Shards of Ever After: Disappointment

"Dammit."

Once again, the pen slipped from the young man's grasp, his damaged hand refusing to keep a grip on it. Though he'd just assumed it would end up with a scar, which it did, he hadn't known about the deeper wounds. The tendons, those tiny, nitpicky bones – the doctor called them metacarpals – would never be the same. But learning to write with his left hand just seemed like too much work, if the right still functioned. After all, ballet students understood ankle injuries. Not hands.

He supposed there had to be some side effects to stabbing a dagger through his own hand, even if he didn't regret it a bit. There was no chance in hell he'd have let her get hurt, especially not for the amusement of that sadistic freak. But he still cursed, when it ached and twinged, and he dropped his pen yet again.

Not that she knew about it.

The days turned autumn peaceful without a hint of supernatural disturbance, and Fakir could truly be called the prince and marvel of the dance school. Sans Rue and Mytho, no one held a candle to his talent, not that anyone remembered. He found himself bored when the new prima of the advanced class – a nice enough girl (though actually, he hadn't even bothered to remember her name) – performed for the group at large. Her mediocre ability simply couldn't capture the interest of the single person who had personally known and still remembered two of the best young ballerinas ever, and the technically terrible duck-turned-girl with a spirit that could captivate anyone.

Nonetheless, conversations were had.

"Senior Fakir dances better than ever, don't you think?"

"Of course, he's truly amazing! But there's something terribly sad to the way he dances now, and did you notice? He's refusing to do a pas de deux – any pas de deux – with anyone!"

"Oh, yeah. Now that you mention it, whenever Miss Claire asks him to perform for us, he gets up by himself."

"Ooh, I bet it's a tragedy! I bet Senior Fakir had a lover, but she got terribly ill and died, and that's why he took a few days off of school, to mourn her, and now he can never love again!"

"Fakir? Have a lover? No way. That would be too weird! Maybe he's in some kinda gang!"

"Maybe he's gay and can't do anything about it, because he'd be disowned and left in the street!"

"He's gay even less than he might have a lover! Come on. We should follow him and see what he does!"

But despite their best efforts, every day, after school, the dark-haired idol disappeared, and not a single one of his fangirls could manage to locate him. Primarily because not a single ballerina in training would think to look down by the pond. Senior Fakir didn't seem like the sort to enjoy getting dirty.

He took his homework – of which there was very little, as one of the benefits of a school focused on the arts was an overwhelming neglect of other subjects – a pen, and thick sheaves of paper down to the dock, where a tiny yellow duck waited. A duck he'd promised never to leave. A duck to whom he'd promised the power of true self. Now, he wasn't so sure.

During the pas de deux under the lake, Fakir thought his heart might have almost broken. There was so much uncertainty, so much confusion. Ahiru had to go back to being a duck, that was certain. But he didn't know what kind of duck she'd been, and any option seemed terrible. If he'd let himself think about it too long, he knew he'd have made the wrong decision. Those were the hazards of falling in love with someone. You wanted to keep them close to you, do the best by them, no matter who it hurt.

So he did what he had to do and told her that no matter what, it was best to be what they were, because more than anything, Fakir understood that the story had to end. If it didn't, there was no hope for anyone. Regardless, when he feared she might die for Mytho's sake, his best friend didn't seem worth it. Rue didn't seem worth it. And worry eclipsed Fakir's heart when the pairs parted ways. Despite her body, Ahiru's humanity was obvious. What if he'd consigned her to a life, truncated as it might be, of a girl in a duck's body?

Even worse, though, the story ended, and he simply couldn't tell. True, she acted exceptionally friendly, even for a sociable wild animal, and when he read to her, the way she absorbed his words, staring up at him like what he said could not be more fascinating, Fakir worried, because she seemed so human. But she swam, and she dived for her food, and attacked the bread he threw to her with mindless zeal, and it seemed either way he couldn't win. And all he wanted was for her to be happy.

Thus, when he sat with her, Fakir did his homework. He practiced writing, always finishing the stories carefully, just in case, and worked, when the inspiration struck him, on trying to finish Drosselmeyer's unfinished tales. As someone who once fell victim to the pain of a self-encapsulated world, Fakir would never wish that pain on anyone else. He made no secret of keeping Lohengrin by his side, however, just in case the book-keepers got overzealous and decided to return for his hands. Assuming they were still alive, Fakir didn't trust those old crazies to keep their axes to themselves. Ahiru seemed to accept this explanation, as much as water fowl can ever accept anything. Sometimes he danced. But he had to remind himself that she no longer had the abnormal muscle control that would allow her access to ballet, even as a duck, and those days always seemed to end with her biting him.

At home though, alone, despite everything, what he'd said under the lake and how hard she tried and the paralyzing fear, the risk that this story could go as horribly wrong as its predecessor, Fakir wrote. Sometimes furiously, sometimes just staring at the paper for hours on end, until he found himself cursing and pacing his bedroom, watching out the window to assuage the irrational fear that some large, ugly, sharp-toothed predator took the opportunity of his absence and her sleep to hunt her.

He broke the nib of more quills than he could count. His hand often seized up, or relaxed inconveniently, too, and once again he'd find himself staring at the goddamned quills, flopping innocuously. For Fakir, it became a compulsion, a habit he couldn't break himself of. Writing and writing and writing with the simple goal, the basic desire to bring her back without restarting the ensnaring process of an endless story. What of true selves? Whatever her form, she was Ahiru, and that couldn't change. But, though he beat himself up for it, he wanted her to be girl Ahiru. To talk to him and fall over and dance perfectly imperfect pas de deuxs with him. To live a human lifespan, not an avian one.

So every night, Fakir wrote. And every night, he failed to finish his story, and watched it curl into ash in the fireplace, his hand and heart aching painfully. Sixty-two manuscripts unfinished, imperfect, just plain unworkable. Only eighteen of them actually failed. The rest didn't even get that chance.

And Fakir doubted. Though he managed to finish out a few of Drosselmeyer's stories, and he knew, somewhere in him, that they were right, though the oak tree could still give him advice, though Autor remained irritatingly himself and still remembered everything, he thought that maybe, it wasn't meant to be. Drosselmeyer may have lost out on his tragedy for the Prince and the Raven, but apparently Princess Tutu was to make up for that.

Once upon a time, Fakir thought (though he didn't say it to Ahiru because he'd rather impale himself than disappoint her) that he could probably get strong, practice, and write her back to herself, and give her the opportunity to dance again. But with every passing day, the passing months, it seemed it might be impossible, and it seemed they might be fated to suffer a tragedy.

Going back to their "true selves" couldn't be good enough, but apparently, neither could he. Even though Fakir understood, continuing to live with her, getting to sit on the dock and keep her warm, even perhaps against her will during the winter, and write with her, and listen to her glee, it was a kind of happy ending, it was also a letdown. Once upon a time, he thought he could be happy with just knowing that Ahiru succeeded and got to be happy. Apparently, even the story's happy ending couldn't be his. But if he could neither craft a different one nor be happy with it, then, Fakir realized, he would have to learn to live with disappointment. Seemed a common theme. The Prince and Princess get their happy ending. But he and Ahiru were only a writer and a duck.

A/N: So, this is going to be a series. If you think back, the first heart shard Ahiru returned to Mytho was the shard of disappointment, so i'm going in order, though i've made up the penultimate five because they weren't specified. It'll be a bunch of shorts about their lives, pretty directly after the story ended. Loneliness next. Thank you for reading, and i hope you liked it!