Motion Under Fire
I made a bad connection
She says I went astray
I jumped ship abandoned my post
I didn't think I lost my way
But oh, how the mighty fall
I saw her crack a smile
I don't got a chance for redemption
She don't believe in the miracle mile
'Don't Give That Girl a Gun', Indigo Girls
On occasion, Juri would entertain the thought of a year in school without the added complications of the rose seal on her finger. Not without the student council position, of course, which wouldn't truly make it a normal year of school. Her early experience with normal school life left her with the impression that it was boring, the uniform was hideous, and without a certain amount of emotional and mental support from The Girl She Wasn't Thinking About, the company wasn't much to speak of. Without the everlasting, frustrating duels clogging her schedule, she'd be able to have a lot more free time to shift around, more fencing practice hours, less time tolerating the verbal hedging of the council meetings, and possibly even thicker study hours. (The power to ace the tests, indeed.) Not to mention she could regain or at least pretend at her former, glorious ignorance of that 'castle in the sky' and of the true face of Himemiya Anthy, who moonlighted as some vessel of supreme power in her spare time. Most importantly, at least at the moment, she wouldn't have to deal with the problem of the rogue duelists of the 'dark rose', the temporarily brainwashed students who randomly pulled amazing feats such as removing swords from the chests of ordinary people, threatened to kill the Rose Bride, and basically caused undue amounts of stress and chaos for everyone involved in the duels.
The three of them had denuded the old records room, where all the previous notes and history of the old student council members before them had gone, and upended small quantities on their table, shifting through the ledgers and notebooks to find any note that what they were facing had happened before. She yawned and stretched, her back arcing like a cat's, and turned her attention back to the heaps of paper in front of her. 'What a wonderful way to utterly waste a perfectly good Saturday morning', she thought with just a touch of resentment. Morning had long faded to late afternoon, and the sun's slow descent colored the room with dusky-red light that filtered through the heavy, velvet drapes. Dust motes shone heavily in streams of light that penciled lines from the windows, winking in and out, cascading to the floor and ascending dizzily to the ceiling. The room, usually elegant in a very spacious way, had begun to feel oppressive. She really hadn't spared herself a lot of free time to rest or simply to practice her sword work. Ever since her sword had been forced from her body, the experience had made her cautious of any approach from a student alone, and that sort of weakness infuriated her.
They'd worked themselves into a kind of stupor throughout the past week, searching the records they'd uncovered from the room. The job was mostly hers and Miki's, since Nanami was next to useless at that sort of work and her three henchmen couldn't look at any of the information they might uncover. It was all extremely interesting reading, or it would have been if she hadn't been burdened with a pounding headache and an overwork-related case of apathy. After reading the more recent papers and tracing backward, she found she could actually trace dueling cycles with the notes of the previous secretaries. None of them had expected or even hoped for any actual evidence of End of the World's dueling game within the files, but page after page of neatly written script filled the folders with thoughts, trepidations, even triumphs of duelists who had come before them. The duels had run for two solid years before they'd been chosen for the rose seal, with no true champion decided in either cycle until the very end of the school year. Somewhere, the writer had lost patience and order; his notes crammed together and told fragments of an ending story.
…Akito won the Bride this duel, she packed her things from my room and moved with him. No sign of movement from the castle, strange cloud formations this time. The Bride still shows no sign of her emotions or feelings for this strange situation Takayama lost his duel when the flower fell from his lapel when the Bride collapsed to the ground. He injured her with his sword. Takayama is to be expelled, he claims the Bride promised him Something is wrong here there are cars everywhere and the swords will not strike like they did before She is coming and soon the cycle will be…
There must have been some sort of finale, a conclusion to the duels before them that made way for their cycle, but no record of the end had been made. The notes simply stopped after a period of slow deterioration in the writer, becoming vaguer, skimpier, more terse and simplistic rather than exacting and precise. Then, suddenly, there was a jarring return to normalcy as the notes taken regained their clarity but lost their subject matter: the final pages in each book were nothing but ordinary minutes kept in perfectly ordinary council meetings. Graduation ceremonies, club decisions, school-funded programs. Miki had made a brief note of the strangeness of this; he'd said that it looked as though they hadn't even glanced back at their previous records at all.
Along with these revelations came some small proof that Touga had at least glanced through these particular papers. They also dutifully chronicled select, old duels, whichever they considered to be most important, and it involved an action-heavy report that detailed not only the Victor's actions, but those of the Bride and the sword of Dios. Evidently, this was where Touga had acquired his handy trick, the blessing of the blade by Himemiya. The bride kisses the blade so that her spirit takes itself into the blade and offers it great protection and power. Juri felt 'kiss' was a euphemistic term for what actually occurred with the blade, and by Tenjou's reaction to the act, she'd felt the same. Trust Touga to inject heavy notes of sexuality even in his serious business matters.
Not a hint of black roses. An hour of research and study, and not even so much as the reference of a petal turned up.
The elevator rattled as it slid upward, attracting her attention away from the books. When it made the tinny 'ping' that signaled the arrival of another council member, she arched her brow and slid her work away, folding her hands in front of her on the table. Lips curling slightly upward in a mixture of distaste and amused surprise, she greeted her visitor.
"Saionji. I see you've decided to visit. Did you miss one of your possessions when you left after being expelled, or is this just a nostalgia trip?"
Saionji snorted in disgust, his usual infuriating expression of smug complacency plastered over his face. Perhaps it was because she was so mentally fatigued that all the layers of politeness and tact felt like they're been peeled off of her, but she found herself inexplicably annoyed at the sheer audacity he displayed, openly wearing his old student council uniform and striding in as if he expected a welcome.
"How typically inviting of you, Arisugawa. With your social connections, I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't already heard the news. Mikage of the Mikage Seminar visited me a few days before and pulled strings in order to get my expulsion revoked. Thee student council must have been having problems in my absence if even someone who isn't a member of the student body or the staff notices, and decides to interfere. How the mighty have fallen since Touga decided to withdraw from his place as President. Hardly anyone with actual power left behind, so no wonder these rebel Duelists arose. Clearly you lack proper control. "
Normally, Saionji's taunting was like a biting mosquito: pervasive stinging that was easy to ignore, considering its source. His rough, clumsy attempts to insult and infuriate her weren't usually enough to provoke her temper. Juri often told herself that she had endless patience with the idiotic male buffoons who seemed to think that her lack of testosterone was enough to make her an inferior intellect. She was clearly above their level of thinking. When she'd advanced in her skill as a fencer, the boys had become more obnoxious, closing ranks against her. With every strike of her foil against their chest, every parry, every move she countered, the endless chances she had to prove herself superior turned them hostile. They cushioned their bruised egos with the certainty that they were better because she was female. As such, they had only a few years to become stronger and more adept than she was. All they needed was to wait. When she turned fourteen, she studied their cat when it cornered feral, alley-bred dogs. The way it moved, the way it confronted intruders in its territory. The cat gave no quarter. The opening move was always entirely about the attitude.
So she turned her gaze back to the table in boredom and slid a folder towards her and opened it with a single flick of her finger. "This fails to explain your presence here. You know this area is off-limits to anyone not in the student council." Which you will never be again, so long as I am here and have sway in the decisions made. Nanami may be foolish, but even she knows better than to elevate you further. She said none of this, simply inspected the contents of the folder as if she was truly interested. Or as if whatever it held, tedious and dry though it may be, was infinitely more interesting than the ex-council member standing before her.
It had the right effect. Saionji stiffened as if she'd just slapped him across the face and dropped his hands on the edge of her desk with a solid, wooden thump. Books slid off the edge of the desk as he began his tirade. "I will be accepted back into the Council," he said, and the words had the ring of a phrase often repeated, "Do you truly intend to continue this way, being led by Touga's empty-headed waif of a sister? The council as it stands is a farcical shadow of what it had been! It's a joke, Arisugawa, the socialite princess leading the school in her own whimsical and flimsy way. You submit to her?"
"You would rather I submit to you." Juri said, her words dropping with cool and precise efficiency. She spoke, not with any hint of question or indecision in her tone. Saionji hadn't thought she would do anything else. It hadn't even occurred to him that she'd react any differently than the submission he was used to in his female tagalongs, despite her unwaveringly cold attitude toward him since he'd entered the council. To boys like Saionji, girls only occupied certain fixed positions. Juri had long since come to the conclusion that she did not fit into his ideology. Like Tenjou, she was jarringly vivid and jagged in his world of smoothly-fitting shapes. He stared at her, momentarily taken aback, and she used his indecision to advance.
"What did you think, Saionji? That you could simply waltz in here and reclaim everything you so justifiably lost? Did you automatically assume that everyone around you would just bend to your will, since Touga left and we so clearly need guidance? That is a deliberate insult to our competence and skills. Did you believe we'd merely overlook that? Most likely you also believed that we'd simply shunt Nanami aside in order to fit you in neatly, as president of course. Your ego wouldn't stand for anything lower. Honestly, your presumptions are monumental. You were removed from the student council and the school for your inability to control your temper and apparently your sanity. Touga informed us that you were about to attack a younger student, Duelist or no, with your sword. That you managed to return here is…" her mouth twisted sharply downward in amused disdain, "Miracle enough. Don't overstep yourself further."
He whirled around and slammed his hands on the edge of the table so hard that a few books slid to the ground in a flurry of scattering papers. Hands clenched so hard that his knuckles were bone-white and shaking with enough force to jitter against the table, lips pressed tight and pale, he seemed to make an effort to control himself before attempting to speak. She noted suddenly that he seemed thinner, that his eyes were underlined in streaks of faint bruise-blue.
"That's not it…" he said through clenched teeth, apparently clutching the tenuous line of control, "That's…that's not it."
The restraint itself surprised her enough to sit back in her chair. Saionji with his pomposity and egocentric boastfulness completely stripped from him was a sight to see. Of course, she didn't expect that this unusual vulnerability would continue for much longer, so her reply was as sharp as she could make it. Straightening and regaining her previous attitude, she sighed. "Well, what is it, then? Don't waste my time, Saionji."
He jerked back as if she'd jabbed him with a hatpin, but snapped out of his brief lapse into almost-depression. His eyes narrowed at her in anger and his mouth tightened so much, she could see his jaw muscles quiver. She wondered vaguely if she should tone down her aggressiveness, but decided it was more than appropriate. It was fascinating, though, to see Saionji so controlled. Not that he'd ever shown his violent side toward them in the council meetings, but she'd seen him abuse the Bride when she was serving him. That gave her more than enough basis for her intense dislike, and the news of his attack on Tenjou cemented the final verdict of total disdain. Saionji, even when not in a violent rage, had always seemed to be on the edge of lifting the lid on a steaming kettle of rage. Especially when he spoke to Touga. There seemed to be an intangible sort of negative energy there, sparking and sizzling dangerously in every word he spoke, circling every stiffly courteous gesture he made.
Saionji squared his shoulders like he was preparing for a fight. "Do you really think that, with the current situation as it is, we can afford to be divided?"
"What current situation, Saionji?" Juri asked dryly, "I'm sure Nanami isn't grating on your sense of school pride that much. All things considered, she does just about as much for the student council as Touga did, without his philandering. Maybe she's not as popular among the student body, but she's not completely incompetent."
"That wasn't my only concern," he said coldly, "Are you not aware of the current…complications in the dueling game?"
She felt that the sun must have dipped lower as he spoke, spreading the room with dusky shadow. Surprised, she was speechless for a minute as the impact of what he'd said settled home. She'd foolishly assumed that the strange attacks on the student council members had been limited only to the ones who were still active, still involved in the duels. Saionji, expelled from school and presumably off-campus, had never entered her mind as a potential victim of their plot. She'd foolishly dismissed him, even Touga, from her mind and her calculations. "Yes," the words finally came, sounding strangely thicker and slower than usual. "I'm…aware."
His posture relaxed and his expression, relieved and vindicated, made her realize what she'd sensed beneath his question: he'd been afraid that none of the others had faced the strange and unbelievable attack he'd been through. For him, isolated from the rest of them and with no one who knew about the dueling game, no one who could collaborate or sympathize, he might have felt that he was simply sinking into delusion.
Even considering that, Juri's expression hardened as she reminded herself that there wasn't reason for her to allow him any pity or sympathy for him. He'd come in all his over-inflated glory, seeking a student council position again. In typical Saionji fashion, he hadn't expected anyone to be against it or refuse to allow him to run roughshod over them. His expulsion hadn't humbled him at all, and she knew enough about his usual personality to be suspicious of this new 'change'. It might very well be just a ploy for sympathy to make her more understanding to his cause. So she calculated, contemplating this new information from all sides as she made her next move.
"The duelists wearing black rose seals," she said quietly, "What exactly did you want to discuss about them?" She kept her attitude professional, to show him that she would give him only enough time to voice his thoughts.
"What else?" he shouted, slamming his hands on the table again for emphasis, "What are you doing to stop them? Are you taking any precautions against them at all? Are you going to let them have their way? They need to be stopped now, whoever's in charge of…of taking students and warping them like that! It's grotesque, Arisugawa!"
"Is that all?" she asked, her voice cold. "Please remove your hands from the table, if that is indeed the closing statement of yet another of your temper tantrums." In a way, she felt relieved to be back on normal footing. This, at least, was an expected maneuver.
A long spasm shivered through his jaw. He looked at her, his face twitching with the effort he was using to keep himself in control. She would have been impressed if she wasn't so disgusted with the fact that he actually needed that much effort, but she felt a pang of empathy. Saionji wasn't anywhere near her personal list of tolerable people, but she felt, suddenly, he deserved a little consideration.
Juri sighed. "I do understand your concern, Saionji, but…"
"Don't you?" he burst out spitefully, whirling on her, "Did you manage to meet with one of them? Or did they pay a visit to your boy protégé and Kiryuu's sister first? You might find this matter trifling, but don't treat it lightly. These people can draw weapons from the bodies of normal people, not just from the Bride! Isn't that a threat to all of us, as Duelists? It is my concern as much as it is yours, and if this is the attitude you'll take against them, you might as well resign your ring now!"
"Oh, and I suppose throwing a fit is a much better way of dealing with the problem," she replied, with a sigh that said 'why don't you just grow up', "Why bother researching and executing a well-planned resistance when you can just scream and stomp and make demands?" she gathered up the old notes, the sheaf of papers dry and yellow-soft from age, and pushed her chair back. It made a soft, grinding screech against the tiled floor. "That's always been your downfall."
Each rose is a different color, but some are shades of the same. Blue and red, brown, yellow. The roses all come from the garden: how long has it stood here?
It was baking in early-October sunshine, the heat of it intensified as it shone through the glass of their enormous windows. A glass of lemonade perspired condensation on the table, leaving a ring of water when she lifted it to take a sip. "I won't bother boring you with inconsequential details such as the fact that this room is still open only to council members," she said with a hint of exasperation. Juri extended the hand holding her fluted glass of lemonade, a gesture that made it seem as if she was toasting him.
He didn't respond to her verbally, just set his face into something like a sneer. It wasn't as well-crafted as his usual ones. She noted that although he looked on edge, set as if awaiting a chance to leap either away or at prey, he no longer had the look of an insomniac.
"Speak, Saionji," the words made it seem as though she was commanding a dog. She leaned forward and set the glass back down on the table with a faint 'click'. Water slicked her hand and smeared on the table where the glass slid from position to position, creating tiny puddles on the wood.
"Have you talked to Touga?"
When he spoke, she noted that he wasn't using his usual way of addressing people: formally and long-winded, as if he was trying to substitute sheer volume for wit and substance. He was terse now, abrupt and to the point. The almost-lilting way he spoke put her in mind of a child holding something behind his back as a surprise, taunting her to guess at what it was. It was a harmless enough game, and no need for her not to play along, so she replied in a casual way. "I did, at that obscenely large party Nanami threw for him a few days ago. He seemed …" she trailed off, unsure of how to describe the way he'd been acting. Touga was no longer as self-assured and arrogantly confidant, now he smiled with less of his cocky old self in his eyes. He seemed to be thinking of something very far from here, from Ohtori, with its petty social labyrinths and its underground attempts at a vague revolution.
"A little unlike himself," she finished. "Why? Is he also considering re-joining the council?" she spoke sarcastically; sure that was not the case. Touga hadn't even seemed interested in what the council had been doing in his absence.
"No."
She looked up, ready to snap at him for wasting both of their time with the silly attempts at stalling, but when she caught sight of his expression she thought better of it. Saionji didn't look troubled, or at least not like a normal person would. She'd never seen anything like concern or distress on his face. It was as if he didn't have the muscle instinct for those expressions, or maybe he just didn't have the emotional capacity. What he looked was grim, for lack of a better word. "Something happened to him," she said. It wasn't really something that needed asking, she'd had the feeling before. The unspoken: 'There's just him now. When will it be him?' "They took his sword, too."
He didn't answer, just turned away. Presumably, he didn't think he needed to answer, both of them knew it would be a yes. Saionji tried not to be redundant when he could.
"Who drew his sword?" she asked.
"Who drew yours?" he countered, and she didn't ask again. In front of her, the puddle beneath the lemonade grew and the ice inside slowly melted to chips, nearly invisible. She felt a phantom pain in her chest, the voiceless scream and wrenching jolt of her sword, shining silver, sliding bloodlessly out of her body and into Shiori's outstretched hand.
End of the World sent us a letter with nothing inside. Takeshiro, the president, just stood there holding it for a long time. The Rose Bride won't speak.
"What do you think will happen when they reach Tenjou?" he asked. He was like a lost cat returning constantly to the house of owners long gone. She'd stopped commenting on his sporadic visits to the student council's balcony, it was either take steps to keep him from entering or stay silent, and for some reason, she couldn't quite bring herself to remove him from their presence entirely. In some strange way, it felt like he belonged here, like a part of the architecture. He was a duelist as she was, and they all gathered there together. These days, they had a grim tolerance for each other.
"I don't know," she said simply. "I wonder if they would approach her, though. I don't believe they'd do it the same way they did… to us," she looked away as she spoke, "To win the duels they must beat the current victor in a duel by sword, by slicing the rose from her breast. Black ring or silver, the rules are the same. How could they defeat her that way if they incapacitated her? I wonder if that would be counted as victory by default…they don't play by the rules, anyway."
She sat stiffly upright in one of the elaborately carved chairs by the council chamber's enormous glass doors. Usually, they slid out and made an open-air area to the balcony, but the day was dark and wet with sullen rain-clouds and a steady downpour. The glass doors remained firmly shut, although she'd drawn back the curtains to admire the clouds. It was a habit from childhood, she and her older sister had read a fairy tale once about an old fortuneteller who could tell the future by looking at shapes in a cloudy sky. On rainy days, they'd sit in front of the window and make up stories from what they saw in the clouds: rabbits, playground slides, and a broken arm with a band-aid. The day her sister had almost drowned, she thought she'd seen a dark eye in the clouds, half-closing, crushed-charcoal grey around its eyelids.
Today, the clouds were spread thin across the sky in a sheet of even and opaque grey, with occasional inconsistencies. Smears of light shone through the blanketed sky.
"Miki told me something disturbing," he said, in a strangely halting tone. It was as if he had to get the words out of his mouth quickly, before they…what? Sliced into his tongue? Like they were painful to him.
She raised her eyebrow.
Saionji didn't automatically respond. Instead, he seemed to withdraw from the topic momentarily, turning to look out the window, arms folded rigidly. It wasn't so much a retreat as a pause for him to collect his bearings before continuing. "Is it true," he said, eyes focused at some small point on the horizon that lay beyond the window, "That they're not trying to win the Bride, like we are? That their objective is to kill her instead?" His jaw was taut with tension, trembling along its lines. Juri wondered, briefly, if he actually thought himself adept at controlling his emotions.
"I've heard similar rumors," she replied cautiously. Miki had confided in them as much, apparently Utena decided to seek out some information from the council itself about the appearance of the new, alien opponents she'd been facing. In this discussion, she'd told him that each of them swore to kill the Bride before the duels began, and that one had directed her attacks at Anthy to begin with. The reason for their hatred and altered personalities was unknown, none of them had made any explanations as to how or why they became what they were until their roses were taken, and she still couldn't understand what they had to gain by killing Anthy. Wasn't she supposed to be their main prize, the holder of whatever power she could grant them? The power to revolutionize the world, and these new duelists wanted to destroy it.
Just what was Anthy containing, anyway?
So will this miracle power let me ace all of my exams?
She shook her head, feeling suddenly sick of all the highhanded, glorious mystery surrounding Himemiya. The Bride was a blank-faced, simpering, sweet-smiling, willing trophy. Tenjou's casual dismissal of the so-called revolutionary power the Bride carried had angered her at first, a pinprick of desperate rage stemming from the possibility that this was all smoke and mirrors for End of the World, that there was nothing powerful a there at all. That they were simply going at each other in a cycle of stupid, empty movement. What would that mean for her, then? And what had she wanted all along? Possession of a girl she hated, simply so she could show that nothing amazing could come from it in the end? Especially now, with Shiori so close, and still so completely uncomprehending.
"In a way," Juri said slowly, "I think it might be better if they succeeded."
"What?" Saionji all-but yelled the word, nearly falling over a chair in his righteous fury.
"It's tiring, this constant cycle of dueling and winning, passing around Himemiya like some deranged party favor. The false hopes, the suspense, all leading to…what? For all I know, the only thing that will happen at the end of this year is my inevitable graduation from this class to the next. But then again, I'm not exactly willing to quit the dueling game altogether. Even though we're superfluous members right now, it seems. Or didn't you hear that End of the World has stopped giving us letters?"
"Your apathy isn't a good reason to want Anthy dead," he spat at her, as if he had any right to a moral high ground.
"But your inferiority complex is a good reason to want to kill Tenjou Utena," she said, careless now about her words and ready for some kind of a fight. Her tone, however, was as analytical and cool as ever. "What really annoyed you about that? The fact that you were defeated by a little girl with a broken shinai, or the fact that Anthy was finally revealed as the insincere, emotionless toy…"
Saionji cut her off by leaping from the chair he was leaning his hands on, knocking it to the floor with a harsh, metallic clatter, and swung his hand towards her threateningly. Juri stood up before he could make any more progress on that, pushing her own chair back with the sudden movement, setting her hands palm-downwards on the table in front of her in a steadying gesture. She chose that pose consciously, chose to lean forward into the path of whatever blow he would strike at her, her eyes narrowed and chin jutted forward. Her entire posture screamed defiance. Go ahead and try to hit me. I dare you. I absolutely dare you to touch me.
He paused; either confused by her reaction or in realization of what a terminally stupid move slapping her would be. "I didn't want to kill her," he scowled, "That wasn't it at all. It wasn't about that," he repeated.
A quick return to the previous argument, the 'I wish dead/don't wish dead' debate, the moral conundrum. That was fine. She could handle that. Pushing away the brief, strange feeling of disappointment that he hadn't made a move against her, she prepared her argument.
"Well, you certainly didn't want her healthy enough to continue another duel. Was that what you wanted? To slice through her shoulder, cut off her sword arm? To keep her from ever challenging you again?" she laughed a short, nasty laugh. Where had that come from? But what she had been thinking of was Tenjou's scared, adolescent face trying to hold in the sense of terror that came from being threatened with severe injury with a bladed weapon by one of her 'trusted' sempai, the sense of shock that came from seeing that kind of fear in her, and the epiphany that followed. It was only a striking realization because it was so blaringly obvious, something that hadn't even penetrated her thoughts until that point: that girl was young, she was only fourteen and involved in something that made other, older, students obsessed enough to take their frustration out on her skin. Behind all that nobility and delusions of Princehood, she was just a kid in school. What were they doing playing their sword games? What would happen if someone took it too far?
"You're a hypocrite, Saionji."
To her surprise, he looked away.
Juri remembered.
"I sent him a little note," he'd told her once. It was a week, maybe a few days longer than a week after it happened, and they had been in a meeting. Miki absented himself after a phone call, his sister was conveniently ill. This left only Touga for company as she used their private balcony as an area for quiet study. What else was she supposed to do, when they couldn't run a meeting with two people alone? Touga practiced throwing knifes at the board behind her as he spoke, his fingers blurring with precisely placed shots.
"A note?" She was semi-interested, mainly bored.
"About the castle," and he'd told her in the way he had of hinting enough for the listener to piece the vague clues together, about Saionji throwing everything away for the merest glimpse of a promised eternity. She'd laughed then, the sort of self-satisfied, bitter, 'he deserved it' kind of chuckle. It was funny. After all, Saionji was nothing but an arrogant, obnoxious oaf to her then. The sort you couldn't help but wish a downfall on.
"So, he turned out to be the laughingstock of the Student Council," she'd said to Miki. "That fool."
"That fool," Juri said, but the words were empty on her tongue.
The days following that were like time spent around the sickbed of a dying relative, the atmosphere of a hospice lingering in the air. They were all waiting for the axe to drop.
They'd finally abandoned the search for information about the new Duelists and what they were doing to the cycle. It didn't seem to matter, since they had all been targeted already, used and violated…because it did feel like a violation, the actual act of pulling the sword. None of them spoke to each other about it, because each of them knew what it was to be completely under the control of a strange hand (because they were strange and alien, no matter their ties in either friendship or blood), and to feel their entire essence rip away, sinew and muscle brutally tearing free. Shiori may as well have reached her hand through her chest and wrapped he fingers around her heart. Then there was the pleasure, intense as electrical shock, surging at the first touch. Was that how Himemiya felt when they took the sword from her? It left her feeling empty, exposed, spent, as if everything she was had been exhausted and burnt out until there was nothing left to give. The council had played out their mutual stages of decomposition, going over the same problems like a full set of broken records.
They'd finally reached the point where they were tired of playing out that game. Now there was only silence, between each other and from End of the World.
Shin has defeated the current Victor in a duel, the next to fight will be the vice president. Following the duel cycle, it should be set for the next week. It all turns around like a carousel or a spinning arrow, who will it land on when revolution comes?
Juri crumpled the paper, taking out some of her frustration on it. Like the other entries, it was just a useless note telling her what she already knew. The paper, yellow and soft with age, gave her no resistance as she clenched it in her fingers.
"Oh. I'd thought the others would be here, too."
She turned to see what Saionji wanted, her hair brushing her shoulders and falling in her face. This morning, she hadn't bothered with her usual intensive grooming ritual, so her curls weren't tight, tamed corkscrews as they usually were. Her hair was thick and wild; it turned to curls that twisted like half-formed ocean waves. A few strands stuck, static-glued, to her hand as she brushed it back impatiently. "They're all busy," she said shortly, "With… individual things."
Family problems, was what she didn't say. Miki hadn't mentioned anything, but he always had the same way when he was worried about something that hit close to home. He'd curl a hand to his stomach, fist clenched gently, and his conversations would become more tentative and abstract. Nanami was worried about her brother. She said he would often go on walks.
"Does it bother you, Arisugawa, to work with such children?" Saionji asked, the typical sneer back in his tone. It seemed half-hearted though, and absentminded. She wondered if he was rude and tactless out of force of habit, or if it was a persona he'd adopted to deal with all the other insufferable idiots at this school. After all, Saionji had been close friends with Touga, and that sort of thing left an impression.
Although…
"No, it's what I'm most familiar with," she said. Sarcasm was something to cling to.
"No, really," he repeated. Saionji, as anticipated, hardly reacted to the verbal jab except for a twitch of his lips and a slight stiffening of his shoulders. He folded his arms, and she realized, strangely, how every conversation they'd had was exactly the same for their positions: always her seated, him standing. She would be at leisure, in a position of authority, while he had to stand at attention if front of her. The knowledge came in a flashing epiphany, the mediocre sort that arise at odd moments throughout the day.
"Does it feel like the council has declined into some kind of daycare service? Miki may be intelligent, well-read for his age, but he's still just a kid, and Nanami doesn't even need explaining," he continued, "Doesn't it bother you that we've all sunk so low in End of the World's calculations? It makes me think that we're nothing but a chess board for him, and we've been put on hold."
"You didn't come here to start that conversation up again," Juri said.
"No," he replied, I didn't."
"However," she said, "I'll admit that there's truth in what you say. We all may have held grandiose opinions of ourselves. The dueling game was new, intriguing. It gave us a false sense of power, and this may be End of the World's way of proving that wrong. Then again, who can say what he thinks? I'm tired of trying to read minds," she said, sounding bitter, "Hopeless or not, on hold or not, we're still duelists. Whatever little that may mean now."
Saionji looked disappointed. He turned swiftly and paced. "I don't understand, Arisugawa, how you manage to keep yourself like that. The student council is falling apart at the seams and you can't even muster a raised eyebrow. That's the one thing I've never understood about you, but Touga has it, too. That ability to control how he acts. You just don't show emotion, though. He masks one thing with something else. How much do you even feel," he asked, and she knew he wasn't talking about her, so she said nothing.
"When you were fighting Tenjou, you lost that ability."
'I lost my temper," she worded carefully. "Because she says too much and understands nothing."
And that was one thing they both understood. Both of them were tightly under their own guard, locked away. Tenjou was wise like the magi, like the archetypal Fool. She spoke half-truths that hit too closely to their hearts without coming close to the truth as they saw it. There was no room for innocent truths in their minds.
"I received a letter from End of the World," he said to her, "And it says that the trial is almost over."
"Sit down," Juri said, "And read it to me."
The duels are like glaciers. The nature of glaciers is that most everything is below the surface, hidden.
Notes: This is not meant to be a romantic piece, but was written originally to see if Juri and Saionji could plausibly form a romantic relationship. I saw within the first paragraph that attempt was doomed, and so this became an exercise in writing a fanfiction centering around Juri and Saionji and their relationship.