[June 11] [Princess Tutu] The Payment for the Muse

[haleysings.livejournal.com]

Title: The Payment for the Muse
Day/Theme: June 11: ye shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinsfolk, and friends
Series: Princess Tutu
Character/Pairing: Autor, Charon, Fakir, Duck and Johanna
Rating: G



“I’m sorry Autor, but he isn’t here.”

Autor raised his eyebrows and blinked. This was the time that Fakir normally spent writing, so it didn’t make sense for him to not be there. “Did he decide to work out by the lake today?”
“No,” Charon said simply, crossing his arms.
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t think he’d really want you to know.”
“Why not?”
“You should know him well enough by now to know he likes to be alone sometimes.”
“I don’t care,” Autor huffed, taking on the arrogant air that had always served him well. “He should socialize more. Then maybe he wouldn’t be so gloomy.”
“Autor…”
“Tell me where he is.”
“No, Autor.”
“Tell me!”
“No means no!” the man growled. He turned and grabbed hold of the door to shut it, but Autor jumped forward and pushed against it.
“This is important!” Autor insisted, putting his full weight against the door.
“Then come back later!”
“No! I need to see him as soon as possible!”
“All right! All right! I’ll tell you, but don’t blame me if he gets mad at you.”
Autor snorted, his mouth spreading into a smirk. “Hnph! I’m used to it. Now, where is he?”
Charon sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. (Fakir was right, he thought to himself, He is impossible to get rid of…) “He’s at the church.”
“The church?” Autor said incredulously. “Why would he be there? He’s less religious than I am.”
“The graveyard. He’s at the graveyard.”
“…Ah.” That would be why Charon thought he shouldn’t be bothered, then…of course… “Well, they’ve been dead for ten years,” Autor said without emotion, pushing his glasses up his nose. “He has to move on eventually. And this is too important to wait.”
“Autor…”
“Don’t worry, I can be sensitive,” Autor insisted, turning to walk away. “I just won’t talk to him about it.” Charon offered up a response, but he didn’t listen—his mind was made up. Quickening his pace, he set out towards the church.

Finding the church was easy. It was the tallest building in town, after all, and right in the middle of it as well. Not to mention there were several reasons for Autor to need to go to the church in the first place—a genealogist often needs to go in search of graves, after all. And then there was the fact that Drosselmeyer had chosen the tower at the top of the church to house the Story—or, that is, the machine that wrote the story in his stead. (Autor had still not forgiven Fakir for so carelessly destroying the machine. It had to be stopped, of course, but the mysteries that could be solved by studying that machine…he had quite a few sleepless nights trying to put the pieces back together, and he could never quite figure out how it worked.)

The clock was ringing the time when Autor reached the graveyard. He counted the strikes of the bell out of habit—three o’clock. Not really the sort of time Autor preferred for visiting graveyards—the morning was better. Early morning, when there was still a fog. He always thought that would be an appropriate setting for some dramatic scene between the villain and the hero in a story. The villain could step forward slowly as the fog pulled back like a curtain, and he could say--
“What are you doing here?”
Autor jumped back in surprise. Fakir was standing at the gate of the graveyard; a yellow duck perched in his hair as if it was a nest. (Autor would have laughed if he wasn’t so startled.) For a brief moment he thought he could maybe see an amused smile cross onto Fakir’s face, but he blinked and it was gone.
“Ah, Fakir! Good, you’re done then?”
“I suppose. You were looking for me?”
“Yes. I…I have a question to ask.”
“A question?” Fakir shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets and turning to walk down the path—Autor knew he wanted him to follow, so he did. “Go ahead, then.”
“Well…it’s just that…” Autor gestured with his hands, trying to find the right words to say. Their shoes clack on the stone streets like a ticking clock. “I’ve found myself in a…situation, and…I need…”
“Just say it,” Fakir said bluntly, an edge of irritation to his voice. (Duck let out a quack that sounded like a reprimand to Fakir, but he ignored it.)
“Teach me how to write!” Autor responded quickly, jumping into Fakir’s path.
“…I thought you gave up on that.”
“I did, but—“
“Autor, whatever relation you may or may not have to Drosselmeyer isn’t enough to allow you to spin stories the way he does—the way he did. Find another hobby.”
“My mother is a story spinner!”
Fakir frowned and raised an eyebrow. “She is? She never told me.”
“There was probably never a reason to, but she is.”
“Still, Autor, just because she can doesn’t mean you—“
Autor quickly pulled out a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and thrust it out. “I wrote a story as a child.”
“You…what?” Fakir took the paper from his hand and looked at it skeptically. Duck leaned forward and stretched out her neck to read the story. “…It’s no masterpiece.”
Before Autor could respond, a loud, angry-sounding set of quacks erupted from Duck’s beak and she began to wave her wings, sending a few yellow feathers fluttering into the air. Autor quickly stepped back—his eyes were already starting to water. He rubbed at them, grumbling to himself that he wished she would remember that he was allergic to birds.
“Humph!” Fakir responded. “I know my stories weren’t perfect, but they were better than THIS, anyway.”
“Qua-ACK! Quack qua qua quack quack quack!”
“I’m not being rude, just HONEST! Being able to scribble out a few sentences of nonsense doesn’t make you a Story-Spinner!”
The indigo-haired boy narrowed his eyes. “It wasn’t nonsense! It was the truth!”
“What do you mean, it’s the truth? That you wrote it?”
“No! Well…yes. What I mean is, what I wrote was true. She really did go outside of the story. And….and I didn’t even know there was a story back then.”

Fakir read the story again, his brows slowly drawing together. “So…you were able to write reality, then.”
“Exactly! And if I could do that…then that means I could learn how to make my stories reality. I have the power, just like you.”
“Quack-ack,” the duck said. Autor thought it was possibly “I told you,” but he still wasn’t the best at understanding her. Whatever she had said, Fakir once again chose to ignore her. He pushed the piece of paper back to Autor and began to walk again, stepping faster than he did before. “So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?!” Autor quickly trotted up next to Fakir, the afternoon sun glinting off of his glasses. “Don’t you understand? I’m a Story Spinner, just like Drosselmeyer!”
“Good for you. So go write a story and leave me alone.”
“That’s the problem, I…I can’t.” He winced as he said it.
“Why can’t you?”
“I…I don’t know. I just…can’t.”
“Have you tried standing in your study without eating or sleeping?” Fakir asked with an edge of sarcasm in his voice.
“Actually, I have done that before.”
“Hm, how about four days, then?”
“Fakir! Don’t be like that! Just…teach me what you do. How you write! You can do it and I can’t, so…so there…” He took a deep breath, and let out the next statement with a weary sigh. “There must be something I’m doing…wrong.”
“And how do I know you won’t do more wrong things as soon as you can write?!”
“What does THAT mean?”
Fakir clenched his hands into his fists, taking long, deliberate strides as he walked. “Those powers are DANGEROUS. It’s not some cheap parlor trip you can use to amuse yourself!”
“I was the one that told you that! And Mom never STOPS telling me it! I won’t abuse those powers, but I can’t do any good with them right now, either!”
“Give me one reason I should waste my time teaching you to write.”
“Maybe the fact that if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have any hands?” Autor snapped, reaching out to grab Fakir’s arm. “Why are you giving me so many problems about this? I taught you, didn’t I? Why can’t you do the same for me?!”
“Because I don’t trust you!” Fakir jerked his arm back and whirled around to face him, his eyes narrowed and his face pale with what Autor knew must be rage. “How do I know that you won’t go meddling with reality and turn into just another Drosselmeyer?!”
“What’s the matter with wanting to be Drosselmeyer?”
In an instant, Fakir’s hand was gripping his collar and tugging the taller boy forward. The sudden movement sent Duck tumbling off his head and forced her to glide to the ground, but Fakir hardly noticed her. For a moment he balled his free hand into a fist and jerked it backwards as if to hit Autor, but he decided against it and lowered the fist—but still kept just as tight of a grip on his collar. “And that,” Fakir hissed, “is exactly why I won’t teach you.”
He released Autor and shoved him away, sending him stumbling backwards. Before he could recover his balance, Fakir was already storming down the street, the yellow duck running after him as quickly as she could and squawking out a frustrated plea for him to stop.
“Shut up!” was Fakir’s only response—he didn’t even turn to look at her. The duck turned around in a huff and walked back over to Autor, who had been watching the entire scene in a stunned silence. He had never heard Fakir talk to her that way before.

“Quack,” the duck said simply when she stood in front of him. Sorry.
“What did I say?!”
“Qua quackquack quack Qua-quaquack.” First of all, he doesn’t like Drosselmeyer.
“I know he dislikes him, but…”
“Quaquaquackquack quack qua. Quu quaquack quack quack qua.” He’s just scared. You really should think before you say things, you know!
“Fakir? Scared?” Autor laughed—partially at the idea of Fakir being scared, and partially at the realization that he was having a heart-to-heart discussion with a very serious-looking duck. “That doesn’t sound like him at all.”
Duck ruffled her feathers and tugged on his pant leg with her bill.
“What? What do you want?”
“Qua.” Up.
“What? No. I’ll start sneezing.”
“Quaquack.” Just for a moment.
“No.” The duck looked up at him, widening her large blue eyes. “I said no!”

By the time Autor reached his house, his eyes were red, his sinuses were doing everything possible to make it difficult for him to breathe, and he could hardly say anything without having to pause to sneeze. He was, to put it bluntly, rather grumpy and fed up with Duck. “This bedder be—achoo!—ingpordant!” Autor said (as threateningly as he could with a runny nose). The duck flew out of his arms and quickly waddled in the direction of his study. Autor knew he had no choice but to follow her—she was as stubborn as his mother was when she wanted to be. When he reached the door she was already hopping up to his desk and taking a scroll into her bill.”
“Don’t touch that!” he snapped waving his hand to shoo her away. “That’s my family tree!”
I know! That’s my point! was the duck’s indignant response. She pulled the scroll a little forward until Fakir’s branch of the tree was visible, then hopped onto the paper and slapped her webbed foot down in-between two names.
“Fakir’s parents?”
“Did you say Fakir…?” asked a voice from the doorway. Autor turned towards his mother and nodded.
“…Autor, are you coming down with a cold? You look horrible.”
“Ugh!” Autor flopped into the chair in front of his desk and pointed an accusing finger at the wide-eyed, innocent looking duck on the desk. “It’s my bird allergies. She insisted I carry her here, even though she KNOWS I burst out into a sneezing fit when she gets too close…”
“Since when have you been allergic to birds?”
“For a while now. Since I was ten or so—is this really important?”
Johanna frowned, but shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. What were you talking about just now?”
“Duck’s trying to say something about Fakir’s parents. I’m not really sure what.”
“…Did something happen?”
Autor let out an exasperated sigh. “All I did was ask him to help me with writing”--Johanna’s frown deepened, but Autor ignored it—“and he got angry with me and started a fight.”
“Quack quack!!” Duck protested.
“I taught HIM what he needed to start writing, I took him to the Oak Tree, I fought against a—a-a-achoo!—a man with an axe to save his stupid hands, and how does he thank me? By threatening to punch me! Well, he can act like some—achoo!--badly-raised degenerate if he wants to (although I suppose being raised by a smith may not be the best way to learn manners), but—“
“Autor!” Johanna said.
“What?”
“You don’t remember?”
Autor sniffed. “Remember what?”
“The funeral.”
He shook his head, causing his mother to give him one of her looks. (This was her “everything-I-say-goes-in-one-ear-and-out-the-other” look.)
“Autor…Fakir’s parents are dead.”
“I know that,” he said with a wince. “They died about two years ago. I have a copy of the death records around here.”
“They didn’t have a cause of death on them?”
“No. That was blank. I don’t know why.”
“…Probably because they weren’t sure what to put down.”
Autor tilted his head and pressed his lips together.
“Autor…Do you remember when that large flock of crows started to attack the towns people?”
“Yes. I do. They tended to do that every now and then before the story ended, didn’t they…?”
“Yes. They did the same thing when I was a girl, too…well…they were attacking the villagers. Several people were badly wounded, and…a few people died.”
“…Were Fakir’s parents killed that way?”
“Yes…and no.” Johanna walked over to the desk, looking at the names written on the parchment. “There were…rumors about that boy, back then. That he would write stories and sometimes he came true.”
“He could write back then…?”
“Yes. He could. And…I don’t know exactly what he did, but…I think he might have been trying to stop the crows. There were rumors that one of his stories had been found in the house after the attack. About a young boy that would save the town from the crows…”
“He…he wrote a story and…?” Autor glanced up and looked over at Duck. She nodded her head to confirm the story. “…So…so that’s why he couldn’t write before, then…and that’s why he’s so strict with how he uses his powers.”
“…They’re dangerous. I’d rather they didn’t exist at all.”
“They’re…they’re not horrible, though. Fakir does good things with his stories.”
“But sometimes…it’s so hard to know what’s good and what’s not good to write.”
Autor frowned. Was she shaking?
“…There has to be a way. It’s…it’s too much of a waste to do nothing if I really do have the power. There’s too much I could do to make things better.”
“And what do you want to make better, Autor? Why do you want to write?”
”…I don’t know.”
“If you don’t even know, then Fakir was right to refuse to help you. And…and I won’t teach you a thing, either.”
Duck slowly walked back a few steps. Autor’s mother sounded as though she was ready to get into a fight. Autor adjusted his glasses and carefully studied the family tree in front of him. “…I know.”
The room was silent for a moment, and then Johanna turned around and walked out of the room. Autor’s only response was to put his head in his hands and sigh.