I. My only love sprung from my only hate

Once she stood beneath his window. Once, before Mytho flung himself from it and before he loved her, she stood beneath his window and it rattled, rap, rap, rap. She threw the rocks not for him, but for the boy she loved. And yet Fakir was the one who approached, who peeked through the blood-red curtains and saw her there, the girl with flame-colored hair. And sneered.

Sometimes, in his dreams, it goes differently. He throws open the window and sings his love to the heavens. He shouts out, It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! like a doomed character in a tragedy. Why not? Their time was so fleeting; every moment was precious. How could he waste a single moment, being cold and aloof? What a monstrous thing, to squander their time together.

But no. Fakir would not do that. He did not do that.

But sometimes (just sometimes) he wishes he did.

Sometimes he wishes he could revise their history.

Sometimes he wishes their lives were truly stories, that they were manuscipts he could write and rewrite at his leisure. He wishes he could erase every cruel word he ever spoke to her, rescript every awkward encounter, edit out every thoughtless action.

Sometimes he wishes, but even if he could, he wouldn't. Because that would be wrong. Because he has sworn to never to abuse his power, as Drosselmeyer did. Because he wants to go back to being his true self. Because, because.

But this does not make it any less painful.

If you do, I'll make you pay.

He said that to her, once. I'll make you pay. He spoke that threat and he meant it, and when he said that he would have killed her if he needed to, he meant that too. And when Mytho asked him not to turn his sword against Tutu, he made no promises, because he would have done it. He would have done the unspeakable.

He cringes now, when he thinks about it. It burns through him, the searing pain of his guilt unbearable in his chest and his hand and everywhere. Everywhere.

As if sensing his pain, she butts up against his foot. He puts down his book and lets her fuss over him in the way that only a bird could. She is telling him, not so subtly, to stop moping. So he smiles, just a little bit, and that seems to reassure her.

How she would mock him, if she knew what he was thinking about. I wasn't scared of you! she might proclaim, ever defiant. You were mean, but you were trying to protect Mytho, she might say, as if that explained away everything.

This is the real you, she might say. She said that once before, he thinks. After he let her creep into his heart, and everything around him changed, and she said, without a hint of doubt, This is the real you.

He is less certain.

II. Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow

There's a book in the library, so old that its cracked spine is illegible. It's been read a hundred times over, pages dog-eared and notes scribbled in the margins. Autor has checked it out twice. It is an English play, translated badly, or maybe just too flowery to start with. The Russians adapted it into a ballet. Fakir knows this well; yes, once he danced this very scene, his heart full of hope and bittersweet sorrow.

There is a twinge of pain in his right palm. He ignores it, turns the page. The story is familiar. Two lovers, fated to never be together. And yet they were together, for a fleeting moment, and for just that moment everything was beautiful and perfect and right. And if only that last dance could have never ended, if that perfect moment could have gone on forever...

The lovers die in the end. Fakir knew this already, but reading it on the page still stings. And when he slams the book shut, he allows himself one horrible, treacherous thought.

This is not a happy ending.

Romeo and Juliet is not a love story.

It is a tragedy. Drosselmeyer himself could have written it. Fakir had suffered through enough tragedies for one lifetime, and had no reason to be reading it.

But something always drew him back.

The Prince and Tutu danced, just once, and Fakir watched, half-dead, as they twirled and spun like magic, and it seemed like it might never end. And while he was brought back to life by the warmth of a dying woman, in his pain-drunk dreams, he thought for a moment that he might be jealous.

Fakir did not like dancing. He never really liked it, but Mytho did, and so Fakir enrolled the both of them in the academy. It was never unpleasant, and he didn't hate it. But he had no love for dance, not the way the other students did.

Yet in that moment, he wanted nothing but to dance with Tutu. That was a damned foolish thing to wish for; he'd danced with her once before that, on a stage lit by an eel and dressed in fine golden costumes. He'd had his dance already. She was so beautiful then, and he cursed himself for not seeing it sooner.

Now he is always dancing. Always, always. And he remembers the time he held her close to him, like Mytho did. And he looked into her eyes, deep and dark and nothing like despair, and Fakir swears he loved her a thousand times more than Mytho ever did. And every time he dances, he feels the ghost of her flesh against him, and he wishes that their dance could have gone on forever.

III. It was the nightingale, and not the lark

She hasn't changed at all. She is a duck with the heart of a princess, and her soul sings with hope.

This is who you really are, he whispers to her in his mind. And she must hear him, she rubs her head against his arm. She says, I know that already, jerk. Those are the words echoing in his head. They must be hers.

This is okay, he tells himself. This is our happy ending.

But he still wishes that her ending was happier. And he could give her a happier ending, if he just put pen to paper. He justifies this to himself, half-heartedly. In the end, after all, it was not his words that made her Princess Tutu again, but her own power. He just pushed her along. Tutu was her true self too, and if he had been a stronger writer, perhaps she could have kept that form. He could give her back that life. She could still have that ending: the storybook ending, the castles and happily-ever-afters. A few short lines, and she could have the love of a prince.

Oh, she says shyly, reading his mind. But I chose this. I am happy here with you.

He gathers her in his arms. She flaps her wings once, twice, then stills. He holds her against his beating heart-his shattered and broken and impossibly whole heart-and thinks, You deserve more than this.

Fakir does not care that she is a duck. He wouldn't care if she was a girl or a storybook princess. He is by her side and he never wants to leave it, but there is that twinge of guilt, deep in his chest. If only Mytho had chosen differently, he thinks, she might have been happier.

I chose this, she says to him. I chose this, she says to herself.

It is her mantra; it keeps her sane. I chose this. This was my choice. Because she need not have given up the final heart shard. Mytho, who loved everyone, would surely have granted her this small thing if she had asked him. It was not so much to ask for a piece of someone's heart.

But she chose this. Yes, it was certainly her choice. She chose to return to her true self, because Mytho deserved his whole heart and Rue deserved his love, and she is fine with all these things. Because she has Fakir, and he will stay by her side forever, and makes her strong when she is weak.

She did not choose to be born a duck. But that's a little thing, really. She chose to be herself. That's the important part.

IV. And I will do it without fear or doubt

Charon remembers the story. Sometimes he shakes his head when he sees Fakir with a duck, but he never questions it.

Others will talk about it. Students at the academy see them together, and say, How strange! Fakir is always hanging around that strange little duck! And they look at her, and they see how she is unlike any other duck ever to exist, and then they walk away. Because Drosselmeyer still has some power here. They see the duck with a human heart, and for a moment they think it terribly odd, and then they don't think it ever again.

How strange! the outsiders say. A woman named Riddle and a boy named Author and a duck named Duck. A girl with an uncommonly long tongue called Anteaterina. And even now, the people inside the town are part of a story, and they have never thought that their names were strange.

She didn't look back, at the end. She waved and she smiled and she ran off, and she faced it all without fear, without doubt.

He looked back, just once. She was already out of sight and he stepped back into Autor's house, and then, just once, he looked back. He doesn't know what he was looking for. Did he hope that she would come back? Did he wish that he could go with her?

He trembled with fear. He was full of doubts. He put his pen to the paper, and he was terrified of all the things that could go wrong. This was a power he could not fully control. It felt wrong, to write a story about her, to lead her about on puppet-strings. But the words flew out of him, an unstoppable torrent, and he cried. He cried, because he loved her so much and all he could do was hurt her, even when he tried to control the words, when he tried to alter fate.

She saved herself, in the end. Because he was still just the useless knight.

No, she tells him. She is unusually grim, her eyes serious and unflinching. You were never useless.

Fakir looks at her, startled. She glowers. Of course I know what you're thinking, she says. He flushes and looks at the words he has scribbled unthinkingly on the paper. Very deliberately, he sets his pen down, as though that act could sever the mental link between them.

She waddles forward, climbing into his lap. He wraps his arms around her, gentle and warm, and holds her close. Of course you weren't useless, she tells him. Her heart still soars when she thinks about it. I could only keep going because you made me feel strong.

No, Fakir tells her. He rubs her head, fingers running through her feathers. You are already strong. You were always strong. You don't need me for that.

She shrugs away from his touch, indignant. I will tell you a secret, she says, her quacks stern. He listens raptly as she continues. I did need you. I do need you. You will never be useless.

He scoffs. She continues anyway. The pendant glowed when it was near other pieces of the Prince's heart. Except sometimes it glowed for you. You remember, don't you, Fakir?

Fakir cocks his head to the side, furrows his brow. She thinks he must remember it-that was how he discovered her identity in the first place-but he never thought about it before.

You give me hope, she continues. That's not useless.

V. O happy dagger

He never did tell her how he found her in the Lake of Despair. And she never did ask how he had hurt his hand.

Afterwards, once the Prince had flown back into the story and Drosselmeyer's machine had been broken, Fakir gathered up all the pages he had written. Some of them had been sliced in half and some of them were still soaked with his blood, but he stacked them all together and hid them in a corner of his room. He never looked at them again, but didn't have the courage to destroy them.

He knows that she read every word. She pretends like she hasn't, but sometimes she brushes the tips of feathered wings against the back of his hand. There is an angry white scar where the knife skewered his hand. And she says, of all things, I'm sorry.

I should be the one apologizing, he says. His voice is choked now, and no more words will come.

But she understands anyway.

(There's a book in the library, so old that its cracked spine is illegible. It's been read a hundred times over, pages dog-eared and notes scribbled in the margins. Fakir has checked it out a dozen times. It is an English play, about two youths who defied their fates when they fell in love. It is not a love story, but a tragedy, and a glorious one.)

It's not the tragedy Drosselmeyer envisioned. But this ending has a bitter taste to it.

She calls it happy. He calls it happy too, sometimes, when he is talking with her. But there is happiness in accepting your fate, and they had none of that. This is the glorious ending. The (barely, just a little bit, almost imperceptibly) unhappy ending.

It would be foolish to ask for more from this ending. They had their glory-who needs happiness? But he is already a fool. So one day he just says it.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? he mumbles. She looks up and quacks. His face aflame, he continues, It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

She is confused. She tilts her head to the side and asks, What does that mean? Because she is still a duck, and sometimes these things are lost on her. So he takes a deep breath, and lets the words come tumbling out.

I love you.

There are a thousand moments Fakir would rewrite, if he could.

This is not one of them.