Drabbles

By spheeris1

Pairings: Multiple…

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[Labyrinth]

Utena thought of her past as a fading photograph, cracked and yellow and edges smooth with time.
She could see herself now, walking down a small gravel path to a church--bells ahead, bells above, ringing and ringing--and how little she is, dress of charcoal and white, eyes blotted out...no longer bright blue, but the hollow black of death.
'Who are you?' Utena feels like asking.
Who is this girl, this child who knows only fear and despair?
Is it the same now, her little girl fingers tearing at Utena's insides as she lay bleeding and dying?
Helping to make the wound wider, helping it rip a bit more...?
And now, with a glittering sea of hate and a useless prince of days dead, Utena feels connected to her own mortal time.
Her hair fanned out, pointing to all directions--clocks and minutes, time infinite, time suspended and caught in a noose--Utena is time.
And it means nothing to be dead for she died a long time ago.

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[Thinking of Tomorrow]

Outside of the window, it is snowing.
Inside the house, all is silent.
And Kanae fell asleep with her school dress still on, lipstick still clinging to her cold lips and blush still highlighting her cheekbones.
One soft brown leather shoe falls to the floor.
She was trying to remember a time before this moment, desperate to recall a fleeting image in her mind--of candy castles, white horseflesh and glittering gold--those storybook fantasies lulled her to slumber as she grew into womanhood.
How those years fly by, whipping her hair back like a gust of steady wind...
Five to eight to twelve. All gone and all in shadow now.
Kanae cannot see her hand in front of her face anymore.
She can only see his face, the first time in the sun and his soft lips upon her brow.

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[None So Cold]

Divided.
I have used that word more in my long long lifetime than is necessary, clutched to its meaning in hopes of giving my unexplainable motivations a reason beyond reproach.
But no definition comes to mind in the hours in which you sleep beside me, hand still loose in my own and lips parted in speechless dreaming.
I flounder and sink to the bottom of my ocean. Upon the bed of rusted ship hulls and slimy seaweed are the remnants of all my dreams...rotten and lifeless, like myself...and yet they speak to me.
Ghostly rambles about how that ticking of a heart in my chest is just a bomb waiting to explode, how those wires of red are now pumping blood and bringing me back to life.
And all because of you, so innocent and naive and painfully unaware of everything nefarious.
Of everything dark and lonely.
Of everything that is your Princess.
Divided.
If I could tell you what this means to me, in a language you could understand...
'You behold none so cold as I, Utena-sama...and, yet, you behold the only one who could love you so...'

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[But A Whisper In the Storm]

Her mixture of feelings could only fall down like this, tumbling forward with all the preciousness of building blocks.
Red. Blue. Yellow. Green.
And that castle she built, she watched it fall from beneath his smooth as satin skin and his velvet curtain of hair, a nice dark burgundy in the dark of this night.
What she felt was no mere child's play, now she knew that with all certainty...this was of biblical proportions--her grasping hands and her raw throat--my God, whose temple was being torn down with his lips?
She did not question its reality, though it may very well be a dream...a fantasy conjured up by the melting pot of minds in this tiny little world on which they all spin...
She did not question the emptiness that found her with the gray light of dawn, the barren landscape of her bared soul.

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[Her Will Be Done]

Juri is only as strong as she wants to be, drifting down the cool tiles and buried under hot water.
Delicate and pulsing heat, needles to her skin...and Anthy sits outside, baking in the sun of a hot summer day in an unknown city.
But all cities lose their names the moment Anthy steps into them, the letters fall from the signs and float away--white slips twisted by the wind.
Anthy drinks cold water, the beads of liquid sliding down glass and onto her exposed chest, winding down her brown torso and disappearing among the folds of skirt.
Juri would look good out here in the light, not in a dark pit within her amnesiac soul, never there again.
'The bathroom is all yours now...' Juri says quietly.
Anthy closes her eyes and smiles, her lips not moving though she most certainly speaks.
'The sun misses its fallen angel.'
So Juri steps out, much like a bird hatching, and turns to gold....but then....you know the rest....

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[And Good Will Come To Pass]

Fights often happen, though they do not last for long...the harbored ill will de-thaws and the lake is once more placid.
For a while.
Not for long.
And the love-making is so troubled, so frantic and full of scars.
the locket hangs on the wall, it swings back and forth like a guillotine
The kisses drive Juri mad--for they are too perfect coming from her lips as the hours drift away into morning--Utena is perfect in her shattered nobility.
a white rose stays fresh while all others wilt and fade
Utena talks in her sleep and Juri spoons about her naked body.
Someday, when they stop dreaming, better moments shall prevail.

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[I Feel Pretty]

'i feel pretty, oh so pretty
i feel pretty and witty and gay!'
West Side Story


After the time he forgot, those moments when there were blurs of flowers...maybe...and bright metal, Saionji grew up.
His kept his hair long and finished school and fell into the rat-race and got married and had children.
Before the time he forgot, though, was something all-together different.
As if washed in a puddle of gasoline, Saionji can recall some distant moment...or maybe not so distant...and it makes him hide from the gaudy colors presented.
Touga put lipstick on his lips and blush on his cheeks and he said 'aren't we pretty tonight?' with a laugh and he kissed his forehead and shoved him out into the night
But Saionji thinks he might be making this up.
Like a castle in the sky perhaps.
But he eyes that nice little number in the closet, the one with the deep emerald green and shiny glitter sheen.
And Saionji swears he can feel his pulse jump in anticipation.


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[More Of Me Into You]

Shiori likes for the two of them to stand side-by-side sometimes, arms barely touching...just a breath away...
If she looks just the right way and the light is just so and no one interrupts them--Shiori can feel something between them merge.
All the imperfections blend with the perfections, all the subtle hues and the blinding colors swim together.
Shiori feels a little bit whole then.
Not so empty, not so useless, not so beneath everything and everyone.
Shiori wonders if Juri can see it, if she can see how their faces interchange and their blood mixes and their hair becomes tangled into one glorious knot.

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[Venus As A Boy]

It is so easy to fool you, you who believes all the answers are held deep within my eyes and all the wisdom of your yearnings are caught in my lavender hair.
When we touch, I wonder at what you see here before you--a slender youth, frail enough to remind you of your past and strong enough to pierce hearts with the stem of our black roses--who does your mechanical heart see?
You, drowning in your delusions, do not know how much I love to hear you say this name I stole from a dead boy.
I am no longer a girl, no longer a Rose Bride, no longer a witch.
I am your Mamiya.
And when you kiss my lips, I am your Mamiya still--I give you solace in the dark and you give me a new identity to run with, one without female constraints or limitations.
I feel the same fascination as you do, long and pale fingers against my smooth chest and I feel the same odd desire bubble upward as you grip me tight by my slim hips.
I find that I hate the thought of shattering your dreams...
...for I shall be shattering mine as well...

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[If Dawn Is An Illusion]

Juri stepped outside one morning and decided that this was the end of all things.
A distant rumble echoed over the clouds, sounding like the crescendo of a wave or the churning of wheels or the cracking of the world.
Juri walked away from her foil and her dreams. She sat upon a seat, grabbing the wheel and heard the smallest of giggles from inside the jeep.
And a locket fell into a river, dying from lack of air where she did not.

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[Magic Man]

As the light filtered through the leaves and the heat was unbearable, Kanae slipped her shoes off.
Her toes pushed into the coolness of the grass and she threw her head back, closing her eyes to the oppressive sunlight.
But his warm voice slid over her suddenly.
Kanae looked over slowly to see him lounging beside her, on her blanket, digging around in her picnic basket.
She had seen him before, around this park. Sometimes in early morning or sometimes near dusk...sometimes, just sometimes, under the nighttime sky--like a dream perhaps, an illusion that Kanae was drawn to despite herself.
He offered her an apple and she did not remember packing one today. It was large and shiny red.
It looked delicious.
And the first bite pulled her under, the sweet juice attacking her taste-buds and overflowing past her lips...down her chin...
He offered to catch it before it dotted her blouse.
She thought he meant a napkin. Just a napkin perhaps.
It was no cloth he used, no cloth at all.
I try not to waste a thing... He whispered to her, his lips and tongue delicately cleaning her skin.
And Kanae knew this was wrong, such acts in daylight and with a stranger. But her will to fight was gone with the first taste of the forbidden fruit.

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[The Traveler]

The further I get from home, the more I wonder why I left and what I am looking for...Is it all just trying to grasp onto something forgotten? Or I am just trying to forget it all?
Tatsuya sits on a train heading north, past the frozen wasteland of this place he knows so little about. A dot on a map surrounded by a country he knows nothing about.
A language he does not speak. People he does not recognize.
But that is okay--he has his cheap paperback novel about a girl named Jane Eyre, he has his bottle of water rolling at his feet.
And underneath his button up shirt, his thick jacket, his corduroy pants...under all that is a boy.
A boy plagued by nightmares of a trip to the bottom of the Earth. Of a desire so strong it nearly broke him. Of a past shadowed with phantoms, dancing against an orange wall.
The girl in his book--she is delicate of body yet strong of will--it reminds Tatsuya of a girl he once knew.
And we were happy, once...I did not understand her but I loved her. Where did she go? What happened to her? Did I lose her? Did I want to lose her...?
Tatsuya falls asleep and dreams that he is digging up dirt. Rows and rows of it. A garden, his garden, the one he abandoned ages ago.
And a girl grows there. Her hair has become roots, her skin a yellowish-white. She is beautiful.
More gorgeous than Tatsuya can recall.
More real than even he is, sleeping on a train in the middle of nowhere.

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[Reflections]

It was a sobering image.
To see Himemiya Anthy standing opposite, sword raised level with the steady stare of her green eyes. Violet hair down, the ends fluttering with the slight breeze and strands getting caught on golden tassels at the shoulder.
The golden tassels of a prince, yet no ring on that hand--no Rose Crest that would indicate the reselling of her soul.
And the rose that was pinned to Anthy's uniform did not glare with pure white.
It was the lightest shade of pink.
As if mixed ever so slightly, a hint of red into a sea of ivory. Like blood might look if rubbed off of Nanami's skin.
Nanami could not see herself now.
Who stood there, with her weapons yet to be drawn? A child--a wounded and desperate girl, her heart shattered and her fingers smelling of wet cardboard? A young woman--a woman pretending to understand the world when all she wants to do is run away?
Nanami's old dueling uniform felt too tight. The rose of startling yellow blinded her. Ohtori felt like an oppressive hothouse.
Must she always come back to this place, to these feelings?
Anthy began a slow walk toward Nanami.
And Nanami did not raise her dagger, she just waited. Anthy's walk was so sure and confident. This was not the Rose Bride. This was not the wicked witch in the tower.
Nanami felt her breath catch once Anthy stood but an inch from her....This is Anthy, the real Anthy.
'This is not a game, no play duel...' Anthy whispered, as if the words were magic. But there was this sparkle in Anthy's eyes that Nanami caught--a dancing of unexplainable humor. Nanami felt a grin tug at her lips now.
I did not think so, Himemiya.
And Nanami shoved Anthy away, pulling her dagger up quick--then charging full-out to her prey.
And Anthy kept her blade poised, ready, willing, so very eager...Once metal rang out, it dulled the sound of brass bells ringing. Once their eyes met in mutual fury, the prying eyes of each ghost just faded away.

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End [for now…]