Rhapsody Theorem
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.
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. There is a parallel universe, separated by dark matter, interconnected by a portal called the focal point of a Mobius strip… sure. _
Summary: Utena attends a birthday party, and meets with an old friend. Friend. Yeah.
Radishface
Why don't you wake up?
From what?
Your dreams.
Don't want to. I like them.
You don't want reality?
Reality... reality isn't real, either. You wake up to reality. And then you go back to dreams again. It's a cycle, one after the other. So it doesn't make a difference which one you start with first, or which one you end up with.
But your dreams are turning into nightmares.
Who said they were good dreams in the first place?
And you enjoy torturing yourself?
I can't tell you the truth. I wouldn't be able to.
The chick has to break out of the egg sooner or later, you know.
And what if it dies in its shell?
"Should I be scared?" He said, laughing. A blindfold covered his eyes, and Utena took his hand.
"No. It's just your birthday."
"That's what I'm scared of. Getting old." He laughed again, and she shrugged, rolling her eyes.
"You'll never grow. You're eternally young."
"Say that to Doug. He'll be more flattered than I am."
It was her turn to smile, as she led him by the hand, down the corridor. Doug was the one who planned the party. Doug was the one who wanted the party in the first place, because he couldn't live without the feeling of... celebration. Or something. Utena didn't really know, but she was glad to participate in the festivities-- it would take her mind off other things.
Of course Himemiya would be there too. Anthy. Whatever you wanted to call her. She would be there, she would be baking the cake, or serving the cake, or making food, or cleaning up, staying in the corners. They would pretend they were just roommates. And they were.
"Do you miss him?" Michael said, pausing in his steps for a minute, and Utena raised her eyebrow at the blindfolded man.
"Miss who? Doug?" She scoffed, trying to infuse some annoyance into her voice. "Him and all his dates? No, I don't. At least with the new girl she keeps house for me while I'm at class, you know? And she cooks. It's good food-- better than Doug's instant stuff." She went on. "Doug could cook decent stuff, but he was too busy most of the time, and I was always out, so whatever dishes there were were always left in the sink, and it was a rat house most of the time. Yeah." She paused, realizing she was rambling. "A rat house."
"Well." Michael said, and although his mouth wasn't smiling, Utena was sure she could see the crinkles, the folds at the corners of his eyes, the glimmer in them behind the blindfold. "She seems to take good care of you." He winked.
"What makes you say that?" Utena tried to keep her voice steady, and started walking down the corridor again, leading him by the hand. "She's just meant to be a housewife. And she has nothing better to do all day than to clean house. You should see it now," she forced a laugh, forced it to be light, "it's CLEAN. It's not a horrible mess anymore. And she threw away the pillow."
"Oh, the one on the couch?"
"Yeah."
"It smelled like Doug, I remember."
Utena muttered something under her breath. "Hn."
"Are we there yet?" He sounded like an impatient kid, and suddenly, Utena seemed to feel thin air instead of his hand, electricity as it ran up through her arms. She looked down to their interlocked fingers, and for a minute, she didn't see anything, and then she saw something, a ring, a white ring with a pink center, on his fourth finger. And then it disappeared.
"Yeah." Utena shook her head, tried to clear it away, whatever it was. "Yeah, we're here."
Syle's apartment door was in front of her, the apartment number glaring at her as it rested on a plaque on the door, and somehow, she was reluctant to go in. What was behind that door? People, she told herself. People who know you. They might not respect you, but at least they know you. And you know them, you've know them for a long time.
For a long time. She said to herself. A long time.
So just go in. You won't find any coffins up against the walls.
"Happy Birthday, Michael." She said, almost conspiratorially, and he gave a long-winded sigh.
"Miki just sounds so much cuter." He pouted, blindfold still around his eyes. "Please?" And then Utena saw a huge, alien pair of blue eyes, a slim figure, much like the one she was looking at now, but thinner, and less confident, somehow, more fragile, more frail. A stopwatch hung around his neck, and Utena wondered if the man was a track coach. Or if she was just fucking crazy.
Utena's breath caught in her throat, and she struggled to swallow around it. "You said you liked the nickname Mike."
"Then why don't you call me that?" He asked, genuinely confused. "I've cut and styled your hair for years."
"Didn't you just say you wanted to be called Miki?" She said. The panic was rising in her stomach, and she quashed it down. She needed to clean out her ears. Stopping her club habit wasn't enough. Not doing recreational drugs wasn't enough. She needed to clean out her ears because she was getting all the names wrong. Doug sounded like Touga, and Syle sounded like Saionji, and she had a sinking feeling that she knew all those names from before.
"What?" Michael said back.
"Nothing." Utena said quickly, dismissing it, trying to smile like normal. "Mike."
"Yeah?"
"How long have I been here?" She said it. There. And her voice was trembling, and it was ridiculous. Her voice was shaking, and it was absurd. She was stupid, and she was afraid.
"Oh, Utena." Michael laughed, shook his perfectly styled hair out of his blindfolded eyes. "You silly girl. You've been here for as long as I can remember. Forever."
Michael had left her to sit on the couch, the excruciatingly comfy couch, and had run off to madly give Syle some air kisses. So it wasn't a bad couch or anything, it was actually very... very... avant-garde. Syle, the punk, the member of the Anarchist Revolution band, was actually very rich and very spoiled, even though he didn't look it. His apartment oozed contemporary, Scandinavian furniture, paintings of random blotches of paint splattered on canvas adorned his walls (painted by himself, Syle had said morosely, when Utena asked), his couches were curved in strange ways that made them uncomfortable if one wished to sit and perhaps interesting to have sex on. The lights were dim, although through his ceiling-to-floor windows, the last remnants of tangible sunlight flew in, splashing his living room a pale orange.
The place was fucking gorgeous. No wonder Doug had wanted to leave. No wonder Michael had consented to having the 'surprise' birthday party here.
It was only Michael. It was only Michael, the resident hairdresser, but Syle decided to host the party at his house. A few cheesy decorations were hung up, including an arbitrary, rainbow-colored banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY in obnoxious, bold letters, but other than that, it was relatively quiet, since there weren't all that many people. It could have been quieter, though, if the music hadn't been turned up to the maximum and the Anarchist's new CD was playing. She watched the speakers tremble as the drum solo blasted forth, and laughed when the student standing by the speaker jumped in surprise and almost dropped her soda can.
There were no recreational drugs in sight. But Michael was such a sweetie. They couldn't spoil his cheery demeanor by acting like a bunch of stoned hippies.
"Oh darrrrlinnng!" Somebody trilled from across the room. Utena looked up from her spot on Syle's ottoman and smiled at her ex-roommate, who was blithely making his way over across the crowded living room.
"Doug." She acknowledged curtly. Let him see that she was mad at him for leaving. Let him see that she was not satisfied with rooming with a fucking loon who liked to clean house.
"You sound like you're not happy with a perfectly nice girl who likes to keep house for you." Doug pouted, and Utena rolled her eyes, sipping her soda. "I think it's cute."
"I don't." She scowled. "She talks to me about shit I don't know about and I can't understand her."
"So she's a bit...?" Doug made a gesture with his finger around his head and Utena laughed. "Well, she looks harmless enough. And she seemed like she knew you. And don't forget," Doug waggled his finger at her. "you were the one who brought her home."
"So what if I did?" Utena sniffed. "It wasn't a one-night-stand or anything. Not like you."
Doug looked mildly offended for a minute. "I'm not like that now. I found my dearest and I'm not going to let him go."
"Not considering that you've actually been wanting to get into his pants since--"
"Forever."
Utena's face contorted with something unexplainable, but Doug didn't seem to notice. "Anyway." He continued, swirling his martini glass around, the olive making its hypnotic way around the bottom of the glass. "That doesn't matter. She seems harmless."
"What if she's one of those crazy asylum people?" Utena fretted, humorously angry, if that could be a possible combination. "What if she tries to kill me in my sleep? Or what if she kills me in her sleep, like she sleepwalks or something?"
"If she sleepwalks, honey," Doug laughed, pretending to be ignorant, "she'll be walking."
"With a knife." Utena muttered sullenly, but couldn't help laugh a bit. It was good to be talking to Doug again, to be talking about stupid things. With Himemiya, it was different, of course it was. You couldn't just thrown Utena into a strange situation and let her deal with it. With Himemiya, it wasn't like it was with Doug, easy, airy, breezy. There was something intense about her, something focused, and she, Utena, seemed to be that radiating, pulsing point of light that she was concentrating on. Not that it wasn't already strange enough that this supposed one-night-stand (and a girl, no less) was now living with her.
It gave her the shivers to think about it.
It was like Doug was going to say any minute now, oh, by the way, she is an escaped convict and she's going to kill you because she thinks you look like her long lost lover who betrayed her so and so many years ago. But it's okay, Utena, because you're not her long lost lover or anything.
That was correct.
"Dear?" Doug said. "What's wrong?"
Utena looked up, and then out the window, as the sun finally went down. "Nothing." She said, trying to reassure. Doug squinted at her, his red hair in his face, his glasses slipping off his nose. "Is Anth-- Is she here?"
Doug smiled like he knew something, and Utena felt the urge to wipe the smirk off his face. "She's serving drinks, hon'. You wanna go talk to her? It's not like you don't know her."
"No." Utena spat, wrenched her gaze from the punch bowl back to the scenery outside, the landscape. Skyscrapers were visible in the darkening twilight, and she saw the campus, the lights flickering on in the different buildings as the evening classes started. And it looked ominous, the way the shadows were cast, the way the clock tower seemed to lean towards the ground to entice people, the hands on its face crawling like ants as they inched nearer to midnight.
There is no clock tower, her brain reminded her. What are you talking about?
And Utena looked up again, looked up at Anthy, saw her smile back, eyes lighting up with recognition and happiness, yet repressed, disciplined. Nobody was at the punch bowl now, and she had her hands clasped in front of her, fingers interlocking with one another, and Utena imagined one of the hands to be hers.
And then they were being pulled apart, they were being pulled apart, and their hands were struggling to hold on, but then it was only their fingers touching, and then nothing at all, as Anthy screamed when she fell and Utena followed the plummeting form with her eyes until she could no longer see her and the planks of wood from the coffin were flying up into her face, smashing her nose and tearing out her eyes, and the stone castle from above was crumbling and the foundations were dropping onto her back, and the swords came at her with an intent only to strike where her heart was, to kill her where her ambition had been rooted in, to squash any hope of revival, of rebirth, of hope.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I couldn't be your prince. Do you hear that? It's my apology. I can't say it enough. I can't say that I am sorry because I'm not, and yet I am. I wish I could take it all back. I wish you never had to know me. I wish that I had loved you sooner, but I had loved you all along.
She looked away again, suddenly strangely calm and yet her mind and thoughts were a mess, running into one another, stumbling, tripping as they fell into black holes and swirled around endlessly in such whirlpools, clambering to get out and make themselves known. This is what you should think, they were telling her, screaming at her, as they spun to their deaths. You should think that it's nonsense, that it's insanity. You should think that it's the truth. Insanity. Truth. Insanity. Truth. Reality.
"I'll see you." She said, almost jumping off the ottoman, surprising Doug and not caring if Anthy was hurt that she didn't acknowledge her.
"Where are you going?"
Doug seemed to know. In fact, the whole fucking world seemed to know what she was going to do. What she'll always be doing, what she has done, what she wants to do, what she needs to do. The whole fucking world knows her better than she herself ever will and why is that it's because she created it. Everybody stares at her yet nobody cares because they all know, and they all can guess, we know what you want. We know you want to get out. Get out.
"I'm going out."
"Come back." Doug said. And suddenly it was all so very simple.
"Yeah." She said. "Soon."
She practically ran out the door, ignoring the glances tossed her way with easy nonchalance. She ignored the coldness of the metal railing as she chose to make her way down the stairs instead of the elevator. She didn't need and elevator to go deeper, she didn't need an elevator to get from the top to the bottom. She could do it herself.
She opened the door and she was outside, the cars humming in the distance, on the highway, the one she had never crossed. The lights shone in the distance, the ones she had never seen. The stars winked at her in the sky and they didn't say anything to her, they weren't even lights. They were just there, these things, plastered to the infinity of the stratosphere without knowing it.
"Utena." A voice said, and she turned around, saw somebody leaning against a wall.
She laughed, and stopped it before it became hysterical. "Where's your boy?" She asked.
He didn't answer.
"Mikage." She said. "I knew you were going to be here." She chuckled to herself, threw her arms up to the sky, spun around in the street, before she walked back to the sidewalk. "I think I knew you were going to be here because you're always following me."
"Correction." Mikage said. "I'm just here. It's a coincidence that we're here at the same time, at the same place."
"A coincidence." She spat. "Fucking asshole." She turned to him, walked towards him so that he was up against a wall and her hands were by the sides of his head. She knew she could smash his face in. She knew it.
"Utena." He smiled.
"What do you want with me?" She screamed, made him listen.
Mikage shrugged, a fluid movement, unhindered by hesitance, confusion. "I don't know."
"Then don't shit around."
"You can't kill me." He smiled, and the undercurrents of light played around the edges of his eyes. "I'm already dead."
She was unfazed. "You're a fucking zombie, then, is that it?" She laughed, laughed in his face. "I knew it. No wonder you're so pale."
He kept smiling, peaceful, serene, at peace with himself and with her. He made it look like being cornered and threatened was normal. He made it look unnatural. "I had a dream." He said. "In it, you were running, and you couldn't stop."
"I--" She started, and was stopped when he suddenly pushed her and then grabbed her arm, twisted it so that she was pinned to the wall now, her face pressed up against the dirty bricks, tasting dust and grime and filth, so that her head came in contact with the wall and she was left staring at a black nothing for a minute while his voice went on.
"You couldn't stop." He said. "You tried to trip yourself because you were tired and you didn't want to run anymore. But as soon as you tried, you would only land on your feet again. And then you would keep on running. Maybe you would have run yourself to exhaustion and your legs would have kept going."
She felt her head spinning, throbbing from the pain, as the blood pulsed in that one little vein, and it was ignored everywhere else. She could hear him, she realized. She could hear him very distinctly, like jewels, like diamonds, floating in a lake.
"So then I come up to you, because I feel sorry for you." He said. "And do you know what I tell you?"
"What." She croaked, found herself saying something, and she felt a surge of triumph.
"I told you that you were running because you wanted to look for something, and you were running away, at the same time." He smiled, brought his lips up to her ear, and she tried to crane her neck away, but he held her still. "There was an element of irony in there, I think. A wizard had cast a spell on you, and nobody could save this running princess who was running away from everything. And I think I knew everything, because I had once been like that too."
"A fucking princess? Fag--" Utena laughed, managed to laugh, somehow, and then Mikage slammed her head into the wall again, not too hard, but hard enough. She choked on her spit, felt something liquid coming from her nose.
"And then." He spoke quietly. "It was actually a gift, the wizard said. You could only run as long as everybody else in the world was frozen. Time had stopped while you were running. Only for people that were alone in their own rooms did time go on for. There was Anthy." And he whispered this, and released her so that she was leaning against the wall, and he was standing approximately two feet away from her.
She was gasping for breath, wiping the blood away from her nose, and didn't pay attention. She tried not to, tried not to cry. The pain, she told herself. Her head hurt. That was why she was crying. He knew she was going to cry so he gave her an excuse to do it. She hated him.
"People couldn't see you running." He said. "But I did. And she did."
She wasn't crying, she realized. She couldn't be crying. But this salt water, like from the ocean, was pouring over her in great torrents and she was being swept up with it, and the blood was mixing with it and she felt strange, like she was being suspended, rooted to the sky.
"And now."
She looked up, and he was walking away, and she wanted to call out to him, no. You told me about the Mobius strip once. I want to hear it again. I want to hear your voice again, because I know it. I know it very well, when I took a trip down that elevator except I didn't and then I saw you on top of the sky and we fought against each other. You said things. You said there was a focal point where things would cross over and that matter and anti-matter and the me and the not me couldn't exist in the same world and that they would destroy each other as soon as they were in contact. But you didn't say how they would destroy each other. You didn't say if it would be sudden or if it would be slow. You didn't say it would be physical or if it would be destroying me from the inside. And you don't tell me who I am, but you know. I wish I knew.
She gave up, she realized. She gave up for the moment when she saw him get in a car with a boy driving it in front, and then he drove away. She realized that the whole experience had been very surreal, and that she didn't need to tell anybody about it. And this thought seemed to bring her back to her feet, seemed to revive her enough so that she could go back upstairs, take the elevator upstairs because she was too tired to walk.
And when she opened the door to the party, Doug rushed to her and asked her how she was bleeding and why her forehead was brushed and who had done it. And she had just laughed, laughed, and laughed, ruined Michael's party so that they would have to have another one to make up for it, as she was laid on the couch and she was still laughing as Doug told somebody to get her some water and Syle had laid a wet towel on her head and Michael was in the background and fretting over what was wrong.
And Anthy had come from her station at the punch bowl, it was ridiculous. Anthy had come and hadn't done anything but she had held her hand and cleaned the blood from her face and Utena had expected someone to rip them apart any minute but it didn't happen and as she fell asleep, as she walked into that enticing darkness, she still felt those fingers laced with hers, and she wondered if they were real, because they were supposed to be separated.
What if it's not real?
I hate you.
What if none of it's real?
I hate you.
What if you're just making it up again?
I hate you.
What if she's not real?
I don't believe you.
Another chapter of fun and weirdness! ^_^ So, how was it? I appreciate C&C… because… it helps me write. And continue ongoing fanfics. ::cough cough cough:: Um. So. Sorry to be so obnoxious. But anyway!
There's so much I want to do with this fanfic! O_O I can't get around to it, though. I'll need to develop it for a billion more chapters until the ending. Geez. But it feels good to post again.
Utena and Mikage. _ Utena doesn't like Mikage. Will she ever? And does that whole Mobius strip theory even make sense? I have no idea what I'm writing. Actually, I do. It just sounds better in my head.
Coming up (not necessarily in the next chapter)… : Weirdness, surreal ness, and realizations. And a new character. A few new characters, actually. Just because you escape doesn't mean you're happy. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.