Description from my LiveJournal:
Title: The Other Writer
Author: Sabs-chan
Fandom: Princess Tutu
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: implied Fakir/Ahiru, implied one-sided Autor/Ahiru
Comments: This is the gift I wrote for my recipient during the 2008 Princess Tutu Secret Santa Exchange. It's dark, it's woah, and it probably makes no sense whatsoever. Also, there's a couple of gaping plot holes. Also, I don't really like it that much (when do I ever like what I write?)
He talks to the ducks now, the ones that aren't Princess Tutu in disguise. He can't help it. Something about speaking what's on his mind to them takes a weight off his chest, yet he can't deny how stupid he feels whenever he does it. He might as well be talking to a wall, and he's used that insult on several people before.
Fakir pouts, his feelings of frustration and low self-esteem returning to cause stomach aches. The swans bobbing on the water's surface squawk at each other, careless to Fakir's pain and uncertainty. They have no pity. He covers his mouth with his hand and curls his chest into his knees, but his eyes look up to stare at his secret-bearers again. One of the ducks who lives quite far away from the cabin but visits often – even now – is a female swan old and weathered, smoke-colored and wandering to and fro with blue eyes that always seem familiar. He watches her movements and ingrains her face into his mind, all for some reason he can't exactly pinpoint.
The humidity mats his hair in long streaks against his face and forehead. If strands start to sink over his eyes, he tucks them away behind his ears, casting the nuisance off forever. The nuisance in front of him, however, is heavier.
He and Ahiru both accepted the very fates they themselves created all to save Kikan Town's people, most of them neither of them really knew. Deep inside, he wrote that story for her, but she danced for town residents she barely met or even yet to meet. Her generosity in love had astounded him and still did. For such a young girl - so modest, so unimportant to him when he first encountered her - to care for everyone with such unfailing earnestness…the thought was beyond him. No one else in the world matched her kind heart, yet all she received in the end was the form of a duck. The beginning to the ending to the beginning. No displacement; nothing gained for her in the end. Autor and her friends and even Neko-sensei all got what they wanted. She was so busy trying to help them that her wishes were never accounted for.
At first, he attempted to justify everything. Then, his attitude only spiraled downward again: as an animal, he missed her little by little with all the subtle differences. His love for her increased year by year, and with it his longing to be loved back. When he confessed to himself his infatuation with the Ahiru he once knew, he attacked himself brutally. He reprimanded his own mindset, knowing that if she had otherwise not become a duck, she would've died. She escaped her fate, but at a price. If that fate was death – no, worse than death: vanishing into nothing – then why couldn't he just be happy with things the way they were?
But after almost a year since Ahiru's transformation, he isn't happy. He can't be. His greed has overcome everything. He's in the wrong, even though Ahiru deserves something better.
Squeaky footsteps from walking across wet grass reach Fakir's ears and interrupt his guilt. He starts to look out the corner of his eye but turns back and thinks against it: he has a feeling he knows who it is, anyways. He keeps his stare ahead while the owner of the squelched footsteps approaches and stops, a straight, studious presence behind him that sears his eyes on Fakir's back.
"So this is where Mr. Strand's favorite student has been, huh? Skipping three days of writing class just to feel sorry for himself?"
Fakir says nothing. He knows it's better to do so than fuel Autor's sense of self-importance.
"What's happening right now is you've decided not to act and won't act," He declares in that high-saddled voice of his. Hell, Fakir could hear the mirth in his words as clear as day. "It's all your fault that she's still a duck because you're being...well," – he pushes his glasses up – "a coward."
An anger in him stirs, wiping away all sense to leave it alone, to not let Autor bother him. Fakir rises all at once. He turns. He extends one long arm and grips Autor's shirt collar in his fist, pulling him forward.
He calls me a coward, but I know that's what he really is.
Fakir rises up his other hand, clenched into a ball, and Autor winces even though the writer hasn't started yet. Some stupid part of his brain lacks a filter or common sense in these dicey situations, and so he dares to say, "But you're reacting only because you know it's true, right? I mean, what else would you be h-hitting me for?"
Of course, he realizes his mistake after spitting it out to the person about to pummel him. He quivers underneath the grip of rough hands and his eyes are pleading for mercy. Last time, Fakir had connected his fist to the top of Autor's cheek, causing a fat, black mound to appear there that made Autor the laughing stock of his classmates. Not to mention the broken glasses.
Fakir narrows his eyes further, hisses through his teeth, and loosens the hand from around Autor's collar. Autor's heels sink back into dewy grass. Fakir walks away. Relieved, Autor clears his throat and readjusts his neck tie, committing a certain part of this scene to memory. But, he observes Fakir as he trudges away from the edge of the pond to a separation in the hedges, not retracting his earlier judgments.
The ex-knight once promised he would no longer run away, and he had broken it.
He envisions the yellow duck wading through the pond as the once kind-hearted young girl. She'll die before any of them. Autor narrows his eyes to the point that a vein almost appears in his forehead.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Earlier that day, Fakir awoke at a scheduled time to help Charon cook breakfast as he always did in the morning. Ahiru gradually curled out of her bed and wandered out into the hall as she always did in the morning. Fakir smiled a perfect, beautiful smile to her and lifted her duck body onto the table as he always did in the morning. She plopped down onto the wood surface beside her friend and had the urge to preen as she not always, but sometimes did in the morning.
She felt uncomfortable, at the least, and rather itchy. As she buried her beak deep into her wing, Fakir watched with half of his attention fixed on her and served himself to sausage and bread.
She noticed feathers loosening while others fought to occupy the same space. No wonder her skin itched. A couple of daffodil yellow feathers fell out, drifting to the table, and at this she sensed for certain Fakir's eyes shooting over, stilling over her form. She paid no mind, too preoccupied with itching plumage to bother.
Three feathers, so tiny and soft they could be unreal, gathered and tickled at her webbed feet. Deciding she had finished preening enough, that she would rather not frustrate herself at meal time, Ahiru lifted her head back into the light.
Poking through on various spots along her wings, her chest, and her tail were the tips of white feathers, so newborn that they looked like spots of flour at first. She blinked at these feathers, a strange kind of change surging through her, one that made her blood warm with excitement. Ahiru couldn't help but smile as best as a duck could smile.
That was, until she saw Fakir's reaction.
It had been around a year since Ahiru had changed back into a duck again. As a human, she would have been fourteen. According to the change of her feathers, however, she might as well be eighteen, maybe older.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Underneath the water lies a world both alien and home to her, still and serene and protected. She ducks her head around, scanning eyes across blankets of shifting, living blue, and she thinks maybe being an animal isn't so bad at all. A fish scatters by, its scales reflecting light like a group of dancers in flashing cyan dresses shifting through the crowd. Another fish joins the first at its heels, moving in the same abrupt manner. One fish, two fish. Blue fish…blue fish. Bored and full of food for the day, Ahiru spins around and lifts her yellow head back above surface. Her eyes move across the expanse of the lake only to find the sun greeting it from the horizon.
That time already! Fakir must be worried sick! Why didn't he come out to get me?
She flails her wings about, causing ripples on the water, and again she questions about Fakir, about where he is, why she's still here when she should've known time would escape her like that. Her once curious eyes panicked now, Ahiru swims as fast as she can from her spot a short ways from the dock towards the bank, where – trekking up a low-angled slope – sits the small cabin Fakir spends time in before heading back to Charon's. Once the tiny duck makes it through the grass and towards the dirt surrounding the cabin, she gapes at the open front door.
Oh well, she thinks, maybe he knew I was late and he was busy with writing, so maybe that's why it's open. Still, there's a flustered way she looks about before entering through the front doorway, and that's when she sees the hundreds of sheets of parchment littering the floor. Her knees quake under that sight: a haywire of ink blotted into muddled words on scattered pieces of paper, like the murder scene of a story. Whole splotches of ink often dot the parchment and sometimes the carpet, earning a sick similarity to…
The duckling gulps, and her feathers – all golden without a speck of white to be seen – bristle with her flustered state of mind.
A sick similarity to blood.
A fear clutches in her breast, seizing up her breath and striking dread into her eyes. Though a step forward feels impossible and she's almost unwilling to do it, she hears an exasperated groan from the backmost room of the tiny cabin. Fakir…! The questions come flooding in again, laced with concern over the state of her friend. What if he'd been hurt and knocked over his writing stand by accident while trying to get to the bandages? What if he really did cause this mess on purpose, but he was hurting inside? What if the cabin had been robbed and Fakir had got caught up in a fight with the thief? Her heart screams out at her to check on Fakir, saying that she would regret it if she turned back now just to a little terror. What if he had injured himself? What if he lost a lot of blood…?
At that, Ahiru scrambles forward so fast into the other rooms that she almost trips. She dodges puddles of ink and tries to step onto blank areas of parchment, wondering if the smeared words already there mean anything.
She gazes up ahead, spotting a figure in the semi-darkness of the bedroom. He's leaning, she thinks, over the dresser at the foot of the bed, his knees probably on the ground. Fakir! She rushes towards him, quacks drowning in the back of her sore throat. As she approaches, she realizes his breath sounds rasping and strained, and she chokes back tears with the ideas forming in her head. He sounds so hurt. She moves into the dim light of the space, feet from Fakir curled over what looks to be a piece of paper, a quill wild in his hands.
After hearing webbed feet hit against the hardwood floor, he turns his face to her, but a curl of hair swishes around his jaw as he does so. The flash from a pair of worn glasses assaults her vision before Autor lowers his head a little, letting his quill drop to the floor.
"Ahiru…" Autor whispers, and across his face spreads an impish smile filled with shame. "It's done. I finished it. Your story is finally done."
Autor…? She struggles to ascertain, and though she's felt confusion many times today, she's never felt confusion like right now. What? Why?
He stares at her with blinking, wet eyes. Beads of sweat roll down his face, and his hair is matted and damp though still bouncy. He looks nothing like Fakir from close up.
Ahiru doesn't have time to think it over anymore. A sensation overwhelms her like a tidal wave, sending a jolt through her body, tingling in her arms and legs. In the process of her transformation, something different happens. Soon, her body is numb to it all, without warning, and she gains the inability to think. About anything. She's a girl who's emerging into the future after being trapped under snow for thousands of years.
The light swarming her, instigating the change, fades away. Her eyes are blinded no more. She's a somewhat short, German fourteen-year-old standing in the middle of what looks like a room with flat, stony walls, one window, and a simple bed. There's a man with plum hair who is gripping the frame of the dresser, as though holding on for dear life, not sure what to do. She finds she doesn't all that care what his story is. A part of her is missing, but she's not sure whether that's a negative thing. A part of the painting is vanished, or maybe it has never been there all along.
"Where am I?" She asks, and the man with the plum hair looks both horrified beyond description and also like he's going to cry.
- - - - - - - - - - -
It's three months later. The summer weather has turned to dry, blustery days with less sunshine to warm the soul. Some days get cold, but Fakir hasn't used his jacket much. He stays indoors and sits on the bed in the cabin while Ahiru tucks herself under the covers. Fakir hasn't gone to school again until this past week. He considers sometimes when Ahiru should start classes herself, and remembers the conversation they had several weeks ago, still ringing as clear to him as a bell. He had suggested as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world that she would enjoy the ballet classes again.
"Whatever you think is best for me, I suppose," She had said.
As he stares out the window on that autumn day, he shakes his head. No school right now, he decides once more. We'll wait a little longer.
"Fakir?"
His reaction to Ahiru's voice is eager as he whips his eyes around to meet hers. "Yes?" He breathes.
"That man with the purple hair that was about your age. He left."
Fakir feels a breath hitch in his throat, but then his keen expression is replaced by one dark and unhappy. He reflects on her statement a long time before answering.
"Yeah. He left Kinkan Town. He won't be coming back," He says without any anger.
"Oh."
Then they both revert to silence, and Fakir experiences that all familiar twinge of resentment when Autor's name comes up before it settles back down again. That day, when Fakir had gotten back from his discussion about missing class with his writing teacher, Mr. Strand, and saw what Autor had done, he had been furious beyond his own comprehension. Everything ever able to go wrong had done so then; he didn't like to talk about that moment where he discovered a human Ahiru, unable to feel or remember. He had thought he had let go of his rage, but it often liked to come back in short pangs.
Autor had just been a fool, a fool who cared too much and thought he had power Fakir had. His force to create stories into reality had less strength due to his lineage, but still resided, usable. A dangerous tool. Fakir knew twice in his life, now, the hazards of not being able to hone his power.
How could he ever hope to continue her story, to fix the wrongs? What would happen if he only made her life worse?
"The Prince and Princess acted like they knew me," Ahiru murmurs this time, implying another question.
"They do. They knew you before the amnesia," Fakir replies, not hesitating in his answer this time. During their visit, both Rue and Mytho had been upset at Ahiru's state, though otherwise they acted overjoyed that she was still alive. Mytho wanted to do everything for her, but Fakir denied his more extravagant offers. He still doesn't have a sure idea of what to do with Ahiru in this situation besides watch after her, bring her books, and just care.
He knows that soon, he will have to decide where to take her. She can't spend the rest of her life in a cabin and, while outside, following Fakir most everywhere he goes. Besides, he wants to discern a way to heal her memory and emotions, maybe through his writing, maybe through other means.
When he imagines screwing up, not quite as Autor had but with the worst possible negative outcome, he shudders and again rethinks his options.
"I'm back." Fakir trudges into the cabin with boots on, careless to the way he tracks in dirt. He scans the bedroom at the back first, where he can see it from the doorway, then glimpses around till he finds Ahiru, sitting by the empty fireplace.
"Hello, Ahiru."
"Hello," She responds back, as their usual greeting.
Even though the situation is as standard as standard can get with these past few months, Fakir has the sense that something has changed. A book with a sword and a raven as a cover lies at Ahiru's feet: The Prince and the Raven, recognizable in an instant. A ribbon bookmark Fakir gave to her on her last birthday sticks out from the pages, a third of the way down.
"Have you been reading that?" He spits out, and his grip around his own bag of books he brought her tightens.
Ahiru peers up at him, her expression dull and innocent. "Yes."
The ex-knight freezes in place, needing to think about this development. Memories of Mytho pop up first in his mind, to his own surprise, and then he wonders what the prince would think in this situation.
It doesn't take Fakir long to let the bag of books in his right hand plummet to the ground, where she can read them later. He removes his boots and joins her on the floor by the fireplace, all the while wondering whether he's an idiot or not, whether this will only make things harder.
He thinks he hears heavy laughter far off into the distance, and weighs whether it's from the person he thinks it's from or his own imagination. Sighing, Fakir turns a blind eye to the chuckling and tries to focus on the copy of The Prince in the Raven in his hands.
A foolish enormity pertaining to this moment overtakes him, and Fakir stares at the familiar eye of the Monster Raven, peeping out at him from the hardback cover. He then glimpses the sword engraved behind the villain of the story. Last, he moves his gaze up to Ahiru, who only looks back at him with waiting, with indifference to what Fakir does next.
"Who's your favorite character?" He asks, the words coming out of their own accord.
What appears to be a hint of a smile forms along her mouth. Her face seems brighter.
"The knight."