Flightless Bird || l.s. ✔︎

ACT IV: CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

A/N: Sorry for the delay! I just got back from my trip and I wanted to re-read this a few more times before posting.

Weeks passed. We inched closer and closer to opening night, and the gala that preceded it, until we were mere days away.

We hadn't heard back from the investigative reporters.

I was working miracles to keep Harry and Beauchamp apart in the studio. I made sure he was only scheduled to rehearse with the master tutor, Joni. Kenneth would have had my head if he weren't so stressed over administrative details. Things had completely fallen apart without Liam's steady hand to guide the company.

Beauchamp had his hands full with Gigi, who he criticized and mocked relentlessly. While critiquing her solo in Act Two, he told her she was too fat to execute the grand adage properly. Gigi wasn't a schoolgirl anymore. She fought back. Their screaming matches reverberated throughout the whole opera house and were sure to become legendary.

Two days before the gala, Harry received an email from one of the reporters that said she had witness testimony that corroborated his story about Kiev. He wondered who the witness was and what they said. We found out the witness was Harry! Fifteen-year-old Harry. And what he said was simply his own name. The reporters went to Kiev to interview the staff at Beauchamp's old apartment and the curmudgeonly landlord said that the furniture that came with the unit had been vandalized during Beauchamp's stay. Someone had carved their name into an antique desk. It was Harry's name. RBS had paid for a separate apartment for Harry in Kiev, as was the school's policy. This desk placed Harry exactly where he said he was and where he shouldn't have been. In Beauchamp's quarters. This act of impropriety may not have been enough to indict Beauchamp in court but it was enough for the paper to vet the story and avoid a defamation lawsuit.

Boris and Vladimir had signed their own warrants. Each had been embroiled in sex scandals with minors before and after the incident with Harry. The Kiev ballet swept these indiscretions under the rug. But Harry's name was too big, the story too scandalous to be ignored. Their names in connection with the piece would ruin them.

Mags had to get creative with the Zhuk cousins. There was nothing tying them to the incident with Harry. One of her Ukrainian subsidiaries had been investigating them for insider trading and fixing the market with a competitor in Russia. What would have been a footnote buried in the business sections of UK and American papers was now headline news. Harry and I watched gleefully as stocks for their mining company plummeted.

Harry's story would be on the front page of the arts section in Mags' newspapers all over the world. The reporters told him that they would be running the story soon but they didn't say when.

If Harry was nervous he didn't show it. I was nervous for him. I cried when he gave his interview to the reporters.

Harry didn't have any more tears left for Beauchamp.

I couldn't believe someone so private would go public with such a personal story, but my discovery about Harry's past had a snowball effect. Once I found out and believed him, he had the courage to go to Mags, then to the reporters, now the world.

On the day of the gala we woke up early in Harry's bed. It took me a moment to remember where I was before I felt the satin bedspread and saw Harry beside me on a mountain of pillows.

We had been living between our two flats, which was as wonderful as it was inconvenient. We could never find any of our stuff because we'd forget which things we brought where. I was convinced I'd forgotten something but I couldn't figure out what.