Cecily slept fitfully that day. The noise of the bustling opera was not conducive to much sleep. That evening, she begged Mme. Giry for a more private room. "Please, Madame, it is not that I mind the people, but I don't truly want my misery to have company, if you understand."
"I will see what I can do. For now, read. I see you read all the time. Now is a good time to employ that skill. Stay busy; it will help." Mme. Giry had gone without another word.
Cecily had grabbed a Russian book from inside the trunk. "I really should be learning something else," she muttered to herself. "One of the operatic languages." She paled when she realized she would soon have no use for operatic languages. The only language that would likely matter would be market French, so she could buy and sell. She sighed, setting the book in her lap. What was she going to do?
"Прощальный старый друг. Goodbye old friend." She knew that things would never be the same. She wasn't even sure who she was talking to. Perhaps she spoke the words to the walls of the Opera House. Such walls held secrets, deeper secrets than Cecily could discern.
She drifted into sleep again, the medicine for the pain, pushing her softly into a dreamless sleep.
Several hours later, Mme. Giry found Cecily busily scratching away in a blank book. "Cecily?"
Cecily looked up, apparently noticing the ballet instructor for the first time. "Mmm?"
"One of the staff rooms is available. M. Lefevre has given his permission for you to stay there for the time being. It is a bit out of the way, but I didn't think you'd mind. The quiet will be peaceful to you compared to the din in here."
"Thank you." She moved to stand, but Mme. Giry placed her hand heavily on Cecily's shoulder.
"You are not to rise." It was a command in the same voice she used to instruct her ballerinas. There was no room for negotiation. Cecily sat back down. "I will send Fabrizio in a few moments. He and Linnea asked about you."
"Sweet of them." Cecily watched as Mme. Giry left. She then swung her legs over the side of the bed, flinching when her knee moved awkwardly. She grabbed her prop cane and leaned heavily against it, lifting her weight off her bad knee. She was going mad sitting in the bed, and it had only been one day. She could not imagine weeks of such immobility.
She was hobbling down the back hallway toward the open room when she was scooped up. "What the…?"
"Mme. Giry said you are not to walk. I carry you, si?" Fabrizio had the concerned look he had worn earlier.
Cecily ceased her fighting and let him carry her. "Si," she grumbled. "You know what this is like, don't you?" Fabrizio gave her a questioning look. "I can see it in your eyes. Why do you, of all people, understand?"
Fabrizio nodded in comprehension. "You lose your moving. You do not know the future. Maybe bad, maybe good. You are scared."
"How do you know?"
"You hurt your knee; I danced too. Five years ago, I was hurt in my, eh, hip? I lay there, as you do now, and thought my life was over. I thought that everything would change for bad."
"What happened?"
"I never danced again. I returned home, where I began to sing. I sing and I sing, I always sing, until my voice is stronger than my hip ever was. My life change, si, but it is not a bad thing. I sing in opera, I come here, I meet you!"
"And Linnea," Cecily teased, chuckling at the crimson blush that crept up his cheeks. "Have you asked her yet?"
"No." There was fear in his voice.
Cecily felt for the young man. He was only four or five years younger than she was, the same age as Linnea, but it seemed like an eternity sometimes. "Fabrizio, you helped me by telling me what you know. Now listen here. It's terrifying to love someone, particularly one you're not sure loves you. But part of love is the risk. You have to be willing to take a risk for the happiness of the person you love. Is it possible that Linnea would be happy marrying you?"
"Si," he replied hesitantly.
"Than shouldn't you take the risk of making her happy, even if you are frightened?"
"If she wouldn't be? What then?"
Cecily pursed her lips in resignation. "Then you know for sure. Don't waste what you have for something you can never have. Don't live your life wishing you'd done something you didn't do. No regrets." She spoke the last words to herself.
Fabrizio did not reply, which was fortunate, because Cecily was lost in her own world. The entire time she had been in that dark little room with one slot for food and water in, empty dishes and waste out, that had been her mantra: No regrets. She had chanted it to herself for days on end, until they were the only words she remembered the sounds of. She could still form words, but they all sounded foreign to her. "No regrets" was her native tongue, and the impact of the alteration was irrevocable.
She had blocked out every opening of the door with silent screams of "No regrets!" Every entrance made her know it was a lie. There were always regrets, always choices unmade. The what-ifs haunted her mind for those five years. At the same time that Fabrizio was wondering what would happen to him after losing dance, Cecily was wondering what would happen to when she was finally free, now that she had lost herself.
Fabrizio laid her on the bed and must have said something in departure, but Cecily never noticed it. She had told Fabrizio to have no regrets, but that was a fantasy of youth. Regrets were unavoidable, as were memories. You could try all you wanted to run away to escape, to prevent, to hide, to protect from them, but you couldn't.
"No regrets," she muttered to herself.
As a child, Cecily had been alone. She was constantly surrounded, but so alone. Her father and her sister were her rays of light, but one had disappeared and the other was weaker than she was. She had not been born into that emptiness, but it had consumed her nonetheless. Time had taught her how to laugh in her loneliness and pain, how to find a path to tread in the worst darkness of soul. She had learned to stifle her dreams to protect herself from the rest of the wretched world. Everyone she should have been able to trust had abandoned her to the terrifying wilderness of her life. She had learned that she was unlovable, but the only thing she hadn't learned was how to be content with herself as a sole companion.
"No regrets."