Chapter Text
Lexa would never have dreamed of missing company class. Company class had been the one constant, every morning like clockwork, since her first day as an apprentice dancer. Company class was monotonous. Company class was undemanding. Company class was familiar, and it was so unlike the rest of Lexa's day that she treasured it; ninety minutes for her body to wake up, for her exhausted muscles to uncurl and lengthen after being crammed into awkward spaces on the subway, for her concentration to click gradually into place with every flex of her foot or sweep of her arm.
All this meant that she was mildly annoyed to be called out, but when Indra summoned, you went, especially since the ballet-master was an even greater company class enthusiast than Lexa. In Lexa's first ever warm-up with Indra, aged twelve, one girl had refused to do barre exercises in case it inhibited her creative vision, and Indra had physically removed her from the room. She had been Lexa's favourite ballet-master ever since, and Lexa knew, because Indra showed her even less affection than the rest of the dancers, that the fondness was reciprocated.
The shorter woman looked her up and down as soon as she entered the studio. ‘How is your ankle today?’
‘Fine.’
‘Lexa.’
‘It's fine. Really. I saw the physio before class, and she's happy. Nothing to worry about.’ Lexa looked Indra directly in the eye as she dumped her shoe-bag, daring her to object, but she knew that she would be out of the fall season in a heartbeat if Indra saw so much as a flicker of pain. ‘You wanted to see me?’
Indra nodded across the studio, where a dark-haired dancer in a black leotard was fiddling with the ribbons on her pointe shoes. ‘Yes. Her name is Octavia. Kane saw her, somewhere, and wants me to look at her for an apprenticeship. Octavia!’ The girl jogged over obediently. ‘This is Lexa, one of our principals.’
‘I know who you are.’
Indra was only willing to accept attitude in certain forms, but evidently this one didn’t bother her. ‘Good. I need to step out for a moment, so Lexa, I thought you might do some final warm ups with Octavia. Tell her about the company, answer her questions. Be nice.’
‘I’m always nice.’
‘Often, yes. In the morning, no.’
The door closed behind her, leaving the two dancers stranded in the middle of the studio. Lexa, suddenly finding herself to be the responsible adult and taken aback as always by Indra’s whirlwind tactics, shook herself mentally and gestured towards the barre. ‘Is there anything particular you’d like to do? What’s your routine like?’
‘Not really. I’ll follow you.’
Helpful . Lexa hated early mornings themselves only slightly less than she hated early-morning chattiness, optimism or sympathy, but Octavia’s abruptness still took her off-balance. She felt at home in the studio, even more so than she did on stage or in her own tiny apartment, but there was something very alien about warming up with a complete stranger. It reminded her of being at the school, of being a lower-ranked dancer, when she had treated every exercise as a performance because she had so much to prove.
But she was now twenty-two, and she had been a principal since she was nineteen, and she was really fucking good at exercises. So that was all right.
‘You’re not from the school?’ she tried eventually, because it seemed like the friendly thing to do.
‘No.’ Octavia’s reply was curt, as Lexa had expected, but she met the ballerina’s eyes in the mirror and went on unwillingly. ‘I study performing arts, at the moment. Started ballet when I was twelve but never fully specialised. Then Marcus Kane saw me in our summer show and set this up.’
‘That was nice of him.’
‘Yeah.’
Two out, three in, two out, three in, front, back, side, front... ‘This is a good place. The ballet staff are tough, but you need that. Indra can be terrifying, but she’s the best.’
‘Good.’
There was another measure of silence, and after a moment Lexa shrugged and let herself find the familiar rhythm of lifts and lowerings, stretches and curls. Octavia was watching her with intense concentration, and Lexa was about to make one more effort at small-talk when, to her surprise, the younger dancer got there first. ‘Hey, can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘How did you know that you were good at this? Originally, I mean?’
The question caught Lexa off-guard, making her freeze for a heartbeat at the top of a dégagé. I’ve always known. Most of the time. Sometimes I’m still not really sure. ‘Nothing special. I mean, there was no thunderbolt, or anything. I started, and I liked it, so I kept going. My teacher sent me to audition at the school when I was twelve, they took me, here I am. Just...the usual sort of thing.’ She caught sight of Octavia biting her lip as they turned round to work the other leg. ‘Why do you ask?’
They got through another whole set of repetitions before Octavia replied, mumbling it almost inaudibly. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’
‘Do you want to be here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want to join the company?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then start with that.’ Lexa hesitated, aware of being too sore and too tired to be emotionally intelligent; afraid of saying too much, or not enough. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. You might have started late, but your basics look good. You’ve been given this chance. You might as well take it.’
‘I want to.’ Shoes rustled across floor in the quiet. ‘Ballet was my favourite, as soon as I started it, but no one ever told me I was good enough to do it like this. Professionally, I mean. No one ever thought of putting me in the school.’
Lexa stared at Octavia’s back, suddenly realizing what a weird turn her morning had taken, when she heard the door open at the end of the corridor outside. By the time her thoughts caught up with her instincts, she was already speaking. ‘All right. Listen very carefully. Your hands are boring. Indra likes to see all the fingers separated, like this.’ She picked up Octavia’s right hand briskly and demonstrated at lightning speed. ‘She’s also a big fan of necks and head placement, so you want your hair up. Here’s an elastic. No, don’t argue, just do.’ Footsteps approached the studio as Octavia closed her mouth and did as she was told. ‘Make everything twice as big as you normally would. Don’t stop if you make a mistake. Remember you have a face.’
‘Remember what - ’
‘Finished?’ Indra, purposeful as ever, had no intention of wasting more time. ‘Do you have your music? Good. Dance it through once. Don’t stop, even if you make a mistake.’
Octavia blinked at Lexa, who raised her eyebrows – See? – and followed Indra to the side of the room. ‘Do I get paid extra for baby-sitting?’
‘You do not. It was - ’
‘- a formative experience, yes, I know.’ Formative experiences were Indra’s third-favourite thing, after separated fingers and elegant head placement. The music began, and Lexa was strangely proud to see that the younger dancer’s own fingers were pristine. ‘Indra?’
‘What?’
‘I refuse to believe you called me out of class just to lead a warm-up.’
Indra ignored her, her eyes never leaving the dance. ‘She’s talented, isn’t she?’
‘I think so.’
‘Nice fingers.’ The ballet-master shot her former student a knowing look. ‘I wanted her to meet you. She reminds me a lot of you. Before you got good.’
‘This must be why people are constantly saying how warm and appreciative you are. I was starting to wonder.’
‘I am appreciative when you give me something to appreciate. Like that. That was promising.’ Indra sketched the line of Octavia’s leap in the air, a perfect split come and gone. ‘Do you remember the first time you moved up into the senior class? You were fourteen, and I had you all do that combination from Romeo and Juliet .’
Lexa instinctively rehearsed the steps in her head. ‘I was terrible.’
‘But you tried, and you weren’t afraid of it. You always looked as though you knew what you were doing. Right until you fell out of that pirouette.’
The ballerina felt the prickle of remembered embarrassment, of being tiny and precocious – and newly incompetent - in a room of long-limbed, disdainful seventeen-year-olds. ‘It didn’t feel that way.’
‘It never does. It starts from the face. Conquer your face, and your body will follow.’ Indra pursed her lips in what Lexa knew to be her version, during teaching hours, of a smile. ‘Is she trainable, would you say?’
‘I think so.’ Even as she spoke, Octavia corrected her finger positioning in mid-air, halfway through another leap. ‘Yes. She is.’
‘Very well.’ Indra clapped once; Octavia fell to earth, disorientated, disappointed. ‘I wasn’t finished.’
‘I know. But that previous passage was clumsy. Show me again, and this time think. Even if the steps are easy, the expression is not.’
Lexa always enjoyed watching the ballet-masters at work. There was something artistic in its own right about the way they noticed and demonstrated and improved; something beautiful and satisfying about a dancer understanding a correction and performing the step perfectly for the first time. Indra was a wonderful teacher – she had been the one to finally show fourteen-year-old Lexa how not to fall out of that pirouette – and Octavia, pushing down her doubts, was desperate to learn. Lexa could have snuck out back to class, but she realized that, for the first time since her injury had forced her to sit out, she was content just watching the process.
It was only ten or so minutes before Indra gave a final, decisive nod. ‘Very well. We will take you. You can start today.’
Octavia looked, somehow, both utterly steamrollered and utterly thrilled. ‘What? Today today?’
‘Why not? The sooner the better. You have a lot to fix.’ Indra turned to Lexa. ‘What is your first rehearsal?’
‘Duo Concertant with you and Murphy.’
‘Please take Octavia to the shoe room and then the end of class before you go. She can learn Capulets and Nutcracker today, and Kane can work out a full schedule for her this afternoon.’ Her voice floated behind them as Octavia scrambled for her things and followed Lexa out the door. ‘Don’t be late. You’re so behind that I may be forced to have you perform in the dark.’
***
Before arriving through the stage door that morning, it had been a long time since Octavia had ‘done’ shy. She had never lacked confidence, she had a low tolerance for bullshit, and life was too short to be cute about getting what you wanted.
But now that her dream had come true, she was almost afraid to speak.
If that wasn’t enough, the girl holding doors open for her, gesturing her into elevators, pointing out studios and changing-rooms, was Lexa Woods. Lexa Woods belonged on posters, on billboards, in Vogue and Vanity Fair and the rest of the fancy magazines that Octavia only read while she was having her hair cut. But there she had been, standing at the barre in leggings and a k. d. lang t-shirt, all eyes and jawline and soft, dark hair. And, even before she'd grabbed Octavia’s hand and reshaped it into an exaggerated claw to make her point, Octavia had noticed that her fingers were just as long and lovely and expressive in person as they had looked on the page. Standing next to her, actually dancing next to her , had been a confusing mixture of hoping to find something to criticise and being relieved when she couldn't.
They had headed for the shoe-room as Indra had instructed, and Lexa was now sorting methodically through pigeonholes full of new pointe shoes, checking names and numbers. ‘You’ll have to try out other people’s shoes for now. Here are all the ones in your size - take a few, and you can see what you like. They’ll ask you for your specification, later, and then they’ll be made for you and put in one of these pigeonholes for you to collect.’
Staring down the rows of pigeonholes, each full of shoes in all their spotless satin glory, the adrenaline of the audition wore off; the reality of the owners of the shoes, doubtless all as beautiful and talented as the ballerina next to her, dawned in its place. ‘Oh shit.’
‘What?’
‘I can't do this.’ Octavia gazed down at her armful of shoes, genuinely appalled. ‘I mean, I can’t . I don’t have the experience. I don’t have the training. I won’t be able to keep up.’
Lexa looked at her for a moment, head tilted, then reached out calmly and took the shoes. ‘Fine. I’ll show you the way out on my way to my rehearsal. Thanks for coming in, though. It’s been a real blast.’
Whatever Octavia had been expecting her to do, it wasn’t that. ‘What? Is that it? You’re not going to, like, persuade me not to?’
‘Why should I? You think you can’t do this? Then go. Walk out of here and get back to whatever you were doing yesterday.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
Lexa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Excuse me?’
‘This is not a problem for people like you.’ Octavia was suddenly conscious, too late, of having crossed a line. ‘You don’t have to worry about keeping up, or not being good enough. Natural fucking brilliance is like that.’
‘Oh, for the love of…’ Lexa stepped forward and shoved the shoes back into Octavia’s arms. ‘Firstly, I’m going to pretend that you’re not being utterly intolerable, because you’re clearly undergoing a personal crisis and I have neither the time nor the aptitude to counsel you. Secondly, I also don’t have the time for you to reach this conclusion by yourself, so I’m just going to suggest that you ask yourself whether Indra would hire someone who, as you put it, can’t .’ Octavia shook her head silently. ‘Exactly. You don’t have the experience. You don’t have the training. And you won’t be able to keep up, not at first. But none of that means you can’t . Thirdly, you’re allowed one freak-out when you join the company. That was it. Now you’re going to take these damn shoes and get to class, and be as fierce as Indra thinks you are.’
In what she sensed was becoming a theme, Octavia did as Lexa told her.
They made their way up to the largest studio, where the corps de ballet were being rehearsed, mostly in silence, but Octavia touched the ballerina’s arm as they reached it. ‘Hey. Thanks. Look, I didn’t mean what I said. About you and your…’
‘Natural fucking brilliance?’
‘Er, yes. That.’
‘It’s not the worst insult I’ve ever heard.’
‘Sure. Well, good. Thanks again.’
‘I did mean what I said. This is going to be the worst day of your dancing life. But you can.' Lexa met her eyes steadily before she turned to open the door. 'Be fierce.'
***
‘You look like shit,’ announced Anya aggravatingly, pristine in expensive athleticwear and blow-dried ponytail, as Lexa trailed into the studio. ‘Let me guess. Indra?’
Lexa muttered something about damn choreographers and just because you're allergic to sweat and lay full-length on the floor. ‘She's just found a new disciple and it's made her even more fanatical than usual. My blisters have blisters. But she's stopped threatening to cancel the ballet, so that's something.’
‘How's Murphy?’
‘Growing on me. Slowly. Who’ve I got for this one?’
‘Lincoln, but I think you’ll do a solo first, before he comes on. People have missed having you on stage.’ Anya looked down at the dancer, with one of her unexpected moments of tenderness. ‘Injury sucks, huh?’
‘You would know.’ Lexa rolled over to stretch. ‘I just...it’s scary, right? Every jump could be my last.’
‘You're literally the most dramatic person I know, and I've met that Italian guy from Dancing with the Stars.’
‘You know the physiology. This is crazy dangerous. I did everything right, took every precaution, warmed up properly, and I still landed funny and took myself out. What if it happens again?’
Anya sighed. ‘Remember what you said the other night? When you had, like, six shots while I was in the bathroom and I came back to find you doing the splits on the bar?’
‘Only because you'd already let me drink my bodyweight in wine.’
‘Say it.’ The ballerina flopped over elegantly and mumbled something inaudible. ‘I can't hear you.’
Lexa lifted her head with a martyred expression. ‘You're the best choreographer in the whole world and I'll do anything for you, because Art needs us.’
Anya nodded solemnly. ‘Because Art needs us. And then...?’
‘And then I pretended to swoon artistically and hit you in the face.’
‘You hit me in the face. So not only am I the best choreographer in the world, you owe me. And I need you to chill out.’ Anya came to crouch beside Lexa and squeezed her shoulder bracingly. ‘You’re the best. We all know it. And if you dance like you’re scared all the time, you’ll lose that. You have a gift. Don’t screw it up, not now, not like this.’
Dancers got used to being given pep talks in the most unglamorous circumstances; in anonymous physio rooms, or dripping with sweat in the middle of backbreaking rehearsals, or, as now, practically passed out on floors. But this time - is this because of Octavia? - Lexa suddenly realized how much she still needed Anya. The older girl had been assigned as her peer mentor on her first day at the ballet school, and Lexa, lonely and daunted by the responsibility of fulfilling her promise, had clung to her. She was still lonely, still daunted, but it had been a long time since she had admitted it to herself. While she was injured, she had made very sure to think of anything and everything else.
It had been an odd sort of day.
She didn’t say any of this - they had always communicated best without words - but she took the hand that Anya offered to help her up, and squeezed it slightly as she made her way over to the barre to stretch out. ‘Let’s get to work then. Dazzle me, maestro.’
Anya rolled her eyes, but - for once - she was smiling. ‘Well, you’re in luck, because this piece is ballerina Christmas. They’ve commissioned new music, new choreography from me, new costumes from some hotshot fashion designer.' The smile faded. 'So no pressure, champ, but this has got to be good.’