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Turning around and walking back across the corridor to his room was more and more tempting an option, Alfonse thought as he stood outside Sharena’s door, scissors in hand. Tomorrow, they’d join the Order of Heroes, and Alfonse wanted to do that as himself, not someone he wasn’t.
He wasn’t even sure why he was nervous. He was only going to confront his father with two pieces of shocking information at once, and he already knew that neither would be particularly well-received. So, correction, Alfonse wasn’t sure why he was nervous, besides the obvious, or maybe he just wasn’t sure why he was nervous about what he was doing right now. He knew Sharena wouldn’t judge him, she already knew. Much like Alfonse knew the truth about her, too, and how she’d been growing her hair out for this day.
Still, maybe he should just ask Zacharias, instead. Zacharias had confided in him years back, and Alfonse confided in him in turn. He had no fear of judgement there, either.
Just as he was thinking of heading over to Zacharias’s room and having him help instead, the door in front of him swung open.
“I was wondering if you were gonna knock, or just stand out here like a weirdo!” Sharena exclaimed, grabbing Alfonse’s arm and pulling him inside before he could even begin to protest.
“How’d you even know I was out here?” Alfonse asked, almost wincing when his voice took on a higher pitch.
“I could hear you shuffling around! So what did you want, my dear brother?”
Alfonse stammered, not knowing how to say what he wanted. Anything he’d planned to say left his head in that moment. Instead, he just held out the scissors, hoping Sharena would catch on.
Her eyes widened, and she led Alfonse over to her desk, where a mirror was perched on her wall. It’d been snuck up to her, a gift of sorts from one of their servants. Their father didn’t quite understand Sharena, or even approve, exactly, and would not have agreed to give her a dressing table. Thus, she just had the mirror.
Alfonse didn’t want to look away from his reflection, exactly, but he didn’t want to look at himself, either, what with how his hair reached partway down his back. The roundness of his face didn’t help with things much. He closed his eyes.
“You’ve done this before, right?” Alfonse asked, while Sharena rifled through the desk drawers. Presumably, she was looking for a brush of some kind.
“Yeah, I’ve cut my own,” Sharena confirmed, running the brush she found through Alfonse’s locks a couple of times. “Better than having someone else do it and cut it all off again! That’d ruin what I’m trying to go for, you know?”
Alfonse did know. That was almost exactly the reason he came to Sharena with this in the first place. Nobody else would cut his hair short like he wanted. Even on the off-chance Sharena did it sloppily, it’d still be better than what he would get from any professional.
He heard the scissors opening and closing a couple times before they even came close to his head.
Sharena was quick with the scissors, Alfonse realized. He opened his eyes briefly, if only to see just how sure Sharena looked as she hacked off chunks of his hair. She wasn’t even halfway done, but Alfonse already thought he looked much better.
“Ah, ah, ah! Close your eyes, I want this to be a surprise for you!” Sharena practically sang, and when she put it like that, how could Alfonse refuse?
They were quiet again, until Sharena spoke up. “Are you scared?” she asked, and somehow, Alfonse knew she wasn’t just talking about the haircut.
He didn’t really know how to answer that. Of course he was, anyone would be. Instead, he replied, carefully, with, “Are you?”
“Our father’s not going to like it,” Sharena started, still snipping away at his hair. “Turn around, I need to cut the front.” Alfonse readily complied. That meant she was almost done, didn’t it? Sharena hummed a bit. “I already did half of what you’re going to do, though, and that turned out… well, it wasn’t great, but it’s okay? It could have been worse! And besides, aren’t we going to be doing what’s right?”
“Fighting for our people… I wish we didn’t have to, but they are our people. It’s our duty to protect them, any way we can.”
“Not just that, though you’re not wrong!” Sharena laughed a little, almost nervously, stepping back. Alfonse knew better than to open his eyes just yet, she was just checking over her work right now. “I was thinking more like… what’s right for us? It’d be unfair to ourselves if we just let people keep on thinking I was a boy, or that you’re a girl. Okay, you can look now!”
Alfonse turned back around to face the mirror, opening his eyes hesitantly. He didn’t think Sharena would have done a bad job, but he was afraid he wouldn’t look any better with shorter hair. He was glad to see he was wrong, though, he thought as he reached up to fiddle with it. It was drastically shorter, only reaching the back of his neck now. The floor must be covered in blue and blond strands right now.
He’d clean it up later. Now, all he could do was pull his sister into a tight hug, the kind he was usually on the receiving end of when it came to Sharena, and tell her, “It’s wonderful. I love it.”