Then she'll just have to suffer through it. (Ultimate suffering will only last, what, five minutes? Surely she can make it through five minutes of ultimate suffering.)

Duck is, as promised, not a good dancer. Her balance is poor and her movements are imprecise and badly timed, as if she's not only unused to ballet but a little unused to moving a human body at all.

Fakir is a good dancer, at least in the technical sense. He's not a very good partner. It's hard to point toward any specific thing he's doing that makes him so, but the last time any of the students in the audience saw Duck dance with a member of the advanced class, it was with Rue, and Rue had spent the entire time soothing Duck's nerves, guiding her through the performance, and making sure she didn't embarrass herself.

Fakir seems to be going for the opposite approach. Whenever there's something he could feasibly assist with, he doesn't, and while he does whisper something to her during the performance, whatever it is only makes her more upset. The lifts are all there, he's always in the correct position, but Duck looks like she's hanging on for dear life and not entirely succeeding.

At the end of the performance, he lifts her up, and for a second Duck determinedly strikes the actual position she's supposed to be in.

And then Fakir drops her. 

No fair no fair no fair no fair -

She manages to land on her feet, such that it won't be obvious to some of the beginners that Fakir dropped her at all. (The members of the advanced class will all find it pretty obvious.) She doesn't catch her balance; she tumbles forward and careens off the stage.

As soon as he sees Fakir drop her, he's already jumping out of his seat, afraid for her safety; when she falls, she lands neatly in his arms, and he sweeps her upright and sets her on her feet, glaring up at Fakir with a deadly rage in his eyes.

For a moment it looks like he might keep going, but he checks himself before he can do more than get a hand on the edge of the stage, and turns instead to Duck, anger softening to concern.

Duck looks kinda like she might cry. She's not going to, that'd be dumb, but she looks like the next emotional straw will probably do her in.

"You were wonderful," says the dancer. "I'm sorry for putting so much pressure on you."

"That's OK," says Duck, weakly. "Do you, uh, have a bathroom around here somewhere - "

The dancer gives instructions; Duck runs off in the direction she's pointing before she's finished.

Serafin watches her for a second, frowning slightly, then looks up at Fakir again. He no longer seems ready to commit literal murder over this, but neither could he be described as 'happy' or 'forgiving'.

Fakir doesn't look like he cares very much; he ignores Serafin and returns to his seat by Mytho.

Elsewhere in the building, Duck is crying in the bathroom.

She feels sort of dumb about this. It's not like any of her goals actually require her to be great at dancing, or require anyone to think that she's less terrible at it than she is. She shouldn't care about her standing in the class, as long as she gets to keep going there and keep looking after Mytho. Maybe she doesn't even need that, maybe all she needs is to keep becoming Tutu and keep returning shards and - maybe her life as a girl doesn't even really matter for this story, maybe it's, like, window dressing.

But it matters to her. It matters a lot that everyone knows how terrible she is. It matters a lot that she can't stand up to Fakir, and it matters a lot that she can't even thank Serafin, and it matters a lot that as soon as she leaves this bathroom, nobody's going to say anything to her but everyone will be thinking about it. She can't face that, she can't, she can't, she can't.

She has the sense that someone might be hugging her as she sobs, but it's not solid enough for her to stop and see who's there. Her pendant glows briefly, but she doesn't notice it through her tears.

When she's not back after five minutes, he's concerned.

When she's not back after ten minutes, he's worried.

When she's not back after the demonstration wraps up and the class starts filing out the door, he's...

...not entirely sure what to do about it, given that her last known destination was the bathroom? She probably does not want him looking for her there. Unless she's been held up by more magic nonsense in which case she might. Okay, he can at least step into the hall and listen for magical-sounding noises. And bring his lamp. He's not about to leave her behind.

There aren't any magical-sounding noises. There's some faint crying and some much louder voices coming from the bathroom. He probably won't recognize either of them; they belong to members of the beginner class.

"You can't just hide in here forever!"

"Yeah! Don't worry, Duck, we'll comfort you!"

"You have to bounce back so they can see that it hasn't gotten to you, and then you can think about revenge!"

"Or about being a miserable wreck!"

Oh. Okay. Crying in the bathroom for an hour. That makes a certain amount of sense.

It sounds like she has... friends? Helping? Probably they're doing a better job of comforting her than he could, although it doesn't sound like they're doing all that great a job. He turns to go.

Eventually - some time after Serafin and the rest of the class have returned to school - Pique and Lilie succeed at dragging a still-fairly-emotionally-compromised Duck out of the bathroom and back to the dorms, where she hides in her room under her blankets for the rest of the day.

...and, actually, for the rest of the day after that. Because if she goes out she'd have to talk to people, and they would make fun of her, and she might run into Fakir and he's really scary, and she'd have to go to class and get scolded, and it's really just a whole lot easier to stay in her room where she can't mess anything up?

She is going to run out of food eventually, though. Except maybe she can turn into a bird and eat her supply of birdseed, that should last her for a while.

He doesn't worry too much about not seeing her for the rest of that day, but when she's absent the whole next day too, he decides he should probably check up on her.

So he skips his first class of the subsequent morning and heads straight to the girls' dormitories, carrying the lamp in a bag over his shoulder. He's pretty sure he knows which window is hers, and definitely sure he doesn't know how to navigate the girls' dorm from the inside; he checks to make sure no one's watching, and then climbs.

Her curtains are closed, for maximum gloom.

He knocks.

Aww, man, who could that be?

She leaves her birdseed and dips her wing in a handy glass of water and then hurriedly dresses herself and then -

" - uh. Hi Serafin!"

"Hi. You haven't been to class, I was worried. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm totally fine!" she says, sounding not actually very fine at all. "I just. Thought I'd. Take a few days off."

"Duck... you cried in the bathroom for like an hour and then skipped a day and a half of classes. That does not sound like what a person does when they're okay."

".................I guess not," she says, frowning.

"Do you want—I mean—I don't know. If I were you, after that, I'd want to go to a practice room with no one watching and do the dance again with a partner who wasn't sabotaging me at every turn. But I don't know if that'd help you. I just - I want you to be okay."

aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA.

If she dances with Serafin she's gonna mess it up and it'll be horrible, but if she says no then she has to say no, and both of these sound sort of impossible to her so she's going to dodge the one that would require any immediate bravery and see if she picks up any spare bravery in the intervening time somehow.

"M...maybe. I mean. I won't be any good at it anyway, and uh, you don't have to do it if - if you're busy or anything - "

"In theory I have class, but I care about you more than I care about class. And it doesn't matter how good at it you are, it's fine to mess it up, I'll help you."