Again.

[reallyaduck]

Without any conscious direction, Duck's own foot starts to move in sympathy, her hand braced against the door. Forward, side, back, again --

-- but a door doesn't provide the same kind of support as a solid grip on a barre, and it's not too long before her left foot starts to slip out from under her on the smooth wood floor. She skids backwards hastily to straighten herself out.

[fairytaleknight]

Can Fakir get to the door in time to catch her?

Well, yes, sort of, but he's moving too fast and he still hasn't regained all of his bodily control. Fakir loses his balance as well when he reaches Duck, and they both end up in a tangle of limbs by the doorway.

That was not the plan.

[reallyaduck]

"Ack!"

Duck flails around in an attempts to get herself straightened out and separated from Fakir; it doesn't work so well.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry --"

(A long time ago, she'd stood in the doorway and watched Mytho dance; she'd leaned forward so far that she'd fallen. He'd caught her perfectly.

Given that she had then gone straight into a frozen panic, that had not been less awkward than this.)

[fairytaleknight]

"Oh. Don't worry about it."

Fakir extracts one of his legs first, and then the other, before offering his arm to help Duck to her feet.

While Fakir isn't precisely blushing, his face is just a touch pinker than usual. The thoughts that drove him to the practice room feel... distant, for a moment, present but just out of reach. Huh.

[reallyaduck]

"I really am really sorry though! I didn't mean to interrupt --"

Bracing herself on Fakir's offered arm, Duck manages to scramble back up.

"You looked like you were really practicing hard, and -- I was just watching, and --"

Now that she's on her feet again, she realizes belatedly, there's no need to hang onto Fakir anymore; she puts her hands together behind her back instead, shifting her weight absently from foot to foot as she looks up at him.

"-- and you know, you haven't been in class for a while, so I haven't gotten to see -- I mean -- you know, I don't get to see you dance all that much anymore, and -- it's cool to see you even do the exercises! You're really good!"

[fairytaleknight]

Fakir shrugs.

The barrier between himself and his thoughts is fading; and Duck wants to see. Fakir moves into the center of the hall and tries the battements tendus again, this time raising his arms in perfect curves. If he dances long enough, hard enough, maybe Fakir will find the perfect blankness he experienced on the third day of his vigil.

But he can't reach it. Drosselmeyer, his thoughts whisper. Drosselmeyer used my writing to kill.

[reallyaduck]

"I mean -- I didn't mean you had to --"

Duck frowns, unclasps her hands, crosses her arms in front of herself, tightly.

She's about to ask if she should go -- maybe he wants his privacy -- when, abruptly, she remembers why she's here at all, and why she didn't want to leave him alone to begin with. He's just been in an ordeal for three days; he must be exhausted. He probably shouldn't be practicing, even --

-- but he's a dancer, and if you're a dancer, you practice.

She moves a hesitant step closer into the room, not wanting to interrupt, not wanting to leave him be, and not quite able anymore to just watch.

[fairytaleknight]

"Come in already," Fakir says, and although the words are sharp, the tone has very little of his usual impatience.

Now for the dégagés; Fakir lifts his pointed foot off the floor with every sweep, front, side, back. (He hasn't brought his slippers; he's dancing barefoot.) Maintaining balance away from the barre is much harder than usual; good. He needs the difficulty.

"You can practice too. If you want."

[reallyaduck]

Does she want? Duck stands awkwardly in the middle of the room. It's been a long time since she just went into the studio just to practice. There's things they've got to do, if she could only figure out what -- Mytho's getting worse every day, and Rue's pushing everyone away, and --

(-- and she didn't get her toe shoes with everyone else, and Mr. Cat thinks she can't focus, and he's probably right, she can't, not with all this, and --)

-- and it wasn't all that long ago that all this had been about dancing. It wasn't long at all, but it feels like forever.

With a sudden abrupt motion, she scurries across the room towards the bar and grabs for it, then extends her leg in a stiff echo of Fakir's dégagé.

"Okay! I'm gonna practice!"

[fairytaleknight]

She dances so differently when she's Princess Tutu, Fakir thinks as he repeats the exercise. Princess Tutu glides. Princess Tutu floats. Princess Tutu descends from a great height and lands en pointe without having to rebalance.

But Princess Tutu doesn't have that game earnestness, that urge to keep trying, that Duck is showing now. Duck's dancing is real. It's almost like--

Fakir switches legs: Dégagé front, left, side.

When I fought the ravens, I didn't use my skills. I was dancing, and I couldn't stop myself.

Fakir stops still in the middle of the exercise, staring at Duck. Drosselmeyer was controlling me. That's why. Does he control Princess Tutu? He must. She's part of the Story, after all.

But Duck is herself.

Oh.

[reallyaduck]

Duck flings her leg backwards in her third degage arabesque, a little too high and with too much force. She tightens her grip on the barre to steady herself, and then catches Fakir staring at her.

"What? What?" she demands belligerently, still balanced on one foot. He knows she sucks! It's not like it's a surprise!

[fairytaleknight]

"Try it more smoothly." Fakir demonstrates. He's smiling a little, and there's no bite in his voice at all.