ink, a princess tutu fanfic

disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu - I doubt I could aspire to such perfection.
notes: A Fakir-centric piece that takes place post-anime. Speculates on the power of a storyteller. It's, um, rather abstract.

ink

Once upon a time, there was a boy.

He studies the scraps of books Drosselmeyer left behind him at his death, poring over old pages fragmented and charred by fires no human hand ever set until the backs of his eyes burn.

At times he despairs: Drosselmeyer has misled him about so many other things. Why would he not lie about this one? It would have been so simple to curse his descendent with a piece of hope; to leave him there, looking forever in that shining sliver for some reflection of a dream.

At times he thinks: I am mad and dying and no words I make will ever come true.

He writes and writes. The best of them he reads over after three months before sending them to publishers. Belief creates gods, but Fakir is not looking for power; for the transformation that has already formed before, entertainment might do. Out of the amusement of the madding crowd, he might gather enough scattered strength to craft a girl out of feathers.

So he writes sensational tales about gods warring against gods, princes flinging off their destinies and riding off in search of happiness. Reckless tales. Impossible tales. They are all returned with a polite note expressing the slapdash sadness of the editor at being forced to refuse this, and the constant invitation to submit again his next work.

Something more sincere, the editor says. Or more commercial.

Receiving the latest letter, he feels himself growing grim. He does not stop in the room where Ahiru dwells as he always does, but goes to his study and shuts the door. The shelves are lined with books now, where once they stood furtive and empty, but still he knows no more than the boy he was when Drosselmeyer's power was at its height.

Sincerity, the editor said. (He sits and dips the pen in the inkwell, hand sliding down as if to mark the span of the page.)

Sincerity is this: once upon a time, there was a boy.

(He begins to write.)

Night pours in through the windows. Only when he slumps back against the chair does he realise that he has been writing without light. The paper, too, has not been changed since the beginning. But the page has not come to an end; the ink has not dried from his unlifted pen.

He throws the quill down, fumbles for a match, and strikes. The quavering flame throws the shadow of his hand across the ink: pages and pages unfurl across the desk like feathers. Stories clamor in his mind, sinking deep into his bones.

Something like a voice speaks out of the stars, filled with stars, with everything that he has looked for. If he is to write now, it tells him, he can have Ahiru back, a girl still to the marrows of her bones. Ahiru better, even; the lanky klutz who invaded the Academy is hardly a fit love for--

He stops himself, staring down at the paper, thinking love? and fit? But the power runs on, demanding form, fulfillment, freedom. How dare he retreat from it when it could offer him everything he should ever ask for? How dare he crave a wish and refuse the possibility of its reality? This will make him--

--a puppet.

He remembers Drosselmeyer: the mad-eyed man festooned with bright colors and cryptic words. For the first time he begins to wonder whether it had all originated from the depths of the old man's mind.

His elbow jars the inkwell from the table; it shatters against the floor. WIth a sleepy noise, Ahiru peers in through the door. He backs from the mess of glass and ink spreading across the floor.

"Nothing," he says. When she makes a severe qua, he whirls. "It's nothing!"

Her voice is soft and sad as she retreats. He does not call her back, only grits his teeth and shuts his eyes tight, seeing flickers of unwieldy flame glittering behind his eyelids.

Knowing him now, it drives into his life in swarms and impossible masses. The fragrance of roses lashing through the night like perfumed lightning. A touch of feathers and silk winding across his nape in the market. Tasting lemons and ashes intermingling with simple potato soup.

He cannot sleep but that it speaks to him in pieces of sensation and desires. It will give him everything he wants, and in return he needs only to want better things. A princess, not a duck; to rule over more than their small cottage near the woods and lake; to turn away from everything but the weighty knowledge of power chasing sanity from his blood, power altering the world to a yielding, malleable place.

He can build cities of ink, wings out of the bones of words, barricades from an alphabet of thorns. He can turn the heads of crowds with a single gesture to wring words out of ink. With ink he can break a heart, can poison slowly the eyes of a reader until they stagger to weep. He can tear the stars from the sky with a word. He can transmute a pas-de-deux into something comical. Every slight, every misery that the universe has ever inflicted on him, can be scarred over with ink.

The power tangles over him, whispering, promising.

It is perhaps inherent curiosity that makes him try.

He writes again, trembling; in the dark ink seeps into the pages like blood. Once upon a time, he writes, there was a girl who was a duck.

Dawn threads a touch through the sky. It gilds the edge of his eyes, but he cannot see anything save the paper, the moment in which he writes and they lived happily ever after before dashing from the room to look for Ahiru.

She is still half-asleep when he arrives, all short duck curves in the covers underneath her blanket. Her bony arms are still feathered, still wings; her fluttering movements in sleep are still the sad blank ones of someone searching for a lost memory.

He closes his eyes, realising only then that his hands have been clenching as if looking for a sword. There is no sword that can divide this world into regions of black and white; no sword can govern him now.

He wakes at dawn one day. Leaving Ahiru in the house, he takes the winding path that leads him to the bare shore of the lake, arms curved against the weight of the volumes and patches of text that Drosselmeyer has left in his wake.

When he returns to Ahiru, who is staring wide and anxious out the window - and who descends upon him with a frantic quack! as he opens the door - he walks as if a great weight has been taken from his shoulders. His clothes do not smell of cinders, but there are faint black curves underneath his fingernails.

He only publishes a few books after all. It is not everything that he writes: some pieces he keeps imprisoned in drawers of the desks at his house, trapped between the pages of dusty old volumes. The rest he burns.

When the books hit the shelves, when the publisher starts to clamor for more of his work, he thinks of the brooding power still charring his veins with desire and turns away.

There are things that he cannot even think to want.

Later, when he is older and enjoying still his modest success, he peers rheumily over his glasses at his bibliography: a collection of fairy tales, a few idle novels here and there, and a book on duck care. Sometimes he can hear Drosselmeyer shouting contempt in his ear, rage that all of his talent should have been poured into a vessel and broken, that he should throw himself into writing books on caring for animals as if they were of any worth.

I created the ultimate tragedy, the ghost of that ghost bleats, and what do you shape after me? Eh?

Sometimes the power visits again; they use each other as they please, as opponents who recognise one another's worth and cannot hesitate in being ruthless. But it is easier to resist it now; he has few things to want.

(She touches his shoulder. He closes his eyes and smiles.)

Even so, a small thing is perhaps the only good reason to be immortal. What use, after all, has the world for an immortal dynasty?

Whereas books on proper duck care are truly rare.

And there was never an end.

feedback: is welcome - crit particularly!