Chapter 5

Utena and Anthy spent the rest of the day cleaning up the apartment and shovelling snow with those of Utena's neighbours who were around. It was a bit surreal, after nearly becoming a prince, yet at the same time, comfortingly normal. Even after spending such a brief time in the duelling arena again, Utena found she wanted to do something normal. Something as far removed from the world of Ohtori as she could possibly get.

Ohtori really was like a fairytale; beautiful and magical, but savage and brutal too. It was the kind of world where girls were transformed into princesses to dance with the prince at the ball, but where other girls not as pure had to cut off their toes to fit into tiny glass slippers.

It frightened Utena a little that she'd wanted to be the prince of such a world, however briefly. What would have happened if Anthy hadn't come with her? Would she have even understood what was going on? And why on earth had Anthy said she would stay with her, in whatever crazy fairytale Utena made, when she wanted to live in the real world?

That was the part Utena didn't like at all.

That was Anthy being the Rose Bride, all over again, with or without the swords.

The weather stayed clear for the rest of the day, giving way to a still, cold night with stars shining brightly like needles in the sky. Anthy didn't seem to be aware there was anything left that was untoward. And maybe for her there wasn't. Maybe now Utena had chosen a world that was the end of it as far as she was concerned.

She was happy, and Utena liked seeing her happy. And all the other things – being able to touch her, to hold her, to have her here; Utena liked that too. This was maybe something like what she had imagined at Ohtori, all those years ago. Cookies and tea. The two of them being together, free.

Chu-Chu seemed to know it would be all right to sleep with them that night. After Utena and

Anthy had gone to bed, he joined them and snuggled up to Utena with happy little Chu's, making Anthy shake her head.

"I have competition for you, it seems."

Utena met Anthy's half-playful tone with something more serious. "Himemiya…Why did you take me back there today?"

Anthy's eyes flashed in the dark. "In the end, I didn't have to. It was your power that took us there, Utena. Not mine. The power of this." She placed her hand over Utena's heart, or maybe over the sword that might or might not still be inside her somewhere.

"Then why did you come?"

"Because I knew what was going to happen. I didn't want you facing that alone."

"You should have told me. You should have explained to me why you didn't want to go."

"But if I'd done that, you wouldn't have gone. And I didn't want to take the choice away from you. Even if it meant losing you, I wanted you to be free to choose."

"Okay. But Himemiya? You didn't just give me the choice for my future. You gave me the choice for yours as well. That wasn't fair to me and it wasn't fair to you either."

"It had to be like that, Utena. In the world I come from, princesses don't get to choose."

"I know," said Utena. She found Anthy's hand and held it, a little fiercely. "But isn't that why you left and came to the real world? To be free?"

"Yes," Anthy agreed quietly.

"Then you shouldn't have gone back there. You would have been giving up everything you wanted to be with me. Just like before, when you gave up everything…for Akio."

Utena's voice faltered a little as she said his name. She hated to think there could be any similarity between Akio and herself; that her relationship with Anthy was anything like what his had been.

The mattress gave a little as Anthy moved closer, and Utena found she was reaching for her, wanting to be reassured but suddenly no longer certain she and Anthy belonged to each other at all, not in the ways that mattered. Not in the way that she'd tried (and failed?) to wait for.

"I couldn't lose you, Utena. Not again."

Anthy whispered the words into her ear while holding her far too gently, in a way that made nonsense of all of Utena's fears. Utena might have been swayed if she didn't half suspect this was Anthy's intent.

"But you would have lost me anyway if I'd become the prince," she said. "Isn't that why you asked to be with me last night? Because you thought we wouldn't come back?"

After a pause, Anthy admitted haltingly, "I didn't know what you'd choose. And I did want the chance for you and I to be together before we both became something else; that's true. But…Even if that world changed us, you would have changed it as well, Utena. The world you made wouldn't have been like Akio's. Whatever you created would have been beautiful. You have a good heart."

"Dios had a good heart, too and he couldn't save that world. Neither could you. Didn't you say yourself it should have died out long ago?"

"Well now it has," said Anthy, suddenly sounding tired. "Can't you just…be happy we're here and let it go?"

Utena shook her head stubbornly. "No. I need to understand why you were prepared to stay there with me. Whatever world I created, the dynamic between us wouldn't have been the same. I would have had power and you would have had none. Can't you see that would have destroyed us? Didn't you promise me you weren't here to play out the farce of the prince and the Rose Bride again? "

"I meant that, Utena. You were the one who wanted to become a prince. Badly enough that your desire took both of us back to Ohtori."

"Then you should have run and let me live with the consequences of my own stupid actions. If that meant I got trapped there…So be it. It wouldn't have been your fault."

"No," said Anthy. "You needed me to remind you of who you were. The fact that we were already there meant there wasn't much hope, but you'd resisted before. I had to trust that you wouldn't do the thing that would hurt me." She gave a sigh that might have been bitter amusement. "I trusted you enough to go there with you, but not enough to believe you'd make the right choice. I'm sorry. I should have known better. You always…surprise me."

Utena could feel Anthy's ribs brushing hers with every breath. Her skin smelled slightly spicy, maybe like nutmeg or cinnamon; probably from the tea blend she'd mixed before they went to bed. This wasn't like last night when everything between them had been heat and passion and the blossoming of desire long suppressed. Whatever this was, it was quieter. This was just lying together, feeling each other and not letting go, and in some ways Utena thought it was even more intimate than the night before.

"You need to learn to talk to me about stuff like this," Utena insisted. "You don't need to deal with these things on your own. Do you get that?"

"If I ever need a friend to talk to…"

"Yes, something like that."

"I'm still learning, Utena. I told you that."

"I know," said Utena.

Nervous fingers plucked at the lapels of Utena's pyjamas. "I feel like I'm waiting for you to say you think it was a mistake to be with me."

"Would not being together even solve anything?" Utena asked.

"No," Anthy whispered. "I'll still be in love with you. I'll still want you. That won't change."

Utena traced Anthy's body in her arms. "Maybe it is too soon," she agonised. "I don't know. I just feel like we have so much lost time to make up for. I don't want to be apart from you anymore."

"I don't want to be apart from you either."

"That blizzard," Utena mused. "We might not even be together like this, if not for that."

Sounding amused, Anthy said, "blizzards happen, Utena. Sometimes they're just blizzards."

"It was awfully convenient."

"Fortuitous, perhaps, because it gave me what I wanted. It gave me you."

Anthy was hinting at something, but Utena had no idea what she meant. "Fortuitous?"

"In fairytales, fortuitous things happen to bring lovers together."

"But this is the real world."

"It is the real world, but it's still magic." Kissing the back of Utena's hand, Anthy murmured, "this is magic, right here."

"So a blizzard blew itself up out of nowhere purely to allow us to get together. That's what you're saying?"

"Does that seem impossible to you?"

Utena laughed, more harshly than she meant to. "After some crazy fairytale world tried to make me its prince? I'm prepared to believe all manner of things."

"Utena…"

"It's fine, Himemiyna. It's fine."

Despite her words, tears leaked from Utena's eyes. What would be happening now, if they were in that other world? Would Utena have recovered all her certainty, her confidence, her conviction of her own brightly shining virtue? Would she and Anthy be walking hand in hand through an enchanted forest with the dew softly kissing their bare feet, knowing that everything they saw was theirs? Not much of a price to pay for it; just her soul and Anthy's freedom. Just giving up the very things she had believed in as a prince in the first place.

She felt Anthy stroking her hair, the soft, repeated motion slowly soothing her pain away.

"I just want to do the right thing, Himemiya. I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You're not sure," said Anthy. "That's hard for you. But it's the nature of the real world. Unchanging absolutes belong to the world we left behind."

"There's still right and wrong."

"This is not wrong. I promise you that, Utena."

Utena sighed. The night was very quiet outside, even for this small and humble town. She realised vaguely it would be Christmas Eve tomorrow night and wondered what Christmas used to be like for Anthy in Ohtori; if it had even been celebrated there. She could recall no memory of it, but when it came to Ohtori her memories couldn't always be trusted.

Christmas with her brother on the wide white couch.

Doing things Utena could imagine all too clearly, for she had seen Anthy and Akio do them, and done them with Akio herself.

With a sudden vengeful, unprincely glee, Utena was glad to remember that Akio was dead. She was even glad she'd witnessed his demise, and that she knew exactly how much he'd suffered before he died. He'd deserved every moment of that pain for what he'd done to Utena and Anthy, for trying to break the bonds between them that belonged to a magic older and more powerful than he could understand.

Then the moment passed and he didn't seem to matter at all anymore; he was just one more forgotten god in the long annals of the world. What mattered was that Anthy was here with her, that they'd found each other again despite everything, and pushing all thought of Akio away, Utena gathered Anthy closer to her and soon went to sleep.

The next day, Utena brought home a last minute Christmas Tree and a bagful of hastily purchased decorations, and Anthy brought home a family of cats.

"Um," said Utena, looking at the tiny mewling kittens and their gently purring calico mother, "Cats?"

"They were at the animal shelter. There was an appeal in the paper to find a foster family for them."

"That's why you didn't want to go shopping for a Christmas Tree? You went to get cats?"

"Aren't they cute though?" Anthy giggled, letting one of the kittens wrestle with her finger.

Apparently she still hadn't mastered some of the finer points of relationship communication, Utena reflected.

Unexpectedly that evening, the phone rang. Utena answered it to hear Wakaba's voice on the other end of the line. Apparently she'd only just made it back to Tokyo and she talked endlessly and excitedly about what it had been like to get snowed in with her production company.

"I'm sorry that you missed it,' she finished, her voice warming the way it used to in their Ohtori days. "We could have had a lot of fun together, Utena-kun."

Utena watched Anthy dangling Christmas decorations tantalisingly in front of the kittens and laughed.

"We were fine, Wakaba," she said. "We made our own fun."

"Really? Doing what?"

"Heh, well…"

She started as Anthy suddenly grabbed the phone off of her.

"I made love to her all night," Anthy said calmly. "She liked it."

The phone was cut off in the midst of Wakaba's high-pitched scream.

Utena stared at Anthy, dumbfounded. "H-Himemiya, that was really rude!"

Going back to playing with the kittens and not sounding the least worried, Anthy said, "Wakaba has a crush on you, Utena."

"Well…But that's just Wakaba being Wakaba. She's always like that."

"She can find someone to flirt with who doesn't have a girlfriend."

"Wait – Are you jealous?"

"No. I'm not jealous. I don't mind that you're friends with her. I just don't want her thinking she has a chance with you."

"This is Wakaba. She's just a normal girl, no matter what crazy things she says."

"I seem to remember you calling yourself a normal girl not too long ago."

"Look," said Utena, deciding to quit while she was ahead, "are you going to wave those decorations in front of the cats all night, or do you want to help me decorate the tree?"

Anthy gave her an unexpected kiss, leaving Utena flustered. "I'll decorate the tree with you," she said softly, green eyes glowing. "And then later…"

"And then later?" Utena echoed, a little breathlessly, when Anthy didn't finish.

"Hmm, later…" said Anthy dreamily, giving her a sidelong glance, and left the rest to Utena's imagination.

Another two months passed with surprising speed. Anthy moved in. The cat family left to go to their new homes and a pair of injured rabbits from the shelter took their place. Chu-Chu seemed to take it all in his stride, so Utena did the same.

Wakaba still called her. One weekend Utena even went and stayed with her in Tokyo, and didn't know whether to be horrified or amused when Wakaba took her to an all-women bar. Anthy was volunteering often at the shelter by this time, and sometimes even invited one or two people from there over for tea. The first time it happened was the day Utena gave up not liking tea and started drinking it again.

Utena was happy – happier than she'd thought it possible to be – but she found herself restless as well. Her studies had never really challenged her, but now, that fact was starting to bother her. She began pushing herself harder with no goal in mind. Anthy was coming first in all of her classes, seemingly without much effort. She was still often quiet and reserved around those she didn't know; still highly selective in the company she kept. Utena, too, was more selective than she'd once been.

The letter she got from Touga she burned without reading.

And then the day arrived when Juri came to visit. She knocked on their door with no prior warning and swept into Utena and Anthy's apartment like a queen at Utena's tentative invitation.

Her eyes took in Anthy and Chu-Chu and the injured rabbits. She saw the tea set laid out on the living room table, and glanced around the space, noting its size, or lack thereof, and the number of internal doors she could see.

"Just a one bedroom then?" she asked, as if this was an entirely reasonable thing to ask.

"Er," said Utena cautiously, "yes. Would you like to sit down?"

They had two couches now. Juri selected one and soon found herself sharing it with the rabbits. Anthy didn't approve of keeping animals in cages.

Utena and Anthy took the other couch. Anthy poured out tea for them while Juri absently began stroking one of the rabbits. It quivered happily and wiggled its nose.

Juri was as beautiful and poised as ever, Utena reflected, but she was different too. After studying her for a few moments, Utena realised why. She didn't look sad anymore. She wasn't tormented. She looked…at peace with herself.

Noticing Utena's scrutiny, Juri smiled. "I still remember everything," she said. "If that's what you're wondering. You remember too, don't you?"

"We remember," said Anthy, before Utena could. She handed Juri her tea.

"Hmm," said Juri, stirring her tea meditatively. "The duel called Revolution; what really happened then? I've been wondering that for a long time."

"I lost," Utena said, staring shamefaced into her tea, at the same time as Anthy said, "she won."

Flicking her eyes between them, Juri sipped her tea. "How interesting."

"Well," said Utena. "It's a bit complicated to explain."

"Here's what I know." Juri sat forward, inadvertently displacing the rabbit who had half climbed onto her lap. "In the days after the duel called Revolution, I started to realise that the world was so much bigger than I had ever imagined. The things that I couldn't escape from; that had loomed so large in every part of my life; I realised it didn't have to be like that. I could leave them behind. Replace them with other things. I wasn't trapped anymore."

"You're talking about Shiori?" Utena asked.

"Yes, Shiori," Juri agreed. She tossed one perfect curl over her shoulder. "She really was an unpleasant girl. Looking back, I don't know what I saw in her."

"It's because she could reach your heart," said Anthy softly. "She just didn't take very good care of it."

Juri studied Anthy with a speculative and not quite friendly gaze. "Yes," she admitted eventually. "I suppose that's true. But none of that is the reason why I'm here."

"Which is…" prompted Utena.

"I need a duellist."

"A duellist?" Utena went a little cold at the word, images of swords and roses flashing through her mind.

"Correct," said Juri. "I'm putting together a fencing team to compete at the Universiade – also known as the World University Games. I want you to be on it."

"Me?" Utena floundered. "But I haven't picked up a sword since…Since that day. The day of the duel of Revolution."

"Why not?" asked Juri, scrutinising her intently.

Utena looked away, feeling a throb of pain in the old scar she still carried on her flank. "Because I wasn't good enough," she said tightly. "I lost. I lost Himemiya and I lost myself."

Juri glanced between them. "That's not really what it looks like to me."

Anthy placed down her teacup. "She only lost the duel to Akio because I betrayed her. I stabbed her in the back with the sword of Dios. I stabbed her because I was afraid she was going to win."

"What?" said Juri.

"It's true," said Anthy. "But even then Utena didn't give up. She still kept fighting for me. She scarified herself to save me. She set me free from being the Rose Bride. She returned me to myself. She set everyone in that world free to find their own destiny."

"So," said Juri to Utena. "Why don't you duel anymore?"

Anger flared in Utena, anger she didn't even know she still had. "Because I can't ever know if I would have won that final duel. I don't even know if any of those victories were mine. It might have been the spirit of Dios helping me, or Akio manipulating me to make my heart stronger; either way, it wasn't me. It wasn't my strength."

"That's your reason?" Juri tossed her hair again. "That's a coward's reason. No fight is ever guaranteed. If you went to face the End of the World himself without knowing that, no wonder it went badly for you."

"You weren't there Juri! You can't…You can't possibly understand what it was like."

Juri met Utena's infuriated glare with quiet calm. "You were good Utena. You were really good. You could beat me."

"But I couldn't defeat Akio, and now the bastard's dead I'll never get a rematch."

"End of the World is dead? My, my I am learning a lot here. Who killed him?"

"His own fucked up world," Utena growled.

"What do you think Himemiya?" Juri asked, switching her gaze to Anthy. "Should Utena take up duelling again? You used to watch her with such devotion." There was something slightly snide in her tone, and an unpleasant smile that seemed to hint at what she'd just learned about Anthy's actions during the duel of Revolution.

Anthy's eyes flashed angrily, and Juri stared at her in shock. Unlike Utena, she didn't know this Anthy, didn't understand that she was no longer what she had been. Ever so slightly, Anthy's voice shook as she replied, and Chu-Chu climbed into her lap, a tiny ball trying vainly to comfort.

"I used to watch Utena like that because her winning each duel was the only thing that stood between me and another night of being raped. Utena didn't know it – at first I don't think even I knew it; I'd forgotten that I even could belong to myself – but that is what was at stake, every time Utena fought. What you're talking about, Juri, some fencing competition, is a very long way from the duels."

Juri, it seemed, could make no reply, her mouth hanging open almost comically wide.

Utena released a breath into the tense silence and just brushed Anthy's hand with her own. "I did know, Himemiya," she whispered. "I always knew what was at stake. That's why I couldn't forgive myself for losing to Akio."

"I keep telling you, you didn't lose," said Anthy softly.

With a self-mocking smile, Utena said, "I lost even before the duel. I lost when I chose Akio over you, when I broke my promise to you and betrayed our friendship. I'm no longer worthy to carry a sword."

"Is that what you want to do then?"

"I don't know," Utena lied, staring into the dregs of her cold tea.

"Utena." The annoyance in Anthy's voice was obvious.

In a silky, coaxing tone, Juri put in, "Miki has joined the team too. He's just like always. Equally popular with the boys and the girls and as sweetly innocent about it as ever. He still calls his sister every week even though she's gone to study overseas. She teases him about it."

"Chu?"

Looking down, Utena saw Chu-Chu on her knee, offering her his tiny sword with a hopeful expression. She laughed, treacherous moisture beading her eyelashes, and felt both Anthy and Juri watching her. Seeing her own hand move in slow motion, she took the tiny pro-offered sword between her thumb and forefinger and looked up to meet Jury's hooded eyes.

"One fight, Juri. That's all I'm promising."

Juri nodded while a rabbit snuggled ecstatically into her lap. "One fight." she agreed.