The story begins, as all stories begin: once upon a time...

Once upon a time, there was a duck who was fated to be a tragic princess and a knight who was fated to die in vain. The duck averted tragedy through hope, and the knight cast down his sword for a pen. They thought they were supposed to have a happy ending.

But happiness, like so many things, comes at a cost.

-o-

The problem with ink wells is that they tend to spill when you aren't at a desk. Three nice shirts, twenty sopping wet pages, and one pair of pants later, Fakir'd finally gotten to a point where he could feel relatively confident about writing near the lake and not ruining his clothes.

The lake is calm and a small yellow duck bobs along the water's surface. Fakir closes his eyes and lets the wind toy with his hair and the sheaf of papers on his lap. Sometimes he can hear the voice of the oak tree like, suggesting branches of story for him to edge out onto.

Today, he hears something different.

The lifespan of a duck is not so very long.

He jerks forward, upending the ink bottle and cursing under his breath. It's not Drosselmeyer's voice. It's a voice he's heard under the layers of his subconscious, reminding him over and over that, while he and Ahiru may have averted the greater tragedy, there is still a smaller one that they are both caught up in.

The ink spreads over his shirt and Fakir scrubs at it with a handkerchief. Damn, it's no use. Make it four shirts and endless pages of story, none of them doing her any good.

Gold Crown Town won't mind if he walks back to his house covered in ink stains: most people expect it. But Fakir is sick of this feeling, knowing that he made a mistake, that on that night in the Lake of Despair, he should have told her something different than what he did.

Out on the lake, the duck sleeps placidly, not seeming to mind his mistake. But what if she did?

The only things that weren't true in that story were Princess Tutu and Princess Kraehe. Kraehe had been a role the Raven gave to Rue to make her believe she wasn't human. Had Tutu also been a role for the same prupose? Fakir picks up his papers and stuffs them back into his satchel. Where did that leave Ahiru the girl?

It's not a problem easily solved. And it's not the first time since he started writing that he's felt completely useless.

-o-

"Again?" Autor raises an eyebrow at the three-parts black, one-part green splotch on Fakir's shirt when he closes the door. "You know, for a descendent of Drosselmeyer-"

"-I ought to be more graceful because of my bloodline. I'm aware. I was in ballet." Fakir heads up the stairs to the third floor where his bedroom is. Autor follows. His own bedroom is the second floor, but in typical Autor fashion, he tends to meander anywhere and give Fakir advice he doesn't want.

"Clearly it hasn't stuck with you." Autor tosses him a bar of soap from the pile by the bathroom. Then, after a pause. "I saw you at the lake again."

Statement of fact, not a question. Not yet. Fakir shucks off the stained shirt, his scar still silver-red against his skin, and scrubs the ink blot with the soap. "So? It helps me write."

Together, he and Autor rent out a small townhouse in the center of Gold Crown Town. Autor insists it's because the town house is close to the market and the place where they get their papers and pens. Fakir suspects it's because it's centered in the middle of everything, and they can watch their stories in action.

They've been doing this for about a year now, writing out the stories together. Fakir doesn't mind being out of Charon's house, and it made sense to be near another writer should the town's story get out of hand.

But it does have its drawbacks.

"You know, she's not coming back." Autor leans on the doorframe. The downstairs is their common room and writing arena. It took a few months for Fakir to persuade Autor to part with most of the Drosselmeyer memorabilia, and it resembles more of a carpenter's studio crossed with a library now. Long, flat tables, peppered with paper and ink stains, bottles of ink on the shelves and spare nibs in boxes adorn the living room, and their modest kitchen is the next room over. "She hasn't come back for over a year."

Fakir sighs and takes out a fresh shirt. "It's not like she ever left, you idiot. She's still here, just a duck."

And she's probably lonely.

"Still here, but not quite still her. And I know what you're thinking." Autor says, waving a hand. "But her role is over. You have to accept that. She got brought into the story by Drosselmeyer and it caused her a lot of pain. You can't bring her back without hurting her. Even if you could bring her back, if you cared about her, would you really put her through another story?"

"If I cared about her, why wouldn't I?"

The hallway between them is silent.

"The kinder thing would be leaving her alone." Autor says quietly, shrugs, then heads back downstairs. "But, what do I know? I'm just the person who taught you everything your blood didn't. Anyway, I've got to write the night market out. Later."

"Later." Fakir says, then sinks down into his desk chair. Another part of why he moved out was because Charon's felt too empty. His old room always reminded Fakir of being the knight, and he'd gotten too used to seeing Ahiru and Uzura there that when they both left the quiet was overwhelming. Autor may be a jerk, but he's a helpful jerk and a noisy one at that.

Fakir takes out the duck feather pen from his satchel and the inkwell, half-full from its spill onto his lap, and then closes his eyes. Is it really cruel to draw someone back into a new story after their role was finished? Ahiru could be perfectly happy being a duck. That may be her idea of a happy ending.

But somehow, he doesn't think it is.

The ink drips off the edge of his pen, looking somehow insufficient and impotent, less magical than it was the last night they fought together. Fakir pits it down and thinks. Drosselmeyer had written The Prince and the Raven in blood. And if that was enough to bring her into his life and all their lives, then maybe...

He takes a breath. Would it be worth it to hurt her? He doesn't know about Ahiru now. If he knows anything about her from when she was Princess Tutu, he knows that if there was a happy ending possible, she'd go through any amount of pain to make it happen. If she really wanted to be a girl again, then it was better to admit his own fault, his own short-sightedness is saying the real her was only a duck, and give her the chance.

He just hopes that she doesn't hate him for it. For being wrong, and for dragging her back into this.

Fakir takes the letter opener and slices out a small line on his arm, dabs the pen into the blood, and starts to write. The story dips into existence like a ballet dancer spinning gracefully in toe shoes, one note, then another, knitting into a song.

The lifespan of a duck is not so very long, but this duck was different.

-o-

Once upon a time, there was a mermaid who had five older sisters. Once each year, each sister would visit the human world above the waves and come back and tell the youngest mermaid stories. She was enchanted by their tales. When her turn to go to the surface finally came, though, the mermaid did not want to go back to her undersea home.

Was she denying her real self in wanting to leave the sea? Or had she finally realized where she belonged?

-o-

It happens, like all good transformations do, at dawn.

She is on the lake, waking herself up and starting her daily circuit of munching on reeds and small fish. The water is coolish but not too cold, and she's watching the sun crest the walls of Gold Crown Town. She likes that it's called that, that on mornings like these the stone walls look golden in the pale but steady light.

Sometimes she imagines Fakir's voice. It's gotten harder to hold onto since her duck's ears can't translate it as well as they could when she had the pendant, but the timbre, its cadence, that she remembers. Sometimes he comes to the lake and talks. She does not know how long he's been coming or how long he stays, but she knows the fight with Mytho and the Raven has long receded into her past.

This duck's actions had saved an entire town, and, as fate would have it, the story was not quite done with her yet.

Ahiru cocks her head and shivers. There it was again, Fakir's words echoing in her- not just the sound and the way they were said, but the meaning, too. That doesn't happen. It hadn't happened, not since she finished her dance and his story about her ended. Fakir's voice had faded, and her story had ended.

Her story was 's eyes narrow. What was Fakir even talking about? There shouldn't be anything after this, right? They'd saved the prince, and he and Rue had their happily ever after. Things were supposed to be okay.

Something glints under the water beneath her, something gold.

Ahiru swims under for it, just curious enough to forget Fakir's voice for a moment. This is weird. She's explored every angle of this pond during her tenure here, but she's never seen this before. Sometimes people throw bread in for her, which is really nice, but she's pretty sure this isn't food. It's too shiny.

Sometimes second chances are granted when they are least expected.

No, it's not food: it's just a comb with a gold jewel fixed in it. The jewel looks kind of familiar, though. Ahiru can hear music in her head when she remembers it, a pipe organ cranked by a familiar hand. No way.

She pokes at it with her beak. Anyway, regardless of how it got here, it must belong to someone. It's too pretty to leave at the bottom of a lake, and someone must miss it. She bites it and wedges it out of the sand it's stuck in. Maybe if she showed it to Fakir he'd be able to find out who it belonged to.

Intending to perform an act of kindness, the duck took the golden comb in her mouth and swam to the surface. But, as soon as she broke the out of the water...

Ahiru gasps, an actual gasp. Gilded sunlight illuminates the pond, and ripples crash out towards the edges, much more substantial than they'd done before. She feels warm and like something muffling her ears is finally gone, and when she sees her reflection, it's not a duck.

It's a girl.

"What?" The comb sticks haphazardly out of Ahiru's wild orange hair, and her wide blue eyes stare back at her, as though her reflection is going to have to answer some very hard questions. "Fakir, is that you?"

The comb the duck had found was magical, and it would grant her a human form for three months. If she found true love's kiss within that time, she would be able to transform between a human and a duck at will.

"Fakir!" Ahiru calls his name out again, swimming over to the edge of the pond. After a year of being a duck, she has to hold onto the edge of the pond when she gets out, and even though her human eyes are hard to adjust to in the lifting darkness, she's pretty sure she's the only one here. "Hey, Fakir, come back!"

Her voice feels too high, too foreign.

But if, at the end of three months, she did not bestow her first kiss on her true love, then she forever would remain a duck.

"What do you mean, three months?" Ahiru scowls at the rising sun. Three months wasn't long. But that wasn't what was worrying her, because Fakir's voice hadn't stopped speaking in her head.

And as before, on this duck would hang the fates of everyone in the town.

Ahiru stumbles through the bushes. There's no one here, just Fakir's voice in her head, fading fast. Her skin is goosebumped and she can't stop shivering. Man, why did being a girl again have to be so cold? The last time someone transformed her into a girl, Drosselmeyer had told her it was to help Mytho. She hadn't known that it would turn her into a prima ballerina, or that she'd risk her life. In the end, she hadn't minded.

But being a girl again can only mean one thing: something is wrong.

Is Drosselmeyer back? Has something happened to Mytho and Rue in the story? Her hands ball into fists. After all she and Fakir did to save them, she's not about to let the story run off and do something dumb again. Maybe that's more Fakir's job. But whatever! She's got hands and legs and feet now, and she's not going to sit around doing nothing.

A farmer's cart, its driver sleepy from the night ride into town, trundles past her and Ahiru dives into a bush.

Okay, she's totally going to save the town and everyone. First, though, it would be really great if she could find some clothes.

Author's Note:

Hey guys! Hope you like this! I've wanted to write Fakiru forever, especially what happened to them at the end of the series, but I never knew how. I rewatched the anime last week and figured I might as well give this a shot. It's going to be split between Fakir and Ahiru's POVs because I love them and because I want dual POV practice, and hopefully will have more of everyone's favorite characters coming back soon. :) Sorry the romance might take a little while to set up, but I hope it'll be worth it.

Thanks for reading!

-cy.