Leonor De Matteo
August 07, 2020 10:50 AM
Dancing off steam. by Leonor De Matteo
CW: Reference to suicide, antagonism of suicide survivors and victimsLeonor would much prefer to have been in the sports room, throwing things as hard as possible or breaking things or punching things or fighting things. However, sports made her think of Felipe and Jeremy and Quidditch and that was not a thing she wanted to be thinking about right now. Plus, it wasn't that hard. Everyone always acted like sports were hard, but it was the working out and getting ready bit that was hard, and that didn't usually mean playing sports. She didn't have to be in the sports room to exercise anyway, so she'd gone for something she rarely indulged.
Dancing had been part of her life since she was small, and she generally enjoyed it. Most of the time, her dancing was meant to be partner dancing, but Leonor had always stolen away to dance alone, or else been left to dance alone while Felipe was taught how to properly dance with a partner since he would need that skill. Not now he wouldn't. Sometimes, Leonor had danced with her papa, standing on his feet, but that hadn't happened for a long time. She was grown up now anyway.
Felipe though. Felipe was the whole start of all of this ridiculousness. It absolutely wasn't fair of him to go doing something so stupid and awful and then also make it something so embarrassing that she couldn't tell anyone. What was she supposed to do? Tell Jeremy? That would be a bit low, even for her, and Felipe wouldn't be the only one that got hurt. Truth be told, though, there wasn't a lot of fire left in her guts to want to hurt Felipe. He'd proven he was well and truly broken, and far enough past just hurt to try to stop it all. She didn't need to do more than that. She hadn't wanted to do that much, but she hadn't realized he was such a coward, either.
Some part of her was aware that she had played a role in all this. That she had pushed and pushed and kept on pushing until she might've been the one standing there with him. It was the reason she knew what he'd done even before it was announced. She had had to sneak in to the Hospital Wing to see him before he woke up, but that wasn't too hard. She'd known right away. She'd known when he didn't arrive for breakfast, and when she got to the Hospital Wing and seen him laying there, perfectly fine if not for the sleeping draft in his system. She'd been outside the night before and seen commotion at the Pitch. She'd seen the guilty look on Felipe's face when he'd woken up. And absolutely none of it was in order in her head because none of it made any sense at all. Perhaps she'd been unfair; maybe it was something else. But it wasn't anything else. Felipe had confirmed as much just by the fact that he hadn't argued with her. Leonor knew. She'd seen him all break though and had the advantage of knowing what sort of state he was in. She had tried not to pay attention - Javier was much more exciting to pay attention to - but she couldn't help seeing him looking around Los Jardines de Plata as if he was saying goodbye. She doubted it was international planning on his part, but she doubted he was planning anything very far ahead at that point. It was one day at a time and then it wasn't. But it was still because he had lived. It would have been easier if he hadn't.
Dance. Just dance.
She'd set the room up to be a ballroom, with a closet for changing into any one of several gorgeous gowns. She was going to practice for her quinceañera and she had high hopes of performing some sort of dance bit alone since she wouldn't be that interested in dancing with a boy. She was sure Jeremy wouldn't be interested in joining her and Javier was absolutely not important enough for it, although her parents probably didn't think that way.
Despite the options, Leonor opted for leggings and a tank top. She was working out on the dance floor, not gluing herself to the inside of a music box. She turned the music up loud, something with a strong enough beat that she could move with hard, strong, repetitive motions until she was dripping with sweat and she could keep going. Just keep going. Don't stop going.
Someone should have told Felipe that.
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Leonor De Matteo
Dancing off steam.
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