In the minutes following the incident on stage Debbie promptly marched her student up to the physical therapy wing and sat her down on one of the foam beds for one of the physios to take a look at her. The young ballerina had her limbs rotated and bent at all different angles to try and figure out what was wrong, but no verdict had been given.
'And this?' the physio asked, bending her leg inward. She winced and nodded, blinking hard into the harsh lights to suppress the tears behind her eyes. It did hurt, it hurt a lot. But she really couldn't afford to look like she was in excruciating pain if she had any hope of escaping this fiasco lightly.
They couldn't bench her over this. They wouldn't, they couldn't.
She sat up while the physio asked her a few more questions, hunched over with her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. She kept her answers vague, short. Nothing that would make it seem objectively bad.
While the physio filled out something on a form, she glanced at her reflection in the glass-paned walls of the office. Holy shit.
She looked haggard. Washed-out and defeated, the dark circles under her eyes starker than ever against her pale skin. Her hair was plastered against the back of her neck, and making her wonder if-
The door to the office swung open and she jumped, only to find Julian hurtling at her before pulling her into a bone-crusher of a hug. Debbie must have tracked him down then.
'Are you okay?' he stuttered out breathlessly. She nodded, feeling him rub her back in slow, absent circles while he rocked her from side to side slightly.
He muttered something about his mother going to kill him and started unpinning her hair, freeing the coffee-coloured tresses from her bun to let it fall loosely over her shoulders. It relieved some of the strain in her head, and she smiled weakly up at him.
'Alright, Nastasia.' the physiotherapist announced, setting down his clipboard on the table by the window. 'The good news is that as far as I can tell nothing is torn or broken.'
She closed her eyes and breathed a small sigh of relief.
'The bad news is that based on the limited range of motion in your leg and that snapping noise you've been hearing, your left hip is severely impinged.'
Hip impingement, she thought. It was an overuse injury rather common amongst dancers, and usually, recovery time wasn't that long. He said it was severe, but maybe they would let her keep dancing-
'We caught it early enough that you don't need surgery, but you will need time off to rehabilitate it safely before we can get you back to fighting fit.' the physiotherapist explained. 'For the time being, I'm putting you on mandatory bedrest for two weeks, and then we'll start rehab.'
'When can I dance?' she asked earnestly. Two wasn't that bad, if she stayed in shape she could still make Nutcracker.
'Six weeks, at the very earliest.'
Her stomach did a nauseating turn.
'Sorry, did you say-'
'Six weeks.' the physiotherapist repeated firmly. 'If everything goes well, you can start easing into it in six weeks' time.'
・・・
Roman was out for blood. He'd been decently angry when he left the main stage a few minutes earlier, but by the time he reached the upstairs dressing rooms, he was fucking furious.
After Debbie had ushered her student off stage and shot him a look that told him not to follow, he'd been left behind to try and make sense of what had happened. The initial panic that came with realizing something was wrong with her subsided until he felt dangerously numb, unable to feel anything besides the remnants of shock. She was hurt. Something happened on stage, she'd cracked, pulled, torn or broken something, something in her was hurt, she was hurt.
Still reeling internally, he'd watched as Ridley rolled his eyes and muttered something about wasting time, and vanished. Without a drop of concern or worry, he'd simply vanished. Probably to go home and call it a night, as if his partner hadn't come within an inch of a harrowing injury on his watch.
And as quickly as he'd gone numb, he was livid. He'd gathered by that point that their relationship wasn't exactly romantic, but that was utterly unforgivable. She was his responsibility, and instead of protecting her as he bloody well should have, he bullied, controlled, and manhandled her. Until she broke.
Call it territorial or plain antagonistic, but Ivan Ridley was about to be in a world of shit.
With the bloodcurdling urge to rip something apart with his bare hands still cooking in his chest, he stalked to the male principal block. It would have been wise to take ten minutes and calm himself down, go take some deep breaths and spare Ivan the worst of it, but the minute he saw the dancer unlocking his dressing room a little way down the corridor, he sent those ten minutes to shit.
He grabbed him forcefully by the back of the neck and used the small window of surprise to shove Ivan violently into his dressing room. Swinging him around, he took him by the front of his shirt and rammed him into the back of the door, hearing the wind knock out of him.
'What the hell is wrong with you?' Ivan gasped, his expression a mixture of bewilderment and something resembling fear as he caught sight of the unhinged glint in his adversary's eyes.
'I warned you.' he hissed. 'I told you if there's so much as a scratch on her you'll be really fucking sorry.'
'She's fine, calm down already-' he insisted, squirming slightly under his grip. Roman tightened his hold, and Ivan seemed to realize that he was no match for a riled-up, six-foot-five powerhouse.
'Fine?' he seethed. 'You think that was fine?'
'She's walking, isn't she? Probably just throwing a tantrum because she knows she screwed up this morning.'
'You screwed up this morning.' he hissed back, pulling tighter on his shirt. 'She was tired, and it was your job to keep her on her feet.'
'Yeah well,' Ivan sniggered. 'You should see what she can do on her knees.'
The words had hardly left Ridley's mouth before he lost it. Raw, unbridled rage shot through him, driving the blood already pounding in his veins to a boiling point. Something snapped, something broke so violently that his vision went jagged.
With a surge of blinding adrenalin firing down his spine, he yanked Ivan forward before slamming him into the door again, hard enough that his legs buckled out from under him. He abruptly released his grip on his shirt and let the dancer slide down to the floor, hearing him groan in pain before he kicked him viciously in the stomach.
Ivan wheezed throatily, trying to catch his breath or say something, but he kicked him again, and again, until he was choking uncontrollably on the air left in his lungs. He grabbed him by the collar and flipped him onto his back, ramming him into the floor. Ivan let out a loud gurgle as he climbed on top of him and started beating the living daylights out of him.
A murderous composition of bare-boned aggression and sheer powerlessness to change the events of the past few minutes came flooding out of him. He slammed Ivan into the floor repeatedly, each blow more unhinged than the last, relishing in the pleading whimpers and gasps he got in return. He was going to pay, he was going to hurt, he was going to suffer, for what he did to her.
It was an adrenalin-induced blur, and he hardly felt his knuckles singing from the impact as he tore open Ivan's lip and brow. There was blood on the floor, on his neck, on his face, but upon realizing that his ordeal was far from over, Ivan made to cover his head with his arms and curl himself into a ball while his opponent worked out his temper on him.
Roman's rage climbed to its crowning glory, and with one last brutally hard lash to his jaw, Ivan was out cold. His head drooped back and his body went limp under his grip, before sagging completely. Disappointed that his punching bag was out for the count, he gave him one last violent shake before discarding him on the floor of his dressing room.
Still shaking with hostility, he got to his feet and monetarily reeled from the lightheadedness that washed over him. He forced himself to take a deep, sobering breath, clenching and unclenching his fists while his unhinged temper slowly subsided. Raking his hands through his hair, he glanced down at the bloodied pulp on the floor.
Once he let himself think about it, he realized that it had been a while since he last used his fists. Still, Ivan certainly wasn't his first and he knew that he hadn't inflicted any lasting damage, only rattled him enough to teach him a much-needed lesson. And, he noted with a self-satisfied grin, he would be wearing his stage make-up to class for the foreseeable future.
・・・
'Six weeks?' Bastian yelped, crossing his arms over his chest while he eyed Debbie incredulously. 'Six whole weeks?!'
'At least.' the retired ballerina replied, pouring two steaming cups of tea from a silver teapot as she relayed the medical staff's verdict.
'Merde.' the artistic director swore. 'Tell them to give her the good stuff, I need her for Bayadère.'
Debbie shook her head and added some milk to the tea. 'She won't make Bayadère.' she said quietly. 'Even with a record recovery she'll still be three weeks behind on rehearsals.'
'Then she'll have to learn quickly.' Bastian exclaimed. 'Both Ridley and Aaryan have insisted they want her as their Gamzatti since it's their debuts, and then Phillip stopped by this morning saying they'd be a good match. And God knows if he doesn't get his way, he'll throw a bloody fit.'
Debbie stirred the two cups of tea, nodding understandingly. The company was short two of their principal ballerinas as is, with Pritchard having been recently injured and Ashcroft unreplaced after her retirement. That left them with four principal ballerinas, to fill a ballet that required two leading ballerinas per cast. Bastian was clearly in a tight spot, and they probably hadn't even seen the last of the injuries. Not to mention that when he swore in French, the situation was usually rather dire.
'I'll keep an eye on her.' she said, carrying over the two saucers and placing them on his desk as she sat down opposite him. 'And of-course, we will try our best to give her a fighting chance for Bayadère. She won't want to miss it.'
The artistic director rubbed his face with his palms, not seeming to have noticed the tea yet. In her years of knowing him, Debbie had learnt that tea softened the blow when it came to Bastian Acton, a taste he seemed to have acquired when he moved to London some twenty years ago.
The ballet mistress cleared her throat, unsure if she should bring up the details surrounding the incident on stage. 'What are you going to do about Zharnov?' she asked, crossing her legs as she took a sip of her tea.
'Absolutely nothing.' Bastian replied. 'What he wants, he gets. You know that.'
Debbie pursed her lips, setting down the porcelain cup in its saucer. She'd broached the subject with Bastian only once before, and told him that she planned to do her own research before approving any potential partnerships. Needless to say, since then she'd found out far more than anyone had expected, and was vehemently set against any pairing between the Bolshoi's golden boy and the Royal Opera House's youngest ever soloist. 'Well, he can't have her. He has a reputation and quite frankly, so does she.'
'You think he'll be a bad influence?' the artistic director asked, finally noticing the tea and thanking her with a grateful nod.
'Never mind bad influence, he's bad publicity, bad news, and an absolute nightmare to work with.' Debbie explained exasperatedly. 'I spoke to an old friend from the Bolshoi and you won't believe the sort of things he's done to get his way.'
'Walsh hasn't complained yet.' the artistic director shrugged. 'And besides, I've got half the marketing department doing damage control already regarding his... Reputation.'
Debbie set down her tea with slightly shaking hands. 'I don't care, Bastian, she is my student and I will not gamble her future on a washed-up drug addict.'
'You know that I respect your wishes, Deborah-'
'Don't Deborah me.' she interrupted. 'When you asked me to train her, you knew as well as I did that she is young and inexperienced, and would need more guidance than usual. I take my job as her teacher very seriously, and you've got another thing coming if you think I'm about to let all that talent go to waste on him.'
Bastian opened his mouth to reply, but shut it again, seemingly choosing his wording.
'He is not to go near her.' Debbie seethed, feeling an angry flush creep into her cheeks.
'I will talk to him.' Bastian stated, holding up his hands to try and calm her down.
'No, you will tell him.' she affirmed. 'And if he has a shred of decency left in him he will understand.'
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Hi everyone! Hope you all enjoyed this action-filled chappy! I finally gave you all the long-anticipated Zharnov x Ridley showdown 🥳. Not going to lie, I think Ivan's breakout role as The Punching Bag was his best yet, but let me know what you all think 😂. Love you all, have a beautiful day, and thank you for being here! 🖤