Disclaimer: Don't own Tutu. Nope. Not a bit of it.
Vignette Eight:
Rue and Princess Tutu laid a seemingly lifeless Freya down on her bed in the girls dormitory of Kinkon Academy of Visual and Performing Arts. Rue pressed her middle and indx fingers to the blond ballerina's wrist with no result. She did the same to the artery in her neck, it was the same. No pulse. No heart.
"I'm sorry, Ahiru." She said to her companion.
The pink princess' eyes welled up. "That can't be." She grabbed Freya's shoulders and shook her body violently. "Freya-san! FREYA-SAN! Pull yourself together, Freya-san." But it was no use. Freya's body remained limp and lifeless.
Rue placed a comforting hand on Princess Tutu's bare shoulder. "I'm sorry, Ahiru." She said. "This is all my fault. I knew Hoffnung was going to to something like this. I just thought... I guess I thought I could stop him."
Ahiru reverted back from Princess Tutu. "No, Rue-chan. I couldn't save her. I don't understand what happened. Back when Mytho did this all I had to do was appear on the scene as Princess Tutu and he would spaz-out and I could save his victim. But my appearance had no effect on Hoffnung. What went wrong?"
Rue remained silent.
"FREYA-SAN!" The comatose blondie had stirred on the bed before them. Ahiru bent close to her face still shouting at her. "Freya-san! You're alive! You're alright! Freya-san!"
She had the most blank and empty look in her eyes as she sat up in bed.
"How do you feel?" Asked a very shocked Rue.
"I don't know." Replied the blonde ballerina in a monotone.
"Are you alright, Freya-san?" Asked the genuinely concerned Ahiru.
"Maybe." Freya's face was a blank mask. She had no expression as she spoke and there was no infraction in her voice. She was alive, but without her heart the blond ballerina was the same an animated doll.
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Mytho struggled uselessly against the silvery-white threads that bound him, all he achieved, however, was just to cut them deeper into his flesh and drain yet more blood from his already taped body. He heard footsteps on the cog wheel below him and glanced down to see Hoffnung staring up at him. He looked happy about something, happy and full.
"You've eaten." Said Mytho.
Hoffnung ignored his father's statement. "You shouldn't struggle like that, father. It drains the blood from your heart."
"Why don't you let me down then?"
This to, he ignored. "I met the most interesting person today. Would you like to hear about it?"
Mytho was silent.
"Her name might sound familiar to you: Princess Tutu?"
Mytho's eyes widened and an expression of absolute relief spread over his entire face. "Princess Tutu!" He closed his eyes. "Yes. Rue found her. I'm so glad." He looked Hoffnung square in the face. "Princess Tutu can... no... Princess Tutu WILL save you."
The Raven boy laughed. "Save me? From what? Myself? You? No, Father, I'm afraid that it's you who needs the saving right now. Not me."
"Princess Tutu will know what to do. She will save you, just like she saved me."
A third time Hoffnung ignored his father's words. "Look what I've done with the place!" He wave a hand indicating all the brass cogwheels all turning and clicking together like... well, like clock work. "I got the thing started again. Well, my writer got the thing started again wile you were unconscious. Isn't it beautiful?"
"If by beautiful you mean creepy, then yes."
"You never appreciate the things that I do!"
"You never do anything worth appreciating."
That statement cut. Hoffnung liked to think that his heart had hardened against his fathers disappointment, his father's shame at having a Raven for a son but no, it hadn't and Mytho's words were like poring salt on an already festering wound.
"Princess Tutu won't help you, father!" There was more anger than determination in his eyes. "I won't let her. I will take everything from her, everything she loves! I will give her nothing! I will let her do nothing. A useless Princess from an already ended story."
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Rue sat alone in her dorm room. The same room she had occupied during her first stay at the Academy, as Princess Kreahe. She starred out her window at the moon lit courtyard below. Not much actually happened in that courtyard she realized. In-fact, during the whole of the Tutu anime maybe only two or three events actually took place there. The courtyard held no memories for her and so it was good place, a neutral place to stair wile her thoughts ran wild in her head.
Hoffnung had stolen another heart. She knew he would, of course he would it was all he could eat to sustain himself. Just the Pure Hearts of innocent people. Rue had tried other thing, things that he could feed on without stealing hearts. The original Raven had raised her on his own blood and so that was her first attempt. After that fateful night when she and Mytho had learned that Hoffnung was a Raven she had begun feeding him her own blood.
She had to be stealthy about it, she knew that if Mytho ever found out he would be furious. She tried to pass off the cuts on her hands and wrists an simple carelessness, Mytho never pressed her to hard he would just get this sad look in his eyes and say that as long as she was alright he wouldn't worry. And this continued for years. Rue was sure that in that time Mytho must have figured it out eventually, but he never said anything.
The only time it seemed like he was going to call her on it was one evening when she had walked in on him trying to get Hoff-chan to eat some mashed up... something. He had simply turned his head to face her and said "He must love you more than me. I can never get him to eat, but he always eats for you." He had stood up then and turned to leave the room as he passed he had whispered to her "You will have to tell me your secret some day." And then he left.
As it happened, Rue never did tell him how she got Hoffnung to eat, or what she was feeding him. He grew up as healthy as he could, altho he was always an inch from starvation but they were happy. That is until Hoffnung got hungry during one of his lessons one day, he was around the age of seven, and ended up eating his tutor's heart.
Mytho hadn't know what to do then. He'd never been faced with something like this before. Now everyone, or at least everyone who lived in the palace, knew that the crown prince was a Raven. Not knowing what else to do, Mytho did what most parents in fairy tales do: he locked Hoffnung up in the highest room of the tallest tower in the whole of the palace. But there was one thing that Mytho had forgotten, and that was that Raven's could fly, and so Hoffnung had escaped.
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Fakir ignored the insistent knock at the door. It was late, no one should be calling this late. Whoever it was could just come back tomorrow. He was writing and he did not want to be disturbed. The knocker persisted. Fakir gritted his teeth, if this kept up they would wake Karon. He stood and walked to the door, yanking it open with all the ferociousness of a fan fiction writer whom had received to many critical reviews.
"FAKIR!" The pink-orange haired girl stumbled into the room, the skirt of her school uniform swirling around her hips. "Fakir, it's terrible! Freya-san! Freya-san...!"
"Ahiru." He seized the panicked princess about the shoulders. "Calm down. What about Freya?"
"He stole her heart." Tears spilled from her eyes.
It took him a moment to remember just who "he" was. "But she's still alive? Mytho had no heart and he wasn't dead, remember? So we'll get it back for her just like we did for Mytho." He smiled a gentle smile and patted the distraught Ahiru on the head.
"Really, we can?" She immediately brightened. "Even though he ate it!"
Fakir paused. He was thinking it was just sitting on a shelf somewhere and when they rescued Mytho they could just grab it during their get away. But if he had eaten it... Fakir didn't really want to think about rescuing a heart from some one's small intestine or even just their stomach for that matter.
"Don't worry." He finally said. "I'll write a way for us to get her heart back. Like maybe after we defeat Hoffnung, all the hearts he's eaten will just magically return to their proper places."
He hugged him then. "That's great!"
He moved automatically to wrap his arms around her in turn but paused. She still hadn't given him her answer to his question. Did she still love Mytho? Would she shy away from any advances on his part? If he hugged her back would she push him away? Would she hold tighter? Would she do nothing and think it nothing more than just a friendly hug? Most likely the latter of the three. She was very dense.
"Oh, yeah." She pulled out of her one sided hug. "Have you written anything new since turning me back into Tutu?"
He grinned the grin of an artist that was just beginning to be recognized in their field. He swept up the stack of paper that was Mytho's life story in one dramatic "swoosh" and held them out for Ahiru to take. She accepted the hand written novella began to read. He watched as her expression changed from happy to optimistic, to apprehensive, to sad and finally she placed the pages down on the table.
"This is really sad, Fakir."
"But this is what happened in the story before Rue came back out." He spread the pages out over the table so that each one could be seen. "It tells us why every thing's happening the way it is."
"Did it tell you how we can help Rue-chan and Mytho?"
"No. Not yet." He had a weird look on his face. Ahiru didn't quite know how to interpret it.
"We don't need to read about the sad things that happened before we got involved. We just need to know how we can help now." She placed a hand over Fakir's and slowly lifted it away from the pages. "So don't write any more sad thing." She held his hand in both of hers now. "Just like we did before, let's combine our 'we want to save Mytho' powers." A smile.
"Right." He said absent mind-idly as he gathered the pages to gather and placed them in the correct order. Combine their powers... Oh, he wanted to "combine" with her alright. The initial physical attraction he'd felt toward her when she first retuned to human for had subsided since the town had been absorbed further into the new story. He assumed it was because fairy tale characters weren't driven by... by the need to procreate like real people. Thank you Dr. Freud. But the attraction was still there and still strong.
"Hey, Fakir?" She was fiddling with the hem of her skirt. "Remember when you asked if I still loved Mytho or not?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, Rue-chan said something to me a wile ago." The hem of her uniform seemed increasingly interesting to her as she spoke. "We were at the Prodding Bridge, you know the one that was possessed by the feeling of curiosity."
He gave a blank stair. He wasn't in that part of the episode. She didn't notice his lack of recognition though, her skirt was to fascinating.
"I asked her if it would be better if Mytho had a heart and she said it didn't matter. She said that she loved him just the way he was and that he didn't need to change, but if he did change she would continue to love him. She said she couldn't love him enough."
"Is you answer to my question then the same as hers?"
"No." Now she was fiddling with the pendant. "It's just that she loved Mytho unconditionally. And I... I loved Mytho because he was handsome. When he was getting his heart back piece by piece I think I still loved him, even when he was evil I think I loved him. But after he went back into the story I started thinking. Maybe it wasn't really Mytho I loved but... but maybe I was in love with the idea of Mytho instead. Does that make sense?"
It made perfect sense and was music to his ears.
"So, I can't answer your question, Fakir, because I don't know the answer myself." She stopped distracting herself with clothing and accessories and met his eyes. "Is it important for the story? Originally Princess Tutu wanted to save the Prince 'cause she loved him. But I don't know anymore, does that mean that I can't be Princess Tutu? Is that why I couldn't save Freya-san?" He eyes welled up. "Fakir!"
This time he did wrap his arms around her, a firm, tight hug. He felt the warmth of her tears as she cried into his shirt and searched wildly for something to say. He didn't have much experience with girls, and by "much" he of course meant "none", and he had even less experience with crying girls so words escaped him. The best he could do, he decided, was what he was already doing and so he just held her and waited for her to finish.
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Autor watched the quill move across the paper. The quill suspended from the story machine, the quill being moved by the wheels, not his quill. The story wasn't his any more. But then, he realized, it probably never was from the beginning. He was just being used by Hoffnung, a puppet that could influence the story, what a useful pawn he had made. And he'd never even gotten the chance to talk to Rue, let alone make her his.
He peered up into the mass of cogs and gears above. Somewhere up there Hoffnung was taunting Mytho pointlessly. He looked back at the quill, now he was a pawn and a servant. He had made Mytho suffer inside the story, brought Hoffnung out, even fixed Drosslemyer's machine and this was his reward.
"I chose the path of the villain." Autor sneered at himself. "And everyone knows that villains never get a 'happily ever after'. We get our just desserts."
"Did you say 'desert'?" There was a flutter of black feathers as Hoffnung landed gently next to Autor. "I really couldn't possibly. I'm still full from the blond. But if you're hungry, I here this restaurant called Ebine is really good."
Autor didn't respond. He venously wished that Hoffnung would just disappear.
Fin for now...
Thanx To...
James Birdsong: Your reviews are always so positive, I really appreciate that.
Puchiko2: thank you for your in put, I'm trying to write my fiction wile still honoring and staying true to the Anime, I am often annoyed by fan fictions that abandon the fundamental characteristics of the original work from which it was based. As far as ch. 7 mimicking season 2 of the Anime... I was just really annoyed that Tutu always managed to save every one of Mytho's victims in the Anime. I really wanted some one to louse their heart, if for no other reason than to show that Princess Tutu wasn't infallible. That and I really hated Freya, she reminded me to much of Aris/ Arith from FFVII.
Lady Ariez: I'm glad you like it so much. : )
Special Thanx To...
Lady Ariez for adding me to her favorite authors, favorite stories and her Story Alerts.