A/N: If you haven't noticed by now, these don't all take place in the same time frame. They are character studies more than anything else, but considering how much the Utena cast grows and changes, it's really impossible for these to happen at any one point during or after the series.

Oh, and I cheated with the Juri ficlet here. It's set in movieverse, but I'm actually rather proud of it.


It's strange, but Shiori feels connected to Kozue.

They're completely different people. Shiori hates being looked down on, hates being inferior, and she does so much to escape that fate, even if it doesn't work. Kozue cares nothing for what others think, except for her brother. She wants to be free, like -- how did she put it? Like a wild animal, uncaring.

They have spoken perhaps twice.

Perhaps, someday, they will be friends.


Touga began wondering a year or two ago if Saionji was bipolar, with how he shifts from bitter to happy to the anger of a raging storm. Lately, he has simply accepted it as how he is, nothing else.

He mentions this to Nanami one day, and she laughs. "Oniisama, that is caused by three people -- Himemiya Anshii, Ohtori Akio, and you."

Saionji, he thinks, you have managed to deceive me in one more thing. Perhaps you are not such a fool after all.


Nanami hates Chu-Chu.

Anthy is strange, and that bothers Nanami, but she detests that creature. If she could kill it, she would, and if she simply never had to see it again, she would be almost equally overjoyed. Other things annoy her, but Nanami has never disliked anything so thoroughly with so little cause.

She will never admit to anyone that the reason she hates Chu-Chu is that Kyouichi can't stand the sight of the damn thing.


Sometimes Saionji just wants to go back to when he was younger, when things were simpler. When he and Touga were the best of friends.

Then he frowns at himself for thinking such nonsense, and returns to his work.

That is one thing he has always admi-- no, respected Tenjou for. She wants to find her prince as she is now; she does not wish to return to the time when she met him.

He wants to go forward, he really does. But sometimes he cannot stop himself from looking back, even if it only makes things worse.


(Okay, I cheated on this one. Movieverse.)

Being at Ohtori had been like floating; it was a beautiful dream, in which strange things happened but you never questioned them. Everything was somehow glimmering and mutable, like water.

Juri spins Wakaba's steering wheel hard as she pulls off a flashy turn that would make even Fujiwara Takumi proud. Everything feels so real now; they could crash and die this very moment. Or this one or this one or this one. The leather of the steering wheel feels warm against her hands, and she savours the thrill of being able to do this impossible thing.

That is, to live.

She glances back at her companions. Miki smiles at her, and Saionji takes the wrench out of his mouth long enough to remark on how he'd never taken her for a stick-shift driver. Juri glories in the knowledge that every day will be like this from now on, so bright and hard and real.

She can't wait to get outside.


Akio doesn't play chess.

Neither does Touga.

Anthy is quite good at it, but she really can't be bothered to play. She has better things to do.

Mikage doesn't even know how -- that's how little he cares for such things.

Saionji has about a fifty-fifty chance of beating anyone you put him up against, be they complete amateurs or grandmasters. No-one really knows why.

Utena has maybe heard of it once.

Nanami, oddly enough, is absolutely fantastic.


Nanami has a strange sense of duty.

She doesn't necessarily like Aiko, Keiko, or Yuuko, but if one of them shows up at her door distraught over something (as long as that something isn't her brother) she will sit them down with a mug of something warm and talk until things are resolved.

She will happily slap Kyouichi when he needs it, and has done so more than once.

She will even try to warn Tenjou, if she finds out something Tenjou should be wary of.

She tries to keep her little family happy -- spreading not-entirely-false rumours about Miki's music teacher in order to get him fired, making sure Juri doesn't linger too long when she sees someone with violet hair. Keeping Kyouichi from spending too much time brooding alone.

And then there is Touga.

Sometimes, she hates her brother. After all, what duties can she do, now, for him?


One night after Anthy has left, Akio jerks up in bed, breathing hard. He has realised something, the same thing his sister had.

It is possible to leave this place.

Akio can go wherever he wishes, get a job somewhere, do something meaningful with his existence. He would never regain the power of Dios, but it is unlikely that he would ever do so in any case. He can leave all this work behind, all these carefully orchestrated systems and plans, for a life free of eternity.

He knows that he will wake in the morning to find his plans going beautifully, his new rose bride at work, his sister still unjustly torn from him. All midnight revelations forgotten. Everything (almost, whispers a quiet voice in his head, she's still gone) in place.

But he is too tired right now to go anywhere, much less pack up and leave Ohtori for ever. Perhaps someday he will follow Anthy . . . but not this day.


You might like to go take a look at the prompt list -- I've come up with some pretty out-there stuff. It may amuse you to see just how far away from the original idea I've gone. (For instance, the prompt for that last one was 'rip', and the prompt for the Juri one was 'we all float on'.)