I noticed part of the chapter had duplicated, so I just fixed it and reposted the chapter. Sorry for the mess up!

MARK POV

"Tom, how do I apologize?"

"I'm sorry usually works."

"She won't speak to me, she won't look at me, she locks herself in her room, and I never see her eat anything. I spoke out of anger and now I've hurt her." I had been beating myself up ever since the saw the hurt in Anna's eyes. "It was a serious shock."

"Sorry won't do it then I guess."

"Nope. But it can't hurt to try." I heard music start to play in Anna's dance room. "Speaking of which, there's no time like the present. I'll call you later."

"Alright Mark. Good luck. Love ya little bro."

"Love you too old man." I ended the call and walked over to the room. The door was open slightly, and I peeked in to see Anna, tied into pale pink ballet shoes, twirling on the tips of her toes. She used the kicking of her opposing leg to propel her spinning. I gentle knocked on the door, and she dropped one foot and flattened the other one onto the ground. She turned her head, and I got my first full look of her since we argued.

Her eyes had dark circles around them and her clothes hung off her. She had lost sleep, and my assumption of her not eating was right. Damn it.

"Can we talk?" She nodded slightly. I stepped in carefully, and ran my hand through my hair. "First thing, I wanted to apologize for my words on that night. I had no right to call you…that." She simply stared before sitting down and unwrapping her shoes. "I was upset and angry over the idea that you were so exposed to men, and had to expose yourself like that just to pay for food, and I didn't like the idea of strange men touching you, so I lashed out. I apologize sincerely." She didn't say anything, and just kept undoing the ribbons around her ankle. "I'll leave you now." I turned and opened the door.

"Why do you care about other men touching me?" Her voice was soft, and a little rough. Had she not been drinking water either? She had taken the shoe off, and her foot was wrapped in a white cloth. I rubbed the back of my head bashfully.

"Well, this is kinda embarrassing." Her eyebrow rose, and the unwound the white cloth, revealing a sort of cover over her toes. "I would be lying if I said I wasn't attracted to you." She took off the cover, just to reveal silicone spacers between her toes, which were then also removed. "Why are there so many layers to your shoe?" She chuckled, then stood flat, one foot exposed, the other still in the shoe.

"Base position." She then rolled off the balls of her feet and stood on the tip of her toes. "En Pointe. There are so many layers to protect the toes and foot to avoid having significant damage when resting the entire weight of your body on the tips of your toes. Shattered bones in the toe is often seen when ballerinas fail to protect their toes." She sat back down and started took off the other shoe. "You're attracted to me?" I nodded, and her face flushed bright pink. There was a slightly awkward silence, the music filling it only stifling the silence slightly. "I'm sorry for slapping you."

"Don't be. I deserved it after calling you…That."

"A whore?" I cringed. "Don't freak, I've been called it before. More times than I'd like to count, and not due to the pole dancing."

"What?" I slid down and sat next to her on the floor.

"My way of dancing ballet is much more sensual and seems quite sexual in comparison to most dancers, who prefer the innocent, prim and proper way of dancing. Don't get me wrong, I can dance like that, but it becomes boring very quickly, and throwing my own flair into the dance makes it more fun and satisfying to dance." She sighed. "However, to those prim and proper ballerinas, the ones who have had daddy's silver spoon in their bloody mouths since the day they were born, the dance style of a full ride scholarship student is crude and uncultured, and a bloody abomination to their way of life. I was thus dubbed a whore by many of those girls, only because I had penetrated their bubble of life and showed them that ballet was not only for the upper class, that it was not all prim and proper and actually had life to it."

Now I just felt like complete shit. I had called her something that essentially singled her out when all she wanted to do was to dance for a living. A sniffle came from beside me and I saw Anna try to discretely wipe her eyes. I wrapped and arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, letting her sniffle and cry on me.

"Maybe one day you can teach me how to dance like you do." Her eyes shot up to meet mine.

"I may just hold you to that."

I opened the door to the apartment, a few bags of groceries in my hand when I saw Anna lying on the couch, curled into a ball.

"Hey, I thought you had practice today." I put the groceries down on the counter and started putting stuff that needed to be refrigerated or frozen away.

"Cancelled for the week." The small hiss of pain after she said this made me raise an eyebrow.

"Everything ok?" I walked over to her and saw how tense she was in her curled position.

"Yea, the week long cancel is a normal thing. Every month, we take a week off. All the girls take a week off." A small light went off.

"Period cramps?" She nodded.

"Ding ding ding!" I stood there silently for a moment before throwing a wet cloth into the microwave for 30 seconds, then slid it into a ziploc bag. Catt often had cramps when we were dating, this helped her a lot.

"Here, lie flat on your back." She did so, hissing in pain as another cramp started. I laid the hot cloth on her lower stomach and laid my hand over it, holding it in place. She closed her eyes, made a contented noise and placed her hand on mine, enjoying the simple relief that the heat provided. I smiled at the contact, knowing it was the first time she had initiated contact with me since I found out about her job.

"How do you know how to do that?" She opened her eyes slightly to look at me.

"One of my ex-girlfriends had really bad cramps around the time of her period. This often helped." I pulled my hand away, but she caught it and made me look back at her.

"Thank you." I smiled.

"It's no problem."

ANNA POV

"So who the heck is Darkiplier?" I asked Mark one day when we were lounging around in the living room.

"He's apparently an alter ego of mine when I'm acting dark or creepy." I made a small noise letting him know I understood, and popped up with a wicked smile.

"Want to entertain your fans and make him real?" His eyes connected with mine and a similar wicked grin made its way across his face. We sat there smiling for 5 seconds before both scrambling to grab jackets and keys to go grab stuff to do this. I slid into my Camaro, Mark sliding into the passenger seat.

Thirty seconds later, we were speeding out onto the roads to the nearest mall.

I was a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Mark clung to the middle console and the door, trying to stabilize himself in the car. He look of fear made me giggle slightly.

"Hang on, we'll be there in a few minutes."

"It's a half hour drive!"

I laughed again. "I know!"

As we drove into the mall's parking lot, Mark fell out of the door as soon as we were parked. "LAND! SOLID LAND!"

I slid out of my door and closed it. "Don't be such a drama king."

Mark's head leaned back as I did the blonde streak in his hair. "So you do ballet. What part do you play in the…dances?" I chuckled at his attempt to figure out my complicated world of dancing.

"The parts we are given are based on what rank we have in the 'hierarchy', for lack of a better term. There are the apprentices, younger girls who are just beginning in the ballet world, the corps de ballet, better known as the background dancers, the second soloist, the first soloist, and the principal dancer."

"Aaaand, what are you?"

"Second soloist, soon to become first. The girl is moving to Washington to take up an offer to teach ballet there, so I'm taking her place within a month. They have us alternating roles to get me used to it."

"What kind of training do you guys do? I'm assuming all that dancing doesn't come naturally." He grinned cheekily at me.

"Nope, it certainly doesn't." I wrapped the streak in his hair in foil to help the dye set. "Ok, now we wait 45 minutes, then you go wash that out." I started putting the dying kit away. "Our training pretty much consists of stretching as soon as we come into the studio around 9 in the morning. We do exercises, workouts, until about 10:30." I paused to put the dye away, and mark and I walked over ot relax on the couch. "Then there's class, we go through the various stances, motions. We practice what we would do in the performance, arm movements, leg movements, positionings. Then we go onto practice dances. These help us build up our endurance and helps us last throughout an entire performance. Then we have one on one coaching. The corps get an hour or two of individual coaching, sometimes the principals will have full days of one on one time. Then there's physio, making sure we haven't injured ourselves, then lunch, and then we get an afternoon break around 4:30, 5ish. I'll typically use that time to sew a few pairs of point shoes."

"A few?" His face was shocked. "How many do you go through a performance?" I smiled.

"When I was in the corps, I would have a pair last 2 or three performances. As a principal, you can go through a pair per act. I started numbering my shoes when I was first hired by the company, I am now on pair 155."

"Do you pay for those?" I shook my head.

"The company gives us an allowance for shoes based on our positioning. I get roughly $300 a year to cover my shoe expenses." He whistled a long, low note. "Typically, that's where our day would end, but if we have a performance, we then go back to class after having hair and makeup done to help get into the right mindset for the performance. Then we get dressed, laced into our dresses, we have the 5 minute call to get ready and get into positions for going out onto the stage, dust our feet with talcum powder to avoid blisters, occasionally we'll dust the base of the shoes too to help us glide across the stage."

"The satin doesn't do that well enough?" I shook my head.

"Not all of our shoes are satin. I have a pair made of denim for a ballet version of Grease we did for charity the year I was hired. Some are made of leather, some are cotton, it all depends on what we are performing. But anyways, after the performance is the ice bucket afterwards."

"Ice bucket?" I nodded.

"We stick our bare feet in plastic bags and put them in ice water to help release the stress from the shoes and the dancing. After that, we take off out makeup and go home around...10? Depends on the day." I shrugged, and glanced at the time. "Ok Blondiplier, go rise that out the dye before you get a bald patch."