Chapter Text
Another rehearsal finished. Dorothea stood center-stage, arms out as if to embrace the would-be crowd, gathering her breath from that ultimate note. She felt the eyes of every stagehand and dancer on her back. Please be good enough. It had been a long day. They always were long days leading up to a new performance. If only this last run-through was perfect, everyone could go home. No one moved. As the vestiges of the final clash from the cymbals disappeared in the dome, the opera house was silent save for Dorothea’s breathing. The managers sat in the front row, legs crossed and fingers on chins. Finally, one of them dismissed them with a wave of his hand. A sea of bodies above and below the stage heaved a sigh of relief. The stagehands began reorganizing the set pieces as the dancers shuffled to their dressing rooms. The conductor chastised the orchestra just out of earshot of the managers as they congratulated each other on what Dorothea could only assume was another day of watching others work hard. What fancy suits they could afford for doing so little. The war changed so much on the outside, but nothing within these walls. Nothing except the star.
On her way to her dressing room, she overheard the gossip from the dancers, and again from her costars to their dressers. That they had to tailor her costumes to cover up a battle scar. That she wasn’t as flirtatious as they remembered. That they swore they saw her cry in the scene where her lover refuses to leave his wife for her. That those tears seemed too genuine. Her dressers smiled and insisted that it didn’t matter what they thought. Dorothea appreciated that support when she was a teenager, but these days she didn’t give it a second thought. Her caring wouldn’t change their habits, and it wasn’t as if they had said anything untrue.
The process of removing her dress after a performance was always curious. It wasn’t that she grieved its beauty or the grace of the performance. She wished she could pin her feelings on something so poetic, but that wasn’t the case. It had more to do with the people who were doing the unclasping, unzipping, unbuttoning. Whether it was her castmate at the beginning of her career, or the team of women before her now, her mind could never focus when a delicate set of fingers eased a button through a hole. The tenderness with which they pulled trinkets from her hair and combed it out fascinated her every time. She’d learned to close her eyes so as not to stare as one worked off the bodice and corset. She prayed that they wouldn’t touch a vein as they removed her necklace and know the violence of her pulse in these moments. In her first days here, this foreign intimacy was the most shocking. Women did it so casually with one another, as though they were taking apart props. As though it meant nothing.
Dorothea had played the part of a nobleman’s arm candy before, and the way they touched her could never compare. It was a show, even with the ones she invited to spend the night. The arm looming over her sweaty waist, the dry hands brushing aside her hair, the fingers locked over her shoulder. The performance of a man desperate for her affection affected her so little, yet a woman paid to attend her had her blushing at the slightest touch. Did they know the power they had over her? Her acting was passible on stage where the audience could hardly see her face, but the same wasn’t true in these close quarters. Whatever the case, they didn’t let on that they knew anything. They simply did their job, wished her goodnight, and left.
Her first encounter with such feelings was confusing to say the least. Dorothea was not yet a teenager when she became the understudy for a for the girl who swept all the adolescent roles at the time. It wasn’t for her talent. Her father was a major patron for the company at the time, so her every role was purchased. There wasn’t a doubt in Dorothea’s mind that she considered her a pet, that she reveled in her status. At least, not until that night when that girl was among the last to leave, when she found Dorothea settling into a cot in the back of the building. She pulled Dorothea with both hands through the winding halls all the way to her dressing room and made her sit before the mirror. With the precision of a physician stitching a wound, she applied her costume to Dorothea, her hands tender as they wove a scarf through her thick hair. Did she know that Dorothea’s heart stopped when she leaned in close with lipstick in her hand and parted her lips - all to direct her to follow suite? By the time she was finished, Dorothea was shocked to find a star in her reflection, albeit one in need of a tailor. But the girl didn’t seem to mind. Her hands were firm on Dorothea’s shoulders, her eyes reflective. Again, she bent at the hip to rest her chin on her shoulder, and Dorothea sucked in a breath. “You’re stunning.”
The next day, she claimed to be unwell. Dorothea performed and never saw her again. For weeks, she could only think of that girl as a collection of sensations, something to be experienced in reveled in. With time, she came to emulate her. Dorothea was a student of seduction, experimenting on ways to sway others with her breath. That girl came to mind every time Dorothea made a man sweat, every time she made them stutter. But even after mastering her every lesson, she never lost her magic in Dorothea’s mind. Not until she was overshadowed by yet another teacher.
There was a commotion near the front entrance of the opera house. The managers shrieked in such a way that mimicked Dorothea’s range. For fear that involving herself would delay her return home, she stuck to the shadows, out of sight. Careful not to strike the marble floor with her heel as she descended the stairs, the prima donna became nothing more than a peripheral concern as she approached the exit. It was a useful skill she’d learned on the street, one that she could turn to after a successful show to sneak past the crowd. The managers’ voices rang out on the lobby like a coward’s call to arms: “We don’t have preparations to host a king!”
If only their words hadn’t been those words, then perhaps she wouldn’t have stopped in her tracks. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been caught. But the mention of Claude struck her enough for somebody to notice.
“Ah, now I understand!” One man swept across the room with his arms outstretched to her. “The king is coming to see his old comrade! Once again, our star pulls through for us!”
Once again, her acting skills were put to the test as she found a way to smile.
Claude had been faceless for some time in her mind, ever since the day he left for Almyra after the war. She’d first learned of it from Byleth. She tried her best to hide it, as always – no sobs, no sighs, and certainly no words to let on her feelings, but the truth was plain and painful to see. She sought no pleasure once her work was finished each day, she ate nothing except when reminded, she stopped responding to personal letters. It was impossible to connect such inhuman suffering to a face, much less the smiling face that returned a year later. Even upon seeing him again, Dorothea could not pin the hurt to his image, especially not with how content Byleth was to have him back. The name at once evoked the sly boy who used to help his classmates with their chores, and the heartless man who abandoned his partner and his nation in their time of need. And now, a king.
In her carriage, it briefly struck her that he had reason to be upset with Dorothea as well as the power to act on it. She knew emasculated men to act in unpredictable ways, after all. But Claude (the one she knew at the Officers Academy, anyway) was not the sort to flex cruelty so brazenly, and Byleth would never allow him to do something rash. Still, this couldn’t mean nothing. Why isn’t she coming with him? We’re not children! Does she really plan to just forget I existed? If so, why would she let him come at all?
Gazing out at the quiet streets of Enbarr, she spotted a familiar fountain. Its gurgling rose to match the symphony of crickets. In the moon’s reflection on the water, she swore she saw the ghost of a girl sitting at the edge, scrubbing her dirt-caked ankles. The weight of her own thoughts suddenly hit her, and she couldn’t help but laugh. A decade ago, she wasn’t important enough to be worth assassinating or intimidating or protecting or keeping. Now, politics were personal. Funny how the world rewards those lucky enough to endure it.