Five times Fakir cried.
1. Charon always holds him, those first few months after his parents die, when the nightmares are so terrible he screams himself raw.
2. "You idiot!" He calls Mytho, shaking his shoulders, scared and angry and upset when he feels his eyes stinging. "You could have died!"
Mytho doesn't say anything, just looks at him with wide, empty eyes, and he doesn't do a thing as Fakir cries against him, feeling so damn useless...
3. It's a stupid thing to cry for: he'll still be able to walk, even without a cane. It's just dancing what he won't be able to do anymore. Ahiru nuzzles against him and Fakir holds her tight, his leg both itching and hurting inside the cast.
4. She's tiny and beautiful and perfect and Fakir is terrified he'll drop her. Mytho-- Siegrfied beams too, just like Rue and Ahiru do, and he watches the new Princess, Bianca, and doesn't do a thing as he feels himself cry.
5. Wild ducks live around twenty years: Ahiru has lasted over twenty five, and Fakir knows that she has done so only because of him, not wanting to leave him alone.
So one day before the sunrise he picks her up and walks them towards her pond, and with his legs in the water he tells her their story, feeling the magic he can thread through his words.
He holds her small, warm body against his chest and looks as the dawn starts and he keeps on talking about freedom and love and happily ever after, and though she's silent, Fakir thinks that he can almost feel the moment in which her heart stops.
It's the moment his heart breaks down.
