Sorrow

Once upon a time, even after she'd gotten her happy ending, a fairytale princess cried.

"You look sad."

"I am, a bit."

The white-haired prince moved around to the front of wife's chair, futilely seeking her downcast eyes. As ever, the beauty of his princess's face could only be tempered slightly by even the deepest of despair, and this tragic regret only underscored her loveliness. Not, of course, that he bore a bias. When she glanced up, allowing him a glimpse of her gracefully budding tears, he wished only to kiss them away. But he would never cut Rue off like that, and force her to keep her sadness locked inside. Siegfried knew better than that firsthand.

"What is it, Rue?" God, don't let it be that she wishes she hadn't come with me. Even though the raven-fed girl danced the part of a storybook princess, Siegfried couldn't help but remember – would never, ever forget – that Rue truly was human. Even if she claimed to be tainted by Raven's blood, her body long ago purged itself of that substance. Either through the process of science (if his researchers were right, human composition changed with time, the dead parts falling away and growing again in bits as tiny as strands of hair) or love (truly, he'd found, something incompatible with Raven's blood) Rue had remade herself. She was no more raven than Princess Tutu had been. And though he'd love her either way, selfish desire kept him thankful for that tiny bit of contamination. Siegfried felt certain that if he lost Rue, not even Princess Tutu could repair his heart.

"I love you, Mytho." Ah, she'd done it again! A lifetime of habit, it seemed, couldn't break so easily. Not that that stopped Rue from feeling as though she'd tumbled off the learning curve every time she called her husband his earthly name. In truth, though, she'd done phenomenally, only slipping when under stress.

"You can call me that, you know," he offered.

"No, no, it would be too confusing. Their long lost Prince Siegfried comes back not only with a Princess they know nothing of but named Mytho?" In some ways, Rue made a better regent than her husband, clever and pragmatic while his primary desire was to give her anything she desired.

"If that's how you feel about it… Ah, but you're still crying!" Siegfried knelt, clasping her hands and searching her crimson eyes with his gold ones. "Is loving me really so bad?"

Sometimes, Rue wondered if he had any idea how distracting he could be, staring at her with a gaze full of such adoration that she thought he might reshape the face of the world if she asked. Particularly compared to his previous emptiness, it stopped her short every time she realized that he lived for her, too. "No, of course not." She tried to compose herself, already embarrassed by the display of emotion. "Siegfried, you… This is all… This is everything."

"Then why are you crying?"

She evaluated. "No… No, it isn't important."

"I think it is."

Not sure she wanted to, Rue ended up blurting out what she had to say anyway. "Ahiru."

"Oh." Part of him, the part with identical thoughts and concerns, understood perfectly. Impaired emotions do nothing to impede memory, and Siegfried more than anyone knew how much they owed her. Ahiru risked everything for him, for both his and Rue's happy ending, thus consigning herself, again, to the simple role of a duck. But if Rue's concerns differed… "What is it?"

"Well… We belong to both worlds, Siegfried." She stood, moving to get dressed the part of the people's graceful princess. Outside responsibilities pulled on Rue, and she, for one, knew much better than to just sit around talking to her husband, even when she experienced upset. "That other existence is ours, too, in Kinkan town, but we'll never go back there. We left everything behind and… Well, I miss them sometimes."

The brusqueness of her voice did not go unnoticed by the white-haired prince, but, fortunately, he knew enough to realize that Rue was just trying to fight off emotion she didn't think she deserved, or should feel, lest someone mock her for her frailty. "Of course you do. So do I. But this…" He couldn't say it. For him, it might be easy, because he was from a storybook. But she wasn't. "This is the ending."

Even searching through a closet, the dark-haired princes held an innate grace. "Of course it is. It's our happy ending, and we couldn't ask for anything more."

"You're pretty strongly emphasizing that."

"Of course I am!" He still struggled, sometimes, with the nuances of emotion, and Rue remained overwhelmingly patient, explaining to him why someone stressed this and not that or had a face that said no when his or her mouth said yes. Fortunately, she only ever had to explain one time. "Mytho – Siegfried, we got everything we could want. We got happily ever after. But we didn't get it for ourselves."

He nodded. "Tutu."

"Ahiru. She told me, you know. She told me she still thought of me as Rue, when even I called myself nothing but Krahe. Tutu was just a costume she put on, but underneath, she was always just a well-intentioned girl… duck."

"But she…"

"She had to turn back into a duck! She did the most out of anyone, but she…" Rue sat down heavily on their bed, her knees curled delicately into her chest.

"She had to turn back into a duck," he repeated. It was the only thing to say, because sometimes the truth is what best encompasses the suffering, the regret.

Rue laid her head against her prince's chest. "They only live ten years or so, you know. Twenty, if you're lucky. We don't know how old Ahiru was in duck years, but as a girl she was thirteen! Siegfried… she could die anytime, and we wouldn't even know! She deserves to live out the rest of her human life… And…" Soft tears, just a few of them, soaked through his shirt.

In moments like that, Siegfried couldn't help but remember that his princess was only a fourteen year old girl, vulnerable and suspect to hurt. She'd been told from a young age that no one could love her, but Ahiru did. The clumsy girl was probably the first girl friend Rue ever had, the first one who loved her at all, much less risked everything to help her. He wasn't unaware that, for a royal couple, the two of them were incredibly young. Fourteen and eighteen (for, within the realms of the story, Mytho again began to age) year olds generally didn't head anything. "Fakir writes now, though. He'll stay with her. She won't die."

"You can't know that." Cynical Rue shone back through, her worry and agitation getting the better of her. "Neither of us can, and…" Even if she got the life she deserved, Rue knew with perfect clarity that they could do nothing for their friend, not even see her again. And if she didn't, well… They may as well have condemned her to die.

"I know… But while we can mourn her loss, we can also be grateful for knowing her in life, Rue."

"Yes…" She pulled her dress on, and, with a sad smile, circled her hands above her head, reaching out as though to invite her prince to dance.

Gently, he took her hand, and they exited the bedroom. And if Prince Siegfried's typical kind smile seemed to curve down a bit on the edges, and Princess Rue's gentle eyes seemed to shine with more wetness than they usually held, well. Sorrow cannot vanish so easily, after all.

A/N: in reference to the last one... i accented Pike and Lillie's names, because they would otherwise be pronounced without the "ay" sound at the end in English, so i found it more appropriate to denote that sound. On a completely different note, i really see Rue as being the more practical of the two of them... Thanks for reading! Affection next... And on a completely unrelated note that will not have significance later pshh, what do you guys think of Lillie/Femio?