"Wild horses wouldn't drag me there, and you know it."
It was autumn in Goldcrown Town. The lush green leaves of the many trees throughout the entire town had given way to the most beautiful array of red and gold. One would most likely expect the town to be overflown with mystical fog as it had been so often in the past but this had stopped altogether as soon as the story had come to a close, Fakir had noticed. Now the fog that dressed the cobblestone streets seemed much friendlier, he thought. The town had gotten busier recently too, with all sorts of people frequenting the five gates, coming and going in and out of town as if nothing had ever happened and of course, no one remembered. This was how life had went on to be. And it was nothing to complain about after all.
The all too familiar, red-headed girl he was talking to was a thing that needed more getting used to than the expansion of the town beyond its ancient walls. She had been back in this form for close to a year now and it still filled the writer with an odd feeling. There were many internal battles he had fought before being able to make this happen. After all this was not the way it was supposed to be and sometimes the sight of her convinced him that the words he spoke in the lake of despair that time, had meant nothing. All that talk about accepting your true self in order for the story to go its intended way, all hypocritically idealistic. But after all the story was done now and they both knew, though they never said it out loud, that Ahiru was most herself when she was a girl. It had always been this way.
Quite frankly she was delighted to be able to resume studying at the academy and now that she had no more urgent business to attend to other than her studies, her dancing improved rapidly. She had noticed it herself, even back then, that when she really got to practice and do it earnestly, she could make the best out of it and she definitely had some talent that she could put to use now. And it was a wonderful thing to observe, her being so invested in something just for herself. Like she was finally able to live.
Fakir on the other hand had not set foot on academy grounds for a long time. The only reason he had picked up dance after all had been because Mytho had adored it. Even if he couldn't have favored it from a lack of heart, it still had been like second nature to the prince, like an instinct. Even if there had not been any self to express, it had always seemed like he knew that it was a significant part of himself. Saying that Fakir himself had not enjoyed it would've been a lie, he knew that. However with everything that had happened, he just couldn't bring himself to go back to it. It just didn't feel right without anyone there who shared his experiences. Instead he had resorted to practicing his writing, occasionally visiting Raetsel and Hans out in the town nearest to Goldcrown to let his childhood friend read a page or two. It was hard to adapt to the world as it was now after an entire childhood of living within this secluded town, devoting his entire life to one and the same purpose after his parents' tragic death. It was not easy to find a new value for oneself only and no one else but there was a sense of lightness to it, a feeling of ease that was brought forth by all the possibilities that he had now. And the reassurance that there was still a bit of time left for him to decide what he wanted to make out of life.
"Oh, come on. I'm sure everyone would be thrilled to have you back! Even if for only one production."
"Once again, I haven't set a single foot in a practice room in what… two years? Don't you expect me to be rusty?"
"But you used to be so good at it. Surely nothing a few weeks couldn't fix!" She was so wrong about that.
Ahiru had been trying to convince him to pick dancing back up for a few weeks now, ever since the school announced they were doing a collective production of Coppélia — though the drama faculty refused to succumb to the ballet faculty and opted for a few scenes out of E.T.A. Hoffmann's Sandmann to play instead. The music students had been practicing for months already, you could hear them all across campus while the art students were still trying to find motivation to even do as much as gather their supplies. It was a sight to behold and Fakir was truly happy to stay out of it.
"Besides, what role do you even expect me to take?"
"The teachers are still looking to cast a worthy Dr. Coppelius-…"
"God no."
A puppet maker driven to insanity, probably because of loneliness or a burning desire to build the perfect human. Or most likely even both. Fakir found the pure idea of it insulting to his character.
Ahiru was close to giving up. She knew the idea was bad, she did not even take it seriously herself but she did not really enjoy seeing him so secluded from everyone else. Sure, maybe he liked it that way. He had never been the most communicative soul in town, as hard as she found it to admit, but she couldn't imagine how she would feel if she were in his place. Then again, maybe it was just an excuse to get him to come back to the academy. Ever since she had returned, he had been missing somehow. Occasionally seeing his stoic face on the way to and from class was just part of the experience and honestly it became exhausting after a while, talking to Piqué and Lilié while trying to remember what they knew and what they didn't. Of course all their memories of Ahiru had been wiped away and while it had hurt quite a lot to have her two best friends forget all about her, their relationship had gone back to normal quickly. But sometimes Ahiru did not want to pretend nothing had happened.
"You know, you could at least visit once in a while. Two years of absence and people are still talking about you. You're infamous!", she argued. And there was no lie to this but still it was in vain.
"That is exactly why I am not going."
Sure, he had a point and it was hard to argue with a brick wall after all. His unnecessarily prideful demeanor got on Ahirus last nerves quite frequently, but that was nothing new to anyone. However she was not quite ready to give up just yet. There were a few steps left before they got to the dormitories he was walking her to this evening.
"You could at least help me practice once, alright? Everyone else is busy preparing for their own parts and I would even try to get up extra early so we could practice an hour before everyone else arrives." Her last resort: sacrificing precious sleep. Around them the nightly fog was slowly creeping in. For Ahiru it was already way too late in the evening to make such a promise, but she was determined to prove to him how much this place meant. Too much to just abandon it as if he had never been a part of it. And much to her surprise, as they stood in front of the iron gates and the street lanterns were dimly lighting themselves as if there was a hint of the town's magic still left in them, he agreed.
"Okay, fine. Since you have been begging me nonstop for weeks and this is probably the only thing to get you to stop — tomorrow 5:30 am in front of the academy gates. Be one minute late and I'll leave."
Ahiru's face lit up alongside the lanterns above their heads. Her stubbornness had proven itself useful once again. Sometimes perseverance is the only way to win a battle you are almost sure you'll lose.
"I will be there, sir!"
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It was one of these decisions you make one day, totally convinced that they are the right ones, and then the next day when you have to actually act on them, regret settles in far too quickly to believe that any of it would even be worth the trouble.
Once Ahiru awoke it did not feel like she had actually slept and on the other side of the window the sun was still far from rising, the lanterns from the evening before still glowing. Reluctantly the girl got out of bed and started the day early, wondering why she did all this to herself. Why she made herself suffer, even if she knew very well it was far from being the worst thing she had faced in her short life.
The cold morning air felt refreshing in a way that few things did and already served as a worthy compensation for the lost time she could've spent sleeping. It was crisp and alert and it picked on parts of her face which pleasantly reminded her that she was human and that no one could take that away from her now. It was all hers to keep.
They barely spoke until they entered the quiet practice room. Usually it was Ahiru that lead their conversations but while Fakir, as reserved as he was, seemed fully awake, she was drifting in and out of consciousness at best. But walking in silence for once wasn't all that bad either.
The practice room felt a lot more eerie in the dark of the early morning and the electrical lighting was so weak it only contributed to that effect by flickering occasionally, as if ghosts were haunting the place. Though the fairytales were all over, superstitions had remained in Ahirus mind that made spirits appear in every irregularity she faced. Looked at through the large mirror walls, their silhouettes looked unfamiliar and strangely distorted but that took just a little getting used to until they finally started conversing to kill the spookiness.
"I never asked: What role did they assign to you?", Fakir asked, voice still a little weak as Ahiru noticed that he wasn't all that immune to early mornings after all. Proudly, even if a little shy, she declared her most exciting achievement ever since becoming Princess Tutu.
"Aside from the Mazurka-corps in the townsfolk they gave me a puppet part!"
Fakir was not all that familiar with the ballet, it was one of the later Romantic pieces as far as he knew. But he was familiar with the musique des automates. The stage of the second act usually depicted the doctor's puppet workshop and featured a few of his machines, puppets that go haywire once the music starts, each with their own repeating pattern and choreography. It surely wasn't a big role, but an achievement nonetheless. And oddly enough he found it fitting for Ahiru, in all of it's silliness. Surely she would have a blast going all out in a crazy supporting role like this and very much to his surprise it somehow filled him with pride. She could see it in his expression, the way in which he softly nodded in approval.
Just mere minutes after, as Ahiru had finished stretching, Fakir was still trying to make sense of her notes on music and choreography. The squiggly cursive that looked like she had been in an awful hurry while writing was supported by endearing stick-figures executing basic poses and half of the French names of the steps were misspelled but after a while he supposedly had it down. He found it hard to avoid the thought that her notes, while nearly useless, were a witness of her determination and he found it nothing but admirable, adorable even.
The Mazurka was planned as the folk-dance it was meant to be, with expressive movements and dancers in pairs in circular and linear formations. There certainly was a lot of movement required, both in terms of dancing itself and traversing the stage. In between arguing with Ahiru about whether she had written down the choreography falsely or whether Fakir had simply misinterpreted her notes, he noticed fairly quickly that his stamina had decreased significantly over the course of the last few years. Yet as always, his counterpart was an unstoppable force of nature.
"Why would there be a pas de valse in this choreography?", Ahiru protested at his most recent claim. The girl still wasn't the best with keeping in mind choreographies as some information to piece puzzle pieces together logically were still missing.
"Why wouldn't there be?" And Fakir grew a little frustrated with it.
"Because it's supposed to be a Mazurka and not a Waltz, of course?"
"But they are both composed in 3/4 times, you airhead" The young man was slightly bent over, hands on his aching knees and his breathing stuck in his lungs. He felt like a man five times his age, all while Ahiru was just slowly beginning to wake up.
As she did not really know what to answer to his last explanation, she just mustered his heavy breathing for a while, irritation visibly written on her freckled face. As nothing happened for a long time, Fakir slowly sat down on the cold floor, before eventually leaning back, collapsing fully, arms and legs stretched to the side. He noticed her increasingly puzzled expression as she too sat down quietly.
"I told you I was out of practice", he noted — a lot more placid than just a few moments ago. But Ahiru shook her head.
"You're doing well. Better than I even." Which should not be a surprise to her, as much as it still confused her in all of its unfairness. She was working so so hard to catch up yet in moments like these she felt like she was miles behind everyone else.
Her company however wanted to hear nothing about that.
"Have you taken a look at your reflection at all today?", he asked in a serious tone, sitting up to face the girl that looked at him with sparkling blue eyes and furrowed brows that made him want to joke around until they morphed into a smile, which of course was too far beyond his capabilities. Ahiru still did not know what he was hinting at.
"You have been improving at rapid speed, Ahiru. Maybe you don't notice your own improvement, because one never does. But every struggle you might feel at this point is just growth." He had noticed it in the way in which she had not stopped dancing even outside of school hours, in every movement she subconsciously had adapted, from the occasional skip to the more intentional pirouette. Maybe there was still a great gap between what she could do now and what she used to do as Princess Tutu but a fairytale princess should never serve as a frame of reference.
"I think you belong here now just as much as you used to years ago."
It took a great deal of making herself believe he was right but if Ahiru knew one thing then it was that she had the ability to believe everything she wanted to if she just pretended for long enough. And besides all that this simple sentence of his had almost felt like a compliment, which was rare on his part. In a singular movement she got up and began to stretch as far into the sky as her tiny frame allowed her to, basking in the greatness she felt for the fracture of a second.
"Maybe you're right. I would love if you were." And she turned around to his now puzzled expression. Sometimes, in ironic fashion, he forgot that his words could hold enough weight to change a person, especially if not written on a piece of paper. Like an all encompassing truth she stood over him, hands on her hips.
"But maybe you're forgetting that this is also the place you used to belong. And you could belong again anytime you wished." Slowly Fakir started to realize what she was attempting to do once again and he was shocked to find that it was starting to work. After all her spoken words could hold just as much weight. He looked around the room, rising autumn-sunlight slowly falling through the stained glass windows of the practice room, mirror wall opposite to them and wooden barres lining the windows. Through them he could see the golden colors of an early morning courtyard and the library just across from their building. Sure, lots of unpleasant memories filled these halls but as his gaze returned to Ahiru, he could name at least one positive memory for every negative one. He found her hand outstretched to help him up and with the release of a tensed up breath he took it, cracked a crooked smile and pretended the weight of her frail silhouette had any part in pulling him onto his feet.
"Maybe I will pay some more thought to it", he answered eventually. After all he was free to do whatever he wanted to now and the only one who could hold him back was himself.