Tales of glory written in the dust

"Straighten up. Now I have to put you to the test."

Fakir gets to his feet, his eyes still on the family tree Autor showed him. I'm a descendant of Drosselmeyer? A direct descendant?

My ancestry is not the point.

"I'm ready," says Fakir. "Test me."

Hi, everyone.

As I think I told you all, I've been immersed in Princess Tutu for the last month with Mark Watches, so now I both miss Fakir and am in love with Season 2 again. I've also been watching the lovely work of Autor (herr_bookman) and Lohengrin/the Knight (knightoftheswan).

I spoke to Autor's player, who has followed what Duck, Fakir, Rue and Uzura did at Milliways, and who has done everything she can to make her play compatible with the rest of the Princess Tutu group. Thus, her Autor, like the rest of our characters (except Lohengrin, who is obviously from a different point in time) is currently at the break between seasons/first few minutes of episode 14.

I'm promising myself that I get to play Fakir as soon as I catch up on grading, i.e. if I can finish the current stack of papers before the next stack comes in. I move that when I do, we move onward in canon. Does that make sense?

I don't think we should play through canon scenes in groups unless we're actively changing them, this time. I for one don't have time for that! Individual OOMs from individual characters' perspectives are great, but if the scenes are the same, I vote there's no need to play them together.

So now the question becomes, where in canon do I come in, and do you guys have any preferences? The second half of episode 14 goes straight in to episode 15. I'm thinking that, for Fakir, the point right after he leaves Mr. Cat's office in 15, when everyone thinks he pushed Mytho out the window, is an interesting spot...

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Corrections?

[Later on this day]

The girls in the salle mutter to themselves: What happened to Fakir? Why is he wearing those bandages? Maybe he got in a fight! Who did he fight with?

Mr. Cat ignores them, and turns his baleful gaze on Fakir. "That," says Mr. Cat, "was the most pathetic excuse for a leap I have seen from you in years. Go home."

"But--" Fakir tries to protest.

"You are not going to learn anything if you persist in attempting difficult routines with those injuries. Go home. Practice the basic steps there, as often as you can. I expect you back in a week."

Fakir ignores the girls watching him as he walks out to the dressing room.

***

In the smithy, Karon is paring black soot off scraps of wood. He doesn't look up when Fakir comes in. "Sit on a stool," Karon says. "Before you fall over."

Fakir sits, less to be obedient and more because the walk through Kinkan Town was more draining than he'd prefer to admit. "Let me help," Fakir says.

Karon does look up this time, surveying his adopted son with the eye of a craftsman examining a damaged object. (It is, in fact, the same look he gave to the piece of wood in his hands.)

"All right," Karon answers, after a moment. "Put on these work gloves, first, to keep your hands from getting cut up any further, and start untangling this knot of wires. Here are the pliers."

Fakir works in silence, feeling the quiet of the smithy enter his mind. This is peace, he thinks. This is happily ever after.

***

Fakir can't breathe in the cold water(but it wasn't like that). A raven's beak pecks at his chest, tracing the purple edges of his birthmark in blood. The raven isn't even wet. Puppets, someone says, follow only the pull of their strings. "So who," Fakir says (how am I talking, anyway?) as he chokes on green water, "is pulling mine?"

All at once Fakir is awake, in his childhood bedroom, sometime after midnight. He pulls on a blue bathrobe and pair of suede slippers and pads down the staircase to the smithy.

The pieces of Edel are on the larger worktable: a wooden staff now whittled into the form of a lower leg, a curved frame that will become a torso, a row of straightened wires, seven gears with the soot cleaned off of them, some unrecognizable black shapes. Fakir sits on a stool beside them.

"Why did you do it?" Fakir says. He can see her blank smile in his mind. "You didn't have to step in. I was ready to die. It's the Knight's job, you know."

Edel doesn't answer, of course.

"I appreciate that you're not giving me cryptic and unhelpful comments," Fakir says. "But I want to know. Did somebody pull your strings, or did you pull your own, in the end?"

Silence.

"I know the story by heart. The Knight stands between the Raven and the Prince. The Knight fails, and the Prince shatters his own heart. I was resigned. I told Princess Tutu to take care of Mytho. I broke the Prince's sword, so Mytho couldn't lose it all again. After that, my job was over. But you -- you gave me a light, to lead me home. You burned, so I could live."

Fakir closes his eyes, remembering the fire.

"I'm alive, and the battle's over. Am I still the Knight? I wish you could tell me, Edel, what did you give me my life back for?"

The pile on the table says nothing.

In the silence, Fakir goes back up to bed.

(Karon, in his bedroom adjoining the smithy, does not sleep for the rest of the night.)

"Princess Tutu," Fakir gasps, with what remains of his breath. "You must see to Mytho's future."

Good. That's the last thing. The Prince's sword is broken; Mytho won't lose his heart, and Tutu will keep him safe. Fakir can fall now.

The lake closes over him.

(Happiness, to those who accept their fates.)

***

It's quiet down here, lit by a strange and peaceful turquoise light. Fakir knows he's wounded in a dozen places, but he doesn't feel pain. Perhaps he's past pain altogether. Fakir doesn't care very much either way, as he drifts slowly downward. The light is getting dimmer, and the water around him becoming a deeper and deeper shade of blue.

...Shouldn't I have drowned by now?

The tunnel opens on a spiral staircase in red sandstone, and then on a set of rough, uneven paths overlooking a cliff face.

Faint light, radiating from nowhere in particular, shows that these paths, too, and the great stone walls to the right of the paths, are also built of red sandstone. The air is damp and cool, and something, somewhere, is dripping.

Fakir walks quickly; there's no reason to dawdle. Duck can just do her best to keep up.

Princess Kraehe has kidnapped Mytho, told Fakir and Duck all about it, delivered a string of threats and insults and vanished in a cloud of raven feathers.

The meadow by the gazebo seems unnaturally quiet now that the crow-princess is gone. Duck and Fakir stare at each other. What now?

Then the silence is broken by a hand-organ playing "Music of the Automatica." Apparently, now Fakir and Duck can have a conversation with a cryptic puppet. That's all their day needs.

Thunder cracks, or perhaps it's Fakir's head throbbing. He opens his eyes.

Where-- I'm in our room, of course. That's my ceiling. But--

He has a vague sense that something's wrong about the ceiling, but he can't place it.

"How did I--" Fakir says, out loud. How did I get here? There was -- there was a battle. Princess Kraehe. I couldn't fight, and then she attacked, and now--

that's right. Tutu helped me. Tutu brought me here. Damn her, I could have walked by myself.

Fakir pushes himself up on aching, stinging arms, which, he notices with disgust, are wrapped in bandages. "She bound my wounds. What kind of a useless cham--"

Fakir breaks off, staring. Princess Tutu is beside him, head down and dozing on Fakir's bed. That's what's wrong with the ceiling. I'm in Mytho's bed. She even put me in bed. "Hey," Fakir says, and if his face is pained, his voice is gentle.

Not long ago, Fakir said to Tutu, "When the Raven faces you, strike!"

But when at last Fakir held the Warrior's sword, and the raven princess danced before him, he couldn't touch her. She shielded herself with Mytho's body, and Fakir hesitated --

and then she was gone, and Fakir did nothing.

He couldn't even attack Princess Tutu with the sword. She stood before him, with that maddening smile, and with her pendant (impossible!) around her neck again, and said, "I don't have any wish to fight you."

Fakir should be furious right now. He isn't, and he isn't really sure why not.

Baiting a trap for Princess Tutu was this morning's project. This evening Fakir has larger concerns, like the invitation he received to Mytho and the crow-princess's wedding, naming Fakir as a witness.

Damn that Princess Kraehe! Does this mean she doesn't see me as a threat?

She will, very soon. It's time.

I've been fighting my fate long enough.

Fakir dresses, slipping Princess Tutu's pendant into the pocket of his uniform trousers. In the shadows of a Kinkan Town dusk, he crosses the town to the smith's house.

When Fakir sees it, he's thinking of other things:

what he said to Tutu

(When the Raven faces you, strike! You can't guard Mytho with just heartshards!)

and what Mytho said to him.

(Why do you hinder me from regaining my heart, Fakir? I want to get my heart back.

Fakir -- you're trembling. Why?)

But Fakir's looking down as he remembers, so he sees the thing glimmer on the stone stairs leading out from the ballroom. It's a butterfly-wing pendant in rose and gold, and it flickers, as Fakir watches, into a plain red stone on a simple chain.

"Is that--"

It is. It's the necklace Tutu always wears. Fakir bends to pick it up and slips it into his pocket.