Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows
By Gabi (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)
Chapter Four: A Long, Fatal Automobile Ride
A/N: Shelter, the short one shot Utena and Mikage fic that you can find here: has now officially become part of the continuity of Chiaroscuro. You must read it first or none of this chapter will make any sense. You have been warned.
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After the decision was made, Utena had wanted to set out to throw a monkey wrench in the gears of injustice immediately. It had taken a concentrated effort on Nemuro's part to convince her to wait until the next morning. He was busy on the phone the rest of the evening, arranging for his rent to be paid, direct withdrawal from his bank account for an indeterminate period of time, arranging a sabbatical for himself and offering enough veiled threats that the university was happy to grant one for Utena as well. He even managed to line up a graduate assistant to feed all the Nanami. He had a sneaking suspicion that the rodent would be coming with them.
Utena spent the evening packing and unpacking and trying to decide what to take. Nemuro finally pointed out that it probably didn't matter. They were not going on a social call. As for errata they might need upon arriving . . .
"I imagine she will see to that," and he had gestured absently at Anthy, who had laid a 'spread' of the four cards that they'd received en invitatcion.
And that had settled it. When they finally all piled into Nemuro's small black compact car they did so with little more than some snacks for the rodent.
When Utena had finally asked how he proposed to find Ohtori even though none of them had clear memories of how they'd found or left the universe ruled by the mad prince, he had simply responded,
"I don't propose to find it. I imagine that if the Rijichou wants us enough to send us an invitation then it will find us."
Utena did not argue with him. It was too sobering a thought.
*
It was like an endless tilt at a windmill, only this windmill never got closer and actually was a dragon in disguise. They might be giants, indeed.
Utena was fidgeting, rifling through the glove compartment, looking for something to do. The cats-cradle that Anthy had given her had amused her for no longer than five minutes and she was already pacing the cage, despite the fact that they'd been on the road for less than an hour. Utena was a creature of action and the task that lay before them was one of patience. He was confident that they'd stumble upon Ohtori, but it would be in the prince's own sweet time, and not at their convenience.
He glanced in his rear view mirror, angled as it was so he could keep an eye on both Anthy and Tsuwabuki and noted with relief that the boy had headphones in his ears. He could hear faint strains of the piano even in the front seat, which meant that he had to have the volume maximized. Anthy appeared to be playing gin with her rodent. His eyes stole another glance at Tsuwabuki as if to reassure themselves and then he turned his attention back to the front seat. Utena was studying a map of Denmark in the world atlas.
"You know that this is a trap, don't you?" it was the first chance he'd had to speak to her in at least partial privacy since their little stranger had arrived.
She looked up from the confusion of maps immediately, "What do you mean? You don't trust Tsuwabuki-kun's story?"
He shook his head, "No, I'm sure that he's telling the truth. He has no reason to lie. I'm also sure that the Rijichou let him go expecting him to find us and lead us back. Little that happens happens without the Rijichou's knowledge or outright orchestration."
She was somewhat indignant, "If you were so sure that this was a trap then why did you agree to come along?"
He shook his head slightly and had difficulty answering for a moment. Finally, he said only, "I'm the third."
She rolled her eyes and then crossed her arms, "The third what?"
"High-Priestess-Fool-Hierophant. I'm the third."
"Aren't you doing just what Akio-san wants, then? Aren't you just the same as the rest of us?"
"If that's the way you want to look at it, then yes, but that's rather simplified. Remember Utena, the solution to a problem is not always to do the exact opposite of what is expected. If you're that easy to read then you may as well just do as the Rijichou wants, because he will always anticipate you."
"But -- "
"If I had stayed at home and let you rush headlong into his arms then I would be safe, that's true, but the Rijichou would have twisted a knife deep in my gut more effectively that if I was there beside him in the arena," he closed his eyes for the breath of a moment and allowed a sardonic smile to creep onto his face, "Besides, what's that you're always fond of saying? A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
"Don't mock me, Nemuro," she grumbled testily, turning back to Denmark.
"I wouldn't dream of it, my dear," the sarcasm drained from him and it seemed no longer worth it to attempt to talk sense to her, so he focused on the road again.
They drove without stopping for hours and the sun went down but no moon rose, although Nemuro marked the lunar calendar from memory. Gibbous was due, but he did not appear and the road got progressively smaller, bordered at first by low hedges and bushes, then by trees choked by vines, finally by dark, sinister shapes that were just a little too far out of headlight range for him to properly mark them. They were like no native tree shapes he'd ever seen, and after some time he turned to Utena to bring her attention to the vegetation.
Except she wasn't in the passenger's seat. Where she'd gone he did not know. They hadn't braked, hadn't rested, hadn't switched about, but Utena was somehow gone.
There was only the witch.
Her voice was as soft as a silken burial shroud and mellow, lulling, "When your mind wanders, do you ever wonder, Mikage-san?"
His grip on the steering wheel tightened slightly and he focused on the dark tunnel of pavement-and-trees in front of him, following the pale ghostly white lines until they vanished into the hazy darkness ahead. He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. He could not remember when the sun had set and it had gotten so infernally dark. He had been driving too long.
"My name is not Mikage," he insisted, tersely. He did not like speaking with the Rose Witch when no one else was awake except her pert little familiar, "Brown Jenkin," he muttered under his breath perversely, before continuing, "My name is Nemuro. You know that."
She leaned closer, plum hair spilling over her shoulders and he was lost in that cloying rose scent.
"Do you have any twos, Mikage-san?" she trilled breathily and he fixed her with a long, slow look before he was forced to turn away. She continued unabated, "But do you ever wonder, Mikage-san? Wonder what it would have been like?"
He didn't bother to correct her again, simply regripped the wheel, palms sliding over it, slick from cold sweat. Somehow, the road ahead of him seemed narrower.
"Wondered what what would have been like?" his mouth was somehow curiously dry, and he swallowed with difficulty.
And then her hand slid comfortably to his upper thigh and began to laze about languidly and his arms were lost in her hair, still gripping the steering wheel desperately, and her voice was husky in his ear, "Don't you ever wonder what it would have been like if you were my champion? If you were my victor?"
Her hand on his chest was smooth and angular, like the hand of a boy, and then it was the hand of a boy and the hair under his nose was spun sliver-lavender, and he burned with the scent and then high over head there was a titanic roll of thunder and lightning split the sky, striking ground somewhere in front of them, illuminating the obscene, dark, writhing shapes on the side of the ever narrowing highway.
As her hands slipped a little higher to play about his face he let out a thin, high scream and covered his face in an attempt to block out the wide, pupil-less green swaths and the wicked, undulating mass behind them. The car screeched off the road and into oblivion and the last thought he had was a fervent prayer that he would be consumed by the fire before they could lay hands on him.
And then he was being shaken roughly awake, and he came to drenched in sweat and as the car swam into focus he found Tsuwabuki leaning concernedly over him, hands on both shoulders.
"Is he all right, Tsuwabuki-kun?" and that was Utena's blessed voice from somewhere ahead of him.
He somehow managed to nod despite the trembling and shakily answer, "Nightmare, just a nightmare."
Tsuwabuki gave him a steady look before relaxing his grip and returning to his own seat and Nemuro found himself in the back seat of his own car, staring dazedly at the back of Utena's head.
"When did you start driving?" he could not keep himself from asking, no matter what the others would think.
"You don't remember?" Utena sounded incredulous, "Then I'm glad I took over. Himemiya thought you were getting a little drowsy, so she suggested I take over for you. We switched about an hour ago."
Anthy's silhouette in the passenger seat ahead of him gave no tells, so he let out a long shaky breath before folding his hands on his lap and replying, "Of course."
"You should try and get some rest, Professor. I dunno when we'll get there, so I may need you to drive again tonight," Utena advised soundly.
He heard the soft mechanical click of the car's tape deck as a cassette was inserted and soon he could brace himself against Rachimanov and felt much better for it. If Utena meant to soothe and comfort him, then she'd made a good choice. He leaned against the door, cheek against the cool glass and pulled his long coat around thin shoulders. He would attempt to sleep, despite the horrors that plagued him if only because for once Utena was making good, strong, rational sense.
He let himself go against the soft piano music and dozed, chased by shapeless troubles, but none quite so shapeless and horrible as those he'd seen illuminated by lightning, struck out against the blasted heath. He slept fitfully, but without waking, and it was thunder that finally roused him from his sleep, not the sound of the tires on gravel, nor the shuddering stop.
When he realized that they were no longer moving, he sat up sharply to question, but Tsuwabuki was asleep and snoring soundly and Utena was nowhere to be seen.
"Where are we?" he asked the only other occupant of the car who sat silently, staring sightlessly ahead, hands folded demurely in her lap.
At the sound of his voice she turned slowly and lifted one arm to gesture out the window, "We're at a church."
Nemuro refused to follow the line of her hand and persisted with his questioning, "Is this your doing, Himemiya-san? I know that it was you behind that night horror that I had. There must've been something in that tea that you gave me. I can't prove it, but I know it was you."
Anthy raised one slim eyebrow before responding, "This is not my doing, Nemuro-san, it's yours."
Nemuro's grip on the driver's side seat in front of him tightened and his knuckles turned white. He would not allow her to run him in circles like this. He did not dignify her with a response.
She did not seem to mind, "This is Utena's testing. What happened to you before was your testing. It was my responsibility to see to it."
"And how did I fare on your test?" his voice was crisp and glassy. He had no mind to deal with her now.
She did not take offense at his tone, no matter how much he secretly wished it, "As I expected: no better and no worse."
"Why are you not tested?" he continued, probing for the truth in her web of invented mystery.
"I have already been tested," her response was automatic.
"And who tested you?" he pressed the point with little mercy, the nightmare still groping ham-fisted at his soul.
"Utena," she said, as if this should have been the obvious conclusion and he cursed himself because it irked him that she should presume to condescend and he let it. She continued without waiting for his response, "She's waiting for you outside."
He finally followed her previous gesture out the window and it found Utena standing alone in the rain and staring at a titanic cathedral. His mouth went dry and he opened the car door wordlessly and left the sanctuary of the car without thought, drawn to her side despite himself.
As he entered the curtain of rain that started a few feet from the car he momentarily wished for the sure weight of his black-handled umbrella, but there was no time to turn back and fetch it from the car. From somewhere close he heard a bell and as he turned, he caught sight of two boys on a bicycle, colored red and green under the lightning. Christmas colors. Perhaps they were magi.
He soon lost sight of them, their visages drowned in the rain and he turned back to Utena only to find her gone and the heavy cathedral door swinging shut at the top of the worn steps. He cursed himself again and scrambled after her, nearly loosing his footing on the treacherous rain-wet stone. He caught himself on the door, fingers grasping at polished carvings, and it swing in easily, balanced finely on a pivot.
The dry stone in front of him was terrifyingly familiar, as were the shoes set carefully to the side of the door. Had he read about this somewhere? This couldn't be familiar to him. He'd never been to a church in his life. Not once in his life. But perhaps before, perhaps in another life, when he'd been another-man-the-same-man wearing a threadbare pea coat and the same violet-colored-glasses. Before he was born, before Mikage, before Ohtori, before puppets, strings, and tear-fed-roses.
But not before her.
He stared dumbly at the brown shoes, worn from aimless walking and soaked through with rainwater. If this was her test then why did it feel so damnably like his own?
He turned and caught sight of her at the far end of the church, beside the three black slabs and the young man who sat cypress-kneed on a child's stool. He didn't wait for another bit of parchment to flutter from the sky and offer direction, nor did he offer penitence to the church by taking off his shoes as he had done before-after-then.
He did not wait. He did not think. He ran.
Utena was standing opposite the in utero him, as far from the other two coffins as she could get and still stay on the raised dais. Her head was bent and her hair obscured her face and she gave no indication that she was even aware of what was going on, even when the-other-before-Mikage ran a hand soft over the hair of the-other-before-Dios and placed it carefully back into the coffin with her.
As they stood, silent, it was impossible not to absorb fragments of the conversation between the in-coffin and the on-stool.
"So memories are like treasures. They're treasures of the people you don't have anymore."
"I suppose so."
"So what do you do when you don't have any memory treasures? Isn't it lonely?"
"Yes, it is lonely. I suppose when you don't have memories of your own, you have to find new ones or make some up."
"So I'm one of your new memories?"
"I suppose so."
They continued to watch impotently as the on-stool turned and walked off. Some indeterminate amount of time later a false-god in silver-spun lavender with eyes like a verdant abyss arrived to take custody of the in-coffin and lead her off like a lamb. Apollo-my-lord-the-shepherd he was not, but neither of them lifted a hand to stop him or warn her.
After a still of lonely silence backed by candlelight, Nemuro turned to look to Utena and caught his own flickering shadow on the wall.
"Kashira kashira, gozonji kashira?" he murmured absently. Perhaps that's all it amounted to: a dialogue of shadows.
She was there: rainsoaked, soulsoaked – like a woman drowned, silent as the dead are silent. Had she passed? Had she failed? Had he passed? How was he to judge a test such as this?
And then she raised her head and turned and looked at his shadow.
"You were here, before."
And before had weight. It was weight of Before the Common Era. You were here B.C.E. Only perhaps it should be B.U.E. -- Before the Uncommon Era, because life with the mad prince had been anything but common, but perhaps the uncommon became the common when it was forced upon someone as daily routine just as the common . . .
"So were you."
"Nemuro."
"Tenjou Utena," he responded in kind and then opened his mouth to ask 'Do you ever wonder what it would have been like . . .' but she did not wait for him.
"Did you love me?" she asked abruptly, turning from his shadow back to the caster. It was something he'd never admitted, not even during the halcyon days before Himemiya.
His answer came curiously easily.
"No."
I love you.
I never stopped.
Don't you dare imply something by asking 'Did you love me?'
Instead of turning glassy, as he would have done, as he expected, she smiled at him and shook her head.
"Computers are terrible liars, Nemuro."
When they got back to the car, Nemuro took his turn driving again and Utena fiddled halfheartedly with the map of Denmark. He had barely turned his key in the ignition when Anthy drew their attention to the sun which was rising behind them, over a hill. They all turned to watch it, even Tsuwabuki whom Anthy had apparently roused. There was something curious about it, as if its center of rotation were off kilter.
"In his universe, I suppose he is the sun-king," he muttered to himself, closing his eyes against the parody and turning back around in his seat. He didn't bother to finish turning the key in the ignition. He knew where they were.
He was not surprised when Utena jostled him roughly in the arm.
"Professor, look!"
He opened his eyes slowly as one does when one does not want to see what is on the other side of them.
The gates of Ohtori stood open for them.
*
To be continued in Chapter Five :P