A/N: OMG, an update? O.o Impossible things do happen. This may be the slowest moving fanfic I've ever read or written, but lo and behold, another chapter. And if I ever manage to get the next few chapters written, the characters will get to Ohtori Academy, and we will see some duels at last, as well as all the familiar faces that ought to be in any Utena story. That's all a big "if," currently, though.

She dreamt of a prince.

In her dream, she stood before a long pathway into darkness. A red carpet rolled out before her, stark against the blackness of the void around her. At the end hung a figure, pierced by a million swords. It was a girl – a witch. But the girl was innocent. She was kind, and suffering so much. Why didn't the prince save her?

I will save her.

She stepped towards that picture of eternal pain, determined to free the victim from her endless suffering, only to find herself cast into another place – a school – where bells tolled with the triumph of the victor and swords clashed in duels for supremacy.

The swords were wielded by shadows, dancing along the walls like puppets in a theatre, thrown there by the orange rays of the setting sun. She passed the shadows and climbed an endless staircase. There was an elevator, too. Up, down… it went both directions, down into hell and flames and a void where time ground to a halt and the only flowers were black. There, the grim reaper, Professor Nemuro's twin without glasses, pulled levers and switches of his perpetual motion device – only it wasn't a perpetual motion device; it was part of a grand puppeteering machine, and the levers led to strings that made the shadow players dance and swing their swords.

She cut the strings, destroyed the machine, and the evil professor, who turned out only to be a puppet himself, melted into a shadow and vanished.

After that she rode the elevator up, up high beyond the staircase, towards a castle floating upside down in the sky, where she had to go in order to save the princess who was really a witch who was suffering eternally at the hands of her mad brother. Along the way she was attacked by shadows, but they were too insubstantial to stop her. She reached the top, searching for that red carpet leading through the void to the witch.

But at the top, a million swords plunged into her, breaking the elevator. She fell from the sky, fell and fell and…

… she should have woken, then. She'd had this dream before, in different variations. Sometimes a prince appeared in it, sometimes Nemuro was not in it at all (he had been a recent addition), sometimes Wakaba was a shadow fencer who stood in her path. No matter what variation it came in, always it ended with her falling from the sky. But this time, it continued.

She found herself in a white, hazy, indistinct place. She was lost, but not afraid or unhappy. On the contrary she was enjoying herself, exploring and learning and feeling the world as if for the first time. With her was the witch, who had turned into Anthy Himamiya, and held her hand as they walked along, laughing and talking. Somewhere the mad prince was looking for them, but he was trapped in the upside-down castle and could not reach them out here.

But… there were red eyes on them, following them. One of the shadow fencers had somehow escaped, and trailed them. He was not sufficient to worry them – she could cut through him with a flick of her wrist, as easily as she had the shadows around the elevator. Unfortunately, she had not noticed the string attached to him. He tugged it, then he was lifted out of sight like a doll cast aside, and in his place descended the puppetmaster.

"I've finally found you, Anthy…" he said in a deep, husky voice.

"No – I won't let you take her back!" she cried, raising her sword.

"What can you do about it?" he said, chuckling. "You're still asleep. If you want to try to rescue her again, you'll have to climb the staircase to the heavens and tear apart the castle… If you ever wake up."

He snapped his fingers, and darkness descended on her. She fought, tried to remain conscious, but she found herself sinking, sinking into…

Utena's eyes opened. She stared at the ceiling of her room, white and pristine – the only part of her room, actually, that was clean, at least until Anthy's arrival yesterday evening.

"Man, what a weird dream… Anthy, do you ever—" She had turned her head to address her roommate, but her voice trailed off at the sight of the empty bed across from her. "Anthy…?" She sat up, wondering briefly if Anthy had really been kidnapped, then dropping that dream-induced notion for the more likely possibility that she had risen early and left. "No way… she wouldn't leave me like that." Disappointment, then hurt crept into her bright blue eyes. She rose and quickly dressed, determined to search for her friend. Maybe she had just gone out to get breakfast.

"Anthy, if you really ditched me… But you promised you would stay!"

She stuffed her books in her backpack and swung it over her shoulder before jogging out the door. Neither in the dorm dining hall, nor in the nearby café did she catch a glimpse of Anthy.

"It can't be… It wasn't supposed to be like this. She can't leave me like this!"

Still refusing to believe Anthy was really gone, she dashed back to her room and looked again. There was nothing, not a trace of the young woman. Nothing except…

There, fluttering on the desk from the breeze let in by the open window. It was a note, weighted down by a stapler. Utena closed the window, wondering why Anthy had opened it, and picked up the note. It read:

"I am sorry I had to leave early. Please don't be upset, and don't worry about me. Your kindness has meant a great deal to me, more than I can possibly say. I promise you I will never forget you. Sincerely yours, Anthy Himemiya."

Utena crumpled the note in her first and stood silent, her jaw clenched and her eyes staring fixedly at the wall, as if she might burn a hole through it.

Anthy… How could you do this to me?

Her hands trembled slightly. It was with an effort that she stopped their shaking and opened the note again, looking down at it and blinking back tears.

… did you really choose to leave here early?

She slumped heavily into her chair, a frown on her lips as she set the note on the desk.

"' no good can come from it,' huh? What was in that box…?" Her eyes narrowed. She bit her thumbnail and looked carefully over the letter again. It was polite, distant, formal… Secretive. There was something hidden there that Anthy had not written.

I think I'll go and have a talk with the professor.

(In
the
asylum...)

He woke slowly, gaining perception of the light seeping under his lids, first, and then feeling the weight of his limbs, which were heavy as lead. He mustered the strength to open his eyes, but could not move otherwise. His body was dead weight. From his lethargy and the haziness of both his thoughts and his vision, he knew he was suffering from the effects of a drug. The sedative, or the medication, or both.

Wavering unsteadily in his vision were blank grey walls, lights blaring overhead. The asylum.

Not here… why am I waking here? The dreams should have ended.

… or did they? Sudden suspicion flared inside him, merging with the bright ceiling lights to bring a shock of pain to his skull. He closed his eyes. Akio had never specified which world was the dream, which the reality. Nemuro had logically assumed that the world in which Akio appeared to him, in which Tenjou and Himemiya existed, was reality; but what if that assumption was wrong? What if both worlds had equal validity, and Akio simply chose the more convenient to merge him into?

No, that does not make sense, cannot be physically possible, the existence of two simultaneous separate worlds overlapping in a shared space… Perhaps the entire thing – Ohtori, Tenjou, Himemiya, my job at the campus – all of it was the bizarre concoction of my diseased brain.

It was too much to think of, through the thick haze of the drugs and the sluggishness of his system. He waited patiently for the lethargy to wear off, for the day to pass and the minutes to tick by. A blanket of indifference settled over him.

Two theories developed from the haze of his mind: the first, that he had been in the asylum to begin with, and that everything outside the asylum was illusion created by an unstable mind. This was the scientifically sound idea, the one that explained away all the surreal experiences, and summarized it all in one problem: his lack of sanity. As for the teahouse evidence Mikage had gathered? The therapist had been correct – he had overheard it from someone at the asylum.

The second theory accepted the simultaneous existence of two separate but linked realities, which was why the teahouse was real in both. According to that theory Akio Ohtori's words about Mikage fracturing his reality were correct, and somehow the Chairman not only had access to both realities, but had some power over them.

"Sempai."

He gave a soft sigh at the sound of that voice. He did not want company, and had no desire to see Mamiya.

"Sempai, are you all right?"

He tried to speak, but found that what sound came from his lips was barely a whisper. Whatever medication they gave to me was far too strong.

"I'm sorry, sempai… Something has upset you."

The touch of gentle fingers brushing back his hair brought his eyes open. He looked at Mamiya's familiar, youthful face, and an objection came to his lips; but he was too tired to speak, and so he said and did nothing as the boy stretched out next to him.

Mamiya leaned against him and stroked his hair.

"Go away," he tried to say.

"What's that, sempai?" Mamiya leaned closer.

The boy's warmth brought stirring recollections that should have been pleasant to Mikage, but in fact only caused him discomfort. He made the supreme effort to move his arm and rest his hand on the boy's shoulder, pushing him away. "You are not Mamiya," he said. "He died, many years ago."

This speech, though delivered in a voice sapped of strength by weariness, was nonetheless entirely firm in its conviction. Mamiya disappeared from beneath his hand. He closed his eyes, thinking that perhaps he was not Mikage but Nemuro, stuck again in Mikage's world.

No… there was no sense in differentiating the two anymore. He was himself, lying on a bed in a mental institution, drugged, tired, drifting…

He woke several hours later, feeling somewhat more alert and hungry though still unwell. His sleep had been dreamless. He sat up and fingered the fabric of the sheets, ran his hand along the cold wall, and listened to the sound of footsteps echoing loudly off the tile and concrete of the corridor outside.

His sleep had been… dreamless. Which meant…

This was reality. He stood, feeling with utter certainty now that whatever divide had existed in his mind had been closed. Akio had fulfilled his promise.

He had been cruelly tricked, and if he had found the emotion to care he would have been angry at both his manipulator and himself, for having stumbled into this trap. As it was, he found his response was indifference. What existed to differentiate this place from the campus, anyway? Very little, in the minds of the two men who had lived in those worlds. They had both moved without purpose, simply existing from one day to the next. He found when he realized that he had been tricked, that he had no reaction at all. Only acknowledgement of that fact.

"Nemuro," he said flatly to himself, "welcome to Chihido Mental Hospital."