Hi there! Okay, so yeah, I've put Mytho's Pet Shop on the backburner…just for now. James Birdsong suggested I should try writing my other idea for a fanfic! :D So here it is. It's a little…no, it's a LOT different: this is my first Princess Tutu After Story fanfic, since Mytho's Pet Shop is an AU. So yeah. It takes place about a year after the anime ends. :3 Enjoy~
Chapter One:
The image was hazy at first, but then came into focus. It was a lake all too familiar. On the small wooden pier that went about 4 feet out into the lake, a there was a young man sitting at a desk. He seemed content in his work, which appeared to be writing. Now and then, he would look up and stare across the lake. On the other end, calmly swimming about, was a little yellow duck, which big blue eyes. The man smiled and waved. The duck waved her little wing in acknowledgement and began to swim over. He tossed her a piece of bread from his pocket, which the duck ate up hungrily. The man bent down and patted the duck on her feathery little head, and said:
"I'll bring you back. Then we too can have a happy ending, yeah?"
The duck looked up into the man's green eyes and nodded, with a blank stare. The man bit his lip and turned back to his work. Suddenly, time seemed to wisp by, like a frail leaf in the summer wind. The sun rose and set with a speeding pace, and movements were sped up, as in a time lapse. Day after day, the man continued to return to the pier and write. His sped up hand often ripped his old, withered notebook, crumpling the pages and tossing them behind him. Years flew by, and the young man began to noticeably age into a grown man. And yet, the duck stayed the same, as if not a day had gone by. The man's gestures began more frustrating and frantic, his fingers now permanently stained with the black ink of his golden quill. As for the duck, she seemed to grow more and more distant, acting less like a duck with a human mind and emotions, and more like your average duck. Her blue eyes darkened to a dark gray, her gestures and movements less graceful, more…well, duck-like. The duck seemed to revert to an earlier stage, as if she was never changed by a strange and fairy-tale like sequence of events that no one remembers. And as the years passed by, the duck had left the lake for long periods of time, migrating around when the winter came. But the gradual change of the man's duck didn't thwart his continuous struggle, writing on and on. As the years continued to pass, you would think any man in his right mind would've reluctantly, but surely, have eventually given up, trying to revive the last bit of magic he had. He would've moved on with his life, just as the duck had with hers, met someone else, and had a life. But then, the man wasn't in his right mind. It was apparent that this man had lost his sanity in his impossible quest long ago.
The water had continued to flow, the time had continued to pass, but the now middle-aged man had failed to tell his story. He had gone over the edge, past the point of no return. He stopped coming and going, and had devoted his existence to his story, never leaving or sleeping. Even when the duck was gone for the summer, an insane smile crept along the middle-aged man as he looked up from his work to toss a now moldy, crusty, stale piece of bread from the pocket of his worn pants, and said:
"I have a feeling we're close, Duck!" He said, without his duck even being there, "You'll just have to be patient a little longer, and then, we can finally have our happy ending, yeah?"
After he finished talking he smiled an insane smile directed to an animal that wasn't there, and tossed his wrinkled, saggy face back and bellowed a mighty laugh of excitement and anxiousness. Then he brought himself back to his aged, old notebook, with yellowed pages, some ripped, with running ink from the rain that he ignored, and brought his still golden quill and his blackened hand down to his writing, with even more confidence and enthusiasm than before. He panted heavily and he wrote, and wrote, and wrote, ink thrillingly darting from the page. More years passed, the duck coming and going, the man writing and writing. The man grew old, skinny from his lack of eating over the years of writing, and face decrepit with wrinkles and folds, the most prominent, of course, his laugh-lines, from the years of passively laughing like a maniac, throwing moldy bread on the grassy lake bank. Moldy bread collected in a pile, sometimes being eaten by insects or other animals. Crumpled pages collected in a pile as well. From all the insanity and lack of food, the old man began to die. He was breathing even more heavily, and frantic writing slowed, but not once did he think of stopping. The duck flew back in from her yearly trip further south. She swam around a bit and occasionally dipped under water for a few seconds, coming back up with a small fish in her mouth. When the old man noticed her, he gave his smile and wave, like he always had, but the duck didn't respond. The old man worn and saggy hand lay down on his lap, and he gave a little toss of his head, tangled gray hair giving a little jump. Then the duck looked up, without any sign of interest, but still decided to waddle on over to the old man. He cracked a huge grin and picked up his tattered old notebook off his desk and shoved it in front of the duck's face.
"Look at this, Duck!" The man said, excitedly, "I think I got it this time!"
When the sickly old man said that, the duck felt a little strange. From deep inside, she felt a flurry of emotion and memories that had long been forgotten. A tint of blue color flashed by.
With her own animal instinct, she jumped back in fear. The old man continued:
"I'm so close to finishing, Duck! I can just see your human self in my mind!" His sickly, dying voice was cracked and aged, but kept a young kind of spirit. The duck, meanwhile, had her fist conscious thought in decades…not only that, but it was in human language.
My… human self?
The old man was dying for sure now. He put his last efforts into his newest piece of writing. And with every word, the duck's eyes grew a little bluer. The duck had a sudden thought that flashed through her expanding mind. Well, it wasn't a thought exactly…it was an emotion.
An emotion that she had lost an overdose of many, many years ago. An emotion that had lost its strong feel. An excess emotion that, so long ago, she had selflessly handed off to a prince in peril. An emotion that, so many times, had been mistaken for love.
But it wasn't love. Oh no. It was hope.
With the old man's final efforts, his gradually slowing hand finished the last sentence. And with a satisfied, less insane and more…calm…smile, spread across his decrepit face.
"I told you I'd finish it," He wheezed, with his final breaths. And then the man died.
At that moment, the duck's eyes widened to a new shape and feeling, bluer than they ever were. Her yellow feathers evaporated to long, braided red hair that fell past her knees. Her little duck's body grew and morphed into that of a petite 14 year old girl. Her bill changed shape to a cute upturned nose and a pink-lipped mouth. Where a duck had stood but a few seconds ago, a beautiful and adorable young girl stood, dressed in nothing but long strips of wavy red locks. And she gained her consciousness. Staring at the dead old man, her eyes began to water, but then stopped, and simply stood there with her little mouth slightly open. There are times when you are simply beyond tears.
The girl began to glow again as she edged towards the dead man that so well resembled two men she knew. A young man she had fell in love with, and another man…a man that had been long dead.
The girl's small, glowing, and trembling hand began to reach out to the dead writer. And in the moment before she touched the man's cold, dead face, she changed. Not into another animal, no heavens no. It was, instead, another side of herself. She was clothed in a gorgeous white tutu, white as the feathers of swan, with a translucent underskirt of pink lace. Her tender feet were pulled into Pointe, and were delicately caressed with pink satin, ribbons magically criss-crossing up her calf, up to her knee, and pulled themselves into a cute little bow in the back. Her hands were cuffed with big beaded bracelets, and her long braid of hair was undone and then pinned up with fragile white feather hairpieces. Angel-like wings sprouted from her back, curving around her fallen love. The girl's small hand then touched the man's wrinkled face, but it gave off a sudden wave of horrible magic at work. Tutu's eyes widened and quickly pulled back her angelic hand, but it was too late. From where her finger used to be, a small crack had opened. Then the crack spread and lengthened, grotesquely splitting the dead man perfectly in half. A splash of blood sputtered from the body. Tutu's hand flew to her mouth in horror. They had been unable to avoid their fates after all. Accepting her fate at long last, Tutu's eyes shut closed, glistening tears streaming down her cheeks. And then, she whispered the terrible, yet somehow comforting words.
"My knight…" Tutu breathed, "I-I…I love you…"
Nothing happened.
"I love you!" Tutu exclaimed, with more confidence.
Still nothing. Tutu's eyes narrowed.
"I LOVE YOU, FAKIR!" She screamed.
After her confession of love, she broke down into a sob and wept at Fakir's dead body, a smile, split in half, on his aged face. She knew it was the end; she could feel her blood evaporating into sparkles of light inside her. Externally, it started at her feet. Her beautiful satin Pointe shoes disintegrated into bright flakes of light. As it crept up her strong and perfect figure, Tutu clutched Fakir's cold hands lighter in her fragile grasp. But even that wasn't possible, for her wrists disappeared into flurries of light, and utterly destroyed her helpless grasp for Fakir, which only made her cry harder. After another painful few seconds, Tutu was only a bust of herself with a couple of glowing hands dying with her fallen Knight, ripped in half by not the touch of the black raven, but of the white swan and the yellow duck. Tutu used what was left of her hands to wipe her eyes, and her fingers were no more. Then she gave a soft chuckle.
"We are really a couple of fools, aren't we?" She smiled, tears dripping from her glowing face.
All the golden dust collected into one speck of light, which vanished along with the sunlight coming in through the trees with the daybreak. Fakir's body then fell away, evaporating into the shadows of the old desk that was stained with ink and falling apart, and the trees surrounding the lake. A stream of light against a stream of shadow. Although one could not exist without the other, they are fated to never cross paths or interact for as long as the water flows and the time passes.
Now, you've told me a story! Bellowed the voice of the man who'd long been dead.
A curtain fell upon the tragedy-turned-happy-story-turned-tragedy again. (funny how that works out) Whispers in the wind cried that the ending, leaping about the audience seats that were placed before the grand stage, which was, in fact, an illusion. But the one and only real person in the audience, the man who'd long been dead, silenced it with a huge laugh. He laughed and laughed, triumphant in the long run and relieved.
"A masterpiece! A masterpiece!" He shouted in between laughing spasms, "In the end, my powers won! That took a lot more work than I expected, but in the end, it was worth it! Hahahahahahahaha!"
The scene began to go hazy and unfocused again. In the back row, another real person sat, unbeknownst to the author who died long ago. A princess sat, hair as black as a raven's feathers, tied into a beautiful flip on the top of her head, and she was wearing a black tutu of raven's feathers that she hated. Her eyes were wide and tearing up, and she gave herself away with a small whimper of utter sorrow.
As soon as she did, the author's laughing stopped abruptly. He quickly spun around from his front row seat, his face bright red with rage of unimaginable proportions.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?" He spat.
Rue cried out and sat up in her bed. Her eyes were red and her face was all wet with tears. At once, the Prince, who was sleeping next to her, sat up with fear and grabbed his fiancé.
"Rue!" He asked, a worrisome look in his amber eyes, "Are you ok?"
Rue gave into his embrace and cried.
"Oh, it was horrible!" She wheezed after about a minute of crying in the Prince's arms. She knew she had to do something. She clutched the cloth of the Prince's velvety sleeping robe. She had to pay back the debt she owed to a knight and a duck.