JAQUEMART
                              by
                         Alan Harnum

Utena and its characters belongs to Be-PaPas, Chiho Saito, 
Shogakukan, Shokaku Iinkai and TV Tokyo.

This copy of the story is from my centralized fanfiction archive
at http://www.thekeep.org/~harnums/fanfic.  I can be reached by
e-mail at harnums@thekeep.org

IV.  Katabasis

The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet
I fell for you like a child
Oh, but the fire was wild
I fell into a burning ring of fire
Went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
--Johnny Cash, "Ring of Fire"

* * *

The bells were impatient.  He could feel the inevitable imminence
of their ringing, and their desire to ring.  The purpose of bells
was to ring.  The purpose of a bell-ringer was to ring them.

     But only when it was time.
     
     Would he know when it was time?
     
     He had always known before, and had no reason to think that
it would be different in the future.

     When it was time, the bells would be funereal.
     
     But only when it was time.
     
     He would wait.  There was no pain in waiting.

* * *

His name was Salvadore, and he was a balding, red-cheeked, round-
bodied, slope-shouldered, mustachioed man in his fifties whose
eyes were as full of warmth and humanity as those of a dead fish.

     He trotted into Anthy's cell on Leo's heels like a fat dog
loyally following its master, put his little leather case down 
on the table, folded his hands across his pudgy stomach, and 
twiddled his thumbs while Leo approached Anthy.  He came to stand
right at the edge of the damp, gold-flaked circle surrounding her
chair.

     "I found out what happened to the man I had following your
apprentice," he said quietly, a hard note in his voice as he
looked coldly down at her.  "She sent him back to us.  What was
left of him.  With a red rose in his mouth."  He wiped away the
wisps of white hair clinging to his sweaty forehead; even with
his dark complexion, it was impossible not to notice his pallor.
"This is the last chance before I will have Salvadore begin his
work.  Will you repent of your sins?"

     Anthy stared neutrally back at him, mouth a flat line.  "I 
am done with penance and guilt," she answered quietly.  The 
clotted wound upon her cheek from the glass sliver throbbed
dully, painfully.

     For a moment, Leo's eyes were pained as he looked at her.
He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his
forehead again.  "Answer the questions, then," he said, folding
the handkerchief and putting it away.  "Then you shall at least
leave this life of flesh without pain."

     "Before I go to the infinite pain of Hell, as dictated by
your all-loving God?"  She smiled, and shook her head, almost
thought she saw him flinch.  "No, Leo.  I have already answered
them.  My brother looks over your shoulder; my familiar is with 
my 'apprentice'; my 'apprentice' is with my familiar."

     Salvadore was looking away from the confrontation, casting
his glance around the room as though seeking something, 
displaying no apparent interest in the outcome of the 
proceedings.  Leo glanced back at him, then turned back to Anthy.

     "So be it," he said.  He sounded vaguely regretful.  
"Flora--"

     "That's the first time you've called me that since we met
again, you know," Anthy said softly.  "And it's not even my name
any longer."

     He stared at her in silence, eyes dark, face pallid.  
Salvadore was still looking around the room, now frowning 
slightly.  

     "Señor Cano," he finally said in Spanish, "is there an 
electrical socket in this room?"

     Leo turned his head to talk to the chubby man.  "There is 
one behind the leg of that table in the corner."

     Salvadore walked over and knelt down to check.  "So there
is," he confirmed matter-of-factly.  "I should have thought to 
look there.  I am going to need an extension cord."  He quietly
left the room.

     "Do you like to watch him work, Leo?"
     
     Leo shook his head.  "No.  But I do not hate it, either."
He folded his hands, gently tracing his fingers over the ring he
wore.  "You are going to tell me where El Diablo is, and then I
am going to kill him."  He stated it as a given, with complete
belief, but he did not have the voice of a fanatic.

     Anthy realized, for the first time, that he really did 
believe he was doing right, and felt a terrible pity for him.  

     "If I told you where he was, would you swear to me to leave
my familiar and the one you call my apprentice out of this?  To
never move against them?  To never harm them?"  she asked.

     He was silent for a moment, then shook his head again.  "No.
I will not swear to an oath I cannot keep."

     "You are honest, then.  Better than others I have known."
     
     "'Others'?"  He looked thoughtful for a moment, then, 
softly, mirthlessly, laughed.  "Of course; you are very, very 
old, after all."  He steepled his fingers and stepped away from
her.  "They were fools and brutes.  So many died who did not have
to; they may have been guilty of many sins, but true witches...
there are not so many of them.  I do not concern myself with 
foolish hedonists dancing naked at the full moon; such nonsense, 
though sinful and heretical, is relatively harmless compared to 
true witchery."  He started, as though realizing he was saying 
far more than he wanted to, than frowned and turned away from 
her.

     "Leo?"
     
     He did not answer her entreaties, and only looked back once
Salvadore had returned with the extension cord.  Even then, he
said nothing, and merely watched as it began.

* * *

"No answer?" Nanami asked, not even looking back.

     "No."  Utena hung up the phone, yawned, then lay down on her
bed, put her hands behind head and stared up at the ceiling.  "I
suppose she might just not be answering the phone, but..."

     "I'm sure that's it," Nanami said, turning now from the 
frost-gilded picture window and the sight of the dropping snow to
look at Utena.  "You shouldn't worry yourself about it.  Himemiya 
didn't want to come along, did she?  So, why should you worry 
about her?"

     Utena's eyes traced a crack that forked in arboreal branches
across the ceiling plaster, and she remained silent.

     "It's past midnight." Nanami's voice was soft and sleepy. 
Utena heard the frame of the other woman's bed squeak softly as 
she sat down on it.  "I've had a long day, and you've had a
longer one.  We should get some sleep."

     Utena nodded, then rolled over onto her stomach and reached
for the phone on the table between the beds.  "I'm going to call 
Saionji."

     Nanami sighed, exasperated, and flopped back down onto the
bed with her arm covering her eyes.  "Fine.  Do whatever you 
want, but do it quickly, so I can turn off the lights and get
some sleep."

     Hand poised over the numeric pad of the phone, Utena paused.
"What?  I know, he's probably asleep, but I'm worried.  Besides,"
she added after a moment, "I want to know how Wakaba's doing.  I
should have called him earlier, but... well, it's been a busy 
day."  She glanced down at the piece of paper with Saionji's home
and cell-phone numbers on it.  "You think I'm just being 
paranoid, or something?  I mean, maybe she's asleep... Anthy can
sleep really solidly if she's tired, and the phone might not wake
her up."

     "Or maybe she's using her magical witch powers to screen her
calls," Nanami growled, turning over on the bed so that her back
was to Utena.  "I don't even care, Utena.  I'm exhausted.  I
don't even see how you're still awake."

     "I don't really see how either," Utena admitted.  "I didn't
even sleep on the flight over here."

     "Utena, just call him and let me go to sleep," Nanami 
murmured.  "Then you get into your pyjamas and go to sleep too.
We've got to be up early tomorrow."

     "Well, I don't, really," Utena said.  The phone had been off
the hook long enough to begin buzzing imploringly, and Utena 
pressed down the button to return it to the regular dial tone.
"I'm not going into Ohtori like the rest of you are."
     
     "So what are you going to do all day while we're scouting
Ohtori?"
     
     "I don't know."  Sit around the room and study the crack 
from every angle, to try and figure out for certain if it _was_
the same crack.  She knew it was the same hotel, but lots of 
rooms probably had cracks in the ceiling.  It wasn't surprising 
they'd ended up in the same place; pleasant and not too pricey, it
was right on the outskirts of Houou's suburbs.  The perfect spot
to serve as a base of operations for a counter-revolution.  Or to
stop when you and a friend spent a lot more time at the carnival 
in the neighbouring town than you expected, and it was very late,
and the car's engine was making funny noises, and he said he was
very tired, a few too many rides, a little too much to eat, 
didn't trust his driving skills, worried about falling asleep at
the wheel and, no, don't be silly, he could afford one night, he 
only worried about the appropriateness of it, the chairman and a
young female student...
     
     How she'd blushed at that.  Oh, God, why hadn't she been
able to see what he _was_?     
     
     "Utena?  Utena?"
     
     The phone was buzzing again.  Utena numbly pressed the 
button down once more, and dialed Saionji's home number.  No 
answer.  He was probably at the hospital with Wakaba.  She 
hesitated, then dialed the cell-phone number.  Two rings, and 
then the click of a machine answering.

     //"We're sorry, but the subscriber you're calling is 
currently unavail--"//

     She hung up.  He must have his cell-phone turned off.  
Unsurprising, if he was at the hospital.  Nothing more she could
do now.  She'd try Anthy again in the morning, and Saionji again 
if she didn't get her.

     "No luck?" Nanami asked sleepily.  She'd crawled under the
covers, still with her back to Utena, and was half-curled into a
sleepy ball with her blond hair falling upon the piled pillows in
waves.

     "Nope."  Utena got off the bed and walked to the dresser,
confirming that Chu-Chu was still--worryingly--asleep in the 
little box-bed she'd made for him out of a tissue container.  
"Hmm... you know, I didn't pack them."

     "Whm?" Nanami muttered, shifting slightly beneath the
covers.

     "My pyjamas.  I remember, I thought about packing them, but
then decided I needed room in my bag for other things."  She
chuckled derisively.  "I didn't exactly pack slowly and 
carefully."

     "Mmm," Nanami replied.
     
     "Oh well; guess I'll just sleep in the nude."
     
     "What?"  Nanami sprang up in bed, half-tossing the covers
off onto the floor.  "That's utterly indecent."

     Utena snickered.  "So you were faking being half-asleep,
were you?"  She began to unbutton her shirt; Nanami clamped one
hand over her eyes and pulled the covers back over herself with
the other.  "Oh, relax; I was going to keep my underwear on
anyway.  Honestly, it's not like I've got anything you haven't 
seen in the mirror your whole life."
     
     "I have an extra nightgown.  You can wear that."
     
     "I don't like nightgowns, and, besides, I don't think it
would fit me."

     "I have one that's loose on me that I brought."
     
     "Unsurprising, given that you brought three suitcases."
     
     "What's wrong with that?"
     
     "Nothing, in theory, but I'll remind you that I was the one
who carried your extra one in from the car.  What did you pack in
there, bowling balls?"
     
     "Hmph.  Look, are you going to wear it or not?"
     
     "I'll pass.  Thanks anyway."
     
     "You've got no modesty at all."  
     
     Utena dropped her shirt to the floor, followed it moments
later with her slacks, then went into the bathroom to wash up
before bed.  When she got back out, Nanami's position hadn't
changed.
     
     "Turn out the lights, Utena."
     
     After shutting off the overhead light, Utena got into bed
and turned off the bedside lamp.  Only ambient light from the
outside, where the snow still fell lightly beyond the window-
glass, prevented the room from falling into total darkness.

     "Good night, Nanami.  Pleasant dreams."
     
     "Good night, Utena.  Sleep well."
     
     For perhaps a minute, the room was silent.  Utena kept her
eyes open and watched the snow falling beyond the window.  It had
been falling when they arrived at Houou's one small airport, had
fallen as they'd driven in the rental car (Nanami had, of course,
insisted on driving) to the hotel, and was falling still.  If it 
kept up throughout the night, Houou would have a fresh layer of
snow to replace the almost-melted cover that had been on the 
ground when they arrived.

     Snow in Sapporo was lovely.  She and Anthy had spent quite a
few nights sitting on the couch together, with coffee or tea or
cocoa and marshmallows, watching the fat flakes drift down 
through the hazy night outside like angels falling to earth.

     *"Utena, do you ever imagine that every flake of snow that
falls is the soul of someone who died?"*

     *"Hmm.  No.  Can't say that I ever do."*
     
     *"All the dead, of all times, of all worlds, falling, 
falling, falling..."*

     *She reaches out and takes Anthy's hand.  "You say funny
things whenever we watch the snow falling."*

     *"I'm sorry."*
     
     *"Don't be.  It was... beautiful, in a way."*
     
     "Nanami?"
     
     Silence, the utter quietude of old night.
     
     She tried again, a little louder, surprised at her own 
tremulous voice.  "Nanami, are you still awake?"
     
     "...I am now."
     
     "Oh.  Sorry."
     
     Nanami's voice was muffled, exhausted and exasperated.
"What do you want, Utena?"

     "Nothing.  Nothing.  It's just that Anthy and I always used
to talk every night before we went to sleep.  Last night was the
first time I've ever gone to bed without doing that in over seven
years.  Tonight... I don't know."

     "Perhaps you just miss that other voice from the darkness."
     
     "Yes.  I think that's it."
     
     "It must be a comforting thing, that.  To know even in the 
night, if you cry out, someone else will answer."  Nanami's voice
was wistfully envious.

     Utena stared up at the ceiling.  The crack was still dimly
visible in the wash of light from outside, a darker darkness, a
shadow upon shadows.
     
     "This brings back some memories, doesn't it, Nanami?" she
asked after a moment.  "Of when you came to stay in the tower,
right before everything fell apart."

     The silence radiated back to her from Nanami was almost
palpable, chilly as though the winter were reaching through the
walls to cup the room in cold embrace.

     "Did I say something wrong?"
     
     Suddenly, startlingly, Nanami laughed, bitter as frost on
window-panes, and Utena shivered to hear the sound.  When that
mirthless, pain-laden laughter finally stopped, silence fell 
again like a hammer.  Utena lay in the darkness, saying and 
thinking nothing.
     
     "Utena, I _saw_ them."
     
     "W-what?"  Yet she knew what was coming, surely as a falling
woman knows the earth below shall rise to meet her.

     "Himemiya and her brother.  I know... what they did 
together.  I saw them."
     
     "You did, then?" Utena whispered quietly, less to Nanami
than to the night.  "You did, then.  I guess you weren't talking
about Touga after all.  I guess I always knew."

     "Well, I gave you enough hin-- 'talking about Touga after
all'?"

     "In your apartment."  Utena found it hard to draw breath
enough to speak.  The ceiling crack seemed an impossibly black
thing, like the first intrusions of some darker, higher plane
upon this one.  "'To your own sister.  How could you?  Bastard; 
your own sister.'  I... I always knew.  You were so angry the 
next morning, at breakfast, and... I put it all together 
afterwards, I think, and then forgot about it.  Didn't want to 
think about it.  Because I should have understood, and then, 
then... things might have been different."

     "I think things were too far gone by then," Nanami murmured.
She no longer sounded sleepy at all.  "Our paths were set."

     "No," Utena whispered in answer, thinking of highways 
running to eternity and ocean scents, the whisper of fan blades,
the heat of bodies and summer... "No, it wasn't quite too late.
If I'd... if I'd only not been so blind."

     She rolled over onto her side, looking towards the dim,
huddled shape of Nanami lying in her bed.  "Although I'm... kind
of glad.  To know that Touga didn't actually..."

     "Oh, he did," Nanami said shortly.  "But it's none of your
business what he did.  Don't be too shocked; it wasn't... wasn't
the kind of thing that Himemiya and her... but it's none of your
business."     
     
     For a moment, Utena couldn't even speak.  Finally, she 
managed, almost stuttering, to say:  "Then why are you telling
me about it?"
     
     Nanami shifted, turned to face Utena.  Her eyes gleamed
dimly with the residual light from outside, but they rest of her
was lost in shadow.  "I don't even know."
     
     "Was that what happened when Akio showed you the ends of the
world?"

     "...what?"
     
     "When I was telling you about the duel called Revolution,
Shiori said that Akio showed you all the ends of the world... did
whatever happened with Touga happen there?"
     
     "...I said it's none of your business."
     
     "Is that a yes or a no?"
     
     There was a gleam of tears in Nanami's eyes.  "Yes," she
whispered at last.  "That was where it happened... in the back of
the car... on the road to the ends of the world..."
     
     They stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then
Utena cleared her throat, and said, "Akio made her do all that,
you know.  It wasn't--"

     The sharp laugh that burst from Nanami's lips like a wounded
dove severed her mid-sentence.  "Oh, Utena, you don't really
believe that, do you?  Have you ever seen her, I mean, really 
_seen_ her?  With her glasses off, and her hair down, completely
nude... there was _light_, Utena, there was light everywhere.  I
couldn't even look directly at her.  She was..."  Nanami's voice
trailed off uncomfortably.  

     "What?"
     
     The bedsprings squeaked as Nanami moved again to look up at
the ceiling, further twisting the covers around herself into a
quasi-cocoon.  "She was..."  Beautiful, Utena thought vaguely, so 
beautiful that it almost sundered your mind just to look at her
when she was like that, you felt as though you were gazing at the
same time into the highest heaven and the deepest hell, as though
your heart were going to crack and fall into a million pieces, 
you wanted to fall down on your knees and worship her... "...like
a goddess.  She was so bright, Utena... you couldn't understand
unless you'd seen the kind of thing that I did."

     "I saw," Utena admitted, finally, in the darkness.  There 
were tears in her voice.  "I saw them too.  Right before the 
end..."

     "Why didn't you do anything, then?"
     
     Utena let out a single, choked sob that rose up from deep
within her like a swimmer surfacing, from the scar upon her body
from Anthy's sword and the wound upon her heart from Akio's
touch.

     "What was I supposed to do?" she whispered, and fell into
silence.  She dried what few tears had fallen with the edge of
her pillowcase, then rolled over onto her other side, facing 
away from Nanami.

     "You understand, then," Nanami said quietly, so gently there
was a kind of cruelty in it, as though she'd already done so much
hurt there was no need to do more.  "Do you think anyone, even 
Akio, could really make her do anything that she didn't want to?"

     Utena didn't answer.
     
     "Was that enough conversation to let you go to sleep, 
Utena?"

     "Yes," Utena replied.  "Quite enough."
     
     "Good night, then."
     
     "Good night."
     
     In her mind's eyes, Utena pictured herself rolling over 
again, reaching out across the gap between the beds with her 
hand, pictured Nanami doing the same.  The gap was not so large.
Large enough, though--large enough.  Neither of them moved.
     
     Tired though she was, it took her a long time to fall 
asleep, and, when she did, the dreams were very bad, albeit
unremembered.

* * *

Anthy had reconciled herself even before it began to the torments
she would undergo.  Even without her power, she believed she
could endure them, hold out long enough, die without giving Leo
any thread that he could follow to Utena.

     Enduring pain, however, was not the same as not feeling it.
     
     Salvadore was very good at what he did, and astonishingly
varied in his technique.  After so long a time as the Rose Bride, 
she had thought she knew every kind of pain there was, but he 
showed her a few she didn't.

     So many different kinds.  Pain that cut, pain that bruised,
pain that broke, pain that burned, pain that shocked...

     And, all the while, Leo stood calmly by, and asked the
questions, over and over again, promising each time that if she
answered, the pain would end... hard to hear his voice, though,
over the screaming (was that her?  it didn't sound like her), 
over the whirring of the tiny needle-sharp drill he used at 
several points (that was why he'd needed the extension cord, for 
that and for the bare-ended wires he plugged in and used to send
convulsive, heart-throttling bursts of electricity through her
body), but she held out, she had to hold out, had felt worse pain
than this before, she told herself that each time she cried 
out...

     But there had always been the power, then, a funnel for the
agonies both mental and physical that were inflicted upon her, 
that she inflicted upon herself.  Several times, in desperation,
she lost sight of where she was, and tried to use her power to
make the pain go away, but it only made it worse... if only 
Salvadore would be careless for just a moment, and break the 
circle of gold and holy water (she guessed it was holy water, it
could be any of a half-hundred other things... and even then, 
there might be other elements in the inadvertent binding circle 
Leo had somehow managed to create beyond cold-forged iron and a
circle of gold and holy water... had he hit upon it by chance, or
somehow had the information supplied by Akio?  How long had Akio
been planning this, whatever it was, and... red roses in the 
mouth, oh, why hadn't she seen, why hadn't she realized the 
moment he said it?) that kept her pinned and helpless.

     Suddenly, she realized that there was no new pain, that it
had stopped some time ago, and that she was alone again, but she
still hurt so much that she hadn't realized it.  She didn't even
recall them leaving.  They'd be back... this was only the 
beginning.

     If she hadn't known that it wouldn't work, she would have
forced her power against the binding until the pain killed her.
But she'd pass out before that happened.  Maybe... maybe that
would weaken her enough, though, Salvadore wouldn't realize how 
weak she was when he began again, and then--

     No.  This... this was what Akio intended.  He gave them into
Leo's hands, then had his Knight kill the man following Utena...
He wanted her dead and Utena alive, of _course_ he didn't want 
Leo coming to Ohtori, he expected her to die before she gave the 
information, for Utena's sake... or did he, she couldn't think, 
she couldn't begin to unravel his web, the pain was so bad...

     She tried to open her eyes, and managed a bare slit on one.
The other was swollen entirely shut (Salvadore used his hands as
well as more complex tools), and felt as though it were a 
carrying a baseball on the lid.  Her head was bowed against her 
chest, and raising it would have been an impossibility.  A lot of
her blood was on the concrete floor, and she saw a few of her 
teeth (he'd extracted them as expertly as a dentist, but without 
anaesthetic) scattered amidst the red puddles soaking the 
concrete.

     The effort of keeping her eye open became too much; she 
closed it again, and let her head sink down completely.  Leo's
face swam before her, young, old, becoming other faces: a 
Chinese prince with soft dark eyes in a rugged young face, a 
thin-lipped young Weimar officer with a kindly expression, too 
many others to number, and she could remember none of their 
names... but they had all called her the same thing at the end,
after their noble (but not noble enough) hearts had failed and
Akio raised his hand against them, leaving their minds in ruins
and their souls in ashes...

     *Witch, witch, accursed witch...*
     
     And, each time, he wouldn't _kill_ them, wouldn't give them
that mercy, and so she... no other choice but to take their agony
from them and bear it herself.

     It would never end, she realized suddenly, and a light went
out in her heart.  Even if she escaped this time, her past was 
too great a monster to be left behind.  Ever since she'd escaped
Akio, it had hung over her head like a million swords suspended 
by hairs; Leo was only the first to drop.
     
     Didn't she deserve this, in a way?
     
     Hadn't she brought all those fine young men and women low?
     
     No end to it.
     
     In her despair, she began to weep, though it hurt to do so.
She could not stop even as the door opened again, and, oh, could
it be time to begin again already?

     "Agua."
     
     Mathias.
     
     The cool edge of a metal cup brushed her lips, and she 
opened them automatically.  Far more water spilled on her than 
got down her throat, and it was a painful effort to swallow, 
but swallow she did, and it was sweeter than anything had any 
right to be when she was in such pain.

     "Please tell grandfather what he wants to know," he pleaded
in Spanish.  He sounded as though he had been crying.  "Then it
will stop."

     "Here again without his permission?" she asked quietly,
voice transformed into a half-incoherent mumble by her swollen
lips.

     "What language are you speaking?  It is not Japanese, I do
not think..."     
     
     What language was she speaking?  She didn't even know.  It
took conscious effort to remember her Spanish.  "It doesn't 
matter.  Thank you for the water."

     "If I could," he said, half-agonized, "I would set you free.
I hate this.  I hate what he does.  But... it says we must not 
suffer witches to live.  But it also says that whatever we do, 
even to the least among us, we do also to Christ.  And to honour
our parents, and he has been like a father to me... but my real
mother was a witch, like you... I do not know what to do..."

     He really was crying now.  Anthy felt, suddenly and 
painfully, the desire to reach out and stroke his hair.  But 
even if her wrists had not been bounden, she could not have 
done so.  At least half her fingers were broken, probably more.

     "I wish my mother had sacrificed me to the devil, as 
grandfather tells me she surely intended," he said fiercely.  
"Then my soul would have flown straight to Purgatory, and I would
not have to live like this.  Or better if I had never been born
at all--no, why do I say these sinful things?  Oh, Father, 
forgive me, Christ, forgive me, Lady Mary, forgive me--"

     "Mathias!" she said sharply, commandingly.  She forced her 
one good eye open a crack again, and tried to bring his young,
tear-stained face into focus.  "You can set me free," she said,
softening her voice.  "You can.  It is within you.  You know
that."

     "I shouldn't.  I can't.  I don't know how."  He put his head
into his hands and sank down to his knees, seemingly uncaring of
the blood upon the floor.  "Oh, Lord, oh, Mary, tell me what to
do.  Show me what is right," he moaned.  Then, a moment later.
"Please, Lord, won't you answer me?  Can't you hear me?  Speak to
me, like you spoke to Moses from the burning bush, to Paul on his
way to Damascus.  I don't know what to do."

     "I was thirsty," she said softly, "and you gave me drink...  
I was in prison, and you came to me."  She knew the words well
enough to use them to manipulate this boy... she did not like
doing it, but...

     "What you have done to the least of my brethren, you have
done also to me," he murmured.  He drew a deep breath and stood
up, wiping the tears away from his eyes.  "I do not have the 
keys to your manacles."

     "The circle," she murmured, hope lighting in her like a
small bright candle.  "If you break it, I can--"

     The door opened.  The candle went out.
     
     "Mathias," Leo said tonelessly, from where he stood in the 
doorway.  His cold black eyes raked over them both.  "Are you to 
become the one your namesake replaced, then?"

     Mathias turned, fear and remorse instantly replacing his
conviction.  "No, grandf--"

     Leo's hand snapped out and struck him a hard blow across the
face.  Mathias stumbled, and nearly fell.  "Get out of here," the
old man hissed.  "You are confined to your room.  Do _not_ leave
it.  Must I post a guard over you to make sure you obey me?"

     "Grandf--"
     
     "Get out!  We shall speak of this later."
     
     Mathias hurried from the cell, not even giving Anthy a 
backward glance.  Leo turned his ashen gaze upon her, and her
heart quailed at the hate in it.
     
     "You will _not_ lead even one more young, foolish man even a
step astray, bruja," he snarled.  "I swear that by God and Christ
and the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin and all the saints.  
Questioning be damned, I should kill you now for doing that to 
him."

     "He reminds me of you," Anthy mumbled.  "When you were
younger, of course."     
     
     "He reminds me of myself as well," Leo said coldly.  "And
that is why I will keep him out of your hands."

     "Will you kill me now, then?" she asked quietly.  "Will you
bring this to an end?"

     "We will come for you again in the morning," he said,
turning away from her and flicking off the single bulb that
illuminated the windowless room.  When he left and closed the 
door, the room was plunged into utter darkness.

     Anthy sat in that darkness, alone with her agony.  Somehow,
even with so much pain, even with the cramped immobile position
she was in, she eventually managed to fall into sleep.

* * *

From a chair near the room's one big window, Utena watched the
rental car carrying Nanami, Juri and Shiori pull away down the
highway, heading out of the suburbs and into the city proper--
aimed, like the leading point of a sword, at Ohtori and Akio.

     When they were out of sight, she got up and drew the 
curtains closed.  The winter sun, painfully bright, seemed to 
have no intention beyond stabbing into the room, casting away all
shadows, and forcing her to walk around with her eyes half-
closed.  With the curtains drawn, things in the room were much 
more bearable.

     She hadn't been able to reach Anthy or Saionji before
breakfast, and was now beginning to really worry.  The fact that
she couldn't _do_ anything tempered that fact a little; it wasn't
as though she could hop on the next plane back to Sapporo just to
check if Anthy wasn't answering the phone.

     Over breakfast, they'd come up with cover stories: Nanami 
was paying a surprise visit to her brother (conversation had 
elicited the grudging fact from her that this wasn't an 
implausible proposition, given past events), and Juri and Shiori
were in town to visit Shiori's mother (the look Shiori had given
Juri when she made the suggestion implied that this was an
extremely implausible proposition).  That they happened to be in 
town at the same time was mere coincidence, as was the fact that
they came back to Ohtori to "visit".

     Utena knew it wouldn't hold up long if Akio actually got 
wind of their presence on-campus, of course, but it was the best 
they had, and they had to scout Ohtori.  

     She checked on Chu-Chu (still asleep; something more to 
worry about that she could do nothing to change), then sat down
on the bed and looked up at the crack.

     "It isn't the same room," she said firmly.  The nagging
feeling that she'd forgotten something tugged at the corners of
her mind.  It had been bothering her since breakfast, like a word
right at the tip of her tongue.

     It couldn't be the same crack.  And even it was, so what?
Coincidences happened.  It meant nothing whether it was the same
crack or not.

     She lay down on her back and closed her eyes.  "Great," she
muttered.  "Five minutes, and I'm already bored."  She yawned.  
"Tired, too."

     Awful dreams last night; she'd woken up in bathed in cold 
sweat three, perhaps four times.  But terrible as they'd left her
feeling, she couldn't remember (cracks) anything (the crack in 
the ceiling opening) at (laughing darkness pouring down) all (an
emotionless mechanical voice shouting that "it" had escaped 
again).

     She gasped and opened her eyes, having drifted off for a 
few brief seconds before startling herself awake.  The room 
seemed very dark and cold.  Strangely agitated, she turned on 
the bedside lamp, then hurried over and half-opened one curtain 
in order to let some sun into the room.

     In the bathroom, she splashed cold water on her face,
combed an errant tangle out of her hair, inspected her teeth for
any stray bits of continental breakfast (God, room service was
expensive--fortunately, Nanami was paying), clipped her nails and
examined the tender bruise on her cheek.  She couldn't tell if it
was still swelling, or beginning to go down.

     By the time she got out, it had been almost fifteen minutes
since she'd said goodbye to the others.  If this kept up, she'd 
be crazy before lunchtime.
     
     "Screw it," she said finally, going to the door and slipping
on her shoes.  "Did we ever say 'Don't leave the hotel room, 
Utena?'  As long as I don't go walking through Ohtori's front
gates, things will be fine."  She looked back as she left the 
room.  "Hey, Chu-Chu, sleep well."

     She rode the elevator (the so familiar elevator; riding five
floors up with him, alone, had been almost unbearably tense, the
claustrophobia of it, the closeness...) down to the ground floor
(the plants in the lobby had been changed), then went into the
lounge, ordered tea, and seated herself in a pleasant little nook
semi-detached from the rest of the lounge, with a newspaper 
provided for guests.

     Winter was the off-season for tourists in Houou, and there 
were less than half-dozen other guests in the big lounge full of
leather-backed chairs and oak tables.  The nook she sat in was an
irregular pentagon, one side open to provide entrance and exit,
and every other wall dominated by high smoked-glass windows that
let in enough winter sunlight to read by without it being too 
bright.

     On the third page, a sidebar held a short article about the
death at Ohtori.  Little more information than what she'd read in
the paper in Sapporo.  Funny; she would have expected it to be 
bigger news here.  

     A boy was dead, and Tsuwabuki Mitsuru had killed him.  She 
remembered Mitsuru as a nice boy, good at heart, albeit a little
strange and excessive in his attempts to become Nanami's "big 
brother".  He'd asked her advice on how to become an adult, and--

     And then he'd come back soon after as one of Mikage's 
twisted Black Rose Duellists.  What terrible game was Akio 
playing now?

     She sipped the sweet green tea, and wondered vaguely what
would happen if she walked into Akio's office.  Would he be 
surprised?  Surprised enough that she could run him through
before he even said a word?  

     Could she do that, even?  Kill him in absolutely cold blood,
without giving him any chance to defend himself?  Was that the
kind of thing a prince did?

     Not any prince she'd ever read about.  Then again, wasn't
acting like a prince--believing that everyone around her was as
pure and noble at heart as she believed herself to be--why things
ended up the way they did?

     If she'd only been a little less trusting...
     
     Well, you learned from your mistakes.
     
     "No answer from the room?  How unfortunate."
     
     That voice... no.  It couldn't be.
     
     She looked over the top of the newspaper.  It was.
     
     The nook had an unobstructed line of sight to the front 
desk, which allowed her to see Kiryuu Touga leaning his elbows on
the counter of the reception desk to talk to the woman behind it.
Who, though old enough to be his mother, was visibly blushing.

     Utena stared.  He looked almost exactly the same as he had
in high school: long crimson hair, perfect face, tall and slender
and broad-shouldered... the light grey suit he was wearing was
even rather reminiscent of his student council uniform...

     She stared too long, obviously, because his head turned in 
her direction, and he saw her.  She raised the newspaper quickly
and ducked her head.

     Footsteps approached across the thick carpet of the lounge.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she cursed herself.  Stupid!

     His shadow reached over the top of the paper and touched her
face as he stood in the entrance to the nook.  He softly cleared
his throat to get her attention, as though it wasn't completely
obvious despite her attempts at concealment that he had it
already.

     Slowly, she lowered the newspaper.
     
     "Have we met somewhere before?" he asked.  He had a strange
expression on his face, one made up of a collection of slight
exaggerations: eyes that were a little too wide, a neutral smile
that was a little too neutral.

     She searched his expression for some hint of his true
intentions, but found nothing.  As far as she could tell, he was
utterly sincere.  Then again, she'd had plenty of experience of 
how good an actor he was.

     How to play this, now that her carelessness had forced her 
to?  Casual was best for now, she decided.  "Really, sempai, is 
that the best line you've been able to think up in seven years?"

     "Then we have met before," he murmured, more to himself than
to her, and sat down in the chair across from her.  "'Sempai'..."
He pronounced the honourific slowly, as though tasting it with 
his mouth like a fine wine.  "Then you went to Ohtori?"

     "I'm insulted."  She folded the newspaper on her lap and
looked at him flatly.  "You don't remember me at all?"

     He shook his head.  "Not from Ohtori."
     
     "Then from where?"
     
     Touga looked at her speculatively, then got up and leaned
over as though to whisper into her ear.  Crimson hair brushed her
cheek like fine silk, whispering over the bruise so lightly as to 
be almost pleasurable.

     Tenjou Utena, she told herself, you are playing a very
dangerous game here.  Touga had said nothing yet.  His breath was
warm against her face, and she could smell the mild, spicy scent
of his cologne: exotic, a heady mix of sandalwood and jasmine, 
but no hint of roses.  Somehow, that reassured her, as much as 
what he said when he finally spoke confused and almost frightened
her.

     "You are the prince of my dreams," he whispered.  He had his
eyes closed, seemed almost to be speaking from a dream himself.  
"Will you come with me?"

     "Now?" she replied, once she found her voice.  Questions
whirled through her head: was he sincere, as she wanted to
believe he'd been on that last bittersweet night before the fall
(or after; when had the fall, her fall, begun?), or was it merely
another mask?  How had he come here?  

     "Yes.  Now."  He straightened and took a step back, looking
down at her with...  Pleading?  Awe?  Affection?
     
     "All right," she answered slowly.  "I'll come with you.  
Where are we going to go?"

* * *

Darkness.  Absolute, all-encompassing, never ending darkness.  A
darkness from the end of the world.

     Then a voice spoke, and, lo, there was light.
     
     "If something ever troubles you, come talk to me about it."
     
     "No matter what, I'll help you."
     
     "Don't be afraid."
     
     "If you're in pain, if you cry out, even in your dreams, I
will hear you and know."

     "I will come."
     
     "I will save you."
     
     And she was rushing upwards, arms outstretched, fingers 
spread wide, tears streaming down her face, crying out a name
from her heart as the darkness pressed all around... 

     Anthy woke up with a start, greeted by agony of all her 
remembered wounds and the total darkness of her cell.  She would
have cried out with the pain, but her throat was too dry to let
her form words.

     She slumped forward in the chair, expecting the resistance
of the bonds on her wrists and ankles to keep her upright, and
fell out of it.

     Too surprised and weak to even realize she was free before
she hit the floor, she landed badly in her own dried blood, 
jamming the broken fingers on both hands against the concrete
floor, which sent shocking, awakening agony through her entire
body.

     She tried to scream, couldn't help herself, and managed to
croak thinly.  She was bruised and cut and pierced and broken,
almost insensate from pain and weakness, but she was free.  Free!

     She sucked in power as though taking a vast inhalation of
breath before diving deep underwater.  The pain faded.  Scabbed-
over lacerations became tiny scars, broken bones began to knit
again, new teeth poked hesitantly through her gums to replace the
ones she'd lost.  Then the agony hit again.  Not enough power.  
Nature abhorred what she was trying to do, and fought back.  She
gritted her teeth and reached out for Chu-Chu, bridging the 
distance between them instantly now that she was free of her 
bonds.  Strength and fear and love and worry flowed back through
their link as he woke; she gasped and her back arched 
involuntarily.  So much power...  She staggered to her feet, and
almost slipped and fell in a puddle of her own blood.  Still not
enough...

     No other choice.  
     
     Wind rose at her feet, fluttering the rags of her clothes.  
The darkened bulb overhead suddenly expended all its light in one
bright flare as it exploded, and the shards were powder before 
they hit the floor.  By that time, the room was no longer dark: 
light burned upon her brow like a crown of stars.

     Ahh, yes, oh, God, she'd forgotten how good this felt... the
power, the glory of it, the thrill of _bending_ reality to her
will, of being beyond all laws...

     Cracks rived the concrete floor and walls as though they 
were plate glass struck by a hammer.  Ceiling timbers shivered 
and warped as premature rot began to consume them.  With a 
creak and a groan, the chair and table splintered and collapsed.  
     
     Anthy threw back her head and cried out in agony and 
ecstasy.  Electricity arced in forking bolts from the wall 
socket and played across her body in a cloak of fire, raising
every hair and consuming what remained of her clothing.  

     She laughed, and waved her hand, as lightning leapt from 
between her lips and light crowned her head.  Electric blue flame
tightened across her naked flesh, then solidified into a plain 
but wearable blouse and skirt of sky-pale azure.

     Finished.
     
     She gasped suddenly, and hunched forward, coughing fiercely.
When she recovered and wiped her lips with the back of her hand,
it came away with small flecks of blood on it.  Finished, but
still weak.

     She had to get out of here.  Questions about how she'd 
gotten free (she could see cold-forged iron manacles lying open
and undamaged in the ruins of the chair) could wait for later.

     The door was unlocked; Leo obviously hadn't even considered
the possibility of her escaping.  How _had_ she escaped?  That
dream, that voice... it couldn't be...

     Later, she told herself.  Escape, first.
     
     Outside, she half-staggered down the narrow hallway, pausing
every few steps to lean against the wood-paneled walls and take
deep, gasping breaths.  There were two other doors similar to her
cell's in the short hallway, but she ignored them.  Behind her, 
the hallway opened up into a larger room shrouded in darkness--
all the lights were off, and she had only her crown of light to 
see by--and, close up ahead, she could see stairs rising.  She 
guessed she was in the basement of a large house.

     Upon reaching the stairs, she sank down to her knees and
pillowed her head against her forearms on the bottom step.  She 
no longer felt any pain from the wounds of her torture, but a
desperate weariness remained.

     Escape...  Anthy forced herself to rise and groped for the 
wall with both hands.  The light upon her brow flared and when 
she drew away, her palm-prints were burned into wood turned 
black with age where they had rested.  Even as she struggled up 
the stairs towards the door at the top, the dark corrosion of the
palm-prints began to spread outwards like inky pools.

     At the top, she put her ear to the door and listened.  
Hearing nothing, she reached for the knob, then stopped.  She was
so weak that even standing was an effort, but the risk...

     She steeled herself and sent her mind probing out through 
the door to whatever lay on the other side.  It gave her a 
blinding headache.  A small room... domestic-seeming... burnished 
metal... heat... a kitchen... one other exit... beyond that...

     pain
     
          sharp
          
     death
               
          fear
                    
     The shock of so much psychic agony almost made her fall back
down the stairs, as her mind retreated instinctively from the 
terrible residual pain lingering in the room beyond the kitchen.  
She caught herself against the wall, then stumbled down to crouch
awkwardly on the steps while she dry-heaved for a long, 
excruciating minute.

     I don't want to go out there, she thought desperately.  I
don't want to see whatever it was that left those traces.  She
knew with an almost visceral knowledge that whatever had happened
up there had some intimate connection to her escape.

     But what was she to do?  Wait here in the darkness like a
frightened child?  She had to find someplace safe to rest and 
recover her strength.  She had to get out of here.

     She opened the door, and was immediately hit with the 
coppery tang of blood and the stench of bowels loosed in death.
There was nothing of note in the small, clean, white kitchen, 
with its wall hung with shiny steel pots (so reminiscent of the
shiny steel of Salvadore's tools) and its large stove; the 
place of killing lay beyond, a large dining room dominated by a 
thick oaken table big enough to seat a dozen men.

     Which was, she guessed, how many lay dead in it.  It was
hard to tell for certain, they were in so many pieces.  Blood was
everywhere, splashed on the floor and walls, sprayed across the 
table and chairs.  The dead men predominantly had dark Latin
complexions, but she noted two (perhaps three; so many pieces...)
Asians.  Leo did not seem to be among them, but then again, there
didn't seem to be enough heads to account for all the torsos and 
arms and hands and legs...

     She covered her open, silently-screaming mouth with one 
trembling hand, and leaned heavily against the archway dividing
kitchen and dining room to prevent herself from falling over.  
Sunlight streaming in from the small kitchen window and the big
round-arch windows of the dining room indicated it was early
morning, but she might as well have stood within the dead of
night.

     (and when the prince came forth upon hearing his sister's
      cries)
      
     So much _blood_...
     
     (and saw what the people's hands had done)
     
     ...the smell of it...
     
     (what the people's hands had done)
     
      ...trying to detach herself to keep from screaming...
      
     (the sickness and weakness left his body, and the strength
      of hate filled him)
       
     ...swords rose and fell, hewing her body as though she were
a block of timber...

     (he drew his sword and fell upon them)
     
     ...the cabin door opened...
     
     (fell upon them as the harvester's scythe falls upon the 
      wheat)

     ...shouts and curses became cries of agony and fear...
     
     (as the woodman's axe falls upon the young saplings)
     
     ...silver steel whirled through the air...
     
     (as the stooping eagle falls upon the doves--so did the 
      prince fall upon them, until crimson gore poured over all
      the land, and no thing would grow there for a thousand 
      years)
      
     ...a click.
     
     (the wives and daughters and mothers and sisters cried out 
      in mourning for their husbands and fathers and sons and
      brothers, cried out, "Why, oh Prince, our Prince, hast thou
      done these things?")
      
      Anthy turned numbly towards the sound and raised her hand.
      
      (the prince said nothing, for he had no voice left from
       all his weeping.  He lifted his sister's body in his
       bloody arms and left the land forever... some say to seek
       the Ends of the World, and some say to...)
       
     Salvadore, who lay eviscerated but still living in one
corner, froze.  His fingers unclenched spasmodically at a gesture
from Anthy, and the long black pistol clattered to the bloody
floor.

     Anthy locked eyes with him and walked carefully across the
floor, avoiding limbs and bodies as though they were drifts of
snow, stepping over pools of blood as though they were puddles 
left by a rainshower.

     "Who did this?" she demanded, compelling him to answer.  

     "A prince," the dying man murmured in Spanish.  He smiled a
bloody smile.  "A prince in black..."

     "More," she said softly, and _pushed_.
     
     Salvadore spasmed, murmured, "...white cape..." in a barely
audible voice, and died.

     She turned away from him without another glance (the push
had only hastened his inevitable death), and thus ended up only
being shot grazingly in the left shoulder rather than full in 
the back.

     The gunshot's report echoed deafeningly in her ears as the
bullet's impact half-spun her round, nearly knocking her to the
floor.  Almost instinctively, without even getting a clear sight
of the firer, she threw a heavy burst of power in the direction
of the attack; there came a pained cry, abruptly cut off by the
sharp sound of a body impacting something solid.

     Clutching her right hand to her left shoulder (the wound was
not serious, but, on top of everything else, it was terribly
painful), she turned around.  

     And paled.
     
     "Oh, no," she whispered.  "No."  Feeling suddenly so weak as
to be barely able to walk, she hurried over to where Mathias lay
near a set of open double doors leading out into a wide hallway 
with a staircase leading up.  The gun he'd shot her with was 
still clutched tightly in his hand.  His head looked to have 
struck the door frame hard enough to give him a concussion; there
was hideous laceration on the left side of his head that was 
bleeding freely, and blood ran from his ears and nose as well. 

     Footsteps.  A gasp of shock, one that seemed to struggle to
draw the air necessary to make it.     
     
     Anthy turned her head and looked across the blood-soaked 
room to where Leo stood, framed in the opposite set of double
doors, a scabbarded sword held in one hand.  He looked from left 
to right, eyes wide, face pallid, as though he could not believe 
the sight.

     Then his gaze fixed upon her where she knelt over Mathias, 
and his eyes narrowed to ashen slits.  "Murderer," he snarled.  
"Damned murdering witch.  God have mercy on you..."  And he drew
the blade, tossed the scabbard aside.  "...because I will not."

* * *

"Nice."

     "Yes."
     
     "Must be very spacious."
     
     "It is."
     
     "Somehow, though, I didn't expect to find Kiryuu Touga 
driving a minivan."

     Touga shrugged, smiled what might have been a self-
deprecating smile, and unlocked the doors of the black minivan 
using a small remote control on his key ring.  "You obviously
remember me better than I remember you," he said with a bit of
melancholy.  "I'm not who I was at Ohtori."  He sounded almost
apologetic, even a little uncertain, as if he were trying to
affirm the fact for himself as well as explain it to her.

     Utena walked behind him to the passenger door, which he 
opened for her.  Ohtori Academy's rose crest was done in red on
the hood and sides of the van.  She stepped up to the passenger
seat and settled back comfortably against its plush upholstery.
Touga closed the door her, and walked around the front of the van
to the driver's side.  Utena watched him appraisingly through the
windshield.  He moved with the same easy grace and agility he'd 
had at Ohtori--the same grace and agility of the Knight of 
Pentacles?

     The same knight whom she'd thrown out a ten-story window, 
and yet remained convinced was still alive.  This is a dangerous
game you play, she told herself again.  You have no idea what he
knows, or where he's going to take you.  Or why he came to the 
hotel--how did he know to come here?

     The prince of his dreams...  Whatever did that mean?
     
     The latch of the driver's-side door clicked, switching the
tracks of her train of thought to other directions.  Touga hopped
up into the driver's seat, turned his key in the ignition, and 
put the van into gear.  They left the hotel's parking lot and
started down the highway towards Houou, following the same route
as Nanami and the others had started down a little over a half-
hour earlier.

     "Where are we going?" she asked.  It occurred to her that she
should have been more nervous than she actually was.  

     "To where I live now," he answered.  
     
     "Why?"
     
     "We can talk there."
     
     "And we couldn't talk at the hotel because..."
     
     He sighed.  "It wouldn't have felt right.  And I have some
things I need to show you."     
     
     Touga drove in silence for a few minutes.  Utena watched the
snow-speckled scenery pass; in the distance, she could see the
shining ocean, capped by wave-foam whiter than the snow.

     "This all must be very strange for you," Touga said 
suddenly.  "Please, believe me when I say it's just as strange 
for me.  Probably more so."  She saw his hands tighten 
momentarily on the wheel.  "I don't even remember what your name
is.  But you went to Ohtori?  I don't remember that either."

     "Tenjou Utena."  She named herself quietly, watching his 
face carefully for a reaction.  A flicker indicative of a
suppressed look of surprise, maybe?  A clouding of his blue eyes?

     "Tenjou Utena."  He seemed to mull her name in his mouth as
he spoke it.  "I... if I had even one memory carved within me, 
that would be enough.  I know it would.  But I don't.  I don't
remember you from Ohtori at all."

     Utena shifted uncomfortably against the confines of the
seatbelt.  "You said I was the prince of your dreams.  What did
you mean?"

     "I can explain more easily at home," he said after a moment.
"Please; trust me for now."

     "All right," she replied slowly.  "I'll trust you.  For 
now."

     "Thank you," he said, glancing away from the road for a 
moment to smile warmly at her.  She almost blushed.

     Don't be a fool, she thought.  Remember who he seemed to be
when you first met him?  And what he turned out to be?  Even 
after that one sweet night in the Duelling Arena, with the 
aurora overhead like successive veils of light, he'd challenged
her again.

     And he'd sent that Rose Signet to Nanami, the one currently
sitting in the depths of her purse wrapped in three layers of
tissue.  
     
     "It's such a funny coincidence, meeting up like this," she
began cautiously.  "Why were you at that hotel today?"

     "I got a call from my little sister yesterday," he said.
They were entering into Houou's main city now, and he turned off
at the next exit from the highway.  "Do you remember her?  
Nanami."

     "Yes, I remember her."
     
     "You've read about what happened at Ohtori recently?  The 
boy who killed another in the duel?"

     Utena nodded slowly.
     
     "Well, he was a friend of hers.  Tsuwabuki Mitsuru; this
information doesn't get spread around, you realize.  I only know
it because I'm the Assistant Director of Off-Campus Operations 
for Ohtori."  He paused.  "That's why I have this vehicle, by the
way.  It belongs to Ohtori Academy.  Part of my duties involve
coordinating tours for students interested in coming to Ohtori. 
I drive them around in this."  A vague smile graced his face.  
"It's not exactly a dashing vehicle, I'll admit, but it's
functional."

     "Comfortable, too."
     
     "And the sound system is wonderful.  Turn on the radio, if
you'd like to hear it."

     Utena did so.  A melancholy woodwind melody filled the 
interior of the minivan, underlaid by brooding pizzicato strings.
Soon enough, a mezzo voice entered:

     o/` Wenn dein Mütterlein
     o/` Tritt zur Tür herein
     o/` Mit der Kerze Schimmer,
     o/` Ist es mir, als immer
     o/` Kämst du mit herein,
     o/` Huschtest hinterdrein
     o/` Als wie sonst ins Zimmer.
     
     "Eww.  Mahler."  Utena wrinkled her nose distastefully and
turned it off.

     "Mahler tried to put the world into what he composed," Touga
said quietly.  "Unfortunately, so much of the world is ugly.  I 
much prefer Dvorak or Sibelius."

     "I agree.  And you still haven't told me why you were at the
hotel today."

     They were in Houou's small but busy downtown now, driving
past office buildings and stores.  Touga turned into the 
underground parking garage of a tall condominium building, and 
they left the bright day behind for artificial lights that
glared down from the dark concrete ceiling.

     "I know Nanami well enough to know that she'd likely come
to Houou without telling me.  She likes to pay me surprise
visits, and this incident with Mitsuru would give her an excuse
to do that."  He pulled into a larger-than-usual space marked 
with a RESERVED sign and a number; the concrete wall was to one 
side, and a graceful red motorcycle was to the other, looking 
rather lost in occupying a parking space meant for another
minivan.  "Not that she wouldn't want to see Mitsuru anyway, 
but..."

     "Nanami had something of a big brother complex," Utena
blurted, before she could stop herself.

     Touga nodded uncomfortably as he turned the ignition off.
"It's true."

     Not any more, Utena thought dully; whatever memories had
been brought back for Nanami, they seemed to make it unlikely
that she'd be hanging off Touga's arm any time soon.

     "Anyway," Touga said, as they exited the minivan, "Nanami
only stays at two different hotels when she comes to Houou, if 
she doesn't stay with me.  I checked the first one, and she
wasn't registered there, so I went to the second, and spotted you
when I was asking for her at the desk."

     "Oh.  So it was all just a weird coincidence."
     
     "I suppose."  Touga indicated the motorcycle with his hand
as they passed it, heading for the elevators.  "That's my solo
transport when the weather's warmer."

     "Hmm.  Looks big enough for two."
     
     "It is.  I have a sidecar for it in storage, although I
haven't used it in... years now.  Ever since I lost touch with
Kyouichi.  Do you remember him?  Saionji Kyouichi."

     "Yes, I remember him.  What happened?"
     
     "We drifted apart," Touga answered, but he looked unhappy,
and Utena felt quite certain he wasn't telling the whole truth.
No need to press on this topic, however.

     They waited at the elevators in silence for the car to
descend, then entered.  Touga inserted a card into a slot in the
elevator's panel and pressed the button for the top floor.  Utena
leaned back with her hands clutching the bar on the back wall, 
and stared at all the reflections of the two of them in the 
mirrored walls.  "So, you don't remember me from Ohtori at all?"

     "No," Touga said.  He had his back to her, facing the doors 
of the elevator, so she couldn't see his expression in the 
mirrors.  "Not from Ohtori."

     "But... from dreams?"
     
     "Yes," he replied.  "From my dreams.  It will make more
sense--as much as it can ever make sense, I suppose--once we get
to my penthouse."

     "You have a penthouse?  Must be expensive."
     
     "After our father died and Nanami moved to Tokyo for 
university, I sold our old house," Touga said.  "It was too big
just for me.  I wouldn't want for money even if I didn't work for
Ohtori."

     "Sorry to hear about your father," Utena said automatically.
     
     Touga shrugged.  "Our mother died when I was fourteen.  
Father started going on a lot more business trips after that, and
was never around much.  He had a heart attack while drinking in a
geisha bar in Kyoto with some of his business friends."

     "Oh."  Utena went uncomfortably silent until they reached 
the top floor.  The elevator dinged, the door opened, and they
stepped off right into Touga's penthouse itself.  It was well-lit 
and spacious, filled with a tasteful, equally-divided mix of 
Western and traditional Japanese furniture and art.  There were
very few real walls, and the big central area was divided into
rough sections--living room, dining room, study, bedroom--by a
succession of artfully-painted folding screens.  All the outer
walls were little more than large windows, with thick curtains
drawn over them in some cases to guide the placement of natural
light throughout the penthouse.

     "Nice place," Utena said, trying and failing to take in
everything at once.  Touga obviously didn't want for money at
all.

     Touga nodded vaguely and hung his jacket on a free-standing 
rack by the door.  He held out his hands to take her jacket, then
hung it beside his.  "Please; sit down.  Thank you for coming.  
For trusting me.  I know how strange this must be."

     "I'm used to strange," Utena said, kneeling and slipping off
her shoes.  As she straightened up again, she heard a plaintive
meow, and a fat chocolate tabby with black stripes came trotting
out from behind one folding screen to rub up against Touga's 
legs.

     "Yes, Barako, I'm home."  Touga knelt and rubbed the cat's 
head affectionately.  

     "Is that the cat Himemiya gave you?" Utena asked.
     
     "Himemiya?"  Touga looked confused for a minute, then
nodded.  "Oh, yes, Himemiya.  She went out with Kyouichi for a
while, didn't she?  I suppose she did give Barako to me.  I don't
know why I didn't remember that."

     I do, Utena thought.  He was either sincere, or an 
incredibly good actor.  She found herself wanting to believe the
first, but there was so much more evidence for the latter...

     He led her into the "living room", past a folding screen
decorated with an expansive depiction of the sea and a seaside
town, and seated her in a comfortable, slope-backed chair made of
light, flexible wood.  Barako followed them, hopping onto an
ottoman placed near a chair identical to the one Utena sat in 
before curling into a furry ball and apparently falling asleep.

     "Would you like something to drink?" Touga asked.
     
     "What do you have?"
     
     "Anything you want, probably.  A soft drink?  A cocktail?"
     
     "Can you make a margarita?" Utena asked, smiling.
     
     "Give me a few minutes."  He walked off towards the kitchen,
one of the few rooms actually closed off by interior walls.
     
     She hadn't had a margarita in over a year.  The last time 
would have been her twentieth birthday, when Anthy took her out 
to a restaurant they really couldn't afford.  It had been a 
wonderful birthday, but they'd had to eat even more frugally 
than usual for two weeks afterward because of it.

     Touga returned a few minutes later with a perfectly-made
margarita in a salt-rimmed glass, a brandy for himself, and a 
large manilla folder.  He handed Utena her drink, sat down across
from her with the folder in his lap, and sipped his brandy.

     Utena tasted the margarita appreciatively.  "Mmm.  Good."
     
     "Part of my job means I host a lot of gatherings here," 
Touga said, smiling slightly.  "I've become something of a
bartender."  He reached down and idly stroked his cat's head, 
then handed her the folder.  "Anyway... take a look in there."

     Utena put her drink down on a coaster resting on a small
table beside her chair and opened the folder.  And stared at the
top paper of the small stack within.

     "I never even considered myself much of an artist," Touga
said softly.  "But... when I took a pencil in one hand, and 
thought of my dreams... I mean really thought about them, hard,
picturing them in my mind..."

     "This is... me..." Utena murmured, shuffling through the
dozen or so sketches with increasing confusion and wonder.  
"But... no, it isn't.  I don't look like this."

     "Yes, you do," Touga said urgently.  "Well, other than the
hair, and... other obvious differences."

     The first sketch was a facial portrait done in charcoal
pencil, carefully shaded and precisely drawn.  "Like looking into
a mirror, almost," Utena said, more to herself than to Touga.  
The lips were a little thinner, the face perhaps a little 
stronger, more overtly masculine (although still quite 
androgynous)... the hair was in a short page-boy cut, but it was
her face, subtly changed.

     The next sketch, a full-body one, made it clear that the 
one depicted was male: stripped to the waist, barefoot, clad only
in black trousers, the young man with her face wielded a heavy
broadsword against a horde of enemies suggested rather than 
openly depicted by shading at the edges of the picture.  In the 
next, he wore ornate dark armour and rode upon a caparisoned 
white horse, with a heavy lance in one hand.  Utena stared as 
though struck by deja vu, then looked at the next one: the prince
with her face relaxed beneath a tree with bowing branches in a 
sylvan glade, his fingers plucking delicately at the strings of a
harp.  

     "W... what are these?" Utena asked, shuffling further 
through them.  The prince faced a terrible dragon in one; in 
another, he stood with his head tilted back, staring up at the
one lit window of an otherwise dark tower.

     "Drawings from my dreams," Touga answered softly.  "So, my
prince... what do you think it means?"  He took a deep draught of
brandy and settled back into his chair.  "What I think... I think
all I've done, what I've tried to do... has been so that I could
meet you.  So I could meet you again."  He smiled like a man who
emerges from a dark cave, and sees again the sun last seen so 
long ago that he did not know if the memory of it was true.  "It
all makes so much more sense now."

     Utena blinked slowly, then closed the folder and laid it
aside.  "'What you've tried to do?'"

* * *

Anthy wasn't afraid at all.  As Leo stalked towards her, she 
locked eyes with him and reached out to freeze him in place.

     When the power parted around him like waves breaking upon a
jut of rock... then she began to be afraid.  He would kill her 
if he could, and she was weak, and her power could not touch him.

     He advanced slowly, murder in his eyes.  She tried to grab 
and pull his sword away, but she could not touch that either.
Her head throbbed with pain, and green light seemed to strobe
before her eyes.  A chair lifted and flung by a wave of her hand
rebounded a foot from him and smashed to flinders against the 
wall, as though some invisible shield surrounded him.

     "Don't you see, witch?"  He smiled triumphantly, and pointed
at her with his sword (a gleaming Spanish-style rapier, almost a
twin of the one he'd used so many decades before).  "I am 
protected from your infernal might."

     He was wearing something, probably under his clothes, 
something enchanted to protect him from witchcraft.  She knew it
could be done, but whatever he had would have to be incredibly 
strong to turn aside even her power.  Perhaps if she'd been
stronger, she could have overcome it, but weak as she was now...

     Leo was almost upon her now.  Anthy sucked in a breath, and
gave out one last, agonizingly painful push of power.  With a
rattle of rings, the heavy dark curtains drew themselves over the
room's large windows.  As the overhead lights were off, the act
plunged the room into almost total darkness.

     "You think that will stop me?" Leo snarled, a vague shadow 
in the darkness with a thin silvery gleam of residual light upon 
his blade.  "I'll hunt you to the ends of the world!  I swear by 
God and Christ--"

     "And the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin and all the saints,"
Anthy said.  "But what's more important to you, Leo?  Killing me,
or saving the boy?"  She steeled herself, and drew a deep breath.  
"Why don't we find out?"

     The curtains exploded into flames, so swiftly and powerfully
that the windows behind them burst outwards in sprays of glinting
glass.  The room was suddenly full of blazing light: red and 
yellow danced luridly across mutilated bodies and pools of blood.
Leo instinctively threw up a hand to shield his eyes as Anthy
turned and ran for where she assumed the front door to be,
stepping over Mathias's limp body as she did.

     She heard pounding footsteps behind her; turning back, she 
slashed her hand through the air.  A line of fire leapt up from
the floorboards as though rising from a chasm deep within the
belly of the earth, bisecting the hall with her on one side and
him on the other; Leo barely stopped himself from running 
straight into it.

     "Are you mad?" Anthy screamed at him from the other side,
shaking with exhaustion and fear.  "Save the boy!  What have you
become?  You can hunt me down later, but he'll _die_ if you don't
get him out of here and to a hospital!"

     "I have time to kill you and save him!" Leo snapped, eyes
glittering with reflected flames.  He made as though to leap
through the thin curtain of fire; Anthy, almost weeping with the
effort, tripled its apparent width.  Behind Leo, the dining room 
was rapidly becoming a sea of flames.

     "You don't," she said, almost pleading.  "Save him.  And you
can't run through these flames; whatever you have--"

     "I have holiness to protect me!  Men have walked through 
fire for God before!"  But he did not move, and threw a glance
back over his shoulder towards Mathias.
     
     "--whatever you wear that protects you from my power, it
won't protect you from these.  I've only started them.  Save the
boy."  And she turned away from him and hurried to the front 
door.  Behind her, she could hear Leo cursing her, in Japanese,
in English, in Spanish, calling her every vile name he could
apparently think of in every language he knew: witch, murderer,
whore, slut, devil, temptress, betrayer, and many more.  She 
ignored him, shoved open the shadowy door at the end of the
hallway, and was hit by a blast of bone-chilling winter air 
almost crippling to adjust to after the heat of the flames.

     She stumbled down cold wooden steps and collapsed to the
frost-hardened earth at the bottom.  Gritting her teeth, she 
forced herself to rise again, and look back.  It was a very 
large house in a western architectural style, and it was 
currently going up in flames.  The door she'd exited through
seemed to be a side door.

     The house was built atop a hill, and there didn't seem to be
any neighbours.  She must have been brought to an isolated rural
area.  Beneath her bare feet, snow sucked eagerly at her body
heat; she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.  Glass
from broken windows glinted on the white like scattered jewels.

     She had to get out of here--get to somewhere safe, and her
apartment certainly wasn't safe, Leo knew where that was, and 
he'd be after her as soon as he'd made sure Mathias was safe.

     If they got out alive.
     
     Anthy looked back.  Flames were licking from the windows of
many rooms, now.  It wouldn't take more than a little push to 
make them burn more eagerly: brighter, hotter, larger, fiercer,
stronger...

     From inside the house, she heard the creak and groan of wood
about to collapse.  It sounded like the scream of some vast
animal in agony.

     No more than a little push...
     
     "No."  She hugged herself tightly, teeth chattering, and 
turned away from that road.  Drawing on what little power she had 
left to protect herself from the numbing cold, she ran over the
snow to the front of the house.  As she'd suspected, there were
several vehicles--a big dark van and two cars--parked in a small
lot before the wide stairs leading to the double doors of the 
front entrance.

     She chose a small, beat-up, blue Toyota.  It was unlocked;
thank God (or Fate or Chance or whatever else, she didn't really
care at this point) for small graces.  When she stumbled inside
and weakly closed the door, she almost wept for joy.  The keys
were on the dashboard.

     After turning the ignition on, she immediately put the heat 
as high as she could, then pulled out onto the rough road leading
down the hill, presumably towards a highway.  Behind her, the
flames of the burning house rose higher.
     
* * *

Touga looked at her in silence for a moment, then drained the 
last of his brandy before speaking.  "When you were at Ohtori,
did you ever meet the deputy chairman?"

     "Ohtori Akio?"  Utena stared at her hands.  "I met him a few
times."

     "Did you ever think that he might not be..."  Touga seemed 
to search for the words for a moment.  "Might not be what he
appeared?"

     "A few times," Utena answered softly. 

     "What I'm about to say is probably going to strike you as
very strange."  Touga sighed, and looked away from her.  "But
you've seen those drawings.  Those are strange as well..."

     "Go on," Utena prompted gently.
     
     "Ohtori Akio is a murderer," Touga said slowly, waiting to
see her response.  Utena thought about faking shock and surprise,
but finally decided against it.  Touga continued:  "I don't have
proof that he's ever directly killed anyone, but there's people
who would be alive today if not for him.  Akino Hasuichi, the boy
Tsuwabuki Mitsuru killed, is one of them.  Kaoru Kozue--you might
remember her or her brother, Miki--is another.  I think he may
have killed Ohtori Kanae, the woman he was engaged to, probably 
by poisoning her."  He paused, and looked at her ruefully.  "I 
know this sounds crazy, but..."

     "No.  Continue."
     
     Touga took a deep breath and folded his hands in his lap.  
"I think Ohtori Akio is planning something terrible, and has been
for some time, although I cannot say what.  I leaked the 
information about the boy being killed in the duel to newspapers
outside of Houou.  Otherwise, it never would have been news at 
all.  Akio doesn't just control Ohtori, he controls the city:
I've got evidence showing bribes to judges, to the chief of 
police, to the editor of the newspaper... he runs this city like
his own little kingdom."

     "Why?"
     
     Touga gestured helplessly with his hands.  "I don't know,"
he muttered.  "I've had to be so cautious... I don't think he has
any hint of what I know, what I've done... there's a secret club
at Ohtori, called the Duellist's Society... it's headed by the
Student Council President, advised by Kaoru Miki--"

     "What?  Miki-kun?"  _That_ was what she'd forgotten: she'd
never asked Nanami if she knew where Miki was.

     "Kaoru Miki got his Master's last year," Touga explained.  
"You may remember he was taking university-level courses, even 
when he was only in the seventh grade.  He came back to Ohtori as
a teacher and guidance counsellor this year.  I know he's 
connected to the Duellist's Society, but I don't know if he knows
what they and Ohtori Akio are really up to..."

     "Miki wouldn't do that kind of thing," Utena said hotly,
balefully staring Touga in the eye.  "He's obviously just being
used by Akio."

     Touga blinked, slowly.  "You sound as though..."
     
     Utena replied quickly, flustered: "I mean, if Ohtori Akio
is up to what you say he is.  I don't know if he is.  But Miki
wouldn't be involved in that kind of... what _do_ you think Akio
is involved in?  And this Duellist's Society?"

     "I keep on hearing the word 'revolution'," Touga said
quietly.  "I think Ohtori, Houou... they're just practice.  Akio
seeing how easy it is to control an entire city.  The students 
who have gone to Ohtori in the past have gone on to become 
wealthy businessmen, important political leaders... powerful
people."  He looked up at the ceiling.  "I think Akio may be 
planning to overthrow Japan's government.  Not now, maybe not 
even in ten years.  But in fifteen, twenty... when the students
who were in the Duellist's Society are out in the world, as 
businessmen and politicians and academics... or maybe it's 
already begun, maybe..."
     
     Utena wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.  It was 
completely wrong, of course, but, given the surface information,
it had a certain twisted logic to it.  Akio and Touga must have
spent a long time making it up (and had a lot of fun doing it, 
too) if Touga _was_ acting.

     But if he wasn't... if he was already opposing Akio, with
what little information he had...

     "What about these dreams?" she asked.
     
     "They were what started me on this road," Touga explained.
"I don't remember you from Ohtori--more on that later--but you
remember me.  I was... a playboy."  He pronounced the last word
with a mix of faint wistfulness and profound distaste.  "I broke
quite a few hearts in my time.  Lost more than one friend because
of it, too."  He paused.  "I wasn't a very good person back then.

     "One night, soon after I graduated from college and went to
work for Ohtori, I dreamt that I was fighting a battle with
someone I knew to be a prince--the prince who looked like you.  
It was supposed to be to the death, but, after the prince had
disarmed me and put the point of his sword to my throat, he did
not kill me.  Instead, he smiled down at me, and said:

     "'You are a worthy foe, but have lived too long in the
darkness.  If you will only seek the eternal, miraculous light
that I have found, then you shall shine as bright as a star, and
become a prince as I have.'"

     But I couldn't become a prince, Utena thought with dull 
pain.  That was why everything fell apart at the end, because I
wasn't a prince.  But she said nothing.
     
     "The prince sheathed his sword and helped me to my feet; he
gave me back my sword, and pointed it towards the sky, and I saw
the face of Ohtori Akio, monstrously huge, looking down upon the
earth like a second moon.  His smile was most terrible thing
I'd ever seen."

     Touga stopped talking and looked at her, as if awaiting a
response.

     "That's really strange," she said weakly.
     
     He nodded, and looked disappointed.  "Do you have any...
strange memories about Ohtori?"

     "Not really," Utena lied.  "I went there for less than two 
years.  Played a lot of sports, did pretty mediocre in my 
classes, then transferred away to another school."

     "Oh.  Why are you back in Houou, then?"
     
     Utena's mind froze up.  They'd never come up with a story to
explain her presence here.  "Visiting friends," she blurted.

     Touga nodded.  "After I had that dream, I started looking 
into Ohtori Akio... let me show you something."  He got up and
went into the study area; the folding screens hid him from
Utena's sight, but she could hear drawers opening and papers
being shuffled.

     What to do, she wondered.  If he wasn't lying, and _if_ he
really didn't remember anything, restoring his memories would
give them another ally against Akio, one with great connections
at Ohtori and much more knowledge than any of them could hope to
have about what Akio was currently up to.

     But if this was just another act, if he was in league with
Akio again... well, then he already had to know why she was
really here.  Even if he wasn't the Knight.  So there was nothing
to lose by trying to restore his memories.  If he was genuine,
they'd have a powerful sword on their side; if he was acting, 
then he'd probably pretend to "remember", but she was fairly
certain she'd be able to tell if he was faking or not. 

     Fairly certain.
     
     "Just a minute," Touga called; drawers were still opening,
papers were still shuffling.  "I'm having a little trouble 
finding it."

     A third possibility occurred to her: everyone had changed 
once they had their full memories restored.  Could Touga change
for the worse if he was given back his memories?  Shiori (and
Nanami, although that was getting much better) had become 
hostile to her after they got their memories back.

     But he'd said he loved her, on that beautiful, painful night
atop the Duelling Arena...  Or had that just been another lie?
She heard him returning, and fiercely shoved the thoughts away.  
     
     "Take a look at this."  He handed her a ragged photograph, 
faded with age.  "I found it in the archives."
     
     "The Dungeon?  Miki-kun told me about that once.  Isn't it
full of spiders the size of your hand, and nothing's filed
properly, and..."

     Touga chuckled.  "It's not that bad.  Look at the photo."
     
     The photo, torn slightly on the upper right side, colour 
leeched from it by the passage of years, showed three people.  
Utena recognized two: Akio and Mikage Souji.  Between them was an 
attractive, stylish woman in her twenties with short dark hair.  

     "It's old," Utena murmured.  Mikage was dressed differently,
and wore tinted glasses.  "How old?"

     "Look at the back," Touga said.
     
     She turned it over.  Written on the back in fading ink was:
     
     Himemiya Akio
     Chida Tokiko
     Nemuro Chirikazu
     
     "Nemuro?" she murmured questioningly.  Tokiko... he'd
called her that when they fought.  And the date, written under
the names... "This is over thirty years old."

     "Yes.  And he hasn't aged a day."
     
     She handed the photo back to him, no longer having to fake
surprise.  So Mikage _hadn't_ just been another student 
conspirator...  Who had he been, then?  And what had happened to
him after she'd defeated him and left him sobbing on his knees,
murmuring the name "Mamiya"--a name that meant nothing to her--
over and over again amidst the scattered petals of his torn black 
rose?

     Had it been anyone else, she would have sympathized, tried
to help him... but she'd had no sympathy for Mikage.  He'd hurt
too many people, too many friends, with his puppeteering.
Perhaps if she'd been able to have even a little sympathy for
him, things would have turned out differently.

     "So what do you think?" Touga asked finally.  "I can show 
you the documents if you want... show you how Akio's got Houou's
government in the palm of his hand."

     "No."  Utena shook her head while rising from the chair.  
The margarita lay unfinished, ice almost entirely melted.  "This
photo... I think you really are on to something."  She decided 
then and there to talk things over with Juri and the others
before deciding just what to do about Touga.  That was what she 
should have done with Nanami, instead of arbitrarily restoring 
the memories despite her suspicions.  "I'm just not sure what."

     "I think something might have been done to some people who
went to Ohtori," Touga said slowly, reaching down to pick up the
empty glass.  "Do you want to finish this?"

     "Yeah, sure."  Utena took the glass and gulped it all down
without thinking, and thus experienced the rare combination of an
alcohol buzz and an ice-induced headache at the same time.  
"Gahh."
     
     Touga took the glass back; their fingers brushed.  He smiled
at her.  "Best to drink it more slowly."

     "Good advice," Utena gasped.  "What's that you said about
something being done to people who went to Ohtori?"

     "As I said, I don't remember you from Ohtori at all," Touga
said.  "Yet the prince of my dreams has your face.  And you
remind me of him...  You have a... nobility to you, if you don't
mind my saying so."

     "I don't mind," Utena murmured, looking away from him.
     
     "But you don't remember anything strange about Ohtori at 
all," Touga continued.  "Maybe you should."  He paused.  "A few
months back, I managed to acquire one of the rings worn by
members of the Duellist's Society.  I found that if I wore it
while I slept, my dreams of the prince were much more vivid... as
an experiment, I sent it to my sister.  She told me that she 
began to have dreams after she got it, about fighting duels; I 
think she joined her school's fencing team because of it."

     "How odd."  
     
     "Mind control experiments, perhaps?" Touga mused.  "Some 
sort of hypnotic suggestion?"

     "Could be."
     
     "But what was going on?  Why me?  Why my sister?"  He shook
his head.  "Far too many questions."  

     "Lots of them."
     
     Suddenly, his warm hand fell upon her shoulder.  "Listen,"
he said softly, "I don't want to put any burden upon you that
you're not willing to bear.  But I've been doing this all on my
own for several years now, and... well, it gets rather lonely.  I 
have to worry that everyone I come into contact with might be 
reporting back to Akio, so it's hard to get close to anyone.
If you'd give me your help, perhaps, somehow, the two of us can
stop this together."  He smiled at her, and she couldn't help but
blush a little.  "Even if I only had you as a confidant and
friend..."

     "I'll help you if I can," Utena blurted, stepping away from
his touch and his smile.  "Though I don't know how much that will
be."

     "Thank you.  That's enough.  Simply meeting you again has 
been enough."

     Utena said nothing; she couldn't even meet his eyes.  She
hated having to tell so many lies.  It made her stomach hurt.  

     Touga cleared his throat.  "I'm going to visit the chairman
now.  The real one.  Would you like to come and meet him?  He's
an interesting old gentleman."

     Utena blinked.  "Yes.  I would."
     
     "I'm glad."  Touga put the photo down on the folder, picked
up his empty brandy glass, and walked away towards the kitchen.  
"Could you put that photo in the folder and leave them on my 
desk?  I'll put them away later."

     Utena did as he asked, then went to the door to pull on her
coat and shoes.  Dangerous games, she thought--dangerous games.

* * *

Anthy walked out of the boutique in winter clothing--hat, coat,
gloves, boots--that would have cost over a month's salary if 
she'd bought them with real money.

     The clerks had been rather wary at an exhausted woman 
wearing a blue skirt and blouse, and nothing else (including
shoes), but once she'd started pulling cash seemingly out of 
nowhere (which was more or less what she'd done), they'd become
friendlier.

     She felt a little guilty that the money would disappear in a
few hours, but, to be honest, she'd just had her worst day in 
seven years and wasn't really feeling up to worrying about a few
minor moral lapses.

     She'd had to fight to keep from falling asleep while she 
drove, and it had taken her over an hour to find her way back to
Sapporo.  Will was the only thing keeping her on her feet at the
moment, and even that was beginning to flag.  

     What she needed now was a safe place to sleep for about 
three days, and someone to guard her while she did.  It was only
after she stumbled into the phone booth that she remembered she
didn't actually know Saionji's number.

     "Phone book," she murmured to herself.  "You can look it up
in the phone book."  But her numb fingers couldn't seem to turn
the pages properly, and all the letters and numbers blurred
together into incomprehensible gibberish.  "Damn it."

     She walked back out into the cold, rubbed her temples hard
in an attempt to lessen her horrific headache, and focused.

     *SAIONJI KYOUICHI, I NEED YOUR HELP!*
     
     That would get his attention.  Barely able to walk and with
her headache now so painful and all-consuming that she could
almost ignore it, in the same way a massive bruise was easier to
ignore than a papercut, she staggered into a nearby restaurant
and sat down at a booth.

     A slim waiter approached, pad at ready, and handed her a
menu.  "Something to drink to start?"

     "Coffee," Anthy murmured.  "A lot of it.  And... bring me
something to eat.  I don't care.  Teriyaki, yakisoba, yakitori,
okonomiyaki, sandwiches, whatever you have.  Whatever's good.  
You choose for me."

     "The special's good today," the waiter said, looking at her
a little confusedly.  "It's soba noodles with--"

     "Good.  I'll have that.  And some soup.  Do you have soup 
here?"  She glanced at the blurring menu and forced her eyes to
focus.  "Miso soup."

     "Will that be all?"
     
     "For now," Anthy said balefully, staring hard at the table
in an attempt to prevent herself from passing out face-first onto
it.  "I may want more later."

     She was still eating when Saionji arrived nearly an hour
later, and at work on her fifth cup of coffee.     

* * *

Ohtori Mansion lay by the sea, built high atop a hillside whose
long end sloped languidly towards the waves.  A big central house
with forward-curving eastern and western wings, it bore an
obvious architectural affinity to Ohtori Academy: the huge facade 
was dominated by trefoil-arch windows that reminded Utena of the
long archway-filled passages and walkways of Ohtori.
     
     In addition to the main house, there were several adjunct
buildings, including a large bell-shaped greenhouse with its 
glass surface carefully kept clear of snow.  Snow-choked 
fountains and skeletal, naked trees arranged in precise rows 
made Utena guess that the gardens were quite extensive in the
warmer seasons.

     The entire sprawling immensity of the place was enclosed by
tall sharp fences of wrought iron, and a security guard's small
hut stood before the front gates.  Touga rolled down the window
and greeted the man on duty by name.  The guard returned the 
greeting and pressed a button that swung the gates wide to admit
the van.

     "Nice place," Utena murmured.  She paused.  "But somehow...
desolate.  Is it nicer in the summer?"

     "No," Touga said, a little sadly.  "Not really."
     
     "What's the chairman like?"
     
     They parked in a small lot beside the western wing of the
house.  "He's not a well man," Touga answered, as he took the 
keys from the ignition.  "But his mind is still sharp."  As they
walked against a bitingly cold wind down a half-cleared pathway
towards the front of the house, Touga leaned in conspiratorially
close to her, even though there was no one else even sight except
a lone, hunched groundsman brushing snow from the trees over a 
hundred feet away.  "I think Akio may be keeping him ill somehow;
perhaps through poison."  His face darkened.  "Or more esoteric 
means."  He straightened and moved a step away from her as they
rounded the corner, approaching the tall, wide stairs leading up
to the front doors.  They passed into the shadow of the 
overhanging roof midway up the steps, and Utena noted that two 
massive columns engraved with rose motifs provided its support.  

     She tried, but was unable to suppress a shiver at that 
sight.  Touga glanced to her.  "Cold?  It will be warmer 
inside."

     "Yes," Utena agreed perfunctorily, "cold."
     
     Shortly after Touga banged the heavy brass knocker against 
its plate, the door was opened by a soberly-dressed middle-aged
balding man.  "Kiryuu-san," he said, bowing slightly as he 
ushered them into the huge front hall of the mansion, dominated
by several large portraits on the walls of scholarly-looking men
whom Utena assumed were the previous Ohtori chairmen.  "Ohtori 
Hoshimi-san is waiting for you in the eastern drawing room; 
Ohtori Taiyoji-san is with her."

     "Taiyoji-san?" Touga said, raising an eyebrow.  "What a
delightful surprise."

     "I'm sure he'll be very glad to see you," the man replied
without cracking a smile, either missing Touga's irony or too
much the stoic to acknowledge it.  He turned a laconic gaze to
Utena, but said nothing.

     "Kumozo-san, this is Tenjou-san, a friend of mine who also
went to Ohtori; Tenjou-san, Kumozo-san is the major-domo of the
Ohtori household."

     "Hi.  Nice to meet you."  Utena bowed.
     
     "An honour," Kumozo replied, and bowed back, though not 
quite as low as she had.  "Kiryuu-san, do you require my escort
to the eastern drawing room?"

     "No thank you, Kumozo-san, I know where it is."
     
     "Then I shall resume my other duties."  Kumozo bowed again,
then headed away up the left-hand of the two huge curving
staircases leading to the second floor.
     
     "Pompous ass," Utena muttered once he was out of earshot.
     
     "Kumozo-san is a good man.  He's merely very formal,"  Touga
said quietly as he took of his coat and shoes.  "We can put our 
outdoor clothing in the closet over there."

     "Who are Ohtori Hoshimi and Ohtori Taiyoji?"       
     
     "Ohtori Hoshimi is the chairman's wife," Touga replied as he
closed the closet.  "Taiyoji is the chairman's younger brother;
he serves on the academy's Board of Trustees."

     "Don't like him much, do you?"
     
     Touga shrugged as he lead Utena down the eastern hallway
adjoining the front hall, whose walls displayed several stylish
Impressionist landscape paintings that looked in need of dusting.
"Taiyoji's views on what Ohtori's educational direction should be
conflict with mine," he explained.  "And with that of the current
chairman, and all the other trustees."

     "Confrontational, huh?"
     
     "At times."  They passed under an archway; beyond it, the
hallway opened up into a small, comfortable sitting room, with a
fire blazing in the dominating marble fireplace and a half-dozen
comfortable leather chairs.  

     Ohtori Hoshimi, whom Utena vaguely recognized from when she'd
come to lecture Akio about his treatment of Kanae, rose to greet
them.  She'd aged very well; Utena guessed she had to be in her 
early forties at minimum in order to be Kanae's mother, but there
were very little visible signs of that age about her face.  While
elegantly beautiful, she didn't bear much resemblance to her 
daughter.

     "Touga-san; a pleasure as always."
     
     Her dead daughter, Utena thought, whom Akio might have
killed like he killed Kozue, whom she hadn't feel any guilt at 
all towards for messing around with Akio behind her back.

     "And who is this?"
     
     No; she had felt guilt.  But she'd done it anyway.  Did 
feeling bad for doing something wrong make it somehow better than
if you didn't feel bad at all?

     "Tenjou Utena, a friend of mine from my student days at 
Ohtori.  I'm escorting her around town while she's here.  I 
thought she'd like to meet the chairman.  How is he today?"

     "As he always is," said the quiet voice of the room's second
occupant, who hadn't yet risen from his chair and thereby allowed 
Utena to get a good look at him.  "Neither medicine nor prayer
seems to have done much for his recovery."  She craned her neck a
little to get a view around the obscuring back of the chair: dark 
clothes, grey hair, wide, powerful hands, and, most interesting 
of all, a white priest's collar.

     Hoshimi smiled wanly, and glanced to the man in the chair.  
"As Taiyoji-san says, he is much as he always is.  Weak, but 
lucid."

     Ohtori Taiyoji rose from his chair.  A big, powerful man in
his fifties, he looked as though he'd be more suited as a 
stevedore than a priest.  "Kiryuu-san, I am sorry I must depart 
so quickly, but I was in truth about to leave just as you 
arrived.  I have a lunch appointment.  I'm sure I will see you 
again before I return to Rome."  He bowed to Utena.  "Hopefully,
you as well, miss."

     Then he departed before anyone else even had a chance to say
farewell.  The three of them watched his rapidly-retreating back:
Utena with confusion, Touga and Hoshimi with a kind of jaded
acceptance.

     "Still trying to sell you on his desire to return Ohtori to
its roots as the most eminent centre for private Catholic 
education in Japan?" Touga asked in a low voice.

     Hoshimi nodded.  "It's his cause," she said sourly.  "The
school gave up its religious affiliations less than a decade 
after founding, but he doesn't care."

     "I never knew it even had them," Utena said musingly.  "You
know, that explains a lot about the architecture."

     Hoshimi turned to her and nodded again.  "One of the 
architects was an Italian who designed cathedrals; Tsukiichi's 
grandfather, who endowed the academy, commissioned him to design 
a school based upon cathedral architecture, which obsessed him 
his entire life."  She grimaced.  "The library has about a 
thousand books on the subject, all very dusty, all very boring."
She sighed.  "Enough babble from me, though.  You wanted to see
him?"

     Touga nodded.  
     
     "I'll take you to him."  She led them back to the front hall
and up the stairs to the second floor, then down another hallway
to a door at the end.  Utena could faintly smell roses, and,
underlying them, pungent attar.

     "Try not to look surprised when you see him," Touga murmured
to her, low enough that Hoshimi wouldn't hear.  "His appearance
is a little shocking when you first meet him."

     The chairman's wife opened the door.  The heady odour of 
roses and attar trebled, becoming almost sickly-sweet, to the 
point where Utena nearly gagged.  Beyond, the room was full of
muted winter sunlight streaming through translucent gauzy 
curtains drawn across the room's two big opposing windows.  A
half-dozen big arrangements of different breeds and colours of 
roses sprang up from transparent crystal vases placed at 
different places throughout the big room: on the bedside table,
on the big oak desk, on the top of the single tall bookshelf.

     Seated at the desk in an electric wheelchair, Ohtori 
Tsukiichi, the school's real chairman, looked up as they entered. 
Despite Touga's warning, Utena still wasn't sure she managed to
keep shock off her face.  Gaunt wasn't adequate; emaciated was
better, but still not close enough.

     Skeletal.  He was skeletal, skin so tight over his bones
that it was nearly translucent.  She could see distinctly the
shape of his skull.  When he put down the gold-rimmed pen he was
writing with and raised his hand in greeting, she found herself,
to her disgust, thinking of how easy it would be to count his
knucklebones.

     "Touga-san, Hoshimi-chan... and someone I don't know."  He 
smiled; Utena could see it was intended to be friendly, but, from
him, it came out dreadfully macabre.  "You'll have to forgive me,
dear girl, I don't look my best."  He patted the wisps of white 
hair clinging to his skull.  "I was much better-looking before I
started to go bald."

     Touga and Hoshima laughed forcedly; Utena couldn't manage
more than an uncomfortable smile.

     The chairman reached down slowly with a feeble hand and
manipulated the joystick of his wheelchair.  It moved back from
the desk with an electric whir, and turned to face them.  "So,
Touga, who is your attractive friend?"

     "I'm Tenjou Utena, Chairman Ohtori."  Utena bowed quickly.  
"I went to Ohtori Academy for junior high.  Very pleased to meet
you."

     "But you didn't finish at Ohtori?  I'm disappointed.  Were
there some problems with the quality of the education?"  His 
quiet, whispery voice seemed genuinely concerned.

     "Err..."
     
     A high-pitched cat's meow saved her from having to answer,
as a long-bodied Siamese emerged from the darkness under the bed.
Hoshimi knelt down and the cat jumped into her arms with one
smooth leap.  "Trivia, my pet, how did you get in here?"

     "Probably snuck in and fell asleep under the bed when I was
brought my breakfast," the chairman said amicably, chuckling
dryly.  "Little scamp."

     Touga leaned over and rubbed the cat's head.  It purred, and
its blue eyes narrowed with pleasure.  "Such a beautiful animal."

     "Isn't she?  I'm going to take her downstairs.  I'll be back
shortly."  Hoshimi opened the door and exited, leaving Touga and
Utena alone with the chairman.

     "So, Utena-chan, do you still live in Houou, or did you have
to leave Ohtori because you moved away?"

     "I live in Sapporo," Utena answered quickly.  Utena-chan?  A
little too familiar, that.  She let it go by--he was a sick old
man.  "I came back to visit some friends."

     "Ahh.  Sapporo's a lovely city.  I haven't been there in 
years."  The chairman slowly turned his head to look at.  "Touga,
tell me how things are at Ohtori.  Anything new about that poor 
boy who died?"

     "No, nothing new, but there's been some developments in the
plans for the..."  Touga launched into a long and technical 
discussion of Ohtori's current events with the chairman, which 
Utena tried at first to pay attention to on the off-chance it
contained useful information.  She soon found herself tuning out,
though: looking around the room, trying to remember the names of 
the different varieties of roses, reading the spines of the
chairman's books (most of them seemed to have "Education" or a
synonym of that somewhere in the title, and looked fantastically
dull).  The cloying odour of roses and attar became more bearable 
as time passed, but not by much.

     She first heard the voice inside her head during Touga's 
explanation of the new course schedule for Ohtori's French 
program.

     help us
     
     "What?"  She started.  "How interesting.  French.  Really.
My friend Wakaba took French for a year, but she didn't really
think much of it.  Not to say it isn't a wonderful program, I'm
sure, it was probably just that she wasn't a very dedicated
student."
     
     The chairman and Touga looked at her for a moment in 
silence.

     "The French language _is_ fascinating, isn't it?" the 
chairman finally said cheerfully.  "Go on, Touga."

     help us
     
     Who's help us that? she thought.  I don't help under us
stand.     
     
     "Excuse me," she said.  "I need to go to the washroom."
     
     "Go to the end of the hall, turn left," the chairman
directed.  Utena hurried out of the room and closed the door
behind her, then took deep breaths of air that wasn't sweet 
enough to choke on.

     help us
     
     The two words repeated themselves over and over in her head,
sounding like her own thoughts, as she made her way to the
bathroom.  She ran water in the big marble sink and splashed her
face.

     help us
     
     "Who are you?" she hissed.  Was she hallucinating?
     
     down
     
     "What?"
     
     dark
     
     "I don't understand."
     
     hungry
     
     "Who--"
     
     HELPDOWNUSDARKHELPHUNGRYUS!
     
     She cried out and fell to her knees, clutching her head as 
a sudden intense migraine sent red-hot shrapnel throughout her 
skull.
     
     tired
     
     sleep
     
     "Okay," Utena murmured, and proceeded to do so.
     
* * *

Snow was falling again, in little white pellets like a scattering
of seeds from heaven--a strange snow, one whose flakes held up a
little longer against the windshield's heat and the wiper-strokes
than usual.

     "Anthy... what's going on?" Saionji asked, glancing away
from the road for a moment.  The wind was blowing loose-packed
powder off the top of the snowbanks lining the sidewalks, and 
pallid dust-devils danced and died upon the road's lanes and 
lines.  "What happened to you?"

     "I'm being hunted," Anthy murmured in reply.  She'd tilted
the passenger seat back almost forty-five degrees, and had her
head turned away from Saionji to stare out the window.  "Or I
soon will be.  I need somewhere safe to rest and regain my
strength, and I need someone to guard me while I do that."
     
     His pause was palpable.  "And you chose me," he said
finally.  She was unable to tell if it was a declaration or a
question.

     "There was no one else," she said after a moment, turning to
look at him.  His hands were tight on the wheel, eyes focused
intently on the road.  She considered him critically: while still
in very good shape (he was too vain not to be), it wasn't the
fighter's shape of his Ohtori years.  He was still a young man,
but his shape was already becoming that of a businessman who
worked out on the weekends.  "When was the last time you used a
sword, Saionji-san?"

     "Kyouichi," he said quietly.  "Please; can't you call me
that?"  He paused; his eyes were distant.  "The last time I 
sparred would have been my last year of high school."

     "That long ago?" Anthy said, surprised.
     
     "After I lost touch with Touga, there really didn't seem to
be any other worthy foes."  The way he said Touga's name, as
though drawing it out from some shadowy place... something more
was there than a friendship drifting apart.  "I still pick up a
shinai or bokuto now and again, just to keep the muscles
remembering what they're supposed to do... but I'm not the 
captain of the kendo club any longer..."  His eyes went distant
again.  "I'm not a Duellist any longer."

     Regret?  Relief?  She couldn't say.  To live a life for
seven years without remembering what had really gone on at 
Ohtori, and then have all of it come back at once...  Wakaba had
made the choice for both of them, of course, but had she been
right to let Wakaba decide for Saionji like that?  He'd gone far
deeper into the shadows than his wife had.  Wakaba had only
brushed against the pitiless thorns of Mikage and Mamiya's 
(yes; think of "him" as Mamiya--it was easier that way) black 
roses, but Saionji had been nearly as tangled in Akio's web as 
Touga by the end.

     "I need your help, Kyouichi," she said.
     
     He nodded.  "What do you want me to do?"
     
     "For now, as I said, I need rest."  She yawned 
involuntarily, but it served to punctuate her point.  "My 
apartment isn't safe.  I don't even dare go back there to get my
clothes."  Who knew how many men Leo had?  They might not have 
all been there to die at the hands of... whoever it had been...

     (when the prince came forth upon hearing his sister's cries
      and saw what their hands had done, all the love he had held
      for the people and their daughters fled his heart on black,
      beating wings)
      
     "Anthy?"
     
     She started.  "Sorry; fell asleep for a moment."
     
     "I could take you to my--our apartment.  Wakaba's and mine."
     
     "No," she said after a moment's thought.  "That's not safe
either.  They might have tracked Utena that far before they lost
her."

     "Anthy, what exactly happened?"  Concern and uncertainty
pervaded his voice.  "How did you..."

     "Later," she murmured, closing her eyes and yawning again.
"Short version: I was kidnapped, tortured, and escaped.  I think
most of those hunting me are dead or out of the picture, except
the leader, but I can't be certain.  I've got almost no strength 
left from healing my wounds and escaping--the only reason I'm
still awake to talk to you..."  She yawned yet again.  "...is 
because I've eaten enough food for three in the last hour, and
drank enough coffee for five.  I'll tell you the long version 
later."

     Saionji's pointed silence made it clear he wasn't satisfied
with her explanation; she wasn't really able to tell without 
looking at his face, though, and opening her eyes was too much 
effort at the moment.

     "I'll take you to a hotel," he said finally.  "I'll have to
call Wakaba and explain things to her.  I left rather abruptly."

     "Undoubtedly."
     
     "How did you... reach me like that?"
     
     "We were engaged, once.  And you had--still have--strong 
feelings towards me."  She realized vaguely that she might be
saying more than she should in her exhausted state, but so tired
was she that the realization didn't really help her to stop.  
"You were close, too; would have called Utena, but..."  She
trailed away; some things were not going to be said, no matter
how tired she was.

     "What are you going to do after you rest?"
     
     "You know," she said slowly, "I haven't even thought of
that."

* * *

Blue eyes, blue eyes that laughed and capered and burned cold
along their edges, blue eyes that flared and danced and pierced
like a spear, blue eyes that wheeled and turned and slashed like
razors...

     Utena woke up.  Trivia the Siamese was sitting on her chest.
     
     "Meow," she said.
     
     "Hello," Utena replied woozily.  The bathroom tiles were 
quite cold, and she could still hear water running in the sink.

     The Siamese blinked at her, said "Meow" again, kneaded 
delicately at her naked throat with velvety paws behind which
hooked claws lurked like veiled threats, and at last hopped off 
her to pad out the barely-open bathroom door.

     She sat up slowly, one hand massaging her clammy forehead.
How long had she been out for?  It couldn't have been long, or
they would have come looking for her.  

     "What the hell _was_ that?" she whispered.  Her whole body
seemed to be assembled of poorly-connected segments like an
ill-made marionette.  After taking a few deep breaths while
seated, she stood up with one hand on the edge of the sink for
support.  Reflected in the mirror, her face was pallid as though
she'd just seen a ghost.  She splashed her face again, then
turned the water off and left the bathroom.  Funny how that cat
had gotten in, she thought as she walked down the hall--she was
sure she'd closed the door tightly.

     Of course, it didn't even approach the weirdness of having
her own inner voice start screaming at her.  As she made her way
back to the Chairman's room, she tried to decide just what to do
about it.

     Down... dark... that seemed fairly simple.  Help us?  Who
were "us"?  And... hungry?  That had been a little disturbing.  
All the others had just been words, but she'd felt that hunger in
the marrow of her bones and the pit of her stomach.

     Should she tell Touga?  Maybe he'd experienced something
similar before.  But she still couldn't trust him... it might be
better to keep this quiet until she was back at the hotel, and
could talk to Juri and the others about it.  Explaining just how
she'd come to be at Ohtori Mansion might be difficult:  Hey 
everyone, remember Touga?  You know, Nanami's brother, the guy we
don't trust at all?  Well, through a series of bizarre 
coincidences, I ended up back at his luxury penthouse, where he
made me a _really_ good margarita and showed me the sketches he'd
made of me if I were a real prince.  Then we went to visit the 
real chairman of Ohtori Academy, who was actually quite nice 
except for the fact that he looks like he should have been dead
about five years ago, but, anyway, the important thing is that I
heard a voice in my head yelling for help while I was there, so,
what should we do about it?

     She could just imagine the responses.  And it hadn't even
really been her fault; how was she to know that Touga would have
predicted Nanami's return and gone around checking hotels?

     But it wasn't as though she could just not tell them.  Was
it really a lie to leave out certain details, such as who you
were with, or why you were with them?

     Yes, she told herself firmly, yes it was.
     
     She waited outside the door to the chairman's room for a
moment, still thinking about what to do.  Touga's voice was dimly
audible through the thick door, with lengthy pauses that were
likely the chairman speaking too quietly for her to hear.

     "...very soon... yes, the preparations are all made... a
very appropriate quartet, these four..."

     Hand on the doorknob, Utena paused.  Eavesdropping wasn't
really polite, but...  Oh, to hell with polite.  

     "...yes, he's been planning this for a long time... should
be quite an impressive event, if it all turns out how he 
envisions..."
     
     She frowned, knowing that she was missing key words, key
words that might put what Touga was saying into context, perhaps
tell her just what his role really was... "these four"... 
"planning this for a long time"... it could be something entirely
innocent, or--
     
     "Tenjou-san?"  
     
     Utena started at the voice, and looked back nervously at 
Ohtori Hoshimi.  "I was just about to go in," she said quickly,
defensively.  She turned back to the door and knocked rapidly.
"Just had to knock, you know; that's the polite thing to do."

     "Of course," the older woman said dryly, giving Utena a look
of vaguely suspicious confusion.

     Touga opened the door.  "Ahh, Utena, Hoshimi-san, welcome
back.  Your timing is very good."  He smiled back at the invalid
chairman.  "I think I've just about told Tsukiichi-san enough
information to satisfy him for this week."

     Tsukiichi chuckled, a sound like a small animal moving 
through a wet pile of rotting leaves.  "Just about.  I like to
feel like I'm still involved in the school."  The chuckle 
dissolved into a hacking cough.  Hoshimi moved worriedly by 
Utena, drawing forth a handkerchief from her blouse pocket and
holding it to her husband's lips while supporting the back of his
head with one hand.

     "You should rest, Tsukiichi," she said soothingly, looking
rather pointedly at Touga and Utena.  "All this talk has excited
you too much."

     "Forgive me," Touga said softly, although he didn't really
sound sorry to Utena.  "I should have been more concise."

     "Nonsense."  Tsukiichi feebly waved his wife away.  Utena
could see red flecks staining the handkerchief.  "I enjoy your 
visits nearly as much as I enjoy Akio-san's."

     Akio-san?  Utena suppressed a frown.  Even without an
engagement to Kanae, Akio obviously still had the real chairman
under his thumb.

     "And it was such a pleasure to meet you, Utena-kun," the
chairman continued.  "If you're going to be in town long, I hope
you come to visit me again."  He smiled at her, and, again, Utena
had to remind herself that he was trying to be friendly, not
frightening.

     "Thank you, Ohtori-san," she replied.  "I'd like that.  It
was so nice to meet you."
     
     "I'm going to get Tsukiichi into bed," Hoshimi said, again
giving them a pointed glance.  "If you two could see yourselves
out... thank you for coming, Touga-san... it was very pleasant to
meet you, Utena-san..."

     Touga bowed slightly, made his farewells, and left with
Utena.  Once out in the main hallway and out of earshot of the
chairman's room, she turned to him.  "She seemed to want us out
of their pretty quick, didn't she?"

     "She's concerned for her husband's health," Touga replied,
almost defensively.  "Any sign that his condition may be
worsening tends to make her a little abrupt."

     "I guess that's understandable," Utena agreed.  She sighed.
"Poor woman.  It must be hard for her."

     "Yes."  Touga nodded.  They started down the curving stairs
leading to the main floor.  Halfway to the bottom, he glanced at
his watch.  "Listen, it's nearly noon... do you want to--"

     "It is?"  Utena looked at her own watch.  "Oh, boy.  I 
really have to get back to the hotel."  Juri was going to call 
her around noon in order to report on what they'd found out so 
far.  "Got someone I need to meet."

     "Oh."  Touga looked disappointed.  "Perhaps another day,
then.  How long are you in town?"

     "Oh, at least a few days longer," she said.  "I'm not really
sure, yet.  Listen, what's your number?"

     "Well, it's more traditional for the man to ask," he joked.
"But here's my card.  It has my home number, my office 
number--not that I'm there much, I usually work from home--and my
cell-phone."

     She slipped the card into her purse.  "Thanks."  Don't ask 
me for mine, she pleaded silently.  If she gave him her room
number, he'd know she was staying with Nanami, and then the whole
carefully-constructed web of lies would fall apart.  So, if he 
asked, the only choice would be to add another lie, and she 
_hated_ lying.  Or to come up with some excuse as to why she
couldn't give it to him, which would be a kind of lie as well,
because she _would_ have given it to him, it was just that--

     "Utena-san, are you all right?"  They were at the front 
doors now, and he was taking their coats from the closet.

     "Oh, fine.  Just spaced out for a moment."  She knelt and
slipped on her boots.     
     
     As they crossed the hollow-seeming grounds, walking beneath
barren trees and past dirty grey piles of snow, Touga lightly
touched her elbow.  "Thank you for coming," he said softly.  "I
think seeing someone new did him good.  That's the best I've seen
him in months."

     "Oh?"  She didn't want to imagine what he must be like on
bad days, then.

     "There was some expectation after Kanae died that he'd take
the academy out of Akio's hands, perhaps give it over to another
board member.  Not Taiyoji, of course, but someone more qualified
than Akio."  He moved his hand away from her elbow, dug his keys
out of the pocket, and unlocked the minivan with the remote as
they approached.  "The problem is, Akio's done an incredibly good
job.  Ohtori's international reputation and standing are the best
they've been in years.  A meeting of the Board of Trustees is 
scheduled next week to discuss the results of a five-year review,
and I expect no one except Ohtori Taiyoji will raise any 
complaints against Akio."

     "What kind of complaints?"
     
     Touga shrugged as he opened the passenger-side door for her.
"His usual ones.  Ohtori has moved too far away from it's 
original roots.  The ties that existed with the Church in the first
decade after Ohtori's founding should be re-established.  That
sort of thing.  Oh, and he despises Akio personally."

     "Can't be all bad, then."
     
     "No," Touga said as he got into the driver's seat.  "He's a
good man; he's involved in a lot of humanitarian work abroad. 
Ohtori Academy is just a sore point for him.  As is Akio."

     They drove to the gate, and Touga stopped the car to allow
the guard to open it.  Utena waved a thank-you to the guard as
they left the grounds.

     On the way back to the hotel, Utena remained mostly silent,
letting Touga talk of inconsequential things related to Ohtori,
none of which caught her attention as important.

     Eventually, they pulled into the pick-up and drop-off area
of the hotel.  It was shortly after noon, and Utena hoped that
Juri hadn't called yet.

     "Give me a call later," Touga said quietly.  "We've got a
lot more we need to talk about."

     As she turned towards him to unbuckle her seatbelt, he 
leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips.  Still something
of a playboy after all, she thought, but she wasn't really 
surprised, and she didn't pull away.

     He was an awfully good kisser.  He would be, of course; 
plenty of experience.  There was a sweetness to it, the kind of
humility that had been in his awkward declarations on that last
innocent night--but at the same time, there was the promise of
more to come, if she so desired.

     Damn it, Tenjou, she thought vaguely, as the kiss went on,
as he brought one hand up to run it down her hair and cup lightly
the back of her neck.  What is it with you and dangerous men?

     If he tried to give her anything more than his lips, she was
pulling away.  He didn't.  Pressed them against hers a little
more intensely, perhaps, but she found herself pressing back.

     There hadn't been anyone else since Akio.  
     
     His hand gently stroked the nape of her neck, tangled a lock
of hair round his fingers.  Their positioning had him almost 
leaning over her, and his hair softly brushed her face in a 
feather-light caress.  Utena felt flushed and hot, and needed to
breathe; she placed her hand flat against Touga's chest (still
hard and muscular--she could feel that even through his jacket
and shirt) and eased him slowly out of the kiss.

     "I'll call you," she half-gasped, quickly opening the door 
and stepping out onto the sidewalk before the hotel.  "Bye, 
Touga."

     "Goodbye, Tenjou Utena."  The slow way he said her name, as
though reluctant to let it escape from him too quickly, sent a 
chilly but undeniably pleasurable tingle down her spine.
     
     She closed the door behind her without looking back at him
and hurried into the hotel.  Had there been anyone around to see
that?  Thankfully, the windows of the van were tinted on the
outside.

     The first thing she did upon getting back into the room was
check on Chu-Chu, relying upon the room's natural light to see.  
He was still asleep where she'd left him, but when she gently 
spoke his name and prodded him with her finger, he opened his 
eyes to look at her.

     "Chu," he said wearily.  
     
     "Feeling better?" she asked.
     
     "Chu," he agreed, nodding his head and letting out an 
enormous yawn before falling back to sleep.  Utena felt immensely 
relieved--it had probably just been a little flu bug or a cold or
something.  Chu-Chu got those from time to time.

     "Sleep well, little friend," she murmured affectionately,
rearranging his small blanket.  It occurred to her that if Juri
had already called and missed her, she might have left a message
with the desk.  She walked to the table between the beds and
turned on the lamp.

     On her bed and Nanami's, unobtrusively laid on their 
pillows, small white envelopes were placed.  Unaddressed and
unsigned, except for Ohtori's rose crest.

* * *

By the time they checked into the hotel, Anthy was almost asleep
on her feet, and had no real choice but to lean on Kyouichi for
support--that, or pass out.  She tried to be delicate about it--
her arm through his, her head against his shoulder occasionally
when she felt especially weary--but it was impossible not to
notice how he stiffened and shivered at her touch, as though she
were ice or fire to him.

     What a power she had over him still, she thought vaguely, 
with an almost perverse pleasure.

     As they made their way down the green-painted hallway to the 
room, she glanced up at his face: stoic and neutral, he avoided
looking at her.  She could almost feel the shame radiating from
him at his response to her physical presence.

     He is not entirely who he was at Ohtori, she reminded 
herself.  But she could not forget the finger-shaped bruises on
Wakaba's arm, or the look in his eyes in the park.  If he was not
entirely who he had been at Ohtori, he was not an entirely 
different man, either.

     The thought occurred to her that she might not be entirely
safe with him under these circumstances: alone, isolated, weak,
needing him to stand guard over her while she slept.  But, as she
had said, there was no one else.

     She thought suddenly of Wakaba, sitting alone in her 
hospital bed, and felt a guilty pang.  Wakaba would be wondering
where her husband was (he said he'd left abruptly--what kind of 
explanation had he given?), if he was safe, perhaps even if he'd
be coming back.  Had she the strength, she would have reached out
and told her pleasant things: that no harm would come to him, 
that he would be safe, that she wanted a guardian, not a lover 
(for how could Wakaba avoid thinking of that, now that she 
remembered about the leaf and the black roses?).  

     "Anthy?"
     
     "Hrm?"  She stirred from her thoughts, rubbed sleepily at 
her eyes with a limp fist.

     "I need to get the key out.  Can you let go of my arm?"
     
     "Mmm."  The wall provided the necessary support now; she
leaned against the cool, scalloped, green-painted plaster and let
out a brief yawn.  Inside the room, she imagined there would be a
bed, with a soft mattress and fluffy pillows and gentle sheets to
pull over her body so that she could sink down from this waking
precipice into the bottomless pelagic gulf of sleep...

     Keys rattled, hinges creaked; the door was open, and 
Kyouichi was leading her inside, into a dim room pale with 
sunlight, a small room with only one bed and a little TV by the
chair in the corner, a tiny balcony beyond the sliding glass 
doors whose curtains were drawn open... he was helping her off 
with winter's clothing, gently and judiciously, touching her body
no more than he had to... he knows, she thought vaguely, knows 
how weak I am...

     "Do you need to use the washroom?" he asked, softly, kindly.
It reminded her of a father talking to his daughter, and, how 
long had it been since she'd had even reminiscence of that?  She 
shook her head, murmured a word or two that she forgot even as 
she spoke them.

     The bedsprings creaked.  She sat on the bed now, and he was
drawing back the covers and the sheets, gently easing her down
beneath them and tucking them in over her.  He adjusted the 
pillows beneath her head so that she was more comfortable.

     "My clothes," she murmured.
     
     "W-what?"  She could almost see the look on his face; it 
almost made her smile.  "Anthy, I can't--"

     "No.  Not that."  Such an effort to even remember the right
words, as though she'd forgotten her entire vocabulary.  "What 
I'm wearing right now, the blouse, the skirt... they only exist
because I'm concentrating on them.  As soon as I fall asleep for
more than a few minutes, they'll disappear, so don't be 
surprised--and don't pull back the sheet to check on me, if you 
know what's good for you."  So many words drained her of what 
little strength she had left; she could not have spoken more even
if she'd wanted to.  

     "Sleep well, Himemiya Anthy."  That same rare tenderness, as
though her name were a precious thing, a jewel for him to protect
against all who would take it... "I will guard your rest."

     Thank you, she thought, and tried to say it, but she was too
weary.  She faintly heard his footsteps moving away, water 
running in the bathroom, the rattle of pills in a bottle, the 
sound of swallowing.  Her eyes were closed, and the darkness 
seemed to hum all around her like a swarm of black bees.  For a 
short minute, she was at that point where exhaustion of mind and
body were so great that sleep was impossible, and then it took 
her all the same.

     Dreams came, nightmares, and she had no strength to send
them away.  Dios wept with hate and grief, and his silver sword
split Leo's head down the middle like a rotten fruit.  Faces slid
and ran like melted wax: Dios became Utena became Saionji became
Leo became Akio, slayer and slain wore the same masks.  There 
were violins screaming dark music to the accompaniment of a 
deranged piano and an off-key harp, and shadows waltzing with
skeletons in awkward wallflower steps.  Dogs howled and cats
screamed in a bestial choir, accompanying a newborn's enraged 
solo.

     Then the dreams went away as she fell deeper still, aware of
the darkness (always aware of the darkness), but without reason 
to be afraid of it.  Her body healed itself, took back strength
as she floated like a barque upon black-slumbering seas.

     At times, she would drift into wakefulness, then quickly
fall back.  Once, Kyouichi was sitting in the chair, wat