I thank Unnoticeable_Demon for helping.
Once upon a time, there was a maiden in love. "I want to tell my beloved how I feel, but my love might be over the moment I confess it." Every day she suffered, agonizing in this way. She took no meals, and even sleep evaded her. Eventually, she died without ever having been able to communicate her feelings. But the man she loved married another woman, and lived happily ever after, without even the slightest inkling that she had ever existed.
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Tiger was vaguely aware of a voice and a sound of splashing water in the room next door. Her mind was clearing, but she couldn't find the strength to stand up. In fact, she was vaguely wondering how she could do that.
"Oh, did she disappear-zura?" Uzura was saying in a fascinated surprise.
Meanwhile in the room next door, Fakir looked outside the window.
"I found her." He told Lion, who was helping Uzura remove the sheets of Duck's bed, which she had splashed with water.
"I'll go get her." Fakir said and he went outside to find the little yellow duck on the pavement. Fakir took her back inside and then left with Lion to have her change back into a girl and clothe herself.
"What's going on?" Tiger asked when she gingerly reached the landing and looked to see both her brother and Fakir lean against Duck's door.
"You should take it easy, Tiger. You got hurt pretty bad by the Ghost Knight and then you got stabbed." Lion said to her and he reached out a hand to steady her as she reached them.
Tiger winced when she pulled a face. "The Knight didn't do it, Mytho did." She informed them grimly.
Duck's gasp could be heard from behind the door. "He didn't!" She cried out.
"He did, but then he asked you 'what did I do?'" Tiger said, looking at Fakir.
"Listen Tiger, stay far away from Mytho. This might be my fault. I threaten the Raven in him." Lion said to her and he looked distraught.
"I heard him order the knight to kill the girl called Tiger." Fakir said softly.
"Mytho, no!" Duck cried out again, thinking of the old Mytho and how much pain he had to be in, to know that he was being used to hurt so much.
"I'm sorry, but this isn't looking good for him." Tiger growled as she felt a stab of pain when she wanted to straighten her back.
A silence fell as they all waited for Duck to get dressed. Duck had been upset with the news about Mytho, but she also had some information to give to the others as well.
"What's that? You say you've met Drosselmeyer?" Fakir asked her in amazement when she was finished telling them how she had ended up outside.
"Yeah, it looks like whenever I meet Drosselmeyer, time somehow stops." Duck said, then she added: "You can come in now."
"And then?" Fakir asked when they all entered the room. Uzura was still busy fixing the bed with the dry sheets Lion had given her.
"He said the rest of the heart shards are sealing away the Raven, and also that the heart shards I return to Mytho are causing him a lot of pain." Duck told them sadly.
"I'm hating this story even more now." Tiger mumbled darkly.
Fakir's face, however, hardened. "So? What of it?" He asked, cooly and Duck startled. "If Drosselmeyer is right, that moment, when all the heart shards are returned, we'll see the Raven's resurrection. In other words, the start of the battle." Fakir told her.
"We can't stop the battle, Duck." Tiger said.
"Mytho must be prepared for some suffering already. If you aren't prepared to handle that as well, you should stop being Princess Tutu. I will protect Mytho with my sword." Fakir said.
Lion looked at Duck, his expression compassionate. "You have to be prepared for this, Duck. All we can do is try, but…" He trailed off, but Duck understood. With a dry sob, she nodded.
"I wish you weren't always swinging around swords and stuff, I mean that's really dangerous you know!" Duck cried out.
"So you're saying I'm incapable as a knight, is that what you think?" Fakir asked her, testily.
Duck jumped up. "That's not it!" She cried out in alarm.
"The sword isn't getting us anywhere with this." Tiger said, agreeing with Duck on this one.
"You spend all your time reading up on this and stuff, right? I just thought this kind of knight, well probably wouldn't be… um Fakir?" Duck's voice trailed off when she saw his face.
"If your wounds have healed, go home. I'll walk you." He said to her, a little blunt, but not unkind.
"Um, are you mad?" Duck asked Fakir carefully as they walked through the empty streets of town.
"No, not particularly." Fakir answered as he casually strolled down the street in front of her, his hands in his pockets.
"You are mad." Duck insisted, grumpily.
"I didn't think that Raven was going to do that." Lion said quietly.
They reached the Girl's dormitory and Duck closed the gate between herself and the two boys.
"Thank you very much for the bandage." She said, addressing Fakir with a kind smile.
"Later." Fakir said and turned to return to Charon's house.
"Good night!" Duck called after him and she gave them a little wave.
Lion returned her wave and gave her an apologetic smile before he ran after Fakir.
"A knight who can't even protect his princess. Does that mean the story will stay exactly the same whether I'm here or not?" Fakir said quietly, voicing at last what had been bothering him since yesterday.
"There must be some way for you to still protect who you want to protect, but I think the girls are right. We need to find another way for you to do that. Your sword will only repeat what the knight of the Prince and the Raven did before you."
When the boys returned to Charon's house they found Tiger still out of bed. She was sitting at the kitchen table and was as white as a sheet.
"Sorry, we were being reckless." She whispered to Fakir when he shut the door behind him.
"Please Tiger, get some rest." He said to her, he himself sounded exhausted.
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It took Tiger a week to get better. Luckily, the stab wound had been dealt with quickly and had not been too deep, otherwise it had taken longer to heal. Tiger was allowed to attend class again, but was reduced to following the Beginners' Class' curriculum instead of the advanced stuff she was used to. It was infuriating to repeat the things she already knew, but in her condition, there was not much else she could do. She just had to keep practicing! Fakir had been very kind to be her partner during these past days. He didn't have to, but he worked twice as hard to be there to help her alongside his own studies and Tiger came to realize how much she had scared him with her risk.
On one of these occasions when Tiger had to sit out the practice and just wait for her time to start, Piqué came to sit next to her.
"Hey, how are you doing? I hurt you got hurt pretty bad recently." She sat to her in a whisper and she gave Tiger a searching look.
"Yeah, I'm ok. I have to keep on practicing, but right now it's just the easy stuff that I can do. To be honest, I'm kind of sick of it already." Tiger told her honestly, her eyes wandered to where Fakir was practicing on his own. She wished she could dance with him like she used to, not like a child.
"You know…" Piqué began mischievously as she followed Tiger's gaze. "You could use this opportunity to tell Fakir how you feel."
"Huh?" Tiger shot Piqué a look.
"Look, I may play the fool at times, but I got eyes, you know?" Piqué continued, her tone more serious now.
"He was really out of it in the time you weren't here. He looked like he had seen death, but now he seems to live for you. Here!"
Tiger startled when a bright coloured letter was shoved under her nose. It was red with lace around the edges and covered in pink hearts. It had hers and Fakir's name on the back. When she recovered from the first shock, she snorted. "I'm not the type to send love letters."
"Trust me. Give it to Miss Bottom. She goes around delivering love letters for people."
Tiger raised an amused eyebrow. "Miss Bottom?
"Mm-hmm," Piqué nodded with enthusiasm, "and word is she knows the feelings of people in love."
"Really? Maybe I'll go see her. Uh, just to see if she can tell me about feelings." Tiger said evasively.
Once class was over and she was lingering in the changing room, she took out the letter Piqué had given her. It still looked ridiculous.
"But even if Fakir did get this, he'd probably say I'm wasting time and stuff." She mumbled to herself. She therefore decided to find Duck, maybe she could decide on what to do after she talked to her.
"I wonder what kind of person Miss Bottom is?" Duck said after Tiger had filled her in about the whole 'love-letter delivery'- thing. She was vaguely staring down at a letter herself. They were in the school grounds, on a little bridge and no one was around, so they could talk freely.
"You have a love letter, too?" Tiger asked her in amazement, but before Duck could either confirm or deny it, they heard heavy dragging footsteps approaching them and they turned around. Unknown to them, Uzura had snuck into the school grounds and was watching them from behind the trees.
"Are you agonizing over your love?" A muffled voice asked them.
"Are you Miss Bottom?" Duck asked the person to be friendly as she turned around, but she froze in shock when she met, instead of a person, a large stuffed head of a donkey, attached to a large donkey costume.
"D-donkey?!" Duck spluttered.
"I'm Bottom, friend of all those who are in love." The girl said in the donkey costume.
"That's nice, but why are you in such a big costume?" Tiger asked her.
"Costume?" The girl repeated, flustered. "Anyway, where's your letter?"
Suddenly there was a sound of a zipper being pulled down behind Miss Bottom and Uzura asked: "Your tail is not a tail, zura. Where's your tail, zura?"
Miss Bottom screamed when Uzura tried to find any real tail underneath the costume and ran away as fast as she could.
"Miss Bottom." Duck called after her and began to run after her.
Tiger did not move right away, she looked down at the surprised little puppet and with one firm twist of the hand she turned uzura's head around.
"You naughty, naughty girl! I've told you time and time and again not to search for any more tails!" She told her crossly, then she set off to search for Miss Bottom as well.
"Miss Bottom? Miss Bottom?" Duck called as she searched around the trees.
"Where are you?" Tiger called out as well, but then she spotted something big, furry and brown, scarcely hidden behind a tree. When the approached they could see that the girl had taken off the Donkeyhead. Short, bushy, dark red hair was bobbing up and down while the girl tried to catch her breath.
"Hey, look!" She said to Duck, nudging her and pointed to the tree.
"Miss Bottom?" Duck said carefully as she approached the tree.
The girl startled tremendously and started to wave with her arms.
"No, you've got it all wrong! I'm not Bottom or anybody who has to do with love letters and- uh…" She shot an angry look at the huge donkey head sitting beside her.
"Aren't you that upperclassman I see around?" Duck asked her.
"And you're also in the ballet division like us." Tiger added.
The girl sighed in defeat. "I found me out. Anyway, I'm Hermia. Please don't tell anyone, ok? I'll make sure your letter gets delivered." She said and she held up the letter she had taken from Duck before she ran off.
"No, that's ok. My friend was the one who wrote it for me. But she's kind of got the wrong idea about which person I like, so..." Duck said awkwardly.
"My friend wrote a letter, too. Though she is right about the person I like." Tiger said and she gave Hermia an embarrassed smile.
"Oh." Hermia looked down at the supposed 'wrong' letter in her hand and then to the one that was still in Tiger's hand.
"By the way, I'm Duck." Duck said pleasantly.
"And I'm Tiger. I'm in the intermediate class, but I got hurt and have to do beginner's stuff, which is getting boring." Tiger said, rather quickly.
"Oh, I'm sorry you got hurt. I hope I can at least help you with your love letter." She said to Tiger kindly, then she turned to Duck. "Well Miss Duck, when you've written your real letter, bring it to me anytime, ok."
"Oh, I would, but circumstances keep me from confessing my love." Duck said softly and she hung her head.
"I see." Hermia said and she gave Duck a searching look.
"You like 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'? There's a character who gets a donkey head, since you have a donkey costume." Tiger said a bit loudly to Hermia, to change the subject.
"Yeah well, my name is in the play and it is about the things that can control one's feelings so, it seemed fitting that I dressed up accordingly with that tale." Hermia said, shrugging.
"Um, Miss Hermia, do you know people's feelings?" Duck asked her.
"What? Oh, I don't know, but sometimes I can sense them. Like, 'Ah, this person is in love', or 'She looks lonely, maybe she's suffering from a broken heart'. I'm fairly tall, you know, so I'm always the one furthest to the back of the core. But one day, I noticed I could see the feeling of being in love written on everyone's backs. The heart-rending feelings of people in love. Love is a wonderful thing, but it also makes people suffer and be sad, right? So everyone has a hard time saying 'I love you', and they're all keeping their feelings inside. I thought I'd at least like to try and see if there was something I could do to help those people."
"I see." Duck replied.
"But you know, lately it's all been letters written to Mytho." Hermia said sadly and she actually looked a little bitter.
"Written to Mytho?" Duck asked softly.
"Yes. I bring him lots of letters everyday. Most are from people whose feelings ultimately won't be returned though." Hermia told them with a sad expression on her face, she obviously felt deeply for those who would end up hurt.
"I honestly can't stand that. This isn't real love." Tiger said fiercely.
Hermia sighed. "No, it isn't, it is fascination and it won't make anyone happy in the long run."
"I guess you must see Mytho pretty much everyday then, huh Miss Hermia?" Duck asked Hermia, getting back on topic.
Hermia turned to her and managed a smile. "Yes. Well actually, the odd thing is Mytho usually comes to me."
"So then you know something about Mytho's feelings, don't you?!" Duck pressed on, her voice raising.
"Huh?" Hermia looked at her in surprise.
"Anything is fine." Duck cried out.
"I'm sorry. Mytho's feelings are the one person's I can't seem to read." Hermia confessed.
"Oh, I see." Duck's expression fell in disappointment.
"Don't pressure her, Duck." Tiger said to Duck, noticing Hermia's alarm.
"Oh, are you by any chance one of those who likes Mytho, too?" Herma asked them both, looking from one to another.
"No, I like Fakir, but I don't think he'd want a love letter." Tiger said at once.
Duck did not reply, but seemed a bit dazed by the question.
"Huh? Oh, I guess you must like him too, huh Miss Hermia?" She instead asked Hermia.
Hermia got flustered at once and started to wave wildly with her hands.
"No, no, no! You've got it all wrong! I don't have any feelings for Mytho! I have someone else I like! His name is Lysander!" She cried out in a high-pitched voice, before she caught what she was saying and blushed furiously.
"Mr Lysander?" Duck asked, intrigued.
"Uh-huh." Hermia nodded, still confused by her own confession to two strangers.
"That's a weird coincidence. One of the couples in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" had those names." Tiger said with an amused smile.
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Hermia then took them to the front of the Sculpture division where a statue stood. It was made of dark grey stone and resembled an angel playing a long instrument that could be a clarinet, oboe or just a long thin horn. The angel had a round head and no face, still there was some bulging around the mouth of the instrument that could suggest to be perching lips.
Duck looked uncertain at the statue, she was not used to art and didn't now what to make of it.
"See, Lysander is someone in my grade from the sculpture division. This is one of his works." Hermia told Duck and Tiger with joy and admiration in her voice.
"Wow." Duck breathed, still not that enthusiastic, but she could imagine what work a statue like this would require.
"Your heart gets warm just looking at it, doesn't it?" Hermia said, obviously more connected to the statue than her company.
"Huh?" Duck looked at Hermia with some confusion, then looked back at the statue, trying to understand what Hermia was feeling. "Yeah."
"I don't have the words for it." Tiger said, slowly.
"It's as if the sculpture is somehow filled with the warm and tender feeling of love." Hermia went on in that same glow of joy and her cheeks were glowing with the thought of its creator.
"Right." Duck agreed vaguely.
"He must have been thinking about someone while he created it." Hermia mused.
"It might have been you, Miss Hermia." Duck suggested brightly, turning to her again.
Hermia, face burned red from sudden embarrassment and she began wild waving her arms again.
"No, definitely not! I know myself better than anyone else does, so…." Hermia cried out, but then she suddenly stopped to stare at the building across from them. There, a student was walking by. A student with very short blond hair and a square scowling jaw. The boy looked very cross and much older than he probably was.
"Is that Mr Lysander?" Duck asked Hermia, who figured this to be the case from the dreamy look on Herma's face.
"Yeah… doesn't he exult kindness?"
"Uh, su-sure…" Duck said with uncertainty as she leaned forward to see Lysander better and try to see something in his brute face that could be described as 'kind'.
"I, uh…" Tiger said as she was trying the same thing. As the three girls stared at Lysander, the latter happened to pass Mr Cat who stared directly back at them with an alarming expression.
"What the-" Tiger cried out as all three of them backed up as if they had been hit by an electric fence.
Mr Cat kept his expression as he slowly raised a shaky paw and pointed at himself.
"It's the mime for 'Do you mean me?'" Duck said and she looked to Hermia to save the situation, but Hermia was just too flustered to think and she was just shaking her head and waving her arms.
"What's that mime supposed to mean?" Duck asked her.
"I don't think it is." Tiger said, watching Mr Cat move his right paw to his left with a chill down her spine.
"The, the mime for 'marriage'!" Duck cried out, panic striking her now as well.
Hermia completely lost her head and started yelling incoherently while she raised her arms and started to spin them around like a windmill.
"Don't know that one." Duck said, watching Hermia doubtfully.
Mr Cat still continued with his silent proposal and moved on in sweaty desperation, stretching out a paw towards Hermia with his other paw resting just below his neck.
"The mime for 'vow'!" Duck said, watching Mr Cat again, then she looked back to Hermia, but the latter was still not making any sense. But then she cleared her head just enough to stop. She moved her arms from inwards to outwards and straightened up.
"Now that's the mime for 'no'." Tiger sighed in relief.
Across from them, Mr Cat got the message at last and started to run back and forth in frustration. They all sighed deeply in relief.
"That was a close call." Duck said, she sounded exhausted.
"Yeah." Hermia breathed, then she looked across from them again, Lysander had entered the building next to the Academy.
"Why don't you write a love letter?" Duck suggested, following Hermia's gaze.
Hermia got embarrassed again and began to shake a hand with a face as red as a tomato.
"But you could destroy yourself if you do nothing." Tiger said to Hermia. She was reminded of the dream she had last night. The story had been miserable. It was about a maiden who was so consumed by fear that her love might not survive her confession that she kept her feelings a secret till the point of death. Tiger had seen a lonely window, shut to anything else in the world, with an overgrown tree bearing down upon it.
They got distracted by Uzura who, while wearing the donkey head from Hermia's costume, was happily trotting along while she was drumming and singing a silly song.
"What's that sound?" Hermia asked vaguely, looking around for the source of the noise.
"Oh, uh, something important has come up. That is, well, goodbye!" Duck stammered as she was completely distracted by Uzura. Quickly, she ran away, trying to catch Uzura.
"Think about what I said." Tiger urged Hermia, before she too ran after Uzura who happened to be heading for the library. The one place she could absolutely not be!
"Oh, not good!" Duck panted, as Uzura did indeed ran into the library.
"Uzura, stop being so loud." Tiger called after Uzura, aware that she herself was yelling.
"Fakir!" Duck cried in desperation, reaching his table on the first floor.
Fakir looked up, utterly surprised by the sight he was seeing.
"What are you doing, playing with Uzura?" He asked Duck.
"We're not playing." Tiger replied, catching Uzura at last.
"Would you mind being a little quieter up there!" The boy named Autor demanded from a level down.
"Sorry." Fakir said, more automatic than genuine.
"It's not my fault." Tiger retorted.
"Oh Fakir, researching in books again, huh?" Duck said to Fakir, trying to be conversational.
"I'm just doing whatever I can, however small. I haven't cast away my sword." Fakir replied.
"Oh right." Duck replied, catching his meaning, then she addressed Uzura.
"Come on Uzura, we're in the way, so let's go."
Tiger let go of Uzura, but that had been too soon. Uzura resumed her drumming and singing while she ran out of the building. Tiger sighed, but just followed her out. It was not like Uzura would listen to her.
"How many times must I tell you?!" Autor yelled at them.
"Sorry." Duck called over her shoulder, but Tiger still didn't feel like apologizing.
"I told you, it's not my fault." She said to Autor before she left.
After the girls left, Fakir gave up his reading. He was frustrated with himself.
'Why, why am I so obsessed with books? No matter what book I open though, they all have their endings torn out. The Ghost Knight's book was the same, but I saw the end of that book in my dreams. Damn it! What does this mean?' He wondered.
"We have to be quiet in the library." Duck told Uzura once they were outside, but other raised voices rang out from around the corner of the library.
"That under-developed Hermia of all people!" An aardvark in a girls uniform said to another aardvark.
"I can't believe she's with Mytho!" The other one said.
"Oh, this is so vexing!" The two aardvarks cried out in unison.
Tiger gasped in shock. "No…" She whispered and, without discussing anything with Duck, she left to find Lion. She found him reading a book in the courtyard.
"Lion, that thing's at it again. This time, with a girl named Hermia." She told him while she ran towards him.
Lion looked up, shut his book quickly and stood up. "What? Are you sure?" He asked.
"Yes, Duck and I were talking to her not long ago and I'm pretty sure she is the girl from the story I dreamt about, about an unconfessed love!" Tiger said, her voice was high with panic. They had to go, now!
Meanwhile at the back of the school, Duck had found Hermia and Mytho after she had approached the two aardvarks about Mytho and Hermia. She had arrived there just in time to hear Mytho demand Hermia to give him her heart.
Duck gasped. "Miss Hermia!" She cried out and wasted no more time, but transformed immediately.
Tiger arrived with Lion only a second later and she transformed as well.
"Miss Hermia, don't go over there." Princess Tutu told Hermia.
"It's a trap." Princess Clara added.
"Are you going to interfere?" Hermia asked them vaguely, her eyes out of focus.
"Please come and dance with us, Miss Hermia." Princess Tutu said to her, reaching out a hand.
"Dance with you?" Hermia repeated in confusion, but she did not take Princess Tutu's hand.
"Hermia, hurry and come here. Give me your love, now. I demand it." Mytho called out to Hermia, and he sounded vexed and impatient.
"Yes, I'm coming." Herima obliged.
"Good, my loyal maid. Here, come into my arms." Mytho said to her as she was being carried towards him by Mytho's crows.
"Miss Hermia, is that really alright? Is it alright to end your love without ever having said anything?" Princess Tutu asked her.
"It's fine! You can just throw away a meaningless love like that!" Mytho snapped.
"How can you say that so easily?" Demanded Princess Clara angrily. "Who are you to decide what feeling of affection is important to someone?"
"Yes, such a love should be cast aside." Hermia agreed with Mytho in that same vague way, it was almost as if she was sleep walking.
"That's not true. It isn't meaningless. It's a precious feeling of yours, Miss Hermia." Princess Tutu argued earnestly.
"Though things were tough, I've never casted aside my love." Princess Clara said.
"It is still love whether you speak it or not. But if that truly is a precious feeling, would it be only cruelty to throw it away? I don't want you to hide that feeling on your back. I want you to tell him about it."Princess Tutu said to Hermia while she danced serenely around her.
"Who knows, he might share your feelings." Princess Clara said and she stopped her dance in front of the crows carrying Hermia, making them stop bringing her to Mytho.
"Why not find out if he wants to share his happiness with you?" She asked her, smiling.
"If I were allowed, I would also… if I were only allowed." Princess Tutu agreed in a soft voice that carried her own pain.
Mytho could see yet another failure before him and scowled. He gnashed his teeth in frustration, but soon started to shake when the true Mytho inside him began to fight back.
'Begone from inside me, Raven!' he cried out from within.
"Yes, that's right, I haven't, I haven't told Lysander anything about this yet. About my feelings." Hermia realized and her eyes began to clear at last.
Princess Tutu reached out a hand and pulled her up, away from the crows.
"Yes. The feeling that has grown to the bursting point inside you. That is real love."
'That's right!' Cried the real Mytho. 'What you seek is false love!'
"Shut up! What is this real love?! If the love I'm seeking is false love, then all the love in the world must be false!" Cried Mytho in outrage.
"I fear he might have gotten worse." Lion said quietly, watching Mytho struggle with himself to a point of insanity before he disappeared.
"Miss Hermia!" Princess Tutu caught Hermia, just before she fell, but Hermia was not hurt. She simply fell into a satisfied sleep.
"Lysander." she whispered peacefully with a smile upon her face.
A little away from it all, Uzura had been watching. Now that the two Princesses had disappeared she figured it was time for her to head home, but just before she turned to leave, she noticed two letters on the ground. She picked them up and looked at them. Then she smiled happily when she saw the hearts, covering both envelopes.
"I've just found Duck and Tiger's lovey-dovey-zura!" She cried out in triomph and skipped away.
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At the end of that same day, Hermia, who had recovered from her little 'mishap' with Mytho, went to the sculpture division to confess to Lysander. Tiger had been curious about this, because she wanted to know for sure if Hermia was released from the tragic story she had dreamt about. Tiger watched from a distance how Hermia confessed to Lysander, making the latter blush unbelievably. Then as Hermia leaned curiously around Lysander to see what he was working on, she discovered that he had made a life-like sculpture of a fairy in her image. Tiger could see it too, it was beautiful and spoke of Lysander's adoration of Hermia, especially how the face was sculpted. Tiger decided not to intrude on their happiness any longer after that and sneaked away. But when she crossed the inner bridge on her way to the girls' dormitory, she met Fakir.
"I was looking for you." He said to her, he had a strange expression on his face that Tiger did not trust. Then he reached into his pocket and showed her a horribly familiar letter.
"Uzura gave this to me. What is this?" He asked her.
"I swear I didn't write that! My friend-" Tiger began defensively and she snatched the letter from Fakir's outstretched hand.
Fakir looked at her and sighed. "Don't waste time on trifles, idiot." He said to her and walked away.
"Figures." Tiger growled as she watched him go.