Disclaimer: I don't own Princess Tutu at all.

torixx3 - Thanks for your long reply! haha. I've been dancing for almost a decade, I guess you can say, but I stopped two or three years in between during my sixth to eighth grade year. So essentially I've danced for like seven or eight? lol. I've danced ballet the longest though, and it's my favorite. All in all, I've danced ballet, pointe, modern, jazz, choreography, and tap. I understand your injuries though, as a fellow dancer. I almost fainted during my pointe lesson one morning last month because I didn't eat breakfast and it was just not a good experience. But since then I've performed four dances flat on stage and a short piece on pointe. Definitely look into it for the summer. Even if you don't like ballet (it's not for everyone), you'll get great dancer experience out of it because the regimen for ballet is really hardcore.

Homurapop22156 - Thank you! I really hope that you will like this chapter. It doesn't really connect to Ahiru regaining her memory but it is very essential in depicting the progress Fakir/Ahiru's relationship.

Fakir's POV

It had been two weeks since Ahiru's last fainting spell, and she still showed no signs of recalling anything from her past. Learning this, I was majorly relieved. However, a little voice in the back of my head—probably Drosselmeyer—nagged me, 'So selfish, so selfish, keeping Ahiru from herself.' Since then, I had been unable to write anything properly because the voice kept bothering me. Like now.

"Fakir, are you okay?" I blinked, and Ahiru's big, cerulean eyes stared at me. Reddening, I sat up straight from the slumped position that I took in the chair. Ahiru had invited me to the dance studio to help her with some choreography for the upcoming dance recital in several days, and I appeased only after she allowed me to bring some of work that I had been unable to complete because of my writer's block.

"Yeah, yeah. Just spaced out there for a moment." I stuttered uncharacteristically.

She puckered her lips cutely and promptly sat on my lap. "He—Hey! What are you doing?" I exclaimed, now turning purple, as I saw in the studio's mirrors.

Ahiru put a finger to my lips. "Be quiet. You've been helping me for the past hour, so I suppose that I should help you with your work now. After all, it was my fault that you missed all of that work anyways," I opened my mouth to disagree, that I had writer's block, but she pinched my lips together, "Hm. I didn't know that you wrote these kinds of stories Fakir."

It was the story of one of my neighbors, who had recently lost her husband who provided for her family. It was a loveless marriage, one that was arranged between their parents, so she was not upset that she had lost her husband. The woman wanted to be with her lover, the one she had wanted to originally marry, but he was poor, and her parents rose objections when he asked for her hand in marriage. Now that she was widowed, she was going to go to her parents again and ask herself, but as soon as she got to her parents' home, they introduced her to another man she was to marry—her dead husband's twin brother.

So far, I did not know what to write next, how to give my neighbor a happy ending, so she was probably caught in a dilemma as I pondered how to help her. Time was running out, however; I could not wait too much time or else the story would complete itself on its own, probably with an ending that all of the characters would be upset with. Nonetheless, that story was the least of my problems now; I had switched some of the papers so that Ahiru's story was jumbled between the pages. I did not want Ahiru to find out—'What?' The voice in my head mocked, 'You don't want her to find out that you knew her before? That you knew her past and were a part of it? Or that you have a power to create reality through writing words? You don't want her to find this special ability and think you're crazy, do you not?'

And then again, how could she not know that it was my passion to write fairytales? How much contentment I would get when I carefully wrote the "... And they lived happily every after," or something of the sort at the end of each story? I wondered how much this Ahiru, not the one of the past who went through so much shit, knew about me. Did I want to risk her reliving her past in order to really know me?

Before I could sort out my conflicting thoughts, Ahiru asked, "Is this a class project?"

"What? Oh yeah—yes, it's for English."

"Hm, so you'd probably want a happy ending; your teacher is a romance-obsessed, right?" I nodded. "The main character in this story probably would not want history to repeat itself by marrying her dead husband's twin, so I think she should probably outright say that she would like to marry the one she really loves. Maybe the problem in the beginning was that because her lover asked her parents for her hand in marriage and since she didn't ask herself, her parents thought that she would rather marry a rich guy." She looked up with a finger to her chin. "At least, that's what I would have written."

I looked down at the black ink, the scripted words and blurted softly, "What if just telling them isn't enough? Sometimes people know what to say in their heads, but it can possibly only make the situation worse," I looked at her with a crazed expression, and she jumped reflexively, "What if she wants to make everyone happy, but she has to risk her own happiness in the process? And then, what if she wants the opposite? What if the only thing she wants is to be with the one she loves, but she has to risk her lover in the process? It just won't make sense, and whatever I do, I just can't write a happy ending!" I exploded, grabbing her by the shoulders.

Somehow, the story just didn't seem like someone else's anymore.

A few moments passed by. I was still heaving, eyes bloodshot red, and Ahiru still sat on my lap, unsure and weary. "Sorry, I just—I'm having a really hard time with this story right now." I placed my hands over my face, embarrassment now settling in at my outburst.

In a soft voice and a pat on my back, Ahiru reassured, "It's only a fairytale, Fakir."

She didn't understand. Why did I think she would? "Yeah, just a fairytale…" I muttered sardonically.

.

...

.

Ahiru's POV

I couldn't understand what it was with all these men being so crazed around me so suddenly and consistently. After several minutes of coaxing, I had Fakir forget his outburst and return to the person I knew—sarcastic but caring. He was standing on the floor now, and I set a record on the player, music from the grand pas de deux of the Nutcracker emanating from its great horn. I was practicing the pas de deux, flat instead of pointe, because my clumsiness would have not made for a great performance.

We started downstage at opposite corners of the dance floor. I almost missed the beginning, which was the easiest thing in the world, preparation to second and a walk toward and away from Fakir, toe-ball-heeling once again to our respective corners. It's just that Fakir looked so regal and visibly grew at least two inches as his posture became one of a dancer and not one of a writer slumped at his desk. I bouréed in fourth toward him, and he gently took my hand. Feeling the unique strength of a writer as well as the callouses his writing hardships had given him, I trusted that he would not let go as I dévelopéed forward. He turned me in a pique, and I lifted my leg into a high attitude. He turned me while I was in attitude, and halfway I brought my leg back to retiré. He caught me, and once again I trusted him not to let go as I leaned backward, seeing myself in the mirror behind me. In classical ballet, exaggeration is key. We repeated the same steps again twice, and reiterated most of the moves that followed.

In the bourrés afterward, he went backward as I went forward, connected by one hand. Our other hands made a perfect heart. He led me as I split in the air while on relevé and a pique arabesque in the other direction. Our moves were perfectly synchronized as they executed their chasée and sauté, ending side by side in a soutenu. While he was behind me, we completed a glissade together. But when I pas de chat, he lifted me so high in the air that I didn't have time to scream. In this beginner rendition of the pas de deux, the partners were not supposed to do any lifts. Just as soon as it happened, it was over, and he was settling me down for a pirouette from fifth position. Since we had to repeat this move, I was prepared since I had already done the move a first time. Once he lifted me into pas de chat, I looked into his eyes. They were holding my gaze lovingly, knowingly.

And it scared the hell out of me.

It scared me that someone could know me so well, when I realized that I really didn't know him at all. His eyes, painfully clichéd as it was, seemed to bore into my soul and be able to analyze it as easily as one of his English papers. His smirk—no, his smile—obviously displayed that he was remembering a special memory. And his hands—oh, his hands—carried my lithe body with such tenderness that it was hard noticing that he was holding me in the air. It seemed like I was calculating everything about him, while he easily knew everything about me.

So I fell. My body contracted, and my posture fell, which put on unnecessary weight. Even Fakir's resilient arms could not hold out while gripping my body high in the air. We tumbled to the floor clumsily, and I took the fall harder since I was higher in the air.

"What the hell—Ahiru!" He struggled to get out.

"Sorry," I said, holding my leg to my torso.

"Are you okay?" He asked gruffly, in a voice that didn't really want to care but actually did.

"Yeah, I think I just bruised myself. Nothing serious," I explained nonchalantly. My clumsiness had made for worse injuries beforehand. "It's your fault for executing a lift that I couldn't do," I teased with not much ardor as usual, not wanting to look in his eyes or his direction even.

"Well, I think we're over for today… Good work," He said, an unsatisfied tone lacing his seemingly harmless words. He offered me a hand, but I got up on my own.

As he stalked out of the room, cold tension in the air, I stared at his unfeeling posture. I thought that underlying that taciturn demeanor was the person that fussed over me when I fainted, the person that worried when I was left out in the rain, the person that cared enough about my feelings to enroll me in Kinkan High for ballet, and ultimately, was love. Instead, I gazed at a person that I barely knew anything about. I questioned, Who are you really, Fakir?

So we get to hear Ahiru's thoughts instead of Fakir's in their second pas de deux. I want to hear your thoughts now! Please review :)