FANFICTION: Rewritten in Raven's Blood
Aug. 22nd, 2010 08:48 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
neko-no-hanashi.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tutufansOh gosh. Um. Yeah, this is the first fanfic I've written (and finished) for Princess Tutu in quite a while, but I was just way too inspired by a piece of fan art of Raven!Fakir and Raven!Ahiru made recently by my good friend Manda (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
serika_san ) to keep myself from writing this idea down. The visual concepts of the Raven!Fakir and Raven!Ahiru in this are completely hers; I just tried to write out what personalities I think they would have and how I think they could have come to be. XD
This story, in all essence, is an alternative version of how the story of Princess Tutu could have ended circa episode 25; when the Raven's blood begins to rain down on the town, Mytho and Princess Tutu oddly are not affected by it even if they are standing outside in it, and by the time Fakir runs out to keep Ahiru from drowning herself, the rain has fortunately stopped and so he is not affected...but what would have happened if they hadn't been so lucky? A lot of the early dialogue and action is based on Episode 25's original dialogue, but I did try to keep it as original as possible with the format and pace...possible warnings are definite Rue/Mytho/Ahiru-ness and slight hints of Ahiru/Fakir, as well as a storyline Drosselmeyer-san would rather like the path of.
Mucho thanks to Manda, Kai (kai_lis ), Kris (astrobright68 ) and Sammie (samsamjellyjam ) for reading over parts of this for me: you really helped save what little is left of my sanity. XD I also dedicate this to Manda for the wonderful inspiration that was her art and to Sammie, since her birthday tomorrow served as my deadline to finish this~.
With all that said, I hope you all enjoy~!
Once upon a time there was a prince. The prince was the creation of a man writing a perfect tragedy, one who also created a terrible Monster Raven who longed to eat his heart and gain eternal life from it. To seal away the Raven, the prince shattered his own heart, entrusting a piece of it to a beautiful princess until the time was right for him to get it back. But when the prince was to receive the final piece of his heart back and fight the Raven once more, the princess felt a strange reluctance to give back the piece of her dear prince's heart.
The words echoed through Mytho's ears, echoing back to his mind as it stumbled out of the blackness that it had been lost inside.
The voice was familiar...the same voice who had so many times assured him of the love he had not been able to feel.
“Well, just tell me you love me.”
“I want to hear you say that you love me.”
“Trust me, Mytho, you do love me.”
That voice, at those times having been strong and firm in her will...was now crying out of desperation the most sincere, loving sacrifice one could give.
The prince's eyes grew wide, gaining the light of true awareness again as they took in the sight of a dark-haired girl, the voice's owner, each of her wrists held by the claws of ravens flying her away.
“...Rue...”
Rue made no struggle as she was flown into the mouth of the Monster Raven, and his beak closed around her.
Mytho's feet met the ground as Princess Tutu helped him land.
“Rue...” Tutu murmured, before crying more desperately, “NO, RUE!”
“Relax,” the Monster Raven sneered. “I haven't killed her yet. She is alive in my stomach.”
The beast was so large that he took up half of the sky above Kinkan Town with his massive body and endless black wings. His scarlet eyes narrowed upon the white-haired prince that was his foe in the streets below, shining with the eye of some vile happy child as his voice boomed down to him.
“I should have done this years ago and saved us all the trouble, prince...she was just a human girl I kidnapped on a whim, and yet she has been quite useful. If you kill me, you will be killing the girl inside of me...likewise if you seal me away.”
Mytho's eyes narrowed, his teeth gritting together with frustration. Then...unless he defeated the Raven once and for all, this time...Rue would be lost...
Tutu looked at Mytho as he spoke.
“My prince?”
Mytho turned to look at her, his amber eyes immensely serious.
“I need you to give me my final heartshard.”
What?
Tutu was visibly startled. Mytho's eyes fell away, becoming more absent.
“...The feeling that raven's blood inflicts on the human heart...I know that pain. It starts in the weakest parts of your heart and spreads ruthlessly...it makes you hurt even the ones you love most. ...Rue has stood up against that pain all alone, ever since she was a child...even if her love was frail and she had no one to share her pain with, she never once thought to stop loving...and with that true love, she was able to save me from the Raven's darkness.”
The prince turned fully around to look at her, stepping closer to her as his eyes rippled with that seriousness as well as something a bit more...fragile.
“...It is my turn to save her now...and if possible, I would like to take Rue as my princess. So Princess Tutu...please give me the last heartshard.”
Inside of her form as the magical princess Tutu, Ahiru heard his words with no less clarity than if she had stood before him as herself; even though Tutu was always composed and dignified...even though she had always thought that Rue would be the perfect sort of person for Mytho and would suit him much better than she ever could...she nonetheless felt a loss at the words he told her, especially when accompanied by the eyes that reflected the emotions she had returned to him.
She...had only wanted him to smile...and she never could have told him what she felt for him without vanishing...and yet the feeling of the prince choosing Rue, as well as the feeling of knowing he was preparing to save her even when it would endanger his life and place him at the Raven's mercy...was a terrible emptiness that ached from all sides of Ahiru's heart.
The duck that was now dressed as Princess Tutu before the prince's eyes did feel the tears forming in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, but she kept smiling for her prince.
“...Yes...”
Her hand came up to the pendant around her neck, her fingers running over the stone in the center that was the prince's final heartshard.
“Thank you...” Mytho murmured, his eyes rippling with gratitude that touched his soft smile.
Tutu's hands came up the chain to find the clasp on the back of the pendant, not breaking eye contact with the prince as she made to take it off.
This...really was happening...the Monster Raven was back at full power, and now Mytho had to fight him......and she would go back to being just a duck...
She made to unfasten the clasp, to give the pendant to Mytho...
...But it would not come apart.
The princess's eyes narrowed slightly in confusion; she tried to twist it around to unfasten it, but the clasp was refusing to come undone.
“What is it?” asked Mytho.
“...The...pendant won't come off!”
Tutu tried pulling at the chain, trying with more strength to pull it apart, but it remained as stuck as ever.
“It's not...coming off...” she felt frustration and desperation grabbing hold. “Why won't it--?”
The Monster Raven gave a sudden, cold roar of a laugh.
“Isn't that clear?”
Tutu looked up with a start. Mytho turned around to look back up at his foe, his eyes narrowed, to see the Raven's wings spreading further across the sky, entirely encompassing the air over Kinkan Town with his lengthening, growing feathers. The wings were like dark storm clouds coming in to black out the sun and remove all light, and it showered a rain upon the town: a scarlet rain that ran down the roofs of the houses of Kinkan and trickled off Princess Tutu's white dress and along her skin.
She flinched, her eyes going wide. It wasn't rain; it was too thick, too sticky to be rain--
“It's the Raven's blood!” Mytho realized.
He bolted over to the princess, extending his hand as if to grab hold of her. “Tutu, you must--”
A blast of lightning crashed down, landing right between the prince and the magical princess. Tutu was thrown backward into the ground by the force, her bare back colliding sharply with the cobblestone street.
When she looked up, the prince was trapped inside of a transparent black egg, arched up from the pavement on a precarious, clawed roost miles up from the ground.
“Prince!” cried Tutu.
The Raven's blood staining her pointe shoes as she hurriedly got to her feet, she immediately tried to summon some vines to rise her up to his level to assist him...but the Raven's blood came down in a shower, pelting down on her and weighing her down.
“You know full well why the heartshard won't come off,” the Monster Raven cawed in a low, booming voice down at her. “I can see it from here. Even though you were the one chosen to return the prince's heartshards to him, you still are nothing more than a human with a pathetic human heart.”
Tutu refused to listen; she had to save the prince--!
Raising her arms, she pulled vines up from the ground, letting them magically grow upward and lift her up from the streets toward the captured Mytho.
“The prince may have been foolish enough to think that humans could love everything and everyone...but that really isn't true, is it? When bathed in my blood, his heart did what all human hearts do: give into their true essence, the one that lives by destroying the lives of others!”
The blood stained Tutu's white dress, running along her skin as she struggled to keep her posture straight and the vines growing. It was...so heavy...it was as though the blood was seeping through her very skin, weighing her down and keeping her from reaching the prince. Mytho pounded his fists on the side of the egg, shouting words she could not hear through the strong black glass that made up his prison.
She had to reach him, Tutu thought--she couldn't let the Raven steal his heart--the heart that loved everyone--
The Monster Raven's cold, scarlet eyes narrowed upon Princess Tutu as he grew to his full size, looking down upon her with a most cruel smile.
“Princess Tutu...you can't give back the heartshard because you don't want to give up that piece of the prince!”
Tutu shot backward, her eyes very wide.
“No--no, that's not it--!”
“That piece of the prince's heart is the only part that the human girl inside of me does not have,” the Raven affirmed cruelly, “and you don't wish to give it up, even if it is the prince's wish!”
“No!” Tutu cried. “That's not--!”
“Even though you love the prince so dearly, your own will still will contradict his, not for his sake, but for the sake of yourself!”
“I--”
The Raven's blood was growing heavier, as was the inside of her chest, which ached at the accusation. It wasn't true! She wanted the prince to be happy--she just wanted--
The eyes of the black beast above her narrowed slightly down at her. “Oh? You are still resisting?”
He gave a booming laugh, one that became a fierce wind that hurled down toward Tutu, throwing her vines down enough that they couldn't grow any higher, stranding her a good five feet from Mytho imprisoned in the black egg above.
“Even if it would make the girl inside of me happy to be with the prince,” scorned the Monster Raven, “you still can't help but want that wish of yours. That's how all humans are, down in the deepest parts of their hearts! My blood does not create anything that isn't already there to begin with...it solely bares the parts of yourself that you try so hard to hide!”
“NO!”
Ahiru, the blood seeping through her skin with the strength of some burning acid, screamed the single word as loud as she could. The dress that made her Princess Tutu was almost being torn away by the blood, the cloth being slashed away from her waist and from the top of the dress as the white was enclosed by dark scarlet.
The redhead's head shot around, looking over herself as the gold bracelets on her wrists vanished, as her long curly hair, stretching back down to the length it was when she was just the girl Ahiru, came tumbling down loose around her shoulders.
“N-no!”
The facade of Tutu was being torn away...the pendant of extended wings was slowly withdrawing, becoming just the simple heartshard pendant that it had been before.
She had to reach Mytho now!
Ahiru's arms practically slashed at the air as she tried hopelessly to make the vines grow enough for her to reach Mytho.
But when she did so, she lost her balance.
The grace of the magical ballerina gone, Ahiru began to fall, her long hair swishing loosely around her as she was thrown backward off of the vines she had created.
The fall seemed unnaturally slow...it was as though as she fell, her eyes still locked on the prince trapped above her inside of the egg, his face fearful and desperate as he struggled to escape, Mr. Drosselmeyer had suddenly started writing everything more slowly.
Was it...her fault...? Her fault that she couldn't return the final heartshard to Mytho...?
Silence echoed endlessly around her, lingering and growing inside of her ears so that it throbbed against her head.
Her fault...because she didn't want to give his heart back...?
But no, that wasn't true! She only had wanted him to be happy and to smile...that's all she'd wanted! She'd always known that...someone like Rue would suit Mytho better than she could...she'd always known that--
Why...why did her chest hurt so much!?
Tears swam in her eyes, deadening conscious light therein as gravity made them fall upward and leave her face. The blood that stained the white cloth of Tutu's dress ran upward, streaking across the air around her as it completely stained her from head to toe.
That piece of the prince's heart...the heartshard that held an emotion she could not identify...that piece of his heart had made it so she could return his heart to him, so he could again feel love and happiness...so she become Princess Tutu before his eyes, rather than just a small, fragile...useless duck...
But now...now she wasn't Tutu...she wasn't a duck, and she still couldn't save the prince...the one who had been able to say what it was Ahiru had wanted to tell him, but had chosen not to because she was afraid of vanishing...had been Rue. Rue had willingly sacrificed herself, all of herself...something that Ahiru, even as Princess Tutu, had not been able to do...
And for it...Rue received Mytho's love...
A strange, pink color rippled inside of the blue of Ahiru's hollow eyes as her hand still stretched out as if to grab at her prince locked away in the hold of the Monster Raven.
She just...wanted him to love her...as that storybook prince, the one who had a heart that could somehow love everyone in the world...
...But would he love her...if she were only a duck...?
Time seemed to abruptly speed up, and the girl fell right down toward the ground. Instead of hitting the blood-soaked street, however, a cluster of black made her vanish before the impact.
Mytho shot back in surprise seeing her vanish, his hands plastering against the inside of the glass egg.
“Tutu! Tutu!” he cried, the strong glass drowning out his voice.
He stopped, however, when another cluster of black swished around outside of his egg, swirling raven feathers around in a shadow-like mist.
The Monster Raven's scarlet eyes narrowed with satisfaction.
“So you finally gave in to the truth...”
Mytho's eyes widened at what appeared before him from the black raven wind.
Hovering in mid-air before him was a girl garbed in a dark scarlet tutu and top that trailed off her shoulders and slashed under her chest to reveal her white stomach and was trimmed with black feathers. Scarlet stockings ran up from her black-feathered boots up to her mid-thigh, ending with gold trim similar to the trim of the fingerless scarlet gloves that covered her forearms and hands, one of which held the twinkling scarlet pendant that was Mytho's final heartshard. Most striking of all, however, were her red hair, brighter than the bloody color of her attire, streaming down along her shoulders in wave-like curls that twisted along and around her pale face to frame her pink-stained eyes and her cold red-marked lips.
“...Princess Tutu.”
One of them, the one with the dark ponytail and green eyes that was Fakir, was sitting in front of the desk, holding a duck-feather quill as he rested his head on his hand and looked upon the empty page placed in front of him.
The other storyspinner, the bespectacled one called Autor, placed a cup of tea on the desk next to Fakir, his face touched with an annoyed sourness. He had gone ahead with Fakir's request for his help rather reluctantly; inwardly he still didn't know why he was accepting this anyway, since he still didn't like the fact that Fakir had been chosen by his heritage to be the natural heir to Drosselmeyer's craft, when he, Autor, had been the one to research his heritage thoroughly and had practiced his own writing when Fakir had given up on it as a child.
At that moment Autor caught a sound like loud, raucous talking coming from outside. With a brown narrowed eye he glanced over his shoulder toward the closed windows and front door.
“...It certainly is noisy...” he grumbled, turning and walking over the door to see what all of the fuss was about.
Fakir did not turn to look at Autor as he went to the door, instead too focused on the piece of parchment before him. On that page, he would have to write a story about Mytho, and bring this story to an end unlike the one Drosselmeyer no doubt had in mind for it.
Could he do it? He had only ever been able to write a story about Ahiru, and even then he had no idea how much of that story came from his own will. It had just been as though her feelings had come up through his arm, into his hand and out onto the page in the form of words. His writing, whether his own or not, had saved Ahiru from Drosselmeyer's clutches...
Could he truly...do the same thing for Mytho...especially when Drosselmeyer's will would directly conflict with his desire to do so?
Fakir massaged his temple. He could already feel a headache coming on...
“Fa--!”
Autor abruptly burst back into the room in a panic, stumbling over his own feet and landing on the floor with a loud THUMP, his legs twisted almost comically behind him and over his head.
“--kir...there are ravens all over town!”
The writer who had filled the role of a knight looked over his shoulder at him, his annoyed eyes twinged with confusion.
There were always ravens in the town; even when Fakir was a small boy, there had been plenty of them...but obviously something was really wrong if Autor was acting like this.
He got up from the desk, still holding the quill in his hand as he hurried past Autor over to the door, throwing it open as if to go out and see what was happening.
Fakir stopped mid-step in the doorway. A strange red rain was coming down in buckets outside of Autor's house, trickling down from the overlay over the front door to splash down on the pavement.
“W-what--?”
His green eyes shot past the rain making thick, syrupy puddles in front of his white shoes, onto the remainder of Kinkan Town. The sky had gone entirely black as the red droplets came down, not from clouds but from the black sky alone...and in that rain was the source of the sound Autor had heard: not talking, but the loud and raucous cawing of crows.
The black birds flew through the blackened sky in massive flocks, but they had horrifying company in the form of the citizens of Kinkan Town, once ordinary humans that were now mutated with the beaks, wings and pitch black feathers of the crows flying around them in the sky. With their beaks toward the sky, the citizens stained by the scarlet rain seemed to be celebrating, cawing with an almost vicious and mindless joy and flapping their wings at the sight of their smaller brethren coming to take over their home.
Fakir stumbled back, his hand roughly clutching the doorway in an attempt to steady himself.
“What is...going on...?”
Autor once he had stumbled back to his feet hurried over to Fakir by the doorway, also looking out.
“It looks just like the Raven Festival scene from The Prince and the Raven,” he said, his own eyes narrowing behind his glasses as he looked at Fakir. “If this rain is blood and it's turning everybody into ravens...does this mean that the Monster Raven is now back in reality as well?”
The Raven was released...then Princess Tutu must have returned the heartshards that were trapped inside of Kinkan Town's five towers, Fakir realized.
And that meant...
Fakir's eyes narrowed, and without another thought, he bolted out the door.
“Fakir!”
Autor tried unsuccessfully to grab him back; instead of running outside into the rain himself, he shouted after the other storyspinner, “Fakir, you can't go out there!”
But Fakir didn't pay any mind; instead he ran down the street, through the downpour of blood that streamed along his white shirt and pants.
If Princess Tutu had returned the shards...then Ahiru and Mytho were both out there.
The Raven's blood had already corrupted Mytho...Fakir may have put down his sword so as to prevent the fate that he was dealt, but he still had to protect him, regardless of whether or not he was the raven prince...and Ahiru...if she got turned into a raven too--
Disregarding the red running through his white clothes to stick to his skin like a leech with some acid-like bite, Fakir ran down the street, running in the opposite direction of the humongous flock of ravens flying over him; they had to be coming from somewhere, and the only place they could all be coming from would have to be from the Monster Raven himself...
The young storyspinner was running through the town square toward the wall when he ran right into a large mob of the ravens. What was disturbing about them, however, and what had made him stop momentarily was that many of them were dressed in the Kinkan Academy uniform. One of the ravens even had pointed ears and was jumping in leaps as it gave the loud yowl of a cat...obviously once having been their feline ballet instructor, Mr. Cat.
The flock of human-crows entirely blocked his path down the street, but on the other side, Fakir could hear a low, cruel voice coming down in booms toward the town.
“Prince...now you have no allies remaining. They have all been awakened by my noble blood, and have accepted their fate as my servants...”
The voice had to be the Monster Raven, Fakir thought to himself. His eyes narrowing sharply, he at once shoved his way into the crowd in an attempt to get to the other side.
The crows around him, however, began to respond vocally toward the sight of someone that still had a heart not yet corrupted by the Raven's blood.
“Give us your heart!” one cawed.
That one crow was echoed twice over by others, and Fakir found himself being shoved between the black-feathered creatures, some of them grabbing hold of his arms with their wings. He struggled in their grasp fiercely, pushing one of them off as he shoved his way through, trying to get past them as he was pelted with the red rain falling from above--
“...You have no choice but to give your heart to me now,” Fakir heard the Monster Raven close by sneer.
His eyes widened. Mytho was going to--!
“Give us your heart!” repeated another crow with a pink bun of hair as she tried to bite down on his long ponytail to grab onto him. Her beak ended up seizing the ribbon securing it, making his hair come loose when it was pulled out.
“Get...off of me!” Fakir snarled, shoving one off only to be grabbed by another.
“Give us your heart!”
“Give us your heart!”
Their beaks came down, one of them snatching hold of Fakir's shirt and tearing a sleeve off and another grabbing a hold of the back and ripping a gaping hole in it. The blood of the Raven trailed down his bare skin, making him flinch both from the utter coldness and from the horrible, burning sensation it seemed to have upon contact.
He had to get out of this--
With all of the strength he could muster, the once-knight kicked the raven in front of him in the chest, throwing him backward as he rammed his shoulder into the next one, and then punched the one after that in the side of the beak.
Just as he reached the edge of the mob, however, he was suddenly seized from behind, two strong wings grabbing hold of his arms as a large beak came plowing down into his shoulder.
“AHHH!”
Fakir couldn't stop himself from releasing a choked cry of immense pain as blood spurted out from the deep wound inflicted by the sharp beak. As he tried to suppress the pain enough to fight back against the hold, the raven holding him cawed “Give us your heart,” just as all the others had.
Unlike all the others, however, that caw was enough to Fakir freeze where he stood, his eyes widening in horrified recognition as he turned to look at the crow, dressed in modest apparel with a blacksmith's hammer in the pocket of his dirtied brown smock.
“...Karon...”
The egg's glass abruptly fell apart, at once shooting up from its perch in many sharp, dagger-like pieces that crossed in several directions, effectively trapping Mytho's legs and arms on either side of him.
The prince struggled, but the glass completely prevented all manner of escape. His eyes rippling with anxiety and frustration, he looked up to see Ahiru, now controlled by the blood that had so corrupted him, coming down to stand in front of him on top of the perch.
Mytho's heart ached at the sight. Her eyes that had once been blue were now so devoid of light; although her face was reasonably neutral, the pink orbs seemed to be completely defeated, as though deciding not to deny the fate now given to her...the one that made her a servant of the Monster Raven.
“Tutu...”
Mytho thought he had seen something flicker inside of the pink of Ahiru's eyes in response to the name, but it was so brief he might have imagined it.
“...I am not...Princess Tutu,” she said very quietly.
Her voice didn't sound as it usually did, in her ears or Mytho's; while being just as soft as it had been, it was less chirp-like and more smooth, like a chick that had transformed into a little garter snake. What was most noticeable, though, and most strange to hear in Ahiru's voice was the great bitterness that seemed to come in response to the name of the ballerina princess she had been.
Why did...she deny who she was? Mytho had never felt the need to deny he was the prince, when the raven's blood had been in control of him...so why--?
“Now...” the Monster Raven said, rising himself to full height as his eyes narrowed upon the prince, “...give the prince his final heartshard.”
Ahiru looked up with a start toward the bird, her pink eyes reacting with a more visible, taken aback flicker.
“What?”
“Return the last piece of the prince's heart,” the Monster Raven repeated, his tone not changing at all in its order. “If the prince's heart is not complete, then I cannot gain eternal life from it...so before you tear out his heart for me, you must complete it for me with the shard you have.”
He had Ahiru...he was going to make Ahiru give back Mytho's heart...and if he did that, and ate the prince's heart...Ahiru would be his to do away with, his alone--
Fakir fought the immense pain in his chest, almost more painful than his wounded shoulder from how the Raven's blood clawed at him. As the raven that had once been Karon made as if to stab him once more with his beak, he clenched his fists, his teeth gnashing together from both the pain and the fury that the thought of Ahiru being in the Raven's clutches unleashed in him.
“...Forgive me, Karon...”
With that he threw himself back into Karon, avoiding his beak by slamming his elbow down into the older man-turned-crow's solar plexus. With a groan of pain, he released him, and the storyspinner darted out from the crowd, even with them cawing and flying after him.
He could see the Monster Raven now, lording over the town like some grand black curtain on a stage. As he squinted upward, running through the heavy red rain weighing his chest down and streaming through his loosely flowing dark hair, he could see a thin pillar of black at the end of the street in front of the wall. On top, trapped in spears of black glass, was a white-haired person that had to Mytho, and in front of him was--
Fakir's eyes widened.
Ahiru...?
“...No!” she shot back, her now-pink eyes rippling with a firmness that could almost be righteous if it didn't involve something so selfish. “This piece belongs to me!”
It being...the only piece that didn't belong to...
But the Raven seemed unfazed and uncaring toward this objection to his will.
“What is so precious about that piece to you? The prince has not given you the love he has owed you...his heart is of no use to you. Although he swears to be the Prince Who Loves Everyone, he will choose the human girl inside of me for his princess.”
Ahiru flinched a bit despite herself, the image of Rue dancing with Mytho at the Academy over her eyes. Even then...they had always looked so good together...
“What use is his heart to you, when you can steal the heart of someone who has not so thoroughly rejected and hurt you?”
The red-haired girl's eyes fell down to the heartshard pendant in her hand, lingering with rippling pink.
He had chosen Rue...even after all she had done to give him back his heart so he could be his real self, when Rue had only wanted to prevent him being the true him...he had chosen Rue...
But...if she gave back the final heartshard...
“AHIRU!”
Ahiru's head shot up. That voice was...
Her eyes swerved around, down to the street where the voice had come from. Running through the thick, heavy rain that trickled down the cobblestones under him, with his hair streaming loose behind him, a sleeve torn off of his shirt and a bleeding shoulder...was Fakir.
“Ahiru...?” Mytho repeated, but Ahiru didn't hear him.
“Fakir...”
It had to be something in raven's blood that made one want to fly, the storyspinner might have rationalized anytime else, but at the moment he was not able to rationalize it. Never seeing how his eyes darkened as red as the raven's blood running down from the sky around him, he ran as fast as he could down the street toward Ahiru, faster and faster, needing to get higher and higher in his strides--
And then suddenly he was running on air, charging upward on nothingness in a brutal mocking of gravity. The rain that was the Monster Raven's blood streamed around him all at once, coming together to run in layers beside him, running along his stained white shoes pants, along his stained and ripped white shirt, and along either side of his face. The blood became feathers, which became vines of cloth, which melded together around him, becoming black gloves, a tight black shirt, black pants, black boots, and a dark green cape trimmed with cygnet-colored feathers that was thrown back behind him as he flew through the air without wings.
Fakir landed in a crouched position beside Ahiru, straightening up slowly as he looked down at her with his eyes newly alight with raven scarlet. The Raven's blood seared in his chest; even with how it had wanted to be above the ground and beside her, it now clawed at him demanding that she be closer still. He viciously tried to yank the feeling back, however, out of his own pride, inflated and yet chained down by the blood now staining his chest.
“Ahiru...”
The redhead's pink eyes, rippling with emotion, almost seemed to reflect some of the blue familiar to her eyes...but Fakir could not focus on it for too long. Ahiru abruptly leaped forward, grabbing onto his shirt almost entirely on impulse as her face sat almost on his chest.
“Fakir,” she whispered.
Her voice did not hold the sweet, duck-like quality it had had when he last saw her, now sounding smoother and almost cooler, but the light quality remained, even if it held a pride that wasn't there before.
“The Raven wants me to give Mytho his last heartshard back, Fakir,” Ahiru said very quietly.
Fakir felt his eyes narrow slightly upon the top of her head. She looked up at him, looking over his face with those strange pink eyes that seemed almost more uncaring than Mytho had been when he had had no heart.
“Even though Mytho won't be fighting him,” the redhead continued, seeming to speak half to Fakir and half to herself, “...even if Mytho's heart belongs to Rue...and holding onto the piece won't make him love me...”
She gave something of a soft, short laugh, her head falling downward so all he could see was her twisted smile. The laugh was a broken sort, though, devoid of humor and almost choked.
“...The Raven won't gain eternal life without Mytho's heart being complete...Mytho won't love me, even if I gave him his heart back and wanted him to be his true self, so he could smile and love again...”
Ahiru's shoulders began to shake as her smile began to crumble; although Fakir couldn't see them, he could hear the tears in her voice.
“...Even if I did everything for him, and he still won't love me...even if my heart hurts more than anything knowing that he'll love Rue with all of his heart if it's given back to him, because she saved him from the Raven's blood...”
She sounded more like her regular self with each word, as she burst out, looking up at him with eyes stained by both pink and blue,
“...I can't do it! I can't give it back...because I know that if I give it back, I'll go back to being just a duck! The prince wants to make Rue his princess...he won't ever love me like he does Rue...and still...!”
Tears slid down her face as she closed her eyes, turning away to vainly try to hide her face from Fakir and the trapped Mytho.
The storyspinner looked at her, his own newly scarlet eyes reflecting the darkness surrounding them. Despite the pain in his chest caused by the Raven's blood that now stained both of their hearts, he kept his posture straight and proud, even if he had to clench his jaw in order to do so.
The Monster Raven's blood had entirely tainted both of them...if they waited much longer, then they probably would be growing feathers like all of the others. If it were not for Rue saving Mytho, he probably would be as he had been before, tainted, just as they were.
“It's not like that...”
Fakir turned his head toward Mytho. He had stopped struggling against his captivity, now only focusing on Ahiru with somber amber eyes as she looked up at him, her own pink eyes taken aback.
“I know...that me wanting Rue to be my princess doesn't make sense for who I am supposed to be,” the prince said solemnly, “and I am sorry that I have hurt you and made you feel enough bitterness to want me to lose my heart to the Raven...”
His eyes flared with immense regret, before he burst out with immense firmness,
“...But just because I want to make Rue my princess does not mean that I do not love you!”
Fakir was visibly taken aback. He...?
Ahiru's eyes widened sharply, almost looking more human simply because of how the surprise lit up her face.
“You returned my heart to me,” Mytho said to her quietly, his eyes rippling with that emotional firmness. “You wanted me to be the real me, when everyone else was content with me as a heartless doll. Even if I would have to fight the Raven, you respected my wish to get my heart back and did so...I realize that I have been very selfish in not thinking at all about what it is you wanted, all this time...but you are very precious to me. Even if...I wish for Rue to be my princess...and, if I can...love her most of all...I still love you...Ahiru.”
The pink flickered, the blue breaking a piece of it away to peak through it inside of Ahiru's rippling eyes.
“Mytho...”
The Monster Raven, however, seemed to no longer be all right with staying silent. With a fierce groan, he sent a strong wind down upon the town, one with enough force to knock one over. Fakir immediately jumped forward to support Ahiru so she didn't fall.
“Princess Tutu!” boomed the Raven, his impatience audible in his order coming down in the form of strong wind upon them. “I command you to return the heartshard to the prince now!”
Ahiru, however, had made up her mind. Her eyes narrowing, she looked upon the raven with pink-colored hatred.
“I am NOT Princess Tutu!”
She threw the hand still clutching her red pendant at the air like some gracelessly flapping wing, summoning black feathers on her own wind to make Fakir, Mytho and her all vanish from the roost.
As they appeared on the ground, the white-haired prince no longer trapped by the black glass that had been his prison, the Monster Raven laughed.
“What? And so you think that means you do not belong to me?”
Fakir stepped in front of Mytho to face the Monster Raven, his eyes coldly scarlet. “Ahiru and I will never belong to you...we serve the prince, with raven's blood in us or not.”
Ahiru came to stand in front of Fakir, similarly protective in her stance and glaring up at the Raven. The beast's scarlet eyes narrowed, seeming all the more amused.
“Perhaps now you will remain foolish enough to question me, but you won't always. Even the prince, the one who was able to love and be loved by all of his kind, eventually succumbed to my hold, and you are no different. You will give into me, and you will give me all of the prince's heart.”
Fakir felt his jaw clench despite himself. No way in hell was he going to let him have Mytho's heart, especially if it meant that Ahiru would have to--
“Fakir...”
The storyspinner turned around to look at Mytho as he straightened up.
“...He's right,” the prince said, his eyes very serious.
“What?”
Ahiru similarly looked upset. “Mytho, you can't give up! We won't leave you, we'll protect you--”
“For now, you will,” Mytho interrupted. “But...out of no less loyalty for me...you will decide to give into the Raven's will...and the fate that comes with it.”
“But--” Fakir started to protest.
But Mytho stopped him again, his eyes rippling with sorrow. “I have raven's blood in me, Fakir. If it weren't for Rue sacrificing herself, I would have given my heart to the Raven of my own will...accepting my fate so as to avoid the endless pain that desired more love that was possible in all the world...”
Fakir felt a stab at the underside of his heart when tears appeared in the prince's eyes.
“...What can we do, then...?” he asked.
Mytho closed his eyes. “...We have to seal away the Raven again while we still can. Maybe then...one day I can get all of my heart back again, all of it...and save Rue.”
Fakir's eyes narrowed, gaining dismay in their red depths. “Must we really shatter your heart again...make you go through all of this all over again...?”
“No!”
Ahiru grabbed onto Fakir's sleeve in desperation, looking appealingly to both him and Mytho.
“No, there has to be another way!”
“There isn't, Ahiru,” Mytho responded quietly as he opened his eyes again. “If we do not seal away the Monster Raven now, he will triumph...if he is sealed away, at least his rain will stop and anyone who has not been touched by it will be saved.”
“But I can't become Princess Tutu again!” Ahiru argued. Her hand tightened again around the heartshard that was now solely a red stone on a chain, rather than the pendant of extended wings it had been. “How will you get your heart back if--”
“Ahiru.”
The redhead looked at Fakir when he cut her off; his scarlet-trimmed green eyes not leaving her pink-stained blue, he took her hand in his, holding it securely.
“We'll figure it out. Even if Mytho has to take his heart out again, we can look after him and try our best to find a way to defeat the Raven...whether he is the prince by then or not.”
He brought an arm around her, bringing her close to his chest.
“...I promise you...we'll stop the Raven from eating Mytho's heart...and I'll make sure that you stay a human.”
For a moment...the Raven's blood ached a little less inside of his heart.
Ahiru looked up at Fakir, her eyes bluer than they had been since the arrival of the Raven's blood into her...before she finally inclined her head in an accepting, sorrowful nod.
His eyes flickering toward the Monster Raven as the massive scarlet eyes narrowed upon him, Fakir held his hand out in front of him and, out of raven blackness, created a thin rapier-like blade adorned with metal feathers along the hilt.
“Will you be able to use this, Mytho?” he asked. He did not have the power to bring back Mytho's swan sword, after all.
The prince looked down at the blade with grim eyes. “Yes.”
He extended a hand to take the hilt of the sword and bent down to kneel on the ground. Placing the hilt on the cobblestones with a soft clink, he lined up the blade with his heart.
“What?” said the Monster Raven, his scarlet eyes going wide. “You choose to cut out your heart again? Even when it will also seal away the girl rotting in despair inside of me?”
Mytho's eyes flared with regret and painful sorrow, but he nonetheless shot back with fierce pride, “Yes, Raven! And when I am returned to my full self again, even if it takes me a thousand years, I shall defeat you!”
He glanced to Ahiru and Fakir briefly and offered them a smile.
“Thank you, Ahiru...Fakir.”
Ahiru's eyes widened. He...thanked her...
As Mytho raised himself above the blade, she felt the claws of the Raven's blood slash through her.
“Even if...I wish for Rue to be my princess...and, if I can...love her most of all...I still love you...Ahiru..”
If Mytho cut out his heart...then he wouldn't be able to love her at all--
“No! Don't do it!”
Ahiru lunged forward as if to stop him, but Fakir threw his arms around her from behind and held her back as the prince impaled himself on the raven-made blade.
Alongside a loud, echoing cry of choked pain, an almost explosion of scarlet light came from his chest, throwing itself out from all sides of him to fly over them like red shooting stars. From Mytho's body the light ripped through the Monster Raven's blackness, making him give a groan of fury as he fell back down, massive wings retreating, down into the tower from which his head had shot up from. In Kinkan Town the five towers lined up along its circular wall lit up with red, and the black sky became simply gray and sunless, the rain of blood drying up as his wings withdrew...and the ravens flew away, whether to different parts of the town or outside of the story-driven reality all together.
At last all of the red light had dissipated, and Mytho dropped the rapier-like sword Fakir had supplied him with and slumped forward to the ground.
Ahiru at once broke out of Fakir's arms, running over to turn him over.
“Mytho. Mytho!”
His eyes upon opening were just as blank upon Ahiru as they had been when Fakir had first met him...when he had been a kid, finding a mysterious boy with no name or identity slumped over on the street, unconscious.
Ahiru looked at him, her pink eyes rippling slightly. “...Do...you know who you are?”
“No,” the white-haired young man answered blankly.
Fakir could only see Ahiru from behind, but he could see the conflict in her body language. Even if it had hurt her because of the Raven's blood to think of him loving someone else...it hurt her to hear him without any emotions at all...after all, she had been the one who had so wanted to give him all of his emotions back.
“...Your name is Mytho,” she told the heartless prince at last, her voice again in that cooler and smoother tone. “I am Ahiru, and this is Fakir. We're going to take care of you...so you have to listen to us and do as we say...all right?”
“All right.”
The Raven's blood in Fakir's chest shifted uncomfortably. Yes, it was a very familiar kind of exchange, though Rue and he had been the ones to tell Mytho what to do and not Ahiru...but for another reason he couldn't really put into words, he felt the urge to move forward, gripping onto Ahiru's shoulder as he looked down at Mytho.
“Get up. We're leaving.”
Ahiru glanced over her shoulder at Fakir with a reproachfully pink eye. Pulling her shoulder out from under his hand, she wrapped her arms around Mytho's arm as he got to his feet, not really seeming to notice the gentle offering of assistance the redhead was giving him.
“Mytho...” Ahiru said in that cooler, smoother voice, still keeping her arms around his though her eyes focused down at the pendant dangling securely from her hand on its chain, “...I want to hear you say that you love me.”
That was...what Rue had said to him, that one time...right...?
“I love you,” Mytho stated out of blank obligation.
Fakir's eyes narrowed slightly as he picked up the sword he had created, looking away from the other two with a sniff. Extending a hand along his cape, he then drew it sharply back in toward himself, calling a blast of black wind around them until all three of them vanished.
serika_san ) to keep myself from writing this idea down. The visual concepts of the Raven!Fakir and Raven!Ahiru in this are completely hers; I just tried to write out what personalities I think they would have and how I think they could have come to be. XD This story, in all essence, is an alternative version of how the story of Princess Tutu could have ended circa episode 25; when the Raven's blood begins to rain down on the town, Mytho and Princess Tutu oddly are not affected by it even if they are standing outside in it, and by the time Fakir runs out to keep Ahiru from drowning herself, the rain has fortunately stopped and so he is not affected...but what would have happened if they hadn't been so lucky? A lot of the early dialogue and action is based on Episode 25's original dialogue, but I did try to keep it as original as possible with the format and pace...possible warnings are definite Rue/Mytho/Ahiru-ness and slight hints of Ahiru/Fakir, as well as a storyline Drosselmeyer-san would rather like the path of.
Mucho thanks to Manda, Kai (
kai_lis ), Kris (astrobright68 ) and Sammie (samsamjellyjam ) for reading over parts of this for me: you really helped save what little is left of my sanity. XD I also dedicate this to Manda for the wonderful inspiration that was her art and to Sammie, since her birthday tomorrow served as my deadline to finish this~. With all that said, I hope you all enjoy~!
Once upon a time there was a prince. The prince was the creation of a man writing a perfect tragedy, one who also created a terrible Monster Raven who longed to eat his heart and gain eternal life from it. To seal away the Raven, the prince shattered his own heart, entrusting a piece of it to a beautiful princess until the time was right for him to get it back. But when the prince was to receive the final piece of his heart back and fight the Raven once more, the princess felt a strange reluctance to give back the piece of her dear prince's heart.
Rewritten in Raven's Blood
“Please, I love you...my prince! I have ever since I was little...I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU!”The words echoed through Mytho's ears, echoing back to his mind as it stumbled out of the blackness that it had been lost inside.
The voice was familiar...the same voice who had so many times assured him of the love he had not been able to feel.
“Well, just tell me you love me.”
“I want to hear you say that you love me.”
“Trust me, Mytho, you do love me.”
That voice, at those times having been strong and firm in her will...was now crying out of desperation the most sincere, loving sacrifice one could give.
The prince's eyes grew wide, gaining the light of true awareness again as they took in the sight of a dark-haired girl, the voice's owner, each of her wrists held by the claws of ravens flying her away.
“...Rue...”
Rue made no struggle as she was flown into the mouth of the Monster Raven, and his beak closed around her.
Mytho's feet met the ground as Princess Tutu helped him land.
“Rue...” Tutu murmured, before crying more desperately, “NO, RUE!”
“Relax,” the Monster Raven sneered. “I haven't killed her yet. She is alive in my stomach.”
The beast was so large that he took up half of the sky above Kinkan Town with his massive body and endless black wings. His scarlet eyes narrowed upon the white-haired prince that was his foe in the streets below, shining with the eye of some vile happy child as his voice boomed down to him.
“I should have done this years ago and saved us all the trouble, prince...she was just a human girl I kidnapped on a whim, and yet she has been quite useful. If you kill me, you will be killing the girl inside of me...likewise if you seal me away.”
Mytho's eyes narrowed, his teeth gritting together with frustration. Then...unless he defeated the Raven once and for all, this time...Rue would be lost...
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Princess Tutu...”Tutu looked at Mytho as he spoke.
“My prince?”
Mytho turned to look at her, his amber eyes immensely serious.
“I need you to give me my final heartshard.”
What?
Tutu was visibly startled. Mytho's eyes fell away, becoming more absent.
“...The feeling that raven's blood inflicts on the human heart...I know that pain. It starts in the weakest parts of your heart and spreads ruthlessly...it makes you hurt even the ones you love most. ...Rue has stood up against that pain all alone, ever since she was a child...even if her love was frail and she had no one to share her pain with, she never once thought to stop loving...and with that true love, she was able to save me from the Raven's darkness.”
The prince turned fully around to look at her, stepping closer to her as his eyes rippled with that seriousness as well as something a bit more...fragile.
“...It is my turn to save her now...and if possible, I would like to take Rue as my princess. So Princess Tutu...please give me the last heartshard.”
Inside of her form as the magical princess Tutu, Ahiru heard his words with no less clarity than if she had stood before him as herself; even though Tutu was always composed and dignified...even though she had always thought that Rue would be the perfect sort of person for Mytho and would suit him much better than she ever could...she nonetheless felt a loss at the words he told her, especially when accompanied by the eyes that reflected the emotions she had returned to him.
She...had only wanted him to smile...and she never could have told him what she felt for him without vanishing...and yet the feeling of the prince choosing Rue, as well as the feeling of knowing he was preparing to save her even when it would endanger his life and place him at the Raven's mercy...was a terrible emptiness that ached from all sides of Ahiru's heart.
The duck that was now dressed as Princess Tutu before the prince's eyes did feel the tears forming in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks, but she kept smiling for her prince.
“...Yes...”
Her hand came up to the pendant around her neck, her fingers running over the stone in the center that was the prince's final heartshard.
“Thank you...” Mytho murmured, his eyes rippling with gratitude that touched his soft smile.
Tutu's hands came up the chain to find the clasp on the back of the pendant, not breaking eye contact with the prince as she made to take it off.
This...really was happening...the Monster Raven was back at full power, and now Mytho had to fight him......and she would go back to being just a duck...
She made to unfasten the clasp, to give the pendant to Mytho...
...But it would not come apart.
The princess's eyes narrowed slightly in confusion; she tried to twist it around to unfasten it, but the clasp was refusing to come undone.
“What is it?” asked Mytho.
“...The...pendant won't come off!”
Tutu tried pulling at the chain, trying with more strength to pull it apart, but it remained as stuck as ever.
“It's not...coming off...” she felt frustration and desperation grabbing hold. “Why won't it--?”
The Monster Raven gave a sudden, cold roar of a laugh.
“Isn't that clear?”
Tutu looked up with a start. Mytho turned around to look back up at his foe, his eyes narrowed, to see the Raven's wings spreading further across the sky, entirely encompassing the air over Kinkan Town with his lengthening, growing feathers. The wings were like dark storm clouds coming in to black out the sun and remove all light, and it showered a rain upon the town: a scarlet rain that ran down the roofs of the houses of Kinkan and trickled off Princess Tutu's white dress and along her skin.
She flinched, her eyes going wide. It wasn't rain; it was too thick, too sticky to be rain--
“It's the Raven's blood!” Mytho realized.
He bolted over to the princess, extending his hand as if to grab hold of her. “Tutu, you must--”
A blast of lightning crashed down, landing right between the prince and the magical princess. Tutu was thrown backward into the ground by the force, her bare back colliding sharply with the cobblestone street.
When she looked up, the prince was trapped inside of a transparent black egg, arched up from the pavement on a precarious, clawed roost miles up from the ground.
“Prince!” cried Tutu.
The Raven's blood staining her pointe shoes as she hurriedly got to her feet, she immediately tried to summon some vines to rise her up to his level to assist him...but the Raven's blood came down in a shower, pelting down on her and weighing her down.
“You know full well why the heartshard won't come off,” the Monster Raven cawed in a low, booming voice down at her. “I can see it from here. Even though you were the one chosen to return the prince's heartshards to him, you still are nothing more than a human with a pathetic human heart.”
Tutu refused to listen; she had to save the prince--!
Raising her arms, she pulled vines up from the ground, letting them magically grow upward and lift her up from the streets toward the captured Mytho.
“The prince may have been foolish enough to think that humans could love everything and everyone...but that really isn't true, is it? When bathed in my blood, his heart did what all human hearts do: give into their true essence, the one that lives by destroying the lives of others!”
The blood stained Tutu's white dress, running along her skin as she struggled to keep her posture straight and the vines growing. It was...so heavy...it was as though the blood was seeping through her very skin, weighing her down and keeping her from reaching the prince. Mytho pounded his fists on the side of the egg, shouting words she could not hear through the strong black glass that made up his prison.
She had to reach him, Tutu thought--she couldn't let the Raven steal his heart--the heart that loved everyone--
The Monster Raven's cold, scarlet eyes narrowed upon Princess Tutu as he grew to his full size, looking down upon her with a most cruel smile.
“Princess Tutu...you can't give back the heartshard because you don't want to give up that piece of the prince!”
Tutu shot backward, her eyes very wide.
“No--no, that's not it--!”
“That piece of the prince's heart is the only part that the human girl inside of me does not have,” the Raven affirmed cruelly, “and you don't wish to give it up, even if it is the prince's wish!”
“No!” Tutu cried. “That's not--!”
“Even though you love the prince so dearly, your own will still will contradict his, not for his sake, but for the sake of yourself!”
“I--”
The Raven's blood was growing heavier, as was the inside of her chest, which ached at the accusation. It wasn't true! She wanted the prince to be happy--she just wanted--
The eyes of the black beast above her narrowed slightly down at her. “Oh? You are still resisting?”
He gave a booming laugh, one that became a fierce wind that hurled down toward Tutu, throwing her vines down enough that they couldn't grow any higher, stranding her a good five feet from Mytho imprisoned in the black egg above.
“Even if it would make the girl inside of me happy to be with the prince,” scorned the Monster Raven, “you still can't help but want that wish of yours. That's how all humans are, down in the deepest parts of their hearts! My blood does not create anything that isn't already there to begin with...it solely bares the parts of yourself that you try so hard to hide!”
“NO!”
Ahiru, the blood seeping through her skin with the strength of some burning acid, screamed the single word as loud as she could. The dress that made her Princess Tutu was almost being torn away by the blood, the cloth being slashed away from her waist and from the top of the dress as the white was enclosed by dark scarlet.
The redhead's head shot around, looking over herself as the gold bracelets on her wrists vanished, as her long curly hair, stretching back down to the length it was when she was just the girl Ahiru, came tumbling down loose around her shoulders.
“N-no!”
The facade of Tutu was being torn away...the pendant of extended wings was slowly withdrawing, becoming just the simple heartshard pendant that it had been before.
She had to reach Mytho now!
Ahiru's arms practically slashed at the air as she tried hopelessly to make the vines grow enough for her to reach Mytho.
But when she did so, she lost her balance.
The grace of the magical ballerina gone, Ahiru began to fall, her long hair swishing loosely around her as she was thrown backward off of the vines she had created.
The fall seemed unnaturally slow...it was as though as she fell, her eyes still locked on the prince trapped above her inside of the egg, his face fearful and desperate as he struggled to escape, Mr. Drosselmeyer had suddenly started writing everything more slowly.
Was it...her fault...? Her fault that she couldn't return the final heartshard to Mytho...?
Silence echoed endlessly around her, lingering and growing inside of her ears so that it throbbed against her head.
Her fault...because she didn't want to give his heart back...?
But no, that wasn't true! She only had wanted him to be happy and to smile...that's all she'd wanted! She'd always known that...someone like Rue would suit Mytho better than she could...she'd always known that--
Why...why did her chest hurt so much!?
Tears swam in her eyes, deadening conscious light therein as gravity made them fall upward and leave her face. The blood that stained the white cloth of Tutu's dress ran upward, streaking across the air around her as it completely stained her from head to toe.
That piece of the prince's heart...the heartshard that held an emotion she could not identify...that piece of his heart had made it so she could return his heart to him, so he could again feel love and happiness...so she become Princess Tutu before his eyes, rather than just a small, fragile...useless duck...
But now...now she wasn't Tutu...she wasn't a duck, and she still couldn't save the prince...the one who had been able to say what it was Ahiru had wanted to tell him, but had chosen not to because she was afraid of vanishing...had been Rue. Rue had willingly sacrificed herself, all of herself...something that Ahiru, even as Princess Tutu, had not been able to do...
And for it...Rue received Mytho's love...
A strange, pink color rippled inside of the blue of Ahiru's hollow eyes as her hand still stretched out as if to grab at her prince locked away in the hold of the Monster Raven.
She just...wanted him to love her...as that storybook prince, the one who had a heart that could somehow love everyone in the world...
...But would he love her...if she were only a duck...?
Time seemed to abruptly speed up, and the girl fell right down toward the ground. Instead of hitting the blood-soaked street, however, a cluster of black made her vanish before the impact.
Mytho shot back in surprise seeing her vanish, his hands plastering against the inside of the glass egg.
“Tutu! Tutu!” he cried, the strong glass drowning out his voice.
He stopped, however, when another cluster of black swished around outside of his egg, swirling raven feathers around in a shadow-like mist.
The Monster Raven's scarlet eyes narrowed with satisfaction.
“So you finally gave in to the truth...”
Mytho's eyes widened at what appeared before him from the black raven wind.
Hovering in mid-air before him was a girl garbed in a dark scarlet tutu and top that trailed off her shoulders and slashed under her chest to reveal her white stomach and was trimmed with black feathers. Scarlet stockings ran up from her black-feathered boots up to her mid-thigh, ending with gold trim similar to the trim of the fingerless scarlet gloves that covered her forearms and hands, one of which held the twinkling scarlet pendant that was Mytho's final heartshard. Most striking of all, however, were her red hair, brighter than the bloody color of her attire, streaming down along her shoulders in wave-like curls that twisted along and around her pale face to frame her pink-stained eyes and her cold red-marked lips.
“...Princess Tutu.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Meanwhile, in a house not far away from the edge of town where the Monster Raven and the prince had faced each other once more, two young men with storyspinning in their blood stood before a desk that held parchment made from ten-year-old reeds and an ink pot full of ink with a 7: 3 blue to black ratio.One of them, the one with the dark ponytail and green eyes that was Fakir, was sitting in front of the desk, holding a duck-feather quill as he rested his head on his hand and looked upon the empty page placed in front of him.
The other storyspinner, the bespectacled one called Autor, placed a cup of tea on the desk next to Fakir, his face touched with an annoyed sourness. He had gone ahead with Fakir's request for his help rather reluctantly; inwardly he still didn't know why he was accepting this anyway, since he still didn't like the fact that Fakir had been chosen by his heritage to be the natural heir to Drosselmeyer's craft, when he, Autor, had been the one to research his heritage thoroughly and had practiced his own writing when Fakir had given up on it as a child.
At that moment Autor caught a sound like loud, raucous talking coming from outside. With a brown narrowed eye he glanced over his shoulder toward the closed windows and front door.
“...It certainly is noisy...” he grumbled, turning and walking over the door to see what all of the fuss was about.
Fakir did not turn to look at Autor as he went to the door, instead too focused on the piece of parchment before him. On that page, he would have to write a story about Mytho, and bring this story to an end unlike the one Drosselmeyer no doubt had in mind for it.
Could he do it? He had only ever been able to write a story about Ahiru, and even then he had no idea how much of that story came from his own will. It had just been as though her feelings had come up through his arm, into his hand and out onto the page in the form of words. His writing, whether his own or not, had saved Ahiru from Drosselmeyer's clutches...
Could he truly...do the same thing for Mytho...especially when Drosselmeyer's will would directly conflict with his desire to do so?
Fakir massaged his temple. He could already feel a headache coming on...
“Fa--!”
Autor abruptly burst back into the room in a panic, stumbling over his own feet and landing on the floor with a loud THUMP, his legs twisted almost comically behind him and over his head.
“--kir...there are ravens all over town!”
The writer who had filled the role of a knight looked over his shoulder at him, his annoyed eyes twinged with confusion.
There were always ravens in the town; even when Fakir was a small boy, there had been plenty of them...but obviously something was really wrong if Autor was acting like this.
He got up from the desk, still holding the quill in his hand as he hurried past Autor over to the door, throwing it open as if to go out and see what was happening.
Fakir stopped mid-step in the doorway. A strange red rain was coming down in buckets outside of Autor's house, trickling down from the overlay over the front door to splash down on the pavement.
“W-what--?”
His green eyes shot past the rain making thick, syrupy puddles in front of his white shoes, onto the remainder of Kinkan Town. The sky had gone entirely black as the red droplets came down, not from clouds but from the black sky alone...and in that rain was the source of the sound Autor had heard: not talking, but the loud and raucous cawing of crows.
The black birds flew through the blackened sky in massive flocks, but they had horrifying company in the form of the citizens of Kinkan Town, once ordinary humans that were now mutated with the beaks, wings and pitch black feathers of the crows flying around them in the sky. With their beaks toward the sky, the citizens stained by the scarlet rain seemed to be celebrating, cawing with an almost vicious and mindless joy and flapping their wings at the sight of their smaller brethren coming to take over their home.
Fakir stumbled back, his hand roughly clutching the doorway in an attempt to steady himself.
“What is...going on...?”
Autor once he had stumbled back to his feet hurried over to Fakir by the doorway, also looking out.
“It looks just like the Raven Festival scene from The Prince and the Raven,” he said, his own eyes narrowing behind his glasses as he looked at Fakir. “If this rain is blood and it's turning everybody into ravens...does this mean that the Monster Raven is now back in reality as well?”
The Raven was released...then Princess Tutu must have returned the heartshards that were trapped inside of Kinkan Town's five towers, Fakir realized.
And that meant...
Fakir's eyes narrowed, and without another thought, he bolted out the door.
“Fakir!”
Autor tried unsuccessfully to grab him back; instead of running outside into the rain himself, he shouted after the other storyspinner, “Fakir, you can't go out there!”
But Fakir didn't pay any mind; instead he ran down the street, through the downpour of blood that streamed along his white shirt and pants.
If Princess Tutu had returned the shards...then Ahiru and Mytho were both out there.
The Raven's blood had already corrupted Mytho...Fakir may have put down his sword so as to prevent the fate that he was dealt, but he still had to protect him, regardless of whether or not he was the raven prince...and Ahiru...if she got turned into a raven too--
Disregarding the red running through his white clothes to stick to his skin like a leech with some acid-like bite, Fakir ran down the street, running in the opposite direction of the humongous flock of ravens flying over him; they had to be coming from somewhere, and the only place they could all be coming from would have to be from the Monster Raven himself...
The young storyspinner was running through the town square toward the wall when he ran right into a large mob of the ravens. What was disturbing about them, however, and what had made him stop momentarily was that many of them were dressed in the Kinkan Academy uniform. One of the ravens even had pointed ears and was jumping in leaps as it gave the loud yowl of a cat...obviously once having been their feline ballet instructor, Mr. Cat.
The flock of human-crows entirely blocked his path down the street, but on the other side, Fakir could hear a low, cruel voice coming down in booms toward the town.
“Prince...now you have no allies remaining. They have all been awakened by my noble blood, and have accepted their fate as my servants...”
The voice had to be the Monster Raven, Fakir thought to himself. His eyes narrowing sharply, he at once shoved his way into the crowd in an attempt to get to the other side.
The crows around him, however, began to respond vocally toward the sight of someone that still had a heart not yet corrupted by the Raven's blood.
“Give us your heart!” one cawed.
That one crow was echoed twice over by others, and Fakir found himself being shoved between the black-feathered creatures, some of them grabbing hold of his arms with their wings. He struggled in their grasp fiercely, pushing one of them off as he shoved his way through, trying to get past them as he was pelted with the red rain falling from above--
“...You have no choice but to give your heart to me now,” Fakir heard the Monster Raven close by sneer.
His eyes widened. Mytho was going to--!
“Give us your heart!” repeated another crow with a pink bun of hair as she tried to bite down on his long ponytail to grab onto him. Her beak ended up seizing the ribbon securing it, making his hair come loose when it was pulled out.
“Get...off of me!” Fakir snarled, shoving one off only to be grabbed by another.
“Give us your heart!”
“Give us your heart!”
Their beaks came down, one of them snatching hold of Fakir's shirt and tearing a sleeve off and another grabbing a hold of the back and ripping a gaping hole in it. The blood of the Raven trailed down his bare skin, making him flinch both from the utter coldness and from the horrible, burning sensation it seemed to have upon contact.
He had to get out of this--
With all of the strength he could muster, the once-knight kicked the raven in front of him in the chest, throwing him backward as he rammed his shoulder into the next one, and then punched the one after that in the side of the beak.
Just as he reached the edge of the mob, however, he was suddenly seized from behind, two strong wings grabbing hold of his arms as a large beak came plowing down into his shoulder.
“AHHH!”
Fakir couldn't stop himself from releasing a choked cry of immense pain as blood spurted out from the deep wound inflicted by the sharp beak. As he tried to suppress the pain enough to fight back against the hold, the raven holding him cawed “Give us your heart,” just as all the others had.
Unlike all the others, however, that caw was enough to Fakir freeze where he stood, his eyes widening in horrified recognition as he turned to look at the crow, dressed in modest apparel with a blacksmith's hammer in the pocket of his dirtied brown smock.
“...Karon...”
~*~*~*~*~*~
“You still intend to resist, prince?” the Monster Raven asked, his beaked mouth turning up in a cold, cruel smirk. “Well, then...if you won't agree to give me your heart, then I will simply have it taken from you.”The egg's glass abruptly fell apart, at once shooting up from its perch in many sharp, dagger-like pieces that crossed in several directions, effectively trapping Mytho's legs and arms on either side of him.
The prince struggled, but the glass completely prevented all manner of escape. His eyes rippling with anxiety and frustration, he looked up to see Ahiru, now controlled by the blood that had so corrupted him, coming down to stand in front of him on top of the perch.
Mytho's heart ached at the sight. Her eyes that had once been blue were now so devoid of light; although her face was reasonably neutral, the pink orbs seemed to be completely defeated, as though deciding not to deny the fate now given to her...the one that made her a servant of the Monster Raven.
“Tutu...”
Mytho thought he had seen something flicker inside of the pink of Ahiru's eyes in response to the name, but it was so brief he might have imagined it.
“...I am not...Princess Tutu,” she said very quietly.
Her voice didn't sound as it usually did, in her ears or Mytho's; while being just as soft as it had been, it was less chirp-like and more smooth, like a chick that had transformed into a little garter snake. What was most noticeable, though, and most strange to hear in Ahiru's voice was the great bitterness that seemed to come in response to the name of the ballerina princess she had been.
Why did...she deny who she was? Mytho had never felt the need to deny he was the prince, when the raven's blood had been in control of him...so why--?
“Now...” the Monster Raven said, rising himself to full height as his eyes narrowed upon the prince, “...give the prince his final heartshard.”
Ahiru looked up with a start toward the bird, her pink eyes reacting with a more visible, taken aback flicker.
“What?”
“Return the last piece of the prince's heart,” the Monster Raven repeated, his tone not changing at all in its order. “If the prince's heart is not complete, then I cannot gain eternal life from it...so before you tear out his heart for me, you must complete it for me with the shard you have.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Fakir looked back toward the street, his face visibly shocked and horrified by what he heard the Monster Raven say next.He had Ahiru...he was going to make Ahiru give back Mytho's heart...and if he did that, and ate the prince's heart...Ahiru would be his to do away with, his alone--
Fakir fought the immense pain in his chest, almost more painful than his wounded shoulder from how the Raven's blood clawed at him. As the raven that had once been Karon made as if to stab him once more with his beak, he clenched his fists, his teeth gnashing together from both the pain and the fury that the thought of Ahiru being in the Raven's clutches unleashed in him.
“...Forgive me, Karon...”
With that he threw himself back into Karon, avoiding his beak by slamming his elbow down into the older man-turned-crow's solar plexus. With a groan of pain, he released him, and the storyspinner darted out from the crowd, even with them cawing and flying after him.
He could see the Monster Raven now, lording over the town like some grand black curtain on a stage. As he squinted upward, running through the heavy red rain weighing his chest down and streaming through his loosely flowing dark hair, he could see a thin pillar of black at the end of the street in front of the wall. On top, trapped in spears of black glass, was a white-haired person that had to Mytho, and in front of him was--
Fakir's eyes widened.
Ahiru...?
~*~*~*~*~*~
The raven-tainted princess's posture changed slightly, almost becoming defensive though her back remained straighter and prouder than it usually was when she had simply been Ahiru. Her hand tightened around the pendant still in her hand with a similar attitude to a child holding more tightly onto a precious stuffed animal.“...No!” she shot back, her now-pink eyes rippling with a firmness that could almost be righteous if it didn't involve something so selfish. “This piece belongs to me!”
It being...the only piece that didn't belong to...
But the Raven seemed unfazed and uncaring toward this objection to his will.
“What is so precious about that piece to you? The prince has not given you the love he has owed you...his heart is of no use to you. Although he swears to be the Prince Who Loves Everyone, he will choose the human girl inside of me for his princess.”
Ahiru flinched a bit despite herself, the image of Rue dancing with Mytho at the Academy over her eyes. Even then...they had always looked so good together...
“What use is his heart to you, when you can steal the heart of someone who has not so thoroughly rejected and hurt you?”
The red-haired girl's eyes fell down to the heartshard pendant in her hand, lingering with rippling pink.
He had chosen Rue...even after all she had done to give him back his heart so he could be his real self, when Rue had only wanted to prevent him being the true him...he had chosen Rue...
But...if she gave back the final heartshard...
“AHIRU!”
Ahiru's head shot up. That voice was...
Her eyes swerved around, down to the street where the voice had come from. Running through the thick, heavy rain that trickled down the cobblestones under him, with his hair streaming loose behind him, a sleeve torn off of his shirt and a bleeding shoulder...was Fakir.
“Ahiru...?” Mytho repeated, but Ahiru didn't hear him.
“Fakir...”
~*~*~*~*~*~
The rain pelting down on him had always been heavy and inhibiting, making it hard for him to move due to how it burned his skin and to the pain it had caused in his chest. But at that moment, seeing Ahiru, even if it was adorned in raven feathers...the blood almost seemed to make Fakir want to elevate himself, up, up, up until he reached her.It had to be something in raven's blood that made one want to fly, the storyspinner might have rationalized anytime else, but at the moment he was not able to rationalize it. Never seeing how his eyes darkened as red as the raven's blood running down from the sky around him, he ran as fast as he could down the street toward Ahiru, faster and faster, needing to get higher and higher in his strides--
And then suddenly he was running on air, charging upward on nothingness in a brutal mocking of gravity. The rain that was the Monster Raven's blood streamed around him all at once, coming together to run in layers beside him, running along his stained white shoes pants, along his stained and ripped white shirt, and along either side of his face. The blood became feathers, which became vines of cloth, which melded together around him, becoming black gloves, a tight black shirt, black pants, black boots, and a dark green cape trimmed with cygnet-colored feathers that was thrown back behind him as he flew through the air without wings.
Fakir landed in a crouched position beside Ahiru, straightening up slowly as he looked down at her with his eyes newly alight with raven scarlet. The Raven's blood seared in his chest; even with how it had wanted to be above the ground and beside her, it now clawed at him demanding that she be closer still. He viciously tried to yank the feeling back, however, out of his own pride, inflated and yet chained down by the blood now staining his chest.
“Ahiru...”
The redhead's pink eyes, rippling with emotion, almost seemed to reflect some of the blue familiar to her eyes...but Fakir could not focus on it for too long. Ahiru abruptly leaped forward, grabbing onto his shirt almost entirely on impulse as her face sat almost on his chest.
“Fakir,” she whispered.
Her voice did not hold the sweet, duck-like quality it had had when he last saw her, now sounding smoother and almost cooler, but the light quality remained, even if it held a pride that wasn't there before.
“The Raven wants me to give Mytho his last heartshard back, Fakir,” Ahiru said very quietly.
Fakir felt his eyes narrow slightly upon the top of her head. She looked up at him, looking over his face with those strange pink eyes that seemed almost more uncaring than Mytho had been when he had had no heart.
“Even though Mytho won't be fighting him,” the redhead continued, seeming to speak half to Fakir and half to herself, “...even if Mytho's heart belongs to Rue...and holding onto the piece won't make him love me...”
She gave something of a soft, short laugh, her head falling downward so all he could see was her twisted smile. The laugh was a broken sort, though, devoid of humor and almost choked.
“...The Raven won't gain eternal life without Mytho's heart being complete...Mytho won't love me, even if I gave him his heart back and wanted him to be his true self, so he could smile and love again...”
Ahiru's shoulders began to shake as her smile began to crumble; although Fakir couldn't see them, he could hear the tears in her voice.
“...Even if I did everything for him, and he still won't love me...even if my heart hurts more than anything knowing that he'll love Rue with all of his heart if it's given back to him, because she saved him from the Raven's blood...”
She sounded more like her regular self with each word, as she burst out, looking up at him with eyes stained by both pink and blue,
“...I can't do it! I can't give it back...because I know that if I give it back, I'll go back to being just a duck! The prince wants to make Rue his princess...he won't ever love me like he does Rue...and still...!”
Tears slid down her face as she closed her eyes, turning away to vainly try to hide her face from Fakir and the trapped Mytho.
The storyspinner looked at her, his own newly scarlet eyes reflecting the darkness surrounding them. Despite the pain in his chest caused by the Raven's blood that now stained both of their hearts, he kept his posture straight and proud, even if he had to clench his jaw in order to do so.
The Monster Raven's blood had entirely tainted both of them...if they waited much longer, then they probably would be growing feathers like all of the others. If it were not for Rue saving Mytho, he probably would be as he had been before, tainted, just as they were.
“It's not like that...”
Fakir turned his head toward Mytho. He had stopped struggling against his captivity, now only focusing on Ahiru with somber amber eyes as she looked up at him, her own pink eyes taken aback.
“I know...that me wanting Rue to be my princess doesn't make sense for who I am supposed to be,” the prince said solemnly, “and I am sorry that I have hurt you and made you feel enough bitterness to want me to lose my heart to the Raven...”
His eyes flared with immense regret, before he burst out with immense firmness,
“...But just because I want to make Rue my princess does not mean that I do not love you!”
Fakir was visibly taken aback. He...?
Ahiru's eyes widened sharply, almost looking more human simply because of how the surprise lit up her face.
“You returned my heart to me,” Mytho said to her quietly, his eyes rippling with that emotional firmness. “You wanted me to be the real me, when everyone else was content with me as a heartless doll. Even if I would have to fight the Raven, you respected my wish to get my heart back and did so...I realize that I have been very selfish in not thinking at all about what it is you wanted, all this time...but you are very precious to me. Even if...I wish for Rue to be my princess...and, if I can...love her most of all...I still love you...Ahiru.”
The pink flickered, the blue breaking a piece of it away to peak through it inside of Ahiru's rippling eyes.
“Mytho...”
The Monster Raven, however, seemed to no longer be all right with staying silent. With a fierce groan, he sent a strong wind down upon the town, one with enough force to knock one over. Fakir immediately jumped forward to support Ahiru so she didn't fall.
“Princess Tutu!” boomed the Raven, his impatience audible in his order coming down in the form of strong wind upon them. “I command you to return the heartshard to the prince now!”
Ahiru, however, had made up her mind. Her eyes narrowing, she looked upon the raven with pink-colored hatred.
“I am NOT Princess Tutu!”
She threw the hand still clutching her red pendant at the air like some gracelessly flapping wing, summoning black feathers on her own wind to make Fakir, Mytho and her all vanish from the roost.
As they appeared on the ground, the white-haired prince no longer trapped by the black glass that had been his prison, the Monster Raven laughed.
“What? And so you think that means you do not belong to me?”
Fakir stepped in front of Mytho to face the Monster Raven, his eyes coldly scarlet. “Ahiru and I will never belong to you...we serve the prince, with raven's blood in us or not.”
Ahiru came to stand in front of Fakir, similarly protective in her stance and glaring up at the Raven. The beast's scarlet eyes narrowed, seeming all the more amused.
“Perhaps now you will remain foolish enough to question me, but you won't always. Even the prince, the one who was able to love and be loved by all of his kind, eventually succumbed to my hold, and you are no different. You will give into me, and you will give me all of the prince's heart.”
Fakir felt his jaw clench despite himself. No way in hell was he going to let him have Mytho's heart, especially if it meant that Ahiru would have to--
“Fakir...”
The storyspinner turned around to look at Mytho as he straightened up.
“...He's right,” the prince said, his eyes very serious.
“What?”
Ahiru similarly looked upset. “Mytho, you can't give up! We won't leave you, we'll protect you--”
“For now, you will,” Mytho interrupted. “But...out of no less loyalty for me...you will decide to give into the Raven's will...and the fate that comes with it.”
“But--” Fakir started to protest.
But Mytho stopped him again, his eyes rippling with sorrow. “I have raven's blood in me, Fakir. If it weren't for Rue sacrificing herself, I would have given my heart to the Raven of my own will...accepting my fate so as to avoid the endless pain that desired more love that was possible in all the world...”
Fakir felt a stab at the underside of his heart when tears appeared in the prince's eyes.
“...What can we do, then...?” he asked.
Mytho closed his eyes. “...We have to seal away the Raven again while we still can. Maybe then...one day I can get all of my heart back again, all of it...and save Rue.”
Fakir's eyes narrowed, gaining dismay in their red depths. “Must we really shatter your heart again...make you go through all of this all over again...?”
“No!”
Ahiru grabbed onto Fakir's sleeve in desperation, looking appealingly to both him and Mytho.
“No, there has to be another way!”
“There isn't, Ahiru,” Mytho responded quietly as he opened his eyes again. “If we do not seal away the Monster Raven now, he will triumph...if he is sealed away, at least his rain will stop and anyone who has not been touched by it will be saved.”
“But I can't become Princess Tutu again!” Ahiru argued. Her hand tightened again around the heartshard that was now solely a red stone on a chain, rather than the pendant of extended wings it had been. “How will you get your heart back if--”
“Ahiru.”
The redhead looked at Fakir when he cut her off; his scarlet-trimmed green eyes not leaving her pink-stained blue, he took her hand in his, holding it securely.
“We'll figure it out. Even if Mytho has to take his heart out again, we can look after him and try our best to find a way to defeat the Raven...whether he is the prince by then or not.”
He brought an arm around her, bringing her close to his chest.
“...I promise you...we'll stop the Raven from eating Mytho's heart...and I'll make sure that you stay a human.”
For a moment...the Raven's blood ached a little less inside of his heart.
Ahiru looked up at Fakir, her eyes bluer than they had been since the arrival of the Raven's blood into her...before she finally inclined her head in an accepting, sorrowful nod.
His eyes flickering toward the Monster Raven as the massive scarlet eyes narrowed upon him, Fakir held his hand out in front of him and, out of raven blackness, created a thin rapier-like blade adorned with metal feathers along the hilt.
“Will you be able to use this, Mytho?” he asked. He did not have the power to bring back Mytho's swan sword, after all.
The prince looked down at the blade with grim eyes. “Yes.”
He extended a hand to take the hilt of the sword and bent down to kneel on the ground. Placing the hilt on the cobblestones with a soft clink, he lined up the blade with his heart.
“What?” said the Monster Raven, his scarlet eyes going wide. “You choose to cut out your heart again? Even when it will also seal away the girl rotting in despair inside of me?”
Mytho's eyes flared with regret and painful sorrow, but he nonetheless shot back with fierce pride, “Yes, Raven! And when I am returned to my full self again, even if it takes me a thousand years, I shall defeat you!”
He glanced to Ahiru and Fakir briefly and offered them a smile.
“Thank you, Ahiru...Fakir.”
Ahiru's eyes widened. He...thanked her...
As Mytho raised himself above the blade, she felt the claws of the Raven's blood slash through her.
“Even if...I wish for Rue to be my princess...and, if I can...love her most of all...I still love you...Ahiru..”
If Mytho cut out his heart...then he wouldn't be able to love her at all--
“No! Don't do it!”
Ahiru lunged forward as if to stop him, but Fakir threw his arms around her from behind and held her back as the prince impaled himself on the raven-made blade.
Alongside a loud, echoing cry of choked pain, an almost explosion of scarlet light came from his chest, throwing itself out from all sides of him to fly over them like red shooting stars. From Mytho's body the light ripped through the Monster Raven's blackness, making him give a groan of fury as he fell back down, massive wings retreating, down into the tower from which his head had shot up from. In Kinkan Town the five towers lined up along its circular wall lit up with red, and the black sky became simply gray and sunless, the rain of blood drying up as his wings withdrew...and the ravens flew away, whether to different parts of the town or outside of the story-driven reality all together.
At last all of the red light had dissipated, and Mytho dropped the rapier-like sword Fakir had supplied him with and slumped forward to the ground.
Ahiru at once broke out of Fakir's arms, running over to turn him over.
“Mytho. Mytho!”
His eyes upon opening were just as blank upon Ahiru as they had been when Fakir had first met him...when he had been a kid, finding a mysterious boy with no name or identity slumped over on the street, unconscious.
Ahiru looked at him, her pink eyes rippling slightly. “...Do...you know who you are?”
“No,” the white-haired young man answered blankly.
Fakir could only see Ahiru from behind, but he could see the conflict in her body language. Even if it had hurt her because of the Raven's blood to think of him loving someone else...it hurt her to hear him without any emotions at all...after all, she had been the one who had so wanted to give him all of his emotions back.
“...Your name is Mytho,” she told the heartless prince at last, her voice again in that cooler and smoother tone. “I am Ahiru, and this is Fakir. We're going to take care of you...so you have to listen to us and do as we say...all right?”
“All right.”
The Raven's blood in Fakir's chest shifted uncomfortably. Yes, it was a very familiar kind of exchange, though Rue and he had been the ones to tell Mytho what to do and not Ahiru...but for another reason he couldn't really put into words, he felt the urge to move forward, gripping onto Ahiru's shoulder as he looked down at Mytho.
“Get up. We're leaving.”
Ahiru glanced over her shoulder at Fakir with a reproachfully pink eye. Pulling her shoulder out from under his hand, she wrapped her arms around Mytho's arm as he got to his feet, not really seeming to notice the gentle offering of assistance the redhead was giving him.
“Mytho...” Ahiru said in that cooler, smoother voice, still keeping her arms around his though her eyes focused down at the pendant dangling securely from her hand on its chain, “...I want to hear you say that you love me.”
That was...what Rue had said to him, that one time...right...?
“I love you,” Mytho stated out of blank obligation.
Fakir's eyes narrowed slightly as he picked up the sword he had created, looking away from the other two with a sniff. Extending a hand along his cape, he then drew it sharply back in toward himself, calling a blast of black wind around them until all three of them vanished.
They left no trace of their presence except for two lone raven feathers fluttering to the cobblestone streets to sit in a lingering puddle of raven's blood.
