Shoujo Kakumei Utena

                       BENEATH THE SKIN
                              
                              by 
                              
                          Alan Harnum
                              
Utena and its characters belongs to Be-PaPas, Chiho Saito, 
Shogakukan, Shokaku Iinkai and TV Tokyo.

E-mail : harnums@thekeep.org

Obligatory Warnings:

1) This a post-series story.  It is full of spoilers.

2) It contains explicit sex.  If you're not legal age or 
otherwise have a problem with it, please stop reading now.

* * *

The canal was frozen over, a long ribbon of dirty ice that made 
her wonder idly just how it was that fish stayed alive under 
frozen lakes.  Someone had tossed a red soda can onto the 
surface, and it stood out like a wound, close beside the further 
of the sloping concrete banks.  Kiryuu Nanami shivered, drew her 
coat tighter around her, and stuck her hands into her pockets.  
Even in thick mittens of pale yellow wool, her fingers felt 
terribly cold.

     "So," Kaoru Miki said brightly from beside her, "where would
you like to go for lunch?"

     "I don't know," Nanami replied after a moment, staring at
the smooth, flat, gleaming surface of the ice.  "You're the one
who invited me.  You choose."

     He rubbed his gloved hands together and smiled cheerfully.  
If the cold bothered him, he didn't show it.  "Sushi all right?"
Each word sent a puff of fog into the wintry air from between his
white teeth.

     "Sushi's fine."

     Miki began to walk, further compacting the well-trodden snow
of the sidewalk beside the canal beneath his boots.  Nanami
followed at a slightly slower pace than him, so that he had to 
stop every half-minute or so to allow her to catch up.

     "We haven't seen much of each other lately, have we?" he
ventured after a little while.

     "No," Nanami agreed.  "It's been a few months."  Passing 
each other on the campus, in the hallways of the junior high
school building, it was always: Hello, Miki-kun; hello, Nanami-
kun.  That and no more, a contact fleeting as the brush of a
feathered wing.  "How's Mitsuru working out?"

     "Oh, wonderfully!" Miki exclaimed.  He paused and stared
briefly up at the sky, which was so blue that it was almost
painful to look at.  "You were right.  He's a bright kid, perfect
to take over for me next year."

     Nanami nodded, as though she'd expected no less, but said
nothing more.

     "Kozue really likes him as well," Miki added after a moment,
somewhat hesitantly.

     "She spends a lot of time with the two of you?"
     
     Miki nodded, and almost, but not quite, blushed.
     
     "Touga put you up to this, didn't he?" she said suddenly,
sharply, turning on him so that their eyes locked.  Her gaze was
fierce, angry, and he nearly took a step back.

     "What makes you--" he began, licking his lips.
     
     "Don't play games with me!" she snapped, glaring.  "Just 
tell me the truth."

     "Yes," Miki said, looking away from her.  There was 
something broken in her violet eyes, something painful to look 
into.  "He asked me to talk to you.  But the lunch was my idea."

     "How sweet," Nanami said acidly.  "And do the two of you
spend a lot of time together these days as well?"

     "I didn't have to do this, you know," Miki said softly,
hoping to disarm her anger through kindness.  "It wasn't just
because he asked me.  It's because I'm worried about you."  He
hesitated.  "So's your brother.  We all are."

     "'We all are,'" she mimicked mockingly.  "You and Touga and
Kyouichi and Juri?  Don't make me laugh."

     "I'm not trying to make you laugh.  We are worried."  He 
made a helpless, futile gesture with one of his hands, agile 
fingers stroking the air as though attempting to soothe an
agitated cat.  "You've quit all your clubs and social 
organizations, you don't see any of your friends... Touga says 
you spend all your time these days in your room, when you're not
at school."

     "I don't care about those things any more, they weren't ever
really my friends, and how I choose to spend my time is my 
business," she said shortly.  If her fingers hadn't still been so
terribly cold, she would have taken her hands from her pockets 
and folded her arms at him in defiance of his concern.

     Miki, with some small effort, kept himself calm and kept all
but concern from his voice.  "Nanami, keeping to yourself the way
you've been since... well, it's not you.  You were always so...
involved... active--"

     "Interfering?" she interrupted snidely.  "Bitchy, maybe?  Is
that what you want to say?  Is that who you think I am?"  For the
first time since the conversation had begun, her expression
softened briefly, like a muscle spasming.  "It's not, Miki," she
said quietly, as though it really were important that he believe
her.  "It's not."

     He looked away from her again.  "I didn't say you were 
either of those things," he said finally.  "But--"

     "But you thought them, didn't you?"  She smiled, and it was
bitter and hard to look upon.  "More than once.  It doesn't 
matter to me, Miki; I didn't care what people thought of me then,
and I don't care now.  It's how I think of myself that's 
important to me."

     Miki sighed gently.  "This is all about the game, isn't it?"
     
     "It wasn't a game!" she said sharply.  Then she forced 
herself to lower her voice.  "I hate how you all speak about it
like that.  It wasn't just a game.  Whenever any of you talk 
about it, it's always 'the game' this, and 'the game' that.  
Never 'the Duels' or 'the Revolution' or--"

     "It _was_ just a game," Miki said forcefully.  "You play 
games when you're children, Nanami.  Then you grow up and you 
leave childish things behind; you get away from the past.  You
don't let it tear you up and--"

     "What about _her_?" Nanami snapped, advancing on him.  He
didn't fall into her trap and retreat, however, and she was
forced to bring herself up short or bump into him.  "You were in
love with her one day, and then--"

     "I had a crush on her," Miki said, smiling gently.  "I still
do a little, I suppose.  She was very beautiful, and so kind.  
But... it wasn't really love, even if I thought of it that way."

     "You just keep on telling yourself that," Nanami said, 
almost sadly.  She turned her gaze away from him, towards the 
dead flow of the canal.  "And you really believe it.  You all do.
That's what I can't understand."  She closed her eyes, and wished
that her fingers weren't so cold.  "That's what I hate so much."

     After brief hesitance and doubt in the propriety of the act,
Miki put his hand on her shoulder from behind and squeezed, as
lightly as he could without not squeezing at all.  Not knowing 
what to say, he said nothing at all.

     "Thank you," she said after what seemed to him like a very
long time.  It was an obvious effort to say the words, but they
came out graciouslyly enough, for her.  "It's sweet that you're 
concerned.  But I'm fine.  Really, I am."

     He took his hand away.  "Want to get lunch now?"
     
     She looked back, eyes on him, body turned away.  "I think 
I'm going to pass on it," she said.  "I'm sorry to drag you out
here, Miki.  But you really said all you needed to, didn't you?"

     "I suppose," he said, restraining a sigh.  "Your brother
really is worried about you, Nanami."

     "I'm sure he is," Nanami said bleakly.  "You can tell him
I'm doing fine when you talk to him about this."

     "I will," Miki said eventually.  He took a few steps back,
then paused.  "Come talk to me any time, if you want.  You know
where I live."

     She nodded, and seemed to be waiting for him to go.  He
didn't.  "We go in the same direction some of the way, don't we?
Let's walk together."

     "I want to stay here a little while, I think," she said,
finally taking her mitten-clad hands from her pockets and rubbing
them together.

     "Are you sure?  It's very cold."
     
     "It is winter, Miki," she said, with a slight air of
exasperation.  "Winters are cold."

     "Yes," Miki said.  He took a few more steps.  "Take care of
yourself, Nanami."

     "I will," she said softly.  Then: "Miki, you'll know this.
How do fish live in frozen lakes?"

     "Under the ice," he said immediately.  "Enough oxygen is
trapped when the lake freezes that the fish can live until it
melts, usually.  No lake freezes all the way through; just on the
surface."

     She nodded.  "Thank you.  I was just wondering."
     
     "Well," he said, smiling.  "Now you know."  It was one of 
the things about her that he really did find appealing--she had a
curious nature.

     "Goodbye," she said.  There was a kind of dismissal in it.
     
     "Goodbye," he echoed back, and walked away, leaving her
alone to stare at the lengthy bleakness of the canal.

* * *

When she really thought about it, she had to blame irony.  She'd
been the one to take the ring off, she'd been the one to say that
they should forget about all of it as quickly as possible.  So,
of course, as though some divine justice were at work to punish
her for all she'd ever done or thought or said, she was the one
who could leave none of it behind, while everyone else went on
with their lives.

     At some point, their rings had been taken from them, taken
back to the Ends of the World from whence they came.  She
could not remember clearly how it had happened.  When she'd taken
hers off, she'd left it on the table in the Council chamber.  Had
the others simply done the same, after Touga had craned his head
back to look at the sky, and told them, quietly, with utter
assurance, that it was over?  They had all ridden down in the
elevator together, hadn't they, then gone their separate ways?

     Every blank spot, every memory that was hazy, filled her
with terror of what might have been, when she stopped to think
about it.  What exactly she'd seen on that night in the tower in
the room of the stars, or what had been waiting for her, and only
her, at the Ends of the World.  What was she missing?  _What had
been done to her_?
     
     Some time before the beginning of winter vacation, she found
herself skipping classes to visit different spots around the
school: the forest gate that would never again open to her, the
greenhouse where the unkept roses had begun to grow wild, the
kendo room, the music room, the fencing hall.  Those were all
explicable places for her to go.  Others were not: a fountain 
that she somehow knew she would have to see by night to get the
full effect, and a garden of red poppies that she'd never seemed
to notice before.  It wasn't as though she'd never skipped a 
class before, but there had always been Keiko and the others to
cover for her, to get the homework for her, to make excuses and
subtly remind any mere teacher of the kind of power that Kiryuu 
Nanami had; and now there was no one to do those things, and so 
it was unsurprising that a letter was sent home.
     
     They got Touga to talk to her, of course.  God forbid they
should do it themselves.  She could just imagine the 
conversation: she looks up to him so much, dear, he'd know
exactly what to say to her, and would you like another drink?

     "You have to get over this, Nanami," he'd said.  She had sat
in a chair by the window, and he had stood with his arms folded
near the door of her room.

     "I don't _have_ to do anything," she'd replied.  Not 
petulantly, not like a little girl, but with an acid bitterness
even more unsuitable.

     "No," Touga had agreed.  "You can simply keep on making
yourself unhappy, if you like.  No one can stop you doing that."

     She was glad that he no longer condescended to her when 
they spoke.  The pretenses of kindness were different now; not
any less hurtful, now that she knew the truth, but in the
difference was at least some acknowledgement of her changed
state.

     "I won't skip any more classes," she had said eventually,
and she did not; she did her wandering early in the morning, at
her lunch breaks, and at night.  When she returned to the
fountain, she had stood amidst the colonnades as though hiding
from the stars, puffed white fog into the chilling air, and 
simply stared at the desolation of the marble as though
expecting some revelation to emerge from within it.  Water to
flow in the winter, perhaps.

     "I'm sparring with Kyouichi tomorrow," Touga had offered by
way of farewell.  She had attended, as she always did, and 
calmly made them tea, because she knew that to see her so quiet
and submissive and sisterly made something crack in Touga; his
eyes would turn away from the match, sometimes, just for a 
moment.  And she would smile for him, and Kyouichi would score a
hit.  Kyouichi she cared for no more than he did for her; they
were beneath one another's notice.

     Something, despite what she had said to Miki, was wrong with
her.  Sometimes she would find herself smiling at the sight of 
the snow falling beyond her window, so white and clean and pure, 
or she would fall into humming cheerfully along with a song on 
the radio.  But then she would suddenly remember the room of the
stars and the dark, naked movements of their bodies, or the feel
of Touga's hands seizing her shoulders, and everything would draw 
inward again.  She would find tears threatening her eyes for no 
good reason in the middle of classes, and would have to excuse 
herself and hurry to the nearest washroom, where she would crouch
in a stall and sob as quietly as she could until it had passed.  
Each time when she returned to class, Keiko and Aiko and Yuuko 
would be smiling at each other; sometimes her pen would be 
missing, or there would be a folded note on her desk that she 
would simply tear to pieces without reading.  They thought they 
were hurting her, with their gossip behind her back and the 
rumours they spread, and she let them think so, because she 
simply did not care.  But it made her realize the true nature of 
the power she had once wielded, for there was no way to fight 
this beyond becoming a part of it, or not caring--and there were 
many who weren't strong enough not to care.
     
     They never, of course, tried to harm her physically again.
They had learned their lesson before, what she was capable of if
pushed to the edge; far more than the slaps and hair-pulling that
they thought a fight between girls ought to consist of.  She had
taken to exercising more than she ever had before: jogging in the
morning before school, doing aerobics before bed, sneaking up to
the school on the nights she couldn't sleep and running laps on
the track until her body ached.  She was in the best shape she
had ever been, and she had no idea why.
     
     It was like deep inside, some small mechanism of her 
heart had broken, a spring or cog or gear gone awry, and nothing 
would ever work quite right again.  But life went on.  One day 
passed after another, just as they had before when she'd been 
happy.  That was one of the most horrible things of all.

* * *

On the day before winter vacation began, she had a visitor:
Tsuwabuki Mitsuru, red-cheeked from the cold, bundled up in a
thick woolen overcoat and a heavy blue hat, hands lost in his
mittens.  Summoned cautiously by one of the maids, she met him in
the entrance hall of the house.

     "Would you like to stay for some tea?" she asked him
politely, wanting to let him know how glad she was to see him,
unable to find the proper way.

     "No thank you, Nanami-san," he replied, with a little
regret in it.  "I have a lot of things to get ready before I
leave for home.  I only came to give you this."  He held out a
small package to her, wrapped in silver paper, tied with a blue
ribbon.

     "A Christmas present?"  She smiled and took it from him.
     
     "Happy holidays," he said, and bowed, somewhat stiffly.  "I
will see you when the school year resumes."

     "Wait," she said.  "Let me open it in front of you, at
least."

     For some reason, he seemed eager to go, but paused and
nodded.  She opened it delicately, untying the ribbon and then
carefully pulling the tape away from the paper so that she could
unfold it in one single piece.  Within was a small black jewelry
box.  Her smile grew at Tsuwabuki's increasing embarrassment, as
she flicked the case open with her thumbnail and withdrew the
necklace from it: an amethyst stone, square-cut, on a silver
chain.

     "Thank you, Tsuwabuki-kun," she said.  "It's beautiful."

     "Kozue-san helped me pick it out," he said after a moment.
"It's almost exactly the same colour as your eyes, Nanami-san."

     She dangled the stone on the chain and let it catch the
light within its heart as it swayed.  "You're right.  It is."
She knelt down so that he was taller than her.  "Could you put it
on me, please?"
     
     Blushing furiously, he fumbled his hands out of his mittens,
and fastened it around her neck, fingers trembling as though he
feared to touch her skin as he lifted her hair out of the way.  
She straightened and adjusted it in the hallway mirror; it went 
nicely with the black sweater she was wearing.

     "Thank you," she said again, wishing she had something to
give him.  She stared at her smiling face in the mirror, at the
glitter of light in the stone, and suddenly a memory struck her:
watching from far away, concealed in the shadows of a tree, as
Tenjou Utena fastened on some new earrings, and they caught the 
sun as she moved her head.  

     Something must have changed in her expression, because
Tsuwabuki said, hesitantly, "Nanami-san..."

     She knelt down again, swiftly, and hugged him tightly to 
her, so that he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes.  "Thank you,"
she repeated, kissing him on the cheek.  "Happy holidays to you
too.  Take care of yourself."

     When he had left, blushing and smiling, she retreated to her
room, put the necklace away in the corner of a drawer, and 
muffled her sobs in one of her pillows until they were finally 
gone.

     Touga left the next day, heading up north to go camping with
Kyouichi.  She waved goodbye to him from the front door as he 
threw his bags and gear into the taxi, and departed for the train
station.  It was going to be just the two of them.  She wondered
vaguely if they were sleeping together, and, if so, how long they
had been.  Then she decided she did not care.

     One night later, she had a dream, simultaneously vivid and 
distant in the way that only dreams can be, of the two of them 
together, Touga and Kyouichi, a sweaty tangle of pale limbs and 
long hair, thrusting movements and sharp cries, thin lips and 
white teeth.  In the dream, it was not clear whether she was 
another participant, or merely an observer.  She woke up with a 
hot flush over her entire body, with one hand down between her 
thighs.  Shocked, frightened and ashamed, she crept furtively to 
the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face until the 
arousal left her; then, returning to her bed, she lay awake until 
dawn, watching the red numbers on her alarm clock slowly 
rearrange themselves as the night passed away.

* * *

A few nights before New Year's day, after dinner, she went for a 
walk in what amounted to the downtown.  It was warm enough, for
winter, and for once she almost didn't feel the cold at a time
when she wasn't running.  She bought a hot pastry from a street
vendor, and wandered around looking at storefronts while eating
it.  At an intersection, she saw three girls huddled together in
conversation; as she got closer, one of them turned her head, and
Nanami saw that it was Juri.
     
     "Hey, Nanami," Juri said.  She smiled and waved, and 
honestly did look pleased to see her.  "How are your holidays
going?"

     "All right," Nanami said, approaching closer.  The other two
girls turned, and she saw she knew both of them as well--Juri's
friend from the fencing team, the one who'd had the messy public
breakup with Tsuchiya-sempai, and Utena's ponytailed friend.  The
names came to her after a moment of thought: Takatsuki Shiori.
Shinohara Wakaba.

     Introductions were made all around.  Juri was friendly and
happy and more beautiful than Nanami had ever seen her, with her
hair let down in the back from its usual sausage curls.  Shiori 
seemed nice, if a little shy.  Wakaba was simply so cheerful and 
outgoing that it seemed to border on a kind of insanity, and 
Nanami wondered if she was hiding some horrible secret from 
everyone.  They exchanged meaningless pleasantries, an act which 
she found enjoyment in despite herself.  She did not ask why none 
of them had gone home for the holidays, even though she knew 
that they all lived in residence, and thus presumably had no 
family in town.
     
     A few moments after Shiori had made some quiet comment about
one of the high school teachers that made Juri laugh out loud,
and which Nanami didn't get (and she was pretty sure Wakaba
didn't get it either, even though she laughed anyway), Wakaba
nudged Juri in the ribs with her elbow and hissed sotto voce,
"Ask her", while winking at Nanami as though the two of them were
sharing some private joke.

     Nanami was amazed that anyone, even Wakaba, would dare to
nudge Juri in the ribs, and was more amazed when Juri simply
laughed again and asked, "Nanami, do you know how to bowl?"

     Wakaba piped up before Nanami could answer.  "Because it's 
our league night, you see, except my friend Toshiko's sick, and
she usually makes up our fourth, and it came up really 
unexpectedly; she called me just before I was getting ready to
leave to meet Juri-sempai and Shiori-sempai, so we don't have a
substitute arranged, and if we don't find somebody, we're just
going to have to forfeit whatever points she might get, so it's
almost as though God sent you to us, you see."

     "It would be very nice if you'd join us," Shiori added
softly.

     "I have never," Nanami declared, "been bowling in my entire
life."

     She found both her hands seized in both of Wakaba's.  
"That's okay!  We'll show you how--it's really easy.  You just
knock down the pins with the ball."  Wakaba looked briefly at
Juri and Shiori.  "That's cool, right, you two?  It's not like
we're going to find another substitute in the next five minutes."

     "It's fine," Juri said soothingly.  "Come on."
     
     The bowling alley was almost cavernous, full of the sound of
the heavy balls crashing into the wooden pins, and occasionally
a triumphant shout.  All eyes turned to Juri as she entered--it
was clear she was very well known here--and they were forced to
stop as people came up to give their greetings.  Wakaba pulled
her aside as Juri tried to say hello to everyone at once.

     "Don't look so nervous," she whispered.  "You get used to 
the noise pretty quick."

     "It's not that--"
     
     "Of course it is," Wakaba said, with something that would
have been a smirk had it not been so totally lacking in malice.
"You used to be the queen of the school, but you've been keeping
to yourself for months.  Rumour has it that it's because your big
brother did something terrible to you.  Which I can believe,
because he's a _total_ jerk, but..."

     Nanami wanted to tell her to shut up, but it would have been
far too much like kicking a puppy.  But Wakaba wasn't nearly as
airheaded as she seemed, and stopped of her own volition.

     "Listen," she said kindly, putting her arms around Nanami's
shoulders and leaning in close, "there's something you're going
to have to know right from the start if we're gonna be friends."

     Thankfully, everyone was paying attention to Juri, and none
at all to the little scene playing out between her and Wakaba.
Even though she had been keeping to herself, she was still well-
known around the school.

     "Why are we going to be friends?" Nanami asked dubiously,
almost automatically; then she wished she hadn't, because for a 
moment, Wakaba's disguise dropped away, and it was like watching
a living plant suddenly wither before her eyes.

     Then it was gone, and Wakaba was smiling again.  "You
shouldn't be so unfriendly, you know; I'm not going to bite you."
She snapped her teeth together playfully, and Nanami almost drew
back from her.  "Okay, it's like this.  I don't know when to back
off.  Never been any good at it.  So, if I'm ever going too far,
just shout at me, 'Wakaba!  Back off!', and I'll stop.  Okay?"

     "Okay," Nanami said slowly.
     
     "Great!  Let's get you some shoes."
     
     The bowling shoes were too tight, and squeaked.  Once she
had them on, Wakaba grabbed her by the hand and half-dragged her
towards the lane, where Juri and Shiori were talking to the other
team.
     
     "Okay, look," Wakaba said in a low voice as they approached,
"just throw hard and throw straight and don't worry about it.
Juri-sempai throws strikes every time, and I'm pretty good too,
and Shiori-sempai pulls her weight the best she can, and the
other team will all be distracted half the time by looking at
Juri-sempai anyway, so we're gonna kick their butts.  You got 
that?"

     "Yes," Nanami said, by now running on automatic pilot.
     
     "Great!" Wakaba enthused.  "Since you don't have a ball, you
can use mine.  It's lucky."

     Nanami soon discovered she was a horrible bowler.  She had
no idea how Wakaba, who didn't look any stronger than her, could
throw the ball one-handed so accurately and so powerfully.  
Perhaps it simply came with practice.  It was difficult to keep
from getting frustrated, but by the end of the first game, she
had some feeling she was getting the hang of it.
     
     Juri bowled exactly as Nanami had expected her to: 
precisely, perfectly, almost mechanically, without a single
wasted motion.  When it was her turn, she simply got up, threw
her ball, and knocked all the pins down.  Then she did it again.
Then she did it one more time.  Then she sat down, took one 
single delicate sip from her can of iced tea, and went back to
talking to Shiori or Wakaba, occasionally politely paying
attention to Nanami.

     Wakaba, who got a perfect frame nearly as often as Juri did,
was completely different.  She yelled at her ball to change
directions if it looked as though it were going to gutter, and at
one point dropped to her knees and prayed for the final wobbling
pin to topple (it did).  Wakaba, Nanami realized, was the kind of
person you either adored, or wanted nothing to do with, and she
wasn't yet sure which it was for her.

     Shiori was slightly better than mediocre, but seemed to be
having fun, and just shook her head and smiled every time she
missed a spare, or the few times her ball went into the gutter
without hitting any pins.  Once, Nanami saw her watching Juri in
the aftermath of another perfect frame, arm still upraised from
hurling her third ball, and there was something small and angry
and envious in her eyes.  Then Wakaba said something to her, too
quietly for Nanami to hear, and Shiori laughed and the look in
her eyes went away.
     
     The other team was good, but didn't have anyone who could
match Juri or Wakaba, which made up for Nanami's total 
incompetence.  
     
     "Told you we'd kick their butts," Wakaba said, after the
other team had said their goodbyes, packed up, and left.  "We
always stick around and bowl a few more games just for fun.  You
wanna?"

     "All right," Nanami said after a moment.  She felt happy,
suddenly; different from the kind of happiness she'd known 
before, when she'd had her vicious circle and all her power, but
happy all the same.  And she hadn't felt like that in a long
time.  Perhaps it was simply the alien setting.  A noisy bowling
alley was almost the antithesis to the sedate funereal elegance
of Ohtori.
     
     Even the thought was almost enough, though, and she 
remembered that she'd tried to transfer schools.  Had filled out
the paperwork and sent it in.  And it hadn't worked.  If she
tried it again, would it work?  Would she be allowed to leave?

     "Nanami?  Hey, wake up; it's your turn."
     
     She got up and threw a strike without thinking, her first 
one of the night.  Wakaba cheered.  Juri and Shiori 
congratulated her.  A spare resulted from her next two throws.  
She sat down almost glowing with pride, and Wakaba got up to 
take her turn.

     Quite suddenly, she realized that Juri had her arm around
Shiori, very casually, and that Shiori was leaning her head
against Juri's shoulder, looking comfortable and contented as a
bird in a nest.
     
     "Yes?" Juri asked.  Nanami realized she'd been staring, and
looked away.

     "Nothing," she said.  "Thank you for inviting me to this,
Juri-sempai.  I had a very nice time."  She stood up and gave a
perfunctory glance to her watch.  "But it's late, and I really
should be getting home."

     "It was nice to meet you," Shiori murmured.  She looked
sleepy.

     Wakaba came back towards their seats muttering something
about her ball being possibly defective--she'd missed picking up
the spare--and blinked at Nanami.  "Going already?"

     Nanami nodded.  "It's late."  She avoided looking at Juri
and Shiori for fear she might start staring again.     
     
     "Okay," Wakaba said brightly, "beauty rest.  Gotcha.  I'll
walk you out."

     They stood in the lobby of the bowling alley together as
Nanami put on her coat and hat and mittens.  Snow had begun to 
fall again while they bowled, visible through the glass-fronted
doors.

     "Goodbye, Shinohara-san," she said, feeling uncomfortable;
falling snow suddenly resembled falling rose petals.  She wanted
suddenly to hurry home and lock the door to her room and turn the
lights out.  "It was a pleasure to meet you."

     Wakaba smiled.  "You're going to come bowling again with us,
right?"
     
     "Well, I expect your friend will be better again the next
time, so..."

     Wakaba shook her head.  "Uh-uh.  You don't get out that
easily.  We go bowling all the time, not just for the league.
Heck, sometimes I go by myself."  She nudged Nanami in the ribs.
"We could go together, just the two of us; I could show you how
to it properly."

     She couldn't contain it any longer.  "Why are you being so
nice to me?" she snapped.     
     
     Wakaba flinched as though struck, and looked briefly as if 
she wanted to snap something back; then her expression softened.
"Why do I need a reason?" she asked after a moment.

     Nanami had nothing to say in reply to that.
     
     Wakaba shook her head.  "You're not used to people being
nice to you just because they want to be, are you?"     
     
     "I guess not," Nanami replied quietly, looking away.  I wish
I could vanish into the falling snow, she thought; I wish I could
go away from here forever, and no one at all would miss me or
realize I was gone.
     
     "That's sad," Wakaba said simply, and then she suddenly
hugged her.  Nanami had no idea what to do; the touch left her
paralyzed.  Wakaba was far too inclined to physical gestures for
her comfort.  Was she like Juri and Shiori?  Did she...?

     She closed her eyes and waited, prayed, for it to end.  The
soft warm body against hers.  The arms around her.  At last, it 
did, but Wakaba wouldn't let her go; she simply retreated to 
arm's length with her hands still on Nanami's shoulders and her 
head cocked to the side to study her.

     "Why did you do that?" Nanami whispered.
     
     "Thought you could use it," Wakaba said.  Then she sighed.
"But it didn't do you any good, did it?"     
     
     "I really do have to go," Nanami said, almost with
desperation.

     "Do you want to talk about this?" Wakaba said slowly,
looking uncomfortable as she dropped her hands to her sides.  "I
mean, whatever this is.  I can tell it's something, but..."

     "No," Nanami said quickly.  "Thank you.  No thank you.  I--"
     
     "You sure?"
     
     "Yes."
     
     Wakaba grinned.  "You really sure?"  She raised her hands 
and flexed her fingers.  "I could try tickling it out of you..."

     "Back off!" Nanami snapped.
     
     "Okay," Wakaba said instantly, grin vanishing.  "Bye,
Nanami.  I guess you should go now."     
     
     Nanami nodded, and headed for the doors.  Then she stopped
as she grabbed the handle.  "You were Tenjou Utena's good 
friend, weren't you?" 
     
     Wakaba took a while to answer.  "I thought so," she said.
"But when she left, she didn't even say goodbye to me, or call 
me, or even write me a letter.  So maybe I was wrong."
     
     "Do you know where she went?"
     
     Wakaba shook her head.  "No one can give me a straight 
story," she said sadly.  "I tried, you know.  I tried to find out
where she went... but then I just gave up.  There's a time you
have to move on, you know.  And wherever she did go... well, 
since she didn't tell me where it was, I guess I wasn't a very
important part of her life.  I was just on the edge of it."
     
     I know what that feels like, Nanami thought.  To realize
you've always been on the edge, after spending so many years 
thinking you're in the centre, or at least that you ought to be
in the centre.  

     But all she could say was, "Goodbye"; Wakaba said the same
back to her, and there they parted.
     
* * *

"Who is it?" the voice from the speaker asked.

     "Kiryuu Nanami."  She paused to await a response, but there
was none.  "I want to talk to you," she added.    
     
     After a moment, the elevator doors opened, and she stepped
inside.  The ride seemed to take much longer than she remembered
from the last time she'd been here, but the room with the
planetarium projector, where she ended up, was exactly the same.

     The Ends of the World was sitting at his desk, doing
paperwork and looking decidedly non-menacing.  He indicated the
chair in front of the desk with a wave of his hand.  "Have a 
seat," he offered pleasantly.

     "I'll stand," she said.
     
     "As you will," he said complacently.  "It's not my way to
make a lady do anything against her will."  He smiled as she
scowled at him.  "How can I help you today, Kiryuu Nanami-kun?"

     "I want to know where she is," Nanami said bluntly.
     
     Akio pursed his lips and signed a looping signature on the
bottom line of a requisition form.  "Where who is?"

     "Don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about!" she
snapped, taking a single step towards the desk.

     He looked up.  "It's merely that you need to narrow the
possibilities a little," he said calmly.  "By 'she', you see, you
could mean either my sister or Tenjou Utena."

     "Your sister?" she said, suddenly startled; she hadn't given
much thought to Himemiya Anthy, to the Rose Bride, in months.
Then she laughed, and it was her old laugh, to her delight and 
her pain.  "I don't want anything to do with that weirdo.  Just 
tell me where Tenjou Utena is."
     
     Akio took a piece of paper from a drawer in the desk, wrote
something on it, folded it in half, then in half again, and slid
it across to the far edge of the desk.

     "What is that?" Nanami asked, approaching cautiously and
picking it up.

     "It's an address," he said quietly.
     
     She glared at him.  "Don't think I'm that stupid," she 
hissed.  "You wouldn't make it that easy."

     "Then don't go," he said with a shrug.  "Either way, please
leave my office.  I have paperwork to attend to."

     "You--"
     
     He rose up from behind his desk, towering over her, and
suddenly she remembered the sight of him on the couch with his
shirt open, and his dark hands on the wheel of the red car, and
the touch of Touga's lips on hers; and his eyes raked up the 
dream of Touga and Kyouichi from where she'd hidden it and fed it
back to her, purified, and her skin was suffused with fire.

     "You can stay," he said, and his tones were smooth and
silken, "if you wish.  But I am going to watch the stars soon, and 
if you are going to stay, you will have to watch them with me.  
Do you want to do that?"  His skin seemed suddenly to be 
stretched far more tightly over the skull beneath.  "We could go
for a drive afterwards," he offered.  "You could ride in the 
passenger seat.  Beside me.  It's very different from riding in 
the back."

     "No," she said firmly, and the world broke apart at it.  The
Ends of the World quietly sat down again, and picked up his pen.

     "You understand, then," he said cryptically.  And he smiled,
softer and more gentle than before, almost kindly.

     "No," she said.  "I don't understand at all."  She turned 
and stalked away towards the elevator, whose doors were still
open, as though it had known to wait for her.
     
     "Kiryuu Nanami-kun," he called, as she stepped inside.  And
she turned back.  God help her, but she turned back.  Akio had
stood up from behind his desk again, and, with his back to her,
was staring up at his planetarium projector.
     
     "The Ends of the World is, at the same time, a person and a
place and a state of being and a state of mind," he said quietly,
more to himself than to her.  

     "And which of those are you?" she asked coldly.
     
     He looked back at her, and his smile was tired, so tired;
suddenly, she understood, with perfect clarity, with a sharp
pain like a knife-blade in her breast, that whatever he might be
now, whatever he might be for now and perhaps forevermore, he had 
once been something beautiful and good, and she mourned for him 
with the grief one might feel looking upon an ancient statue from
thousands of years ago.  The broken limbs, the long-vanished 
head, the weathered and rain-pitted stone.  There was no 
restoration possible, for such a thing; all that remained was a
reminiscence of past wholeness.

     "All of them, of course," he said, and the elevator doors
closed on her, as the motor of his star-machine began to hum, as
the windows began to close.

* * *

What surprised her was how close it was.  Only a few towns over.
The train ride took no more than forty minutes.  At one point, 
they passed through a tunnel in the hillside, and she watched the 
dark walls passing by beyond her window with a fascination she 
could not account for.  She asked directions from the ticket 
agent at the station, and found the address to be within walking 
distance.  It was a small brownstone apartment building at least 
three decades old which had obviously seen better days, but only
relative to its present state.
     
     The address had not provided her with anything more than the
building number, and for a moment she was gripped with doubt.  
The apartment would be under an assumed name, and she would have
no way of knowing which one it was, and since she certainly
couldn't go around checking every single person who lived in the
building, it would probably be better to just turn and around and
leave now.
     
     She stepped into the lobby and looked at the directory 
beside the mailboxes.  As she'd expected, there was no Tenjou 
Utena listed.  But there was a Himemiya Anthy who lived on the
first floor; as she should have expected, but had not, probably 
due more to wishful thinking and willful blindness than anything
else.  Where else would the Rose Bride have gone when she left, 
except after Utena, after her saviour, her protector, her victim?

     Or perhaps (now her fear and doubt latched onto a different
possibility) this had been the joke of the Ends of the World all
along, to send her into the jaws of his sister, which would then
close upon her and devour her--she knew this in an absolute 
sense, in the way that she knew one and one made two.  No one
else had ever seen it, except perhaps Kyouichi, a little, and it 
was what had made his love for her so twisted.  The hate.  The
malice.  The alien thing in the eyes behind those glasses, 
staring out at the world as though through a succession of veils.
Utena had seen it least of all.  Poor Utena, she thought.  There
was a mixture of contempt and real pain in her thoughts as she 
considered the girl who'd wanted to be a prince.  I tried to warn
you, and you just didn't listen to me; you went on wearing your
blinders and playing prince, and where did it get you?  It's not
my fault you didn't know how to listen, how to read between the
lines.
     
     It would, she decided, probably be best if she simply left
right now.  Even if Utena was here, Himemiya was as well, and 
she couldn't handle the two of them together.  She remembered
their bedroom in the tower; the joined beds in which they'd
nightly stared at each other.  And done more?  The thought made
her shudder as though with sudden cold; it was dirty, and it made
her think of the room of the stars.  But there had been no stars
that night, had there?  Only the naked expanses of skin and the 
red dress sliding to the floor.  The Rose Bride's cold, dead 
eyes, and her hair down to her ankles as she stood like a blot of
woman-shaped darkness in the dim light.  Best to go; what right, 
what reason, did she have to intrude into their new lives?
     
     She pressed the intercom button and keyed in the number for
the apartment.  There were two rings, muffled--the intercom, like
the rest of the building, was in poor shape--and then someone 
picked up.  "Hello?"

     Himemiya Anthy.  Hearing the voice again didn't produce much
effect in her.  What was there--certainly not fear or doubt--that
it could cause that wasn't already present?  Instead, she found 
her voice suddenly calm, as though she were her old  self again, 
putting on a mask that went deeper than skin-deep.

     "It's Kiryuu Nanami," she said.  "Is Tenjou Utena there?"
     
     "Yes, she is."  Anthy's voice was devoid of any audible
emotion.     
     
     There was a brief silence, and then Nanami said, "I want to
see her."     
     
     There was no answer but the click of the phone being hung up
on the other end.  Nanami suddenly found herself angry in a way
she hadn't been in months, and was pulling back her finger to 
stab the keypad again when the door to the hallway buzzed to
indicate it had been unlocked.  She took two long steps and 
pulled it open as quickly as possible, hurried down the hallway,
and turned left at the elevators.  The apartment was at the end
of the hall.  As she raised her hand to knock, the door opened,
and Himemiya was on the other side, hair down, glasses off,
dressed in a white sweater and dark grey slacks; it was as though
she'd reached some middle state between the quiet, demure 
malevolence of the schoolgirl and the naked, violated power of 
the woman in the room of the stars.
     
     "Nanami-san," she said, with the same polite, submissive 
tone with which she'd said everything at Ohtori, "how nice to 
see you again."  And she smiled.  It was the same smile she'd 
had while wielding the long toothed length of the ice saw, and, 
as before, it made Nanami's skin crawl.  

     "Don't play games with me," Nanami snapped.  Past Anthy, she
could see that the apartment was small, but far less shabby than
the rest of the building; it reminded her of the dorm room the
two had shared at the East Hall, with a place for everything and
everything in its place.  She wondered where the animals were
hiding, and how many.  She glared at a point about six inches to
the left of Anthy's head.  "Where is she?"
     
     After feeling nothing at Anthy's voice, Nanami hadn't 
expected to feel anything at Utena's, either, but when Utena
called out, "Anthy, who's at the door?", she felt something let
go inside her, like a knot being untied or a very small dam
breaking; it was terrible in its ambiguity, evoking every moment
she'd ever spent with Utena in one single rush that broke upon
her so hard that she had to fight desperately not to fall into
yet another spell of inexplicable crying.

     Anthy's smile changed subtly but profoundly at the sound of
Utena's voice; it lost all malice, all otherness, and became warm
and human.  It was as though Nanami no longer existed in her
sight.  "Come and see, Utena."  She stepped back and pulled the
door wider.  "Please come in, Nanami-san," she said in an
undertone.

     Nanami took a single step inside and simply stood there,
uncertain whether or not she had the right to slip her boots
off onto the rubber mat and slip her feet into one of the pairs
of guest slippers nearby; she wasn't even sure if she wanted that
right.  But she would have liked to take off her coat, which hung
on her too hot and too heavy now that she'd been inside for some
time.

     Anthy solved the problem for her by extending her arms to
receive the coat and indicating the slippers with a brief nod of
her head.  Nanami was handing her coat over as Utena came in from
the adjoining bathroom, dressed in an ankle-length, long-sleeved, 
dark blue robe, head bent to towel her hair.  She looked up at 
them, and her bright blue eyes widened slightly before a broad, 
friendly smile graced her face.  

     "Hey, Nanami," she said, quietly, sounding almost shy.  
"Wow."  She laughed.  "Talk about unexpected."

     "Tenjou Utena," Nanami said shortly.  "I..."  She trailed
away, suddenly realizing for the first time that she had no idea
what she wanted to say, no idea how she would say it if she knew,
and, in truth, no real idea of why she'd even come here, or had
the courage to face the Ends of the World in order to do so.
     
     "I will make us some tea," Anthy said primly, and walked
away towards the tiny semi-detached kitchen as Nanami, after a
moment of hesitation, pulled off her boots and put on guest 
slippers.

     Utena approached slowly, giving one last hard buffeting with
the towel to her hair as she did; when she pulled the towel away
and hung it over her arm, Nanami saw that her hair had been
cut to about the same length as Miki or Tsuwabuki's.  Uncombed 
and damp from the recent shower, it stood up in places in stiff
pink spikes.

     "You cut your hair," she said, glad of finally having
something to say, cursing the vapid stupidity of the comment even
as she made it.

     Something went out of Utena's smile, though it remained just
as broad, and she ran her free hand through her hair, failing
utterly to put it into any kind of order.  "It got cut for me,"
she said softly.  Nanami got the impression that she had just
said something terribly hurtful, but had no idea why.

     "It suits you," she added after a moment, softly.  Then, 
hurriedly, in compensation: "I mean, a tomboy's haircut for a 
tomboy, right?"  And she laughed, hating herself for doing so, 
doing so all the same.

     Utena just looked at her for a moment.  There was a profound 
and utter silence between them.  Nanami could hear water running
in the kitchen, and Anthy humming softly in accompaniment to it
as she made tea.
     
     Utena, finally, blessedly, laughed and shook her head.  "You
haven't changed, have you?"     
     
     Nanami just looked away for her, wanting to tell her that 
she had changed, but not knowing how to make it seem like 
anything more than an empty denial after how she'd behaved so
far.

     Utena balled the towel and tossed it like a basketball back
into the bathroom, then gestured towards the biggest piece of
furniture in the apartment's front room, a large and rather
battered couch.  "Have a seat," she offered.
     
     "Thank you," Nanami said, and sat down at one end.  
"Comfortable."

     Utena sat down at the other end, picked up a hairbrush from
the nearby side table, and began to brush her hair.  Nanami 
folded her hands in her lap and stared at them.  Utena seemed to
be waiting for her to say something; which was perfectly fair, of
course, because she was the one who'd come visiting.
     
     Perhaps a minute passed like that, with Utena brushing her
hair and Nanami gazing intently at her hands.  Then Anthy came in     
with teapot and teacups on a tray, with her strange pet perched
on the edge of it as he chewed on a cracker.  She put it down on
the coffee table before the couch, then sat down in a high-backed
chair near Utena and began to pour in silence.

     "So how is everything?" Utena asked finally.
     
     Nanami laced her fingers together and flexed them.  "The
same.  Different.  I'm not really sure what to say.  It all goes
on like it did while you two were there, and at the same time, it
doesn't."  She grasped for more to say.  "Your friend Wakaba is
friends with Juri-sempai now.  They go bowling together."
     
     Utena's face quirked into an expression of amused disbelief.
"Juri-sempai bowls?"  She snickered.  "That doesn't seem at all
like her."

     "She does it very elegantly," Nanami said, a little stiffly.
     
     Utena laughed again, then sobered a little.  "I'm glad to
hear Wakaba's doing all right."

     "She misses you, you know," Nanami said.  "A lot."  Almost
unconsciously, she accepted the white cup of green tea that Anthy
passed to her.  

     "I miss her too," Utena said after a moment, quietly and
sadly.  "I miss--"

     The breaking of porcelain interrupted her.
     
     "Naughty Chu-Chu," Anthy chided, shaking her finger at her
shamefaced pet.  "Knocking your tea onto the floor like that.  Be
more careful."

     "Chu," said the creature, looking embarassed.
     
     Anthy began to rise, but Utena put down the hairbrush and
stopped her with a raised hand.  "I'll clean it up.  You had to 
go shopping anyway, didn't you?"

     Anthy nodded, then looked to Nanami.  "But we have a guest
now--"

     "Oh, that's quite all right," Nanami interrupted laughingly.
"Go ahead and do your shopping.  I won't be at all offended.  
Please don't let me get in your way..."
     
     "Well," Anthy said, blinking, "if you insist..."
     
     "Oh, it's not that I insist, not at all, it's just that I
really don't want to be a bother, after I dropped in like this
without even calling ahead..."  Anthy was, to her relief, already
at the door and pulling on her coat, and Utena had gone into the
kitchen to get something to mop up the spilled tea with.
     
     "Well," Anthy said, opening the door, "it was pleasant to 
see you again, Nanami-san.  Perhaps you'll still be here by the
time I get back."  Her tone made it quite clear to Nanami that
this was a statement of fact, not an expressed wish.
     
     "It was so nice to see you again too, Anthy-san," Nanami
lied.  

     "Don't forget to take Chu-Chu with you," Utena called as she
came back in with a wad of paper towels.  "You know how much he 
likes going to the market."
     
     "Of course," Anthy said, heading back and picking up her
pet.  "How silly of me."

     "Chu," said Chu-Chu, nestling into the crook of his owner's
shoulder and giving Nanami a speculative look, as though she were
something he might possibly be able to eat.
     
     "Goodbye."
     
     "Goodbye."
     
     "Bye."
     
     "Well," Utena said, turning to Nanami once Anthy was gone as
she mopped up spilled tea and put porcelain shards into the 
saucer the broken cup had formerly rested upon, "there goes some
of the tension, huh?"
     
     "I don't know what you're talking about."
     
     Utena finished soaking up the tea, stood, wadded the sodden
paper towels into a ball, and tossed them in the direction of the
kitchen, presumably towards a wastebasket Nanami couldn't see.
"Don't worry about it.  You wanted her to go, she wanted to go,
but both of you had to play polite and demure ladies together,
so..."  She laughed and began to walk around the coffee table to
get back to her side of the couch, then suddenly cried out in 
pain.

     Nanami half-rose, startled.  "Utena, what--"
     
     "Didn't get all the shards," Utena said with a grimace,
hobbling over to the couch and sitting down.  "My right foot
found one of the ones I didn't.  Ow."  She awkwardly pulled her 
right leg up into her lap, and began to gingerly probe the sole
of her foot with her fingers.  Nanami could see blood beading
like a small red jewel; her gaze followed naturally from there up
to the expanse of leg that Utena had exposed when the motion of
her leg hiked her robe up.  What she saw made her frown and look
closer; Utena's leg was covered in scars, very faint but clear if 
one looked carefully.  Each was no longer than her little 
finger's last joint, but there were dozens of them even on the 
small expanse of skin she could see, crosshatched in a 
frighteningly even pattern like some sort of ritual tattooing.
     
     "It's really in there," Utena muttered in a pained voice,
and Nanami started and pulled her hand back.  Without realizing
it, she'd been reaching out, as though to touch the scars.  "And
the light's no good at this angle..."

     "I can take it out for you," Nanami said after a moment.

     Utena looked up, attention broken from the shard in her 
foot, and blinked.  "Yeah, sure, thanks."  She stretched out her
leg and propped her heel on Nanami's left knee.  "So, how are
things at Ohtori?"

     Nanami carefully took hold of Utena's foot by the instep 
with one hand and brought her other to the sole.  The contrast
of texture was remarkable; the sole hard and calloused, the 
instep soft and smooth.  The blood was running in an almost
alarming amount, making it hard for her to see more than the 
small pale point of the porcelain shard.  "The same.  Different.
Like I said.  Everyone is..."  Frowning, she trailed off, and
squinted her eyes.  "There!"  She pinched the shard between two
of her nails and drew it out.  "Got it."  Slightly nauseated by
all the blood, she tossed the shard into the saucer with the
others, and looked about in futility for something to wipe her
hands on.

     "Funny how such a little thing can hurt so much," Utena 
said, looking at the shard.  "Better go wash our hands.  And put
some disinfectant on this."
     
     The bathroom was small, and the little sink was rather
cramped with the two of them washing their hands at the same
time.  The water ran red briefly, and then clear again; Utena
sat down on the edge of the toilet seat, and Nanami knelt, dabbed
disinfectant on the wound, then put an adhesive bandage over it.
     
     "You're acting rather motherly towards me, aren't you?" 
Utena said with a faint smile, looking down at her.

     "If you'd have just been careful, I wouldn't have to," 
Nanami retorted, but without any real anger in it.  It gave her a 
warm glow to do something like this, she realized; it made her 
feel happy in a way she never did otherwise.  Not the kind of 
hard, brittle, sharp-edged happiness that came from a cutting 
insult or a plan gone exactly right, but something far more 
gentle, lasting; a better kind of happiness.  The only person 
she'd ever been able to approach this feeling with before had 
been Touga.  "If you'd just--"

     And, quite suddenly, everything was bad again, as the red 
car and the darkness and Touga's lips came brutally rushing back
to her; and she drew away from Utena as though burned, rose, and
stalked quickly out of the bathroom before any of what she felt
could be seen on her face.

     Halfway to the couch, she found her arm seized from behind,
painlessly but inescapably.

     "If I'd just what?" Utena asked quietly, from behind her.
     
     For a moment, she considered breaking away--trying, at
least--pulling on her boots and coat, and just getting out.  It
would be more terrible to break down in front of Utena than
anyone else, because there would be only kindness here, and she
didn't think she could bear that.  Kindness would somehow make
all of it so much worse.  Then she simply found herself going
limp, as though she were about to faint, and Utena caught her
and half-carried her to the couch.
     
     "If I'd listened to you, yes?"  Utena half-shoved her down 
on the middle cushion, then sat down beside her.  "Did you come 
all this way, just to tell me that?"  For the first time since 
she'd arrived, there was real pain in Utena's voice, a raw, 
hidden thing that was hurtful to hear.  "Well, maybe you're 
right."  She still hadn't let her arm go; if anything, her grip 
had tightened.  "Or maybe you should have just said, 'Hey, Utena, 
I saw Akio raping his sister, and maybe you ought to do something
about it.'"

     Unable to contain it any longer, with nowhere to run fast
enough, Nanami broke down and began to cry, very quietly, the way
she had always cried when the tears were genuine.  Utena's 
fingers were so tight around her arm that they were going to 
leave marks, and then they were gone.

     "I'm sorry," Utena said awkwardly.  "I--"

     Nanami didn't look at her, and simply kept on crying, 
because now that it had begun, now that Utena had seen her weak,
the damage was done.  Best to get it all done with as quickly as
possible, then go.
     
     After a moment, Utena put an arm around her, the same arm 
with which she'd earlier gripped her so painfully tightly.
Nanami stiffened at the contact, despising the touch and 
appreciating it at the same time.  She sighed and put her head on
Utena's shoulder, and a very distant memory came to her, of just
after Touga had lost the kitten she'd given him.  How he'd found
her crying by herself, huddled in the shadow of one of the 
pillars of the back portico.  "You miss him too," was all he'd
said, and then he'd just sat down beside her and let her cry
against his shoulder.  He hadn't cried at all.  She couldn't ever
remember Touga crying, even in times he'd hurt himself when he
was very young.
     
     Somehow, that memory didn't make everything that was good in
this turn terrible; it simply was, the past coming to mind in 
parallel and contrast to the present, then passing away again.

     "Better now?" Utena asked gently, when her crying had 
dissolved into mere sniffles.  She made no effort to push Nanami
away, or move away herself, as though she would have been content
to remain this way forever.

     "Utena?" Nanami murmured into her shoulder.

     "Yeah?"
     
     "Want to hear the worst thing I ever did?"
     
     A long silence.
     
     "If you want to tell me," Utena said finally.
     
     "My brother told you how I found him a kitten for his 
birthday once, and how it disappeared, right?"     
     
     "Yes, he did," Utena said.  "A long time ago."
     
     "Things don't just disappear for no reason," Nanami said
softly.   Utena's scent was clean skin and good plain soap and 
mild herbal shampoo.  "I got jealous of all the time he spent
with it.  More time than he spent with me, it seemed.  If I'd
just thought about it, I would have realized it was because it 
was new, and if I waited, he would... but I didn't.  So I took it
and I put it in a box and I taped the box up and I took it to the
canal, to the place where the water rushes down like a little
waterfall..."

     She trailed away, thinking, now is where Utena will push me
away.  Now she'll see what kind of person I really am.

     "How old were you?" Utena asked softly.
     
     "I don't even remember," she answered after a moment.  "Six,
maybe five.  Maybe younger.  It seems as though it were a 
thousand years ago, some days, and other days as though it were
just yesterday."
     
     "Do you think about it a lot?"
     
     "Not a lot, these days."
     
     They sat together silently for a long time, and then Utena
spoke.  "Why'd you come here, Nanami?"
     
     "I'm not even really sure," she whispered, pulling her legs
up onto the couch and nestling against Utena like one jigsaw
puzzle piece against another, as she'd used to do when she 
watched TV on the couch with Touga, in the days when they'd still
done that kind of thing together.  "To make sure you were real.
That you'd existed.  That you'd annoyed me and fought with me and
made me forget myself when I talked to you.  There was some 
reason I couldn't just move on like everyone else was, and you're
it, and I don't understand why."

     Utena smiled faintly and moved her head so that it was 
resting atop Nanami's as it rested in the crook of her shoulder.
"You're the last one I expected.  Miki or Saionji, looking for
Anthy.  Touga, looking for me.  Even Juri before you.  But..."

     "He knows where you live, you know," Nanami said quietly.
"He's the one who gave me the address." 
     
     "I know," Utena said after a moment.  "He and Anthy write
each other letters.  Every few days, one comes for her from 
Ohtori, and she goes into the bedroom by herself and writes one
back, and then goes out and mails it as soon as she's done."

     Nanami closed her eyes and took a deep breath.  "What do
they say to each other?" she asked finally.

     "I don't know," Utena said.  She absently twined one strand
of Nanami's hair around a finger.  "I can't even imagine what
they could possibly say to each other.  I haven't asked Anthy.
I haven't read one."

     "Do you know where she keeps them?  Her letters from him, I
mean."
     
     "In one of the desk drawers, I think."
     
     "Then why haven't you--"  She stopped, laughed.  "Why am I
even asking?  Because you're you."

     "I think..."  Utena struggled in silence for a moment to
find the right words.  "How did he seem, when you talked to him?"
     
     "Different than he was," Nanami murmured.  "Exactly the
same."

     "Her leaving him was probably the best thing that could ever
happen to him.  That's what she said to me, after she found me.
I was in a hospital in this town.  I was hurt pretty bad, after
the final duel, and everything was sort of hazy in my memory.  
She helped me find myself again."  

     "It wasn't rape, you know."
     
     Utena started in the unison of their embrace, and for a 
moment Nanami feared she would draw away.  "Then what was it?"

     "Something worse..."  Nanami paused, struggling now herself
to find the proper way to say it.  "It was as though she didn't
want it and she could have stopped him at any time, because she
was the one who had all the power, but she was going to let him
do it to her anyway, as though to prove some kind of point; and
he didn't want to do it to her and could have stopped himself,
but he was going to do it to her because she was going to let 
him, and... it was so _dirty_.  It was the worst thing I've ever
seen.  I'd rather die."

     "Than what?" Utena asked quietly.  Breath against
Nanami's ear.  Hand cupping the side of Nanami's face.  

     "It's all like that, isn't it?" she whispered, closing her
eyes and shivering at the touch.  "In the end, all of it's just
like that.  Horrible.  So horrible."
     
     "No, it isn't," Utena said, sounding stricken, as though
Nanami had said something blasphemous.  "It's..."

     Suddenly Utena kissed her, and it seemed the most natural 
thing in the world to happen, something inevitable as gravity or 
entropy.  Utena's hands were touching her in the way that 
Touga's had in the back of the car; on her shoulders, moving down 
her arms with gentle strokes, and then fingers and thumbs 
splaying out as they touched the upper swell of her breasts to 
run five separate trails down each one.  But Touga's hands had
been rough and fast and harsh; there had been nothing gentle in
them.  They had seized, rather than caressed; an act of 
possession, not one of worship.  These made her feel beautiful, 
the touches, as though each stroke were stripping away a little 
of the layers of her shell to let something brighter shine 
through.
     
     Utena's lips parted slightly against Nanami's, and, in 
response, like the image in a looking-glass--just like that, she 
thought vaguely, exactly like that, we could never get along 
because we're far too much alike--she parted hers, and now there 
was a hunger in the kisses they exchanged.  Utena's hands were 
still on her breasts, molding now rather than stroking, 
spreading a pleasant heat centered on each of her nipples that 
slowly spread out through her entire body.  In between kisses 
Utena was saying things in short, hurried snatches of breath: 
you're beautiful, Nanami, I love you.  Her voice was so sweet, 
so sincere, that it was almost believable.

     Nanami pulled away with a cry, wrapping her arms around
herself and putting her back to Utena.  "Don't," she whimpered.

     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Utena reach out a hand
for her, then draw it back.  The pink flush in her cheeks became
a deep red blush of embarassment.  "I'm sorry," she mumbled, 
casting her eyes down, "I really am, Nanami, I just thought you... 
I mean--"

     "Don't say you love me."  Suddenly she felt as though she
might cry again.

     "But I do," Utena said quietly.  "I love all of you.  You,
Touga, Miki, Juri-sempai... even Saionji.  You..."  Her forearms
fell upon Nanami's shoulders from behind in a kind of loose,
hesitant embrace; with her left hand, she pulled the right sleeve
of her robe up to her elbow, and Nanami saw that the crisscrossed
scars were there, too, cut off very precisely at the wrist.  "You
know how I got these?"

     "No."
     
     "I got sliced to pieces at the end of the final duel.  It's
hard to explain.  That's a part that's still really jumbled, and
Anthy doesn't like to talk about it.  But there were all these
swords, flying, tearing everything to pieces.  The Duelling
Arena, the stairway, the forest, me... and at first it hurt, it
hurt more than anything in the world, but then... then it got to
be as though I went through the pain and out onto the other side,
it felt so _good_, you know, in the way a really hot shower feels
good even though it's a little painful... and it was as though
each time they pierced me, a little tiny sun was being born 
inside me and shining for billions of years and then going out,
all instantaneously, over and over again."  

     "Do they hurt?" Nanami whispered, staring at the even,
patterned rows with an almost hypnotic fascination.
     
     "Sometimes," Utena murmured distantly.  "Sometimes, it's 
like my whole body is on fire, like I'm feeling the swords all 
over again.  Sometimes I have nightmares.  But... you know, I 
reached a point where it was as though I understood everything.  
Where I understood everyone, where I _was_ everyone, and I saw 
them, not as they are or how they think they want to be, but as 
who they _could_ be, if everything had gone just right for them, 
if every event in their life had just been designed to push them 
towards being beautiful and good... and it's as though..."  

     Words, Nanami realized, were entirely inadequate for what
Utena was trying to convey.  Nothing could possibly be adequate
to communicate this.  But she was trying her best, trying to give
her some idea, as a shadowed flame in a mirror can give some idea
of a flame's full brightness.
     
     "There's a story about a bunch of people chained in a cave,
you know, in the dark cave, watching shadows pass across the
walls by flickering torchlight, and they never know that there's
this whole bright world outside, full of sun and sky... and it's
like _everyone_, everyone is like that, you and me and Touga and
Juri-sempai and even Akio-san, everybody is just chained in the 
darkness, stumbling blind, imprisoned forever, but outside the
cave, inside of them, I mean, there's so much _light_, there's so
much _freedom_...

     "The last thing I felt was my self fading away.  Like when
you go to sleep.  Or when you die, I guess.  Not sure which I
did.  But I realized that if somebody would just _say_ something
to everyone, give them a little push, then maybe they'd finally
have the strength to break their chains and get out of the cave.
So I did.  But I'm not sure if it was a good idea."

     Nanami sighed and leaned back.  Utena wrapped her arms
around her more tightly, beneath her throat, above her breasts.
"I think it was," she said softly.  

     From the angle she was at, she saw only the edge of Utena's
smile.  "I'm glad you do."

     She sighed again.  She couldn't decide what felt better:
just to be held like this, by someone else, someone you knew
wasn't just doing it in order to take advantage of you later, or
to be kissed, touched in the way that made the pleasant heat pass
through your whole body, by the same sort of person.

     "Basically, Nanami, whatever you want from me, if I can give
it to you, I will.  Because I really do love you.  You can't not
love someone after you know the whole of them."

     Nanami took Utena's left wrist in both hands and brought it
to her mouth.  She pressed her lips to it, softly, at the point
where the pattern of the scars began.  There was a clean 
sweetness to Utena's skin, and the raised texture of the scars
was almost but not quite imperceptible, like the taste of some
most subtle food.  Utena moaned softly, almost inaudibly.

     "I think I love you too," she said wonderingly, terrified 
and fascinated by the idea.  "But I'm not sure how.  I don't 
even know how it happened."
     
     "That's the way of it, a lot of the time," Utena said,
gathering Nanami's hair at the back into a loose tail with her
free hand, then letting it go a moment later.  "I remember with
Anthy, I was always talking about not wanting a bride, just
wanting to meet a normal boy... but I've changed now.  It's not
so simple any more.  People have these divisions within 
themselves over who they can love and how, like their souls have
been cut into pieces: these are the people it's all right to love
as friends, and these are the people it's all right to love as 
lovers, and..."
     
     And these are the people it's all right to love as family,
Nanami thought, achingly, wanting to say it out loud, to complete
the triad that Utena had been leading to, but had trailed away 
from before she could make it explicit.  Utena was right.  It 
wasn't simple.  Everything crossed over, once, twice, a dozen, a
hundred times.  

     "You and her do this a lot, don't you?"  The same kind of
things that Juri and Shiori must do.  Adult sorts of things.  
Sex, she thought, suddenly and rather viciously, as though
slapping herself with the word.  She knew what it was and she
knew what it meant, so why dance around it?
     
     "Yeah," Utena said after a moment.
     
     "So what's she going to think of this?"
     
     "She takes a long time shopping."
     
     Nanami looked back, into Utena's vivid blue eyes, and saw
something in their depths that made her wonder how Utena's touch
had managed to be so gentle, and the hunger of her kisses so
restrained.  Utena, she saw, needed this--whatever this was going
to end up being--just as much as she did, perhaps even more.  And
she realized then that whatever she might be individually to 
Utena--an annoying immature brat, a figure of pity, a bitter 
rival and perhaps a friend, herself as seen through a mirror 
darkly, her shadow, the self she might have been had circumstance
placed her differently than they had, the little princess she 
might have remained rather than the girl-prince she had become--
at the same time she was a collective, she was all the friends 
and rivals and lovers and possible lovers that had been left
behind at Ohtori, that Utena had cast aside to follow whatever it
was that burned for her in the beautiful, terrible figure of
Himemiya Anthy (how hurtful to realize that however much Utena
might love her, it would never compare to that); she was Touga,
Miki, Juri, Saionji, she was Wakaba and Shiori and Kozue and
Tsuwabuki.  She was Ohtori Akio, she was Ohtori, she was all of
Ohtori, its shadows and elegance, its beauty and terror; she was
the past, just as Utena was her past, and the present had to 
consume the past for the future to come.

     And so, when Utena leaned down to plant a chaste kiss upon 
her forehead--the sort of kiss one would give to a sibling in farewell--
Nanami moved so that their lips met, and they were off again as
before, as though they had never ended.  The position was
awkward on the couch, but with some twisting--filling the time it
took with kiss after kiss, with gentle touches to each other's 
bodies--they found themselves a place of comfort, Utena on the 
top with Nanami beneath her, both of them sweaty and flushed and
grinning at each other as though sharing some private joke.  The
front of Utena's robe had fallen open almost to her navel, and
Nanami could see that the scar patterns were everywhere on her
body, everywhere except her feet and hands and face and neck;
she could see the small but perfectly-formed shape of Utena's
breasts, and, still mostly in shadow, the enticing pink tip of 
one nipple.  At first not knowing if she dared, as though Utena's
body were some sacred thing forbidden to touch, she simply stared; 
then, with sudden courage, she reached up and slid her hand 
beneath the loose robe to curl her fingers gently round the 
breast and cup the nipple in the centre of her palm.

     Utena let out a tiny gasp at the touch and closed her eyes.
Nanami squeezed gently, fearful of hurting Utena, not sure of
where it would cross the boundary from pleasure to pain.  Utena
raised herself up a little, straddling one of Nanami's legs with
both of hers, and thrust her chest forward a bit, drawing away
and offering herself at the same time.

     "A little harder," she murmured.  "I'm not made of glass.
Don't worry."

     Fascinated by the feel of it, by the hardening point of the
nipple against the skin of her palm, Nanami caressed the breast   
in her grip with a little more intensity, glowing with pleasure
at the obvious enjoyment Utena took in the touch, expressed
through an occasional gasp or moan or giggling, girlish squeal.
She could feel herself growing hotter, as though she were inside 
a sauna, as though her clothes--the light sweater, the thin 
button-up shirt beneath it, the knee-length skirt--were too 
confiningly heavy.  Her free hand crept almost of its own 
volition down towards her waist, and met Utena's along the way in
a collision that was almost clumsy.  They laughed, paused briefly
to sort things out, and then Nanami found one of Utena's hands up
beneath her skirt, stroking back and forth from one inner thigh 
to the next, coming teasingly close to the centre but never quite 
touching it; the other was  atop her chest, caressing her breasts
as before through sweater and shirt and bra.  She brought both 
hands up to Utena's body, one to each breast.  A pleasant 
electric shiver ran through her, and she simply left them there, 
enamoured of the feel of the soft, yielding swells and their 
small, stiff tips.

     "Lie back," Utena murmured, drawing her body downwards,
pulling her breasts back from Nanami's hands.  Suddenly almost
fearful, Nanami did; Utena, whose robe had now fallen almost
completely from her to leave her only in the white panties she'd
had on beneath, slipped her arms beneath Nanami's sweater.  
"Arms up."

     Unable to think of doing even anything else, trembling, 
Nanami did as directed, and let Utena pull the sweater over her
head and toss it aside.  The contrast between them--Utena nearly
nude but completely in control, she still mostly clothed but
helpless and almost passive in the face of so much new feeling 
and new sensation--excited and frightened her.
     
     Utena knelt above her, perfectly balanced on the couch, and
smiled at her.  "Just tell me if I'm going too fast for you," she
said gently.

     "Or not fast enough?" Nanami murmured, trying to manage a
smile back.  She was so terribly nervous at this, but, at the
same time, wanted it so very badly.  Were all feelings like this
once one left childhood behind?  No desire without a coupled
repulsion, no joy without fear to twin it?

     "Or not fast enough, sure," Utena said, laughing and dipping
her head down to quickly land a fluttering kiss on Nanami's lips
before moving downwards to lay a trail of them down her throat
and neck, finishing at the collarbone with a tiny, teasing nip of
her teeth which made Nanami let out an inadverent giggle.  Her
hands crossed briefly over Nanami's breasts; then her fingers
were unhooking the top button, and moving down from there, one
button after the other, crouching over Nanami and pressing small,
moist kisses against her throat.  Nanami squirmed and let out a
small gasp; the heat had become a kind of itch, as though her
skin were alternating between slightly too loose and slightly too
tight.  Pleasurably aggravating ripples were spreading out from
slighty below her navel.  Utena gave a delicate lick to the spot 
where neck met collarbone which made her shudder and press her
thighs together, desperately wanting to relieve some of the
pressure and at the same time hoping for its increase.

     The buttons of her shirt were all undone now; Utena's body
was pressed close to hers, nipples occasionally dragging across
her bare belly and making her shiver.  Propping herself up on one
hand and raising her body higher, Utena looked down at Nanami and 
shook her head.

     "Geez," she said.  "How many frills do you need on a bra,
anyway?  You are such a... I don't know, _girly_ girl."

     "Just because I know how to dress--"  Nanami was cut off as
Utena pressed warm lips to the valley between her breasts, at the
same time bringing hands round beneath the back of the now-loose
shirt to fumble with the clasp that held the bra closed.

     Groaning, Nanami arched her back, raising herself slightly
from the couch to give Utena more room to work the clasp.  Her
nipples were jutting almost painfully against the silken lace of
the cups, and she badly wanted them free.  Utena seemed to be
having trouble with the clasp, however; while still kissing the
upper swell and inner valley of Nanami's chest, she muttered a
muffled invective against "whoever designed these damn things"
that made Nanami giggle again at the hot, ticklish breath against
her skin.  She reached up and pushed against Utena's shoulders,
moving her back to a sitting position on the couch, then pulling
her own legs up to sit herself.

     "Honestly, you're terrible at anything even remotely
feminine, aren't you?" she chided, half-turning her back to Utena 
and sliding out of her shirt.  "How do you manage?"

     "I mostly wear sports bras," Utena muttered, panting hard
and taking advantage of the brief respite to pull her robe 
completely off and throw it aside.  "I hate those damn clasps."

     Nanami reached behind her back with practiced skill, undid 
the clasp, and dropped the bra to the floor.  "There we--ah!"

	Utena suddenly had her stretched back on the couch again, 
with one hand on a breast and the other down between her thighs, 
and her mouth on a nipple.  The sudden influx of sensation was
overwhelming, and left her paralyzed; Utena's palm pressed flat
against her sex through the covering skirt and panties, and
suddenly the pressure began to peak and peak.  Utena's tongue was
rolling around her nipple in circles of almost geometric 
perfection, and everything felt so _good_, better than anything 
had a right to be, but then she realized vaguely, somewhere at 
the centre of the ball of pleasure engulfing her, that Utena was 
doing all the work, which wasn't right.  So she moved both hands 
to Utena's chest and began to massage the yielding firmness of 
her breasts again, even as she bucked and moaned beneath the
attentions of Utena's hands and lips.  Thank goodness, she
thought vaguely, that the couch is just large enough that we're
not going to fall off.  As long as we're careful.  

     Utena switched her mouth to the other breast, licking round
the nipple for a moment before giving it a soft flick with her
tongue and then closing her lips around it to suckle.  The hand
between Nanami's legs began, somewhat awkwardly, to undo the 
button holding the skirt together.  Nanami put her head back and 
let out a soft gasp, briefly closing her eyes and losing sight 
for a moment of everything beyond the space of her own body.  
Then she was back again, and dragging one hand down Utena's body 
from a breast, rippling down ribs and crossing tight flat 
scar-patterned belly before moving, hesitantly, beneath the 
elasticised waistband, through a thatch of downy hair to the 
damp, hot space below.  
     
     Utena was slowly pulling her skirt away, but ceased her 
motions and drew away from the nipple she'd been sucking on to
moan loudly as Nanami hesitantly stroked a forked pair of fingers
against the outer lips of her vagina.  The labia, she thought
vaguely, and that brought other dry, scientific-sounding terms to
mind: vulva, clitoris.  Coloured diagrams hung on the chalkboard,
a pointer dryly clacking as the health teacher pointed each
section out as though explaining the components of a combustions 
engine; girls giggling behind their hands and looking at each 
other, thinking they understood, not understanding.

     She had no real idea if she was doing it properly, and was
worried she would mess up somehow and hurt Utena.  This was the
most secret place, the centre of a woman's body; like a tunnel
opening into the heart of the self.  There couldn't be a worse
kind of hurt than a hurt done here.

     "I'm doing okay, right?" she asked worriedly, breathing
heavily.  "I'm not hurting you or anything?"

     "No," Utena gasped, closing her eyes.  Her breath felt hot
as a desert wind against Nanami's breasts.  "No, you're doing
fine."

     Hesitantly, licking her lips and nodding gratefully, Nanami
closed the two fingers and slid them down between the outer
lips, stroking very gently; almost immediately, she felt a stiff
little nub of flesh amidst the slickness of the inner canal that
she knew had to be the clitoris.  When she touched it, even just
briefly, Utena cried aloud and bucked against her hand.

     "Yes," Utena said heavily, burying her face in Nanami's
bosom, kissing one breast and then the next, licking and sucking
the nipples in rapid succession, "like that, just like that..."

     Wrapping her free arm around Utena's waist and drawing the
two of them close together, so that her exploring hand was the 
only division between their bodies, Nanami continued her strokes, 
a soft one up and a slightly harder one down, gradually
increasing the speed of her motions.  With Utena atop her, body 
to body, she twisted and rolled over, so that they lay on their
sides with Utena against the back of the couch, legs entangled.  
Tremulous, still fearing that she would somehow do Utena an 
injury--she had barely even touched her own body like this, had 
stopped quickly and ashamedly soon after beginning the few times
she'd even dared--she pressed her thumb against the clitoris and
explored the hot opening beneath with the tips of her index and 
middle fingers.  When Utena made no protest (and, in fact, 
uttered a soft sound that made her encouragement quite clear), 
she pushed them deeper into the tight, soft, slick sheath, 
withdrew, and repeated, continuing to rub the clitoris with the
ball of her thumb as she did.

     Utena, now shaking in their embrace as though out of control
of her body, scored the edges of the fingernails of both hands
lightly done Nanami's back, and began to caress the upper swell 
of her buttocks through the bunched-up skirt.  Her mouth was 
locked around a nipple stiff with arousal, moist from earlier 
attentions of her lips.  Nanami sped up the pace, whimpering 
each time some shift of their entwined legs made Utena's knee 
or calf or thigh brush against her own covered sex.  What 
would it feel like, she wondered, to have Utena's hand down 
there, touching her as she was now touching Utena?
     
     It seems it's just a matter of rhythm, she thought; keeping 
it up, not too fast, not too slow.  She could feel Utena's heat 
growing, her caresses becoming stronger but more and more 
unfocused.  She heard what might have been a tear of fabric as 
Utena finally pulled her skirt away and tossed it to the carpet, 
but at that moment, she didn't care.  The world was limited to 
the motions of her hand in that hot, strange place, the pulse of 
her body, the hard sucking and soft biting of Utena's mouth at 
her nipples, the sounds of pleasure and the smell of sweat and 
excitement.

	"Oh yes," Utena said fervently.  Then, more quietly: "Oh."  
Nanami felt a brief contraction run through Utena's body and up
her arm, a sudden sharp tension, then sagging relaxation; she 
slowed the motions of her fingers, then pulled them out and 
simply let her palm rest flat beneath the panties, enjoying the
damp, cooling heat, and feeling proud and happy to have given
Utena so much pleasure.  They stayed like that for a few seconds,
and then Utena raised her head and kissed Nanami again, very
softly.

	"Thanks," she said.  "That was good."
	
	"I'm glad," Nanami said, blushing.  "I didn't know..."  In
the wake of Utena's climax, she felt her own intensity 
diminishing with surprising quickness.  Her body still tingled
with the anticipation of further touching, but more distantly.

	Utena reached up and pushed sweaty bangs out of Nanami's 
face, then softly kissed her again.  "See," she said quietly.  
"It's not always bad.  When it's two people who care about each 
other..."  She moved the hand down to Nanami's chest, brushing 
her fingers lightly over the nipples.  "Ohtori's a bad place.  It 
twists good things."

	Nanami nodded. "It's horrid," she said.  "The Chairman..."
	
	Utena sighed and kissed Nanami on the forehead, then began to
slowly kiss down the left side of her face.  "He's trapped as
well," she said sadly.  "Maybe more than anyone.  I hate him, but
I pity him, too."

	And you still love him, Nanami thought.  She could hear it in
Utena's voice.  Everything tangled and interwoven.  So hard to 
see a path to go.

	Utena's lips descended her neck and breasts and belly.  She
slipped her fingers into the edges of Nanami's panties and drew
them down.  Her tongue circled slowly for a moment in the light
thatch of blonde hair.
	
	Everything so complicated; not always the act, but the 
reasons behind.  	

	"Oh," Nanami said.  "Oh."
	
* * *					
	
	After they finished, they showered together in the cramped
walk-in shower in the corner of the bathroom, whose tiny window
looked out into a garbage-strewn alleyway.  They washed and dried 
each other's bodies, and Nanami brushed out her hair, then 
braided a section of it with long-familiar motions of her fingers 
and used that to pull the rest of it back from her forehead.

	Utena dressed herself in long pants and an oversized shirt.
Nanami did the best to smooth the wrinkles for her clothing and
slipped it back on.  There was a small tear in the skirt, but it
wasn't visible unless you looked close.

	At the door, she slipped on her boots and coat, then turned
to Utena.  "I didn't even know why I came here when I arrived,"
she said.  "But I understand it now.  I loved you.  I loved you
and I couldn't admit it, but I wouldn't let you go.  I tried and 
tried to go back to being the old me, but it didn't work."  She
fell silent and stared at the floor.

	"What're you going to do now?"
	
	"I'm going to go back to Ohtori."  She looked up at Utena and
smiled, but sadly.  "I'm trying not to have any illusions.  I 
know that what you have here with Anthy..."

	Utena nodded.  Nanami thought she looked a little sad as 
well, but that might just have been wishful thinking.  Out of the
robe, with her scars hidden, she looked smaller and somehow
vulnerable.

	"Do you want to walk to the train station with me?" Nanami
asked hopefully.

	Utena shook her head.  Now she was the one to look at the
floor.  "I don't like to go outside much," she said in a small,
shamed voice.  She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging 
herself without seeming to realize it.  "I... it's getting 
better.  But the sky... I go outside and I look at it and I see 
the sky all full of swords."

	Nanami swallowed and wondered just how much of what had
happened had been because Utena had been putting on a brave face.
Who had she just been with, made love to?  The real Utena, or
some cover story?  Did it matter?  Yes, it did, she thought; even
wondering if it mattered meant it mattered.

	Utena came forward and took her hands.  "I'm glad you came,"
she said simply.  "When you go back to Ohtori..."

	"They hardly remember you," Nanami suddenly blurted.  "They'd
rather pretend you never existed, even with all you did for 
them."

	Utena flinched, her eyes sharp with pain.  "I know," she 
said.  "But they're happy, aren't they?"

	After a moment, Nanami nodded.  "Wakaba really does miss you,
though."

	"Tell her I miss her too," Utena said quietly.  "And that I
love her."

	Nanami flushed slightly. "I can't tell her that."
	
	"Yes," Utena said softly, "you can."
	
	She leaned forward and kissed Nanami, hard, her mouth opening
as she did.  To take something from her.  To give her something 
back.  Nanami kissed back, but hesitantly.  There was a spark, 
she thought; like a little jump of static electricity.

	"I don't know what to do," Utena whispered.  "I can't save
him.  I don't know if Anthy can, either; I don't know if all the
letters in the world can save him.  But you..."

	It was the first time Nanami had ever heard her sound scared.
For a single strange moment, she had the distinct and certain
feeling that Utena wasn't there, that there was only her, that if
she looked hard enough at her she'd fade and dissolve and she'd
be alone.  "I don't know either," she said finally.  Then she 
pulled her hands away.  "I have to go."

	"Goodbye," Utena said.
	
	"Goodbye, Utena."
		
	She walked quickly down the hallway, past the elevators, past
the entrance where the directory stood black with only Himemiya
Anthy's name on it.  She wondered at who else lived here.  There
were names on the faded directory, but she'd seen no sign of 
other tenants.  

	Outside, she looked back at the weathered, silent facade of 
the building.  The snow was on the ground, but people were 
passing by.  An old woman with a dog, a young man carrying a 
swaddled baby in his arms.  A tortoiseshell cat stepped nimbly
along a wooden fence in the distance.  The sky was blue and full 
of sun, and she realized she probably would never see Utena 
again.  

	The thought hurt, but not as much as she would have expected; 
there was an ache, but there was also something pleasant in it.  
Maybe it was just the memory: the kisses, the touches, the words.  
Loving and being loved.  Feeling free again.  Their bodies, 
moving together, moving apart, each self in orbit round the 
other.  The first time, but there would be other times, and the
hurt of parting would dim and fade, and the memory would remain,
even if she never saw Utena again.

	Nanami turned and walked towards the train station.

	A block away, she met Himemiya Anthy, in a long coat and a
rather silly furry hat with flaps for covering her ears.  Her 
arms were full of paper bags of groceries, with the shivering 
top of Chu-Chu's head just visible poking out of one.

	"Oh, you're going home, then, Nanami-san?" she said.
	
	Nanami nodded.  "It was nice to see you again, Anthy-san."
	
	Anthy smiled cheerfully.  "It was nice to see you again as
well, Nanami-san."  She shifted the groceries in her arms and 
made as though to walk by.  As she passed Nanami, she stopped 
and looked at her.  Her gaze was pitiless, but there was no 
cruelty in it; it was like some god had put the spark of 
intelligence in the eyes of a statue, a human voice in its 
mouth, made it walk and feel, but it was a statue still.

	"You won't come back here," Anthy told her, and then she 
walked on.
	
	Nanami turned and called after her that it wasn't her 
decision to make, but Anthy simply kept on walking, and Nanami
scowled a moment, then went the other way.  It wasn't Anthy's
decision to make, of course, but what she had said wasn't
necessarily an order or command.

	She had to wait at the platform for over an hour for the
train back, which was delayed.  Shadows were falling as the sun
sank by the time it came.  On the way back, she drifted in and
out of sleep, passing through fragmented snatches of a dream.  
She was standing at the entrance to a cave with the moon 
overhead.  There was a torch in her hand, guttering and spitting
flames at the dark.  An aurora roiled overhead; thunder in the 
air like the anger of gods.  Her feet began to move her into the 
cave.  She snapped awake as the train passed through the tunnel, 
and raised a hand to brush at her eyes, as though she'd been 
crying in her sleep.  For some reason she was thinking of Touga.
Of how things had been when they were children.  How kind he'd 
been to her.  Could it all have really been nothing but an act?  
He'd said so, but what people said and what they really felt...
	
	She sat in silence the rest of the way home, trying not to
think too hard.

* * *	

Snip, snip, went the scissors.  She'd always done well in sewing
in home economics class.  She'd waited until the maid who handled 
the repairs of all the little rips and tears of Kiryuu family 
clothing had the day off, then snuck into her room to use her 
sewing machine.  Too many questions otherwise.

	They had kept all of Touga's old school uniforms, carefully 
wrapped, packed away in crates in the basement.  She'd known that
for years, of course; she'd go down there sometimes, on rainy 
days, or when Touga was away on school trips, and unpack them, 
and hold them to her chest and inhale what lingered of his scent
on them.

	Bring in the sleeves.  Let out the legs.  The chest, too.
	
	When it was done she cleaned everything up, put things away
in the right places, and went back to her room with the bundle
wrapped in her arms.  She undressed and showered, scrubbed every
inch of her body.  She dried herself with a voluminous white 
towel.  She brushed out her hair until it hung long and straight
down her back.  She put on panties, and the sports bra she'd 
bought the day before.

	She stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself.  At
the shape of the muscles in her arms and legs.  She'd never 
really been able to see the shape of them before.  She was 
taller, too, she realized.  She put on the grey pants and turned 
from side to side, studying herself.  Utena had worn shorts, but 
she wasn't Utena; she was not as interested in showing off her 
butt, for one.

	Slowly, she did up the buttons of the jacket.  The collar
pinched a little, but no worse than some dresses she'd worn.
She looked over at the alarm clock beside her bed.  It was seven
o'clock in the morning.  Walking quickly, it took about thirty 
minutes to get from the Kiryuu manor to the Ohtori campus.  But 
she was walking slowly this morning.

	There weren't many students on their way to the school this
early in the morning; just those with clubs, or group projects to
meet about, or special duties to get the school ready for the 
day.  But there were some, and with cell phones and text 
messaging, the word spread quickly.  There was a crowd at the
gate when she walked through, with whispers running back and
forth like tiny sparks of electricity.  There was some laughter, 
and some pointing.  But not a great deal.  They watched her walk 
beneath the archway, walking slowly, with pride, with her brown 
schoolbag held loosely over her shoulder with one hand, and their
eyes were full of memory, like ice slowly cracking to show the 
water flowing beneath.

	Don't you remember, the whispers said.
	
		There was another girl, who dressed like that.
	
	She said she wanted to be a prince.
		
		Whatever happened to her?
		
			I wonder...
			
				I wonder...
					
					I wonder...
					
	The whispers moved like shadows	through the school.  She came
to the basketball courts, where the team was practicing on the 
one court cleared of snow, sweating and puffing in the chilly 
air.		

	Care for a challenge? she said
	
	They looked at her as though she were mad.  She took off her
jacket and played one-on-five against them, and won.  As she 
left the court, someone threw her a towel to wipe the sweat from 
her brow.  She didn't see who it was; there were so many.  She 
saw Keiko and Aiko and Yuko in the midst of them.  She gave them
a smile, and they shied away, melted into the crowd.  Ice chunks,
bobbing and dissolving into the flow.

	In the main building of the school, she was stopped by Juri.
	
	What are you doing, Nanami?
	
	I'm going to school, sempai.
	
	I mean that uniform.
	
	There's no rule against it, is there?
	
	Juri looked askance for a moment, then smiled.  No, she said,
there isn't, there's no such rule.  There was something in her 
eyes like longing.  Nanami smiled back, and then from the corner
of her eye she saw Shiori standing in the shadow of a white 
pillar, hollow resentment in her eyes, and felt sick.  We should
all just forget this ever happened, she heard herself say from a
far distance.  The necessity of memory, but also of forgetting;
forgive and forget, not just one or the other.  You have to 
forget in order to forgive.  But I can't forget.

	She went by Juri quickly.  The clock said five to nine, and
classes were starting.  She tried to act as she always did, but
every eye in the room was on her, even the teacher's.  Math,
English, Literature.  Miki kept on looking at her.  The agony of
memory was in his eyes.

	At lunchtime, she found Wakaba under a tree on a hillside.  
There were no other students close by.  The snow was melting, and
Wakaba was sitting on a patch of green grass, knees hugged to her
chest.  She looked up at Nanami with red-rimmed eyes.

	She asked me to tell you that she misses you, and she loves
you.  Wakaba began to cry, and Nanami knelt down and held her a
while, and wiped away her tears with a handkerchief from her
breast pocket, and kissed her forehead.

	On the way to the chairman's tower she found Saionji and
Touga, back from their camping trip, tall and fresh and healthy.
They flanked the path like sentinels, their arms folded.

	Nanami, Touga said, this is a very foolish thing you're 
doing.  The entire school is talking.  Saionji didn't say 
anything, just stood on the other side.  Their shadows 
crossed upon the path before her.
	
	Saying good things about me, I hope, she said.
	
	You've brought shame to our family, Touga said, an edge of
agitated frustration to his voice that was very unfamiliar to
her.  Don't you understand what you are doing?

	Yes, she said, I do.
	
	She stepped twice within their shadows, and then was past
them, at the base of the chairman's tower, before the great
ornate doors.  Roses of all colours.  She turned and looked back
at Ohtori's buildings.  The sun was setting.  How can the hours
pass so quickly, some part of her thought.  The shadows of the
buildings slid across the campus.  She saw other buildings among
them, faint shapes like heat-hazes with windows and doors,
superimpositions of lines that sketched the empty forms of towers 
and halls, shadows cast by no visible building, buildings that 
cast no shadow.

	The elevator doors opened.  She stepped into the cave.
	
* * *			

The Ends of the World was sitting in one of the windows when she
came into the planetarium.  He had one long leg drawn up to
his chest and the other stretched out.  From beyond the window, 
the red glow of the sunset backlit him.  The pose made him look 
almost insectile, emphasizing the sharp lines of his body.

	"Hello, Nanami-kun," he said.  His head was turned away from
her, his eyes watching the sunset.  "I knew you would come back."
He dropped one of his hands to dangle down off the edge of the
sill.  There was a white envelope in it, with one end torn off; 
she could see the edge of a letter, still folded, within.  "Did
you find her?"

	"I found what's left of her," Nanami said.  She walked across
the room, her eyes drawn to the chairman's desk.  Stacks and
stacks of paperwork; he'd been letting it pile up.  There was 
dust upon some of it, and a stale quality to the air.  A letter
opener, gold-hilted, sitting atop a stack of slit envelopes.  
The floor about the desk was strewn with crumpled balls of paper
covered in looping, aborted script.

	"How is... my sister?"  He glanced over his shoulder at her.
	
	"She is still your sister," Nanami said.  "I don't know what
else to say than that."

	Ends of the World nodded and pulled the latest letter out of
the envelope.  "Brother," he read.  "I hope this letter finds you
well.  I dreamt of the castle again last night, brother.  And the
barges on the waters and the fireworks and the music.  The winter
is long here, brother..."

	Nanami stepped forward and rested her hand against the edge
of the desk.  She stared at the letter opener, hard.  It wavered
slightly, remained a letter opener.  She stooped and picked up a
crumpled piece of paper, unfolded it, and read.

		now when the sun is born each day at dawn
		I will lie along your body as a boat along a river
		and place my soul a blazing ornament upon your breasts
		and burn with my bones my name all down your flesh
		
	"Chu-Chu says hello, brother.  I do not miss you, brother, 
but sometimes I wish that I did."

		sister, by a dark love bound and blind
		I touch you now, in this forbidden time
		and my white robes of death unwind.
		
	"Those are not my words, you know," Ends of the World said
suddenly, tossing the letter to the floor.  "I took them.  They
seemed so right at first, but then..."  He trailed away, then
turned his back to her and hung his legs over the edge of the
window, out into space and the long fall.  "At first I told her
to come home in my letters.  Ordered her.  And then I began to
apologize.  And I am sorry.  I am truly sorry.  Now that she is
gone, things are so much more clear."  His voice shook for a
moment.  "But what is the worth of words?  I do not miss you, but
sometimes I wish that I did."

	Nanami remained silent.  She reached out and took the letter
opener up in hand.  She tossed down the aborted letter, picked up
another.

	"All her letters end like that."
	
		Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes 
		I thought it was there for good so I never tried. 

	"I look at the stars, Nanami-kun," Ends of the World said
quietly and with great pain, but with a certain dignity as well.
"I look at them and all I want is to be a sun again.  The sun is
just another star, you know."  He swallowed.  "But closer.  But
not too close.  Too close, it brings only death."

	Ends of the World dropped his hands to the window sill as 
though in preparation to launch himself out into space.
	
	"Are you finished?" Nanami said, turning the letter opener
over in her hands.

	Akio looked back, surprised.
	
	"It's a very nice speech, but making nice speeches and 
copying out bits of poetry you find relevant won't really change
anything, will it?"

	He said nothing.
	
	"Get down off that sill, will you?"
	
	He obeyed, appearing somewhat stunned.
	
	She walked forward.  She looked down at her hand and saw that
the letter opener was gone, and in its place was a broken sword, 
a golden hilt and a few wicked sharp inches of remaining blade.

	Akio watched her approach with fear in his eyes, but also
anticipation and longing.  He reached up and began to unbutton 
his shirt, until he had bared his breast to her.  She watched the
smooth dark muscles of his chest move minutely as he breathed.

	"Do it," he said raggedly, his voice a shrilling parody of
his usual smooth tones, like a little boy trying to sound mature;
it was full of self-pity and deep, old pain.  "End it.  Oh, 
please, end it.  I'm so--sorry, sister, I'm so sorry."

	Nanami raised the broken sword and pointed it at his breast,
then tossed it aside and slapped him across the face.  The sword
skittered away into a corner like a metallic spider.

	"No," she said, her voice rising.  "You think it's that easy?
That I just kill you and things are all right again.  No.  You
don't get off that easy.  Of all things, you don't get to be the
martyr.  You can't just make things right again by dying.  That's
not how it works."

	Akio raised a hand and touched the red mark of her palm on
his face.  The self-pity and the pain were still in his eyes, but
also a spark of anger.  And perhaps understanding.

	"Then how does it work?" he said, with a hint of a sneer.
	
	"I--I don't know," she said, stumbling suddenly, confidence
gone.  What am I doing? she thought.  She suddenly felt like what
she really was: just a scared, stupid girl, in her brother's 
school uniform, pretending to be something she wasn't, pretending
she could be the one this time, the one to finally fill that 
prince-shaped hole in the universe, the rescuer, the saviour...

	"Stop that!"  She hit him again; not a slap this time, but a
closed blow of her fist.  It knocked him sprawling to the floor.
"Don't you see?  Don't you _understand_ yet?  No princes, you
say; never was such a thing as a prince.  No heroes.  No 
goodness.  Just selfishness and lust.  And so that's how it is."
She took a deep breath, as he lifted his head from the floor and
wiped blood from his mouth.  "And she said... and she said, there
are such things as princes.  There are heroes.  She said, you can
be good and strong and brave, even when everything around you is
cruel and weak and cowardly.  And flawed.  You can stumble.  You
can fail.  But you can't just give up!  You--"  Her voice 
faltered again, falling from its impassioned height.  Do I really
believe these things, she thought?  Do I believe them now?  Do I
just want to make myself think I believe them?

	Akio stayed on the floor, staring at his faint reflection in
the polished tiles.  He said nothing.  And then he began to cry.
The tears ran down from his eyes in silence, except for the 
faint sound of them breaking and dissolving on the floor.  He
didn't even seem aware he was doing it.

	"I wish it were so easy," he said softly.  "But it's not.  
They killed her.  They killed her and I couldn't save her.  
Sincerity is not enough.  Power--"

	"Is that enough, either?"
	
	Akio looked sick, the colour drained from his face; even his
clothes looked faded and worn.  His mirror image in the tiles 
looked better than he did.  Each tear that fell gave it more 
definition, more brightness.  The angle of the light from the
sunset coming through the window sheathed it in a suit of glowing
white.

	"No," he said eventually.  "No."  His hands brushed the tiles
as though to scrape and gather the reflection back into himself,
but it grew only more clear with each scrabbling movement of his
fingers.

	Nanami simply watched the struggle in silence.  She'd done
all she could now, fulfilled the implicit promise she'd given 
Utena.  Brought the memory of the prince back to the school.
Gone down into the cave, deep as she could go.  The last of the
chains.

	She didn't know how many hours passed, but as the sun set
completely and night fell, Akio's reflection in the tiles dimmed
and faded, and he raised his head to look at her.  His 
fingernails were bloodied from scraping at the floor, and his
expression was haggard.  Other than that, there was no outward
change.  But his eyes, something in his eyes... fear, and
uncertainty, and mistrust.  All things she recognized.  And hope.

	"Here," she said, bending down and stretching out her arm to
him.  "Give me your hand.  I'll help you up."
	
	Slowly, feebly, he reached for it.  Outside the planetarium, 
high above it, the stars, all distant suns, began to come out.

FIN


Author's Notes:

Poetry credits from the final scene are to Gwendolyn MacEwen and 
Leonard Cohen (fulfilling my CanCon requirements).

This story would not have been completed without help and
encouragement from various people, particularly among them Sean
Gaffney and Matthew "Mercutio" Giglia (who read the story in bits
and pieces over the course of about two years), Katie "spacetart"
Vieceli (who told me at Yuricon that the lesbian sex didn't suck,
thus giving me a lot more confidence in the story), Erica 
Friedman (who encouraged me strongly to finish it by saying she
wanted to see the lesbian sex as well), and the Fanfic Revolution
folks who helped me polish it into a final state.