This is roughly what Professor Diamonds Fic500 requested a while ago but my own take on it. It shoes her inner thoughts as she goes about this experience. I am very happy with what I wrote, and I hope you guys enjoy it too.
No. Don't do it. Don't create a vulnerability for yourself. Hood up not off. Don't do it. Don't expose yourself. No not pink. Not black. Maybe dark blue. Purple. Perhaps. Who cares? It's a vulnerability, and the shoes are silly. It's all silly, and I hate it. It was a terrible silliness. Don't do it. You will look like a fool. You will look foolish. You are not a fool, you are a titan. A titan standing essentially in their underwear staring into the mirror. It isn't really underwear, it is a leotard. And the shoes, pale black... And the tights, skin colored. You are not a ballerina, so stop it. My tiptoes rise on their own. I am not stopping it. I am ashamed. I only saw her on TV the once before I bought this garbage. No one could have seen me do it. No one can see me now My leg lifts in a ballet position I have to look up later. I think I twirl. Then I step out of those clothes, the ones that aren't me but rather the girl I saw on the TV when Beast Boy was channel flipping. He's always channel flipping, and I never pay attention but my book had lulled at a boring part. And then I looked up, and when he had gotten distracted by a snack, the ballet played for a single moment. And it utterly captivated me.
Then I bought this garbage and dared to look up classes. And stupidly put my name down. Well, an alias. It was infuriating. I was angry at myself all the way into my first class where I knew only what I had read on the internet. I had read a lot, though. And watched far too many videos. So many that when I next checked the computer clock it was three hours after I had begun, and then I heard knocking on the door. It was Beast Boy, asking me to come to dinner, which any other boy would have stopped doing thirty minutes ago, when he began. And I was not quite certain why a boy so anxiously antsy as him would wait thirty minutes in the same spot doing the same thing.
"Dinner," he had said, but no one else had waited, and I would have skipped happily. But I did not, because one person waited. Maybe he is waiting for me as I attend the first and clearly the last class in my life. Maybe Beast Boy was waiting for me to come home. But he was probably channel flipping. I don't know why he does that. Maybe to deny something the way I tried until this moment to deny wanting to move as I breathe, full of grace and dignity and confidence, real confidence. Is it possible for someone to fake dignity and confidence? Or perhaps for someone to fake having to be moving constantly when that person is also able to stand for thirty minutes and just wait on someone they care about.
So I take that foolish ballet class. My first and last. For three weeks in a row. Every time I come home the others are talking about something but Beast Boy is flipping channels, and his head jerks up for a moment whenever I walk in. I am getting better at this. I am mad at myself for getting better at this. I am mad at myself for getting better, but also pleased when I look in the mirror. And I walk taller when I enter the class each time for the last time. When I enter and his head jerks up and I am home, my toes point upward even though I am by then not wearing the shoes for it.
I find I like looking in the mirror and feeling a different type of strong, and I like walking taller. And I like the way his head jerks up when I get home. Just a little. I don't suspect that he looks up because he's worrying. About me. We are teammates, and therefore must worry about each other, and Robin and Starfire and Cyborg. So of course he is worried about me when we are being superheroes, but not when I am being a ballerina. I almost hate the term. It is so foolish of me. And he wouldn't worry, wouldn't keep knocking, if I hadn't chosen this silly hobby because a girl I saw on TV looked like she had something brilliant in her life. I guess I did too. I just didn't know it yet.
Beast Boy could only do what one would expect to do actually with his half full brain. He spies. Had I been out twice a week to make sure that the tower hadn't run out of avocados I would only have been miffed rather than mortified by his attempts to play Bond. But when he caught me dressed in my jesters clothes pretending to be brilliant, pretending to be confident, well that was the last straw. I am not brilliant or confident, not always, not yet, when I see him, I am crying. I do not cry. But I do not dance ballet, either. And maybe I have been pretending to have dignity and perhaps pretending to be the sort of girl who doesn't cry, as he is pretending to be the kind of boy who doesn't stand still. But he does, and know he does, because he must hold me up for eternity. Not moving once. And I am not only the type of girl who dances ballet, but also the type who hugs back.