ATTN: I've just recently finished Princess Tutu and all I can say is that it cannot be healthy to be this emotionally distraught over a fictional duck.
Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu, nor any of the songs/references used or alluded to in this fic.
Set about four to five years after the end of the series.
Zufrieden
"I think the purest of souls, those with the most fragile of hearts, must be meant for a short life. They can't be tethered or held in your palm. Just like a sparrow, they light on your porch. Their song might be brief, but how greedy would we be to ask for more?"
-Emm Cole
Feelings for Something Lost In Two Parts, Pt. 2
He crumples another sheet of parchment between his ink-stained palms, snarling and frustrated as he desperately makes grabs for words that elude his smudged fingertips. When he cannot grasp them, he yanks his much more tangible hair instead until his scalp stings and his brow is streaked with ink. There are a handful of papers that he keeps, however, because while they're scarce and scattered, the pieces are there and he knows it. It's simply a matter of stitching them together in a way that won't simultaneously rip out the still-fragile seams of reality.
Fakir sighs. It's a tired, heavy sound that seems much too old to come from such a young man. But as he gazes towards the small tuft of feathers peeking out from the nest of blankets in the basket beside his bed, he is reminded of why he labors: For she is the giver of happily ever afters, never taking more for herself than some pieces of bread and a few lazy naps in the afternoon sun.
Perhaps it is because he is human, born and inherently prone to overcomplicating things. Perhaps it is because he cannot fathom how such a passionate girl could possibly be content going back to such a provincial life. Perhaps it is because he can't quite understand the simplistic needs and desires of a duck (ah, how convoluted humans are!) Perhaps it's simply because he longs for the rasp of her sweet voice.
Fakir is a liar to say he longs for her voice alone, although he does truly miss her squeaks and titters. But he truly misses her hair as well, tufty and long and soft as down feathers, and the most dazzling shade of red.
(Though he worries that he may not remember the exact shade, he thinks, for it is not far beyond a writer's nature to romanticize.)
He crumples another paper after dragging his quill scathingly across yet another rejected line of prose. Her skin was not that of pristine porcelain, he reminds himself, but of a lightly sunkissed hue, dotted with freckles and dusted with pink. She was not graceful, he thinks, and Fakir recalls a gangly teenager who seemed startled by her own body, if not terribly earnest to learn it. He thinks to all of the times he's seen her trip or crash or stumble, and he remembers how small she felt in his arms when he'd catch her. She was as graceful as her namesake and he is very careful to chronicle this, for it is not Tutu that he longs to remember.
But as his hand slowly starts to drift away with his thoughts, there are words spilling forth from them, words such as once upon a time and all at once he stops, violently and absolutely.
Fakir refuses to impose his will upon her. He refuses. It is her story, he thinks, and she has chosen what she wants her ending to be.
He makes his way down the darkened hall to throw the papers into the fireplace, never once glancing up at the muse that slumbers at his bedside as he goes.