Work Text:
People used to stare at him whenever he said he loved ballet. The ones outside of the field peered in with confusion. Dancers that had quit, wished the best, the pay not worth the risk of being brittle when retired. Those that stayed, he was once like them. A passion that he thought he would never tire of, even as a job.
Cruel and painful as she was, he loved her. Bruises stained his callused, rough feet a dark range of colors, and he’d still force them to carry leaps and twirls. He lost a couple nails. Broke his wrist in a horrendous fall when he was younger. Sprained his ankle too many times, torn ligaments, fractured his feet.
None of that appeared. It disappeared from his body. A fleeting thought of pain erased.
As twisted as it was, if he could feel it all and more –to love again– he would.
Breaking the illusion, shined tempting each passing day.
What remained in him wasn't the feeling of dancing.
Emptiness ghosted his nerves, moving without a lick of sensations he’d grown to see as him being alive, progressing, learning– Those mistakes he used to swore at, reaching, aching, arching for perfection… Isn't something he can do anymore. Pain that was all worth it to see where he started, that grew and caressed his soul with encouragement– gone.
Arcing from below to lop off his head, he weaved by the flurry of red lines threading from Wreck’s attack.
It came infuriatingly easy. Not a falter. A stumble or tremble. Mind detached from the fluid, flowing movements of his pliable body. His heart didn’t rise with the air falling behind him, never, ever breaking a sweat. Tilting his head back, he passively sank his eyes into the crowd on this staged attack. Cold eyes distantly slipped on an act that mimicked the pulse of a beating heart. He jumped from the building.
Heavy, laborious to "love" as he once did. His body lied to all, because how can he if he and his body didn't feel– didn’t look as it once did? Fabricated to be stainless and unmarked, without a single fail. Without the apparent hues and blemishes of ruining hardships– a blank, untouched canvas.
All the weight bared on the pointe of his foot, still, boundless from above.
His entire leg would’ve snapped, thews ripped apart, broken bones and a smashed opened skull for brain matter to bleed onto the concrete. An image imaged, intrusive. It faded, wiped clean from his mind.
Nice can’t fail in their world; he didn't fall.
Perfection was always coveted in ballet. Honed, shedding any weaknesses in his form. Obsessive to be –trained to pluck out what ruined that image from the start– he is now. The perfect hero. So they think as he dealt a fist, still as pristine in white when he first appeared. The crowd that cheered his false title, a chorus that raised, unaware of the show. Wreck curled in rubble, holding to his stomach. Blue eyes turned away.
It’s the end of the act, after all.
Nice smiled.