"I am the feeling of fear. You won't leave me alone, will you? It's scary all alone - "

...Serafin hesitantly attempts to pat the ghost.

"It'll be okay," he says. "I think if we give you back to - the rest of you - you'll feel better."

"Yeah, you'll be OK once you go home. Which, uh, I can do, as long as, uh - "

C'mon, transformation.

....c'mon.

Maybe not.

"Now now now, you didn't think it would be that easy, did you? No, little Duck, this time you have to face your fears alone."

...oh.

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

"...um," he says. "Does - the shard need to - be somewhere that's not you. For the thing to happen."

"Mmmmmmmmaybe?"

"Do you think you can let go of her for a minute?" he asks the ghost. "It's okay if you don't want to, I know it's scary. We'll figure something out."

"I don't want to, it's scary. Where - where do you want me to go?"

He doesn't want to do this, he does not want to do this, he wants to do literally any thing other than this, but here he is, doing this.

He takes a deep breath and puts a comforting hand on the ghost's shoulder and says gently, "Do you think you could come over to me?"

The heart shard looks uncertain.

"... Serafin, you don't have to..."

"We have to get him home, and we can't get him home if he stays with you," he says reasonably. But his voice is shaking a little. Fear is the worst emotion, fear is worse than pain, worse than grief, worse than helpless desperate sobbing rage, but he's not about to stand by while it stays with Duck forever making her cry in bathrooms for hours and miss whole days of class, now is he? No. No he is not.

"So - so I can take him for a little while." He reaches for the ghost's hand, addresses it directly. "I'll take good care of you, I promise."

"...all right," says the heart shard, quietly, before hugging him and dissolving.

why did he do this this was the worst idea everything is terrible—

He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his face in his hands and tries not to cry. He told the fear shard he would take good care of it. Having an emotional breakdown immediately would probably not qualify as taking good care of it.

"It'll just be a second," she says, hugging him, and then she steps away.

And then a few seconds later -

"Hello again, Serafin."

He looks up at her and, somehow, manages a smile.

"Is - is your name really Princess Tutu? That's kind of silly, isn't it?" he says, wiping tears from his face with one hand.

"Perhaps," she laughs. "But it is the name I was given, and I wear it with pride. Would you like me to take the shard back now?"

He nods, shivering.

She draws the shard back out of him, and it reverts to a small glasslike object. "Thank you. That was brave of you."

He looks up at her, and smiles again, and shrugs slightly. "It - seemed like the thing to do."

She smiles back. And then hugs him, briefly, because that seems like the thing to do, too. "I'll get this back to Mytho now."

Hug.

"Thanks. I'll - probably skip all my classes and spend today in the most out-of-the-way practice room I can find, dancing until I can't take another step."

"All right then. Goodbye."

And away she dances.