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Chapter Text

When Nibenaes was little, she knew she was going to be a ballerina.

It was in her family - the theater and dance - and her older sister was already a prodigy. Curunis didn't want her to be a dancer, but Nibenaes had known her long enough that if she had declared that she would never dance ballet in her life, that Curunis would have declared her unworthy of the blood in her veins.

Probably. Sometimes, her sister confused her and Alphen - both her dance mentor and godparent - had told her that she shouldn't think too much on it, lest she grow sad or think herself into spirals.

But regardless of her sister, however much her grace in ballet slippers enchanted Nibenaes, she loved dance. There was something thrilling about the spin, the weightlessness of it all, the burn of muscles after a long day of training.

She knew she was going to be a ballerina.

Then, she turned seventeen. It wasn't even a dance accident that did it, but an argument with her aunt Saelind that had her misjudging a piece of ice on the road. She woke in the hospital having lost her car, a foot and her aunt.

Her mother tells her the news. Nibenaes has never seen her cry before but she does here, taking Nibenaes' hand and pressing a kiss to the back with an affection that she hasn't shown her daughter since Nibenaes was still a toddler, as she tells her that Saelind died on impact and there was nothing to be done.

And Nibenaes will never dance again, and she will never be professional. Prosthetics are getting better every day, the doctors like to tell her, but she doubts that they will improve so much that she might be able to dance on stage in the next few years.

She comes back from hospital to her father's house on crutches. She's transferred out of school - the prestigious ballet academy that Curunis had graduated from the year before, that Nibenaes had fought so hard to attend too - to a private academy nearby, that she hates. None of her friends go there and they're so busy with their training, that soon Nibenaes doesn't really speak to them anymore.

She was going to be a ballerina. She was going to be-

It's what she and Saelind had been arguing about. Saelind, who had never danced herself but worked backstage and met Haleth there, hated that Nibenaes wanted to do ballet. She said it would break her, like it broke her mother, and-

And it didn't, because Nibenaes was going to be a dancer but now, she never would be, and Saelind wouldn't even be here-

It comes to a head the summer after her last year of school. Without school to make her get up anymore, she spends most of summer in her pyjamas, holed up in her bedroom; she knows that her parents are worried when they sit together in her father's sitting room, with her stepmother Melimmírë too, to talk to her.

"This can't keep up Haldis," her mother says, mouth pursed. "I know you're upset-"

Upset is definitely one way to put it. Curunís recently got the role of Odile in the company's performance of Swan Lake, a true prodigy, and she'd looked so beautiful on stage. That was where Nibenaes had wanted to be, on the same stage as her sister, but there was no place for her anymore.

So she laughs, so hard it feels like crying, and tries to ignore the gaping Saelind-shapped hole among her collection of parental figures. She feels like she's being interviewed, their eyes pressed against her skin as they try to cajole her into an agreement.

"Mírifindë, you can't stay in your room forever," her father tries eventually, when everything else produces no more reaction.

"Maybe I want to," Nibenaes replies - the first thing she's said throughout the conversation - and decides that she is done with this, half limping away on the new prosthetic she's not yet used to.

It's not them that gets her out of her room. Not her father, who would pay her tuition for whatever she wants but doesn't really know what that is; not her mother, who had always supported her with her dance but never thought she might need something else in her life; nor Melimmírë, who cares for her but has never been close to her.

It's not even Alphen, who her parents call upon for help. They can convince her to leave for a coffee, and it makes her feel a little more alive to leave the house, but any attempt by them to start a conversation about her future leaves her feeling sick and nauseous and goes nowhere.

Curunís comes back home for a week in September, just after Swan Lake closes. It's the happiest Nibenaes has seen her in a while, under the weight of her parents' praise as she tries to give over an air of prestige as she relates nearly every moment of the show's run, and Nibenaes lets the conversation wash over her. She's made an effort to come downstairs to eat lunch, to show her face for her sister but she's beginning to regret it; Curunís certainly doesn't care for her presence, no matter what her father had said.

She'd gone back to her room, with its half-closed curtains and the crutches discarded by the bed and-

And-

"You don't look well," Curunís says, appearing in her doorway a moment later. Nibenaes, laid back on her bed, hums noncommittally; her sister says it's judgmentally, as if Nibenaes' lack of self care reflected poorly on her, but Nibenaes doesn't take it personally anymore. She's stopped taking most of the things that Curunís says personally anymore.

Without a response, Nibenaes is sure that Curunís will leave again, but to her surprise, she doesn't. She hovers in the doorway, as if waiting for her response, and so Nibenaes turns over in the bed to scowl at her.

Curunís wrinkles her nose. "It smells in here too. What have you been doing?"

Nibenaes roles her eyes and slumps back against the pillows. So Curunís is in a good mood and showing it by not being as mean as she usually is, pretending she doesn't care by veiling affection with insults. Nibenaes is too tired to deal with this.

To her surprise, Curunís keep going. She walks in, stepping over dirty clothes with a snide comment, and pulling open the curtains until the late evening light shines through the window, and she keeps talking as she pokes around into the corners of Nibenaes' room.

Nibenaes doesn't get it. Growing up, Curunís barely ever stepped in and here she is...

"What do you want, Carindë?" Nibenaes asks, pushing herself up on her elbows and Curunís pointedly looks out the window instead of meeting her eye.

"Mother is busy," she says, "and I need my practise uniform tomorrow. It won't be as good, but she did teach you to sew, so it'll have to do."

Curunís sniffs and holds a pile of folded cloth, and it must be the old, ratty t-shirt she's worn for practise since she was fifteen.

Nibenaes laughs, still no humour in it. "Do it yourself."

"Grandfather has invited me out to supper with him and Grandmother, I won't have time."

Curunís still won't look her in the eye, or say please, or admit that she even likes her sister. Nibenaes hasn't picked up a needle in years, not since her ballet training grew more intense and there suddenly wasn't a time for it outside of fixing up her pointe shoes.

And yet.

"Fine. Give them here."

There's no thanks, as Curunís deposits the clothes on the end of Nibenaes' bed nor as she sweeps from the room. Nibenaes sighs, and crawls forward to pick the shirt up. There are holes as well as the unravelled seam, and so Nibenaes pushes away dirty clothes on the floor to go hunting in the drawer under her bed for her threads.

The shirt, when she's done with it, is fixed with embroidery that climbs up and around it to hide the obvious mending. Red flowers bloom on golden vines, and white doves' nest among them, and though her fingers are sore from hours hunched over the fabric...

On her bedroom floor, an evening in late September, Nibenaes finds something new to spark inside her.

When Curunís leaves two weeks later, all her clothes - for her rehearsal outfits are all so old and poorly taken care of that Nibenaes had managed to steal all of them for a repair - are newly decorated. Curunís complained but she had left her work untouched and worn the clothes in spite of it.

Without Curunís, Nibenaes grows restless. She stalks the halls of her home for clothes that need repairing and with none immediately apparent, she tidies up her room and begs a lift from Alphen to the local craft store for fabric.

A skirt is her first project, and then she branches out to a pinafore dress and a shirt (and then three more, when those prove more comfortable than any that she has bought), and a pair of cargo trousers, and she is teaching herself patterning when her father comes to her.

"Mírifindë," he says, "I have had an email from the costume designer at Carindë's dance company. She wishes to meet you."

Nibenaes, half way through drafting a corset on her bedroom floor, blinks up at him in confusion. "Me?"

"I believe that she was impressed by your mending work." Her father is frowning, his worried frown where his jaw clenches and his eyes scrunch slightly. "Will you meet with her?"

Nibenaes does. She meets with her - Crinthammos, a lady with a great deal of skill in the field of costuming - and is offered a job as an apprentice, and Nibenaes says yes before she has time to realise that her dream has changed.

She is glad that it did, for all that Curunís refuses to be even civil with her for the first six months of her job.

It is at this theater that she meets Rochind, who sweeps the stage and is the one who locks the theatre up. Many late evenings had they spent together, as Nibenaes finished up alterations on costumes and Rochind turned everything in the theatre off, and he started walking her to the bus stop for fear of her being jumped late at night. They have their first kiss on the darkened stage, date in secret for several months among the chaos of the backstage and break-up with the same quietude.

It is at this theatre that she meets Mentelossë and Glorfindel, who will soon be the dearest of friends; it is them who are good enough friends to tell her when she's being stupid, to remind her that breaking up with Rochind was monumentally stupid.

She gets married; Crinthammos retires and Nibenaes is set to replace her, but then she falls pregnant with her sweet Mallos and the director of the company hires some musty old has-been who wouldn't know a corset from a set of stays, and by the time that Calanmír - their second daughter - is old enough to be strapped to Nibenaes' back while she works, Nibenaes is the head of the costuming department.

Rochind still sweeps the floors, even if he's technically the backstage manager by now, and Curunís - after one injury too many - ungracefully retires to the pit to put her second talent to work as the orchestra conductor. Nibenaes has new dancers to pin and pleat, and poke and prod, and she always smiles for Ancalimon when he comes around with his phone for another backstage video.

Lossrilleth comes in quietly, a girl who wears old shoes and dresses a little too perfectly at practise. Nibenaes starts putting new pointe shoes in her locker when she notices, because old shoes are a recipe for destroying your feet early, and then a few new sets of practise slacks.

It wasn't intentional, but Lossrilleth worms her way into Nibenaes' heart. She's young and full of a love for dance, that fuels her so completely. In her, Nibenaes can see echoes of her sister, in the way that she pushes her body to bend so completely until it will undoubtedly break itself, but she also sees echoes of herself.

It's why she pushes her towards Síroleth, to the company's ever-suffering medical professional. Curunís had never gone and she had ended up in a slightly early retirement, which had done little for her temper, and Nibenaes remembers what it was like to devote her life to something that she loved and to lose it with nothing to fall back on.

One Thursday practise, Lossy dislocates her shoulder and Nibenaes is the first to notice during her fitting. She scolds her for not saying something and drags her to Síroleth, who sets it in place and tells her to rest it for the next few days, and then offers to buy her lunch as a consolation once they've let all the correct people know about the injury (and Nibenaes had told her team she'll be popping out for lunch).

They go to a café, and Nibenaes orders a coffee with enough caffeine and sugar to power her through the next few hours of costume design (a new show meant new costumes, which meant long hours working for her) and a sandwich, and orders the same for Lossy for she never seems to eat enough.

"If tomorrow," Lossy says, breaking the silence between them, "I got into a car accident and I couldn't dance again, I don't know what I'd do."

And Nibenaes smiles and reaches across the table to take Lossy's hands in her own. "You would work it out."

"Really?" Lossy looks up at her, disbelieving. Nibenaes wants to tell her that there is so much of her life left to live, that the world does not end when you are thirty, that what you choose to do now is not set for ever and ever.

But she also knows that it will not help, and so this is what she says instead:

"I'll tell you a secret," Nibenaes says, feeling old and young all at once as her chest aches with how close to home Lossy's example got and how far she has come, "I did."

Chapter Text

The storm is heralded by a distant roll of thunder on the horizon.

It's been been grey all day with a pressure that's been waiting to break, and it starts with a rumble and the beginning pitter-patter of rain.

"Oh, the storm's nearly here," Calanmír says, cutting her sister off mid ramble about Japanese art styles. "I'm gonna have to go."

She can practically hear Mallos' eyeroll. "You're so weird 'Mír," she says, "you'd probably go stormchasing, if you didn't love the orchestra so much."

"You only say that because you hate storms. I remember that you used to crawl into Mum and Papa's bed until you were at least fifteen; and then you'd crawl into mine, and pretend that it was because you wanted to play Stardew Valley with me."

"Lies. Lies and slander. My own sister defaming me."

"Oh shush, I shan't tell anyone."

Mallos laughs on the other side of the phone, crackly over the distance between them. "Go chase your storms, my silly little sister!"

They say goodbye, laughing and unable to ever do so quickly and easily, before Calanmír is pocketing her phone and attempting to find her favourite blanket and a mug. The best window in the apartment for storm watching, Calanmír had decided (though the apartment had yet to be christened with it's first storm while she and Lossrilleth lived in it), was certainly the one in the sitting room which swung forwards instead of out.

There's a nice, comfy armchair right next to it too, one that Lossrilleth had hurried her up to get from the side of the road, and that they'd both treated extensively for bedbugs and other mites. Now it's Calanmír's favourite place to sit when relaxing of an evening, and is at the perfect angle to see the lightning pierce the sky over the cityscape.

"Evening Lossy," Calanmír says cheerily, and gets a strange look from her roommate; undoubtedly it was because Calanmír was smiling as brightly as she is, because Calanmír is not unaware of her sometimes quiet facial expressions.

She settles herself on the chair, book in hand, and spends a few moments pretending to care about whatever her book is about, before closing it and setting it aside to settle her eyes on the horizon.

The rain starts getting heavier, the pitter-patter turning to fat rain drops dripping down the glass, and the sky gets even darker with the growing clouds and the setting sun.

The first flash of lightning surprises her, a thrill running down her spine just as the thunder rushes to catch up with it's partner, and she leans closer until her nose is against the window. It's the sort of overwhelming noise and sensation that works like a charm on her; she imagines that this must be why people like horror movies.

Soon the thunder and lightning are hitting at the same time and the storm must be right above them. Calanmír grins to herself and puts a hand out to push the window open when-

Calanmír isn't actually sure what's happening at first. One moment, she has her face plastered against the window and is fully invested in the storm, and the next she's stumbling to her feet as Lossrilleth tugs on her arm hard.

"Get away from the window," she says, insistent. "You have to get away from the window."

Calanmír blinks, her brain still recalibrating as it moves from the storm to the middle of the room. The sudden change has left her feeling unsettled, her chest heavy and vaguely like she might start crying, but she somehow manages to swallow back her initial reaction to be angry when she sese Lossrilleth's face.

It's completely vacant.

Calanmír is momentarily at a loss as to what to do. Lossrilleth has started mumbling about not going near the windows and her grip on Calanmír's wrist in ironclan and unrelenting, and a mixture of fear and that illogical upset that's choking her makes Calanmír momentarily paralysed.

Thunder, overhead; Lossrilleth screws her eyes shut and Calanmír feels the way she starts shaking.

"OK," Calanmír says, painfully forcing out the words around a throat that tries to close around them. "Sit down."

Lossrilleth does, falling onto the sofa like a doll with it's strings cut. Her gaze is still vacant, and she flinches at every flash of lightning or rumble of thunder, and Calanmír still can't escape.

What to do. Panic is creeping in at the edges of Calanmír's mind, and she chases it off with very careful breathing; if she panics too, then this all goes to shit, she's sure of it.

Breathe in, breathe out. Five things you can see (the cushion Mallos made her as a housewarming gift, the sofa they got in a garage sale for less than a tenner, the armchair, her book lying abandoned upon it, the curtains her mother made for them).

Breathe in, breathe out. Four you can touch (Lossy's hands still on her wrist, the sofa's roughly spun covers, the soft wool of her favourite cardigan, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders).

Breathe in, breathe out. Three things you can hear (the storm outside, Lossy still mumbling about the window, her own heavy breathing).

Breathe in, breathe out. Two things you can smell (the sweet perfume Lossrilleth has worn everyday since Nibenaes bought it for her for her birthday, a mug of tea sitting out on the table that Lossrilleth must have made).

Breathe in, breathe out. One thing you can taste (the sweet acridity of blood, where she's bitten her tongue).

Breathe in. Don't panic. Breathe out. Don't panic.

It's not actually helping. Calanmír can feel it creeping ever closer, a completely full blown panic attack that's blindsided her entirely; she can't fully understand why it's appeared right now, but she does know that it's coming and-

She starts singing. Her voice cracks but the song is an old lullaby her father was fond of singing, back when she and Mallos were both still kids and had things like lullabies sung to them. He said that their grandfather used to sing the same song to him as a kid, and it was probably passed down for generations.

So she sings, blindly and without thought. Some of the words get mumbled, some of the notes get vaguely approximated, but she closes her eyes and sings and sings.

The lullaby is growing strange and meaningless from her mouth now, but her breathing cannot race when she's singing something slow, and her heartbeat slows in time. There's nothing for her brain to focus on but the continuous murmur of sounds and notes pouring out of her.

Her voice cracks again. She doesn't know how long she's been singing, but long enough for Lossrilleth's grip to have loosened on her wrist and when Calanmír opens her eyes - to see how easily she might extract herself - Lossy has fallen asleep where she sits.

It looks uncomfortable.

Calanmír stands, jerky, like her limbs don't know what they're doing, but she makes herself lean over to gently push Lossrilleth into a more comfortable position (stopping, heart in her mouth, when she frowns and looks as if she might wake) and drag the throw that always sits over the back of the sofa over Lossy herself.

Then she stumbles, mind uncomfortably disconnected from her body, into the kitchen - the closest room that isn't the sitting room - and fumbles with her phone until she has her father's contact pulled up.

The phone rings three times before Rochind picks up.

"Niphredil?" he asks, quiet and curious that she is calling him so late (because it is late, she realises suddenly, looking up at the clock on the oven to find 11:39 flashing back at her). "What's wrong dear?"

For the first time since moving out, Calanmír feels homesick.

She'd known, after getting her place in the company's orchestra, that she wanted to move out of home. It was a new chapter of her life and she wanted the space to practice without her parents' sometimes overwhelming presence. They'd offered to help with the price, and pushed her to room with Lossrilleth, who Calanmír would genuinely consider a friend now.

But now she misses them. She misses them so much that it physically hurts. She suddenly feels very adult with very adult problems, and she just wants her dad.

"Papa," she says, beseechingly, and a sob claws it's way out of her throat. The panic from earlier comes back in full force, as an all-encompassing buzzing in her head and a pressure so strong in her chest that it feels like it will burst.

"Oh dear." Her father sounds worried. "Is Lossrilleth there? Can you hand the phone to her?"

And that just makes Calanmír cry harder, the words to explain that no, she can't get Lossrilleth because Lossrilleth would probably be in a worse state than she is if she woke her, and being unable to explain this all makes it all the worse.

"Are you two physically alright Niphredil?"

She can't-

"This is important. If you are alright, I need you to hang up, and I'll come over to the apartment, OK? If one of you is hurt, stay on the phone and I'll call the emergency services."

Of all the things that Calanmír could do right now, hanging up on her father sounds like the worst, but she is alright and so she does it. And there she stays, on the kitchen floor and listening to the distant sounds of the storm as she clutches her phone to her chest and tries to think of something that isn't whirring panic.

The key turns in the lock - she'd given her parents one, with Lossrilleth's acceptance, in the case of an emergency - and she hears the familiar sounds of her father's boots against the front mat.

"Niphredil? Lossy?" Rochind calls, and pokes his head into the kitchen first.

Calanmír feels something like a cornered animal, crouched in the corner between two of the cabinets and staring up with wild eyes at her father. Rochind still has his raincoat on, dripping water onto the linoleum, and Calanmír pushes past her fight-or-flight currently duelling it out for who will win to stumble forward and throw herself into his arms.

He strokes her hair, hums that lullaby and for a moment, Calanmír is seven again and the overwhelm is from a band practise that had gotten slightly out of hand. Her father had come to pick her up and the conductor had handed her - teary eyed and nonverbal - off with an apology, and they'd had to sit in the car for nearly an hour and a half before she'd felt like a human being again.

"Good girl for calling for help," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I know that must have been difficult. Now, why don't we go to bed?"

So it is, that half an hour later, Calanmír is tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle, a mug of tea and her father perched on the edge of her bed. His raincoat and boots have long since been discarded, and he's now just in a woollen jumper that Calanmír faintly recognises as Lossrilleth's handiwork. There's a notebook and pen in between them, lying innocently on the quilt.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Rochind asks, nudging the notebook towards her. Calanmír picks it up, slowly and without much enthusiasm, and scrawls Lossrilleth panicked about the storm, and that panicked me.

A small, fond smile grows on Rochind's face. "Were you storm watching again?"

Calanmír nods, and adds, but she dragged me away really suddenly and it unsettled me, and then she was panicking and I was panicking, and I didn't know what to do.

"You called me, that was a good start."

But what if you're not there next time? What if we're in different countries or something? I should be better than this.

The smile falls from Rochind's face into something sad. "Dear," he says, and reaches out halfway; Calanmír meets him there and lets him take her hands in his, "this isn't something that just goes away."

Calanmír frowns.

"Just like your mother still panics sometimes when she has to drive somewhere, or like how Alphen sometimes all there. Sometimes I get overwhelmed just like that too, and I have to go home and let your mother wrap me up warm until I feel alive again." He squeezes her hands. "It isn't ever going to go away, but you can grow with it; you learn what triggers it - and you know what triggered this one, for example - and you know who you can call."

Calanmír untangles her hands to reach for the notebook again. It sucks. I hate not being able to speak, it makes me feel like I'm choking on my words. I hate not being in control. It hate it so much.

"I know."

But Calanmír isn't done. I wanted to help Lossrilleth. I really wanted to help her but I couldn't because I got stuck in my own head. Is she still OK?

"She was still asleep, last I checked." Her father's face is even more drawn in worry. "Do you think something is wrong?"

Which is a difficult question to answer, and so Calanmír just shrugs. I don't think she was just scared of the storm. Mallos is scared of storms and this was more like Mum when someone puts her behind the wheel of a car.

"Then I'll let your mother know. She's rather fond of Lossrilleth, you know."

Which is what he does as Calanmír feels herself drift into sleep, exhausted and pretty much spent.

When she wakes, it's to a clear sky, a fresh morning and the beginnings of a headache pounding behind her eyes. She stumbles out of bed as the events of the evening before come filtering in through her sleep groggy memory, and out into the sitting room where her parents and Lossrilleth are sitting at their foldout dining table with an array of fruit and fresh pastries.

"Morning sleepyhead!" Nibenaes cries, and holds out an arm to snag Calanmír on her way past for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "We were just about to start without you."

"What is all of this?" Calanmír asks, pleased to find her voice back even if it's slightly raw from last night's overexertion.

"Breakfast," Nibenaes says, as if it's obvious. "Your father called me last night, said that a treat might be in need for both of you, and so I popped past the shops on my way here to deliver a feast."

"Which is very kind of you," Lossrilleth says, nervous and mousy and looking for all the world as if she would be anywhere else, "though you didn't have to-"

"Oh please, as if I could ever exclude you." Nibenaes reaches over to absent-mindedly pat Lossrilleth's wrist even as she turns to Calanmír with a friendly frown. "Sit down, I didn't buy the food just for you to gawk at it."

So Calanmír sits, and the conversation flows because if there is one thing her mother is skilled at, it's getting people comfortable enough to talk. She's honestly still a little tired from last night, and she can see that same exhaustion reflected back in Lossrilleth's expression and tries to express 'I'm sorry about my mother' in the form of a facial expression.

Lossrilleth wrinkles her nose in amusement, and shakes her head very slightly, and Calanmír takes this to mean that she doesn't mind.

She'll probably mind in a minute, when they get to the real reason that Nibenaes and Rochind are here. Calanmír waits for it all meal, as she first nibbles on a croissant and then realises that she's starving and could eat every pastry on the table, but the conversation barely shifts from the endless reams of gossip that her mother has from the theatre.

Then breakfast is finished and all the coffee drunk, and the two of them are bidding farewell to her.

Calanmír waves them both off (still dressed in her ratty old pyjamas), and tries to work out why Nibenaes wouldn't have spoken to Lossrilleth as she makes her way back through to start clearing up from breakfast; except she finds the answer to her problems standing in the middle of the sitting room floor, nervously biting her thumbnail.

"You alright Lossy?" Calanmír asks, admittedly a bit more nervous about something going wrong than before.

Lossrilleth blinks, confused for a moment before settling. "Oh, yes, just thinking."

Calanmír nods. That makes sense, there can often be a lot to process after her mother has been in your general vicinity for more than five minutes.

"I'm sorry."

It's Calanmír's turn to look confused. "...pardon?"

"I'm sorry," Lossrilleth repeats. "I freaked you out last night. I shouldn't have."

"You didn't; well, I mean," Calanmír is quick to correct herself, "you did, but I'm pretty sure you were long past the being able to stop yourself part of a panic attack. And you didn't do anything more than upset me a bit, so there's nothing to forgive."

"You called you parents."

Calanmír whinces. "Sorry, they're my emergency contacts. Did they say something weird to you?"

Standing in the dead space in the middle of the sitting room is beginning to leave Calanmír uncomfortable, so she sits on the sofa and pats the place next to her. Lossrilleth hesitates a moment before coming to join her.

"No, nothing weird, but your mum did insist on talking to me on my own, and I think she's really concerned about you. Said I should probably go to therapy." Lossrilleth laughs, nervously, but there is something bright and slightly hurt behind her eyes.

Calanmír is pretty sure that her mother had probably intended that to be a good-intentioned suggestion and not a thinly veiled insult.

"You should," Calanmír blurts out, and wants to sink into the floor immediately. "I just mean-"

Sometimes, even without the added stress of a full on meltdown, words are difficult.

"The storm upset you. I remember that you kept telling me not to go near the window. That's not - my sister, Mallos, she's scared of storms but it's not...like this."

"I don't - next time there's a storm, I'll just stay in my room. You don't need to worry that I'll do something like that again and freak you out. I promise."

Calanmír clicks her tongue, annoyed. "I do worry. You're my friend, and I don't want you to feel like that every time there's a storm. You should talk about it - whatever left you so scared of them - with someone who can really help. And - and even if you can't do that, don't lock yourself away. I'll keep you company."

"You don't have to-"

Calanmír cuts in before Lossrilleth can politely duck her way out. "I want to."

There's a moment where Lossy looks, wide-eyed, like she might try to continue to argue, but then her face softens ever so slightly into something that might be hope. "Alright," she agrees. "Next time there's a storm, we can sit it out together."

"Together," Calanmír says, and feels a bit better already.

Chapter Text

Rain hisses against the old, leaded-glass windows of the costume shop. Thunder grumbles. 

Nibenaes feels Lossrilleth flinch under her hands. 

“Careful,” Nibenaes says, “I’ll pinch you if you don’t stay still.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lossrilleth says. There’s an edge of nervous mousiness about her that only appears when she’s beginning to deflate. Nibenaes’s eyes sharpen, watching her like a hawk. 

Nibenaes thought she’d solved the mystery of the Lossrilleth ages ago: she's just poor. Not just ‘starving artist young ballerina proves to the world she can go it alone’, but really poor. Unlike the other young dancers, Lossrilleth already knew how to make a shoestring budget stretch before she accepted a meager corps de ballet salary. 

Nibenaes has seen it in her cheap lunches. It's there in Lossy’s nearly telepathic ability to know that there's a good deal on used furniture or props on a ‘Buy Nothing’ page somewhere. 

It's the way she has exactly two rehearsal outfits that she hand washes at night and wears every other day. They match perfectly. Who can tell if she has two or ten? Except Nibenaes looks at clothes all day and she’s been watching: one of the leotards has a tiny bleach stain in the armpit. The hem around the neckline of the other was repaired by hand. So: there are only two. 

That explanation satisfied her for a while. The shame she’d seen on the girl’s face when she’d made excuses not to be driven back to her apartment at night was real. The address in a shifty neighborhood that Nibenaes had found when she used Rochind’s key to sneak a look at Lossrilleth’s employee file was real. So she’d quietly given Lossrilleth tidbits to help ease the burden. ‘Company’ lunch breaks. Pointe shoes from the ‘pointe shoe fund.’ 

And Lossrilleth has been seeming truly happy. She’s a perfectionist bordering on OCD, but this is ballet, so that’s not so strange. That precision is part of what makes her so exquisite on stage: she makes feats of athleticism seem effortlessly elegant. She has the most beautiful hands Nibenaes has ever seen, even after decades of being in the theater. Lossrilleth, with her pale skin, white hair, and terribly pretty face, is a porcelain doll in the flesh. A figurine who’s stepped out of the music box and into a story of magic, talent, and even romance!

The relationship with Legolas actually makes Nibenaes nervous. He is so much older. He has position and influence and money that Lossrilleth simply does not. But he is also a lovely, decent young man and —by all appearances— he treats his new girlfriend very well. They’re sweet to watch together, in fact. 

But now, Nibenaes thinks — now, something has changed. After the incident at the new apartment Lossrilleth shares with Calanmir, Nibenaes had not walked away satisfied. Something had been terribly, terribly wrong that night and she still doesn’t know what. ‘I hadn’t slept well in a few days’ was the excuse she’d been given, and she doesn’t believe a word of it. 

Lossrilleth is still standing on the block, waiting for Nibenaes to finish extracting her without shedding any pins. Her minute muscular control is failing. She keeps shivering, but it shouldn’t be cold — Nibenaes has too many half-naked dancers in her shop to let it be chilly.

Thunder booms, very close now. As if they are inside a drum. Lossrilleth actually shudders. 

“Are you okay?” Nibenaes asks, keeping her voice casual. “Do you need a jumper?”

“Oh no, I’m fine!” Lossrilleth lets out a tinkling laugh. “It’s a furnace in here!”

She makes it look effortless, Nibenaes thinks, unbidden, and her doubts soak deeper under skin. How much of it is an act? The cracks in the porcelain doll have been painted over masterfully, but Nibenaes is getting better at seeing them anyway: just like she’d noticed a bleach spot in fabric and a hand-fixed hem. 

Nibenaes lets out a sigh of frustration. She tugs at the corset she’s peeling off Lossrilleth — let her think it’s the costume. Or maybe she can offer a distraction…

“Do you know how to darn?” Nibenaes asks. “You know how to knit…”

“Oh, yeah, I do, why?”

“There are a few old cloaks I’d really like to repair, but I haven’t done much darning,” Nibenaes lies. “Think you could take a look?”

“Pfft, I could try,” Lossrilleth says. Light flashes. Her eyes flick to the window and back to Nibenaes. “It’s hard to believe I’d be better at it than you. Besides, all my tools are at home.”

“Come here,” Nibenaes says. “Just look, will you?” Something to keep her hands busy and her mind off the storm. 

Lossrilleth’s phone chimes. She picks it up and looks. Her eyes light up, which finally feels sincere to Nibenaes. 

“Uh, maybe tomorrow?” Lossrilleth says. “Legolas just got here. I want to see him before he has rehearsal…”

“Sure,” Nibenaes says. “Maybe I can come over to the apartment tomorrow? I’d like to see what tools you use,” she adds, her mind tugging at the mystery like a loose thread that could unravel expensive cloth. 

“Oh!” Lossrilleth says. “Well, why not? I’m sure Calanmír would love to see you.” She fiddles with her wraparound skirt, starting to look restless. 

“Go on,” Nibenaes snorts. “Go find that old man, and say ‘hi’ from me, too.”

“He’s not old!” Lossrilleth calls behind her as she streams out the door. Her skipping stutters for half a second when another peal of thunder hits.

“Hmm,” Nibenaes hums unhappily. She begins pinning Lossrilleth’s dance corset onto a dress form so she can start altering it. For the first time since they’ve been working together, she’s letting a seam out, not taking it in. Only a few centimeters, but still – progress! And yet. 

Her thoughts brew. She doesn’t feel time passing. And then — a noise jolts her out of her head. 

“Mum!” Mallos says loudly, like she’s repeating herself. 

“What?” Cold curls in Nibenaes’s belly.

“You’d better come, it’s Lossrilleth.”

Of course it is.

Up one set of stairs (plain); down another set of stairs (gilded). Before they reach the foyer, Lossrilleth’s voice is splitting the air, louder and shriller than Nibenaes has ever heard it. 

“Why would you do that?” Lossrilleth shrieks. Nibenaes’s nausea only grows when she sees the girl with her boyfriend, her small fists pushing against his chest. 

“Lossrilleth, I—“

“I told you, you should know better!”

“I was almost here!” Legolas protests. “There were only two blocks left, if that, when I heard the first thunder. It wasn’t even loud yet!” His eyes flick up towards the stairs, where various people from around the theater are beginning to gather.

“It’s too dangerous!” Lossrilleth actually sobs. 

Nibenaes has never seen her so out of control— never. Even her mousiness has a deliberate quality, as if she were hiding in plain sight. 

“You can’t be outside in a thunderstorm!” Lossrilleth shouts.

Legolas pulls her towards him, gently. Everyone can see: she can easily pull away from him if she chooses. Instead, she collapses towards him, ignoring the rain dripping off his hair.

“I’m okay,” Legolas croons. “I’m fine. I’m safe.”

She buries her face in shoulder and takes in a deep breath, like she’s smelling him. She shudders. 

“Don’t do that again, promise me,” she says. Her voice has gotten very small. 

Young, Nibenaes thinks, like a child. 

Legolas sighs. She balls up her hand, clutching a fistful of his shirt. 

“Okay,” he says. “I won’t stay outside if it’s thundering. I’ll just… wait it out, I guess.”

“You can take an Uber if you need to,” she says. “But wait inside until it comes. Don’t go near the windows.”

Don’t go near the windows — that’s what she’d been saying on the night she’d terrified Calanmír, Nibenaes thinks. 

“An Uber sounds fine,” Legolas agrees. “Everything is ok, Snowdrop, everyone is safe. Listen — it’s over now.”

She nods against his shoulder. He hugs her until she releases his shirt.

“Why don’t we go clean up? I got you all wet.”

“Okay,” she mumbles. Legolas looks up at the stairs again, taking in the faces looking down at them. 

Lossrilleth turns and notices them too, suddenly freezing like a deer in headlights. Her face had been bone-white, but now it flushes pink. 

Nibenaes notices movement out of the corner of her eye. She shifts to see Glorfindel nodding at Mentelossë.

“You can use our shower if you like,” Mentë says kindly, offering them the luxury of a private dressing room instead of public locker rooms. “Both of you.”

“Thank you,” Legolas agrees. He glances at Lossrilleth, who’s avoiding everyone’s eyes. She shrugs, but nods.  

“We’ll do that, then,” he says. 

Nobody makes any suggestive jokes. Suddenly they all have somewhere else to be. 

(***)

Nibenaes catches Legolas in an empty hallway later, looking around to make sure no one is listening. 

“Hey,” she demands. “What do you ‘know’?”

“Pardon?” he asks. He looks nervous. She makes him nervous. Well, fine.

“When Lossrilleth was — melting down earlier, she said that ‘you know’ something. What is it that you ‘know’?”

“Oh,” Legolas says. “She meant that storms are dangerous. That they scare her.”

“Why? I need to understand.” She almost says I’m her mother. But she isn’t.

“Ma’am?” Legolas says. “Respectfully? It isn’t my story to tell. You should ask her.”

Nibenaes gives him a sour nod. She doesn’t like that answer, but she respects it. 

“It would be good if she’d talk to you,” Legolas adds slowly. “I’ve encouraged her to— I know how much you’ve helped her. She talks about you all the time. It’s just, I don’t want to push? I don’t want to be that guy she’s dating who starts bossing her around, telling her she needs to get help. But…”

“But someone should,” Nibenaes guesses. 

He tips his head sideways, nodding and shrugging in one economic movement. 

She sighs. He’s an annoyingly good young man. If only he were a little younger…

“It would help if I knew what to ask,” Nibenaes tries. 

Legolas seems to think. He shifts, ready to keep walking. 

“Have you ever noticed?” he asks, “That her family never comes to see her dance?”

Nibenaes feels gears shifting, beginning to click into place. She wracks her memory and can’t find a single one where Lossrilleth talked about her real parents. The dread that has been coiling in her belly suddenly feels heavier.

“And… storms?” she asks. 

“Yes,” Legolas agrees. “And storms. I’m sorry, I have to go. Good luck.”

(***)

Lossrilleth watches Nibenaes inspect her knitting stash and wishes she’d just go. If she’d been able to think of an excuse to get out of this visit — but she’d come up blank, so surprised that Nibenaes still wanted to come that her mind had skipped like a record. 

After that spectacle, she hadn’t expected anyone to talk to her. Once a warm shower had thawed her out, she’d been thoroughly humiliated. Legolas had been very kind about it, but that’s just how he was, wasn’t he? 

Anyone else would break up with me, she thinks. Her thoughts keep falling into shadow today. She always tries to reach for the light, but sometimes clouds cover the sun, and she can't stop it.

“You make beautiful clothes with such simple tools,” Nibenaes comments, holding up a cheap, mint-colored plastic cabling hook. “Someone taught you well.”

“My cousin,” Lossrilleth says, referring to the woman who’d given her a home after the storm. She hadn’t had money for leg warmers or the gauzy shrug wraps that had been in style at the time, but she’d given Lossrilleth knitting needles and some half-decent yarn for Christmas, then shown her how to knit and purl, and to find patterns on Ravelry. 

“Oh, that’s nice,” Nibenaes says. “You must have been close.”

Lossrilleth doesn’t know how to answer that. Her cousin had been there. Well, when she was home. She’d mostly worked. 

Nibenaes eyes her. Lossrilleth nods, hoping she’ll move on.

“You are clever when it comes to being thrifty — and in style! Seems like that might run in the family,” Nibenaes says. “Maybe something your cousin has in common with your parents?”

Lossrilleth feels a cold trickle down her back. Nibenaes isn’t just wandering around in dangerous territory: she’s on a mission. 

“I’d like to meet them someday,” Nibenaes says. 

So it’s now. The day has come. The beautiful dream is about to shatter. She hasn’t been careful enough, lately, about hiding. It’s all too beautiful, being roped into Nibenaes’s family; becoming friends and then lovers with one of the kindest men she’s ever met. She’s felt invincible. 

But now she’s been noticed in all the wrong ways. People have asked the questions she tries to make sure they never think to ask.

“You can’t,” Lossrilleth hears her voice like it’s someone else’s. It sounds flat to her. As though a calm delivery can prevent it from poisoning all the air in the room — ha! She knows better. 

“They’re dead.”

Nibenaes doesn’t look surprised, just resigned. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Lossrilleth replies, as she had hundreds of times. “You don’t need to be sorry. It was a long time ago. I’m fine now.”

Nibenaes gives Lossrilleth a look that is as intense as any spotlight she’s ever danced in. Lossy squirms. 

“So,” Nibenaes says carefully. “Would it be fair to assume this has something to do with your abject terror during storms?”

Lossrilleth swallows hard. There simply is no escape. She traumatized Nibenaes’s daughter and made a fool of herself in front of the Company. An explanation is due, and this is who has come to collect it. 

“Yes, there was an accident during a storm,” Lossrilleth says. “A tree fell… the roof collapsed…”

Nibenaes nods once, twice. She waits for more. 

“I saw it happen.” Lossrilleth waits for the darkness of it all to start choking them. 

Nibenaes waits.

“I was nine,” Lossrilleth says. She feels like a ghost. She can’t feel her body. That is the scariest feeling she can imagine. Where is the ground?

“Let’s sit down,” Nibenaes says, “before you fall.”

(***)

“So you see it’s not that I deserved to live,” Lossrilleth says, looking at her hands. “I just lived,” she said. 

She can’t look at Nibenaes, who’s decided for no reason Lossrilleth can think of to mother her like one of her own daughters. A decision she’d made before she’d known about the ugliness at the root of Lossrilleth’s life. She probably regrets it now.

“Lossy, look at me,” Nibenaes says. More than anything, she sounds tired.  

Lossrilleth swallows, making sure she isn’t going to cry, and looks at the older woman’s face. The secret is out now — whatever it will mean for her place in Nibenaes’s heart. 

“You did deserve to live,” Nibenaes says. She put her hands on the table, reaching towards Lossrilleth without touching her. 

“They didn’t deserve to die,” Nibenaes says. 

Lossrilleth feels like she’d swallowed a handful of the lamb’s wool she keeps to pad her dance shoes. Her eyes start to swim, although she doesn’t want them to. She does not want to fall apart. Her prettily-folded hands have clenched into fists. She doesn’t remember doing that. 

“I am so sorry that happened, sweetie. I am so sorry that you had to see that. It’s no wonder thunder scares you!”

“I only wanted to keep her safe,” Lossrilleth murmurs, thinking of the painful scene she’d caused when she’d witnessed Calanmír storm watching in their tiny apartment. Her panic had hurt her friend, and forced Rochind out into the storm — an unacceptable risk — just to come help them. 

“What?” Nibenaes asks. 

“That time it rained and I— I scared your daughter, I’m so sorry,” Lossrilleth says. “I just had to get her away from the window. It’s dangerous, you know? To be near a window? In a storm?”

“I couldn’t—“ she can’t finish the thought. A sob crawls out of her chest: ghoulish, wet, disgusting. The opposite of everything she’s tried to cultivate in her life since that hideous day.

“I couldn’t help my sister,” she says. A dam breaks and words flood out of her. Her cheeks are cold with tears — since when? 

“Abby was there, in the cabin with my parents and I— I couldn’t do anything. But the other day…Calanmír was right there,” Lossrilleth points to the next room. “I had to save her. She didn’t know it wasn’t safe and she was opening the window…”

“Aaah,” Nibenaes says. 

Lossrilleth has been searching her eyes for some sign that she understands — maybe she can forgive her if she can just explain. The pinch between the older woman’s eyebrows hasn’t released, but she nods absentmindedly. 

“You wanted Legolas to be safe, too,” Nibenaes says. “He was walking to the theater in the storm.”

A shudder runs down Lossrilleth’s body. 

But Nibenaes’s face is finally relaxing. She doesn’t seem angry, to Lossrilleth’s relief. Pity, maybe. She doesn’t like it, but in this difficult moment Lossrilleth greets it like an old friend. She understands pity very well.

Lossrilleth nods. “Yes, I’d— I don’t know what I’d do. If he, or Calanmír or any of you got hit. I’d lose my mind, if I haven’t already.” She tries to laugh at herself: the ridiculousness of her shrieking at her older boyfriend in front of the whole dance company. It makes her feel sick. 

“You’re not crazy,” Nibenaes says. “And — for your own happiness, not because something is wrong with you — I really, really think you would benefit from some trauma therapy. Would you consider that?”

Lossrilleth grimaces. “It’s too expensive,” she mumbles reflexively. It’s what her cousin always said to the pediatrician.

“Horseshit!” Nibenaes blurts out. She clears her throat. “I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. You forget, we’re all in the same country. We all have the same health plan. It’s free. Siroleth can give you a referral.”

“I—“

“Sweetie, this is making you miserable. It scares you to death. You start acting like someone I’ve never met. You grabbed Calanmír, and I’m pretty sure she’s told you by now she doesn’t like to be touched without warning. You yelled at your boyfriend in the middle of the foyer. You were on the verge of hitting him!”

“Because they were in danger!” Lossrilleth protests. “That wasn’t about me!”

“Yes it was,” Nibenaes says. 

The firm-yet-gentle tone of her voice stirs something in Lossrilleth’s memory, until a vision of her of her own mother refusing to buy her a new tutu floats up like a bubble, then pops. More hot tears burn her traitorous eyes. 

“This is all about you. Of course it’s good to be reasonably cautious in a thunderstorm, but that’s not actually the point. The point is, you’re suffering. The point is, I think some part of you never stopped being a nine year old, standing in the rain, watching her family die.”

Lossrilleth crumbles against herself, hugging her arms around her ribs. She stops trying not to cry. The sobbing moves through her like a rainstorm passing through. She can feel the drops of water soaking through her leggings, although her mind has a far away feeling, like she’s hovering near the ceiling looking down on herself. 

“I don’t know what it’s like to be you, to have the childhood that you had,” Nibenaes says. “But I do know what it’s like to be locked in that moment. For several years, I couldn’t get in a car without panicking, because even though my memories of the accident were hazy, the feelings that it elicited were etched into my bones. That panic had no logic to it, but I used to create logic.”

Her hands still lie in the middle of the table, an open offering of comfort. They do not tense as Nibenaes talks, though the memory clearly pains her, and Lossy wonders what it’s like. To feel the pain but not to react to it.

“I used to say I was scared because whoever was driving was reckless, or that I did not want to leave the house, or that I had to walk or else I would never learn with my new leg. It became harder to avoid when I got a job, and eventually-” She chuckles ruefully, as if the memory is fond as well as embarrassing- “I yelled at my boss that I thought her car was a pile of shit and nothing on earth could possess me to get inside.”

“I am lucky, I think, that she noticed it was something more, and she found me someone to talk to; well, she ordered me to, but I don’t want to do that for you.” Nibenaes lets out a breath, even and well-practised. “I couldn’t pull myself out of that car alone, but when I took that helping hand, it became easier.”

She pauses for a moment, as if letting the words settle before she carries on.

“I think it’s probably time for you to walk out of the woods now,” she concludes. “It’s not strange at all, after something so hard, that you could use a guiding hand to lead you out. And that’s all therapy would be. Okay?”

Lossrilleth shrugs. She nods against her knees. She’s lost the will to resist, and why should she? Nibenaes and Rochind, Legolas and Calanmír — who has ever cared about her as much as they do? There‘d been people who fought for her: Dr. Elrond, the pediatrician. A dance coach in middle school and high school. (She came to opening night of Sleeping Beauty last year to see Lossrilleth dance Princess Florine. She brought irises, remembering they were Lossrilleth’s favorite.) 

— Not the cousin who took her in. She hadn’t asked for the responsibility of raising a kid, but she’d still given Lossrilleth a place to stay, (even if it had been cramped and grimy). She kept jobs, didn’t drink too much — she’d given stability, the only thing she had to give. And she didn’t get in the way when people offered to give more, helping Lossrilleth make dance her life. She’d tried.

Now Nibenaes is doing more than ‘trying’; she’s been generous to the point Lossrilleth often doesn’t know what to do with so much care and attention. 

So if Nibenaes thinks Lossrilleth should try therapy, she supposes it isn’t too much to ask. She’ll do it, if that’s what it will take, to keep all the beautiful things she’s gained. As always, she grabs hold of everything beautiful that life offers, and she does not let go. 

“Okay,” Lossrilleth says. “I’ll try therapy.”