Princess Tutu is copyright Ikuko Itoh and Hal Master Studios. No infringement or disrespect of the copyright holders of Princess Tutu or its derivative works is intended by this fanfiction.
The title is the plural of the German word Möglichkeit, which can be be translated as "possibility, opportunity, option."
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Moglichkeiten
by Silverr, (for Skylark)
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Once upon a time there was a brave knight who, in order to save his king's life, agreed to marry a loathsome hag. Though many urged the knight to break his word and refuse the marriage once the king was safe, the knight would not do so.
As a reward for keeping his word, the hag gave him a choice: she could be young and beautiful in public during the day, or she could be young and beautiful at night in their bedchamber.
If you were the knight, which would you choose?
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Duck is dreaming.
Someone is standing on the water in the center of the pond (this is how Duck knows it's a dream). She can't see the person clearly, but they're very tall, with a calm, gentle voice voice that reminds her of Edel (but it is not Edel). Duck notices that the not-Edel has folded wings that, were they open, would cover the sky (although Duck knows not-Edel isn't a swan either). Duck curtsies, and after a moment tiny lights, like multicolored fireflies, shimmer over the surface of the water, coalescing into floating leaves piled high with delicious things: wriggling blue fish, juicy red berries, succulent roots, tiny pearly snails, golden kernels of corn.
As Duck hurries forward, her feet splashing the shallow water, someone next to her laughs and says, "I don't think even you can eat all that, greedy duck." She turns; Fakir is sitting on the shore, dressed in the dark clothes he wore as Prince Siegfried's knight.
Indignant, Duck hops back on the shore, wings akimbo, and pecks at his knee. "Quack!"
Choose, not-Edel requests (though no words are spoken).
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It is her favorite thing to do, to swim in the pond while Fakir sits and works nearby. For seven years every day has been like this, but she doesn't mind. She is with Fakir, and he is happy, so she is happy. For seven years he has written stories for Gold Crown Town, small stories that allow those who need a voice to speak through his words. She loves the way Fakir allows the stories to tell themselves whenever possible, only offering a steadying hand when the story wavers. He may be Drosselmeyer's descendant, but he is nothing like his ancestor.
She thinks at times that if Fakir could change his very blood he would. He had at first refused to take anything from from Autor's house except a small pale green wood shaving he'd found in the workshop. Duck understood his reluctance: to use Drosselmeyer's things would be crediting him as the source of his gift, when really talespinning was given by The Tree. (Not that it mattered, really: wherever it came from, it was Fakir's gift now.) However, Duck also didn't think it was good to entirely ignore where you came from — if you didn't know where you started, how could you know where you were going? — and so she'd pecked Fakir's ankles a few times and planted herself in the doorway of Autor's house until Fakir had sighed and taken a single inkwell, saying that it would be useful as a reminder. He had left everything else in the shrine: the tins of blended tea, the pink and yellow cups, the thick ivory paper — even, to Autor's delight, the feather pens and the massive, bloodstained desk. (Of course Fakir hadn't told Autor that he had no need of Drosselmeyer's desk: Karon had made a new desk, of ash and white birch, with cedar-lined drawers in which Fakir stored the pale blue paper Raetsel sent three times a year from the capital. Fakir didn't need Drosselmeyer's bird-feather quills, either, as the town had presented him with a set of silver pens designed by Lysander that, with only one dip in the bottle, took up enough ink to write for half a day.)
Sometimes Duck comes out of the water and sits near enough to Fakir's chair that he can reach down with his free hand and smooth his fingertips along her dorsal feathers as he writes, or gently scratch her neck, or even just rest his palm on her head. She used to think she was distracting him by making him pay attention to her, but he's told her that the feel of her feathers and bones, so delicate and yet so strong, calms and clarifies him. Even when he's very inspired — Duck can always tell when this happens, because he bends forward over the paper while his pen moves as swift and decisive as a rapier — he doesn't remove his hand from her; when this happens Duck sits very still, barely breathing, until he sits back with a sigh.
Only then does she return to the water.
It doesn't always go so well, however. Sometimes Fakir glowers at the trees, shifts restlessly in his chair, pulls at his hair, crumples the writing paper into a ball. When this happens Duck will gently nip at his ankle until he slides the writing tray aside and lifts her onto his lap, calling her "Duck the feathered cat." When she lifts her wings to preen he always tries to tickle her, and she always pretends to be offended, catching his wrist in her bill and giving it a light squeeze before settling down to nap.
In this way they had lived companionably for seven years.
One midsummer day, while Duck was nibbling some delicious new water sprouts at the bottom of the pond, she saw a flash of light. Curious, she dove toward it. A glint of silvery-blue arabesqued through the mud; when she poked at it with her bill she saw it was a delicate chain. Carefully, she pulled it from the muck until there was enough free for her to dive and twist under the chain and get it around her neck, then she swam for the surface. This necklace was very different than the one she had worn years ago; the chain was so long that the pendant of pale green stone knocked against her knees.
"What's that?" Fakir asked as she scrambled out of the water and ran to him. "It looks like — " He stopped, looking horrified for a moment and then very sad.
Duck knew that look, although she had seen it less and less often over the years. She should have known that the necklace would bring out the memories, but really, deep down in her craw, she thought that would be a good thing. Fakir had never talked to her about the ones that were gone, about Mytho or Rue or Tutu, which made her a little mad now that she thought about it, because, well, first off she missed them too, and so what if people thought Fakir was strange for talking to a duck? And there were good memories too: the time her voice had guided him out of the Legendary Oak; the night that they had driven back the Book Men and their horrible axes; the way Fakir had called her out of Drosselmeyer's narrative engine with the power of his writing; the pas de deux that they had danced ...
"I wonder how it got into the lake?" he said as he tied a loop in the chain to shorten it. "There. It suits you." He lifted her up and then sat back in his chair with her in his lap, even though her feet were wet and muddy. "Hans invited us to visit," he said, stroking the feathers on her back once she'd settled down. "He says that Raetsel wants to name the baby Zura."
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It was a day and a half ride from Gold Crown Town to Hans and Raetsel's house, so they set out early on the chestnut mare they'd borrowed from Ebine. The morning was gray with a heavy cold rain, and Fakir was grumpy. Duck, who didn't mind cold and rain at all, nevertheless was happy to be snuggled inside Fakir's shirt. His stomach was a little softer than it had been when they were teenaged ballet students, but it was still solid and warm and reassuring, and between it and the rhythmic movement of the horse Duck felt herself drifting off to sleep.
And then, gradually, she became aware of a sensation both strange and familiar, a crampy, spinny, bursting ...
The next instant she found herself on the ground, in the squishy mud at the side of the road. The horse was galloping away, whinnying in fear, and Fakir was on his back in the middle of the road, groaning.
"Fakir!" Duck heard what she had thought as if she had spoken. The words sounded scratchy, probably because there was something wound tight around her neck. She put her hand up to pull it away.
"I have hands!" she cried as Fakir sat up.
He looked dazed, but then he gaped at her and whispered, "What the — "
In that instant she looked down and realized that not only did she have hands, she had breasts and legs and a butt — which was finding the mud uncomfortably cold — but no clothes.
"Ack!" She pulled her knees up to her chest, but then re-thought this position as Fakir quickly looked away. She scrambled forward onto her hands and knees, then crouched down. "What happened?" she asked.
"How should I know?" Fakir shot back, sounding even more distressed. As he stood up Duck saw that the front of his shirt was entirely in shreds. She would have laughed at the sight, but the necklace's chain was now so tight around her neck it felt as though it was cutting into the skin of her throat. She put her hands under her hair (her hair! she had hair again!) to undo the clasp on the necklace. Unfortunately, her muddy fingers didn't seem to know what to do with themselves, and almost instantly made a gooey clot of hair.
Fakir stumbled over to where his cloak had fallen. He picked it up and began to shake it out, looking up and down the road.
"What are you doing?" Duck croaked, trying to find where Fakir had tied the chain to make it shorter.
"Covering you up," Fakir growled, snapping the rain-soaked cloak so vehemently that Duck wouldn't have been surprised if the dye had flown out of the fabric. "Checking if anyone saw you. Figuring out where Ebine's horse went. Wondering if Raetsel will be upset when we postpone the visit. What are you doing?"
"Necklace," Duck rasped. "Choking me."
Fakir came over. "Let me do it," he said impatiently. "Stop before you break it." He snapped the cloak out one more time and let it settle over her back.
"C-cold." Duck shivered.
"Well," Fakir said as he squatted down next to her and shoved her hair aside, "if you'd given me some warning you were going to stop being a duck I could have brought along something for you to wear." Now he was practically snarling. "Ermine-trimmed velvet." Whatever he was doing with the chain made it momentarily tighter. "What a mess," he said, but then the chain went slack and the pressure on her neck was gone.
"Hey, I had no idea I was going to ... not be a duck!" How could this have happened? Yesterday she was happily swimming and eating and sleeping, and today she was naked and cold and being strangled by her necklace. "I wasn't trying to make a mess," Duck whispered as she rubbed her throat, feeling near tears.
"I know," Fakir said at last, to Duck's satisfaction sounding at least a little bit contrite. "I'll be back soon. Don't go anywhere."
"I won't," Duck said. It was strange, seeing wisps of hair — still orangey-red — at the sides of her vision again, and feeling the rounded mass of breasts against her thighs and arms ... although oddly she didn't feel bigger. Fakir, on the other hand ... for some strange reason, as she watched him walk away from her back toward Gold Crown Town, Fakir seemed much taller to her now than when she was an actual duck — which was ridiculous, because obviously he was the same size he'd been before, while she was at least ten times bigger. No, more like twenty or thirty!
Duck sighed. Her teachers had always told her she was terrible at math.
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"You can sleep anywhere, can't you?"
"Huh?" Duck looked up, squinting. Fakir — who was now wearing an untorn shirt — stood at the side of the road, holding a rumpled paper bag in one hand and the reins of a dappled horse in the other.
"That's not Ebine's horse," Duck said. "Where's Ebine's horse? Shouldn't we go look for Ebine's horse?"
"We're not that far out of the city," Fakir said. "I'm sure Ebine's horse knows how to get home." He held out the bag. "Here."
"What is that?" Duck asked, pulling the cloak around her as she stood. She wobbled a little, partly because her muscles were stiff and sore from crouching in the wet cold, and partly because her legs felt entirely too long.
"Clothes," Fakir said. He shook the bag at her. "Or did you want to ride back into town naked?"
"No," Duck sputtered, "of course not! But ... can't we just keep going?"
"Going? Going where?"
"To Raetsel's!"
Fakir raised an eyebrow. "You're joking. Something like this happens and you want to act as if ... as if nothing happened? Don't you even care that you're a — that you're not a duck anymore?"
"Of course I care," Duck said, darting forward to snatch the bag, "but I was really looking forward to seeing Raetzel and Hans and the twins and baby Zura and right now I don't want to think about or talk about what's happened or why it happened or anything, okay?" Why couldn't he understand how upsetting this was? She hurried away from him to hide behind a clump of shoulder-high bushes. Turning her back, she shrugged the cloak back onto the bushes, then quickly opened the bag. "What are these?" she sqawked, turning to look at him. The clothes were faded and worn, with badly-mended holes in spots. "Where did they come from?"
"They're old things of mine," he said. "Don't worry, they're clean. I didn't want to risk — to take the time to go into the dress shop."
Duck imagined the scene: the shopkeeper's puzzled face as a red-faced Fakir tried to explain that he needed clothes for a naked woman 'about so big.' The mental picture made her giggle.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing."
"Well, hurry up!"
For some reason Duck found knowing she'd be wearing Fakir's clothes comforting, although as she pulled on the faded tunic she thought This was against his skin once ... his chest, his arms, his shoulders. As she put the trousers on she tried very hard not to think about how many times the fabric had slid over Fakir's thighs and his butt and his ... other things, but it was no good, and by the time she had put on the much-too large pair of boy's ballet flats her face felt like it was going to burst into flame. Which was silly, because she had seen Fakir's legs and butt and ... the bump from what the dance belt held a hundred — no, probably a thousand — times in class without having thoughts like this about his body. Maybe it was because in class it was all posture and foot position and armlines and ballon and extension? No, it couldn't be just that, because she'd never had such thoughts as a duck, either. Fakir was always just Fakir, not 'naked Fakir with clothes on.' She pulled at the cloak, but the bushes had thorns, and the cloak snagged and started to tear. "Stupid cloak!" Why did she always have such bad ideas?
"What are you doing?"
"I totally wasn't thinking!" Duck said, then, "It's stuck."
Fakir stared at her a moment. "Leave it," he said. "Let's go."
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They arrived at the inn just after moonrise, hours after the evening meal. From the outside the inn's candlelit windows had looked homey and inviting, but the common room was empty and there was no one at the desk. "Is there anyone here?" Duck asked. She was exhausted, and couldn't wait to collapse for the night without any more fuss.
It was not to be. When the old couple running the inn finally appeared, for some reason they seemed to assume that Fakir and Duck were newlyweds who had been 'robbed and roughed up,' as they put it. Duck had been about to correct their mistake when Fakir said wearily, "Yes, it's been a very long day."
"You poor darlings," the innkeeper's wife said, clucking like a hen. "I'll bring up a cold supper right away, so as not to interrupt you ... later."
"And the room's on us," the innkeeper had said as he handed Fakir a key. "Upstairs and to the left." He'd winked. "Honeymoon suite."
"Very generous of you," Fakir had said faintly.
"Fakir!" Duck whispered as they climbed the stairs. "I feel like we're taking advantage of them, since we're not really —"
"It made them happy to help us," Fakir hissed back as they walked to the end of the hall. "I wasn't about to ask them to give us two rooms." He unlocked the door.
It was small, for a suite, but the bed was very large. "Don't worry, I'll sleep here," Fakir grumbled as he sat down in a low upholstered chair next to the bed.
"Why are you being so mean and crabby?" Duck demanded.
Before Fakir could answer there was a discreet knock on the door. "Room service!"
Duck opened the door. The innkeeper's wife had a wicker basket over one arm, and carried a covered tray. "Here's your supper, as promised!" she chirped, setting the tray on the small table near the window seat. "I also brought you some clothes that my daughter never wore, and some handmade apple soap, and a comb." She chuckled. "Looks like you have a year's worth of tangles in that hair!"
Duck clapped her hands, then took the basket. "Thank you so much!"
"Such a sweet girl," the innkeeper's wife said, patting Duck's cheek. "You make sure and sleep as late as you like tomorrow, alright? Poor dear, such an awful thing to happen!" With a warm glance at Fakir she left.
"Quack," Duck said experimentally to Fakir after the innkeeper's wife had left. "Quack quack quack," — but when she didn't turn into a duck she turned on her heel and went to take her bath.
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Duck emerged one long, hot bath later in a much better mood. She was clean, there was no more mud in her hair, and the cotton nightgown that had been in the bottom of the basket was not only new, but more importantly belonged to a stranger.
Fakir was sleeping in the chair.
Duck frowned: he'd have a sore back in the morning if he stayed there all night, but he'd probably bite her head off if she woke him and suggested he sleep in the bed. Which was silly, because it wasn't a big deal, was it? After all, it was a very big bed, you could probably fit three or four people in it. And even if it had been smaller, she and Fakir had known each other for years — granted, for most of those years she had been a duck, but still, that had to count for something — and she knew Fakir would be a gentleman, but ...
She tiptoed to the end of the bed and sat, combing the knots from her wet hair.
Fakir's head was tilted back and his mouth was open just a little. Like a sleeping princess waiting for a kiss, Duck thought, and grinned, and then felt embarrassed for having such a thought, and then decided that there was nothing wrong with thinking that way, she was a grown woman now, and ... No, it probably wasn't good to think that way, not when Fakir had spent the past seven years seeing her as his pet duck. Still, no harm in looking, was there? He had a very nice face when he wasn't scowling: with his eyes closed you could see how long his eyelashes were. Not as long as Mytho's had been, of course, but then Mytho had been impossibly beautiful, with those sad eyes and gossamer hair and soft, musical voice ... Duck sighed a little, remembering. She had had such a crush on Mytho when she was young! No, Fakir certainly wasn't what you'd call beautiful, and his voice was too growly to be called musical even when he was being extra nice, but he was real. Mytho had been like an angel — and you couldn't live in heaven.
Fakir opened his eyes. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Um ... thinking about Mytho?" Duck said, tugging at a tough tangle of hair.
"I see." He shifted in the chair, sitting up straighter. "Go up from the bottom, like climbing stairs."
"Of what?"
"Your hair," he said. "Combing down from the top pushes everything together and makes it worse. "
"Who made you an expert?" she asked.
"Raetsel," he said, and held his hand out.
A little surprised that he was serious, she gave him the comb. "Do you think I changed back into a girl because someone fixed Drosselmeyer's machine?"
Fakir, who had moved to sit behind her at the foot of the bed, said, "There isn't anyone who knows how to do that." He started combing through the ends of her hair.
"Not even Autor?" Duck asked.
The combing stopped for a moment. "I don't know," he said curtly.
Duck could tell that the question had made him mad, but she was pretty sure he wasn't mad at her. "I guess we'll find out when we get back."
"Yes, we will." Fakir was combing the middle third of her hair, where all the tangles were, but he was gentle, rarely pulling hard enough to hurt. "Do you want to go back to being a duck?" he asked.
"I don't know," Duck said. "Being a duck is definitely less complicated. Eat, sleep, swim."
Fakir made a soft noise, which Duck thought could have been laughter.
"And I suppose feathers take a lot less work to look nice than hair does," she said, and this time she was certain that Fakir was laughing.
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first post 27 June 2014; rev 18 Aug 2015
