This is my first attempt at a real crossover. If you don't at least have a good idea of what both The Cat Returns and Princess Tutu is about, this story will probably just confuse you. You have been warned.

Chapter One: Hope

There was an old man, all alone in his mechanical fortress. Save for a green-haired puppet child, but there were days when he regretted even that small comfort. He scowled angrily at the people through his mirrors, as they continued obliviously with their happy little existence. His only comfort was the sadness of the little duck and her knightly lover, and that of the prince's bride, the girl who still carried traces of raven's blood in her veins.

It was all just so unfair. After all these years of waiting for his chance to finish the story as tragically as possible, and yet there was hardly a sad face left in the village. His village.

Once again, he resumed pacing his extensive fortress, muttering angrily under his breath. "Traitorous boy," he snarled, glaring at the knight that had inherited his power. "It was my story, not yours! If you wanted something happier, you should have gone and written something for yourself!"

The boy couldn't hear him, though. Ever since the knight broke the machine the old man had built to continue writing his story, he could not contact anyone within the village's boundaries without being called on first. He was as helpless as… as…

Well, a duck.

"Are you mad, zura?" the puppet asked while beating her little drum lightly.

He sighed angrily as he moved into the tiny study that he had tucked away into a corner of his fortress. "Of course I am, Uzura!" he barked at the puppet, kicking life-sized mannequins out of the way so that he could collapse across a tacky orange couch. "Now what?" he muttered as he stared at the shelves of books.

The living doll shrugged, sat herself next to him, and continued playing with her drum.

The old man sighed, taking her toy away and chucking it over one shoulder. "Will you stop with that thing, Uzura?! I've been listening to it for nearly five years!"

She pouted a little and took out a bit of string to start making a cat's cradle with.

Drosselmeyer stared at the red thread between the girl's hands for a second, as his mind shuddered violently. Without warning, his eye trailed to one high dusty corner, one that rarely saw any light. The large golden orbs widened and he hurriedly hopped to his feet so that he could push the ladder into the corner, and climb up it. Once he had reached his destination, his large gloved hand shot out, and grabbed an old book with decades of dust on the faded leather cover. He blew on it to send a cloud of dust flying through the air. Then he took the end of his long red cape to rub vigorously at the golden letters of the title.

"Watcha doin, zura?" Uzura asked him curiously, but her question remained unanswered; he couldn't be bothered with her right now.

Sighing happily, the old man slid down the ladder, and propped himself into the orange couch again. He opened the book, and began reading. Shrugging, the puppet hopped onto his lap to silently read the story as well.

Before half of the story was read, she sighed in a depressed manner. "This is a sad story, zura."

"Exactly!" the man answered happily, letting his first piece return to him in its full glory.

Now this was a good tragedy! Those critics couldn't have possibly known what they were talking about. Now, more than ever, he regretted replacing this story with 'The Prince and the Raven'.

He sighed again, once he had finished reading the first story he had ever written. "I wonder whatever happened to her," he whispered to himself, holding the book to his chest.

Suddenly, his heart rate began to increase, a brilliant idea beginning to blossom in his mind. Praying that it wasn't too late, he ran back to the main part of his mechanical fortress and forced the looking glass to focus on a place that was far from Kinkan village.

His smile became almost grotesque at what he saw.

A young woman was sitting by her mother's deathbed, in a cold and sterile hospital.

"Promise… promise me you'll do it," the skeletal woman gasped, one bony hand clinging to her daughter's slim one.

The beautiful brunette's eyes were pained, as she leaned over the woman and kissed her brow. "I promise," she whispered with a hoarse voice. "I will finish what my… father started."

The older woman sighed in gratitude, leaned her head bad against the pillow, and died. Her daughter began shaking uncontrollably and gently laid her head over her mother's abdomen to start crying, a terrible choking sob that could melt the hardest of hearts.

"Wonderful, just wonderful," Drosselmeyer gloated before adjusting his mirror so that he could get a brief summary of everything that had happened to her since the last time he had seen the girl child. What he saw was more than enough to brighten his morbid mood.

"She went and did it?!" he guffawed, falling out of his rocking chair in order to laugh uproariously. "She really did fall in love with a cat?! An immortal one, on top of that?! Oh, this is so delicious! Thank you, my dear," he said gloatingly to the sobbing brunette, although she couldn't hear him. "I knew I could count on you to give me a good tragedy! Well, don't you fret, my pretty. This time, there are no critics to make me forget about you. Come, Uzura!" he commanded, jumping out of his seat.

Hurriedly, he returned to his study, and fetched out the spare paper and ink that he always kept for an emergency so that he could slam them on his table and pull up a chair. With inspiration he hadn't felt since he was alive, he began writing.

It wouldn't be able to do as much as if he were alive, but it would give his first story the nudge it needed to become real once more.

"What are you going to do, zura?" the puppet asked curiously.

"Isn't it obvious?! I'm going to make sure that her story ends the way it should. You were always my favorite, precious," he whispered to the girl in the mirror as his quill danced across the inky parchment into spidery scrawls. "I know you'll give me the tragedy that I deserve."

ooOoo

Once upon a time, there was a little princess. From her earliest memories, she was the apple of her mother's eye, but her father treated her like a stranger, often forgetting her real name when he remembered that she existed. The little princess did everything she could to win his affection, but alas, he was never moved by her extensive efforts.

Finally, in desperation, the princess begged her father to tell her what she could do to make him love her. The king thought carefully on this, for although he did not care about the girl, his soul was too sincere to tell her what he did not, could not feel. In hopes that she would give up and leave him in peace, he told his young daughter, that if she became the greatest ballet dancer the world has ever seen, he would love her.

The princess wasted no time doubling her efforts in dance, and soon excelled above those who were in her age group. She practiced to the point of exhaustion every day and often had injuries from going too far, which worried her mother terribly. The queen begged her husband to tell their daughter, just once, that he was proud of her, that he loved her, but he couldn't speak what he did not feel, even for his beloved wife, whose heart slowly turned cold against him for his treatment of the princess.

The girl kept dancing through the years, and won much honor and fame for her unusual technique. But still her father kept silent, knowing that it would never be enough to awaken love for his only child.

But then, one day when the young princess was sixteen years old, her father was out traveling, trying to recover a family treasure that was stolen while his daughter was just a baby. His enemy delighted in seeing him alone, and ordered his minions to slaughter the king while he was alone in their clutches.

The father fought bravely, but in the end, he fell under their swords.

His daughter was devastated by his death, and for the love that she now knew would never come. In sorrow, she took her ballet shoes, her medals, and all her possessions that were related to dancing, and put them in boxes, far from her eyes. Although she loved ballet with all her heart, she swore that day that she would never dance again. For it reminded her too much of what would forever be denied to her.

For one whole year, she kept her word. She lost her natural grace, what little there was of her confidence, until she was but a shadow of the person she once was, and no one would have ever believed her to have once been a great dancer.

On the anniversary of her father's death, she was asked to break her vow, by one who didn't know of her terrible pain, pain she could not even talk about to her beloved mother. The princess tried to say no at first, but in the year to come, she would be grateful that she had consented to dance once again.

For in time, it would open a door to what she believed would be happiness at last.

ooOoo

The song had returned. There was a mournful quality to that voice, a pure soprano that could make stones weep.

The unseen singer let her voice sweep over all who could hear her, singing of love and sunshine, summer nights and glittering lakes; all sorts of things that could lift one's spirit, even as she sounded as though she wished to cry.

Suddenly, the song stopped. A terrible silence fell over the darkness, which was soon replaced by a blood-chilling scream from the singer.

"NO! No please, don't take them away from me! Stay back! HELP! Someone, anyone, please!"

Her scream pierced the darkness again, lasting for several minutes. She begged for mercy repeatedly, but it was obviously not given.

The worst part was when she began weeping, like everything good in her life had been stripped away, leaving her alone to the darkness.

The young woman having the nightmare was weeping herself, as she struggled to return to consciousness. Her blood red eyes opened slowly, and she laid the back of one hand against her sweaty forehead. She shook her head slightly, and sat up in the large canopied bed that she shared with her husband.

"Why?" she whispered softly to herself, tears still falling down her pale cheeks. "Why do I keep having that dream?"

This was the third night in a row that she had woken up crying over the nightmare.

The young man at her side murmured softly in his sleep, like he was having a nightmare of his own.

The raven-haired beauty smiled loving at him, and ran one gentle hand over his face and snow-white hair that fell over his head and across the pillow like swan feathers. The man smiled in his sleep, and sighed happily as he returned to slumber completely.

Once her husband was fully asleep again, the woman slowly got out of bed so that she wouldn't wake him up, and pulled a soft yellow robe over her nightdress so that she could walk to the balcony just out a giant glass-paned door.

She walked out onto it, and inhaled the fresh morning air lingeringly. As she often did while standing on this balcony, the red-eyed woman cast her eyes to the academy in the distance, barely visible through the forest that stood between the school she had attended years before and the newly constructed castle she now shared with her prince.

There were days when she was still terrified to wake up, to find out that he had chosen Tutu after all, and that she was still Kraehe, daughter and champion of the Monster Raven.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. No, those days were over, five years in the past. She had won her prince, her abusive 'father' was dead, and Tutu… Ahiru, really…

The dark-haired princess had to admit to herself, she had always loved the girl who was once her rival, and been privately injured when they had competed for the prince's affections. She had never had a real friend before meeting the excitable redhead, and if truth were to be told, she still had some problems with letting people other than her husband, his knight, and her first friend too close to her heart.

A few more tears fell down her face, but they were not from the dream. As the young woman rubbed the tears away with one sleeve of her robe, she heard a fluttering of wings, and a soft landing on the balcony she was leaning against.

She looked up, seeing a yellow duck panting right in front of her, short little wings hanging useless at her sides, since she had just flown from the lake below her balcony. The red-eyed woman beamed sadly at the bird, and carefully picked her up to share a gentle hug. "I was just thinking about you, Ahiru. Did you have the dream again, too?"

The little duck quacked sadly, nodding her head as tears filled her large sapphire eyes.

"Who do you think the singer is, Ahiru?" the black-haired woman asked thoughtfully, holding the duck with one hand so that she could hold her chin with the other. "Whoever it is, I wish I could help her. I don't know about you, but I can't take much more of her weeping every night."

The yellow bird quacked again, agreeing with her human companion.

The princess sighed, and held her friend close as she turned back to the room she shared with her husband. "Let's have an early breakfast, just you and me, okay?"

Ahiru nodded, but the tall princess knew that she was still troubled by something she couldn't say, thanks to her 'fowl' form.

Without warning, there was a violent banging on the door, one that the raven-haired beauty knew well.

"Mytho! Rue!" the knight called out, his tone strangely ecstatic, since he rarely lost his composure. "Can I come in?! It's important: good news!"

Her husband recognized the voice too, as he sat up in bed with a soft sulk on his face. He glanced once with golden eyes at his wife to be sure that she was decent, and smiled at the bird in her arms before calling out to the impatient knight. "Come in, Fakir, and it had better be good."

A tall youth with long spiky black hair, tied back into a low ponytail, threw open the door, a large piece of paper rolled up in his hand like a royal proclamation. His dark green eyes looked happier than Rue had seen them in years.

The small yellow duck in the princess's arms quacked happily, and flew out of them in order to make a beeline for the handsome young knight.

He smiled warmly at the little bird, and held out one hand to catch her and hold her against his chest in a caressing manner. "Just trust me, Mytho; this is the best news we've had since you defeated The Raven," the knight said with a large grin, using the name he had personally given the prince when he was still the royal's keeper.

"That's wonderful, but are we actually going to find out what this great news is?" the raven-haired princess teased him as she sat down next to her husband, and touched his hand.

"Take a good look at this," Fakir gloated, setting Ahiru on his shoulder so that he could unroll the long piece of paper in his hand, and hold it open for the royal couple to view.

Rue stared in amazement as Mytho's hand flinched noticeably underneath hers. She stood up from the bed in order to touch the poster. "Who is this girl?" she asked, taking the picture from him to study the young woman a little better. "She looks familiar."

The girl depicted in the poster was skinny, almost dangerously so, but her face was friendly, although slightly nervous, like she didn't like having her picture taken. She had huge brown eyes that seemed prone to daydream, with hair just a shade darker, and swept away from her face in a high ponytail. She was in a schoolgirl's uniform, but it was not a style Rue had ever seen before.

"Well, I hope she looks familiar. That, my friend, is none other than the daughter of Yoshioka Hasho," Fakir said with tears in his voice.

The black-haired woman gasped, almost dropping the poster in her shock. "But… I thought… his family was dead," she stammered.

"He apparently didn't talk about her a lot, at least while in the village," the knight said with a shrug. "The funny part about all this is that Charon says that I used to play with her as a toddler before her family moved away from the village. Her name's Haru, by the way."

"Haru," the princess whispered, holding the poster against her like a long-lost treasure. "It suits her."

The white-haired prince, however, looked less than thrilled. "Are you sure that's the right girl, Fakir?" he asked in a steady voice, although his heart was less than so.

"Oh yes, and even if she wasn't, I would get down on my knees and beg for your help in bringing her back to Kinkan Town."

Rue looked up at him sharply. "Why? Why would you want her to return, if not for my sake?" she asked almost defensively.

Fakir grinned again, and pointed to the duck on his shoulder, making her quack in confusion. "I didn't tell you the best part yet. About a year ago, she saved a cat prince's life, and was changed into a feline after a messenger mistakenly told the Cat King that she wanted to marry his son. Not only did she fight her way out of the marriage against impossible odds, but she found a way to become a human again. Neko-sensei's been sharing her story with the students for some time now, and it was pure chance that I overheard two of them while in the market yesterday. I'd have come sooner, but I had to break into the school to get the picture."

Mytho's breath came in sharply as he stood up from the bed. "Are you sure she changed from and to a human?!"

"Neko-sensei didn't have any pictures of her as a cat, but he was apparently very firm about the fact that she had changed species twice during her interactions with the Cat Kingdom," Fakir said firmly, smiling at the duck on his shoulder, who had become very silent, her sky blue eyes wide with shock, and just a spark of hope.

Rue's smile returned with a vengeance. "Then, she might know how to help Ahiru!"

"I don't know about you, but I know I want to find out." The knight bowed low before the prince, with tears in his eyes. "Please, Mytho. Grant me permission to invite her to come back. I'll need your help to execute my plan."

"Wouldn't it be easier to send a royal invitation?" he asked in confusion.

"What, no!" Rue said with shock. "If she really got into a scrape like that with a cat prince, I doubt she'll want anything to do with you¸ at least at first."

"I agree with her," Fakir said quickly, still kneeling in front of Mytho. "Please. I already know how to bring her here without a hitch. There's so much good that can happen, if she returns to Kinkan Town."

The golden-eyed royal looked reluctantly at the poster in his beloved wife's arms, and sighed in defeat. 'Then why do I have such a bad feeling about this Haru?' "Do it. Bring her here, no matter what it takes."

The knight smiled brightly, an expression that still sometimes felt odd on him, and rose to his feet. "You wouldn't happen to have paper and ink on hand, would you?"