Chapter Text
Your dance teacher gives you it, once she finds out you don’t possess one. She digs it out of a storage box in the back room of the studio, shaking off the dust before handing it to you with one of her small, half-closed smiles.
“It was mine, when I was a little girl.” She tells you. “It’s not much, compared to the glittery new ones the other kids have, but I was always more of a fan of the traditional pink… It’s good enough for practice, at least.”
You take it and clutch it to your chest, trying not to cry, and she hugs you. It’s the first real hug you can remember receiving in your short, miserable life, and you hug back shakily, clinging to her like she’s a lifeline, the only thing that might save you from the darkness that laps at your feet and threatens to submerge you.
“You’re going to do great things.” She whispers, softly petting your hair, and you sniffle, burying your face in her sweater and trying to hide the tears you can feel dripping down your face. “Don’t cry, love. I promise, everything will be fine, you'll see. You’ll have the world, one day, just watch.”
It’s not the first time you wonder if she knows the truth, if she’s realized that the bruises on your arms, your wrists, and your face aren’t just accidents or the results of the careless play of children, if she’s realized the limp you came to practice with last week wasn’t actually from tripping while walking down the stairs.
(Okay, technically that last one hadn’t been a total lie. You had fallen down the stairs, you just hadn’t tripped. More like… been nudged, slightly, maybe. You’re too afraid to say pushed. You’re too afraid to think your parents might be escalating to punishments that might just kill you one day.)
But she doesn’t say anything, not now, not ever, and you’re too embarrassed and too scared of what could come next to ask, so you don’t, and it stays, as always, your dirty secret that clings to you at all times.
…You’re petrified that even if you told her, if she definitively knew, she wouldn’t do anything, just like everyone else that sees the bruises and your exhaustion and your fear and looks the other way. You don’t want that. You want to keep pretending that if she knew, she would save you. You want to keep believing that she might actually love you just a little bit.
You think that, given the chance, you could come to love her as well, to think of her as the kind of mother you wish you had. You don’t know. You’ve never really, truly loved someone before.
But regardless, you’re not ready to have that dream shattered, so you say nothing, and life moves on.
On your first performance, your parents buy you a store-brand tutu, sparkly and magenta, like the other girls own.
“Wear this.” Mother tells you. “You can work it off later.”
“There are going to be a lot of people there.” Father says. “You are lucky we have allowed you this opportunity, do not embarrass us.”
You take the tutu, and give it to a little girl in one of the younger classes who gets teased because her family doesn’t have much money and her dance gear is all second-hand. She holds it in little fists and stares up at you with wide eyes full of awe, while the other girls in her class, the ones that make fun of her, stare in undisguised surprise and jealousy, because everyone knows that you are the teacher’s favorite, the star pupil, and so to them, in their foolishness, you are a god.
“Don’t listen to them.” You tell the girl, making sure you’re loud enough for the others to hear, as you remember the words you cling to day in and day out. “You’ll have the world one day.”
And then you go on stage, the spotlight shining on the worn pale pink of your tutu, the one that was given to you as a promise, not a threat, and you perform.
You are beautiful.
Later, away from the prying eyes and flashing cameras, when you are home and alone, your mother slaps you across the face so hard you see stars, and sends you to bed without any dinner for your disobedience.
You wonder if that’s still supposed to be a punishment, these days. It’s not like they feed you often even when you haven’t made them particularly angry. Perhaps it’s all just par for the course, now.
And so you sit in your room, blood running freely down your cheek where your mother’s ring cut you. Normally that’d be fine, because you’re used to the sight of your own blood by now, but you ran out of bandages days ago and haven’t had the chance to steal some more, and your cheek won’t stop bleeding. If the blood gets on your sweater, your mother will be angry and you will be punished.
Your eyes find the tutu sitting next to you on your bed, and with sudden inspiration, you push up the top-skirt and grab one of the thin strands of tulle underneath, tearing it free of the stitching. Tying it around your head so that it covers the sluggishly bleeding cut, you stare at yourself in the cracked mirror on the wall.
Your hair is a mess, sticking out every direction and bunching up around where the makeshift bandage is tied. Your eyes are teary and sunken, dark shadows beneath them, and your skin is chalky and pale against the dark bruise already starting to form on your cheek that clashes with the pink tulle on top of it.
The grace and poise you conducted on stage is gone, and you are instead left pathetic and ruined.
You are the ugliest thing you have ever seen.
You sit and look at the tutu in your lap, staring down at the washed-out old pink as your cheek throbs and your arm aches where your mother grabbed it before she smacked you. It hurts, a little, but you know there will likely be worse tomorrow.
…Who are you kidding? It’s always worse the next day. There’ll be no food either, because it’ll be a Sunday and the store you usually ‘borrow’ from will be closed. That is, if your parents would even let you outside. They’ll probably just lock you in the hall closet again.
You really hate that closet.
Clutching the tutu to your chest, you cry, your frame wracked with sobs that eventually fade to a helpless, desperate laughter that borders on the hysterical as tears stream down your face, which you then press to the soft, pink fabric, breathing in the familiar smell of chalk and dust that clings to it, even now.
This is enough, you tell yourself. This is your one-way ticket out of this house where all your parents did is hurt you and out of this town where no one ever cared enough to stop them.
One day, you will be free. One day, someone will love you.
For now, though, this— Faded pink and lace that feels like something close to hope… This is all you need.
(Finally, a protective piece of armor.)