Once upon a time, there was a man who died. This man was in the middle of writing a story that has since been finished, a story meant for tragedy that instead became a trifle of happiness. This displeased the man, but what could he, a mere ghost of himself now that the mechanism he had used to control the story was gone, do? He had nothing more to do with this tale, you see, and so wandered away, looking for another story he could manipulate and twist to his liking.

This, however, is not that story. This is the story of a young man, a knight of the pen, and a little duck who was so much more than that. The final tragedy of Drosselmeyer's original tale, the two now unneeded by the story as the prince and princess left for the place where they belonged. This is not a tragedy, not a tale of disaster or deceit.

This is simply the tale of two hearts, meant to be but separated by such a thin barrier of cowardice… but not for long…


The light of the approaching morning that seeped through the windows curtains, normally what woke the single bed's occupant, did little more than annoy him in his sleep on that warm September morning. Fakir grimaced without opening his eyes, mumbling incoherently as he rolled away from the light, careful even in sleep not to disturb the opposite side of his pillow where a certain little duck was sure to be resting.

Throughout the year that had passed since the Raven's defeat, Fakir had kept his promise to the little creature, never straying from her side for longer then was necessary. Ahiru, whether she was a girl or a duck, would never feel unneeded again.

The winter had been hard on her, fighting the instinct to migrate with the other ducks, but the little basket Fakir had procured for her to sleep in, in his room had kept her as comfortable as could be possible. It hadn't been long before he'd begun to wake up to her curled just inches from his face on his pillow, at first causing him to blush a deep red and go flying backwards off the bed in surprise.

Things had settled into a routine, however, and soon he was worried if she wasn't asleep on his pillow when he woke up. The little duck had snuck into his heart without him even noticing at first, and now there was little he could do about it. Day after day Fakir found himself regretting the words he'd said to her in the Depths of Despair, chiding himself for being so foolish. Let's go back to being our true selves, he'd said, and now regretted it bitterly. Her true self was a duck, and no matter what he did now, he couldn't seem to bring back the girl he'd fallen so completely for.

Multiple times he had tried and multiple times he had failed to write a story that would turn her back into a girl, back into the clumsy, noisy Ahiru that he missed. The words were never right, the situation never complete; something was always missing, something he could never place. Was it because the feeling was one sided? Fakir didn't know. He could be misreading her, after all, but the longing was evident whenever she looked back towards the ballet academy, at least. He wanted to help.

He just didn't know how.

"Fakir."

His name filtered through his mind slowly, but didn't wake him up. He was dreaming, he decided, otherwise how could…

"Fakir!" the voice was just a bit more urgent, someone poking him in the arm. The ex-knight groaned and rolled over again despite the flash of sunlight he was now facing, annoyed but still not fully awake. Something about the voice nagged at him, though…

"Fa-kir, wake up!" his eyes snapped open, suddenly placing the voice as he shot up, staring in disbelief at the owner of the voice. A very human, and very naked Ahiru grinned back, tackling him with a laugh and a cry of "You did it!"

"A-Ahiru!" shocked and embarrassed as he was Fakir couldn't keep himself from wrapping his arms around her, struggling to sit up again, "You're… how?"

"Fakir, your memory sucks," the duck-girl retorted with another brilliant grin, sitting back at his insistence, "You wrote me a story."

The writer froze, "But none of them ever worked-"

"Well obviously this one did." She held several papers out to him then, still smiling. He hesitated, watching her closely before taking them, still hardly daring to believe that he really had brought her back, that he had done it after a year of failure.

The story wasn't one he remembered writing, and definitely didn't sound like him. One line in particular made him blush, startled. And the duck who had once been a girl had a new role to play, one that would anchor her within the realm of humans till the day she left this world. Her place was with the knight, healing the broken shards of his heart…

"Ahiru, I didn't write this-" Fakir's words cut off with a gasp, finding himself suddenly alone and surrounded by darkness. The papers vanished, and then the bed below him followed suit, leaving him to fall deep into despair with a scream of "AHIRU!"

XXXXXXXX

Fakir bolted up in bed with the scream dying on his lips, a startled 'QUACK!' followed by a thump snapping him from his dazed state. Reaching down, the dark haired boy gently scooped up the fuming duck, staring at her in both relief and disappointment.

It had all been a dream; the darkness, Ahiru's human form, the story…

He froze again, still staring down at the little duck as he processed that though. The story. The one the dream-Ahiru had said he had written, the one that had worked. He could remember it, recall it word for word, especially that one teasing little line.

The stories are missing something, he'd been thinking, stuck on what to do. Something's keeping them from working.

And now he knew what it was. Every time he'd written about her, there had been no reason for Ahiru to become a girl again, no role for her to fulfill. The solution had been presented by his dream.

Ahiru quacked several times and stared up at him worriedly as he placed her back on the bed and stumbled to his writing desk, sitting down and immediately picking up his quill. Confused, she flapped her way over and settled on the corner of the desk, giving a questioning 'qua-quack?'.

Fakir paused only long enough to reach over and rub her head before returning to his writing, expression serious and determined. "I know what to do now," he said, "I know how to fix this."

Once upon a time, there was a duck who was human at heart, and a knight of the pen, who lived together in a little cottage by the lake of Kinkan town. Neither was happy, for the duck had been forced to give up her humanity in order to save the prince of the story, and return him to his world. But now the knight had an idea, and a plan to turn the girl back that he was sure would work, for he had a role for her to play now. And with that thought in mind he began to write, ignoring all else until her story was finished, sparing no detail, for he couldn't wait to see if the result would be as he wished it to be…

Knocking startled the writer, her pen dropping against the paper before her as the door was opened to reveal a worried looking older woman.

"It's past two am, you realize," she drawled, sighing at the pile of paper sitting on the desk, "Another story, Cass?"

"Sorry," the girl named Cass yawned, straightening her papers and tucking the pen away for the night, "I'll go to bed now. I just wanted to get a start on this ending."

The older raised an eyebrow, but knew better then to ask, "Alright, don't tire yourself out over this one, though. Go to bed."

"I will," she promised, only tidying up her work desk once the other was gone. A glance at the last words she had written made her smile just a bit, the girl rolling her neck as she abandoned it for the night and headed to bed.

"I will finish the story Drosselmeyer started and give those two a real ending." She swore to herself before turning out the lights and plunging the room into complete darkness.

Hello all, I hope you enjoyed my meager offering to the wonderful series Princess Tutu. This is the first I've ever written for the series, as well as the first time I've written a canon pairing for anything, really, so I hope I managed alright and that I kept the characters... well, in character.

I don't plan for this to be a very long story, nor one that is connected in the way most are. If anything, it'll be more like a series of connected drabbles that have varying lengths of time in between them and such. Either way, I hope you enjoyed.

Amariahellcat