Summary: Honestly, Touga didn't mind being used. But a part of him was still human, and that part had its limits. Oneshot.
Warnings: Dark, character death, minor slashy references, and run-on sentences from hell. :]
Spoilers For: The entire series, basically.
Disclaimer: I don't own Utena, blah blah blah.
Note: Based on my theory that Akio's End of the World trips result in death. I'm not involved in the fandom, really, so I don't know if there are others who share this view or not.
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Let's Die Heroically, Let's Die with Style
Honestly, Touga didn't mind being used.
Sure, the first trip had been scary – terrifying, even – but it was pointless now to be afraid. His heart might still race when Akio shifted to the highest gear and stomped on the gas, but there was no danger for him any longer when the red car lurched forward, when the street-lamps all blurred together on the sides of the road, or even when Akio swung confidently out of his seat to face the End of the World head-on. Touga knew now that that the wheel would guide the car to its ultimate destination with or without its driver turning it there, and every time he would see a little more of the outside world before the crash. That's what made it all worth it for him – the hint of freedom, the glances of an ugly and decimated terrain that was somehow beautiful just for its differences from the elegant, lighted world of Ohtori Academy.
Perhaps it wasn't entirely worth the damage done to his soul, but that part couldn't be helped. And so long as he was kept in this purgatory, who could blame him for seeking any selfish pleasure he could garnish from his gruesome task?
He had led each of his friends, one by one, without question or hesitation, to their dooms. He'd had no objections when Akio suggested that they first take Saionji, who might have been called his closest, if not best, friend in life. Touga had done it all by the script, even then; he had played to his old companion's every fear and hurt and grievance (so many of which were shared with him in confidence long ago, back when he could not have fathomed betraying the younger boy so). He had picked apart every flaw and weakness in his character to get him into that car. He had manipulated whatever shred of trust was left between them to talk Saionji into sitting shotgun for his own demise. He had confused him, spoken in honeyed riddles to place him in that seat, and he had felt only the slightest twinge of regret when those envy-green curls flew back in his face as they sped down the freeway. There was no point to feeling it then, of course, for their destination and its end were unavoidable once the passenger had been secured. He offered his friend no comforts or assurances when their speed turned immeasurable and the last familiar landmark was miles behind them. He uttered no final goodbyes when the roads faded into unlined dirt and jagged rock, nor explanations for the flashes of apocalyptic destruction they saw in the distance, for he knew none himself. Perhaps Akio didn't know either, or perhaps he knew and simply did not think the enslaved Touga worthy of sharing in that knowledge.
Or perhaps Akio himself was the cause, as seemed most likely in Touga's mind. Perhaps his mere existence had brought about the end of the outside world, the real world, and now only the imagined paradise of Ohtori was left. A walled palace to please the foolish minds of mortals and to give Akio one last playground for his games.
Akio swung himself onto the hood of the convertible, shirt open and blowing in the cold desert wind. His laughter drowned out Saionji's scared pleas and echoed even over his final scream.
The red metal screeched, crushed around the bloodstained interior of the car. Broken glass made Saionji's still body glitter in the center of the wreckage. Standing atop the pile of boulders they had crashed into was Akio, smiling, untouched and perfect, with his lavender hair flowing loose around his shoulders and the stars shimmering in the black sky behind him.
At first Touga had been too shocked to move, and he had stared unbelieving at Saionji – no, Saionji's body, twisted and mangled but still beautiful as ever even when bruised and spattered with dark blood. Touga wondered if that's how he himself had looked the first time the deceitful prince had invited him along for such a ride, for on this second trip he was as unmarked as Akio. The wreckage had curled itself around him, stopping short of him by mere fractions of inches, as if he had some mystical barrier protecting him.
But Akio put a stop to his ponderings, saying, "Come, my pet. You need not worry about him any longer."
He remembered being drawn out from the car, as if pulled by invisible strings – for what was he now if not Akio's puppet? – and the next thing he knew they were back at Ohtori Academy. The morning sky was bright, the weather gorgeous as always. Akio was again the charming chairman, and Touga the playboy president of the student council, and, lo and behold, there was the kendo champion Saionji practicing for his next match in the dojo, though his body (like Akio's, like Touga's) was not the one he'd possessed yesterday. His was at once physical and incorporeal, immortal yet already dead, and he too was prisoner to Akio Ohtori's whims.
And so, as Akio had planned, Saionji again dueled with Utena Tenjou. He dueled to win back what control Akio had lost to that girl – that tomboy with the independent spirit and noble heart – when she first won the Rose Bride from him.
But Saionji had lost, despite the new life Akio had so graciously bestowed upon him, and Akio had sent Touga out to prepare another unsuspecting duelist to face the End of the World with them, and then another and another, until all were as good as walking ghosts breathing beautifully giftwrapped death upon the rest of the campus.
And still Utena would not be defeated.
That was when Akio expressed his desire to show her, as he had shown all the others, what the End of the World truly meant.
That was when Touga Kiryuu, Akio's loyal puppet, the lover he abused when he was bored, the lackey he turned murderous when he was angry, finally said no more, for even he, whose fate was long decided and whose soul was long condemned, was still a little bit human. And his human side had limits.
He did not falter in his duties until that day. Without hesitation or guilt he led Juri, Miki, and so many others to their deaths, knowing full well the purgatory they would face when Akio called upon each of them – knowing their souls would be trapped, like his, by the boundaries of Ohtori, never again to see what was left of the outside world. Touga had led even his own little sister to this fate, had twisted and perverted her love for him to seal her demise, but still he could not bring himself to do the same to Utena Tenjou.
But his refusal made no appreciable difference to her destiny, shameful as it was for him to admit it. All it meant was that, when the time came for the Revolution's chosen prince to see the inevitable end of her journey, Akio alone escorted her. Touga was sure that he had no qualms about doing so, probably derived some fleeting amount of pleasure from doing her in personally, privately, and without the roving eyes or hands of Touga there to hold him back.
And he certainly did not hold back, for Utena returned to the illuminated phantom world of Ohtori more broken than any who had made the trip before her. Still she was strong, yes, and still she was beautiful, but somewhere within her Akio had planted seeds of doubt and despair and need that Touga had never before seen in her. She could rebel all she wanted, she could try to fight off the apocalypse still, but it had already happened – Touga had seen that truth with his own undead eyes. Akio had taken from her the same thing he had stripped the rest of the world of already; an important part of her was gone, taken, and could not be regained. Touga did not know if it was innocence, nobility, or some other unnamed something, but she was as hollow as the rest of the student body, as the rest of the world, without it.
She, too, now belonged to Akio.
Maybe nothing he might have done would have prevented this outcome, for she was, however much she fought the image, a girl. She wore a prince's clothes but had a girl's fragile heart stashed within them, as evidenced by how easily Akio's mock-up of love and affection had swayed her from her noble goals. And perhaps that is what despaired Touga so, what made his heart sink and his immaterial body start to fade, what sapped his soul of its strength, because somewhere deep down he had always rooted for her, always secretly hoped that she really would prove herself in the end, that she really would become the prince that the world so desperately needed, that she could not only revolutionize the world but save it.
In his last moments in the purgatory of Akio's making, as his weakened soul finally faded and died into that shining world's oft ignored black backdrop, Touga laughed at this thought.
Utena never could have revolutionized the world anyway, for it had fallen into darkness the day Akio broke out of his eggshell.