Disclaimer: I own only this version of what might come after.
I tried to tell the plotbunnies that if I was going to do Tutu fic, I was going to do it actually set during the story. They made rude faces and threw postseries scenes at me instead. I don't know why I even bother trying to talk sense into them sometimes.
As usual, anonymous comments get answered in my profile.
It's not so bad, really.
True, Ahiru does miss it sometimes. Waking up in the loft, feeding the birds in the morning, the view across the courtyard, dancing with the rest of the class, Pique and Lillie's teasing, Neko-sensei's threats of marriage, being kept after class…well, maybe not the last so much, but it had become a comforting routine, after all.
Mostly she misses being able to talk. Being a girl, really.
Sometimes, she admits, she misses being Princess Tutu, the power, the ease of perfection.
But it had been borrowed power, and she'd always known she'd have to give it up, even if she had almost managed to forget. That's what she had said so long ago, wasn't it? That if she could just help the prince, see his smile when he was finally restored, then that was all she could ever hope for. She had said that he and Rue-chan looked good together.
Yes, perhaps she'd realized she'd lied to herself, at the bottom of the lake.
Perhaps she could have made things turn out differently.
But she remembers how she felt when she saw the prince's sad, lonely eyes.
Saw Mythos' insensitivity to the pain of his own injuries.
Saw the pain that Princess Kraehe lashed out to deny, even when it trembled in every line of her dance.
Saw Rue-chan's tears and anguished cry.
That would never have been better.
She'd wanted to make everything alright for them.
And she had gotten to see Mytho's smile, and Rue-chan's look of wonder, at the end. She'd made her decision on her own terms. She had done it because she wanted to. She'd had her pas de deux.
It is enough. She does not regret her choice. Would not, even if that had been all she had gotten for her trouble.
But it isn't. She's kept other thing from her time in the story that she would not have had otherwise, and she treasures them.
It isn't as though she can't dance anymore, after all. She's proved it. And if it isn't as perfect as Tutu's, well, neither had been Ahiru the girl's, and that wasn't the point of dancing anyway.
She still knows her way around the school, can still visit the familiar fountains, watch the dancers. And if she can't talk anymore, well, she can at least still convey her opinions with flaps and quacks and expressions. And she has people to whom they will matter.
On days like this, when the sun warms her feathers as she drowses, floating relaxed by the pier where the former knight sits, his quill scratching gently as he keeps his promise - his promises…
It's not bad at all.