For SwollenFoot : "Rue's happy ending"

[musesanta]

Title: La Fin

A/N: I won’t deny that I think the only reason Mytho picked Rue is because Rue loved him. Not because he loved her.  

Anyways, this is a bit of an experimental piece. It might seem a little disjointed at times.

 

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Once upon a time, a princess fell in love with a prince from a fairytale. However, her father was the Raven, the prince’s sworn enemy. Believing none would love her, she poisoned the prince with her father’s blood, tying the prince to her.

 

Once upon a time, a princess was lost and heartbroken. No one could love her—even she could not love herself. Her prince had abandoned her and her father sank her in the darkness where she wandered, forlorn.

 

Alone, she danced and wept, her sorrow bare for the world to see. Alone, she waited for the darkness to swallow her.

 

Alone, that was, until her prince returned, saving her from the pits of despair. Betraying her father, she fought with the prince against him, destroying him once and for all.

 

Once upon a time—how do those stories all end? With happily ever-afters, with kisses and bright smiles and a grand wedding. So it was with the end of this story. The princess and the prince return to the storybook world, where the prince is no longer the Prince but the King. If all things went as they should, this would be their happy ending.

 

But this story was not written by their hand. The princess confessed, without hearing a reply.

 

At the end of her words, it was not love that awaited her.

-x-

Borne on strong swan wings, sitting in a carriage of white bone and bright light, Rue forgot that the Raven’s dark, thick blood was cursed.

-x-

“I am home,” Mytho announced to the sleeping kingdom. It was still twilight in this world, the gears frozen as the book waited for its main characters to return. Chink by chink, they started to move, dawn falling once more upon the stirring inhabitants.

 

Half-awake, secondary characters spill from their homes. In dresses and armour, in plain homespun and nightwear, they pour out of their huts and castles, flooding the streets as they walked to the couple.

 

Something had changed, the story knew. Just what, it wasn’t sure.

 

In this world, Mytho and the Raven had never been gone.

 

“The prince is here?”

 

“Where is the raven?”

 

A pause. All turn to stare at the girl beside him.

 

“Who is she?”

 

In this world, Rue never existed.

-x-

“Princess,” a villager greeted, a bright red apple in his hand. “Please, take one.” He bowed slightly as she approached, the smile never leaving his face as she accepted the proffered fruit.

 

The food here was the same. The sticky-sweet juices trailing her fingers as she bit the apple were the same, freezing onto her fingers in the bitter wind. Nearby she could hear a child crying, a girl yelling.

 

Even the voices here were the same. It was so easy to forget that she was the stranger here, that she was never born in this story but was instead a retelling of it. Too easy, at times, to think that she could forget her misdeeds and just start over.

 

“Princess” they called.

 

And “Princess” she responded.

-x-

The story accepted her easily enough, filling in the gap left by her father.

 

It took a raven to replace a raven.

-x-

“Shall we dance?” Mytho asked, his palm up as he bent his knees slightly. Sliding her hand into his, she moved with the tune, a happy escapade from a time long gone.

 

It was a silent hour they spend, wordless and breathless. In pointed toes and pirouettes they spoke to each other of their day, their legs bending and stretching as they jumped through the air. The notes flowed past them, as the music crescendos before freezing poignantly.

 

She stepped on a quarter note, a half note, two sixteenths. The beat remained steady, the melody quickening and her breaths came out as pants.

 

Sweaty, she gracefully extended a leg, opened her arms. Mytho looked at her and these quiet seconds expressed more than a conversation ever could.

-x-

This was not her world. She was sharply reminded of that at times, not at all at others. It was never obvious, the things that reminded her of this fact. Something as simple as a braid, a red ribbon, a pair of ballet shoes.

 

The twinkle in a young girl’s eyes as she reverently watched Rue walk.

 

(She did that too, behind bushes and across courtyards. Always worried, always kind.)

 

She caught the world in that reflection, black hair and sharp edges. A crystalline tear sliding down a yellow feather. The mewling of a cat.

 

And for a moment, Rue remembered that she used to live somewhere else.

-x-

(Her dances were a painful thing after, a chaotic

jumble

of

tumbles

and turns.)

-x-

Kraehe dreamed of dark things in the night, when no one was there to hold her hand and only the light of the stars was there to guide her. She dreamed of dark feathers and wings and the cawing of a crow.

 

Beware, beware, it screamed. For those who betrayed their kin suffered greatly.

-x-

The Raven’s blood flowed thick in her, thicker than it did in Mytho. It stirred sometimes, when Kraehe slept, whispering in her ear of treachery and punishment. She woke up, drenched in sweat, and with the memory of fear on her tongue.

-x-

Rue dreamed of blood, of the thick red blood she had drunk since childhood. It flowed through her veins, cutting and biting, and she felt more and more of herself disappearing with it each day.

 

Who was Kraehe? Who was Rue? Where did one end and the other begin? These questions plagued her by dawn, when the only reflection in the mirror was her own.

-x-

Rue saw the Raven as well, but in glimpses, in the shadows at the corner of her eye. He’d show her parents before snatching them away, laughing as he did.

 

Did you look for them? He’d ask.

 

No, no, no. She woke up in tears, knowing just who’s daughter she was.

-x-

(and her dance changed,

And

Changed,

Confused and lost

[who is she]

It screamed

)

-x-

The princess was the only one who could answer that question.              

-x-

There were good dreams occasionally. Sometimes the princess dreamed of Ahiru, of a duck and a princess and girl who had always called her name. Her bright red hair running just out of sight, her voice high and nervous. She was kind and she was smiling and everything Rue and Kraehe had ever wanted to be was there, at the tips of her outstretched fingers.

 

These dreams were worse than the others. As the light hit her face, the princess awakened to salty tears and bitter reality.

 

In this world, there was no Ahiru.

-x-

(These dances

                                                                                Left                            her

                                                                                Weeping                  at

                                                                                                The end)

-x-

Nor was there Princess Tutu here, the balls of light that formed her body now one with the sky. Not that it stopped Mytho from mentioning of her, the white swan on his lips and in his eyes. In the twirls and arches of his dance, he remembered dancing with another partner, a softer and gentler partner. Her movements mirrored his own, emphasising his nuances, and he half-moved in remembrance in front of her.

 

Hope was not the only thing Princess Tutu gave him. Kraehe watched him, her eyes spotting the differences between those solos and his duos with her. Hope was not the only thing the princess gave him, though he did not seem to realize that himself.

 

Still, he chose her. Not the fair Tutu or the clumsy Ahiru. Just the muddled girl who doesn’t know her name.

 

 That had to count for something.

-x-

Mytho always twisted and writhed when her father stirred in his heart. Eyes flashing, words biting, his tone and appearance changed from the prince to the raven throughout the night.

 

“I’m me,” he’d scream, the prince, the raven, the mixed up creature Kraehe had brought forth. His heart rebelled and broke and she’d watch him as the hours wore on.

 

Sometimes it was a close call, to find which of the two won the battle for his body. Sometimes it was obvious from the start.

 

On the mornings when the raven remained, she’d lock the door and keep his sharp smile to herself.

-x-

Fakir was a name that emerged less often. His grave was here, just out of the castle walls. A small thing for such a great knight, and Mytho sometimes went there to remember.

 

The dead knight or his new incarnation, she couldn’t be sure. She only knew of the wistful smile and the longing he looked at the sky with.

 

But once you’ve returned to the story, you couldn’t leave it again.

-x-

Rarely, they both suffered at the same time, the Raven’s blood screaming for escape from their bodies. Her father still whispered in her ears and his heart, always looking for a way out.

 

This was a curse not easily escaped. In the twilight hours, where none could witness them, the daughter and the prince gasped for air. Writhing and moaning, the pain came in waves, cascading as the night grew darker. Only in the light would this pain elevate. Only in the soft caresses of dawn.

 

There would be no dreams that night, just nightmares of sin and sharp beaks.

 

She’d curl up in bed, her hand clutched his, and wait for the storm to dissipate.

-x-

The music was slower today. Slower and softer, each note lingering in the air long after it was played. She moved accordingly, extending her arms and stilling her gestures. Mytho was in a thoughtful mood as well, balancing out her stiff dismay with his graceful composure.

 

Memories did that to them. Her heartbeat thrummed loud in her ears, her throat tightening.

 

It might have been better to be a crow, to be unloved. Sometimes loving hurt too much, this mash of missing and longing and waiting. She never knew just what that world meant to her until the door slammed shut.

 

And...she turns, Mythos arms pushing her into a careful twirl. This world was a place she could live in. She could wander the streets and remember Ahiru with each flash of red and gold, before taking her next step down the path.

 

She could.

 

It was just that sometimes it was hard loving someone who occasionally looked over your shoulder for a glimpse of white.

-x-

“The wedding has been set,” Mytho told her, her waist grasped in his hands as he lifted her. For a moment, she floated there, the sun cascading down her dark tresses.

 

“When?”

 

Mytho lowered her once more before letting go of her. Bowing, they finished the dance as the notes faded into the dark.

 

“Next month. My father wishes for it to be done before he crowns me. The people are eagerly awaiting the announcement.”

 

She stands there, still on her toes as the silence reigns. “I see.”

-x-

A final conversation:

 

“Why me?”

 

“Because you love me.”

 

“And you? Do you love me?”

 

A question she never asked before.

 

“In time, I will.”