AN: Sorry it's taken me so long to come back to this. But I'm ready to finish this story in time for Christmas!
Christian woke on the sofa in the main parlor as the grandfather clock tolled twelve times. Only the dying embers of a fire and the moonlight lit the Drosselmeyer Manor now. He sat up—he had not realized he'd fallen asleep during the party. Looking to his left, he saw that his mother must have placed her shawl over him as a sort of blanket. To his right, he saw the clockwork owl perched on the side table, tilting its head to the side.
"You're very complex, aren't you?" Christian murmured, letting it hop onto his arm. "You act as if you're alive."
The owl let out an angry hoot and flew out of the parlor and up the main stairway.
I should go to bed, Christian thought, standing up. For all that the Judge and his wife could be strict, they certainly knew how to be gracious hosts.
He found the owl sitting in front of his door. He was about to properly turn in when he heard strange sounds Fromm the room next door—Marie's room. It sounded like a battle was going on in there, with the sounds of tiny swords and gunfire.
Quickly, he pushed open the door to watch and find that he was correct as to the source of the sound. A battle indeed was occurring in Marie's bedroom—but not like any he had ever seen before.
Toy soldiers and dolls were alive and walking, fighting mice larger than Christian had seen before. These mice had glowing beady red eyes, and their very shadows gathered around them, a symbol of their own malevolence. Marie was shouting orders and using a wand that Christian had never seen before to fight alongside her nutcracker against a large seven-headed mouse with a crown on each of its seven heads.
Despite being much larger than the mouse, it was clear that Marie and two of the heads were locked in a battle of magic and losing while her nutcracker, somehow as alive as the rest of the toys, was just barely maintaining his own against the other five heads.
Christian cried out in horror, distracting all seven heads of the Mouse King. That was just long enough for the Nutcracker to stab the Mouse King. The mechanical owl swooped over Christian's shoulder, cawing out, nearly snatching the Mouse King up—but falling just inches short. It circled back around. But the mice knew to retreat.
"I'll be back for you, girl, back for you and your Nutcracker," the Mouse King sneered as he retreated through a mouse hole. The last of the mice scampered into the hole, which vanished in a glimmer of light. All that was left was the toys, Marie, Christian, and the Nutcracker.
"My lady." The Nutcracker dropped to his knee on the bookshelf, at Marie's eye level. "I apologize, that I was unable to destroy the fiend and retake our kingdom!"
"That is quite alright, Prince Benjamin—you have done your best." Marie turned and blinked, as if she had juste realized that Christian was there.
Christian entered the room and shut the door behind him. The toys were cleaning up and then entering Marie's wardrobe. He watched for a few moments, taken aback, before returning his eyes to Marie, the strange orphan girl his family had taken in.
"What is going on?" Christian finally managed to ask.
"I suppose you have a lot of questions." Marie took her dressing gown off of the hook on the side of the wardrobe and wrapped it around herself. She looked just as small and vulnerable as she had the day she had come home with the Judge and Madam Drosselmeyer. She perched on her bed. "It's a long story, I'm afraid. It is the story of how I came here, and what truly happened to my home and my parents. It is not a happy story—not yet, anyway. Are you sure you want to hear it, Christian?"
Christian stepped forward. "Of course I do, Marie. You are my friend and my foster-sister."
"I see." Marie smoothed the white linen skirts of her nightgown. "It is not all my story to tell, I am afraid."
She looked to the Nutcracker, who had quickly made his way to Marie's bedside table in the time of the quick conversation between Christian and Marie.
"It isn't just ours, either," Benjamin added. "But those who started the story, their parts began long before either of us were born. . ."