Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows
Chapter Three: The Messenger Arrives, Previously Shot
By Gabi-hime (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)
The scent of roses dogged his presence with a sure-footed ferocity unparalleled except among the finest of hounds. What once Nemuro had counted as intriguing and signature of Utena Tenjou's presence he now found suffocatingly sweet and unsettlingly bewitching when it was focused and accentuated by Anthy's seemingly vacant watchdogging. His newly developed dislike of the flowers was perhaps also due to the fact that she had "tidied away" the martini glasses along the top shelf over the kitchen sink to make room for her roses. Utena found Anthy's devotion to gardening endearing and she seemed completely oblivious to Nemuro's discomfort. As if in rebellion against the change that was coming into his usually precise and meticulous life Nemuro stubbornly developed an allergy to roses.
Of course, he was still perfectly comfortable around Utena's pet geranium, or would have been if that plant had also not mysteriously disappeared to make room for more roses, a delicate bud vase on the living room coffee table. His favored technical journals which had also always graced the low steel and glass table had also been 'tided away' to the same place the martini glasses had disappeared to, to make room for a delicate china tea service. It was if Rococo was making a steady play to invade his Bauhaus. Where his own tea service had gone, he had no idea, although it really didn't matter because his own tea had disappeared with it. Oh, they still had tea, to be sure, but it was always an herbal blend with rosy undertones, not the dark English breakfast tea that he favored. Tea time was also whenever it suited her. There was no rhyme nor reason to it and damn him if he ever asked for tea with breakfast. There was always coffee for breakfast, fresh, hot, and somehow cloying. He had once asked the location of his breakfast tea, hoping to prepare some for himself but Anthy's only response had been to look rather crestfallen and ask distressedly if he didn't like her coffee. Utena had kicked him under the table and shot him a dark look, muttering something about 'not upsetting her because she's vulnerable, she's trying her best to make us happy' before turning back to Anthy and comforting her. Nemuro had no comfort for either his bruised leg or the continued perversion of his morning rituals.
The overabundance of roses weren't the only sign of the changing atmosphere of their shared living space. Doilies were appearing spontaneously, as far as he could tell, and the hideous lamps that Utena had brought back from a rummage sale some months previous now replaced slim stacks of books, journals, and chrome ashtrays, making moot the recessed track lighting in all the rooms and snaking amber cords across the otherwise unmarred black marble floors. The shifting and unfamiliar style of his own sanctuary was unsettling, but it was in the spare bedroom that he experienced perhaps his most acute loss. The day after Anthy arrived so unexpectedly, Utena came back 'from an errand' with a set of brown mahogany bunk beds that looked as if they had spent many torturous years at some summer camp and set about moving her things from their room into the spare room which she intended to share with Anthy. He did not attempt to argue the point, knowing full well that it would avail him little because he knew that Utena would insist that it was 'just not the same' to share a room with a previous fiancé who was female as it was to continue sharing it with a man she had slept with up until the previous morning. It didn't matter to Utena that they seemingly had the same interest in her because Utena refused to see the other side of it. She claimed she needed space from Nemuro to 'think things through' but unfortunately their space was so small that fleeing from him sent her cuddling up to Anthy in a way that she didn't recognize.
Still, despite the fact that he was being driven to distraction in his own home, he refused to seek the sanctity of his office. He fought hard to keep whatever ground he could both with Utena and in their apartment and he refused to retreat no matter what tactics the other cause might front, lest he lose everything. He did not give her the satisfaction of seeing his distress when Anthy 'helpfully' did his laundry, effectively ruining several of his favorite linen shirts even after he asked her pointedly 'not to bother with his things.' He asked her politely again, citing his shirts as casualties but Utena just kicked him under the table again and told him that Anthy desperately needed to feel as if she were a productive member of their household. Since she didn't go out much, she needed the housework to make her feel as if she were 'part of the family.' Besides, Utena had claimed, the shirts looked fine. Maybe a little rumpled, but certainly not ruined.
He did not even give her the satisfaction of seeing his distress when she had unpacked the necessities for her 'other friend,' the little simian rodent that she and Utena referred to as 'Chu Chu' and he tried not to refer to at all. He had simply quietly gone downstairs and paid the pet deposit and hoped that the little animal wouldn't leave droppings in the kitchen drawers. Previously they'd had an exterminator come by every week to spray, but Utena had had him cancel this as well, lest the exterminator gas Chu Chu 'by mistake.' Since this incident early on, at least once a month Anthy came home with some small animal to add to their menagerie. Utena laughed it off, saying they 'might as well get their money's worth out of that pet deposit' and attempted to explain to Nemuro that Anthy 'just needed things to keep her busy.'
He quietly wished that the iguana, the goldfish, the snails in the terrarium, and the litter of kittens, would occupy her attention, at least enough so that he might divest the house of some of its doilies and perhaps locate some of his blessed technical journals, but she managed to quietly and demurely keep the entire space under her control. Utena didn't even seem to think it strange that Anthy pleasantly called every one of the animals under her care 'Nanami.'
On Tuesday nights, after Anthy had fed the goldfish but before she had cleaned the Nanami terrarium, it was time for parlor games and parlor tricks. Previous to Anthy's arrival the only game they'd kept in the house was chess – marble pieces on a glass board, the colors black and gray – but Anthy claimed to be unable to follow the rules of chess and so the games closet had expanded. Frankly, Nemuro suspected that Anthy had a very fine understanding of the rules of chess, considering their quiet battle over ground in the apartment. She was simply so used to playing the inferior to comfort her prince that she didn't know how to behave in any other way, wouldn't rise to Nemuro's silent challenge lest she upset Utena with a side of her the prince had never seen: strategic genius.
"Besides," Utena offered "Chess is a game for two people and there are three of us now."
And there were indeed three of them. So they ended up playing endless games of Go Fish over watery herbal tea and thickly slathered slabs of poundcake, and Nemuro got used to declaring nearly every round that he didn't have any twos, because apparently this was the only number that Anthy was interested in collecting. As far as he was concerned, their waxed deck of bicycle playing cards might well not have twos in it at all, considering that she had to have queried him no less than a hundred times over the course of their games, and he'd never had a single, solitary two. Anthy rarely won these games, except when Utena let her, but by the end of each match she always had a neat quartet of twos spread by her thigh on the floor. Nemuro went through the motions, collecting threes and fives and nines in neat stacks, because this at least kept them in conversation with each other. At least they could still talk over Go Fish, no matter how awkward it had gotten elsewhere.
And so the days passed, and time settled into a different sort of rhythm, one that Nemuro was not entirely comfortable with, but one he could force himself to adjust to. Days glossed into shapeless weeks with little to remark about save the ever changing menu of cakes and cremes for Utena and Chu Chu until finally, one day, the calm broke suddenly on a day when neither he nor Utena were there to anticipate it.
The day was chill, forcing him to bundle up in his long ash-black coat and gloves as well as the uneven off-white scarf that Utena had abortively attempted to knit for him for both his birthday and then later for Christmas. He'd lectured all morning to rapt students, his demeanor as crisp and sharp as the past-harvest air and they'd risen at the end of the lecture hour to applaud him. He'd stood it for perhaps a minute before seizing his briefcase and leaving the podium, but behind him the rolling applause built exponentially. Leaving the lecture platform in the middle of an ovation was a very Nemuro thing to do, and they apparently adored him for it.
He didn't attempt to go back to his office after the ovation, knowing that even then it would be crowded with breathless students, heady and awaiting an audience. He left his car for Utena and took a taxi home, much more willing to brave time alone with Anthy than have hundreds of adoring students forced upon him.
He was not ready to meet one of his former students in his own living room, seated on the low couch across from Anthy and sipping tea from a delicate demi-tasse. He was taller than Nemuro remembered, grown in the way that all rose-suckled men grew, with long slim legs and wide angular shoulders. Nemuro marked him at fourteen, perhaps fifteen, but he was already taller than the seminar leader would ever be. His hair was tousled, a little long over the ears and parted a bit differently, but still that same familiar caramel color.
The boy – no, the young man; who knew how time was passing at Ohtori? -- turned agitatedly as he came in and Nemuro took his time divesting himself of his cold-weather gear in an attempt to provide himself a little longer to think on what might have led to this situation. The young man wrung his hands a little urgently as Nemuro quietly unwound his mess of a scarf and hung it gently over his coat on the rack. He considered his gloves for a spare second before stripping them off and tucking them in the pocket of his storm coat. He knew that if Utena came home to find him entertaining guests while wearing gloves she would have a few choice things to say to him and no doubt she'd be overjoyed to find another lost starling blundering into their nest. As he turned back to the couch the young man's eyes widened slightly, and Nemuro knew him as uncompromisingly as he had that day some ten years previous, as fully as the master of a seminar must know his duelists. Nemuro walked to the edge of the open living room before clasping his hands loosely behind his back and speaking softly, levelly.
"Good afternoon, Tsuwabuki."
The younger man ducked his head and made as if to stand and greet Nemuro properly but Nemuro stopped him with a single raised hand and Tsuwabuki kept his seat.
"To what do we owe the pleasure?"
Nemuro was going to play this cautiously. How else did one deal with a possible emissary from a mad autocrat safe and sound in one's living room? Tsuwabuki twisted his hands again and Nemuro marked the pale band of flesh on his ring finger: a brand, but no signet. Ah, so that's how it was. To Nemuro's surprise it was not Tsuwabuki but Anthy who answered, and he found it passing strange because the woman almost never addressed him directly.
"Tsuwabuki-kun has been forcefully graduated, Nemuro-san."
Tsuwabuki could no longer contain himself and spoke softly, "I've come to see the Victor. I've come to see Tenjou-san."
Nemuro could not help but let a slightly exasperated noise escape him, "Wonderful. We'll get together a little support group and all attend group therapy. Would you like to move in as well, Tsuwabuki? I could move out of my room and sleep on the couch. Be sure and bring all the furniture and nicknacks that you can find because I'm getting dreadfully tired of my own."
"Tsuwabuki-kun is not here on a social call, Nemuro-san," Anthy's voice was extremely non-combative, soothing him in the same way that she soothed her prince.
"No, Himemiya-san," his reply was short and somewhat tired, "I suppose he's not. Well Tsuwabuki, you might as well regale us with your story while we wait for Utena to arrive. More than how you won your freedom, I am curious as to why you are here."
Tsuwabuki took a deep breath and then got a firm grip on his green slacks before speaking, as if fisting up handfuls of cloth might ground him more solidly while he wavered over unknown terrain. When he finally spoke it was measured and slow, as if the words cost him a great deal.
"I've come to beg the Victor for her help. You have no idea how bad it's gotten since you left. The duels now often end in death and everything seems so hollow, colored in shadows and with no real purpose – and everyone is trapped there, like birds in a hot house, in a glass coffin. It must stop . . . and Nanami-sama, Nanami-sama . . . " here his voice broke off into a sob which he desperately tried to master. Nemuro didn't wait for him to marshal his feelings. His rebuttal came swift and sharp, but as cool and calculated as if he had been lecturing to his students in the hall. In a way, he was.
"You must be out of your mind. Going back to Ohtori would be tantamount to suicide for any of us. You've made it very clear that the Rijichou still rules there, Morning-Star King that he claims to be. Have you considered what he would do to us if we were suddenly back within his domain? You had best leave well enough alone, Tsuwabuki, and be content with your graduation."
Nemuro's frost-quick response obviously agitated Tsuwabuki greatly and before Nemuro had properly finished he was on his feet.
"But the Victor must come. Tenjou-san is the only one who can set them free. Mikage-san, you have no idea. You've never seen the coffins. She took me to see the coffins!" he lost control of his emotions again.
Nemuro stared at him levelly and responded quietly, "My name is Nemuro, Tsuwabuki. Souji Mikage never existed, and I have seen the coffins, as, I imagine, has she. The occupants may have rotated a bit, but the coffins are a long standing tradition of the Rijichou's," Nemuro turned a critical eye to Anthy who sat with hands folded in her lap. The rodent was next to her, devouring some sort of fruit tart, "Surely, you must realize that to return to his seat of power is madness."
She stared at him vacantly for a moment before bowing her head slightly, "I admit that returning to Onii-sama's kingdom does not strike me as a particularly wise idea."
Something inside Nemuro sank as he heard a spare set of keys rattle in the front door. He closed his eyes as if to protect himself from what was coming and then spoke the doubt that Anthy had left hanging in the air, "But?"
"I think the decision is in the hands of the prince. If she decides to go back, then I will respect her decision and go with her," It was Anthy's turn to scrutinize him levelly, "As will you."
"I will never go back to Ohtori," there was a glassy bitterness in his voice that he could not control.
Anthy smiled but there was no humor in it, "Do not delude yourself, Nemuro-san. I know you too well. If she goes, you will follow her."
Nemuro's eyes hardened and he looked away, away from Anthy, away from Tsuwabuki who was still sobbing quietly on the couch, away from the door which presently opened as Utena came in bundled in a heavy down field jacket and laden with groceries.
"If who goes where?" she asked, curious, turning her back on the door after hanging her own coat up. When she recognized the boy on the couch she nearly dropped the paper bag she was carrying. She somehow had the presence of mind to make her way over to the counter and deposit the groceries there as if an automata, but once this was done she shook off the trance and hurried to the couch. Her first observation was monumentally obvious.
"Professor, this is Tsuwabuki-kun! Tsuwabuki Mitsuru," as if for emphasis, she added, "From Ohtori."
Nemuro took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead tiredly, "Yes, Utena. I know."
Anthy did not respond to this statement and simply rose without a word to put away the groceries that Utena had brought home. Utena ignored her movements in favor of their new house guest. Mitsuru, for his part, managed to pull himself together when he realized that his supposed savior was standing before him.
"Tenjou-san, I'm so glad that you're here. You must come! You're the Victor! You're the prince! I know that it's dangerous and that it's selfish to ask you to do it, but you must come, for their sake. I nearly killed her! And Nanami-sama! Nanami-sama . . . "
Utena raised her hands as if in self-defense, "Whoa, slow down Tsuwabuki-kun. What are you talking about? You nearly killed Nanami?"
Nemuro shook his head, staring hard at the glasses in his hands, "No, I don't think he nearly killed Nanami, from the way he's been talking. I think he had to fight someone else important to him. Mari, perhaps?"
Utena cocked her head at the name, "Mari?"
Nemuro closed his eyes again. Mari was a secondary player to a secondary player. Of course the Victor would not know her. It was Tsuwabuki who spoke next, confirming Nemuro's suspicions.
"Yes. I nearly killed Mari. I had her down on the ground, bleeding. I don't know, I suppose I berserked, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill her. Not Mari. Not over a bride. Not even for Nanami-sama," he spoke softly, as if lost and unsure of where to go next.
Utena took firm hold of his shoulders and gave him a sharp shake in an attempt to bring him back to reality, "What do you mean, over a bride? The duels are still going on? That's not possible, he's got no bride! Who's his bride?!"
Nemuro caught Anthy stop stock still to listen to Tsuwabuki's response out of the corner of his eye, but Utena was far too caught up in their own exchange to notice Anthy's sudden keen interest.
Tsuwabuki seemed mowed over by the barrage of questions, but he managed to respond, "Ohtori-san. Ohtori-san is the new bride."
This declaration left an uneasy silence in the room as Utena strove to come to terms. The silence was finally broken by Anthy.
"Kanae," she breathed softly, as if this were an unexpected development for her as well. That gave Nemuro some sense of satisfaction. At least they were all on the same proverbial page.
"Shinohara-san is the champion," the boy added quietly, looking away from from Utena's piercing scrutiny.
This revelation apparently startled Utena more than the previous one.
"Wakaba?! Wakaba is the champion?!"
Tsuwabuki nodded nervously, "Yes, at least she was when I was thrown out. I know that she was you friend, Tenjou-san . . . "
"Is my friend," Utena corrected sharply, "Wakaba is my friend. What did he do to her? What did he do to her to make her that way?"
"He wouldn't have had to do much of anything," observed Nemuro quietly, turning his smoky gray lenses over in his hands. Utena acted as if he hadn't said anything.
"To win Ohtori-san, she . . . she . . . she killed Yuuko-san, Utena-san," Tsuwabuki stuttered out without meaning to, as if attempting to talk sense into the Victor.
This stopped Utena cold and her arms fell limply to her sides.
"Wakaba killed Yuuko. Wakaba . . . killed . . . Yuuko."
Nemuro quietly put his glasses on and pushed the hair out of his face.
"It must be stopped. He must be stopped. We have to go back," Utena spoke with such force that Nemuro knew there would be no arguing with her.
Anthy was at her prince's side immediately upon this declaration, kneeling quietly with one hand on her shoulder. In her free hand she held a thick ceramic mug. She passed it absently to Nemuro before speaking. It was dark, rich English breakfast tea.
"It will only stop with his death."
Utena closed her eyes briefly before responding, "I know. It must be done."
"Sleeping dragons will not lie, nor long do they sleep," Nemuro muttered under his breath even as he caught sight of an envelope that was pressed tight under Utena's arm. She'd apparently stopped at their post-box and then forgotten about it. The heavy cream paper made his senses swim and he could not stop himself from leaning forward and drawing it lightly out of Utena's absent grasp. She turned as he did so and watched raptly as he mechanically opened it and laid its contents out on the coffee table before them.
Three cards, slightly larger than the waxed cards they played Go Fish with.
The Hierophant.
The High Priestess.
The Fool.
He turned away.
"Our invitation stands," murmured Anthy absently, half to herself.
Utena brightened, "Only three cards. That means he can't have predicted that Tsuwabuki would find us so soon."
Nemuro shifted slightly and a spare scrap fluttered out of the open envelope and lost itself under the table. Utena dove for it and after some fishing managed to find it and deposit it in front of them. One by one, they turned away silently to ponder their own heavy thoughts.
The Page of Wands.
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To Be Continued Again!
A/N: Please don't assume that I have some burning hatred for Anthy here. Remember that this story is third person limited from Nemuro's perspective and he's not bitter, we swear. Chapter four will hopefully be out sooner than chapter three was o_o.