Princess Tutu's Gold Crown Town is inspired by Nördlingen, and the Shingeki no Kyojin walled cities for what's left of humanity is inspired by Nördlingen. This was inevitable, and you know it.
Beta-ed by Cherax Destructor.
[For the interests of making this thing as German as humanly possible, we're going with Duck instead of Ahiru. I know which I prefer, but it's a small difference we can overlook.]
"Let's give this story a happy ending." - Fakir and Duck end up in another place, in another time, in another city walled in by terrible secrets. A story can be saved from tragedy, so long as its characters are willing to fight for it.
The night before they disappeared was a normal night, and their day had been a normal day. Before class, Fakir woke drowsily and, through a haze of sleep, wrote about the baker baking and the fisherman fishing and the slow, quiet pace the Gold Crown Town Academy students kept as they perfected their artistic talents.
There was a shy, quiet girl hounding him after class for the past week, so he wrote a page on how the object of her affections would respond to her, politely but firmly, and how they would part ways peacefully and without any overly damaged feelings, and it would have been a resolution that Duck would have been proud of (except Fakir drew the line at dancing his feelings out to strangers.)
The production team for the Academy's newest avant-garde drama-ballet collaboration had trouble keeping their wits together after nights of minimal sleep, so he wrote shortly on how the backdrops stayed put; and how no one lost their voices from the autumn chill that was settling around town, but they did acknowledge that sleeping less and working too hard would make the production suffer; and so they paused to nap and replan and share honeyed tea, and they were much too busy to ask him to help out in their play. Fakir might have considered helping them again once, but they caught wind of his writing habits some months ago and tailed him for three whole days, asking him to write a script. Autor, after finding out, marched into his house and demanded that he cease flaunting his writing to the public, because what if his script influenced reality and became the prelude to tragedy—
"I was taking notes in the school library, I don't know what you call flaunting—no, wait, just get out."
Autor was having difficulties composing, and by the by, Fakir had seen his notes, had realised that it was written for Rue. It was short, slow and played in a minor scale, and while it was difficult for him to think of Rue without thinking of Princess Kraehe, he wrote about how Autor, while brainstorming, realised there was more to Rue than that fairytale damsel, and how she overcame her tragedy by rising to her feet, taking the sword of Prince Siegfried in her hand, and destroying the Raven with the prince at her side. He wanted to write more on how Rue danced herself out of a pinch when Anteaterina challenged her place in the advanced ballet class; or how Rue flew away to her happily ever after on a swan-drawn boat; or how Rue and Duck became friends (according to Duck, at least), but unlike the story's ending, those were events that Autor hadn't known about, and injecting entirely new memories into Autor's mind could drive him to insanity. So as tempting as that thought could be sometimes, he left it at that.
He sliced paper-thin apple slices and corn kernels off the cob for Duck before he made his own breakfast, and since she was still asleep, he left hers by her basket at the foot of his bed. He went to class, impressed the teacher with his pas de deux and left his partner blushing, spent most of his lunch in the library and just a few minutes of letting the shy, quiet girl down gently, and practiced solo until it became dark.
When he was leaving, he could hear the strains of piano from across the courtyard. If it was Autor playing (and he felt certain it was), he had picked up the tempo and added some cheerful trills.
Duck welcomed him home by flying into his face.
"Idiot," he said affectionately once she was done quacking angrily. "I wasn't going to wake you up before I left." The books were left at the door, so he had his arms free for Duck to fly into, and even as she pecked at him with her cold beak, he knew she wasn't too angry at him for not having breakfast with her that morning.
Fakir made up for it with dinner, and valiantly shared her suffering by forgoing bread and making barley soup. Duck's portion was left to cool before they sat down to eat, and when she gave him a pitiable look with her large, dark duck eyes, Fakir sighed and ruffled her head.
"Don't give me that look. If the veterinary doctor says bread isn't as good for you as oats and barley, then you're getting oats and barley."
Duck pecked sadly at her bowl of barley soup.
"There's corn? You like corn, all the corn I left you for breakfast is gone."
Duck quacked lowly. It sounded like a grunt, and he could hear distantly, from a year ago, Duck voicing her displeasure to him as a human girl. Thoughts like those still left him cold, so Fakir pushed that thought down with a mouthful of soup.
"How about grapes? It's harvest season, they'll have them in market on the weekend."
Duck harrumphed and turned her back on him.
"Alright," he said at last. He finished his dinner, and nudged her bowl towards her. "Why are you so set on bread anyway?"
Duck looked at the soup as if it offended her, walked past it and hopped into his lap. The side of her head pressed into his ribs as she tucked herself inside his school jacket. Could she tell how his heart picked up when she did that, or how the heat rose in his face? Panicking, Fakir cupped a hand around her wings to keep her still; in response, Duck burrowed in deeper. It felt horribly familiar.
"Right," he said. His voice shook. He swept his hand from her head down the curve of her neck over and over until he felt the nervousness subside. And when it was safe to speak again, he added, "Was it the time I found you in my locker? Did you really want my bread just for that reason?"
She quacked, happy. He sighed and held her closer. Not for the first time he thought about writing Duck from being a duck into a girl, and not for the first time, he killed the thought as it was. Some things were meant to be and some weren't – with the end of Drosselmeyer's story, the fantastical things were left to the stories, and their teachers might wax lyrical about marriage and love but they didn't want to marry the students or hiss like cats, and Duck was going to stay a duck forever.
He set her back on the table. "Bread occasionally then. I'm not spoiling you, you're still finishing that soup."
She did, albeit slowly, and once the bowls and cutlery were washed and dried, Fakir picked her up and headed upstairs. He switched on the lamp that he had retrieved from the girls' dormitory after Duck's attic-room had disappeared at the end of the Drosselmeyer's story, and Duck settled against it to watch him read. She blocked out some of the light, but Fakir figured it was the autumn chill that drove her to its warmth, and he didn't mind. He read up on narrative structures and plot devices and the difference between Greek and Classical tragedies, and when his mind started to drift, Duck pecked at his fingers and startled him awake.
"Alright, alright," he mumbled, grinding the heel of his palm into his eyes. "I'll go to sleep. Don't coddle me."
Duck flapped and took flight, landing beside his pillow. It really was getting cold, then. He'd have to add extra sheets to her basket in the morning. In the meantime, he pulled the pillowcase off his pillow, draped it carefully over her, and settled down to sleep.
Turning his head towards her, he added, "Goodnight." In the darkness, he could only hear her quack clearly, but he thought he saw the fluttering of her wings, stretching out languidly then folding inwards towards her breast, as if even as a duck, she was miming the hand sign of love.
Fakir slept, and dreamt.
It was a dream, he knew, because he was in the practice room beside the barre, and in the mirror, he saw Duck with her arms in third position, then fluidly raised to fourth position above her head. She wasn't on his side of the mirror, but she was so happy practicing ballet as a human girl, he didn't have the heart in him to be disappointed by it.
He leaned heavily against the barre, fixated as she moved to fifth position. The last he had seen her, she was thirteen and gangly, and it was only in the lake of despair that he'd saw the grace she had as Princess Tutu expressed in her dancing as Duck.
And while Fakir hated dreaming, because dreaming was to let his subconscious rule over him when he was vulnerable in sleep, and give words and images to the thoughts he tried to keep away, it was acceptable like this. What had he written earlier? – a peaceful resolution, a compromise that Duck would be proud of.
Duck caught him staring, blushed, and stumbled.
"Tch," he said, "be glad Mr. Cat didn't see. Accidents like that make him want to marry you."
"That's not my fault!" Duck shouted back as she scrambled to her feet. "I was focusing so hard and getting everything right, and you're the one staring and distracting me!"
She was right, and he didn't even feel guilty for it. Whatever older, adolescent image his sleeping mind conjured of Duck as a human girl, even if he had no form on which to mould those thoughts, made him ache at the absence of her.
"You haven't been practicing, idiot," he said. With his hand extended towards the mirror, he added, "Come on, I'll help you out."
The Duck in the mirror looked uncertainly at his hand, as if it were a dubious peace offering. Any moment now, she would say that it was impossible to reach him, that she was on one side of the mirror and he was on the other for a reason, that she thought their pas de deux at the bottom of that shadowy lake should stay their last.
But then she ducked beneath the barre on her side of the mirror and slid through to his, the mirror rippling violently in her wake. She grinned sheepishly from beneath the barre, and reached her hand up to him.
"That wasn't very graceful," she admitted. "I wanted to do a grand jeté over here, but I don't think I've practiced enough for that."
Fakir reached down and folded his fingers around hers. Had she always been so small? He pulled her up effortlessly and turned her in a pirouette.
"It doesn't matter if you didn't do it right," he said. "I would have caught you."
"I know," she said. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose had darkened somewhat as she aged, but it suited her better. "You said you'd be there to support me."
"Always," he said solemnly. "What did you want to practice then?"
"Oh!" Duck said, flustered. "I actually—actually, I wanted to do a pas de deux. I know I'm out of touch and everything, and I haven't practiced in ages, and I'm just going on memory on what I think I remember, but I really really want to do Cinderella. I don't know if I can, and I'll probably trip over my feet again, and there are so many lifts—"
"That's fine," Fakir said. He lifted their joined hands. "Do you remember how it goes?"
"Not really," Duck said. She reddened and looked aside. "I'm really out of practice."
She was. Once, Mr. Cat had told them that an audience could spot it if they didn't practice for three days. With a year of no practice, Duck would have been dropped out of probationary. It was the sort of dancing that could have made Femio look impressive – her turns were awkward, and Fakir nearly took a kick to his face when he lifted her.
"That was terrible," she admitted at the end as he put her down. She didn't even look at him.
Fakir bent, panting, and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve. It was terrible, and that didn't matter.
"It was," he said with a sigh. He took her hand, and turned her to face him. "But that's why we're practicing. So we can get better."
Duck smiled uncertainly. "You're just saying that."
"Do you think you can't get better? Or that you can't do anything?" He leaned down, his forehead bumping hers.
Her breath caught. She leaned towards him, and he imagined he could count every individual freckle dusting her face. Her eyes were fixed on his, unblinking, and he imagined he could count every single lash too.
"No," she breathed. Her smile widened, genuine. "Not anymore."
"Good," he said, drawing away. "So dance with me."
It was better the second time, then the third, and by the fourth, Fakir felt he could hear the bells tolling midnight around them.
Duck smiled, and stepped back.
She'll leave, he thought irrationally. It was midnight, and Duck would leave.
"I won't," she said beatifically, as if she knew what thought was running through his mind. Was it obvious, the panic on his face?
"I'm happy as I am," she continued. "With you, I was able to give Mytho and Rue their happy ending. With you, we gave Gold Crown Town a better ending than what Drosselmeyer thought up. Even as I am, as I will be when you wake up, I'm still happy. I couldn't be happier, Fakir."
He fell to one knee, and held her hand against his cheek.
Duck rose. Her ballet slippers had turned into pointe shoes when he wasn't looking and when she stepped forward en pointe, like Princess Tutu would have, she reached for his face with her opposite hand, mirroring him.
"I'm happy with you," she said. "That will never change. But our story had a happy ending. Miss Edel might even say this was our glorious ending. So long as we have that, there's no need for Princess Tutu."
"I know," Fakir said. His voice shook. "I know. I know I should be happy, I should."
Duck sank to her knees. Her arms cradled him now, and he remembered this, the way she held him after Princess Tutu rescued him from the fate the oak tree had meant for him.
"There's nothing more I want right now than for you to be happy," she said gently. "But this is a happy ending that you won't get if you try to rewrite the world to suit you."
Her lips pressed against his temple. "Please be happy, Fakir. No matter what happens, I'll stay by your side."
Fakir couldn't hear anything but the sound of bells ringing in the distance. In his mind, Duck's voice echoed. He held onto that and the sensation of her warmth surrounding him as he felt the dream fading.
"And I'll always be by yours," he murmured.
The practice room was dissolving into darkness. Any moment now, he would wake in his room, with Duck sleeping beside his pillow, and he would wake her so they could have breakfast together before school, and the day would go on as normal.
But when Fakir woke, Duck was no longer there, and he was no longer in Gold Crown Town.