Pretty little mind

Location | one of James' dance studios
Date | 29th of June 2022
Time | Midday
Attire | Link
Topic for | @James
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It was the only times she really went out, it was because she knew her father would be furious if she missed practice. Even then it was pretty clear to all that there was an unwanted tension between the two, Nicole refused to talk about anything not related to her dance, usually. But practice today just kept going on as if she was jinxed, she couldn't focus, had a few terrible falls - at least she was lucky enough to not have hurt herself in a way that could stop her from dancing. Perhaps it was all the sleepless nights, she couldn't sleep lately. She was so happy Aleks was a heavy sleeper and that she was able to just sneak out of his embrace and go in watching some tv or go for a run whenever she was unable to go back to sleep. Her mind was tired, her body exhausted. Nothing was balanced anymore, nothing made sense. She had trouble even figuring out who she was. All the light and hope she usually felt had just twisted into a heavy blanket of emptiness.

She kept the ice back on her slightly red right knee which was the one who had taken most of the fall, Nicole looked up when she heard someone walking in through the door. Nicole exhaled a little bit, she was angry at him and Rebekah for what they had done to Lara, playing with her, killing her. Most of all angry that they had tried twisting her mind into forgetting, yet her life had been so much easier to handle when she had lived in the unknown. "I'm okay, I just needed a few seconds," she looked back at her knee for a moment.

James entered the studio after today’s trainer had called him. When he entered the room, everyone was dancing what seemed to be perfect, but James quickly noticed multiple things he would want to approve. He waited till the trainer told them to take a break, or simply seemed to want to take it from the top. James cleared his throat when the moment arrived, which made the trainer notice him, feeling awful because he hadn’t even seen James enter, nor had corrected multiple faults. The trainer was quick to tell James where he should head to find his girl.

The door opened, and he could see how his daughter sat with an ice bag on her knee. From the distance, he could almost see what damage she had done, but on the other hand, ballerinas were after a few years of training a walking accident if they didn’t get the right training, nutrition, sleep, and so on. Things that James had provided for Nicole throughout her life as a ballerina. Had it been any other ballerina, he would have told them to get their shit together and go back out immediately; to train it off, or simply to get back on track of their strict plan. “You’re not okay,” he responded and headed towards Nicole before he sat down beside her, not looking towards her yet. “You’re not fit for training right now,” he told her before he looked at her. He was telling her that she should be taking the rest of the day off. “You’re not on track with your diet or getting the restitution you need,” he told her, keeping his eyes on her for a moment. “What is that pretty little mind telling you?” What was keeping her from being on track? What was in her way? Was it the lazy Aleks? He knew he was no good. Or maybe Ryan was messing with her mind. They were all bastards who should be keeping their hands away from her. It could also be the D’Avalos, they were after all some pricks who had no idea about what they were doing; stupid hunters.
Many thoughts were running through his head, but they were all formed from the love and wish to protect Nicole. He wanted her to thrive. Her dancing however clearly showed how her life was going. Terribly. Falling apart. Would it be necessary to pull her away from the dancing or simply just those stupid men? Would it be better if she just had a few female friends who visited? There were plenty of options, and he surely had no clue about what would be the best, but for now, they had to stop and talk.

She closed her eyes shut for a moment when he stated the obvious. But didn't comment, she knew better than to try out sass him with a comment at this given moment. He also stated the next rather obvious, no she was far from on track. She was staying in bed, seemed to have lost her spark really. Nicole felt less happy,  she wasn't running in the bedroom to wake Aleks up anymore, she was just sitting like a zombie in the couch watching tv till he woke up by himself - which to be fair without her to wake him up could take long. Nicole felt like a horrible person, she had for what felt like the longest time now. "Everything, and nothing -" Nicole responded with a voice that matched how hollow she felt on the inside. "I think I'm falling, and I don't know when I will hit the ground -" she then moved her eyes up to meet her father's. "Am I broken? Or just a horrible person?"

Everything and nothing. Those were dangerous things that a mind could tell one. The way she spoke also hurt him. It truly showed how she didn’t even care about the mask she had worn now that he had seen it. He listened to her, knowing very well that explaining how one felt could open many doors. He made sure to catch her eyes as she looked at him. He could see how broken she felt. “You’re none of that,” he replied to her, directing a strand of hair behind her ear, his hand finding its way to her shoulder. “You need someone to lean on,” he told her, pulling a sympathetic smile. “And it’s okay to lean on someone,” he tried to convince her. A sentence was close to leaving him, but he swallowed it, thinking twice. He had learned his lesson. She didn’t need to think about how he believed that Aleks might be leaning against her and had done for way too long. “You have never been and will never be a horrible person,” he pulled her closer, into his embrace. “We all bend and break sometimes,” he spoke softly to her, but his voice was still clear. “Even though it hurts to break, you will come out stronger on the other end,” he kissed the top of her head. “Remind yourself of kintsugi,” he told her. It was a Japanese term he had used for ages. It was a method to fix broken pottery with gold, making it incredibly beautiful, and to some extent more valuable. It had a story. Whenever he had ballerinas who feared for their career and had a simple injury, it was something he could try to encourage them to focus on, so it would be possible to get them back on track again. Good ballerinas could be hard to find nowadays. After a small thoughtful moment for her to take it in, he took a slightly deeper breath in, “If you’re falling, I can promise you, that I will catch you,” he told her and looked back at her, “I will always catch you,” he pulled a soft smile hoping that it could give her some of the hope that she was missing.

It was true, it was a lonesome journey to carry the burden of all this on her own shoulders. She was scared out of her mind that Aleks never would forgive her for being family to the people who had killed his friend. The guilt was possible the heaviest burden she carried. "I don't have anyone to lean on, not with this," she mumbled a little, but it was true. He had taken part in killing Lara, she couldn't lean on him. If she leaned on Aleks as she had tried to, it just made her feel like he kept something hidden away from her.
Nicole tried to feel comforted in the embrace like she had in the past, but it didn't come that easy, even so she didn't pull back because she needed it. "I will try," she took a sharper breath in and then exhaled. It wasn't like she believed he wouldn't be there for her, because he always had. The thing was she felt like she betrayed Lara somewhere down the line if she was allowing herself to accept the comfort and love.  

It hurt him how she mentioned she didn’t have anyone to lean on with the thing she carried, the thing that weighed so heavy on her shoulders. As her father, he would always be open for her to lean on him. Tell him what bothered her, even if it was him. The way he said things, acted, or simply didn’t do any of the former options. “You can always lean on me,” he told her, knowing that she might not trust it. He just wished she did.
“You can do it,” he spoke softly, pulling her closer to place a tender kiss against her hair before he let her get back up again. “I know you can,” he continued. He let them sit in a moment of silence, to let things settle a little. He knew she might just need a moment to let herself think. He knew that time would help her to get things out of her mind. She might even tell him what was wrong.

"Can I?" She asked as she looked at him, the always so joyful aura she had been carrying was gone, she felt nothing like herself anymore. Perhaps it was also the reason why she could sound this empty, Nicole's voice was always bobbly and full of life, but now, it was like it had lost a part of its soul. "You helped killing one of my friends," okay even if Lara and Nicole hadn't been 'friends' for years, it was still wasn't okay to kill someone, and yes she knew who the people who had raised her were - maybe she had just been too naive and thought they would at least be better than that. "All to what, torment JJ?" Nicole recalled having gotten to the castle, hearing JJ's pained screamed echo in the hallway from losing the mate mark. She had even been the one to lock him out of his room. "I don't know who I can trust anymore," she exhaled a little bit.

“Yes, of course, you can,” he tried to assure her; however, it didn’t take long before she brought up her friend. It made him clench his jaw. Nicole hadn’t noticed how James hadn’t planned to kill the poor girl. It shouldn’t surprise him, but it did. He took a smaller breath in to explain how he had seen things going on, but she added the fact that JJ had been in pain when she died. “Nicole-” he wished to explain things to her, but her head seemed to be storming with thoughts that he couldn’t keep up with right now, and he didn’t dare to look into her memories right now. It seemed like she was done when she told him that she didn’t know who to trust anymore. “Okay, you don’t have to trust me when I’m saying this,” he said and folded his fingers in front of him, looking quite thoughtfully. “It wasn’t my intention to kill her. Things got out of hand,” he told her he explained and licked his lips before he looked at her again. “Even though he can be an ass, he could get another mate in so many other ways,” he told her licking his teeth.