A Truer Story

by TwinEnigma

Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu or Labyrinth or the characters therein. I do this for fun and because sleep is for the weak.

Warnings: Reality is subjective, gratuitous German (edit: now with translations), and would severely help if you were familiar with Princess Tutu. Fakir/Ahiru,unwitting and somewhat innocent if not one-sided Sara/Jareth.

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? – William Butler Yeats

A long time ago, there was a girl.

The image is old and yellowed, almost translucent in places. In it, a beautiful young ballerina poses. It is impossible to know her hair color, but her face is kind and warm and she bears the dignity of the Swan Lake costume well.

She liked to dream and tell stories.

Robert knows this picture well. It is his maternal grandmother, Anne, long ago, when she was just a teenaged girl. Nearby is a picture of his grandfather, who looks harsh and unforgiving no matter how much the photo has faded. Their wedding photo hangs ponderously between the two, his grandfather stiff and serious, face forever frowning, and his grandmother almost flowing in the image, always soft and smiling. In another, they dance together, a pas de deux.

It is so strange, he thinks, for they are a study in opposites and yet so very complimentary that the very idea of seeing them apart would be absurd.

She loved stories of romance and adventure most of all.

Sometimes, Robert wonders if the attraction to women in the performing arts runs in his blood and, seeing pictures of his grandparents, he thinks he might know where he gets it from.

It was the ballet, Swan Lake, that led his grandparents to meet.

It was A Midsummer Night's Dreaming that led him to his wife.

And sometimes he can almost convince himself that it is the theatre that is stealing his wife from him and not the stories.

She always kept the stories bottled up inside of her.

"Ente!" his grandfather calls out, towards the kitchen where his grandmother likes to hide. It is her real name and the only one that he has ever called her by – Anne is for the rest of the world, an appellation coined by immigration clerks. "Ente, it's Robert."

He is old, so old now. He is stooped, leaning heavily on his cane, grey-haired and hardly resembling the young, handsome danseur in the photos. His hands are spotted with age and shake terribly.

From the kitchen, his grandmother says something back in German and his grandfather grunts, turning away.

"She will be along, ja," he adds, moving to his favorite chair. "She is... ah, two left hands." He gestures as if he has dropped something.

There is a terrible silence. Robert finds his tongue suddenly dry and leaden, unwilling to form the words he wishes to speak. His grandfather's green eyes bore into him and he wonders if he knows why Robert has come.

"What brings you here, Robert?" his grandfather asks rather baldly. "What makes you seek out your Großeltern, boy?"

"Sarah, my daughter," Robert manages. "She wrote a story."

For a moment, his grandfather is terribly still, and then he scoffs. "Children do."

"But then it came true."

One day, she told a story out loud and the words came to life.

His grandfather is silent a moment and then shakes his head, waving a hand. "Ach... am unseligsten. It is the Drosselmeyer blood. Ja, that is what it is."

Robert knows that Dressel is not the name they had before they came to America – he remembers as much from school genealogy projects – but the name Drosselmeyer makes him think of The Nutcracker and ballet. His eyes drift to the photos again, up and away and back in time.

His grandparents almost flicker in the photo of their pas de deux, the white swan and the knight. They are the characters and they are not.

Always back to the stage, to the stories.

"How do I make it stop?" he asks.

But she did not understand that words have a life of their own and, once spoken, cannot be taken back. Try as she might, she could not return them.

His grandfather is silent a moment, staring at him intently, examining every inch of his face and hands.

"This is not so simple, what you ask," he says, and moves at last. This time, his grandfather does not shake or tremble as he stands. This time, he stands and walks to the old writing desk in the corner. He opens a drawer, pulls out paper, old and yellowing, and a feather quill. The feather is yellow and short, almost golden in the light, and he holds it pensively.

Robert stares at it and thinks he has seen it somewhere before, maybe in a dream.

"We are Schriftstellerinnen – the writers, story-spinners, ja? We shape the world with words," his grandfather explains. He looks at the feather, a fond smile on his face. "So we must always be careful of our words."

And the words came to haunt her.

"It is most dangerous for the beginner. They have no control, things go wrong. Others get hurt. If bad enough, some forget they ever had power," his grandfather says, closing his eyes for a moment and, for a heartbeat, Robert cannot help but think that there was an unsaid as you should know, a thought that sends an automatic shiver down his spine.

He knows somehow that he has forgotten something, something terrible, and yet the concept of it has scarcely been thought before it too disappears in fright.

"I should like to speak with her," his grandfather says, placing the quill down gently.

"Of course," Robert says.

He just wants it all to stop.

"You gave us life," they said. "You cannot take it back so easily."

Robert goes outside once more, back towards the car parked on side of the road. He looks at his wife, the haggard and pale expression on her face as she watches their daughter in the backseat warily, and then to Sarah, who is writing in her little red diary. He can feel it as reality itself tilts dangerously, trembling with each shaky word, and he pretends he does not see the ghostly reflections of the unicorn and goblins in the car window.

It must stop: something terrible will happen if it doesn't.

He opens the door, smiling and holding out his hand, and Sarah, his little princess, smiles back, taking his hand. She lets herself be led up the path, like a lamb to slaughter, and he tries to remember as he opens the door that this is to protect her from herself.

It still feels like betrayal.

Still, the girl tried, for were they not her words?

His grandfather holds out his hands in welcome. "Komm zu mir. Sit with Pop Pop, ja?"

Sarah nods, the ribbons in her hair bouncing. She still holds her diary, tiny and dangerous, tightly.

"Look at you, how you've grown!" he remarks, smiling, and turns his head away towards the kitchen. "Ente, Ente, komm mitt! Ist Sarah!"

Robert winces at the string of scolding German coming from the kitchen before his grandmother finally emerges. He is not prepared for the way she stops, pressing a wrinkled hand to her mouth and quietly gasps: "Mein Gott! Sie ist Krähe wie aus dem Gesicht geschnitten!"

Then she is moving, smiling gleefully as she swoops in to hug Sarah tightly. "Oh, my dear, you are so big now! You were just a little thing, not so long ago."

Sarah squirms and Robert can sense her discomfort keenly, but he can do nothing about it. These are things he cannot change.

"I have a present for you," his grandmother says, brightly. "Stay here with your Pop Pop and I'll get it."

And then she is practically skipping into the next room, her long, braided hair bobbing after her like a duck.

But the words were strong and clever and would not be caught.

"I hear you like stories, Sarah," his grandfather says.

Sarah nods, smiling shyly.

"What is your favorite?" he asks.

Sarah tells him and they are all fairy tales and adventures, and a ballet or two. But as she speaks, her eyes wander to the desk, and she sees one of the old, faded photos there. "Pop Pop, is that the Nutcracker?"

He turns, his green eyes softening. "Ja, and that is your great-grandmother as Clara and see, there I am, the Nutcracker."

"Oh, Pop Pop, is that really you?" Sarah asks, wide-eyed.

"We were very young, but not as young as you," he replies. "We danced many beautiful stories, ja. Only a few as the premier. That was a long time ago, before the War. Ah, that you could have seen it! They do not make things as they used to."

The concept of that long ago is far too big for Sarah, but she oohs and ahhs appreciatively as his grandfather describes some of the sets and costumes and Richard can feel the story itching up from under her skin.

"It's not fair!" the girl said as the words laughed at her.

"Here it is," his grandmother says, returning at last. In her hands is a white box and, inside, is a doll. Its hair is so fair that it is almost white. "He is –"

"Jareth!" Sarah exclaims happily, pulling the figure from the tissue paper. "He's just like I imagined!"

"Ist Siegfried, ja?" his grandfather asks.

His grandmother nods and receives a sigh and a nod of acknowledgment in return.

"He's beautiful," Sarah sighs, running a finger over the hair.

"Does he have a story?" his grandfather asks with a strained smile.

Sarah chews on her lip a little and shrugs.

Richard has seen the diary entries, the scribbled drawings – Jareth is a fairy tale prince who falls in love with a princess, but the story is not solid. It is tenuous and shaky and as changing as the rambling winds of a child's mind. In one, he is an owl and another he is a goblin, and in some he is just a boy.

"He's a prince," she says. "He was cursed by a witch and rules the goblins in the woods."

Reality ripples and Richard can see the doll's features grow clearer.

"All things have their price," the words said truthfully.

"Would you like me to tell you a story, Sarah?" his grandfather asks. "I used to write them, so long ago."

"Is there a prince?" she asks, innocently. "And terrible dangers?"

"Ja, there are these things," he says and he lifts up the quill, the yellow feather gleaming like gold. "Once upon a time..."

Robert listens as the tale unfolds. It is the tale of a man who wrote a story about a kingdom menaced by a monstrous raven and the story came to life. Trapped in the story, the prince of the land tries to fight it and nearly dies for it has become too powerful. Realizing that victory is impossible, the prince uses an enchanted sword to split his heart and cage the monster. Then the writer of the story dies, his work unfinished, the prince's princess unrescued. The characters are left without an ending and all who encounter them are caught up by the tale.

One day, the prince discovers a boy. He is the descendant of the original writer and he too writes stories. Some are silly, some are wonderful, and some come true. The boy agrees to help, but soon despairs when he cannot simply make it stop. A humble duck, long ago fallen in love with the kind boy, advises him not to lose hope and asks him to write her in the role of the white swan who cares for the prince. He does so and she is at once transformed. She restores the prince's heart, all save once piece, which she reveals was the swan, the symbol of the prince's hope. When she returns it, she immediately becomes a duck again, and the prince, now full of hope, defeats the monster raven, rescuing his princess.

"The prince and princess fly away in a golden chariot, pulled by swans," his grandfather finishes. "Their story ended at last and then the boy and his duck returned home. Some say the prince was so grateful that he turned the duck into a girl to be with her love. Some say the boy turned himself into a duck and that you may find them at the pond they so loved. Others say that the boy confessed his love for her and when he kissed her, she at once became a girl. They lived happily for a long time and if they are not dead, then they live still."

Robert cannot help it, but some part of him screams and nags that he knows this is a true story and that something is suddenly not right, but it has always been not right.

His grandfather looks him in the eye and he knows.

His grandmother is at once a plain yellow duck in a pond, a prima ballerina from Goldkronestadt, and a white swan. His grandfather is a boy with the gift to write and change the world, a danseur and a knight. All these are true, but not. They meld together and twist so thoroughly that he cannot discern where the original story had ended and whatever ending the boy-that-was-his-grandfather had devised began.

"There is a lesson here, Sarah," his grandfather says. "You must never let your stories control you. You give them life. They are yours to command. You understand, ja?"

Sarah stares at him, her green eyes wide as she instinctively curls the doll to her chest, and then she slowly nods.

"Das lässt sich hören," he says, smiling, and pats her on the head. "Come now, I will write you a story. A fairy tale just for you."

"Can Jareth be in it?" she asks, holding up the doll. "He's my prince."

His grandfather stills a moment, looking at her, and nods. "Ja, I suppose so."

"But I did not mean them!" the girl said.

Two weeks later, the book arrives at their house. It is small and thin, bound in red leather and embossed with gold. His grandfather has had it all typed and formatted beautifully for the small book. It is a play, complete with stage notes. Sarah loves it and it immediately becomes her most prized treasure, though she often complains that there is no ending.

Robert cannot bear to touch the thing.

He has a bad feeling about it.

"Didn't you, now?" the words asked, mockingly, and unleashed all the monsters she had shaped against her, killing her mother at once.

It is Sarah's birthday.

Sarah has begged her mother to perform the small play from her beloved book, but she needs to save her voice for her upcoming play and so Robert hires some of the local high school students to perform it.

Sarah sulks, but not for very long. As soon as she sees the teens and their little stage, she is awash with delight, unable to tear her eyes away.

Robert kisses his wife and they sit, content, as the curtain rises. A sudden bad feeling grips him and he looks to his daughter.

Sarah is speaking the lines, the book in her hand glowing white-hot, and suddenly the characters are real. Reality shudders and warps, goblins pouring out of the shadows. They cackle and giggle and scream.

No: it's Sarah who's screaming and he is screaming with her, the present mixing with something long-forgotten and dreaded from his memories.

The goblins reach for Sarah. Robert grabs her, pulls her close, and deep in the back of his mind, he instinctively knows what to do. He tells himself a story and, in that one horrible moment, he is a Drosselmeyer down to his very bones.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who brought stories to life. One day something went wrong and the story attacked her. But what no one knew was that her father also told stories that came true and when he heard her scream, he wrote a story that banished all her enemies back to the realm of imagination. He held her tight and all those that plagued her were sucked back into the paper, the people restored, and mischief mended.

The universe snaps back in to place and Robert does not.

He can now feel the cogs of the wheels of fate turning as he has not done since he was a child and he remembers what he has tried so hard to bury.

He will never forget again.

So frightened was she, that the girl at once forgot all about the power of her words and in doing so, banished them and all the monsters back to the darkness.

Sarah and her mother forget the incident, but Robert knows her mother does not quite forget, not really. She remembers the previous incidents, small things, the unsettling way things always shifted to suit Sarah's whims, and he knows that she has never been comfortable with that. Then, there is some part of her which remembers how Sarah bent the stage to her story, how he shoved things back into place and how, for just that moment, both he and Sarah were utterly beyond comprehension. It is that fear, deep in the most animal part of his wife, which drives her to avoid them and he watches in mournful resignation as the gap widens more with each year that passes and she seeks comfort in her wealthier, more handsome co-stars.

Eventually, his wife will leave him. This he can predict even without the cursed accuracy his blood affords him.

Sarah, poor thing, is oblivious, still a child of innocence and imagination, and she fawns after her mother, never once seeing the concealed terror.

Robert hasn't the heart to break the illusion.

Time passed and the girl grew into a lovely maiden. At her father's wedding to his new wife, the maiden was asked to tell a story and, reluctantly, she did so.

For years after the divorce, Robert and Sarah make do. She is petulant and sulky, blaming him for letting her mother leave, but she wants for nothing and the cogs of fate are blessedly silent.

And then he meets Irene. It is not long after that he sees the little red book, the gold lettering gleaming, in Sarah's hand.

The cogs creak and groan, lurching back to life.

It will not be long now.

She spoke and once more, the words began to stir in the darkness.

Robert can feel the story moving now, all the cogs slipping into place with frightening ease. He knows what is to come next in this play and, unbidden, the memory of Sarah complaining about the lack of an ending creeps to mind.

What if there was no end? Would their family be cursed like the boy prince in his grandfather's old stories: cursed to wander until another writer finishes the tale with the help of a simple duck?

And then he feels it, the spinning of a tiny cog, overlooked and unexpected. It immediately draws him and he writes.

They took the shape of the story's villain, an elf, tall and proud.

It is a barn owl, small and handsome. He is perched in a tree and he stares after Sarah longingly as she dances in the park. He does not know it, but he is already being drawn into the story.

"Would that I could dance with her," the owl sighs. "But I am an owl."

Robert watches, waiting for his cue.

"She seems so lonely," the owl says.

"Are you worried about her, little Owl?" he asks at last.

The owl shrieks in surprise, his eyes impossibly wide and strangely blue.

"Who shall save her from loneliness? Will you?" Robert continues, stepping from the shadows.

The owl beats his wings against the air. "Me?"

"Yes," Robert says and holds out his hand. In it he holds a piece of his daughter's heart, the piece that was torn away when her mother left. "If you would have her, then take this."

"I... accept!" the owl says.

The transformation is immediate. Light explodes from the fragment and bathes the owl in its radiance. When it fades, a bewildered blond boy, utterly human and naked save for the pendant in which a part of Sarah's heart now resides, sits shivering before him on the ground. The boy bears a peculiar resemblance to the princely doll that has been in his daughter's room for years now and he cannot help but wonder if the owl had been his daughter's creation all along.

"Do you know who you are?" Robert asks.

"I... am Owl," the boy says and suddenly squawks, staring first at his hair and then his hands and body in complete shock.

"Just a plain owl," Robert agrees. "But you will play the part of Jareth, the Goblin King that has fallen in love with her, until the play ends."

Owl shrieks in shock, and suddenly is an owl once more, beating his wings furiously against the air.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Robert sighs, watching the owl disappear into the sky. "But the show must go on."

"You called to us, shaped us. We would be your slaves," the words told her. "But all we ask is that you fear us, love us, and give us life."

He knows immediately when the story starts. The cogs of fate spin furiously to his daughter's subconscious will as she summons the goblins into being and calls for the Goblin King. And when they turn backwards, he closes his eyes.

His grandfather is there, old and young and neither.

"Do not fret, Robert," his grandfather says. "Sarah will find her own ending in time."

Then he feels the clock move forwards and he opens his eyes to see what sort of ending Sarah has found.

"You have no power over me," the maiden said and the words relented, tamed at last.

Once upon a time, there was a prince cursed to be a goblin. Once upon a time, there was a terrible and great goblin king. Once upon a time, there was an ordinary owl who became a boy who became a goblin king. He'd fallen in love with a princess, maybe a maiden, maybe just a lonely girl playing dress-up. Some say he stole her infant brother, some say she wished him away, and some say she struck a deal with him to take the child and changed her mind. To get the child back, she endured many trials – some were silly and some were not, but always the result was the same. When she got to the center of his labyrinth, she defeated him and won her brother back.

But the story did not end there.

What came next, no one knows.

Some say the curse was broken and the goblin king was at once transformed back into the handsome prince. Others say that he retreated to his kingdom, broken hearted, and never spoke of it again. And there are some who say the owl gave her back her heart, forever losing the ability to become human or goblin again, and that they are together, content to share their time.

And if they are not dead, then they live still.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Om nom nom nom delicious mind screw.

I was rewatching Princess Tutu and reading TVtropes WMG pages. This ended in me basically going Sarah is a reality warper who likes fairy tales - oh snap! DROSSLEMEYER BLOOD.

So basically, Anne/Ente is Duck/Ahiru (Ente is actually German for "duck") and Robert's Grandfather is Fakir (in case you missed it).

There are plenty of references back to Princess Tutu (the ballet, the multiple choice histories, reality warping, and the case of the Owl who may or may not be a prototype Jareth and seems to be playing a similar role to Duck etc).

I don't go much into it but you can infer that Fakir wrote himself and Duck out of their predicament at the end of the series and immigrated to the US before the first World War as a married couple.

I did enjoy doing this from the POV of someone who is not Sarah or Jareth or Toby etc - Poor Robert. I screw with him so hard in this one. Not to mention I have him having suppressed the memory of his own experience with reality warping. Ended badly was an understatement there.

What is interesting is how the multiple-choice past really works for Jareth and how the concept of his being a construct of Sarah's acting out a play written by a more mature storyteller (Fakir) would explain much about why his nature is contradictory. And then there's the transformation fuelled by a part of her heart - a literal symbol of him having a power over her (albiet unknowingly). You could argue that her rejection of that power over her means she took back that part of her heart.

IDK, this was a weird and beautiful story to write.

GRATUITUS GERMAN TRANSLATIONS:

Großeltern - grandparents

am unseligsten - most unfortunate

Schriftstellerinnen - authors

Komm zu mir - Come to me.

Ente, Ente, komm mitt! Ist Sarah! - Duck, Duck, come here! It's Sarah!

Mein Gott! Sie ist Krähe wie aus dem Gesicht geschnitten! - My god! She is the very image of Krahe! (Princess Krahe is one of the characters of Princess Tutu, the Raven Princess who falls in love with Mytho, the Prince.)

Ist Siegfried, ja? - It's Siegfried, yes? (Siegfried is Mytho, the prince's real name)

Das lässt sich hören. - That's good to hear.