Disclaimer: I don't own Princess Tutu.
Dedication: To Katie. Thanks for being a friend.
Author's Note: This is a Christmas fic I forgot to upload. Ah well, merry belated Christmas!
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"Gifts"
"Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness." – Richard Bach
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Fakir carefully arranged the holly and pine-boughs around the candles on the mantelpiece and paused to survey the result from a distance. Almost right,but -- he stopped and looked at his ankles.
He had felt something bump at his feet and now saw the culprit. Ahiru was waddling around with a long piece of tinsel in her bill, quacking unintelligibly. He smiled and leaned down to pat her feathery head. "I should tack this to the mantle, correct?"
She frantically nodded her head and quacked.
Still smiling, he took the proffered decoration and began to drape and arrange, with judicious use of hammer and nails. When he finished, he again studied the effect.
Fakir bent over to the little duck. "What do you think?"
He was answered by a steady stream of excited quacks, followed by headbutting. "Pleased, right?" he said.
Ahiru nodded but continued her frantic movements, beginning to wave her wings around and hop up and down.
Fakir came to a sudden realization. "You want to the see the whole room?"
Ahiru nodded.
Of course. He scooped her up in his arms. "Better?" he asked.
He was answered by a contented sigh.
Fakir felt his mouth quirk up at the corners and said, "You should be proud. The room's ready for Christmas tomorrow, and it's all because of you."
She quacked.
"It's true," he answered, and it was. Ahiru had nudged and quacked at him until he, irritated, had followed her every whim. A Christmas tree in the corner was festooned with colored balls and garlands. Candles with ribbons and fragrant greenery adorned every available surface. Even stockings were nailed next to the fireplace for Father Christmas to fill with treats, even though Fakir didn't have the heart to tell Ahiru that he and she were probably too old for the twinkling spirit's generosity.
After all, she, as a duck, had never had a Christmas, and, he reflected, neither had he, at least not in years.
But then, Fakir was finding himself being drawn into situations he hadn't experienced since he was a young child:
Fishing at the pond.
Finding shapes in the clouds.
Scattering leaf piles.
Skating on the ice.
He was loathe to admit it, and he made sure that no one ever saw him acting so -- foolishly. Yet, he enjoyed himself, indulging in the childhood that he had lost to ravens and responsibility, and who better to indulge himself with than with a duck, one whose brief life as a girl had been too tied up in healing others' broken hearts to leave much time for foolishness of her own?
Ahiru's squirming broke his reverie, and he, realizing that she wanted to be put down, released her onto the ground. She immediately dove under a dresser and quacking, dragged out a small package.
He leaned down and peered at it. The present would never be mistaken for one wrapped at the fine stores in the village. The paper was ripped and wrinkled and the ribbon tied around it was knotted and creased. Still, Fakir was touched -- it had clearly been done on her own, no easy task for a small animal with only a beak and webbed feet at her disposal. "What's in here?"
Ahiru quacked.
"All right, I'll open it. It's not Christmas, but Christmas Eve is close enough," he answered, laughing -- another magic she had performed upon him, making him laugh so much that he was alien to himself -- and beginning to undo the wrappings.
It was a brand new quill pen - not from one of her own feathers, as they were too small for a proper quill. It must have come from one of her friends, a goose, by the looks of it. Ahiru knew him all too well. "I always need pens -- thank you."
She quacked a reply.
"Yes, I have something for you, too," he said, laughing again, and quickly walked over to his bed and extracted a small box from his pillowcase. "I was a champion at hide-and-seek," he added, noticing her scowls. Apparently, she had not thought of looking there for her present; it had been difficult not to notice when he came home to discover his clothing jutting from drawers and pots slightly disarray. "Here you go."
Ahiru eagerly ripped at the wrapping until she was left with a velvet-covered box. She quacked.
"You need me to open it?"
She quacked an affirmative.
He carefully opened the box, slowly, for maximum effect. It worked; Ahiru's sparkling blue eyes widened. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he said.
On a thin chain was a tiny charm, a pair of golden ballet slippers worked with minute, sparkling, scarlet gems. Ahiru nodded soundlessly. Tears glistened at the corner of her eyes.
"Do you like it?" he asked, suddenly worried. He had seen the necklace at the jewelry store and had, on impulse, decided to purchase it. One of things he knew she missed most from her human days was dancing. As clumsy as she was a girl, she had never been deterred from ballet, and that passion had saved the village, Mytho, Rue, and herself.
Not to mention himself, he added silently to himself before being startled out of his worry by frantic headbutting. He looked down to see Ahiru scrambling around his feet, crying and quacking and smiling all at once.
"Stupid duck," he said, watching the display. "Never change, will you?" The casual query, though, made him think of sadder things, and he sighed, sinking to his knees and catching his fingers in her feathers. He then said "You know what I really wanted to give you?"
Ahiru halted and looked up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Quack?"
Fakir suddenly felt very tired, and he rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "I wanted, I wanted to make you human again." He paused, as he watched her eyes change, then added hastily, "Yes, I know we both agreed that we were going to return to what we really were, duck and boy, but I know you miss dancing, miss going to school with those annoying friends of yours, miss jabbering like an idiot --" He could feel the tears coming on, and he stopped, swallowing the knot in his throat. "Look, I have this power, to write things into reality, and sometimes, I wish, I could just throw caution and vows to the wind and just turn you back into a girl, so I won't have to decipher your moronic quacking into something comprehensible all the time and can have a reasonable conversation for once in my life."
The duck's eyes moistened.
"No, wait, don't cry," said Fakir, panicking. For all his supposed talent with words, that was only on paper -- out loud was another matter. "I didn't mean --" His explanation was cut short.
Ahiru had flung her tiny wings around his legs and had sunk her face deep in the crack between them. Fakir, startled, could only dumbly watch. "Ahiru?"
She slowly extracted her face from the crevice and looked at him with her round, hopelessly guileless, and ever-open eyes.
That was all he needed to see before he understood.
"Oh, Ahiru," he murmured. "You stupid little duck."
"Quack," she said, but it was clear as day what that truly meant.
Merry Christmas, one and all.
Fin.