"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.
[If you want to shine for someone else, you can't be afraid of the dark. And Duck's not afraid. (Not too much, she thinks.)]
2. All the things you (n)ever wanted
And what happened to Duck after the story ended?
As Fakir liked to say to her occasionally, the story of the Prince and the Raven was finally over, and they now had their own stories and own lives to live. The absence of Mytho and Rue was noted by the Academy students, but no one discussed it beyond some wistful comments on how they used to have an exceptionally talented ballerina in a signature red leotard, or the occasional pining for her princely partner.
Gold Crown Town, freed from Drosselmeyer's story, welcomed people who were not electric eels or Indian rhinoceroses through its gates. New ballet teachers replaced Mr. Cat and Miss Goatette. Unfortunately, a new veterinary doctor took residence in the town as well. He strolled past the lake one day, took one look at Fakir tearing up breadcrumbs for Duck, and walked right in to tell him to stop doing so, for reasons Duck did not understand nor like.
Duck, who had thought it impossible to dislike someone as much as she disliked Fakir at the start of her enrolment into the Academy, hated the veterinary doctor and his opinions on ducks eating bread. Fakir, on the other hand, kept telling her that he had a good point (he didn't) and that he was very helpful when it came to caring for horses (that Fakir didn't even need to ride, now that he wasn't a Knight) and feeding ducks (he wasn't).
"I'm doing this for the best."
"Quack."
"You used to like apples so much."
"Quack quack."
She ate apple slices out of his hands anyway, because Fakir spent so much time preparing them for her, and it was hard to be so unkind to Fakir when his writing had started to take a toll on him. It was Duck who noticed it, when he started falling asleep at his desk reading the books Autor had left him. After nights and nights of hearing his head fall with a thunk onto his desk, she realised he was much tireder than he let on.
Duck flew over to the back of his chair, took his shirt collar firmly in her beak to jerk him awake, and was disappointed to get nothing from it. She tapped her cold beak against the back of his hand – and nothing – and sat on his head – still nothing – and finally heaved a blanket from his bed and dropped it over him. And with that done, she settled against the warmth of the lamp, and remembering again how sad it was to shine for someone who didn't pay attention to you, watched over Fakir until she nodded off to sleep as well.
The morning afterwards, Duck woke after Fakir had left for school, and plotted as she sullenly ate the broccoli florets he had left her. She perfected a disapproving glare to give him when he came home, and ended up sitting around after it had gone dark because he didn't come home at all. Was he still at practice? But it was past dinnertime, and Charon came back from the forge without Fakir, and even if he talked kindly to her as he sliced cucumbers and zucchini for dinner ("It's not like him to forget to make your dinner, Duck. But I'm sure it's just schoolwork holding him back,"), it didn't stop her worrying.
After a dinner of vegetables and intense thinking, Duck took flight to Autor's reconstruction of Mr. Drosselmeyer's study. She made enough of a noise until Autor answered, and gave him the disapproving glare she had spent the whole day practicing.
"What's with that face?" he huffed.
"Quack."
"If you're looking for Fakir – and you have to be, there's no other reason for you to be here – he's inside," Autor said, crouching down to scoop her up. Once, Fakir had mentioned that Autor remembered Duck from when she had been a girl, and he respected her for what she had accomplished; and since he was trying to repent for locking her and Uzura out of the study, she could cash in on that guilt, because Autor was unlikely to forget it any time soon. Duck spent a day riding on Autor's head, and deemed it a suitable vehicle of transport for days where it was too cold to fly, much to his anguish.
Fakir was napping with his head pillowed in his arms, on the desk that still bore the mark of a Book Man's axe. He hadn't heard Duck at the door, and as Autor carefully shut the door behind him, it seemed that Autor didn't intend him to.
"I have this feeling," Autor whispered to her, leaning back against the door, "that he's over-taxing himself."
Duck nodded.
"I also have this feeling that I'm not accomplishing anything by talking to a duck who may or may not understand me."
Duck wriggled out of his arms, flapped high, and landed on his head.
"Alright, you clearly do. Would you please stop doing that?"
She nodded, satisfied, and settled down to his shoulder.
"Writing the story of Gold Crown Town's characters isn't that hard, to be honest. I mean, I could probably do it, if I had the talent for it. No—stop—please stop sitting on my head—what I'm trying to say is that... he might be writing something he shouldn't be writing. Something like—you know what I'm thinking, don't you?"
Duck landed on the floor, and turned to look up at him. Autor frowned, bent down to one knee, and met her questioning look.
"Something difficult. Something like..." he waved a hand at her. "Something about you."
Duck peered at his hand. She lifted her right wing and examined it, and then her left, and then she tottered, unbalanced, on one foot as she peered at that too.
"I meant all of you. I think he wants to write you back into a girl."
She gave him the disapproving glare again. She felt she was getting very good at it now.
"I've read enough to know what happens when somebody wishes for something they shouldn't have. Be careful what you wish for, alright?" Autor muttered.
I know, Duck wanted to say, if she had words instead of quacking. She had read fairytales too, and she knew what happened to the couple who had three wishes and ended up with sausages stuck to their noses. She wanted to say it with all her heart, because she believed in Fakir, and she remembered the look on his face as he tore down Drosselmeyer's writing contraption in the clock tower.
Fakir, the boy who learnt too soon that careless writing could turn into tragedy, would never be as careless as to wish for something as dangerous as a duck-to-girl transmogrification. Fakir, who had vowed to stay by her side no matter what happened. He said he would be happy with her as a duck, as he would be if she was a girl. She trusted in Fakir enough to believe he wouldn't do that. And because Autor would never understand her quacking, she held a wing aloft, in the mime for a promise, then swept it down into a curtsy.
"I'll ask a ballet division student about that tomorrow," Autor said. "In the meantime, you're getting him home, I take it?"
It ended up being the three of them walking back to Fakir's house, while Autor muttered the whole way about composition homework he was meant to be doing. As a half-hearted attempt to make Autor feel better, and to coerce Fakir to keep himself upright as he walked, Duck perched on Fakir's head the whole way back.
And up until the day they disappeared, Duck was content with how life went on. She practiced diving in the lake and swam circles around the pier Fakir would sit and write at. There was an entire month where Fakir tried to keep her indoors when she moulted, reasoning that she couldn't fly during moulting season. Duck retaliated by following Charon to the forge and sleeping the day away while Fakir ran circles around the entire town looking for her. She met some of the nice girl ducks by the lake, and they showed her how to gather grass and build nests until she managed to fix up a nice one to show Fakir, who carefully dislodged it from the ground and placed it on the shelf with his best quills and metalwork novelties.
And as Fakir became better at writing, and less overcome by the burden of it all, Duck felt that the world, as it was, was fairly acceptable.
(She tried to let Fakir know that it could have been improved by more bread for her.
Fakir was not lenient.)
But then she woke up one morning in a manufacturing district far, far away from Gold Crown Town, and she didn't even know how wrong she had been.
Beside her ear, someone yelled: "Duck!"
Someone was shaking her. For whatever reason, Fakir was having a bad morning, and he was taking it out on her.
Duck batted the hands away, found the blanket again, pulled it over her head, and rolled over back to sleep. She had one glorious moment of closing her tired, straining eyes again before the blanket was snatched away.
"Duck!"
She pried her eyes open. It was cold, and early, and it felt like dawn. It certainly sounded like dawn, from the birdcall outside.
Duck yawned and rubbed her hands over her poor cold arms. "What's happening? Why is it so early—?"
And then she stopped to look at her hands.
Two hands, with fingers and no webbing. Human hands. For a duck.
She stared her palms, and turned them over to stare at the back. Her hands weren't quite as she had remembered them. In the Academy, she had done her fair share of mopping and chores when Mr. Cat had declared she would be kept back after class, and her hands weren't dainty and soft like Princess Tutu's. Now they were marked by healing scabs and calluses at her fingertips, and she wasn't entirely sure how they had gotten there.
Someone grabbed her shoulder and shook her hard.
"Duck!" Pique shouted, "Duck, get up! You're going to be late for the wagon!"
She scrambled out of bed, and took the armful of clothes Pique pushed at her.
"But—" this isn't the Gold Crown Town Academy, don't we have single bed dormitories, and don't we wake up at seven for class instead of whenever it is right now, and aren't I—aren't I meant to be a duck?
"No buts!" Lilie declared happily. She slapped Duck across the back with what was likely intended to be good cheer, but was in fact horribly painful.
"Oh, Duck! It's just like you to sleep through the dawn shift!" Lilie added, cradling her face in her hands as she gazed off into space. "I can't wait to see how angry Miss Julia will be when she finds out!"
"Miss Julia?" Duck parroted as she looked around her. It was a huge dormitory, with many beds packed tightly together, and many women changing from their nightgowns to day clothes around her.
"Miss Julia!" Pique repeated. "Hurry up, she's waiting!"
There had been more than a few occasions where Duck had ended up without a stitch of clothing in public. Mostly, it had been around Fakir, and that was something Duck fought very hard to not think upon; and it still didn't mean she wanted to change right there, with Lilie and Pique and so many strangers around her.
"Goodness!" Lilie said. Her eyes were shining with malevolent glee. "Don't be shy, Duck! No one's looking, other than Pique and I, and no matter how flat and undeveloped you are, we would never go about comparing how you look to everyone else!"
And because Lilie had brought it up, and because she had to know if the time that had passed meant that she had grown up a little too, Duck worked the nightgown off her head, and looked down towards the floor. It wasn't as if she had expected much – she certainly didn't expect she'd grow out of being gangly little Duck and into a graceful prima donna like Princess Tutu. And on the other hand, she hadn't been expecting the necklace hanging around her neck either.
It was the necklace Drosselmeyer had given her in Gold Crown Town. It was the final piece of Mytho's heart he was saving for his grand finale. And it wasn't meant to be around her neck anymore, when it should have been restored to Mytho entirely.
Whatever look she had on her face sent Lilie into a rapturous fit. She was about to tackle Duck joyously, but Pique hauled her back without even blinking.
"I'm serious, Duck—"
"—you poor insecure thing! Here, let Lilie cheer you up—"
"—get dressed before you get into more trouble than ever!"
She scrambled her way into the clothes Pique had handed to her before Lilie could tackle her again. The clothes she couldn't recognise, but it was a decent fit, and although they had seen better days and their cuffs were fraying, it felt as familiar to her as the Gold Crown Town Academy uniform.
Pique and Lilie grabbed an arm each once she was decently clothed. They dragged her out of the dormitory over the sounds of her protests and hauled her along hallways and corridors that Duck could barely differentiate or navigate.
"Wait—where are we going now?"
"Scatter-brained as usual!" Lilie said with a sigh.
"Getting that last flag you haven't made yet," Pique huffed. "You'll have time to do it on the wagon. Honestly, Duck, I'm amazed Miss Julia hasn't sent you back to the landfills seeing all these deadlines you've missed!"
Duck didn't know what a landfill was, but it sounded like a dumping ground for... things to fill up the land with, and she definitely didn't want to be there.
And at the same time, she wasn't sure what she was doing here either.
"I'm... I'm so relieved," she added weakly.
"You should be!" Pique said.
"Heavens know how long you would last if you go back there without us!" added Lilie. "I still remember how we would go days without eating—"
"—at least three sometimes—"
"—and how some people lost fingers in the winter—"
"—I'm so glad we never got frostbite—"
"—and how some people became hunchbacked after tilling the ground—"
"—at least our backs didn't break. They'd never give us a job in the factory if we had."
Duck didn't remember anything about a landfill or trying her hand at farming or being so cold she'd lose fingers. She kept nodding along to whatever it was Pique and Lilie were saying until she was sure the uncertainty was showing on her face.
Last time it had happened, Drosselmeyer had taken the time to establish a story for who she would be. And even a story of a hopeless beginner student in the ballet class, one she'd thought of as being her own, was better than no story at all.
"Poor Duck!" Lilie announced, when she glanced over at Duck's petrified face. "Now we've scared her into thinking Miss Julia will send her off by herself!"
She sounded entirely too happy about it.
"Really," Pique huffed when they got to the workshops. She continued as she headed towards the shelves at the back and started sifting through a pile of dark green fabric, "Don't let that happen, Duck. Lilie and I won't be with you when that happens—"
Lilie chirped, "I would never land myself back there again!"
"—and Fakir's gone off with the military—"
Duck blurted, "Fakir?"
Lilie clapped a hand over her mouth. Pique paused in her search to stare at her.
"Fakir," Pique said, with a frown. "You know, that tall severe boy who kept hovering over you when we were in the landfills."
"The dark brooding one," Lilie said. "He kept looking as if he had the most malicious intents for you!"
Duck swallowed and knitted her hands together. "I... don't think he did?" she said with a nervous laugh.
"He didn't," Pique said firmly. She glared at Lilie. "Fakir was always just... being protective over her. It was a bit weird though."
"We thought he was linked in with the black market from Wall Sina, and that he was rounding up vulnerable girls for the people smugglers."
"How could he be in with the black market? He was at Shiganshina when the Wall fell!"
"You never know with those criminal types!"
"How could he even find a way to become part of an underground organisation?!"
"Desperate people turn to terribly immoral things in desperate times!"
"He never left the landfills at all before military enlistment!" Pique yelled. "And do you really think someone from Wall Sina would sneak over to here to find people to join their gangs?"
"Certainly!" Lilie said. She glanced over at Duck and elbowed her in the side. "Say, Duck, don't you think Pique sounds a bit defensive of Fakir?"
"I do not!" Pique called from across the room. She yanked a sheet of fabric out of the pile, and marched back to push it into Duck's hands.
"Pique's jealous of how much Fakir liked you, Duck," Lilie sang out.
"I'm not jealous," Pique said with a huff. She glanced over to Duck, who was holding the sheet protectively in front of her as if it would ward off the shouting. "Honestly," she added, her voice softening. "I'm not. I'm just... well, people like Fakir who try so hard to keep other people safe in a place like those landfills are hard to come by, and I don't think Lilie should be saying that Fakir only did those things because he wanted to sell Duck off to people smugglers."
"Well," Lilie said airily. She flapped her hand dismissively at Pique. "He's with the military now. He must have reformed because there aren't any criminals there."
"Except the Military Police," Pique muttered. Then her eyes popped open. "What's the time? We need to get Duck on that wagon immediately!"
"What?" Duck said, startled. She was still trying to wrap her mind around the idea that she was a girl wearing Mytho's heart shard again, and that all these people from Gold Crown Town were here with her in a place that was definitely not Gold Crown Town, and what landfills were, and how Fakir's criminal reputation had followed him here, and what she was meant to do with this flag, when Lilie snatched up some needle, scissors and thread and Pique grabbed her and started sprinting.
They were going down endless hallways before they finally made it outside to a courtyard, where a sleepy young woman was waiting for them beside a pile of wooden crates. Duck had guessed correctly earlier: it was dawn and the sky was still dark.
"Duck," the young woman said when they arrived. "You're late."
"We couldn't get her awake in time," explained Lilie. "Honestly, Miss Julia, we tried everything we could!"
"And it took so long to find Duck's sewing pile," Pique added. "She put her things in the right place, but someone else put their things in there too!"
Miss Julia pinched the space between her eyebrows. "Really, Duck. If you were better with managing your time and workspace, you could be a truly exceptional worker."
"She is who she is, Miss Julia," Lilie said, pinching Duck's face and pulling at it until she made a smile. "Our dear scatterbrained Duck."
"If only she was more organised," Miss Julia sighed. "You're lucky that the wagon is late today. I'm sure the steelworkers have loaded it with more things than they have space for, which means we have less space for the flags and the uniforms..."
She peered at the flag Duck clasped to her chest.
"Is that the one you haven't finished yet?"
"Yes, and Lilie's got the needle and thread for her too," Pique said.
"You'll have to finish it on the way there," Miss Julia said. "Although who knows if you have the room to move an arm by the time they're done with it."
She thanked Pique and Lilie for getting Duck here at a reasonable time, sent them back to the factory floor, then took the flag from Duck. She looked over it critically, then folded it up and handed it back.
"The stitches are a bit wide here, and you've got a bit to do," she commented. "But if you make good time, it'll be done when we get to the Trost training camp."
With Pique and Lilie gone, Duck felt less certain about keeping her ruse up. Being bad at ballet and being kept back after class was one thing, but messing up embroidery and being sent to the landfills where people starved and were smuggled away was another.
"I'll... try my best?" she ventured. Miss Julia looked kinder than Mr. Cat, but if her friends had been right, she was the brink of being sent away to the landfills if she made any more mistakes.
"Let's hope so," Miss Julia said. "Instructor Shadis—" she started sharply, then stopped to inhale, close her eyes, exhale, and restart with forced calm, "Instructor Shadis is so demanding with the deliveries. I don't know why he bothers so much. It's just flags for the trainees, and the ones we deliver for the military personnel at Trost are so much more important because they're the ones the public gets to see."
Duck didn't know what to say to that, so she nodded, unwound some thread and starting threading her needle. She wondered if Instructor Shadis was as demanding as Mr. Cat, and she couldn't tell if that was a good or bad thing, but so long as he didn't try to marry her, she felt she might be alright.
And when Miss Julia was looking away, she snuck a hand into her shirt and pulled out the necklace to take a closer look. It wasn't quite the gleaming piece of jewellery she had last remembered it being: the chain and the metal frame around the gem was tarnished and was in dire need of polishing, but when she turned it to the right angle, the red stone at the centre shone like it was detecting its fellows again.
Miss Julia added from beside her, "Admiring your necklace again, Duck?"
"I'm sorry!" she blurted out, stuffing the necklace back into her shirt, "I'll start on my sewing now, I promise!"
"There's no need, not when you don't have a surface to work on," Miss Julia replied. "I've always wondered who gave that to you, though."
Duck wondered how the answer of 'a dead man without hands made this from the shattered heart of a prince, and gave it to me because he wanted to see me die in his story' would go down. She tried picturing it, and felt her mouth fall open during that daydream.
"I—um, that's a secret really, you don't really want to know about it, it's all very complicated really, I bet you wouldn't want to hear about it!"
Was her face as red as her hair at the moment?
"I'm sure I would," Miss Julia said with curiosity. Duck wondered if it was directed at how interesting she thought this necklace was, or if she was attracting attention by how bizarre she was being.
"It's—it's, um, it's a... really long story..." Duck started, folding her arms up and furrowing her brow in a look of intense concentration. She pulled the necklace out again and took a good long look at it. "I'm not sure where to start, but—I guess—I could... talk about how I... ended up with it?"
She peered intensely at the necklace to buy herself more time. When viewed under scrutiny, the necklace was more ordinary than she thought it should be. And at the same time, Duck realised, when she looked at her clothes with the fraying cuffs and threadbare patches, it was exactly the sort of necklace a poor factory worker who used to work in the fields might have had.
In fact, it suited her situation perfectly. It was as if it was made for her, and that made her wonder if someone was set on making sure she would have and keep it. Because if she was meant to have it, she was meant to be a girl again.
And if she was meant to be a girl, and meant to carry one of Mytho's heart shards, she was meant to turn into Princess Tutu again.
And if she was meant to turn into Princess Tutu again...
Duck didn't want to know how that would go. If Fakir was here, if she had this necklace, and if she retained the ability to turn into Princess Tutu with the necklace, there was only one thing this would lead to.
She wondered if taking the necklace off or quacking would leave her a duck again; and if it did, would it still be reversed with a splash of water? The necklace was a little different here – what would she do if it didn't work the same way?
The apprehension must have shown on her face, because Miss Julia leaned in and waved a hand in front of her face.
"You were saying, Duck?"
"No!" she shouted quickly, clamping her hands protectively over the necklace. "I was saying nothing—which is—which is why you were waving at me like that! Of course! I meant to be saying something, I was just thinking really hard on what it was!"
"You were... going to say how you ended up with it?"
"Oh, yes. Yes, I was thinking very hard about it—and, er, someone gave it to me."
It was a terrible answer, although not an outright lie.
"That doesn't seem like a complicated story at all," Miss Julia replied, looking a bit disappointed at that.
"Well, you see actually—there's more to it than that."
She hadn't mentioned anything about the dancing crows, and ghost knights, and the voice in the river after all.
"It wasn't really that person's to give," Duck explained, "And then, because it wasn't his to give, it wasn't really mine, even after he had given it to me."
"So that... necklace was stolen?" Miss Julia asked, raising her eyebrows.
"No, I'm not saying that!" Duck yelped, tightening her hold.
On second thoughts though, it... was a bit like that. It had been Mytho who shattered his heart, but he definitely hadn't given Drosselmeyer permission to set it into a necklace. But the heart shards were making their way back to Mytho anyway, so it was... also alright that Duck was carrying it for the time being?
"I mean—it's not stolen because the person who had it first lost it, and the person who gave it to me gave it to me so I could return it to him, only I... I can't find him yet."
It was as if a tight rope was strung across her chest. She swallowed tightly when she thought about how Mytho might be missing his heart for days to come, and how much longer it might take now to return it to him.
"Oh, Duck," Miss Julia said sympathetically. She laid a comforting hand on Duck's shoulder. "I understand. After what happened with Wall Maria, it must have been... very difficult to keep track of the people who became refugees."
She nodded weakly. "It's hard thinking about it. But I'm going to find him, I know I will."
She hadn't expected reassurance, but Miss Julia was strangely silent when she said that. Fortunately, she was saved from needing to say anymore when the wagon arrived.
And unfortunately, it was mostly loaded up with steelworkers and their crates. Miss Julia did not look pleased, but the wagon driver and the steelworkers sitting in the back insisted that taking blades to the militia and the training camps was far more important than their flags and uniforms.
Miss Julia looked like she dearly wanted to argue that. Instead, she shrugged it off, pointed to one crate of uniforms, and told them to break it open, because they would be holding onto those uniforms to save them the space of one crate; and if anyone felt that they'd be alright with letting supplies go undelivered, they could personally explain it to Instructor Shadis of the trainees' legion, and Captain Woerman of the Garrison, and whoever was in charge of the Scouting Legion at Trost if the Scouting Legion ever stayed at one place at one time.
The steelworkers shut up and did exactly as she said.
As it turned out, Duck could manage sewing like she could manage ballet – no particular talent beyond the basics, but for what she was doing, the basics satisfied. She made small running stitches to hold the insignia of a pair of crossed swords on the green flag, and only jabbed herself with the needles and pins when the wagon jolted. And for that, Duck was proud.
"You needn't rush it," Miss Julia said, after Duck was done with the swords. "The driver's told me we're going to Trost to make the deliveries first."
"Is that... bad?"
"Not for us. Delivering swords for the Garrison and Scouting Legion to the military barracks at Trost takes more priority – they'll get first pick of the best ones, and then the rest go to the trainees. It won't matter, soldiers need to learn how to make a good cut on a Titan, training swords or not."
Duck wanted to ask exactly what a Titan was; what the Garrison, Scouting Legion and Military Police were; and if she was allowed to look around the trainees' camp for Fakir, because Pique and Lilie had said he'd been there since military recruitment from the landfills. But the last part seemed a bit inappropriate, and the first two sounded like common sense for someone who belonged here. The last thing she wanted to do was to point out how much she didn't belong here.
For lack of anything else to say, she said, "I'm sure we'll get everything done on time."
"I'm not worried about that," Miss Julia said drolly. "I'm more concerned that Instructor Shadis will be less than pleased that we're not keeping to his schedule as he expected."
That settled it. Instructor Shadis sounded like he was worse than Mr. Cat. Duck had never seen a militia in her life, but Mr. Cat was like a brigade general with his ballet drills as it was.
Trost reminded Duck of Gold Crown Town. It was quaint and charming, with its whitewashed walls and red roofs that felt like home. Unfortunately, the towering walls that surrounded it and left many parts of the town in shadow also reminded Duck of Gold Crown Town when it had been walled in by Drosselmeyer's machinations.
She wanted to know exactly what it was they were being locked in for now.
"You look like you've never been to Trost before," Miss Julia remarked as their wagon made their way through the streets.
Duck gulped. "Well—ah, um, you know, I really enjoy sightseeing! And this place is so pretty, it reminds me of—" she almost said home, "—a storybook!"
Miss Julia chuckled. "What's inside Wall Sina would be a real storybook. This is certainly a step up from Wall Maria, but it's nothing like the fancy palace the king lives in." Then she said, "Here we are. Step out Duck, the steelworkers will want to move their cargo out first."
There were military personnel wearing the insignia of a green unicorn with a flowing mane stationed at the barracks they arrived at. In the wagon, she had noticed that the things meant for the trainees had the crossed swords, and the Garrison had the roses, which meant that the unicorn was either Scouting Legion or Military Police.
The unloading took longer than Miss Julia would have liked. She frowned at the ruckus they were making, then nudged Duck in the shoulder.
"The Military Police won't want to help us. Run ahead, and find someone from the Garrison to pass a message to Captain Woerman. We have new flags and extra uniforms for them, and some more for the new graduates in two months."
Duck mumbled the instructions to herself as she headed towards the barracks. Captain Woerman. New flags. Extra uniforms. Some spare for the new graduates. Captain Woerman. New flags. Extra uniforms—!
She ran straight into a uniformed person in her haste. He too wore the green unicorn insignia, which could be Military Police, and to Duck, it didn't look like he wouldn't want to help her.
"I'm so sorry!" Duck blurted out, rubbing her sore forehead.
"You should be, kid," the man said with a frown. "Watch where you're going next time."
"I didn't mean to!" she replied, "I just had a lot on my mind." If he was military personnel, he could help her. It was worth a shot. "I've come here with Miss Julia from the manufacturing districts, and I need to find Captain Woerman and let him know we have new flags and extra uniforms and spare uniforms for the new graduates for the Garrison."
The man eyed her, bemused. "And what am I meant to do with that information?"
Duck gaped. "You could... help me find him?"
He snorted in derision. "Go to a member of the Garrison for that. The police have better things to do than run errands for the stationary guards."
And he strode past her without another word. Duck stared at him as he walked off, and when she was certain he wouldn't be looking back, stuck her tongue out at him. The nerve of that man!
She was still fuming by the time she rounded the next corner and ran into someone else.
"Ouch—no, not again, I'm so sorry, I didn't see!"
"Careful there, Miss," the unfortunate person said, dusting down his uniform – military, roses at the breast pocket. He was tall and thin, with a bushy moustache, and he looked much friendlier than the last person she had run into.
"You're a member of the Garrison," Duck exclaimed. "Can you help me?"
"I'll do my best. Captain Hannes of the Stationary Guard." The man replied. Then he straightened up, looking much more serious than he had earlier.
"Well! I'm—um, Duck from... the manufacturing districts?" Duck said, trying to keep her face straight and equally serious. "And I've come here with Miss Julia, with new flags and extra uniforms for the Garrison, and I'm meant to find Captain Woerman and let him know so he can receive them."
"Captain Woerman, you say? I couldn't tell you where he is at the moment, but as a Captain, I can authorise this delivery as well," Captain Hannes said. "Of course, if it has to be him, you could ask a member of the Military Police to find him for you."
Duck felt her eye tick. "I... think Miss Julia would be happier if you took this delivery, Captain Hannes."
She was; and she hardly looked surprised when Duck recounted how rude the first man she encountered had been.
"Now, Duck," Miss Julia said peaceably, as her eyes flickered over to the members of the Military Police who were only metres away and in perfect position for eavesdropping. "The police officers are very busy. And you found Captain Hannes only minutes later, so there really isn't anything to be angry about."
When they were unloading the uniforms and flags into the storage rooms, far away from the prying eyes and listening ears of the Military Police, she made a face and nudged Duck with her shoulder.
"Awfully uptight, don't you think?" she said as they stacked up uniforms and refolded the flags into perfect rectangles.
"Who?"
"The Military Police," Miss Julia said exasperatedly. "The ones who always complain about how our badges and uniforms and flags are never good enough for them. And who always come to our factories saying that we're not being productive enough when we spin and weave the cotton without nearly as much resources as the steelwork districts."
Hadn't Pique said that the only place in the military with criminals was the Military Police? Duck wasn't entirely sure what they did that bothered so many people, besides being extremely unhelpful and unpleasant when they were asked for help, but she could only hope that Fakir would not end up there by the time she found him.
That made her stop and think, as she piled up uniforms and marked off their paperwork. In her hopes that she would find Fakir at the training camps, she had neglected to ask about how large the place actually was. Would she have time to go about looking for him? What if there was more than one training camp, and he wasn't at the one she was going to? What would she do then?
She thought about what she might have done back at Gold Crown Town. Certainly, her world was much smaller there, and it was much easier to navigate – and here, there were great expanses of field and road separating her from the manufacturing district and Trost, and she didn't even know where the training camps would be. But until she exhausted her options, she couldn't give up on finding Fakir. They needed to figure out this story together – somehow. She just wasn't sure how yet.
They passed Captain Hannes, who was deep in discussion with a tall stern man, on the way back to the wagon. Duck waved. He waved in return. The stranger turned his face a fraction to glare at her as they went by.
It felt like a torrent on ice down her back. Duck stiffened, looked ahead, and rushed on her way.
"Captain Woerman is a bit... severe, I admit," Miss Julia said, once she had caught up with her at the wagon. "But there's no need to run from him, Duck."
"I don't know," Duck replied. She wrung her hands in her skirt and plunked herself down in the back. "There's something about him that doesn't feel right to me."
Miss Julia eyed her suspiciously, as if waiting for her to elaborate, but Duck stared into the distance and said nothing. To her own ears, it sounded ridiculous; to Miss Julia, it would have sounded deranged. But looking at Captain Woerman felt like looking at the Book Men as they raised their axe to Fakir's hands, and nothing she felt about the Book Men ever turned out to be good.
They arrived at the training camp earlier than they had anticipated. Miss Julia was still less than pleased about arriving later in the day, and even told the wagon driver that it would have been faster to take them here in the first place. The driver argued back that it would've been more work on his horses to cart around the steelworkers' cargo for longer, and that they were here now, Captain Woerman hadn't complained none, so why would Instructor Shadis?
"Of course," Miss Julia said. She folded her arms and stared down the wagon driver for a moment longer, then added airily to Duck, "Run along and find Instructor Shadis for me, will you?"
"But I don't know where to find him—"
"Neither do any of us. Ask a recruit, they'll point you out to him."
Off Duck went, taking care not to run around corners in case she bumped into a trainee who was destined to be part of the Military Police. It might have helped, she realised as she made her way around the wooden huts in the training camp, if Miss Julia had pointed her in any direction, because she hadn't run into anyone at all and when she came back to the courtyard where the wagon was, she knew she was going in circles.
Miss Julia and the steelworkers were missing. "They've gone to look for 'im as well," the wagon driver said when he saw her again.
Duck tried again. She passed by a hustling and bustling kitchen full of soldiers, considered going in to ask for help, then reconsidered in case they would respond like the Military Police man had to her. Off in the distance, she could see soldiers charging at each other and wrestling in a dusty training field. There were other soldiers standing out of the ways and taking notes, which cheered Duck up, because there was a good chance one of them could be the instructor she had to find.
The good cheer lasted as she dashed back through the courtyard and abruptly came to a stop with the rest of her when she skidded into a tall girl heaving a large, bulging sack over her shoulder.
"I'm sorry!" she squawked, jumping backwards. "I didn't see you there, and I should have seen where I was going, I'm so clumsy sometimes, are you alright?"
"... I didn't see you there either," the other girl said at last, eyeing her with curiosity. "You're too small to knock me over, so I'm alright."
"That... that's good then," Duck said. She shuffled back towards her. "Are you a soldier here?"
"A soldier in training," the girl replied. She righted the sack on her shoulder, so that Duck could see the insignia of the crossed swords on the breast pocket of her jacket. "Are you looking for someone?"
"I'm looking for Instructor Shadis! And—I'm Duck, from the manufacturing districts, and I've come here with Miss Julia to deliver uniforms and flags for—um, Instructor Shadis. Which I've... just said..." she finished off with a mumble.
"Instructor Shadis will be finishing up at the stables," the girl informed her.
"The stables! Thank you!" Duck called, as she started off back to the training field.
Then she skidded to a halt. Where were the stables?
"Wait, wait—Miss—I, um—"
"Mikasa Ackerman."
"I... don't know where the stables are," Duck said sheepishly.
"This is your first delivery here," Mikasa observed.
"... yes."
"Your supervisor should be with you."
"... yes. But she's busy trying to... settle things with the wagon driver."
"I see," Mikasa said. She nodded in the direction of the stables. "It's a way to go – through the training grounds and past the fences until you get to the fields. You're better off waiting for Instructor Shadis to return."
"I think I can manage. But thank you, Miss Mikasa!" Duck said as she cycled the instructions in her head. She waved before she headed off, and Miss Mikasa, with her hands full, nodded back.
Miss Mikasa reminded her a bit of Rue, Duck thought, because they both had that quiet refined air about them. And like Rue, Miss Mikasa's hair was dark and lovely. She wondered if she was much for dancing as well.
Duck barely made it ten steps before she heard something ripping, then the sound of many heavy things thudding to the floor. Cringing, she glanced back; and as she had expected, the sack Miss Mikasa had over her shoulder had split and there were potatoes all over the ground.
The look on Miss Mikasa's face was one that Fakir would have used on Duck when she had first known him. But as scary as she looked, Duck owed her one, so she ventured back, grabbed a handful of her skirt to make an apron, and started piling potatoes in.
Miss Mikasa set her lightened load to the ground. She inspected the tear at the bottom and frowned. "If I knot up the top of the bag, I can carry it back the other way around. The kitchen's only up ahead of us – I'll manage on my own."
Duck dropped another potato into her apron. "I want to help, and if Instructor Shadis is returning, he's going to be heading here, right? I might even run into him right here!"
Miss Mikasa looked sceptical of things turning out that perfectly.
"Here," Duck said. She shuffled her way awkwardly with her bulging skirt towards the potato sack, knelt slowly and started replacing the potatoes. "We can use my skirt as an apron, fill up the sack, and then we can both carry it. You can hold the top part shut, and I can hold the bottom part, and it'll be lighter if this way too!"
"It wasn't heavy," Miss Mikasa said.
"It was huge," Duck insisted.
"Yes, but I'm a soldier. If I should stand up against a Titan, I can carry a sack of potatoes."
Duck still wasn't sure what a Titan was, so she closed her mouth, rummaged around for an answer, and finally came up with, "What if the knot doesn't hold, and the potatoes all fall out again?"
"We learn about knot work in the military," Miss Mikasa pointed out, but she looked resigned to accepting Duck's help. "And you're going to get your clothes dirty."
Unfortunately, the potatoes were unwashed and leaving streaks of dirt over her clothes. Duck frowned down at them. "They needed a wash anyway. I've been on the road the whole day."
Together, they piled the potatoes back into the sack. Miss Mikasa knotted the top shut, then took the bottom of the bag for herself. "In case it starts ripping again," she explained. "Turn it around so we walk sideways. We won't bump into people that way."
Duck was glad for that bit of thinking on Miss Mikasa's behalf, because they both noticed the tall man – even taller than Miss Mikasa – in a long coat as he hurried by.
"Instructor," Miss Mikasa called out as he walked past. "This worker from the manufacturing districts came to deliver uniforms and flags."
The man stopped, then turned on his heel. He had a dark, unforgiving face, and an expression similar to Mr. Cat's when he found Duck underperforming in class.
Duck swallowed.
"I expected the delivery to come in the morning," he said, looming over Duck.
"Y-yes. I thought we would be here in the morning as well," Duck said nervously.
"And?" he said with a glower. "Why were you not?"
"I—um—I just did what Miss Julia had to do, and Miss Julia had to do what the steelworkers did because... because delivering swords to Trost took priority."
"And where is she?"
"She—oh, Miss Julia?" Duck stammered, "Miss Julia and the two steelworkers who came with us went to look for you, and I guess it's because I took too long when she sent me to find you, because really, I had no idea where to look, and I was getting lost, but Miss Mikasa told me to go to the fields past the training grounds and—"
"—before she could go find you, the sack of potatoes ripped. Duck insisted she help me carry it to the kitchens," Miss Mikasa finished calmly.
"Oh—yes, and it's because I'm grateful to Miss Mikasa helping me when I was lost looking for... you."
"I'll send her back to her wagon once this is done, Instructor," Miss Mikasa added.
Instructor Shadis looked between the two of them suspiciously. At last, he nodded. "As you were, Ackerman."
As he headed back to the wagon, Miss Mikasa mentioned, "You don't have to call me 'Miss', Duck."
"I... don't?"
"I'm hardly older than you are."
"So I can call you... Mikasa? Like we're friends?"
Behind them, they could hear the verbal tirade Instructor Shadis was unleashing upon the wagon driver.
"... I suppose," Mikasa said finally. "What happened at Trost to make you late?"
"Oh, well—we had to go there first, because the steelworkers said delivering swords took priority. But we had uniforms and flags for them too, as well, and I had to find Captain Woerman to take the delivery, and it was just as hard finding him too! I asked a Military Police person for help, and he wouldn't, so he wasn't very nice at all." Duck frowned when she remembered that. "But then I ran into Captain Hannes of the Stationary Guard, and he was much nicer and he took the deliveries in as well."
"Hannes?" Mikasa asked. Duck thought she saw a flicker of a smile on her face. "A captain now?"
"He was blond and he had a moustache," Duck said. "Does that sound like him? How do you know him?"
"That would be him," Mikasa said. "And... we—my friends and I, they're here in training too—we knew him from before we came here." She paused, then added, "He's a good man."
Duck noted the pause, and wondered on the cause of it. "He is. And he's very kind too."
And before she could say anymore, Mikasa pointed out, "Here we are – up the stairs, and on the right is the storeroom. Turn around here, I can walk up backwards."
Through the door, Duck could hear a wild bout of laughter. Together, they shuffled up the stairs and into the storeroom, ignored by the soldiers sitting on the floor peeling potatoes or lined up against the walls with chopping boards and soup pots.
She wondered exactly what was so funny, because they were still laughing after they set the sack of potatoes down and Mikasa was walking her back to the wagon.
"The storeroom is on the way, and that's where you need to put your deliveries. I'll need to take another net of onions up," she explained.
"I hope this one doesn't break as well," Duck said with a smile.
Instructor Shadis had gone back to his office to await Miss Julia and the steelworkers, the wagon driver explained sheepishly. He looked suitably cowed, and before he wandered off to stretch his legs and collect his nerves, he said that the instructor had unlocked the storeroom, and that all Duck had to do was stack up the uniforms and flags on their respective shelves until Miss Julia returned.
Mikasa pointed out the storeroom, then set off to find her net of onions. Duck started on her piles of uniforms and flags and silently mourned the absence of Miss Julia, which would mean double the workload for her. And she had forgotten to ask Mikasa whether or not Fakir might be at this training camp. Still, with no one around to check up on her, she could loiter and catch Mikasa on her way back to the kitchen and ask.
She grabbed an armful of uniforms and made her exaggeratedly slow way to the storeroom, when someone caught her around her arm and pulled her around.
For a terrifying moment, Duck thought it was Instructor Shadis, having seen through her act and ready to give her hell.
And it wasn't.
It was Fakir she was looking at, just as she had last seen him, as if they were back in Gold Crown Town but with Fakir less big because she was looking at him from a reasonable height as a girl instead of a duck, and the look on his face as he stared at her pulled the air out of her lungs.
"Fakir?" she said breathlessly. She felt tears prickling at her eyes. "Fakir!"
She almost dropped the uniforms. Fakir made a motion as though to catch it, and because it had been so long since the oak tree, the day he had pulled her out of Drosselmeyer's other world, their last dance at that lake of despair, she rushed forward to hug him.
It was far from perfect. She almost ran her face into his shoulder. Both her hands were occupied with the uniforms. She bundled them to her chest, wriggled an arm free, then slung it around his back and pulled him to her as close as humanly possible. She was crying into his shirt and she couldn't think of anything except to be glad, because even so far away from home and in a story with landfills where people froze their fingers off and Titans—whatever they were—that needed a military force to fight off, Fakir was here. If she could become Princess Tutu in this place, then he would still be her writer, and he would write them a way out of here. She was stronger with him beside her.
Somewhere behind them, Mikasa coughed. She had a net of onions slung over her shoulder and she was looking at Fakir as though he should be anything that did not involve hugging Duck.
"You need to be back in the kitchens before you get in trouble," she told him. From Instructor Shadis most likely, Duck realised in a panic.
Mikasa glanced in her direction, and added, "You never mentioned you had friends here, Duck."
She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. After a day of memorising her story as it had been laid out for her, it came to her very easily.
"Don't let him get into trouble!" she shouted, pulling away in case trainee soldiers hugging civilians would be seen as rule breaking. She had to make Fakir stay, if only for a moment of privacy so she could tell him about the pendent and what she had learnt about this place. "Tell them I—I made him help me carry the uniforms to the storeroom! It'll be my fault instead of his, I promise!"
She felt her eyes and nose prickling. There was a lump in her throat. "Please, Miss Mikasa, I haven't seen Fakir in so long, not since... not since the landfills, and I just want a minute to talk to him. Please? I've lost touch with so many people since the landfills, it's just... just..."
Mikasa looked like she wanted to correct her about being called 'Miss' again. Instead she looked intently between them, as if to pick apart the truth of Duck's story.
"I see," she said shortly. She glanced at the kitchen, and started off towards it, continuing, "The recruits on kitchen patrol will agree on how you forced him to assist you in your work. For... five minutes. Anything more, and it'll be noticed."
Fakir looked between Duck and Mikasa wordlessly, then managed, "What?"
"He'll have accepted, as is a soldier's duty," Mikasa called back.
"My duty to what?"
"Humanity."
"How are you going to persuade them to agree?" Fakir called out.
Duck saw the curious faces peering at them from the kitchen door suddenly shrink away the moment Mikasa dumped the sack of onions down at the doorstep. There was no time to waste with what little time she had to talk to Fakir, so she handed him her armful of uniforms, grabbed some more off the pile in the wagon so she would look busy, then pulled him into the storeroom and shut the door behind him.
For whatever reason, Fakir looked more flustered than relieved at her quick thinking, but she was too happy to complain. The moment she had set her pile of uniforms down, she lunged at him.
She needed him to be real. She needed him to be here with her. And all she wanted to do was hold onto him, and make sure he was real and with her right here and now.
"Ouch," was what Fakir said when her hug knocked him back into a wall and tumbled the uniforms out of his hands.
"I'm sorry!" she cried, for the umpteenth time in the same day. She stumbled backwards. "I didn't mean for that to happen—"
"Idiot, what were you thinking?"
"That you'd be more prepared, I mean, you're Fakir, and you're always prepared for anything!" She made to pick the uniforms back up before they picked up dust on the floor, but Fakir had his hands around her waist and had her in a lift off the ground.
He was thinking of the uniforms, she knew, and she shouldn't be treading on them and leaving footprints all over them, and it was kind of him to try and not get her into trouble. But when he picked her up, all she could think about was their dance under the lake, his arm around her waist, the ease with which he had lifted and spun her.
And when she was thinking of that, she could only think of how long it had been since that dance.
It hardly seemed like a world that ever had ballet in it and she couldn't put it to words how much she wanted to dance with him again, so she smiled and held his face in her hands instead. Fakir nearly dropped her. His eyes were wider than she had ever seen them before. He looked like he had forgotten how to breathe.
"Fakir," she murmured. "I'm so glad to see you again."
The look in his eyes softened.
"Me too," he replied.
It struck her how similar this was to their final pas de deux, and that reminded her about her suspicions about her necklace and this story. "Fakir. Wait—I can't believe I almost forgot. There's something I need to tell you."
She glanced around in case Miss Julia or Instructor Shadis would pop out of nowhere. "Promise me you won't be mad?"
"At you? Probably not."
Fakir had been so kind and patient with her over the past year that she doubted he would be. It was better to forewarn him either way, because news like this was less welcoming than her re-appearance.
"Alright," she conceded. "Just... just don't freak out please."
She smoothed her blouse down, undid two buttons to pull the necklace out, then held it flat on her palm so he could see.
Fakir, who had gone curiously red for some reason, was taken aback.
"Can I...?" he started, reaching a hand out. He tapped the necklace cautiously, as though it would turn him into something else.
"And that's..." he started.
"Mytho's necklace," Duck said. "The same as it was back in Gold Crown Town."
"Less shiny though," he added.
Duck frowned. "That's not my fault," she retorted. "It just... came like this. Today. I came here today, Fakir!" she added.
"I woke up here today as well," Fakir replied. He folded his arms and frowned. "I don't know why and I don't know what I'm here for, but there was... a story to why I was here, and it feels like there's a story set out for me. "
They stood there in silence for a moment.
"You know what this sounds like, don't you?" Duck said after that pause.
"Yes."
"Because... I have this necklace again. And I have a story too, something about leaving Wall Maria and going to the landfills with you and Pique and Lilie—they're with me as well, in the manufacturing districts, where we do all these uniforms and flags for the soldiers—and then you went with the military and we went to the manufacturing districts—"
Fakir was looking more bewildered by the second.
"—and what I'm trying to say is that this necklace doesn't look very shiny because it doesn't belong to a prima donna like Princess Tutu anymore, it belongs to a poor manufacturing district worker like me, and it's like I was meant to have a necklace that looks like this because that's what I am over here!"
"I have a story like that too," Fakir said finally.
"Oh good," Duck said. "What is it?"
"I'm a trainee soldier in the military," he started cautiously. "And I came from Wall Maria. And in the military, we're here to fight Titans."
"Titans!" Duck exclaimed. She had almost forgotten about those. "Someone mentioned that earlier. Fakir, what are Titans?"
Fakir swallowed. "Titans are monsters. Like giants out of a fairytale. They eat people."
Duck wanted to say something but no words left her mouth. Fakir reached out hesitantly and set a placating hand on her shoulder.
"The walls are there to keep them out—there's three of them: Sina, Rose, Maria, except Maria was destroyed," he continued. "I haven't figured out why, but everyone else knows, it's common knowledge."
When she was still speechless in shock, he ventured, "Duck?"
"Bigger than the Raven?" she said.
Fakir frowned. "I haven't seen a Titan yet. But from what I've learnt, not as big as the Raven. He filled up the entire sky, remember?"
Duck did remember the dark sky and the shower of raven's blood falling on the town. Some days, she preferred not to remember that at all.
"So not as big as the Raven. But still really big."
"Big enough that I need to be able to fly to kill them."
Duck's eyes widened. "Fly?" she whispered.
"There's a special weapon they have here, called 3D manoeuvre gear," he explained. He gestured at what he was wearing – the dark blue shirt he took to ballet practice, which was familiar; then the loops and straps around his calves and thighs and a dark brown strip of cloth around his hips, which was not. "It has hooks and pulleys, so I can hook into something and fly over in that direction with some gas canisters that give me momentum."
"Is it really flying?" Duck said in awe.
"Close enough to. I still need to figure it out to pass graduation in two months, but I have to hook up to something and get around to the back of a Titan's neck and slice them there to kill it."
"And... what happens if you miss?"
Fakir went silent.
"What do you think happens if I miss?" he said softly.
"I don't want to imagine that," Duck admitted.
"But—" she continued, taking his hand in hers, "I believe in you. And I believe that you'll... find out a way to get us out of here."
"By 'find out a way to get us out of here'," Fakir started, "you mean I should write something right?"
"Well," she said, scratching her head gingerly with her free hand. "I was hoping so, yes."
"I haven't tried it out yet," he confessed. "And what happens if my powers as a story spinner won't work outside of Gold Crown Town?"
"I don't know," Duck said. "But we can't give up here and let whatever someone has planned for us play out just like this. We have to get back home."
She looked down at their joined hands, which suddenly made her feel awkward and jittery, and when she let go, it seemed Fakir had the same thought.
"Yes!" she shouted, waving her hands about in panic. "Yes, we're going to make it back to Gold Crown Town! Somehow! We'll figure it out together!"
Fakir, with his hand pressed over his reddening face, nodded frantically in agreement.
"Right, right!" Duck continued, looking around for something to keep herself occupied. The uniforms scattered over the floor looked like a suitable excuse, so she started picking those up. After a moment of collecting himself, Fakir followed suit.
"I almost forgot about these," she rambled, "Gosh, it'd be bad if they caught us in here not working, hey?"
Fakir looked like he was about to agree with her, which was good because he was less stammer-y and more himself, and that was the exact moment Duck heard Miss Julia calling from outside the door and asking where she was.