A/N: (1) The lines of verse in the fic are from the poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Elliot. I specifically chose to leave out the last half of the poem's last line, although why is up to your interperetation.
A/N: (2) The timeline of the three parts of the story are as follows: Then-sometime between when the current dueling game was established and when Utena arrived at the school Now-A few days after Juri's last duel with Utena Tomorrow-several weeks after the series ends
Enjoy! Concrit is appreciated
Then
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
They called her a leopard. Juri Arisugawa, the beautiful beast who turned heads wherever she went and froze blood with her eyes. Oh, she was a wild beast, indeed. For fangs, she had her sword, and for claws the sharpness of her words, but she was no more vicious than any other girl. Those girls, who whispered behind her back, always wondering, insinuating, and spreading rumors like a communicable disease; if they'd had any idea who Juri really was, she was certain they could find more venomous things to call her.
"I am the Rose Bride. From this day forward, I belong to you." Anthy Himemiya greeted her this way, on the path to the dormitory with a suitcase in her hands. Juri eyed her warily. She had beaten Saionji cruelly and efficiently that afternoon (the only way one could defeat him, she imagined) and when she'd returned home, the Rose Bride was waiting on her doorstep.
"Go down to the dining hall," Juri said curtly, refusing to acknowledge Anthy's formal greeting. "I'll come down in a minute."
"We should go together, Juri-sama. After all, we are engaged."
Before she could speak, Anthy had laid her suitcase down by the door. "Fine," she said, realizing it was pointless to protest, "We'll go together." Anthy walked beside her, so close that the frills of her skirt brushed against Juri's leg. It was awkward to have someone stand so close to her; the most devoted of her admirers still gave her a half-yard of personal space. Even in the duels her opponent had always been a sword's length away. Of course, now that she'd won, she would have to endure even more duels than before. The other duelists would come to challenge her for the Rose Bride, and it suddenly made her wonder, what am I supposed to do with a Rose Bride?
Her heart began to race. Of course, she knew what Touga must have done, much the same as if he'd found any other willing girl lying in his bed. Saionji she was less sure of. It was true that he enjoyed slapping Anthy around, but in his own twisted way, he seemed to care about her, too. Miki—well, Miki had yet to win her, but Juri was certain that even a sweet boy like him would loose out to his baser instincts in the end. So what about me? If what End of the World told us is true, I'm not in possession of a girl at all, but the prison of some kind of miraculous power. Until it shows itself, I'm the Engaged. I can do whatever I want with Anthy. So what is it exactly that I want from her?
Juri bit her lip nervously. Dinner was roast duck, but it passed through her mouth tastelessly, she was so focused on her thoughts. Anthy ate slowly and silently. Her movements were strangely delicate, as if she were made of glass, and frightened of breaking herself. Her head was bowed and her bangs fell over her face like a veil. Juri resisted the urge to reach out and brush them out of her eyes.
"Would you like me to make shaved ice for dessert?" She asked quietly.
"No," Juri answered, her voice hesitant. Her hands were clasped in her lap, and she stared at them with furious concentration, not daring to look up. She didn't see the small, dark smile that played briefly across Anthy's lips. "I have another idea."
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
When she let her hair down, Anthy looked much older. She was sprawled, unabashedly naked, on Juri's bed, her green eyes oddly bright against the darkness of her skin, and Juri, crouched over her with the collar of her uniform unbuttoned just far enough to expose the curve of her breasts, looked every bit the predator. Her hand, pearl white in the gloom, snaked a path between Anthy's breasts and down her stomach, coming to rest in the warm tangle of hair between her legs. Juri's skin throbbed with the collective heat from her own body and the body of the girl underneath her. Her fingers twitched. Unable to continue their downward path, they rested at the very edge of the unspoken, unacknowledged need that Juri had always held at bay. Inhaling deeply, Juri looked up into the eyes of the Rose Bride.
What she saw was not at all what she'd expected. There was nothing of the shy, demure Anthy for whom she felt such distain. She was looking at a woman who she felt must be a great deal older than herself; a woman who returned her gaze with a kind of painful understanding. It didn't come as a surprise to her, then, that Anthy leaned up and peeled her shirt back from her shoulders, stroking her neck tenderly, without having to be asked. She knew (and although it was impossible to say how, Juri also knew) that the two of them shared a common bond. They were both liars of the worst kind; they lied to themselves.
"Juri-sama," Anthy whispered, "Tell me what you want, and I--"
Her words were muffled as Juri met her lips in a lingering kiss. "You know what I want. Show me your power; give me a miracle." Their fingers interlocked, and Juri squeezed her hand. "Make me feel it."
Everything else was a blur. A heartbeat later, Juri was naked. Another beat, and Anthy's fingers were inside her, stroking her, building up tension until it broke like a wave and Juri collapsed on top of her, sweaty and sleek. Another beat. Juri's head was between Anthy's legs, her tongue tracing the outline of her sex, driving in, searching. She was running her hands through a seemingly endless web of soft, dark hair, languidly returning to the curve of Anthy's hip, down her inner thigh and back into the hot throb of her body. Save the desperate moans that passed through Juri's lips, they were silent.
When it was over, Juri rested her head on top of Anthy's breast and slept. There was a warm hand on the small of her back, and the scent of roses lingered almost imperceptibly in the air. Drowsily, she ran her hand along the Rose Bride's cheek. Only…it wasn't the Rose Bride's face at all. Instead, it was Shiori's face she saw, and despite herself, Juri took that masked face in her hands and kissed it hungrily. Her hands once again groped at the flesh of the girl in her bed, and despite the unavoidable truth that it was still Himemiya's body she was touching, and not Shiori's, she trembled with desire.
"I love you," the girl said, and reached up to wipe away the tears that had fallen from her eyes.
In the end, there was no miracle. But did it matter?
Now
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear
"That was perfect, Arisugawa! Fucking beautiful."
Juri is twisted at an impossible angle, the train of a green dress pooled around her ankles. The camera flashes brightly in her eyes, but she doesn't blink. She became accustomed to the flash a long time ago. Meanwhile, Federico buzzes over her head, snapping pictures at a thousand different angles.
"Give me another like that…yes, that's it. Now arch your back a little more. Jesus, you look so intense. What're you thinking about, doll?"
This is their cue to take a break. Juri relaxes, and her posture becomes more masculine, more sincere. She holds the cup of tea that Federico offers her away from her body, so that she won't spill any on the fabric of the dress. It's a breathtaking dress, she has to admit, with a plunging neckline and tailoring that accentuates the natural curve of her hips. It was made for her specifically, and appropriately, it oozes sex appeal without overdoing it. She toys with the green satin choker around her neck while Federico searches through the pictures to find the one he'll submit to the magazines.
"You were fantastic, as always," he says, not to stroke her ego, but because it's true. Even Juri herself is a little awestruck at the woman who looks back at her from the pictures. "Well, you seem a little bored in these shots at the beginning. But something always happens, and you click. I mean, anybody can wear a dress, but your face and your eyes, that's what sells the motherfucker. Am I right?"
"You're right," Juri agrees. She takes a deep drink of her tea and sighs.
"So," he continues, sitting cross-legged and turning his thin, bespectacled face to look at Juri, "What were you thinking about?" As he waits for Juri to answer, he lights a cigarette and exhales a plume of smoke.
"I was thinking about going back to school in the morning," she says finally, and it's a sort of half truth. It's not the Academy itself, but what awaits her there that she can't tear her thoughts away from. She's thinking about what she'll do now that Shiori knows. "It's always a bit disconcerting to go back to that after a booking."
He nods, his loose, curly hair bobbing as he does so. "It's always like that. This whole industry is sort of surreal. After playing dress-up in a million dollar costume, everything else seems kind of trivial."
Juri looks surprised. "The dress cost that much?"
"Oh, come on now, I was exaggerating, doll." He smiles warmly. "That's another thing we've got to do. Play everything up, until nobody knows what the value of anything is anymore. If you think about it too much, it'll drive you crazy, so the best thing is to not think about it at all."
Federico's eyes follow her as she gets up and goes to the other side of the room to change into her normal clothes. She's undressed in front of him so many times, and been in so many outfits that revealed more than they covered that she doesn't feel embarrassed at all to be seen by him anymore. Her body is beautiful, they've told her time and again, but she doesn't really comprehend it. Her long limbs give her an advantage in fencing, and her glares can intimidate an attacker into submission; these are the things that matter to her. If her figure is just right to model the fall line, that's merely an afterthought.
"You don't talk about school much," says Federico from across the room. "Don't you have a lot of friends at that Academy of yours?"
Juri thinks about Miki, playing the piano with carefully trained fingers, his ears deaf to everything but the music. She thinks about Utena, who idolizes a man whose name she doesn't even know. She thinks about Anthy, offering her an orange rose. She thinks about Shiori. "I have a few."
"Damn, I had too many friends to keep track of when I was your age. I was the class clown. You know, always playing pranks on the teachers, and writing fake love letters to girls." His smile is distant and affectionate. "When you get to be an old fart like me, you feel like it'd be worth anything to go back; to not have anything to worry about except passing finals and who to go to the dance with."
"I won't be like that." Juri says, coming back in her school uniform with the dress carefully folded under her arm. Her expression is serious. "When I'm finished, I don't ever intend to look back."
"You'll change your tune. Someday you'll be wiser, and then you'll see how great it is to be ignorant." He scratches his chin. "Yeah, the moment you loose your innocence, that's when you'd do anything to get it back."
Juri toys with the cord on her uniform. "Can I tell you something? I lost my innocence a long time ago. You couldn't pay me to take it back."
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
Tomorrow
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
She'll win. No one has to tell her this; it's what she was born to do. She is not Saionji; she doesn't need victory in order to feel important, nor is she Touga, who must always assert his dominance. If there is an enemy before her, she will move with the grace of an animal and destroy it. A cry of "tsuki!" and the next opponent will come to her, sword raised for the fight. Whoever it might be, she will strike them down.
But the one who comes to face her next is smiling. She holds her head up high, as proud as if she had already won. This girl, too, is certain of her victory. She does not see that her old friend's gaze lacks its usual tempest of emotion. Nor does she know that the locket is gone. Perhaps she will not ever know the weapon she has lost; that she no longer has her crippling advantage.
They raise their swords, and a miracle rests in the space between them.
"Let's begin."
This is the way the world will end
This is the way the world will end
This is the way the world will end
Not with a bang, but—