breaking up the girl, rated pg. anthy-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 452 words.
(i am afraid that there's much to be afraid of)
Watching her sleep, sometimes I wonder what I am doing to her.
One might think that playing the role of a helpless, thoughtless, useless little doll would become harder as the years march endlessly past. It doesn't. It in fact becomes easier, because the pain of being the Rose Bride turns the volume down on everything else in the world. Nothing matters quite the way it used to, not when you walk through every day with the awareness that every step is hindered by the sharp pain of a sword through your hip, your knee, your entire leg.
There are holes in my heart, made by a thousand and more swords – all the emotion that I have ever held in that heart has come pouring out long ago. I feel so little, or at least I thought that was the way it is. Utena has turned the volume up again, and it hurts even to look at her…and the pain isn't just mine. I am feeling her agony and indecision as well as I am beginning to feel my own again.
Utena holds my hand while she sleeps, while she thinks I sleep too. But I don't sleep for a long while after I come back to her after seeing my brother. Instead, I watch her as she's away with the proverbial sandman, and wonder what she is dreaming of. Sometimes it is my brother – I know that better than even him, I think – but sometimes, I think that it is me.
Utena is falling apart. Anyone with half a mind can see that, though in the case of so many people in this make-believe world, half a mind is more than anyone else has got. Yes, Utena is falling to pieces, the noble prince brought so low by the realisation of her gender, and I can't help but feel deep sorrow to see it, and know that it is all my fault.
I've broken princes before. Still, I've never broken a girl before. I wonder why it feels so strange to do it? Is it because a girl should already be broken, shouldn't exist in any form that can be ripped to pieces the way we are doing to Utena?
Still, as I watch Utena, I think that perhaps it has very little to do with the fact that she is a girl, the fact that she is still a prince even as she falls from that white horse she has tried to tame. It's all about the fact that I'm breaking up the girl so I can have my own prince back, ever afraid the whole time that she is my real prince and I'm just breaking up myself, too.