The Name of This Gem

by Kelfin

This is fan fiction. Neither Princess Tutu nor any of its characters belongs to me.

The name of this gem is “love”.
If you like it so much, I shall give it to you.
Please... I have no use for it.
Though this gem is strong, it is easily scarred,
though it is beautiful, it is easily tarnished,
and if it is fought over, it may sometimes lead to death.
Please be very careful in handling it.

Edel, episode 11, La Sylphide

He wasn't sure what to call the feeling, and this time there was no one to ask.

The most important thing was that she wasn’t happy, and his own feelings oughtn’t to matter in comparison. He was made for sacrifice: why did he hesitate?

The day had come when he raised his voice to her. He apologized immediately, of course—it was wrong of him to lose control of his temper, regardless of whatever justification he might have. Still, he couldn’t stop thinking that this wasn’t like him—never, never had he felt something this ugly, at least not when he was himself. Anger was supposed to be a good thing, more indignation than it was anything else, a source of strength for the righteous to enable them to defeat what was evil. This, however, did not feel good or right. He ought to treat her with more compassion.

He didn’t touch her anymore. He’d kissed her a few times—he full of condescending affection, she full of fear and fussiness and abhorrence of germs and stickiness—but he didn’t particularly enjoy it, and she never seemed to seek it out. He was uncomfortably aware that other people’s marriages included physical affection and maybe even sex, but his early willingness to display his protective feelings had dissolved. She seemed to accept this with that icy rage that infused her.

Apparently, his love wasn’t enough to heal her.

Broken things filled his heart with a stronger feeling than any other creatures did. To protect the weak—that was his purpose. He’d chosen the weakest and the most broken thing of all, and she needed him, and he had taken a certain self-contented joy in serving her.

He hadn’t wanted to be a burden, had perversely flouted the protection of those who cared for him, because he was strong and he was brave and he didn’t need somebody to protect him because there were only two types of people and he was a protector. He was a grown-up again.

Now he found himself recalling that safe, protected feeling and wishing for it to return. “Regret,” he named the feeling, saying it aloud, matter-of-factly, while he stood on their bedroom’s balcony. Nevertheless, it might have been Loneliness, too.

Their bedroom was at the very top of the highest tower. How delighted he'd been to find it so—but then this whole world was made of him and for him, and such things always proved to be perfect.

Rue, conversely, wasn’t made of him and for him, and something about her didn’t work here, in his world. She was unhappy, he supposed, although he couldn’t fathom what cause she had to be so or what right she had to be so… and he felt that these resentful feelings of his were ungenerous and unmerciful. Indulging her irrationality had been an amusing game, a mild inconvenience that had allowed him to feel satisfied with his munificence. Now, he couldn’t stand it and had taken to tugging on his hair to make his headaches and his sorrow hurt less. They never went away.

Tutu, he knew, had been of him and for him. She came from his soul—even her name came from him, although Tutu was a silly name. He could think of better ones, ones more beautiful and more telling of her nature: Esperanza, perhaps, or Nadia. He had felt something like affection for her, the mysterious girl who gave to him without asking for anything in return. Even after all this time, he didn’t know who she really was. She might be somebody interesting and wonderful. She was nothing now, or dead maybe, but she might have fit here, might have—but this was a treacherous thought, one that violated the understanding he had with Rue.

He wondered if Rue knew how he felt and decided it was probable. Rue knew everything.

Sometimes he thought about human agency and about the nature of fate, but these were moot in the face of paradise and eternal life, and although he’d read all of the books on that shelf of the library, he received from Camus and Kierkegaard not so many answers as questions. After all, such things were troublesome because Rue didn’t like any of the philosophies he found interesting, although she said she liked philosophy in general. Anyway, Camus stirred up fear in him, and afterwards he found that hope was harder to find in his heart.

He spent a lot of time dancing, sometimes with Rue, but mostly alone. Scéne finale: andante, allegro, alla breve, moderato e maestoso, another moderato… Siegfried wanted to marry for love, so he ran away and only stopped when he found her… Swearing his love would render the spell powerless, but a mistake—a deception? a betrayal?—changed the spell so it could never be undone...

He wanted Rue to be happy, but she never was. Well, it wouldn’t be accurate to say never, as sometimes she did have bouts of euphoria and extreme gratitude, in which she’d cling to him and cry tears of joy and tell him that he was too good to her, which was—he reflected with unfamiliar cynicism—undoubtedly true. However, these were rare, and he could never tell just what he’d done to prompt them—they didn’t seem to have anything to do with how he acted or what he said.

That was her way, he had learned. At first, he’d been curious about her motives, had tried to understand which of his actions were causing her anger, her irritability, her anxiety… and then when he’d done to make them suddenly end, disintegrating unexpectedly in smiles and gestures of good will. He’d gradually come to the realization that there was nothing, nothing he could do to prevent her moods, and he began to fear her anger and to tread carefully whenever he was around her.

“Fear.” The word even tasted ugly, almost as ugly as anger tasted, and he as he spoke it, he knew that his anger came from his fear.

He tried to like her, but she seemed determined to make him hate her. She hated herself, she said. People who loved her were either lying or stupid, so he must be lying or stupid. She didn’t like herself at all, called herself worthless and ugly and powerless, and when he told her that it wasn’t true she contradicted him with such flawless logic that he eventually began to be persuaded. “You matter to me,” he told her, but with less and less conviction.

He understood that she had done evil, and even that she continued to do evil—he’d done it, too. He’d forgiven her a hundred thousand times without even thinking about it; forgiving came as naturally to him as breathing. He’d even forgiven himself, although that was more difficult, since one had to be responsible for one’s own actions, however unaccountable one held others for theirs. He carried the regret in him with the guilt.

He was uncomfortable thinking of her failings. He himself wasn’t perfect, no matter how hard he tried to be, but he believed she thought he was, or at least that he was supposed to be. “What do you think of me?” he’d ask her, and she’d chant rhapsodically about his beauty and his purity. He’d saved her, loved her when nobody else loved her, and so he must be good in every way. These adorable effusions were really untrue—after all, he’d done horrible things to her, too—but they melted him until he’d do anything she asked. He occasionally, involuntarily, wondered if she did this to manipulate him, but he couldn’t bring himself to think ill of her.

He was so easily manipulated. He wasn’t sure if he liked or disliked that about himself. It was very difficult, after all, not to love one’s own self.

Her opinions changed suddenly—on many days, she made it quite clear to him that she was the innocent victim of his cruel and willful disregard. He was confused by this; he couldn’t understand why she thought he was disregarding her. He thought of her constantly, worried all the time about her moods, weighed every action by its potential to offend her, never voiced his disagreement with the crazy things she said, sacrificed his pride, felt so sorry for her that he thought his heart would break whenever he looked at her.

“The world is dangerous,” she’d told him more than once, “and people want to hurt you. You trust too many people—you’re such an idiot; I don’t see how you manage to keep breathing. If you listened to me, you’d know whom you could trust, but you don’t listen.”

He supposed her beliefs made sense, considering the truth of her experiences—thinking of which also reduced him to nothing but entranced eyes and an overflowing heart—but making sense didn’t make them true, and it was unpleasant to listen to incessant criticisms of the people he knew loved him, to accusations that they were motivated by their own selfishness. He didn’t like having to direct his indignation (his anger?) against her... Before, he never would have imagined himself doing such a thing, but now he thought himself naïve.

She called him selfish, and he’d thought about it. He supposed he might be selfish, in a way, but not in the way she meant. She meant that he didn’t think about her enough.

She wanted all of his love, which was silly and bewildering because nobody who had as much love as he had could give it all to one person. Besides, love wasn’t something he cultivated and doled out as he chose to the people he liked best—it was a reaction that sprung up involuntarily whenever he met something lovable, and he took joy in it. He just couldn’t help loving flowers and raindrops and baby birds and Fakir and Tutu, and it seemed very unfair of Rue to expect that he stop. After all, it wasn’t as if she were any more deserving of love than a flower was.

Other people didn’t feel that way, it seemed, and maybe there was something wrong with him if he didn’t love one person more than he loved everyone else. Unquestionably, he felt a stronger pull toward things that were fragile or helpless… but if it were true that he loved broken things best, then he must Love Rue best, because she was the most fragile, helpless, broken thing in the world. Only he didn’t love her best; in fact, he loved her less and less every day, and this realization bothered him.

Perhaps he only loved fragile things if they didn’t hurt him when he offered them his love.

Rue hurt him a lot. Any time he wanted to dance instead of looking at her, any time he left her alone for a few minutes, any time she thought he must be thinking that she hadn’t done something well (as if he were constantly looking for things to criticize!), she struck out at him with her words or her hands. He felt sorry for her, and he felt sorry for himself, and he felt contempt for her, too.

Nevertheless, no matter what happened, he had sworn his devotion, and the only way to force lost feelings to return was to pretend that they existed until they did exist. Only… his reason whispered constantly that he was lying to himself, that his love was false and impure…

There were nights when she’d keep him up until dawn, sobbing and screaming and refusing to allow him near her, and then in the morning he’d wake to find her already dressed, cheerful as ever, pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He’d learned to be wary in the morning, at least until he saw whether she were going to hate him or not, and if he couldn’t see the hate rising from her, he’d make timid offerings of good will.

“Would it help if I—“

“I can’t believe you said those things to me!” Her voice was quick.

“I know, I’m sor—“

“How could you?!”

He didn’t know, really. There was a reason that he might have uneasily offered up, but she already knew it backwards and forwards—she always asked the same questions, and he always gave the same answers. Why did she ask the questions if she didn’t want to hear the answers? The pain they’d given each other had been given so long ago—or maybe not so long ago, considering the truth of the way time moved—but long enough ago that it didn’t matter to him anymore, so why should it matter to her?

He was slowly deciding that eternal youth was immensely unfair—although sometimes he found himself feeling relief that eventually she might die, and he’d be free. He was terrified of this thought, but it came unbidden.

Loving her more didn’t help. Running away from her didn’t help. He had tried both, but she reacted badly to everything he did, and there was nothing else to be done. Eventually he told himself that he would just do whatever he willed and to hell with her anger and her tears. Yet, to his shame, he found himself drawn back to her sad sighs, offering the meager comfort he could give, which she took without thanking him and which did not seem to be effective.

He felt ineffective. She made him feel ineffective.

Marriage truly was a loss of freedom, loving and being loved kept a man from achieving his potential, and sacrifice hurt a lot more than he’d thought it would. He’d embraced his fate, and he wasn’t happy, and as for glory… It was too late; the promise had been made. Life was a series of different longings, none of which might be fulfilled, and love was too delicate to remain alive in the face of residual fear and resentment.

When love died, so did hope. Something remained, but what was it called?

The inevitable time came when he could no longer believe Rue was anything other than deliberately cruel, and at last, he raised his voice to her.

When he gently apologized, she cried and refused to speak to him and (perhaps he only imagined it) smiled in triumph—but eventually she grew calm.

“Let’s start over,” she said.

“Okay.” His heart filled up with hope, but he said nothing. Caution was best.

“I mean it. We’ll forget everything that’s happened, and we’ll never bring it up again.”

She’d never said anything like that before.

“Okay,” he said.