A few of you may recognize this story title from deviantART. Yes, I am the same ElfGrove who wrote that doujin. It's become obvious by now that there is no way in double-hockey-sticks that I will finish "Schwäne Zwei"in the original comic form that I started it as. However, I've gotten enough noise that I feel like I ought to finish the story, and I would really like to finish telling it myself. Thusly, I'm putting it out as a fanfic. Chapters will be short to accommodate certain scene/perspective shifts that originally hinged on the comic format.
Anything written in bold that is not specifically the title of the current chapter, should be taken as text written on a page. (This distinction will become important as the story gets going.)
This is a post-anime story. Spoilers abound.
Schwäne Zwei
Chapter 1: Prologue
Once upon a time, there was a man and a duck
The letters on the yellowed and ink-splotched page were mostly scratched out with angry marks of a quill. Only the words, "once upon a time" had been left unmarred. The singular abused page hung on the wall, the first line of the first story Fakir had tried to write after the fall of the Monster Raven and the release of Kinkan Town, no--of Nördlingen from Herr Drosselmeyer's machinations. It was a testament of how far they had come in five years and how much work they had done. It had also been a promise. The promised last story that they would write. The final tale of the Drosselmeyer lineage.
Looking back on the time before the defeat of the Monster Raven, I think I understand them better now. I couldn't fully appreciate what they did, or what they were going through at that time. Ahiru's determination. Fakir's hesitation. Rue's desperate love. Siegfried's strength. Those things I couldn't understand while they were happening, actions that seemed to be foolishness and weakness five years ago, are so different viewed in retrospect. Knowing the full story of everything that was happening then.
It is so much more difficult than I gave him credit for.
Autor hesitated next to the worn oak desk with its stack of parchment, his hand resting on the innocuous-looking cover page to a manuscript. The inkwell was full and waiting, an unusually large raven feather made the quill that rested in the ink. Everything was waiting, for him.
Now I'm the one hesitating.
He and Fakir had spent five long years perfecting their story-spinning. Long nights and days, correcting inconsistencies, writing the stories of everyone that had been touched by Kinkan Town. It had taken the better part of five years to repair the damage Drosselmeyer had wrought. They were both so much stronger now. So unimaginably stronger. Fakir's power would almost certainly have rivaled Drosselmeyer himself now, but Fakir could not write any more.
Hesitating, for far too long.
"He left it to me. To finish the last story when he could no longer write it." Autor spoke aloud to the empty room he had shared with his cousin for so long, "They deserve a happy ending. More than any one, those two do."
He had dreaded taking over this story. Putting it off for weeks after Fakir had been rendered incapable of continuing it. Of all the stories they had written together, Autor was the most afraid of bearing the responsibility for the outcome of the final story.
However, Autor felt the steel slide into his backbone at last. It wasn't going to become any less intimidating if he waited. He took his seat at the oak desk, a replica of the original Drosselmeyer's desk, and felt nervous sweat bead his brow.
"I've made them wait long enough," Autor finally picked up his quill and started removing the already completed pages, starting with the cover sheet.
Schwäne Zwei
Two Swans
By:
Fakir Von Drosselmeyer
Autor Von Drosselmeyer
Gather round now children, let me tell you a story.