Summary: Utena wanted to bake a cake.
Warning: Allusions to sexual violence.
"I'm going to make some kind of cake today," Utena announced.
There was giddiness in her voice, which was by no means a new thing, but still noteworthy. Giddiness suited Utena's voice just so very well.
She started lacing her fingers in Anthy's and then seemed to change her mind and went over to the desk to pull free a piece of paper instead. Anthy watched her and thought of other things.
Anthy remembered baking birthday cakes for her brother. She remembered the dull, smeary taste of the colorful sprinkles and the way they felt on the tip her tongue and between her front teeth and just how much pressure it took to crumble them that way. She remembered the sweet and painful mixture of childishness and inaccessibility the tiny smear of chocolate frosting at the corner of her brother's mouth had invoked.
And Akio had no birthday. Akio was gone. There was no need and no reason to remember him on a periodic basis.
But,
"I really think I'm gonna make a cake. Do you think that's weird?"
Not that she really knew how to bake, or that she had a real reason for it, but Utena had been cultivating an odd desire for domesticity. Those times when she would slip a broom handle gently out of Anthy's grasp with playfulness and a bit of a hesitation were becoming increasingly common. It was no longer even enough to make Anthy anxious.
She asked, "Why do you want to make a cake?"
Utena winked and wrote something down. "To celebrate."
"What are we celebrating?"
"I have no idea how old either of us is," Utena said cheerfully. "We're celebrating that."
It wasn't a good enough reason for a celebration, Anthy thought. But her inability to express her discomfort maybe was.
Or maybe not everything was about the inner workings of her own personal brain, really. She should have been trying harder not to forget that.
.
There were all sorts of things about her brother that weren't quite regular. Some things that should have been concrete but weren't, and some things that shouldn't have been tangible but were. His wishes, for one, were obviously much more powerful than was the human due, and his borders much less clearly defined. His age and his voice and his face and his gender were, much like Anthy's, very much dependent on the circumstances, but not as strictly bound by any kind of linearity.
By these rules and lack of them, there was a lot about him and her (and them, in particular) that didn't leave as much of an impression on as many things as it rightfully should. Memory was one of those things, of course, and flesh was another.
So all of Anthy's scars were invisible and none of her accents were permanent.
But Akio's cock had always been really rather real.
.
Their grocery store had a dairy aisle edged with mirrors and a slightly sticky linoleum floor. It had small children throwing tantrums near the cereal stands and old ladies leaning on their shopping carts like walking aids. It had things made of meat and things made of tofu and even things with wrappings that boasted a kosher certification, which Utena explained had to do with minorities.
Utena had told Anthy it was a quite regular grocery store. Exceptionally regular, even.
Anthy rather liked it, actually.
"I made you a list," Utena informed her while helpfully flapping said item under Anthy's nose. "Try not to go too off topic. We need things that at least share a common general theme with the stuff I've written, okay?"
.
Utena wanted to bake a cake – presumably so that it can be admired, complimented and eaten, which are very reasonable and mundane goals, and shouldn't have made Anthy remember things that so insistently weren't.
But,
"Welcome to Dalieli. Have a pleasant shopping experience."
She spared a quick glance at the greeter's tacked-on smile; its curves and edges looked so achingly familiar. And yet it wasn't quite as painful, not quite as practiced, not quite as perfect. Not quite hers.
Inside the lights were politely white and impersonal, yet seemed to have the special ability to exaggerate every facial flaw or harsh angle, so that the statement they appeared to make conflicted with their actual function. If anyone noticed this, they feigned ignorance. Or simply didn't choose to share their concerns with Anthy, of course. And why would they.
Anthy stared at all the things standing in rows, slick and lettered and identical. None of it really felt alien, though. It was all very simple and had a purpose, and went about it in the most conspicuous manner imaginable. That was probably the way everything should work. That was probably the way Utena's head did.
She picked up eggs and butter and the kind of flour that comes in a blue and white paper bag and whose brand tag is large and obvious. She thought it would be actually impossible to spite Utena through brand name choices, especially since she hadn't been warned and wouldn't be expecting subtle gestures of dismay in response to cake.
And that was a rather good thing. Anthy's mind stepped in all sorts of stupid directions around the sort of company she knew would be able to anticipate it.
.
A kid on a bike rang his little aluminum bell as he breezed by her, ruffling her hair. Anthy adjusted her paper bags so she could tuck the hair away from her face. She knew she shouldn't have worn it down; comfort should always take precedence over symbolism. Some distance ahead the kid was ringing the bell again at a pair of well-fed street cats. Either the bike was new or the kid was just very irritating.
Her flats picked up a rhythm against the evenly paved sidewalk, the crunch of the brown grocery bags a constant if slightly less predictable background. Around that, everything just sounded tired.
She realized she'd forgotten the sound of the bells that had once been so important.
Here bells were an artifact of probably a different time, a time that was never hers and wasn't the current people of this world's either. They were scattered about, like payphones and wooden street benches, in irregular intervals and mostly around the old-fashioned, the religious and the peripheral. None of them had quite the right sound; but now when she thought of the duels, the only sound she could hear was the small, flat tinkle of fucking bicycle bells.
The taste of personality-switching curry; the scent of blue and green and black roses; the feeling of solid metal hilts made out of the softest parts of people; the exact shape of the folds around her brother's eyes –
Some things were possible to forget, after all.
.
The cake was not a birthday one and therefore had neither chocolate frosting nor artificially colorful sprinkles, and Anthy ate two slices and watched Utena polish off three.
It didn't actually feel very celebratory. They were both quiet and used two mismatched yet somehow similarly chipped plates, and Utena laid her feet in Anthy's lap in a way that was casual rather than designed. Anthy stared at the little hole in Utena's sock through which a tiny circle of pinkish toe peeked out, and felt a sudden rush of unreasonable affection.
"Utena," she said levelly and looked away from the little circle of toe. "Don't ever let me use you."
She didn't say "again". It wasn't necessary.
Utena said, "Mm."
It was unusual for her to be so noncommittal. Anthy supposed she wasn't ready to gloss over her forgiveness yet, as if it was a thing to be taken for granted and forgotten. Anthy supposed that was unusually sensible of her.
Or maybe it was just that Utena was preoccupied with important decisions such as whether to opt for a fourth helping of not-all-that-momentous cheesecake, after all.