For someone who had always took so much notice of what is going on in Mytho's heart, Fakir has never really examined his own. He'd had no need to, just content with his role in the broken story. Still serving as the knight and protecting his Prince who could no longer remember him. Just like Mytho he had no need of a heart. Or at least, so he had thought.

But then, that ridiculous duck like girl came along. She'd been so annoying, hanging around Mytho and he'd been deliberately cruel to scare her away. Such treatment had always worked before except on Rue who he tolerated as long as she caused no harm. Ahiru should have run away, he knew. Wasn't she a frightened, flighty little thing? But, despite that Fakir still kept seeing her carrot coloured hair bobbing around near the Prince. And worse... he didn't really see her as a threat. She could not be involved in this story, not someone who seemed as alien to pain as she appeared. And so then he wished her gone for another reason – he didn't want more innocents to be brought in, to be hurt as they inevitably would be if they clung onto the Prince with no heart.

Yet, the impossible seemed to be happening lately and Mytho was... feeling again. He'd panicked about that, accused Rue first who had laughed at him but held the same worried look in her red eyes as his, so he had known she couldn't be to blame. He'd retreated to the library, looking for answers. But studying had never been of much interest to him and he found his eyes drooping, the lack of sleep from watching Mytho in case something should happen in the night.

And then the dream... He'd never had such a dream before. And why – why the hell was Ahiru here? Looking more graceful than he would have thought possible as they danced the pas de deux together. Her slim body was so light, so light in his arms and it seemed as if she were mere air. Her eyes were like water. He'd never noticed that before, despite the amount of times he'd glared at them. And at the end of the dance, he had still held her close and touched her face hesitantly.

You were not what I thought you were, he'd wanted to say.

She'd turned red in her typical fashion, the blush clashing horribly with the freckles on her nose and then a noise erupted from her mouth, loud and insistent. Was that a... quack?

He awoke with a start, his fingers still clutching the page of the book he'd been perusing, The Prince and the Raven. Yes, it should have held all the answers, but unfinished as it was it only presented more questions. He sighed, was about to shut it but froze at the coloured engraving on the parchment. A girl, dressed in pure white, dancing along while the Prince looked on. Who? And then he saw the caption underneath; Princess Tutu.

Oh, of course. He had forgotten her, the tragic girl who had died. She reminded him suddenly, inexplicably of the Ahiru in his dream. He closed the book harshly, pushing it away. No, that was a ridiculous idea. Ahiru of the real world was nothing like Tutu, and nothing like the one he had danced with either.

Yet still, he couldn't help but remember the warmth he'd felt dancing with her. Snap out of it, He told himself firmly. She is of no concern to you. She is of no importance.

But when she appeared the next time in the corridor, flapping around frantically in her normal way, he had smiled a little to himself. Ahiru, dance the pas de deux with him? Inconceivable!

But maybe, he wasn't quite so harsh to her when they spoke next.