Atmung

A Rozen Maiden fanfic by Aondehafka

Disclaimer: the characters and concepts of Rozen Maiden are owned by Peach Pit, not me. This story is based on the anime, not the manga.

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I'm going to lead into this with what might sound like a strange request: if you haven't watched the Rozen Maiden anime all the way through the end of the second season, do not read this story or any of the follow-ups. Rozen Maiden is a great series, and reading this before watching it will completely spoil you on most of the important plot twists... plus the story won't make sense anyway.

On my profile page there is some further information about the series. Again, if you're not familiar with the anime, please go there now instead of reading further – it's for your own good. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.

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Chapter 1: Rage and Sorrow

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Shinku stared contemplatively down into her untouched cup of tea. It was the same flavor it always was, here in her dreamscape. She rested in the same elegant red chair, in the same Victorian parlor. The sunlight streamed through the windows at the same angle and with the same hazy brightness it always did. "How many thousands of times have I come here?" she mused. "And never a real change in all that time... Perhaps I should try to make some?"

The light from the window suddenly dimmed, as black feathers drifted through the air on the far side of the room. She let out a quiet snort. "Even Suigin Tou's visits are becoming ordinary."

"Shinku..." Unsurprisingly, Suigin Tou's opening line was the same too.

"Suigin Tou." Shinku lifted the cup and drank her tea before any pinions could land in it. She was a little surprised that the First Doll said nothing during the time this took. "What is it?"

Her uninvited guest didn't reply, merely stared down at the floor with gritted teeth and one fist clenched. Shinku began quietly drawing in power from Jun. "What did you want?" she asked, hoping against hope that Suigin Tou wasn't there to cause more trouble. She reminded herself of the glimpses she'd gained into her sister's memories when she received her Rosa Mystica, the care the First Doll felt for a girl broken worse than herself. Suigin Tou might not be fond of showing it, but she did have a softer side.

With an incoherent cry, Suigin Tou spread her ragged ebony wings wide, then whirled them around and down. Darkness trailed in their wake, leaving her half of the room shrouded in absolute blackness.

Shinku was already moving, flooding the air before her with a shield of rose petals. Although they didn't obscure her vision, the same would not be true for Suigin Tou. In the next instant she threw herself to the side, drawing fresh strength from Jun and preparing to counterattack. But nothing came flying out of the darkness—not feathers, not flames, not curses.

After a few tense moments had ticked past, Shinku frowned and concentrated. She had held Suigin Tou's power for only a little while, but it had given her familiarity enough for this...

Ten seconds of fumbling effort later, she managed to adjust her vision and see through the enveloping shadows. As soon as she did she blinked and lost the image, her concentration broken by the unexpected sight. "S-Suigin Tou?"

"I'm sorry." The words were choked and quiet, originating mere inches above the floor. Clearly Suigin Tou was still hunched down in the miserable pose which had met Shinku's gaze.

The last of the rose petals glimmered away to nothingness. "You're sorry?" Shinku repeated, hoping to draw out a bit more detail.

"I'm sorry." A pained gasp. "I'm sorry I took so much joy in tearing away your arm. I'm sorry that even as Bara Suishou defeated me, I was more determined to break you than her. I'm sorry that I never listened to what you said, about how we were sisters and sisters shouldn't destroy each other."

"I see..." Shinku paused, and considered her next words carefully. "And are you sorry for following Bara Suishou to that place?"

"I think that goes without saying!" The words were snarled, not choked out, and the point of their origin changed as Suigin Tou shot to her feet. Shinku congratulated herself. Her sister was no longer drowning in grief, and the anger that had replaced it was focused on someone who actually deserved it. Both of these were a nice change. "That damnable little liar! I hope it was my rage and pain that burned her from the inside out!"

"You know, I honestly would not be surprised at that," Shinku murmured. "Still, I think it was just too much power for her to hold."

"Because she was never a Rozen Maiden at all," Suigin Tou said bitterly, then briefly shifted her language to German. It was such a more satisfying language to curse in. "And the bastard whoreson who made her dared to pass himself off as Father to us." Her voice dropped nearly to a whisper as she added, "To me."

"Suigin Tou..." Shinku murmured sadly, then fell silent, considering her older sister. 'I remember what she said to me, after Bara Suishou's final attack broke her. That Father told her even she could be Alice, even with a body like that. And that is true; I am sure of it. But it was Enju who told her that, not Father, and he would have just been saying what he needed to get her to fight. Of all of us, she may have been hurt the worst.'

She didn't think Suigin Tou would want her to bring any of that up, though. At least not now, when the pain would still be fresh. She limited herself to a quiet, "I am sorry as well."

"Spare me your pity, Shinku." With a sound like the tearing of a bolt of cloth, Suigin Tou flapped her wings and shredded the darkness around her. She took a determined step forward. "None of us realized what was really happening. Not me, and not you either."

Shinku inclined her head. "We all made mistakes," she admitted. "And we all need to learn from them."

Suigin Tou gritted her teeth. "Maybe pity would have been better," she muttered. Then, louder, "That's right. I already told you what I learned. What about you, sister? What hard lesson did you choke down?"

"That as sisters, we have to stand together. Father restored all of us except Hina Ichigo and Sousei Seki, the ones who were defeated by a real Rozen Maiden. And he told me I must find a way to bring them back."

"And...?" Suigin Tou asked after an expectant moment of silence.

"Don't you think that's enough?" Shinku wanted to know. "It might not be bitter, but it is certainly a huge responsibility!"

"Tch!" Suigin Tou packed more disgust into the monosyllable than the Sakurada household generated in a week. "I gave you my apology, Shinku. I faced the mistakes I had made, even though it hurt worse than anything. But you're still closing your eyes to your own? Still wrapped up so snug in your blanket of self-righteousness?"

Shinku frowned. "The only one I ever saw wearing blinders was you, Suigin Tou."

"If you don't see it, then you haven't even tried to see. You haven't thought at all about what Father really wants, or why he made us how he did."

"Just say what you mean," the Fifth Doll snapped. "And quit acting like you wish we still had the Alice Game looming over us."

"There! That's it exactly!" Suigin Tou cried. "How many times did you say it, Shinku? 'I have no intention of fighting.' 'I plan to stop the Alice Game.' You said all that back when we thought that was the only way to become Alice. And now we know it isn't, now," her voice faltered, and she looked momentarily away, "now we know Father wanted as many of us to become Alice as possible, not just one... and I won't be able to tell him I'm sorry for trying to break all the others until I find my way to that place..."

"You say all that, but it seems you still wish we could fight," Shinku declared.

"You say that as if we were never supposed to fight at all!" Suigin Tou spat. She paused to let the other doll reply, but when Shinku just stood there blinking those big, innocent, irritating blue eyes she scowled and elaborated. "How can you be so willfully blind? Just because we weren't meant to take the Alice Game all the way to its end, doesn't mean we weren't supposed to play at all!"

"How did you decide that, Suigin Tou?" Shinku asked coldly. "Is it just that you're still clinging to the thought of defeating me?"

"I will some day! You had better believe that!" Suigin Tou shouted. Then, regaining her self-control, she said, "You're the one clinging to delusions. When Father made us, he only told us about one path to Alice. He had to have meant us to walk farther down it than we did, before Enju and Bara Suishou ruined everything. Maybe if we had, we would have found those other ways without Father having to tell us. Maybe that was what he wanted, or maybe not. But it's certain that he did want us to fight, to strive against each other and learn from it! And all you ever learned was how to go your own way!"

"You have no right to speak for Father like that!" Shinku yelled, her fists clenching. "You, who were the first to follow Bara Suishou and Enju! You, who were the only one to ever deliberately break one of your sisters! You, who were not even taking the Rosae Mystica for yourself or Alice, but to heal your medium!"

"THAT'S A LIE!!" Suigin Tou screamed, her wings spreading wide and growing the snapping dragon heads. "After Megu was healed, I would have taken them into myself to be Alice! One girl healthy, and one girl made perfect! But you wouldn't care about either of those, would you?"

"How dare you say that? After what you tried to do in Jun's dream! He and I have stood together through the worst you or anyone could throw at us!"

Seeing the cracks in Shinku's composure was enough to restore some of Suigin Tou's. "Never mind that time; who brought her medium into the final battle, even though he was powerless to help? It didn't make it any easier for you to draw power from him, having him there. All it did was put him at risk! So why did you bring him, Shinku? Simply because you couldn't bear to let one of your possessions out of your sight?"

"I brought him because I trust him," Shinku said, each word etched with frost and iron. "Trusted him to find a way to make a difference. And he did that and more!"

"Whatever," Suigin Tou said dismissively. "I don't really care about your little pet anyway. But I do care about you matching what I did, and admitting your mistakes to me just like I forced myself to do to you."

"So you wish for me to match you? Very well," Shinku said evenly, drawing in another surge of power from Jun. Suigin Tou was the doll with the greatest power to manipulate N-fields, such as the dream they were in... but this dream was Shinku's.

Without warning the world convulsed. By sheer reflex Suigin Tou managed to stabilize her position within it for a few seconds, but she could not hold. With a cry of, "Damn you, Shinku!" she was torn free and cast into the general space between dreams and waking.

The triumphant Fifth Doll's solitude was short-lived, though. Even as Suigin Tou's cry faded, she heard another voice calling her name...

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"Shinku... Shinku... Shinku!"

She opened her eyes, peering through the blackness of three A.M. to focus on Jun. "What is it, Jun? You should not open my box and wake me like that. It's very rude."

"Rude?" Jun echoed. "Is that all you've got to say?" Then he blinked. "Uh... it was you and not Suisei Seki drawing all that power from me, right?"

"Then I woke you up first?" Shinku grimaced. "I am sorry. But Suigin Tou forced her way into my dream world again." She related a brief outline of what had passed between the two of them.

"Geez, that doll never learns," Jun complained. "Or not enough, anyway. At least it sounds like she knows better than to actually break anyone now."

"Even if she is only holding back for Father's sake," Shinku grumbled. "You know, Jun... I never meant to destroy Hina Ichigo. I did not defeat her to get her Rosa Mystica. And Suigin Tou only fell to Bara Suishou after I had as good as defeated her."

"Huh?" Jun blinked, scrubbed his eyes, and wondered whether he was still partly asleep. "What does that have to do with what we were talking about?"

"Just that I wish he had restored Hina Ichigo, and left Suigin Tou to be called back."

"Oh. Yeah, that would have been better." Jun yawned. "Um... is it gonna be safe for you to go back to sleep? Will she just be there waiting for you?"

"I will have to face her sooner or later," Shinku answered. "But... I would rather it wasn't tonight. Perhaps we could talk about ideas for helping Hina Ichigo and Sousei Seki?"

"Okay," Jun said, stifling another yawn and feeling grateful that school hadn't resumed yet. "I'll make the tea."

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Author's Notes

Thanks go to Brian Randall, who preread each of the ten chapters in the fic. Thanks also go to Peach Pit, for creating this anime, and to the group Ayu who created the fansubbed version that I watched (if you were expecting names like 'Souseiseki' and 'Suigintou', that's the reason why you're not seeing them; the naming format used by Ayu was 'Sousei Seki' and 'Suigin Tou') long before Geneon picked up the license for distribution in North America.

Note: this story was completed in 2006, but I waited awhile to post it. However, I'm tired of waiting for this site to put up a 'Rozen Maiden' category, so in it goes under 'Anime Crossovers' instead. When and if fanfiction(dot)net ever decides to create the appropriate category, I'll delete and re-post this fic.