Rhapsody Theorem

[ part 3 ]

Disclaimers: Revolutionary Girl Utena belongs to Be-papas and Chiho Saitoh.

Warnings: Everybody will be OOC, drug-addicts, and raving lunatics. Lots of rambling and surrealness, half of the fanfic might not make any sense. Rated NC-17 for the themes mentioned above, language, as well as... implied sex? I guess so.

Rants: This takes place after Utena 'escapes' from the TV-series Ohtori. What exactly happened after the million-sword-stabbing-her-body incident that Kunihiko Ikuhara effectively blacks out upon? Well... this is one take, and highly unlikely. By the way, this has no relation to my previous RGU fanfic, "Ugh... Men." You might be able to catch the deja-vu similar-names of the 'Real World' characters to the 'Ohtori World' characters...

Radishface

Sometimes, you know, it's like it's all dark outside.

Dark outside?

When it's raining.

But it never rains here.

You've seen it raining, though, I know it.

You know my dreams?

I know you were rescued, and it was raining outside.

Do you know who saved me?

Yes, I know.

Will you tell me? Is he my prince?

He's a dark man. A tall, dark man.

Dark?

And he does dark things. He'll do something to you if you come save me. He doesn't want anybody to come save me.

But why?

Because he's selfish.

Do you hate him?

He's the prince. But not anymore.

Do you hate him?

No, I love him.

Why doesn't he save you?

Because he doesn't love me.

She woke up again, and many things were the same. The African violet was still there, straining towards the sunlight. The shadow from the tree was still there. Her sheets were wrinkled from sleeping in them, and the wet patch on the ceiling had not grown.

Still the same.

Something different.

She could hear the faint cracking and sizzling of something cooking outside, the smell of pancakes and bacon and eggs and she wondered where they had gotten all the food. Was it Doug? But no, she had taken the car last night and driven it home without waiting for him. Why hadn't she waited for him?

Anthy--

She jumped out of bed, half out of surprise, half out of anger, and ran out of the bedroom, slamming open the door as she barged into the kitchen. The girl turned around, mildly surprised at her entrance, and smiled a nervous smile, one dark hand on the frying pan, the other holding an egg. A bottle of cooking oil rested on the counter, which was spotless. The dishes from yesterday had been washed. Utena looked at the entire kitchen. Everything had been scrubbed clean. The tiles shone their original color-- white. The term papers and books on the kitchen table had been removed and placed in neat stacks on the bookshelf. The living room's carpet did not wear scraps of food from three months ago. The television was dusted. The lampshades were straightened.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" She found herself yelling. "Acting like you're my goddamn housewife??"

The dark-skinned girl blinked twice, and a look of hurt crept into her eyes, but she shook her head, and then they were happy again, sparkling. "I cleaned up the complex for you a bit, Utena." She smiled, a beautiful smile, so out of place in this ugly world. "And I decided I would make you breakfast."

"Don't play around with me like that." She muttered, storming over to the kitchen table and pulling back the chair violently, sitting down, resting her head in her hands. "What the hell..."

"If it displeases you--"

"It doesn't displease me, no." She gritted out, angrily. "I just barely know you and you're cleaning everything up. I didn't hire you as a maid."


"So I was brought back to your house like a common whore, is that right?"

Utena blinked and turned to look at the dark-skinned girl, who had carefully turned her face away. A white mouse crawled up her shoulder and chitted there, nibbling at a bit of cracker. She couldn't have just said that. It would have been totally out of character.

"Did we do anything?" She ventured, cautiously, struggling to keep the anger out of her tone.

"No." A dark hand cracked the egg on the edge of the pan, and Utena watched as the egg white and the yolk dripped into the pan, making a sizzling, cracking, popping sound as it hit the cooking oil and the heat. "We didn't do anything."

She was relieved, so relieved. She was still... relatively straight. The drugs must have done something. She remembered Jerry, the gentle coolness radiating off her, and she remembered kissing Anthy, and she didn't remember why-- but it must have been whatever she took that night. At least she only took one. Not more. Any more would have pushed her over the edge again. Today was Sunday. She didn't have any classes today. They started tomorrow. There were no tests, no papers due. It was a listening day.

Just listen.

She heard the eggs crackle and pop as they cooked, she heard the slight rustling of cloth as Anthy shifted her weight from her left foot to her right foot. The little mouse on her shoulder chittered, and made tiny sounds as it ate it's cracker, nibbling away on it. The clock by the stove ticked and tocked in time, the refrigerator hummed.

Anthy was wearing the same thing she wore last night, and it wasn't rumpled from sleeping in, as Utena thought it might have been. She herself was dressed in what she was wearing last night, with the exception of the boots. Those lay by the doorway, both knocked over. Doug was going to have a fit when he got back-- they were his, after all.

Utena scrubbed at her eyes, and stared at Anthy out of her peripheral vision, taking it all in. Here was this girl who had just come around yesterday, who had probably followed her into this club, stalked her, and assumed she knew her. Which was the scary thing. Maybe she was a government agent, sent to track her down-- but that wouldn't make any sense. There were a billion other college kids who did illegal drugs and went to illegal parties and things like that and the majority of them had not been (to her knowledge), arrested. And what was the mouse for? How did it stay so tame? Just perching on her shoulder like that, eating the cracker-- must be tamed. Maybe this girl came from the circus and they were going to hire her drug routine for the main act.

But really. Dark skin... had a slight Indian look to her. No, not Native American Indian. Asian Indian. She even had a bindi on her head, which Utena didn't notice last night. Sort of a red dot on the middle of her forehead, with a red tear-like thing below it. Weren't Indians psychic or something? They could read minds, she had read somewhere. Or something like that. And what was the bindi supposed to symbolize? A third eye or something like that? The red dot with the 'tear' below it could have been just that. An inner self, crying tears of blood. Or maybe she was making it up.

"Where did you sleep?" She found herself asking, and immediately regretted it. It would make her sound like she cared. Which she didn't. Fucking strange girl, just popping in like she knew who the hell everybody was.

"Over there." The dark-skinned girl gestured over to the couch in the living room with her chin. "I hope you don't mind."

"Of course I mind." She snapped, her lips quirking. "It's my couch."

"You invited me."

Utena didn't say anything, only continued to unabashedly stare at this girl who was making her breakfast. Did she ask for it? No. But it smelled good. And she was hungry.

"You're going to leave today." She said, getting up. "Do you have any bags?"

Anthy stepped back suddenly from the stove, as if she had burned herself. The animal on her shoulder squeaked, and then crawled into her mass of hair. She looked up, again, there was that hurt, disbelief, and the foundations of anger that hadn't been used in a long time. Maybe she didn't know how to be angry. Then she returned back to the stove, blithely turning the eggs over so that the yolk was on the other side. "I didn't pack any bags, Utena. Just that one over there." She pointed on the couch, where a simple white bag lay. There was a green handkerchief with white swirls on it next to her bag. Utena walked over to them, and opened it, scouring the contents. There was a simple change of clothes-- a red summer dress, to be exact. And nothing else that was important. And the green handkerchief had cookie crumbs and cracker crumbs in it. She shook it out disgustedly so that they fell onto the carpet, and turned back to look at her.

"I'm sorry." Anthy smiled. "That's Chu Chu's." She turned to the white thing nestled on her shoulder. "Isn't that right?"

"That thing?" Utena shook it again, and Anthy nodded, barely. "It belongs to that rat of yours?"

Anthy looked surprised, but managed to look nonchalant about it.

So patient. So mild.

"Chu Chu's a rat?" She asked, softly, sliding the eggs onto a plate, and then setting the black pan back on the stove.

"Looks like one." Utena dropped the handkerchief back onto the couch. "Isn't it?"

"I don't know." Anthy said carefully. "Is he?"

"Are you blind?" Utena huffed. "Of course it's a rat! A fucking lab rat! Of course it's a rat! It's albino, rodent family!"

"If you say so." She said, and turned to opening the drawers, picking out a fork for the eggs. She walked over to where Utena had been sitting and set the eggs down, next to a plate of toast. "For you."

"What makes you think I eat conventional breakfasts like that?"

"I assumed you did."

"You assume too much."

That hurt again, the disbelief. But she was quiet. "Whatever you say."

But she sat down anyway, and ate them. They were savory, somehow cooked better than when her roommate made her breakfast. The eggs had the right amount of salt on them, the toast was crisped just right. And she could tell Anthy was watching her out of the corner of her eyes with some unidentifiable expression as she watched Utena wolf down her breakfast like a ravenous animal.

"Where did you come from?" She suddenly asked, swallowing what she had in her mouth and nearly choking on the huge lump sliding down her throat.

Anthy was silent, her hands fiddling in her lap, twisting the material of the apron as the rat squeaked on her shoulder. "Ohtori." She replied, after awhile.

"Where's that?" She asked, but didn't look at her.

"It's a school."

"You should have stayed there."

"I couldn't have."

"Why not?"

"You went there, too." Anthy was whispering, now, as she stopped twisting her hands, stopped wringing them as if she was worried about something. There was nothing to be worried about, except for the fact that she couldn't possibly stay another night and would have to find someplace new to go to. Temporary shelter, that was all that was last night. Utena could be a Good Girl once in a while too, and offer a roof for a homeless person now and then. Except the dark-skinned girl didn't exactly look... homeless, when she had seen her. Just happy.

"I never went to Ohtori, or whatever you call it. I've been in this neighborhood for my entire life." Utena pursed her lips tightly. "My entire life."

"You don't remember?" Anthy asked, suddenly walking over and sitting down, looking over at her across the table, intently, in her eyes. Green eyes, just as intense, just as invigorating, as they had been last night. Utena repressed the shiver in her spine.

"Remember what?"

"Remember Ohtori."

"I don't. There's no Ohtori, whatever the name is." She scowled. As good as the breakfast was, she didn't appreciate this conversation. She was crazy. Anthy, or whatever her name was, was completely crazy. Insane. "You're talking bullshit."

"Do you remember a Prince?" She murmured, not defeated yet, but looking away, somewhere else. "Do you remember a Revolution? The Duels?"

"Nothing." Utena felt a wave of something surge up inside her, remembrance mixed with anger and confusion and frustration. "I don't remember a single fucking thing."

"I followed you outside to your Revolution, Utena." The dark-skinned girl was saying, even more quietly, now, just as intensely, but without the vigor she had a minute ago. "This is your world now. I followed you outside. This is what you wished for when you grabbed my hand."

"I never grabbed your hand." She protested angrily. But she had. Just last night.

"The coffin, Utena." A tinge of desperation had entered her voice, made it all the more lonely, the more hurt, the more black and grey and darkest of blues. "The Sword of Dios--"

"I've never been in a coffin for my entire living life!" She screamed suddenly, standing up with a jerk, slamming her hands on the table. "What the hell makes you think I've been inside a coffin?!"

How does she know? Utena thought, desperately. How does she know, when my mother and father died, when they died in that fucking car accident, that I crawled into their coffins? That night in the church? When they were dead, when I didn't have anything else left, that I wanted to die with them?--

The dark-skinned girl merely stared, now, the white mouse in her hair shivering, somewhere.

"I don't remember." Utena replied, suddenly calm. "I don't remember, and it's useless of you to try and talk me out of it."

Those green eyes quivered with unspoken emotion, then looked away.

"Well, if this is what you wished for." She said, softly, so softly she had to learn in to catch the words, straining to hear them. "You wished to forget everything?"

She had, hadn't she? Utena shook her head, minutely. When she popped the pills in her mouth, injected the needles into her arm. She had done it all those times to forget something. Something. And she didn't remember what. But it couldn't have been a wonderful thing to remember. Or maybe it was something worth remembering, something that was wonderful, something worth laughing and crying over and maybe she wanted to forget it because she felt she didn't deserve it.

"Remember?" Utena asked herself, under her breath. "Forget."

Anthy didn't hear her, kept murmuring to herself, her knuckles in her mouth, and she was rocking back and forth in her chair. "You wanted to forget everything. I know, I know, now, you wanted to forget the Student Council, the Duels, the Stairway, the Gondola, the Rose Garden, the Victories, your Prince, the Rose Bride, your Princess, me.

You wanted to forget me." She murmured, intense, eyes wide open, and her rocking grew more and more frantic, although she still did not look up into Utena's eyes. "Didn't you?"

It came back then, in a myriad of images, the images, feeling, wind blowing on her face as she climbed up the stairs, a draft around her body as she was suddenly naked, stripped of her clothing, and a slight tingling as somehow, a Prince's attire fit around her body, snug, a sword materialized out of this girl's chest, not solid, not matter, but still the strongest material in that world, and the kiss that would turn the sword red, vanquish her enemies, climb higher and higher, and the desks, the reconfiguration, and the telescope, the chocolates, umbrellas, the planetarium, the stars, the camera--

Clouds, clouds of white rose petals. And Utena stared up, wildly, one of her hands tangled in her hair. She didn't know what she was supposed to say.

"I didn't forget anything," She said, cursing the words as she said them, "because they never happened in the first place. What the hell are you talking about? Princes belong in Medieval and Renaissance times. Princesses, damsels in distress, they don't exist. I'm not a prince. You're living in a fucking time warp." Her voice faltered, her resolution started to break.

"Let me stay with you--" Utena heard skin rip as Anthy bit through the skin of her knuckles, heard her choke back her sobs. She was shaking, tears, crystalline, dripping down her face and onto her skirt, but her face wasn't contorted, she looked almost insane, rocking like that, staring desperately at nowhere, seemingly calm but not. "Let me stay with you, please, please--" She groped with her other hand for Utena's own, which was lying motionless on the table. It was like she was trapped in the dark, afraid to move, searching for something to hold onto.

Utena didn't say anything, tried to force the images out of her head as she felt her hand be gripped, weakly, timid fingers curling around her own. And as they clasped hands, she felt an electric shock jolt through her fingers, and she wanted to pull back, like she had been burned. But she wasn't burned, there was no burning, witches were burnt, but that was a long, long, time ago. But some witches weren't burned-- impaled, millions, millions, of swords, full of hate, aimed towards them, when in truth, they ddin't do anything wrong, weren't guilty of anything, right?

Right?

"You can stay." She said, unable to recognize her own voice, it was low and it was dry, parched. Her own eyes were glazed, staring off into a different space than those green eyes were, but seeing the same things, different perspectives.

Anthy kept rocking back and forth, back and forth, sobs racking her throat, crying without a reason, but Utena didn't let go of her hand, even though she wasn't aware of it, and gradually, Anthy stopped, and sat in her chair quietly, head still cast down, and they listened to the sounds coming out of the half-open window, cars zooming by, the faint chirp of a bird, somewhere, the bustle of people as they walked past.

When Doug returned home, he saw Utena on the couch, watching a game of baseball. He straightened the leather boots which were turned over by the door, and then proceeded to gripe about if Utena was going to bring some little hot thing home with her in the jeep, couldn't she have waited for him as well? It was a good thing Syle was there, because otherwise, he would have been stuck at that awful party until the next-next-next day. So he had to go spend the night at Syle's place, which wasn't all that bad (whether the flamboyant roommate was referring to the actual place itself or the activities he participated on a certain king-sized bed, Utena didn't bother to figure out), but please, would Utena remember to turn her cell phone on the next time, as well? And if she was engaged in full-frontal snogging, as the English called it, she would remember to check her messages at a later time? Thank you. And dear me, what a lovely job you've done in straightening this place up! Did you do it this morning--? Oh.

And then Syle had proceeded to come into their cleaned dorm room, looking around with slight awe on his face, and while Doug was happily greeting the flustered dark-skinned girl, who had shyly brought them all drinks, Earl Grey tea, to be exact, Utena merely sighed and buried her head under a pillow, not caring if the stupid baseball had flown towards the bleachers and the runner had made a home run. She hadn't been watching the game, really. She'd been thinking about how strange it was, the course of events that had happened, what images had went through her head, enacting some sort of a nightmarish dream that played out like a twisted fairy tale.

"Utena, if I can say something--"

It was two in the morning, and Utena knew that if Anthy had known she was asleep, she wouldn't have bothered talking to her. The dark-skinned girl's voice had a note of hesitance to it, though, and Utena tossed in her bed. It was strangely comforting and annoying to hear Doug say that he'd gladly give up his bed to this wonderful little girl that Utena had brought home (despite all her half-hearted protests) and he would sleep on the couch. Syle merely raised an eyebrow when he heard this and invited her roommate to come sleep at his place for a couple of days but Doug had merely replied that no matter how much he enjoyed the company, one of these days, he would have to get some sleep. So Syle had left with an amused glance on his face, and Utena had gotten to keep her bed.

She could hear her roommate snoring slightly, outside.

"Say it." She gritted. "And let me get back to sleep."

"You know that woman you were sitting next to the other night?"

How could she forget? Luscious curls and cool glance that was compassionate but calculating and a strange, knowing smile-- Jerry, of course, that ridiculously beautiful lesbian with the catty whore clawing her way up her shirt.

"Yes."

"She reminds me of Juri."

"Her name is Jerry." Utena grumbled. "A friggin' guy's name."

"Of course, Utena."

There are no miracles--

"And your roommate."

"Hm?" She was falling asleep again.

"He reminds me of Touga."

Utena remembered she had said that name once. She didn't remember why.

"Touga?" She murmured, and felt fingers through her hair.

A slight muffled laugh sounded from Anthy's direction, and Utena felt too tired to be annoyed. She had to get up early tomorrow for her class. What the hell was so funny?

"Although Touga would never act like that."

"Is that so."

"And his boyfriend-- lover-- what is he?"

"Syle. His fuck-of-the-month."

Anthy didn't seem to hear this obscenity, and if she did, she casually brushed it off. "Of course. Reminds me of Saionji."

"I have no idea who you're talking about, just shut the hell up." She turned over in her bed again to face her, and somewhere along the way, she lost her voice. The green eyes were infinetly sad, even though those lips were curled in a half-smile. Strange, strange, expression.

"You picture everybody." Anthy said, her lips barely moving. "This is your world, you pictured everybody from Ohtori and put them here, and they're all the same. You imagined everybody here except for me."

"Good point." Utena snorted, playing along. "You were probably just the person I didn't want to see, out here, 'in this world.'" She mimicked.

"Is that so." Anthy turned in her bed, facing away, facing her side of the wall. "I see."

There was a strange comfort in knowing that Anthy wouldn't talk anymore, and a strange comfort in not knowing what she was talking about.

But, but, I want to know, something in Utena's mind cried out, lost and helpless. What is this?

What does it mean?

And when we break out of here, we'll go somewhere.

Where will we go?

I don't know. Somewhere, away from here.

It's not bad here.

It could be better.

Have I know of anything better?

You haven't. That's why I'm taking you.

- - - - -

PLEASE R&R…? ::big, teary eyes:: It will make me feel so much better if you do. Who doesn't want comments? This is my first Utena multi-part fanfic… ::bawls like a baby::

Okay, okay, I'll shut up now. =_= But still. Reviews are wonderful to receive.