Chapter 12

It was dark when Ahiru opened her eyes, a drowsiness still had a hold on her mind. Her heart and limbs felt heavy as she lay against something soft. 'What happened?' she asked herself, her mind a foggy loop of waking sleep. She struggled to see or move only rolling on her side, before falling back into an apathetic sleep.

Her body shutter felling a hand caress her shoulder. "Corvin?" Ahiru's tired eyes strained up at the silhouette of the young man, his body bathed in shadows from some far-off light.

The hand recoiled a shame-filled "Sorry." Greeted her as a response.

Worry and confusion fueling her muscle, Ahiru tried to meet Corvin eye to eye. Shaking as she lifted herself part way from the velvety surface.

"Please don't, you're not feeling well." Corvin grabbed her arms in an attempt to steady Ahiru. "You have a fever." He guided a hand to her forehead.

The numb haze inside her made it hard to sense the heat coming for her forehead, and barely Corvin's touch "What happened?" She mustered up the question that had been floating in her head.

"It's my fault." Once more Corvin answered her once in an apologetic tone, his grip loosening.

"Did you kidnap me?" She knew that wasn't the right question, but she couldn't pin in place what was wrong.

"No!" His hands pulled back from her, something helpless entering his voice before he quashed it. "Actually, it's more complicated."

Give a second chance Ahiru tried to get herself upright, convinced if she could just sit up she'd be able to think more clearly. Though when she did it felt like her whole body gave out and fell back in an unnatural rush.

Corvin grabs her mid-fall pulling her close him, eventually finding herself on his lap. "Please stop that, you need to rest." He wrapped his arm tighter around her.

Heat pounding Ahiru's mind raced as her situation clicked in her mind "What's going on?" She looked away from the Corvin.

A period of silence grew in that dark place before Corvin said simply "It's complicated.".

"I'm not going anywhere." Ahiru returned the statement with a biting sarcasm.

Corvin stroked her cheek tenderly "You, Ahiru agreed to love me, to try to be my princess."

The finality in his word made her world tilt, he was correct. She nodded, though it was a strange struggle to do. Had granting Corvin wish made her ill? Is what why Corvin was taking the blame for was happening to her?

"That would have meant ever after, it would have been wonderful." The contempt in his words made Ahiru nervous, it bordered on the primal rage she had witnessed in him.

"What happened?" She tried to keep him talking despite, the sound of agitated rustling above them.

"Your friends, they are trying to stop m- I, us." He calmed ever slightly.

"So, you kidnapped me?" Again, she knew that wasn't that right question, but the mental fog was taking hold of her once more.

"Hid you, Ahiru don't act so ignorant." He stopped his hand the bitter anger slipping into chilled tone "I know what you are."

"What?" She looked at him, a part of her trying to guide her through the numbness.

Corvin cupped her cheek angling her face to his. "You are tied to this story as much as James or your friends are."

Her eyes widened and pulled her face out of his hand and he let her. "How long did you know?" Ahiru wondered if he knew about Tutu and her connection to the magical princess.

"A while." His touch gentled as he whispered, "Just long enough to that you wanted the same thing I did."

Ahiru felt tears sting her eyes, something in her body quivering at Corvin's voice "I just wanted to help you!" She tried to pull away from him, yet still so numb fell on to his chest. Fighting the endless fatigue that was consuming her to express anything, she sobbed into his shoulder.

"You have." Corvin held her gently trying to comfort her "You have."

Ahiru stifled her crying gripping the cloth of his shirt. "Promise me you won't hurt them." She choked out a plea.

Corvin's hold on her stiffened "I can't make that promise love, not when they seek to harm me."

She could hear the something in his voice, not uncertainty something more fearful. Unsure how to take the push her wishes farther in her state, she didn't. A brief moment went by as she laid against him, feeling his chest shutter and listing to his erratic heartbeat.

"I came into the world sickly, different than any other in my kingdom." He spoke with a raw shaky voice like he'd been crying. "My father was a proud and selfish ruler, he disowned me both as his heir and his son."

"Corvin?" Ahiru was confused on why he'd tell her some like that.

Corvin didn't answer continuing his tale "My mother, she was convinced that she could heal me, that she could make me someone that he'd be proud of." again Ahiru could feel his chest shake "In her search to find something to cure me, she was struck down by Prince Siegfried and his men."

She looked up at Corvin the best she could, Ahiru still could except the Mytho would just kill someone. Though Corvin told his story with such sincerity that there must be some truth in it, yet it was still hard to for her to believe.

"When word reached my father." His chest shuttered once more.

Ahiru could guess that Corvin was trying to hide the pain, it made her feel terrible that even when he was still trying to hide his feelings. Even when her being in his arm and his desire to be himself he couldn't bring himself to cry. 'It hurting him, and yet he wants to tell what happened to him.' Ahiru teared up at her own thought, her mind so lost in a haze that couldn't find the word to tell him everything was okay.

"Neglect became my healer, and I'm ashamed of what it made me." She felt his grip on her tighten while a hand played with her hair "I thought, maybe I still do that if I bring harm to that prince, that I would." Corvin stopped suddenly his body become rigged as stone.

Ahiru shifted in his arm growing nervous at his unexpected stillness "Corvin?" she gave a tired sound.
The hold on her relaxed as Corvin's combed through her hair with a whisper he said: "Rest, once you're better you may leave me."

"No." She answered him, it wasn't the right thing to say but she wouldn't just leave him. Ahiru closed her eyes letting her dazed mind back down to sleep.

The screams of angry crows as flocks the dark feathered birds dart away and into the sky from the glittering blade of Siegfried's sword. The prince's golden eye's darted to his princess, standing in the open doorway of the greenhouse with an unpleasant expression. "Rue?" He rushed to her side seeing the interior of the garden devoid of their friend and the sinister boy that held the aura of despair of his fallen enemy. 'What could of I have done to make that make stranger show so much ire towards me?' He thought remembering the glacial stare Corvin had given him.

"Ahiru's gone!" Rue looked up at him eyes wide her pale features flushed with mixed emotions. "We have to find them!" Gripping his arm Rue shook like a leaf.

Siegfried's face shared her worry as he stroked his princess's hair softly, before leading her away from the greenhouse. The unfamiliar campus was empty as the duo wandered through halls and classrooms, the buildings and city bathed in an unmoving still light.

The snowy-haired prince suddenly pulling Rue close "What with the stalking, James?" His voice echoed in the cold hallway they were searching through.

As the hall fell silent footsteps echoed back, the dark-haired and emerald-eyed boy emerged from the shadows. Golden blade in hand and tattered cape upon his shoulders, James glared at them with a mix of anger and annoyance.

"You weren't one for subtlety." Siegfried gave the sour-faced teen a warm smile "Is this where you went after you left?" he took step towards James with open arms.

James raised the sword his expression unchanged "You mean after you banished me!" He growled at the prince with a malicious rumble.

Siegfried's friendly expression fell moving so Rue would be at his back "If you mean that a chateau and a wealthy stretch of land to lord over after you tried to steal my birthright." He drew his sword the enchanted blade glowing dimly in the hall.

"Only after you ran away for years!" James lunged at the prince only for the golden sword to be knocked out of his hands by a simple movement from this target's weapon.

"I. Did not. Runaway." Siegfried clipped as James stared blankly at his empty hands.

Rue looked between her prince and the strange man that had just tried to attack him. "Accuse me how do you two each other?"

"We're just friends."

"I'm his brother!"

She blinked as each of them gave a different statement on their relationship to each other. Rue was sure that her prince didn't have any siblings let alone one that would try to his kingdom from under him.

The hissing of James word's caught Rue off guard, his eyes narrowed and fists clenched. "What are you doing here? Siegfried?"

"I don't know, but a friend of mine is in danger," Siegfried answered his voice chilled.

James shoulders shook the white and red cape flapped as laughter "Oh, boo ho." His teasing was cut short when Siegfried pressed his sword against his neck

"How can you be!" The prince's golden eyes widened as he looked the young man in the eye. "Your heart."

James pushed back the blade with a ghostly smile "Give his highness a prize, he can see past his own grantor." He stood up straight, only for Rue to suddenly stomp on his foot.

"Shut! Up!" Her voice was shrill as red eyes glared into James green ones "I really don't care what your problems is! Ahiru has been kidnapped and is in danger!" She ground her heel deeper into his foot.

James recoiled scowling at her before Rue's words seemed to suddenly reached him with a muttered "Ahiru?" His eyes closed as something akin to shame fell upon his features.

"What do you know her?" Rue asked surprised that Ahiru would have anything to do with the stranger before her.

James shook his head in denial as turned away from the duo, walking away from them back into the shadows of the hall.

"Hey!" Rue was prevented from giving chase after him from a firm grip on her shoulder.

"Rue let him go!" Her prince pulled her back his golden eyes stern but, she saw something more mournful "He can't help us."

Rue tilted her head confused something at her core turning cold "What's wrong with him?" Her voice turned to a whisper "Is his heart missing?"

His grip on her relaxed-on Rue and closed his eyes "More like incomplete, he's only half restored." Siegfried stared at James retreating from before turning to move in the opposite direction.

"He's not-"

He turned to look at Rue his voice scraping and bitter that she almost didn't recognize it "I thought you didn't care?"

Rue didn't answer him as they continued their fruitless search, exiting the school campus only revealed the city to be an outlandish labyrinth. Each pale building with its own empty maze with little clues to where they there or the location of their friend. Together in shared tiredness the prince and princess sat taking a break from a recuse that was growing hopeless with each passing moment.

The low strumming of a guitar jostled the two from their daze "My, oh my two little love birds lost in a frozen world." They looked across the clearing to another strange man neither recognized, the guitarist stopped his idle playing and gesturing to a cluttered painted cart beside him. While making their way to confront the only person besides James they had seen in hours, they nearly ran to him with the hope that the newcomer would some sort of help.

Rue's hair stood on as she noticed a familiar piece of black fabric draped over one of the corners "Who are you?" She stopped in her tracks.

The man looked at her with a knowing smile "I'm a puppet with no strings and here to help and here to harm." The blond-haired man's then expression turned solemn his voice dry "I'm Allard, I'm both Fakir's and Drosselmeyer's mouthpiece."

There was a wave of worry and relief that went over Rue, of course, the author of tragedies was behind this and Fakir must of pull Rue and Siegfried out of their story to help.

"Who's speaking to us right now?" Prince Siegfried asked Allard looking rather disbelievingly at the man.

Allard gave a sigh and said, "I'm not obligated to say, but the story cannot continue and they are very worried."

"How do we get the story to end?" Rue asked unafraid of speaking to Drosselmeyer, she wanted to save Ahiru. Consequences of her action can be solved after she had gotten her friend way that menace that calls himself Corvin.

"Well, you could just give up." Allard gave a sarcastic smile.

Rue griped his shirt "Excuse me?" Her red eyes bore into him as her hands turned into fists.

"Hey, I'm just the massager." The man gave a nervous laugh and with more seriousness said: "If you don't want to give up, you must restore James heart, or your attempts to find your lost one will be for not."

Rue narrowed her eye irate that their success rested on someone else "Do we look like we have that type of power." She released him in a huff while Allard gave her suspiciously knowing look.

"Follow me." He headed up the street leaving the colorful cart behind, Rue quickly headed after him before noticing her prince wasn't behind her.

Turning back Rue looked at Siegfried, his golden eyes dull and sorrowful and it made a deep part of her ache to see that look on his face. She followed the line of his gaze to the cart of trinkets to see that he was looking at puppet of a silver colored fish with jagged fans for fins and an open mouth filled with reflective glass it was a hideous creature. She looked back at him said, "Is everything okay?".

Siegfried jolted like he had been startled from sleep and looked over at her "I'm fine." He gave a half smile taking her hand.

Together they follow Allard back to the school they started at and where escorted into what looked a school's dorm. The duo climbed up the stairs losing Allard on one of the floors, but the of a distanced yet recognizable angry voice.

They turned the corner to see James red-faced in front of the door on the farthest end of the hall "Get out here!" His knuckles turning white as gripped his sword "Yara I saw you, you can't pretend that you don't exist."

Siegfried gripped Rue's hand tighter as James green eye's flicked to them, narrowing with irritation at there reappearance.

"What are two doing here?" He growled as they approached cautiously, made him more rigid and angry.

They moved closer still, their previous encounter with James had convinced them that he was not a threat. James's eye flicked between them and the dorm room door, a soft wimping coming from the other side.

"Who's Yara?" Rue blinked not recognizing the name but assumed that the wimping must be that person.

James glared at the door with a growl "Someone who owes me a favor!"

"No." A female voice cried from behind the door.

With a snap, a furry James lunged at the door blade aimed at the door handle. "Get out damn it!"

The blade didn't hit its target. The wooden door and space in front of the door warping and shifting around the weapon. James lost his foot and staggered his fall halted by Siegfried who was quickly shrugged off.

The door shifted and bent back to its original form with a noticeable red glow "Let me try." Rue approached to door gentle putting hand against the door. "Yara?" She could feel the door jiggle and vibrating from an energy that was unmistakably a heart shard.

"I'm not coming out!" The door bent and shook violently at Yara's shrill words.

Rue briefly looked at the two behind her then asked: "Can we come in?"

Silence bled into the hallway Rue grew uncertain that Yara would answer, then with a weak "Only you." the door open.

Rue looked inside, in dark with the dim pulse of red giving her glimpse of the floor and walls. She walked through the doorway treading on the path outside light as she looked at the shadows of the room.

The ground shook as a shrill scream rebounded throughout the room "I said only you!"

Rue flipped her head around seeing James being yanked away from the doorway, the space leading to the hall. The wood of the door and its frame splintering and breaking apart as the wall swallowed up her exit. Rue pounded and searched the wall where the door a had been, the darkness making anxious as she hears the sounds of clashing blades from the other side. Her scratching ceased as the red glow of James fragmented emotions grew bright taking spectral forms. With a quick turn, she faced the many incorporeal images of James each leering at her with unsettling expressions.

Her gaze fell on a cluster of the red specters, through the translucent mass she saw the source of the voice. Clothes disheveled and, hair pouring over in inky tangles, the girl's eyes flick about her the focus of the pursuit was as indeterminate it's coloring.

"Yara?" Rue approached the girl, trying not to focus on the eerie similarity of herself that she saw in the girl.

"Don't come closer! You want to make me disappear!" The floor between the two girls stretched doubling the space Rue had gained "I haven't been bad, why do I have to go away?" She shook her head chest heaving with fear.

Rue didn't know how to answer the girls replied: "I need to help a friend." She tried to appeal to the girl, she took a soft step forward as not the startle her. "You can help, can't you?" She wondered what the meant by 'disappear', the mess of the girl was no enchanted princess like Tutu.

Yara whimpered as the red ghosts of James's emotion whispered in her ear, the other specters narrowing their eyes them to creep in around the two girls.

Rue narrowed her eyes at the see-through forms began once more "You have something that can help me save Ahiru? Right!" Her hands shook unable to contain the urgency of the situation from the skittish girls.

Yara's expression softened at Ahiru being in danger her eyes focused on Rue. The girl opened her mouth to speak, yet one of the fragmented feelings whispered something in her ear others nodding as her expression fell back into fear. With eyes filled tear Yara let out a scream "Don't take them from me!" Rue stumbled to her knees as the room jiggled and ground as the room moved with its own life "They said I'd stop existing without them!" The tears continue to flow in the red light "I've been good! Don't make me go away!"

"Yara please!" Rue's plea was silence as the floor became a wave of wood and cement throwing her deeper into the pulsing space "You can't be happy like this, aren't you suffering?" She asking remembering something Princess Tutu had told her.

A blankness fell over Yara's face as she hissed "W-What do you know about suffering?"

The ground still and Rue took the opportunity to stand up look Yara in the eyes "A lot I spent a long time being miserable and I spread that misery to others, even someone I loved." The ground moved but she held herself upright "I was possessive and selfish and no matter what I did, it never made me truly happy."

She watches Yara tiptoe away as she shook like the walls behind her, the red specters pulling at her twisted features. Rue could make out their hash whispers, the almost comfortingly as they told her that she would be no more.

Slowly Rue held out a hand to the weeping girl "Yara, I can tell you're in pain, but James is too, without the rest of his heart he's dangerous." She reached the border of red light a ghostly James glaring inches away from her face. "Without him, Ahiru might be lost forever." Rue paid it no mind, speaking past the face and to Yara.

"Ahiru?" The girl squeaked meeting Rue's eye. She could tell that somewhere underneath the influence James's feeling had on her, that Yara cared about Ahiru in her own way.

Rue push her hand through the ruby barrier give Yara a soft and earnests smile "Yes if you just give up the pieces of James's heart, we'll save her."

Yara began to extend her hand slowly "No!" she suddenly recoiled wincing as she stumbled away in renewed fear.

Fear engulfed Rue as she plunged deeper into the cloud of ghostly forms. She couldn't suddenly lose the progress she made because this girl suddenly went manic.

"Stop! Stop!" Yara shrieked as Rue gripped her wrists and thrashed about making them both fall to the pulsing floor.

Rue pinned Yara down the room around becoming more solid. She could fell a pounding in her throat as raw and dark like nothing she felt before. While the incorporeal with stoic expressions or from under ghostly hoods.

"I can't!" The girl under her screamed.

Rue shouted back at her yet she couldn't understand her own words. She reached down to Yara's chest as her entire side glowing. Something in Rue snapped and gripped at the glow under the fabric of Yara's shirt "Give them back!"

Yara squirmed and cried her eyes fill tears "Stop it hurts!"

Light and power rippled around the two swirling in a crimson vortex. The force of it throwing Rue back across the room and on to the floor.

"Rue?" The door swung open. As her prince searched a normal looking dorm room, finding her laying on the floor alone "Rue are you okay!"

"What?" She groaned as he tried to lift her "My head."

"Can you stand?" He asked looking at her with concern as James entered the room.

The moment he crossed the thresh hold the room pulsed with glittering lights. Reflectively his hands shot to his chest, stumbling back as if punched.

"James? Siegfried looked at him as help Rue to her feet. The brown-haired boy stared into the distance like he saw a ghost.

James took an intake of breath and looked at the snowy-haired prince "Thank you, Siegfried, for what you've done for me." His voice was soft and unable to look him in the eye "Sorry for never be able to appreciate it till now." The grip on her sword tightened and relaxed "Let save your friend." Then with a quick movement went into the hall.

Corvin's eyes opened, something had changed. Letting his mind clear from his brief rest he knew in his heart what happened. Lady Butterfly was gone and the girl Yara with her. Apart of him hurt even though he knew he couldn't save them. From the beginning, they separately told him to play nice and oblivious to their plight, for they were cursed to make everyone happy.

He was happy a least. Looking down at the girl resting against him and yet that ache persisted. With Butterfly gone no one stands by him. He could hear in the wind the lost crows he had work to gain his trust, now mutter questions of loyalty as two who could invoke their blood right over them. Even his princess he held in his arms wouldn't stay with him for sure.

"Corvin?" Ahiru's tried voice spoke up as he tried to move away from her.

"I have to go." He gently kissed her hand "I'll return, so please rest."

Ahiru gripped his hands "Promise you won't hurt them." Her words were faint and serious.

He looked at her holding on to his and answered: "I promise."