Chapter 15: Unyielding Pupil

Iroha's mistress gazed out into the dark, star-studded sky, and the girl knew she wasn't simply admiring an evening. She was planning.

"Flower was arrested in Westheim. She failed to kill Miku, my lady."

The sour look on the mistress' face gave her worry. "Such a wretched conclusion to a wretched week," the older woman murmured. She wasn't even touching her full wine glass. "The Prince survives, his allies alert Nordland to our activities, our Faerie Dust supplies plummet… that enchanted charming brat is getting far too lucky."

Of course, she would attribute this to luck. The Prince was far too naïve and inexperienced to have outmaneuvered them on his own.

"And with Flower's arrest, Westheim will come to war…" Iroha lamented.

"Well… at least the Cinderella at his side will be dealt with."

"I'm sorry?"

Iroha looked confused. "My lady, Miku survived."

A sickly smile crept up along the woman's red lips. "Miku is alive, but if Flower delivered the right message… her heart won't allow her to stay with him."

The woman's silvery eyes glinted. "Iroha, what of the Midnight Tears?"

"The last experiment was quite successful… we only have a small amount left though. Enough for one."

The mistress reached for her wine glass. "Then search everywhere for my poor lost Godchildren, my Cinderellas. Bring back the one dearest to me… and ensure the deaths of those who remain disloyal."

Seeing her mistress so excited gave Iroha relief – their plans, their lives, still had value. The Faerie Godmothers still existed, and so the Faerie Godmothers would reign. Even if the Emerald Dawn collapsed.

"As long as Cinderella has the Prince's heart… I still have him. I've planned this entire story from the very first page. So long as they dance within a fairy tale, they'll die together within it."

Kaito sat slumped over in a chair in the living room, clutching the slipper close. He'd barely managed to get dressed, wearing a simple white shirt and blue pants, his scarf loosely draped around his neck.

She was gone.

She'd run.

He'd never find her.

"I promise, when you're safe, I'll leave and you'll never see me again."

Her first promise to him, fulfilled. Only one question hung in his mind.

Why?

"Oh… why? Why, why, whyyyyyy?"

The slurred voice of the purple-haired doctor carried through the living room as Kaito saw Rin trying to keep her stumbling friend propped up on his feet. "I told you not to go drinking with Meiko! You're going to be miserable in the morning, she can drink like a fish and stay standing!"

"Nothing mattersh! She'sh gone, Rin… she'sh goooooone…"

Gakupo tipped right over the side of a couch, flopping over halfway. "ACK! No no no, Gakupo, you need a bed! Oh… there he goes…"

The thoroughly inebriated doctor started to crawl over the couch, until he was largely stretched out on his stomach, his booted feet hanging over one of the armrests. He looked a truly pathetic sight with his limbs every which way, his face flushed with red, his hair spread out around his body.

Rin finally noticed Gakupo wasn't the only person in the room. "Oh! Kaito, I thought you and Miku… ah… well…"

She blushed, but then she caught sight of what Kaito was holding. "Isn't that… Miku's glass slipper? I remember, she only had one when she showed up on the night of the attack…"

Kaito rested the shoe on the table, staring at it somberly. "She… left it behind. Before she slipped out."

The blonde girl let out a gasp. "You're certain she left?! Kaito, we should try and find her, what if the Godmothers-"

"… she left the shoe because Cinderella always leaves a shoe when she runs away."

Kaito's fanciful explanation still seemed to make sense to Rin, the young nurse's face falling in response. "I'm… I'm so sorry… I thought she looked so happy tonight too…"

So maybe Kaito was the only one that really noticed the aura of sadness. Or maybe he just noticed because he knew her so much better.

"Yoursh left too…"

Gakupo looked a wreck, his face flushed with alcohol, as he wiggled around on the couch trying to get off his stomach. He let out a bitter laugh. "Oh… a doctor that can't fix a broken heart… look at me…"

"So… Luka left?'

"Not with Miku," Rin answered as Gakupo choked up at just hearing her name, "She left right as you guys were heading off… she told Gakupo goodbye and everything…"

He was already running lower on allies. How could he have missed the signs? How could he have failed to rally the people close to him so they wouldn't feel they had to leave?

How was he going to move on?

If he got his army, they would be looking to him to lead. And now… he was alone.

'I only got this far because of Miku,' he thought sadly, 'I'm nothing without her.'

"Kaito… can you keep an eye on him? I'm going to make sure his room is ready… and clear of debris… and… yea…"

"Of course."

As Rin nervously slipped away, Gakupo wallowed along the couch some more. Kaito knew the doctor had a rather eccentric personality, but this particular emotional display felt excessive even for him. "Luka… I don't… I don't care… if it's right or not…" he muttered, looking up as if the departed Cinderella was still able to hear him. "What you've done, it doeshn't matter… I never felt like thish for anyone…"

The doctor's blue eyes rolled over lazily to Kaito. "Whaddabout you? You probably had your pick of girls before…"

Kaito stared longingly at the slipper. "My parents kept me so isolated… to be perfectly frank, I never had the opportunity to… to…"

That wild feeling, the sense of rebellion in his heart that night, the declaration without understanding…

"… to fall in love."

Gakupo started to pull himself up. "So this was a first love?!"

He let out a whistle as Kaito felt a prick of embarrassment. At his age he should have had such experiences before. For a moment, he even felt an intense flash of anger – he knew nothing of how to help people because of what had been done to him. To properly understand them. To help someone in need.

"I always saw the sadness inside of Miku… I knew how much pain she kept hidden… I kept trying to find some way to heal it. With trust, with cheer… even with love… but it always lingered."

The lone slipper felt as isolated as his own heart. "How can I possibly heal a kingdom when I can't even heal the heart of the woman I love?"

'Prince Charming is supposed to save Cinderella… what sort of prince am I?'

"Who was he… Yoon? Yung?"

Gakupo's drunken murmurs seemed to make even less sense. "I was reading some booksh on thish… the ailments of the mind… the way that terrible events create afflictions that can't be cured by mere words and feelings."

"Are you suggesting what the Godmothers did to Miku and Luka is like… a disease?"

Kaito tried to grasp the concept of trauma as an illness. Maybe it was no different than a lingering scar. "Heh… I guess I just hoped if I loved Luka enough… that would cure the disease… but it's a much deeper wound isn't it? There are whole institutes popping up now trying to study the human mind… I'm just a surgeon…"

Miku had suffered so many tortures to become a Cinderella. To craft her into the person the Godmothers wanted her to be the night she was to kill him. He wished she would have trusted him more with her pain. Whatever she intended to do now, he would have gladly helped her with all the resources he had at his disposal…

'Miku… what do I do now?'

The troubling thought of Miku's departure kept Kaito from sleeping the rest of the evening, though not unexpectedly, Gakupo slept like a log. Kaito greeted his uncle somberly at breakfast, trying to be brief with his explanation of Miku's departure. Though his uncle was family, he also wanted to present more strength than he felt to him given the Councillor's position.

Naoto was understanding – he gave his nephew space to process his loss, but assured him he could turn to him for any advice before he left for the Assembly. He spoke so tenderly that Kaito briefly recalled how he always felt comfortable turning to his late father for advice as a child.

Did his uncle look at him like this now? Like a son?

Even knowing the truth of the night of his near murder… Kaito still found himself turning to memories of his parents love for solace.

With nothing more to do than await news of the Assembly, the prince found himself with an abundance of time to contemplate his future. The future without Miku.

And still hung there hung the question – why?

"You must think me quite weak," he confessed to Lily, "I'm to lead an army to take back my homeland and here I find myself broken thinking of a lost love."

The Commander was surprisingly sympathetic. "I would think less of you if you were callus to it," she responded, "The Confedere is pledged to you because of the kindness you possess. You've much to grieve over these last weeks. It's rational to use these brief peaceful moments to mourn before you take up a banner of war again."

Maybe that was it. One more loss piled on top of everything else. His home, his old life, the illusion of a family… and now his first love.

He still carried the glass slipper with him. How desperate must Prince Charming have felt, to find love and see her flee him, with nothing but her shoe as a token. As Kaito had gotten older, the obvious flaw in the story stood out to him – how would a lost shoe help the man find the woman he loved when it was possible for any number of women to fit it?

But now he understood – when he had nothing else left, he would try anything to get Miku back. Even something ridiculous.

By afternoon, even his idol was comforting him. "Miku was your first love," Meiko told him as they sat together in the cleaned-up ballroom. "You're not wrong to feel this way."

Yet he still kept replaying the events of the evening… how happy they'd been at peace…

"I must confess, Meiko, you were my first love. Your music at least. My uncle sent me one of your albums, and the songs you performed carried me away from the place I was trapped in. It gave me companionship when I had none. I managed to keep getting more of them… and I kept dreaming about what kind of person you were and what I'd say if I met you."

Kaito stopped when he realized how personal his confession had gotten. Meiko was turning a red as her dress. "I mean… I always wanted my songs to reach people," she stammered, "But I had no idea…"

She sighed. "I mean, I guess I hope I've lived up to that kind of imagination," she said.

She stopped talking when she saw Gumi enter with a familiar brown envelope. She looked strangely nervous. "Ah... Prince Kaito! I've been looking for you after I heard… um… Miku… well…"

The girl crossed the dining room with quick steps and thrust the envelope into Kaito's hands. "I already developed the photos from last night. They're in color! So… so you have something... nice… as a memento…"

In her own odd way, Gumi was trying to cheer up the strange Prince who she'd spied on. "And… well, I put something else in there. You'll understand. I mean, I gave up copies of my photos from the night of the coup, but…"

A small sly smile broke on her face as she looked away from him. "I guess I just wasn't close enough to get any photos of the moment of the assassination."

Kaito almost corrected her when he grasped what she was insinuating. Meiko and Gumi were both giving him a far more precious gift than just a memento.

"Thank you Gumi… I owe you a great debt."

In Kaito's room, he'd spread out the photographs on the bed. He hadn't even spotted Gumi's rapid picture taking while he and Miku spent an entire evening enjoying themselves, though he had recalled her spending more time taking photos than enjoying more romantic activities with her own lover.

Ever present in the photos was Miku's bright smile.

'She was happy… right?'

Had he made her happy?

She made him happy.

Had he thought she'd leave, that he was looking on her last smile for him… he'd never have closed his eyes last night.

His gaze drifted to the familiar black and white photographs. The moments Gumi had captured of Miku's crime.

She'd even managed to capture the tears on Miku's face as she drove the knife in.

'Gumi gave me these… to protect Miku.'

He gathered them up in his hands. A rage filled him as he thought of how frightened Miku was that night, compelled to kill and trying to pretend she was the girl of his dreams at the same time. So fearful of retribution and failure that she couldn't even warn him, forced to undertake a dreadful act to sneak him away from the fate planned for him.

Kaito tore through the photo paper and it felt satisfying to feel something breaking in his hands. In moments, all that remained were tatters. He gathered what remained, storming out of his bedroom to the great fireplace in the nearby living room. He cast the remnants of the photos into the flames, watching them quickly melt into ash.

This was all he could do for her.

All he could do.

"Kaito, there you are! I've been looking for you!"

Len. He turned back to the boy and tried to contain his emotional state again. "Sorry to have worried you," he apologized.

Len glanced into the fire place, but either he didn't notice the burning photo pieces or he felt it unwise to comment on them. "I just… well, I've been thinking a lot about what happened. With Miku."

Kaito turned back to the fire. 'Do I really look that fragile?' he thought. Everyone seemed to be trying to seek him out now.

"It just… none of it makes sense. Kaito, it's not even just how she felt about you. Miku was obsessed with protecting you. So much that I was really worried she'd do something crazy if it meant keeping you alive. She took poison for you! But now… now she's gone? When you're about to go to war and another Cinderella just sought you out?"

"Len, what are you getting at?!" Kaito didn't have time to worry about speculations.

"I'll be blunt. There's no way Miku up and left you unless the Godmothers threatened to get to you through her."

As Len's words settled over him, Kaito found himself repeating it. "Flower was using Miku?!"

That Miku still couldn't be free of the Godmothers, even now…!

"Who the hell do they think they are?!" he shouted, his emotions coarsening his choice of words, "They're not satisfied with simply trying to kill me, they have to torture every person I love?!"

"They've been torturing these girls for years… I got Rin back, but she's still…"

Len looked around him as if ensuring his sister was out of earshot. "Rin's still broken. She's still weighted down by everything that happened. She's only alive now because that damn gas didn't work on her. She was willing to die for me just so she didn't have to carry a burden anymore… and she's had all that time with Gakupo to get better…"

"But was taking over this kingdom all they wanted?!" Kaito continued, "Every aspect of them is so carefully planned, maneuvering every person into place… who are they?! What do they really want?!"

'This… this has to be about more than a crown… it always comes back to me… to that fairy tale… to Cinderella and Prince Charming…'

"Kaito!"

He heard his uncle calling out to him as he rushed into the house. "Kaito, they called the vote! We… Westheim… Westheim is going back you!"

Kaito shivered at the news – that meant he was truly going to war. He was going to be responsible for the lives of everyone under his command… and the people of Estmarch caught up in the violence.

"Well, your Highness… you think you can handle the responsibility of a war?" Len asked.

A spark lit up inside his heart. Fighting the Dawn meant finally facing the people that had been so determined to systemically ruin his life and who still chased after Miku.

Where he once felt uncertainty about his actions, now there was determination. He had to meet them head on. If he could defeat the Dawn, if he could defeat the Godmothers…

"I need to get ahold of Meiko and Gumi at the Nordland embassy," Kaito ordered, "We must co-ordinate with Nordland at once if we're to push back the offensive out there and ensure the Dawn is contained within Estmarch, where Westheim and the Confedere can fight them on our own territory."

He looked over towards Len. "I must ask a favor of you, Len."

"Done," he said with a smirk, "You want me to sniff out the Godmothers for real. Which I'll do. They've broken far too many lives. I can't even say that what they did left me all in one piece. I joined with you in Zweissen to get revenge!"

Len had faithfully followed Kaito on his mad journey, risking so much on a singular purpose. "Thank you, Len. I'm grateful to have your loyalty."

"Oh, did I hear something about revenge?"

Meiko entered the living room, dragging on her lit cigarette with Gumi just behind her. "Because I just received orders through the embassy to co-ordinate with you."

She gave him a playful wink. "The King of Nordland wants to speak with the Prince of Estmarch through our secure channel. I suspect he'll want to get in touch with the Prime Minister of Westheim as well."

"My but you're efficient," Naoto said, impressed, "You're clearly a woman of many talents, Ms. Sakine."

"You're just the person I wanted to see anyway, Meiko," Kaito said, "When we first met, you said you'd been pursued by Cinderellas. That one of Gumi's photos might have drawn their attention. I want to go through everything you two have and see if we can't work out what that event was."

"I'm sorry, I think I'm a little lost," Naoto interrupted, "We're at war with the Dawn now, aren't we? What do Cinderellas have to do with anything?"

Kaito thought of Luka, pulled from the ashes of her home and her heart turned to rage and revenge. He thought of Rin plucked from the innocence of childhood and brought within an inch of her life.

He thought of Miku, seemingly rescued from her abusive home only to return to an even worse fate.

"The Godmothers are controlling the Dawn," Kaito explained, "Even if we fight their soldiers and defeat them to a man… even if we capture General Tonio… none of this ends unless we cut the strings of the puppet masters controlling them."

Prince Charming would chase after Cinderella, no matter what it took, to rescue her from the cruelty of the people who caged her.

'Miku… I'm sorry I couldn't protect you before. But I will save Estmarch, and I will save you with it. I promise.'

As Miku wandered through the snow-coated streets of Aschenputtel, she tried to summon up anything she could still remember. But the combination of the long years away, the drain of the current civil war, and her own faulty mind made the streets feel as foreign as the capital of Westhheim.

She kept her hood and green scarf up – she didn't want anyone to possibly recognize her. Not yet. Of course she worried about drawing the attention of another Cinderella to her side, but she also wasn't quite ready to handle if someone in this city did recognize her.

"-the devil Prince's hordes descend on Estmarch, our enemies allied to his side! You mustn't let his terrible lies sway you to him! We are Estmarch! WE ARE THE DAWN!"

It had been a month since she bade goodbye to Kaito. From Tonio's desperate speeches she was hearing on the radio, she suspected Kaito was rapidly mobilizing against his forces at the Westheim border and making gains in the Sudland territory. She heard whispers of his successes – despite the vile propaganda, the rumors sweeping through the Sudland cities she visited told of a man who showed nothing but mercy. Sudlandians defecting from the Dawn to join up with the Confedere and fight for their homeland.

The Prince proved a brave and talented warrior, but also one obsessed with reducing needless bloodshed.

And he still lived.

As the Godmothers had promised…

She began to walk past a cemetery and –

The day of the funeral was bitter and cold. The flowers yet to blossom. She despised the cold. Her parents became ash, and she wanted to become ash with them… warm and safe…

The sweat drenched her face. Where were these memories coming from? Were they true?

She turned away and ran from the cemetery lest the event repeat. There was only one place she needed to go, if only her heart could lead her to the right street, the right house, the right people…

… unless they'd moved or died in the time since she left.

She almost wished they had – then she could bury them in her mind for good.

But a row of houses began to form in front of her and her feet felt familiar cobblestones beneath her shoes. This path, this was the one…

She tried to steady herself, but she started to shiver. This time not from the cold, but from the fear.

The driver Luka hitched with had thought her utterly mad to want to visit a ghost town, burned to ashes in the wars of the past. She'd managed to invent a proper lie – that she was paying respects to a burial site.

The driver was a Sudlander like her. He understood. But he still dropped her off a kilometer away. Superstitious.

And so, she walked along the unused dirt road. Saint-Famille had once been a powerful city, a testament to the growth of Sudland. The horror of its destruction had so tainted the memory that even its conquerors wanted nothing more to do with it. Let the ashes rest. Let the bodies rot in a mass grave.

Let it stand testament to that which was broken.

She spied the burned-out shells of homes in the distance. Some of them she had faint memories of – the butcher's shop. The bookstore. The clockmaker.

She had no guarantees she wasn't followed. Even if her driver was innocent, that didn't mean someone wouldn't be expecting her.

So she kept her pistol ready and her paranoia strong as she progressed to the great ruins.

The caved in roof of her old church mirrored the broken heart of her countrymen. Even a chapel provided no sanctuary – the invading forces so brutal they even disrespected holy ground. She remembered hearing the screams of children as they were gunned down, the terrified nuns and priests trying to shield them in the name of their Lord.

Her heart pounded harder and harder as the memories swelled around her. Unlike Miku or Rin, Luka had never been spared any of it. The Godmothers seemed to know she thrived on the pain, and they constantly drove her to relive it. To sharpen her into a weapon through the injustice she'd been dealt.

But she wasn't here for memories. She was here because of a train of thought that had been building since she saw the castle at Zellen Sea utterly devastated. Since Saint-Urbain was blasted into ash and toxic fog.

Both times, she knew the Godmothers were involved, and they had been so desperate twice to destroy just one person that they risked nothing in their wake.

And something kept lingering since then – how did she know Saint-Famille didn't hold something valuable? Some secret in its ashes that sealed its fate?

The Godmothers had to have been active during at least Sudland's Rose War. That was when they came and plucked her from the ashes.

She followed the streets, bereft of bodies. She started to recognize the familiar roads she'd played in as a child. She saw the smoked out shell of her family's bakery.

And a tear fell from her eye as the horrible experience of trying to survive the fire nearly consumed her again…

She crept so close to the fire that time that she felt the painful embers singeing her skin. Suddenly a strong woman's hand grabbed her away from the flames and she began to cry. Why couldn't she burn up?!

The nausea rising in Miku's stomach grew as she started to recognize more of Aschenputtel. Even if her memory was untrustworthy, her body seemed to remember the steps she would take to return to her home. The roads she'd walk on with her mother when they waited for her father to return from a trip.

She spied a faded green roof and her knees locked in place.

Out front a girl with a long grey coat and yellow scarf shoveled snow out of the walkway in front of the house, her long blonde hair bunched up into a ponytail that hung to the side. At the shop window was another girl in a purple coat with a black and purple ribbon and silvery grey hair, humming off-tune as she wiped the frost from the windows.

'Neru… Haku…'

Her stepsisters.

They were still alive, still cleaning the house.

'But… but I was the only one that… that did the chores… right?'

'Right?!'

She could still hear the words in her head, reminding her of their cruelty. How little they contributed while working Miku like a slave, how well they lived while she huddled in front of the fireplace for warmth.

Like Cinderella.

But here they were, keeping house without even a single complaint.

"Neru! Neru, has the postal carrier come by yet?!"

She hadn't heard this voice in years and it chilled her even more than the cold. This was the voice of the woman that traded her away. That bargained Miku's future off for money and left her to suffering.

She wanted to rush forward and confront her… but finally seeing the woman stilled her rage.

Miku's stepmother walked out of the house, her once vibrant blonde hair dull and greying, her eyes sunken and empty. Though the woman couldn't be more than her late-30s in age, the way she slumped, the fragile movements, the sorrow in her face… she seemed twice as old.

"Haku, did you see him?! Please, I have another letter for Miku and –"

Haku sighed and held out her hand. "I'll take it down to him," she said sympathetically.

"Oh, thank goodness… with the war going on, it must be even harder for her to get messages."

Haku's singing stopped as she looked to her sister sadly while she took the envelope. "Don't worry Mother. The Godmother Society is well protected. I'm sure we'll hear from Miku quite soon."

'From… Miku…'

She lay in the ashes, clutching her broom close as the stranger spoke with her stepmother. Finally, they called her and she reluctantly stood, covered from head to toe in soot. The stranger looked her over in awe. "You… you are truly Cinderella."

"Oh… I hope they're remembering to keep her warm. This is such a bitter winter…"

Miku shook so hard she couldn't take another step. The sorrowful woman disappeared into the house. The two girls still didn't seem to notice they were being watched as they conferred with each other, Neru leaning onto the shovel.

"Is it even worth it?" Neru said, staring at the envelope, "We know there won't be a response… we know that-"

"No we don't!" Haku protested, "She has to still be out there… she's got to be…"

She grabbed her rag and began scrubbing the window furiously. "We still have to keep this place ready for when Miku comes back."

'When… when I… come back?'

Wasn't she sold?!

Neru sighed dejectedly. "Yea… I'll see if I can find Akira and give him the message."

Miku turned and started to walk away, trying to pretend she wasn't part of the conversation… but she glanced back and watched which way Neru was leaving, so she might follow her herself.

The door to her house creaked from disuse as Luka pushed it open. The collapsed roof in the kitchen had shielded her from the worst of the fire as a child, ironically saving her life as the smoke had an escape path. The oven was crushed, the pots and pans scattered around and rusting.

Even before the fire, Luka remembered that she'd had a humble home – her family was neither terribly poor nor terribly rich, living a simple life where they survived on what they loved. In those days, Luka thought she would as well.

'I'm not here to reminisce. I'm here to find something.'

She swept through the house, trying to recall anything out of place. The day she'd been pulled from the ashes, she remembered the house being thoroughly searched – more than any of the other buildings. Meaning somehow, something in Luka's house had been vital.

And all she could recall was how angry the searcher was nothing was found.

Once more, she tried to walk through the last night of near-normalcy. Before the fire, before the end, when her parents were still alive. They worked for the Confedere – perhaps they'd learned something vital.

'They were… arguing, right? I can't recall why, I just remember hiding in the closet when they did… because I never heard them fight like that before…'

She entered their bedroom, spotting the closet, though mold now crept up along the walls, part of the collapsed roof crushing the bed. She tried to remember sitting inside that closet, and if anything else stood out to her. Something that was odd to her but unnoticeable by strangers.

She remembered an odd scraping sound and her eyes returned to the ruins of the bed. She snuck over carefully, noticing some telltale scrapings on the floor… a bit of carpet…

… she pulled the carpet up and saw it. A safe, embedded in the floor. She didn't have the right equipment to crack the combination. She would need something else.

But Gakupo's constant prattling about macarons was what drew Luka to this place again. Something her parents arguing that night stuck with her as strange.

"I'll hide it with the macarons. Only you, mother, will know the combination."

Luka examined the room better – she saw a trunk with a broken lock, no doubt someone had tried looting it. She took a chance and popped it open, seeing a few scattered and worn books. She picked them up carefully…

… the first was a photo album. The image of her parents shocked her to the core and she trembled as she reached out to touch the page.

'They didn't deserve to die like this…'

The two of them marrying… opening the bakery… her own birth… the three of them making sweets…

Seeing the records of her old life, Luka started to wonder what her life would have been had Saint-Famille survived. She probably would have taken over the family business and spent her life crafting pastries without a care in the world.

She saw the plate of macarons in the photo of them cooking and Luka's logic overtook her sentiment. The macarons, her mother wasn't so great a cook that she could make them from memory. She would have written it down! She examined the image closer, spying a brown recipe book with a flower etched onto the cover…

… she tore through the trunk and at the very bottom, she rested her hands on that very book.

She thumbed through it quickly, finally spying the recipe she needed.

At the corner of the page was a three-digit number. Someone unfamiliar with what they were looking for would have likely assumed it was simply the page number for the recipe, but Luka thought that perhaps…

The safe lock popped open as she turned the dials using those digits. A smile crossed her face as she yanked the door open, eager to finally discover the contents and see what answers they held… if they were truly so valuable that every man woman and child in Saint-Famille deserved to be murdered for it…

"Oh, hey Neru! Another letter from your mom?"

The blonde approached the red-haired boy in the white suit and blue pants. "Afternoon, Akira. I don't suppose the mail is still going through?"

He took the envelope from the girl. "Unfortunately, with the war creeping up on us, we're still taking letters, we just don't know when they'll make it through."

He looked over the envelope and sighed. "Not that this one will make much difference."

Neru fidgeted nervously. "Look, I know it's a long shot, but… you never know…" she said, "Maybe Miku made it… maybe she's not one of the ones who died… maybe…"

Akira patted her on the shoulder. "I get it... she deserved better than that."

As the blonde passed by, Miku took her chance to approach the mail carrier. "That girl, she was talking about a missing person… who was she?"

The red-head blinked at her. "And… you are?"

Of course, he was suspicious. Miku tried to pull back on her approach. "I… I lost someone to those people… I'm trying to find her. I thought maybe… maybe that 'Miku' person could lead me to her…"

Akira seemed to be looking Miku over, but he waved her along with him. "Sorry, there's been a lot of strange things happening. A few years back these weird women showed up and a bunch of little girls disappeared. When they started to turn up dead, we just assumed none of them made it."

This wasn't what Miku needed to know – she knew her own story with the Godmothers. She needed to know what happened before. She watched Akira stuff the letter in his mail satchel. "What was Miku like?" she pressed.

"I didn't know her that well, I just know about her from what Neru told me. She fell apart when her father died. They had him cremated and scattered in a garden her mother planted, and Miku would just sit in front of the fireplace where the soot gathered… like she wanted to join them."

Was mother warm in ash? Was father? It gave her warmth… she never wanted it to end…

"Neru said her stepmother didn't know how to reach her. She tried everything. Finally she started giving her chores just to get her away from the fireplace during the day."

She hated them for taking her away from where she was safe. They had lost nothing, she had lost everything. They smiled and laughed, they had hearts. She wanted to be with the ashes.

"Then those women showed up… said they could save her. Take her somewhere for orphan children, heal her heart, and make her in a Princess. They gave her family money to make up for it… and they never saw Miku again."

She was Cinderella… she would be a Princess… the ashes had given her a new life…

"Whoa, hey, are you okay?!"

Miku tried to snap herself out of the memories that threatened to drag her under as Akira shook her. She leapt back from his touch, clutching her hands close. "I… I'm sorry…" she apologized, darting away through the streets, trying to regain her sanity, the envelope she'd pilfered from his pack tight in her hand…

Just one thing sat in the safe. A small tan folder. She picked it up, sifting through the files. Some dates, from the time of the war. A missive, detailing important intelligence that had to reach the king.

And a photograph of a woman in a black and white dress. Though black and white, it was easy to tell the woman's hair possessed a natural silver sheen. She appeared to be in her late 20s or early 30s at the time of the photograph.

'I… I've seen this woman! I remember her! They took me to her when I was pulled from the ashes!'

She turned the photo over.

"Miriam Herthe. Godmother," she read aloud.

She began to pour through the brief documents, gleaning any useful details from the war…

Dearest Miku,

I pray this letter finds you in good health and safety. Estmarch is at war once again, and now they say the Prince lives and is marching across our lands. He is supposed to be merciful – if he comes to you, I hope he will understand you.

Haku and Neru are helping out around the shop, keeping us afloat even in lean times. Your mother's garden is so lovely in the spring, and the doves still return to it and sing for hours.

I understand that you may hate me for the choice I made. I can accept that consequence – I promised your father on his deathbed that I would protect you, and I failed to save your heart. I hope you have found a kinder home, with comfort and love that heals you far more than I could. Even if I may never see or hear from you again, if you are happy, than I have fulfilled his will.

Miku. You will be a wonderful Cinderella. The future is bright for you.

You will always have a home in Aschenputtel.

Love,

Mother

Miku couldn't stop from sobbing in silence as she read and re-read the letter over and over again, her memories and her life conflicting and stirring up all the emotions she'd been suppressing. She wanted to despise this women that sold her, but she could also remember her begging to leave the ashes in front of the fire before she got hurt. She remembered hating their happiness as if it was something they were keeping from her and she remembered Neru and Haku trying to beg her to play outside with them. She remembered the broom being handed to her and her stepmother guiding her around the house, and how swiftly she would take to the tasks with an empty gaze.

She never got along with her stepmother because they never understood each other, but the woman still tried everything to get her to engage again. The woman, driven to desperation, tried to save her and unintentionally shattered her. The handlers, the Godmothers she worked for, they filled her heart and mind with lies, with violence, with poison.

'What am I?!' she cursed quietly, 'Who am I?! Where do I belong?!'

Miku wasn't Cinderella. She was shaped into Cinderella.

She clutched the letter close to her chest, remembering the words. You will always have a home in Aschenputtel. She forced herself to stand up, recalling the streets and the home. She started to press forward. She had to say something, she had to do something…

… but she watched the older woman with her daughters. How close they looked, even as they carried the guilt with them of missing another child.

Her footsteps halted.

'No. I don't belong here.'

Luka dropped the documents and rolled along the floor as a throwing knife impaled the spot where she had been reading. "Who's there?!" she called out.

She saw a girl in a black dress, with red curly pigtails. "Red Devil. Teto."

Fighting Teto was surprisingly easy – the girl was uneven in her assault. Far too emotional.

"You and Miku tried to do me in!" she screamed as she kept swiping a knife at Luka, "You betrayed me, set me up! You knew I could be a real Cinderella, and you sent me away!"

"I doubt you tracked me this far," Luka said, easily avoiding the blows, "You've had no chance. So who sent you here?!"

"They told me to watch Saint-Famille, for YOU! They knew you'd come back, and they told me if I killed you here, I could be the new Princess!"

Luka spun around, yanking Teto's arm behind her back and causing the girl to scream in pain. "Do you even know why you want it?"

Teto struggled against Luka further, causing the woman to slam her up against the wall. "I don't… have anything else…" she started to cry, "This is all that I am… that's all that I could be…"

For a moment, Luka could understand. Drawn out of a fire when her home was destroyed, she had nothing left. Broken and burned, she lived for just the revenge.

To Luka… becoming a Princess only meant having a purpose when the revenge was done. It was never her true goal as a Cendrillon.

"I used to believe it was fate that I survived to be found by the Godmothers. They told me that my survival meant that I would be the Cendrillon to strike down the people that had stolen my life. That they came to the ruins of Saint-Famille to elevate its lone survivor. But that was false."

That picture staring into her mind, the mysterious Miriam. "It was only chance. Saint-Famille burned to cover someone else's crimes. Nobody came seeking me – they only came to make sure they destroyed the evidence of their actions… and they found me."

She laughed wryly. "I was their 'consolation prize.'"

She felt Teto's struggling weaken. "It's up to you to decide where you came from, and what you do next."

She tossed the girl to the floor, grabbing the documents from the safe and the recipe book, shoving them into her bag. "But if you return to them, you tell them this. Cendrillon's dove is coming to gouge out their eyes."

With that, Luka stepped out of the house. Teto was of no importance now. She could make her own choices on what to do. But Luka had already made hers.

Miku watched Akira dropping off his satchel of letters, still clutching the one she'd stolen, listening to a nearby café's radio playing a song.

"There's nowhere for it to go anymore, the heat of this love… The grey clouds, the monochrome clamor… the sunlight casts a shadow, the twilight changes color…"

The memories floating in her head, the contradictions of her past and herself, began to take form. It had been so easy for her to believe herself the true Cinderella her handlers and Godmothers told her she was. That her life so perfectly mimicked the fairy tale that the people who stole her away could even try to convince her to murder an innocent man.

To be a Princess.

It was easier to convince herself of that than the alternative – that she had no purpose except to burn away.

"The world blurs; even so, will I still love you? I know this - but what should I do? How can I, what should I... What an idiot... I am…"

She started to understand what exactly Kaito's words to her that night meant. Why she'd found the strength to abandon that purpose and commit herself to saving his life.

He'd showered her with kindness and trust. He'd purely opened his heart to her, because he believed she had worth. Even being a prisoner, manipulated into being silent and weak, he struggled for freedom.

That… was what made her love him.

"Let's go, this is war! Just seeing you so happy...! Ardent love is a sin, I'll show you my feelings!"

And that was why she left him – she could still hurt him.

That was why she left her family – she could still hurt them.

So long as she drew breath in a world where the Godmothers still operated, every person she loved was in danger if she stayed near them.

"Ah, the sky cleared before I knew it and it doesn't suit me. I can't hold my feelings back…How can I, what should I..."

But she didn't want this!

She had the right to love, the right to have a family, the right to be with Kaito! Was she supposed to run and hide for the rest of her life? Kill herself to end it quickly?

'I wasn't… even the only one…'

She thought of Luka and Rin. She thought of the girls they'd been forced to kill in Jangenschatz. She even thought of Teto and Akiko…

'Did any one of them choose this? We were all stolen. We lost our lives, our childhoods, our families… our futures. Even if Kaito defeats the Dawn, they'll still exist to kidnap and snatch the futures away from even more little girls that can't protect themselves…'

'I didn't run from Kaito to protect him… I ran… because I was afraid…'

But she couldn't return. Now that she was away from him, she had an opportunity. She wasn't dragging a large group of people around or smuggling a famous dead man. She was alone. She knew how the Godmothers operated, and where they would start placing Cinderellas.

"I'm fighting, shooting for the heart! I didn't choose this way! I'll show you how my skirt flutters, and steal your gaze away!"

She stuffed the letter into her bag. She'd given Kaito the glass slipper, and now she understood it as a promise. That she would see him again. But only after she'd solved her own problems. He couldn't help her now.

She imagined for a moment their final night together, and the strength of his embrace, the comfort of his words, the passion of his intimacy…

'Kaito. I am coming back to you, but not until I've dealt with with them. I promise you, I'm going to bring down the Godmothers, to the last. I'm going to find the Grand Godmother, and unmask her. If they're so determined to chase me down, I'll meet every one of them head on!'

And in this way… she could still protect Kaito, even from far away. Every Cinderella she would take out would be one less to pursue him or undermine his military efforts. One less that the Godmothers would have to operate in the kingdom, gathering intelligence.

'And when it's all done, when I've finally stopped them… I can go back to Kaito. And my home. In Aschenputtel.'

She wasn't sure if this was what Luka had wanted her to do by sending Miku to confront her past, but she silently thanked the pink-haired Cinderella for understanding her, perhaps even better than herself. 'Whatever Luka's planning… if I see her again… it will be as allies.'

'Kaito… I'm sorry for breaking your heart. I hope you'll forgive me when I see you again.'

She would not fail.

"Prepare for a counterattack! I'm fighting a losing battle…Love is blindness. Your kiss opens my eyes…"

A/N:

Phew! That was a lot of exposition. As much as Flight of Cendrillon is about Kaito, to me this story is always Miku's tale first and this chapter really dug into her. This is a very sad and broken Miku compared to the others I've written about, and I knew that simply falling in love with Kaito wouldn't be enough. Miku has to have her own resolution to her internal crisis.

Luka spelled it out more prominently, but I think by this point in the story she's more comfortable with analyzing herself and what she wants. Her threat for the Godmothers? Well, if you're familiar with some of the non-Disney versions of the story, Cinderella is given her gowns by a dove… and that same dove gouges out the eyes of the stepsisters that tormented her. Hey, Godmothers, you're the ones that pissed off Luka, hope you've got your final affairs in order ;)

For those that didn't catch it, Akira is the name I used for Arsloid, because of course I didn't want a character in the story with a name that silly (and yet I still used Cul despite knowing she has a very silly name in French… oh well…) Since Arsloid is voiced by Akira Kano, I just yoinked that name for the hapless postal carrier Miku robs.

Song Credit: I got sneaky here… Miku didn't sing it, but "Love is War" was playing on the radio at the end of the chapter. This isn't really a story where Miku is going to sing very much if you guys didn't figure it out. I feel kind of bad since the songs are something I know people like about the stories, but… well look, not every story is Broken Wings where it's really easy to get them in ;_;