Ahiru held the love note to Fakir tight in her fist, his words ringing through her ears, her cheeks pink and warm. "Stop dealing with trifles, idiot," he told her, and for some reason, it stung a little bit, even though she knew he was going to say that to her. She ran her thumb over his name on the note, her blue eyes feeling tired all of a sudden. Drosselmeyer said that she would love Prince Mytho until she finally confessed her love for him, turned into a speck of light and vanished forever.
And though she knew that collecting all of his heart shards was the only thing that she could do for the Prince, her heart was torn. Maybe there was some merit behind Drosselmeyer's stories, that everything he wrote was destined to happen, and she, after being Princess Tutu like he made her, and confessing her love to Mytho, would vanish. But maybe, just maybe, there was something more for her.
Who said that it was Mytho that she had to be in love with? Who said that she had to vanish into a speck of light like Drosselmeyer wrote in his story? The story was never finished. The ending was not set in stone. She looked up to where Fakir had walked away, a bold smile on her lips. She felt two different things, when she saw Mytho and when she saw Fakir. Two entirely different emotions that were similar at the same time, so hard to explain and yet so easy to attribute to each boy.
Mytho, with his scruffy white locks and topaz eyes, was kinder than anyone she had ever met. Slender, graceful, pale as the moonlight, Mytho always invoked in Ahiru a sense of security, of a future for everyone. Even with his heart doused in the blood of the Raven, she knew that Mytho would be himself one day, and he was one to love everyone and protect them all. If he'd fall out of a window for one little bird, she could only imagine what he would do to protect those he truly loved.
With Fakir, he was angry a lot, and at times he was ruthless, with a tongue like a viper. His dancing was more powerful than Mytho, more feral, but still with the gracefulness that only a seasoned ballet practitioner could ever hope to accomplish. Fakir was handsome and soft inside, underneath all the heartache and pain he hid away. His green eyes were callous, but she'd seen them smile too, she'd seen them show a sign of protectiveness, even of affection, sometimes.
He annoyed her with the way he brushed her off, with the way he treated her like she was below him. Sometimes she wanted to smack some sense into his empty head, though she knew she never would. With Fakir, he always had something on his mind, something important. He wanted to save Mytho just as much as she did. Mytho and Fakir had grown up together, and Ahiru loved Mytho. And she knew Fakir loved him too, in his way.
The Raven was their common enemy, and Mytho and Rue, not Kraehe, never Kraehe, needed to be saved. Even if Ahiru needed to do it alone.
She put a hand over her heart. "I'm not alone," she said after a moment, with a smile. She knew it because of that feeling she got from Fakir. That feeling of being able to depend on him, the sense of knowing, that somehow, some way, he would help her make everything all right, or be there with her, maybe even for her, if it wasn't.
With a smile, Ahiru went back to the dormitories where she stayed with the other ballet students, tucking the love letter beneath her pillow. She wouldn't disappear into a speck of light. She wouldn't have to. Perhaps she'd be a duck for the rest of her life, but she would not vanish, because Prince Mytho wasn't the person she needed to confess her love to.
Drosselmeyer created his characters to follow his every word, to stick to his storyline with the utmost precision, the exact way he wrote it. But that was his downfall; his characters were so utterly human, and that gave them the power to change their destinies.