Episode 10: Aschenbrodel Walzer-Coda, part two

[fairytaleknight]

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.

Comments

[reallyaduck]

With a SUPER SNEAKY DUCK in hot pursuit!

Fakir, what are you doing?

She squints across the street from her hiding place in the shadows, trying to read the sign over the door. It's written in some kind of old-time lettering, like on the covers of fairy-tale books . . . maybe it's an antiques shop?

The door's closing; if she doesn't hurry, she'll miss it. With an involuntary quack, she flutters across the street and through the door.

[fairytaleknight]

Fakir hasn't bothered to knock; he walks into the shop, past the helmets and shields and axes, the pitchers of water and the bellows and the suits of armor, as one who has every right to enter this place.

(He does.)

(Home is, when you have to go there, where they have to take you in.)

Automatically stepping over the creaky floorboard, Fakir pulls open another door. A man, his back turned, his shoulders broad from labor, is sharpening an axe at the workbench.

"Karon," Fakir says.

The man turns his head, an edge of surprise or fear in his voice. "Fakir?"

"Where is the sword." Fakir asks the question flatly, so it's less a question than a demand. I'm only here to get what I need and go.

The smith sets his file down, exasperated. "You haven't been home in ages, yet no greetings for me?"

Then something in the smith's face changes, and he continues more weakly, "There are ... plenty of swords in the shop."

You know exactly which sword I mean, Fakir thinks. "No, that sword. The Lohengrin sword." Fakir walks up to the workbench to face Karon. More gently -- perhaps as close as Fakir can come to saying please -- he continues, "I need it. I have to protect Mytho from the crows now."

[reallyaduck]

Duck peers around the edge of the doorway that separates the outer shop (it's all full of weapons and shields and armor, things that are meant to hit and to hurt and to do battle with, things Duck doesn't like at all) from the inner room, where the gray-haired man sits sharpening an axe.

How does Fakir know the man? Why would he give Fakir a sword? There's no way Fakir should have a sword, Duck thinks, he's crazy and dangerous enough as it is!

But - he says he wants to protect Mytho with it.

[fairytaleknight]

"I can't give it to you," Karon is saying to Fakir. The smith bends his head over the axe, apparently intent on his work. (He's forgotten that the axe is there, actually.)

Fakir's jaw drops. "What?"

"You know," Karon says, staring down at his desk, "that sword was meant for the Knight."

No, you are not going to take this away from me now. Fakir snaps, "You promised that you would let me have it."

"That was when you were a child," Karon says, as if that's any excuse for breaking a promise.

"Mytho," Fakir answers, enunciating precisely, "has been regaining his heart."

Karon looks up with an involuntary gasp.

Fakir presses his advantage, looming over his foster father. "And Princess Tutu has been returning as well," Fakir continues. "The legend you told me about as a child is becoming reality. I am the Knight from the story, reborn."

[reallyaduck]

What?

Duck feels her eyes grow round and enormous.

Fakir . . . a knight? No, not just any knight - the knight from the story, reborn!

Does that make him like her - like Princess Tutu?

(For once, Duck regrets not having read Prinz und Rabe.)

[fairytaleknight]

"If I'm the knight," Fakir says, (and if accused he would deny to the death that he sounds like a sulky teenager), "it should be fine if I use the Lohengrin sword."

"Fakir." Karon's voice has a note in it that Fakir's almost never heard from Karon. Is he pleading? "Why can't you just leave Mytho be?"

"Leave him be?" Fakir's startled by the suggestion. Of course I can't do that.

Karon's lips tighten. "You would be much better off forgetting this accursed tale."

Fakir answers, "It's too late to be saying things like that." His tone adds, Please help me. I need you.

[reallyaduck]

He sounds so young. He never sounds like that at school - he always sounds like he's a million years older than everyone else, like a real true grown-up almost. But here, he sounds like a kid, like he's not really any older than Duck.

He doesn't sound like a knight. He doesn't sound like the school bully, either.

[fairytaleknight]

"It was the same day that you took me in after my parents died. You told me, remember?"

That was the day Karon wrapped a coat around small Fakir, told him that the birthmark Fakir carried was the mark of the Knight, told Fakir that he'd grow to be strong.

There was nothing more Fakir wanted, then, but to be strong enough to face the Raven, and to defend the Prince as he could not defend--.

Fakir draws the memory around himself, and for a moment he does look like the loyal and dignified Knight. "I will protect Mytho. That was the promise I made."

[reallyaduck]

But if he's protecting Mytho . . .

Duck clings desperately to the last few shards of her mental judgment of Fakir, even as she sees them slipping away.

- then why did he try to shatter his heart?

But she already knows the answer. She's seen enough times that Fakir really thinks that getting his heart back is going to hurt Mytho - she'd even thought it would herself, once or twice. Can she really blame him for thinking that too?

[fairytaleknight]

Karon pushes himself up from the table. He's slower at it than he used to be, but he's still strong, and his anger drives him. "This fool's errand you're attempting now is not for Mytho's sake. It's for your own sake, isn't it, Fakir?"

"What?" Fakir stares blankly at the smith.

Karon's voice grows louder, grows poisonous. "The time to fight is drawing closer. Are you sure you're not afraid of sharing in the same wretched fate as the knight in the story?"

(Fakir can see the illuminated page in his mind: the Knight's body, reft in two by the Raven's claws.) "I'm not," Fakir whispers, but he doesn't know whether he means I'm not afraid or I'm not afraid, am I?

Whatever guard Karon normally keeps on his tongue is gone now; all of the worst truths he can think of, he throws at Fakir. "You kept calling the prince a good-for-nothing to make sure his heart wouldn't be restored. Knowing he liked to dance, you enrolled him in the academy to keep him busy. You were too afraid to fight."

Fakir leaps forward: a move from ballet fights. "No!"

Karon advances further. Tension crackles between the two of them. "There's no way that you'll protect Mytho the way you are now!"

Fakir doesn't retreat, but he leans backward. "Stop it!"

Karon snarls,"Just give it up!"

Fakir raises a hand. "Enough! Any sword will do." Shaken out of his usual poise, all graceless elbows and knees, Fakir grabs a plain fencing foil from beside Karon's workbench.

[reallyaduck]

Princess Tutu is a tragic heroine . . .

It doesn't matter! I'm not thinking about confessing now or anything! I just wanna help Mytho!

Are you sure you're not afraid of sharing the same wretched fate as the knight in the story?




Duck flinches away, and so she hears, rather than sees, the sound of Karon's hand connecting with Fakir's face.

[fairytaleknight]

Fakir, already off-balance, falls to the floor.

Karon leans over him, still enraged. "This ends now, got it?"

"Ye-es." Fakir's voice catches. He holds his bruised cheek. Somehow, despite the pain, he has more dignity about himself now than he has since he entered the smithy. "I may be afraid of risking my life, just as you've accused me, but--" Fakir bows his head, closing his eyes. "I want to protect him! Pure-hearted Mytho, who's always risked himself--"

[reallyaduck]

Duck opens her eyes again, cautiously. She looks towards Fakir's face -

- and then something flashes red in the corner of her vision, and her gaze drops down to his pocket. The one where he keeps her pendant.

There's a heartshard around here somewhere!

[fairytaleknight]

Fakir pushes himself up from the floor with a painful grunt. His back stooped, his arms flailing, Fakir runs from the room.

Karon calls after him, once, abruptly: "Fakir!"

Fakir doesn't turn.

---

Fakir leans against a tree behind the smithy, trying to control his breathing. It comes in rapid gasps, and he can't stop it.

At least no one's close enough to hear Fakir, or to see the tears running down his cheeks.

[reallyaduck]

No one, that is, except the little yellow duck who followed him out there, and is watching from across the pond.



He's crying. Of all the things she thought she'd ever see - she didn't think she'd see that.

And everything she thought she knew about what was right and what was wrong, who was the bad guy in this story . . . none of it's clear anymore. All she knows is that here, with tears running down his cheeks, Fakir's definitely not lying about how much he wants to protect Mytho.

He wants to protect Mytho more than anything. Maybe even more than Duck does . . .

Before she can think what she's doing, she swims out into the pond, towards Fakir - letting him see that she's there.

[fairytaleknight]

Fakir hears the splashes, goes tense. If someone sees him --

"Oh, it's you," he says, with a relieved almost-laugh, as he looks down at the little duck. "Sorry you've caught me at a bad moment."

[reallyaduck]

I'm sorry, Duck tries to say - but of course it just comes out "Quack," as she waddles up onto the land to stand in front of him.

[fairytaleknight]

The duck's an innocent, a pure creature untouched by loss or terror or pain. Fakir can look at her without thinking of Karon, or the sword he will never get, or the prince he can never save. Her enormous blue eyes--

"You're crying," Fakir observes. He feels his lips stretch into a smile, under his own tears. "What, for my sake?"

Fakir drops to one knee. Taking the little duck into his hands, he holds her to his breast and hugs her for a moment, for a long time.

(Fakir's breathing and heartrate slow, and his shoulders relax. He doesn't notice.)

[reallyaduck]

- is she crying? She hadn't even noticed.

Her eyes fly wider than ever, as Fakir picks her up - but she stays motionless as his hands settle around her wings and back, and, after a second, she lets her head settle against his shoulder and closes her eyes.

(Duck hugs a lot of people . . . but it feels kind of good to be hugged by somebody, this time. It's like he's trying to comfort her as much as she's trying to comfort him . . .

And that's definitely, definitely not the Fakir she thought she knew.

She's been wrong about a lot.)

[fairytaleknight]

Fakir puts the duck down and straightens. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out the pendant and tosses it onto the grass before the duck.

The little duck looks surprised. She really is an expressive little thing.

"Take it," Fakir says. "You wanted it, didn't you?"

He turns away from the duck, his face hardening. I will not acknowledge you, Princess Tutu, and I will never give you the pendant.

The duck can have it. She only likes it because it's shiny, after all.

[reallyaduck]

Duck stares after him for a long, long moment.

After all that - he just gave it to her. Just like that.

- but she doesn't have time to stand around thinking about it now, she remembers, with a start. There's a heartshard at Mr. Karon's house! Maybe that's what made Karon hit Fakir, like the heartshard made Duo hit Trowa, and she's got to go get it back before something worse happens!

As soon as Fakir's out of sight, she's girl-shaped again, and running off towards the blacksmith's shop.