you know it's about you [barbara]

The first dress rehearsal for any production was always exciting. After all, outfits made up half the excitement that came with performing, and even more so for Soléy ever since she decided she didn’t need applause in her life. The classical tutus were stiff and the romantic ones were rarely long enough for her to pretend that she lived in a maiden’s dream, but they were still nicer than anything she owned, and she was glad that she had a minute to fully appreciate how she looked in the full-length mirror backstage.

She only auditioned for two roles this time round. Her outfit for the clog dance made her wish she tried out for something that came with a more elaborate look, but her options were limited– she didn’t really want to dance with boys, and she didn’t want to stand out in a solo role. There was always the winter production to look forward to, but Soléy didn’t let herself think that far ahead. She has never admitted to anyone out loud—not even Barbie—about the soft spot she had for the performance outfits. Every single time at fitting she made it a point to make sure that everyone heard how much she disliked it, finding the entire process tedious. She tried not to overdo it with the eye-rolling, but knew she always did when she felt an extra pin in her side.

Of course, she had no idea she really wasn’t fooling anyone when she was always the first in line to collect her costume with barely contained excitement, least of all the dressmakers, who always seemed to be extra harsh on her.

Still, a little pain was nothing for Soléy. From where she was backstage she could see the rest of her fellow cygnets doing their stretches and finding their positions on stage. Ignatius was arguing with Eileen about what sort of lighting to use for this scene, and finishing touches were still being put on the backdrop. Personally Soléy thought the trees didn’t look realistic enough, but she wasn’t about to say anything. Everything would fall into place by performance night, no matter how much everyone fought over rehearsals, and they’d put on a great show as usual.

Her hand brushed over the bodice of her cygnet costume, and the subtle silver thread that lined the edge suddenly felt rough against the soft pads of her fingers. She could almost imagine Randi’s detached puzzlement, could see the polite interest Aase took in her like she did with everyone, and she could definitely still remember the way Rafnar and Alvar scoffed the last time their mother made them go to one of her recitals. Her feet, small and neat in new satin slippers, hesitated in place of their previous quiet confidence. There was nothing boring or lame about ballet. So many people did it, danced. They were still cool and popular, weren’t they?

With a barely audible sigh exhaled through her nose, Soléy retreated further backstage, letting the younger dancers run past her in blurs of colour and giggles. There’d be at least fifteen minutes until Ignatius and Eileen finally agreed on something, and another twenty before she was considered well and truly late. Not that, she thought defiantly from where she was enveloped in the heavy red velvet curtains, I care anyway.

Barbara had fussed over her makeup, and then let her mother fuss over the job she’d done with it, and then-- once her mother had gone back out to the lobby to talk to the other mothers-- had put it back the way she liked it. As a result she was late to get downstairs, though as she was hurrying backstage, hopping every so often to get her shoe to sit right, her nervousness was assuaged by the fact that it looked like, even though she was late, so was nearly everybody else. She shut the stage door quietly behind her, and as she was standing on one foot readjusting the heel of her shoe she heard it reopen, two of the hunters who’d been rerunning their dance rushing out.

Satisfied now with her shoe, she fixed her skirt around her and looked around, finally spotting Soléy, all the way downstage in the curtains. One of her straps had twisted a little over her shoulder; Barbie trotted carefully around a bunch of dancers stretching to stand with her, fixing the elastic with light, tentative fingers. “Twisted,” she said in explanation.

“Thought I’d be late,” she said, and grinned, a little nervously. “Are you excited?”

Of course they were, though-- they’d been working hard for this, all summer, and who didn’t love Swan Lake?

Barbara hadn’t tried out for any of the swans, assuming-- probably correctly-- that she’d be too short for any of those roles. Instead she was one of the visiting princesses, in a knee-length tulle skirt and a stuffy, puffy-sleeved bodice. She adjusted her headpiece and then stepped as close to Soléy as she could, batting playfully at the stiff skirt in front of her. They’d run Peter and the Wolf earlier, so Barbie was still full of pent-up energy. “How long d’you reckon it’ll take them to compromise?” she said teasingly, glancing across the stage at their bickering teachers. If she knew either of them-- and she did-- she’d say they’d be here until the director told them they were both wrong.

Soléy watched Barbara fiddle with her shoulder straps, and reached up to touch her hair, somewhat self-consciously, to make sure everything was still in place. Her light blonde hair had been darkened and pulled into a tight chignon by Mia, who assured her that they'd just be testing it out today, before the actual performance, to see how it looked against the silver headpiece. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about the overall look since she wasn't quite sure she looked entirely like herself, but she definitely looked older, and much more grown-up than she felt right now.

Tentatively, she reached out to smooth over Barbara's shoulder straps as well, shaking her head when she said she thought she'd be late, "You're fine. You look nice in that." Maybe she should've signed up to be a princess too. Her legs felt far too bare next to Barbara's modest knee-length skirt; tulle, how romantic. Soléy sighed wistfully and twisted her fingers into the heavy curtain fabric. "I'm excited... At least, I think I am." Her reply was non-committal in comparison to her friend's, and she couldn't help but shiver a little.

"Oh you know them," a hint of playfulness finally returning to her voice as she followed her friend's gaze, "they'd go at each other's throats all afternoon if there wasn't anyone around to stop them, and then it'll be five minutes before they're all chummy again, rinse and repeat." Soléy still thought it was rather nice though, the sense of familiarity the two shared. She wasn't sure if there was anyone in her life like that; Alvar and Barbara came the closest, probably.

Perhaps it was the skimpier costume, but Soléy knew deep down that her nerves were the ultimate culprit when she felt another chill run down her spine. What was it about nervousness that always made her feel cold? She was sure her fingers were as icy as her mum's after Sunday morning washings, when she'd playfully stick them in Soléy's collar just to make her squeal. She wrapped the curtain around herself so that only her head was showing, a tiny bob of white in swathes of deep crimson, and glanced at the stage woefully. "You don't suppose they'll let me sit this one out, do you?"

Common sense told her that with the upcoming performance and how seriously their company took these productions, every dress rehearsal was of vital importance, and her absence might completely throw the other dancers off their games. Unless she could come up with a better excuse other than "just didn't feel like it" in a few minutes, she'd be performing the piece in front of everyone else—which meant other, better, dancers—for the first time. Now she was really going to be sick.

“Oh— thank you,” said Barbie sheepishly. “So do you.” And Soléy did, even with her hair so un-Soléy-like. She looked classical and regal, her tutu, her feathered headpiece, her long legs. Barbara fidgeted where she stood, crossing her ankles and rocking between her feet. She had character shoes on— elegant ones, tan and simple, but not too balletic. She tried to read Soléy’s expression— she didn’t seem thrilled to be at dress rehearsal. At least, not as thrilled as Barbie thought was proper.

“You think you are?” she echoed, trying to figure what that could mean. Soléy must be nervous, she figured. She hadn’t been doing this for as long as Barbie had, didn’t have the same decade-long history with La Bourgade. Longer than a decade, if you included her sister’s tenure there. “It’s just the rehearsal,” she said, in as reassuring a tone she could muster. Soléy shivered; Barbie wondered if she was cold. Or scared. Nobody shivered when they were scared, right? That wasn’t a real thing.

She clicked her heels together, sighed at their teachers. Iggy was gesticulating emphatically at one of the lighting trees— Soléy was right, they’d do this all night. There wasn’t much more to say about them. Soléy hadn’t been around for Florence’s time as a teacher, and Barbie always felt a little uncomfortable bringing up that she did know both the teachers fairly well. “Mmhmm,” she said simply, then glanced in mild surprise at her friend as she retreated further into the curtains.

Her first impulse was to tell Soléy not to do that— the curtains weren’t made for this— and her second was to reach out tentatively and pat the curtain where it seemed to be over her friend’s shoulder. “Sit it out?” she said, with less mild surprise. “What for?”

She followed her friend’s gaze out to the stage, in case there was something there that would, for whatever reason, prevent dancing. Like a tiger, or a sinkhole, or maybe all the boy Tricketts. “Are you sick?” she asked, with some worry— “They’d probably put the understudy in, if you are.” She reached one hand tentatively out, unsure whether Soléy would let her feel her forehead for fever.

Soléy just shrugged. She was decent looking enough (although she really couldn't hold a candle to some of her older cousins) and she didn't mind it if she looked plainer. It seemed to fit more with the "struggling heroine" aesthetic she read about so often in her novels. She hated the idea of being "kind of pretty" almost as much as she hated the idea of being "kind of smart". Naturally, that meant she also hated the idea of being "kind of good" at ballet.

It was different for Barbie, she reasoned. Even if she kind of stinks, there was no one who was seriously going to tell her that, right, given her history with the company and all? There was no pressure for her to stand up in front of everyone during rehearsal when she had nothing to lose, really. But it's a different story entirely for her. What if she tripped? What if she didn't trip now, and the rehearsal goes smoothly, and she ends up freezing on the main stage on performance day instead? There were so many unpredictable disasters she didn't understand how her friend wasn't more stressed, even if she's already done it a thousand times.

"The understudy?" Soléy looked at Barbara, horrified, but not dodging her hand. It felt nice and cool on her forehead, and not clammy at all. "I can't do that! What if they end up liking her better than me? I'm not like you, Barbie, I'm completely and utterly dispensable!" And it was entirely vexing how the Ravenclaw didn't see the seriousness of the situation. In her agitated state, Soléy had no idea she was being contradictory and not making much sense. Dancing wasn't an ideal option, but not dancing was completely out of the question.

With a gasp, she released herself from the curtain cocoon she made for herself. "Oh dear, my ears don't look too big, do they?" It was silly to even assume she might be replaced for something as ridiculous as 'ears are too big', but it was easy for her to get caught up in the moment and run with her emotions. "This is why I don't wear my hair back a lot, I look absolutely droll with my ears showing! Whoever has heard of a cygnet with big ears?"

She’d said the wrong thing, then— Barbie fought the urge to cringe back defensively as Soléy gasped at her. “They won’t replace you,” she said weakly— “They picked you for a reason, didn’t they?”

There wasn’t anything she could think to say to I’m not like you— Soléy was on scholarship at the school, so she truly was on more tentative ground at La Bourgade, but Barbie couldn’t help feeling offended anyway. It wasn’t like it’d been her fault that her sister’d become a teacher there and then died, and if that meant that their teachers gave her preferential treatment— which they didn’t, as far as she knew— well, she would have rather had preferential treatment for any other reason.

Soléy didn’t feel like she had a fever, though; Barbie rather thought it was nerves. “You’ll feel better if you get out of the curtains, I reckon,” she said. “And— I promise, once you start dancing you’ll feel better. You’re a really good dancer, okay?”

(This was the other reason she was feeling a little defensive. Soléy was probably a better dancer than Barbara was and she was feeling rather poorly about Soléy talking this way about her own, very good dancing. Sometimes she suspected that Soléy was even better at it than she let on; it was just beyond her where her friend got all this anxiety about doing well, about performing, about audiences. Why was she dancing if she hated it?)

(Did she hate it?)

Soléy moved straight onto the next absurd crisis; as Barbie took a few steps back to let her come the rest of the way out of the curtain she said decisively, “No, no! Your ears are fine.” They did look bigger than usual— probably because, with her hair so dark, they stuck out more, but the teachers weren’t going to pull a dancer out because her ears were too big. “Soléy, cygnets don’t have ears at all, they’re birds. They’re not going for realism with this. Besides— I think they’re women during that scene, they’re only cursed to be swans during the day.”

Fervently Barbara hoped that she wasn’t coming off condescending or anything; she sent a nervous look at their teachers, who were still gesticulating across the stage. At least they still had some time to kill before they moved on with the rehearsal— hopefully enough time for her to talk Soléy into dancing. She would love it, when she tried it— Barbie believed that— but, oh Merlin, she had no idea how to convince her of it. “I promise,” she tried again, “It’s easy once you start, it’s just… nerves.”

She shook her head. She liked to think she was a little more worldly than Barbara—when she was in fact, quite possibly definitely the opposite—especially with five brothers. And her brothers’ experiences with sports taught her that as long as they wanted to replace you, you were replaceable. There were probably some bigger philosophical lessons about life and people to be learned from this, but Soléy never liked bothering herself with thinking about anything sports related and so replied with a rather noncommittal ‘mmm’.

Sometimes the Hufflepuff felt like she didn’t know her Ravenclaw friend at all. There was something she wasn’t saying, something about her ties to La Bourgade that didn’t quite add up; the same something that seemed to coax another version of her back from the surface, just as she was about to break through the Barbara that Soléy has come to know so well. For all she complained about her own brothers, had she heard similar comments in return?

She took another sidelong glance at Barbara.

This was going to be something for her to pursue on a different day. (Or maybe not. Her father—interestingly, not her mother, which made her rethink her impulses occasionally—always said she tended to let her imagination run away from her.)

Obligingly, appeasingly, she stepped out from the curtains. “You’re really good too.” Her own compliment sounded pale in comparison, lacking the sincerity she knew she felt.

Soléy sniffled next—only a little; she wanted her friend to make her feel better, but she also didn't want her to think she was completely pathetic—there wasn't much comfort in knowing that she'd be portraying a woman with big ears and not a swan with big ears, but decided, wisely for once, to drop the matter. Her slight nod was a little sharper than usual, but otherwise she had no problem with Barbie assuming she’s over this little temper tantrum.

Besides, by this point her humility was catching up to her, and she felt slightly ashamed for causing a scene, even if nobody seemed to notice. “It’s just… I just…” She struggled finding the right words, subconsciously mirroring the actions of their teachers on the other side of the stage. “How are you so sure of yourself? Of ballet, or just anything you really love?” How are you not embarrassed by who you are, like I am sometimes?

running with the assumption that soléy doesn't know about florence! didn't seem like something she'd be in a hurry to broadcast anyway. lemme know if you need anything changed and sorry this thread is taking so long 😭💕

It didn’t seem like she was doing much to console Soléy -- fretfully Barbara smoothed her skirt and glanced back at their teachers, at the girls stretching on the floor, at anything else, and reminded herself not to be sour. At times it was comforting, that her friend didn’t know about Florence, that her friend must think Barbie belonged here, with the curtains and the powdery air, in satin shoes and hair gel.

Whether that was true, Barbie couldn’t have said to save her life -- but it was nice to think of.

Soléy returned her compliment, a little flatly, and sniffled -- Barbara decided to put it all off to nerves, and reached out to rub her friend’s shoulder, in case she was cold. Her own arms were a little goose-bumpy where the sleeves weren’t puffed around them; it was always drafty backstage. She watched Soléy, a little warily, in case she was going to be sick or something, and couldn’t help herself from raising her eyebrows with surprise. She dropped her hand from Soléy’s arm, wrapped her arms around herself instead.

“So sure of myself?” she repeated, her voice pitched up, and she almost giggled, not knowing what to say.

Barbara couldn’t fathom what she’d done to convince Soléy that she was sure of anything at all; she shook her head to clear it. “I mean, I reckon I like ballet,” she said, vaguely. It may have been the familial, unconditional love of having done nothing else for fourteen years, of having been locked into it by her sister and her grief, but she still loved it, she imagined. She shook her head again, thinking over what her friend had just said -- “Don’t you?” she asked, curiously. She couldn’t imagine the answer being no, but Soléy seemed to feel funnily about ballet at the moment.