Well, well, well. It's long past time I got to this one:
Shoujo Kakumei Utena
THE GRADUATES
Post-series story. Full knowledge of the TV series necessary to
understand,
What, you mean you *understand* the TV series? ^_^
He'd noted her in class, she'd noted him as well--both noted
one another with the casual, meaningless recognition of someone
as a momentary intruder into some sphere of the self's world, one
that will pass away soon enough into nothingness once again.
They only ended up meeting in the way that means anything because
they chanced to be seated beside each other (perhaps, given what
happened later, "chanced" was the wrong word, perhaps they could
no more have avoided truly meeting then they could have broken
the law of gravity,
It all depended on the author's perogative. :)
but chance it seemed at the time, and chance
they called it) at the first tutorial, and she'd forgotten her
copy of _The Iliad_.
"Mind if I look over your shoulder when we discuss specific
passages?" she asked quietly.
"I'll nibble on your ear if you'll let me," she quickly added, knowing
that's all men really thought about.
"You're free to, if you wish," he answered. He had a
reputation for coldness (some compared him, behind his back, to
a computer), but it was really that no one had ever tried to
teach him how to be warm.
Ah, a male version of Rei Ayanami. I see. :)
After the tutorial was over, she asked him if he was free to
go for coffee, and even though he technically had a class to go
to,
used 'to go' in the earlier part of the sentence. perhaps
'...he was free to join her for a cup of coffee,'
sounded better to me than 'a class to attend' which could be an
alternative.
where the professor would teach him concepts he already
understood and show him how to solve equations he could have
solved as a freshman, he said he was. At a chipped plastic table
in the corner of a cafe a short walk from the small campus, they
drank cappuccinos and talked of Homer, while
Not sure if you need that comma. Just seems out of place. <shrug>
the ceiling fan
blurred overhead.
For some reason 'blurred' just doesn't seem to be the right word there. Not
sure why, but I think something to describe the sound rather than the
appearance might be better. Very minor nit.
Wow. Talk about stretching to find grammar comments to complain about. :)
"Kind of silly when you think about it," said she.
I'd really rather see 'she said.' Other way just sounds awkward to me.
"All of
these brave and noble warriors, and all they're really fighting
over in the end is a woman. A terrible waste."
Heh. Interesting comparison. But I wonder how many of them truly fought for
the woman, and how many truly fought for the glory, whether personal or for
country, and how many fought simply because they liked it.
She touched the middle knuckle of her right index finger to
her mouth in thought. "It's the fault of the gods, really.
Though Paris being so stupid didn't help much. I mean, what kind
of choice is that to make? The world's most beautiful woman,
over being the wisest man in the world, or the most powerful man
in the world?"
He smiled a little. "With power, he could easily have made
Helen his. With wisdom, he would have known how to make her fall
in love with him. Yes? That is what you are thinking?"
But perhaps the woman was all he truly desired. :)
"I've thought of that myself a few times since I began
reading," he began. "And, yes, on one level, Paris was a fool to
make the choice he did. But, on another level... perhaps he did
not choose a woman, but what she represented; he chose, rather,
Beauty. For beauty is a sublime mystery, and if he had chosen
Wisdom and thereby come to know all things, there would be no
beauty left in the world for him. And if he had chosen Power...
what kind of man is he who would love Power more than Beauty or
Wisdom?
Or that too.
He stared at her for a moment, shocked, then burst out
laughing, the laughter of a man unused to it who
it, who
Coffee again the next night, dinner on the weekend. Repeat,
with variations, for three weeks. Then she accepted his
invitation to go back to his apartment for a drink after the
movie (the first such invitation he'd made), and they ended up in
bed together by a kind of mutually unspoken agreement that it was
time.
heh. Yep. Sometimes it just turns out that way.
Neither of them was a virgin, but neither of them was very
experienced, either.
With members of the opposite sex. Now as to same sex partners, well, that
was another story.
There was none of the awkwardness that
often comes of the early sex between two people
And that sentence seems awkward in the middle. Not quite sure what it is
about it though. Just seems a little off.
--they learned the
ways of one another's bodies by a scientific method of hypothesis
and experiment, which seemed to work out quite well.
For example, spanking was right out with the first slap, but the sheep
costume turned out to be a definite yes.
"Tell me something about yourself," she murmured, head
pillowed upon his strong, slender chest, fingers resting against
the hollow of his throat. "Something no one else knows."
"I'm really a prince who has lost his purpose and who is trying to gain the
power to revolutionize the world with a convulted surreal plot and using my
sister as nothing more than an elaborate tool."
"Ah, so you're like my last boyfriend," Utena murmured.
"Anything," she prompted, "so long as no one else knows it."
"Hmm." He thought for a moment. "When I was seven, I spent
the entire summer killing ants. I waged a kind of one-boy war
against them, with cheerful childish sadism. Water, fire, a
magnifying glass, a hammer... I had many different methods."
"Eventually I moved on to people. You know how women have been disappearing
from campus? That's my work. Want to see their remains?"
"No one," he replied. He shifted a little, and brought an
arm down to embrace her around the midsection, right below her
breasts. "No one."
"Want to ask me something?"
"Want more sex?"
"You don't think this is too early?" she asked, unpacking
her things from a cardboard box, as he looked over his shelves to
see which of his books he could discard to make room for hers.
"I don't think it's too early," he replied, selecting a few
of his old textbooks that he no longer needed. "Do you think
it's too early?"
Ah. A wise man who knows most women's questions have a double meaning, one
which will be bad for you if you don't answer it correctly.
He'd been thinking of taking a year off before he began his
graduate work anyway, and she only made the decision easier. He
got a job at a software company where he'd worked in the summer,
as a programmer and debugger, and spent eight hours a day, five
days a week, staring at lines of code that were complex
were as complex
and
beautiful to him as a jewel of many facets.
a little awkward. Personally I'd go with
'many-faceted jewel'
but it might be just a case of personal preference.
she said, again only half-jokingly. She was a good cook, but he
made an effort to make dinner a few nights a week even though he
wasn't. They had frequent minor arguments over the housekeeping,
as he was punctiliously tidy, and she wasn't.
nice look at the microcosim of their life.
"I dreamt that you were my enemy," she explained. Tear-
tracks shone in the moonlight upon her cheeks. "And that I
pierced you with a million swords, until your body becase mist
and disappeared altogether."
This, folks, is what is known as the classic time to be calling quits to
your relationship. :)
He said nothing, but touched her face in the pitch-darkness
of the tent, like a blind sculptor seeking memory the eyes cannot
give.
nice
"You wore a black rose at your breast,"
You know, it now occurs to me that were I given a choice of rose to wear
upon my breast for duelling purposes, it would be black. No doubt about it.
Odd how the question suddenly struck me there.
she continued,
eyelids closing to the stroke of his fingers. "It had seven
stems, and there was bright blood upon its thorns."
"Such a silly dream," he said, silently promising to call the floral shop
and cancel that bouquet of black roses that he was going to have delivered
to her.
After she had passed, her whisper reached back like an echo
>from somewhere out of their time. "If the chick does not break
its shell," it said, old and tired and faded as a funereal rose,
"it will die without being born..."
Oh dear. This should be interesting.
After he finally fell asleep, he dreamt of the dark woman.
She made love to both of them, and her breasts were as a field
of fragrant jasmine flowers, and her neck was as a tall tower
of black onyx, and her hair was as a hanging garden, and her lips
were as a ripe red fruit, and her sweet thighs were the gates of
paradise.
nice imagery
"She's in two of my classes. Sits beside me in Twentieth-
Century Japanese Lit. Talked to her today a few minutes before
class started. She's really nice."
Odd. Utena doesn't remember her, or is just feigning ignorance to her man?
Dark Parvati rose from her chair without a word, and her red
dress slipped to the floor. Beneath, she wore nothing at all,
and her skin seemed to glow in the moonlight. She spread her
hands wide at her sides, in a gesture of all-encompassing
beckoning.
Wow. fast mover. :)
They came to her both as wayward lambs to their long-lost
mother, and her body was as a field of young green grass beneath
their mouths, and her breasts were as soft heather upon dark
mountain slopes, and her eyes were as two moonlit pools deep
within an ancient forest, and her voice was as a master-player's
harp, and her sweet thighs were the gates of paradise.
And her breath was that of onions, just having eaten three beforehand. It
made their eyes tear and completely ruined the effect.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"If the chick does not break its shell," she said, in
strong, clear, ringing tones, like a brazen bell, "it will die
without being born."
"Unless it's a really, really big shell, and you can make a small hole in
it to pass it food and let air in," he pointed out.
"Work with me here," Parvarti insisted.
"But even after the chick is born," she continued, voice
rising and resounding and echoing, until the walls of the small
bedroom shook and plaster cracked, until the glass of water on
the nightstand shattered and splashed upon the floor, "it is weak
and helpless. It cannot fly. It must be cared for by its
mother. It must be taught to fly, even after it has broken its
shell. If the chick never flies, it would have been better for
it never to have been born at all."
A bit of an extreme viewpoint.
"Who are you?" he whispered again.
She rose, legs unfolding smoothly as the unfolding petals of
a lily. Her hair hung down to her ankles, and she shone like a
new-born star. "I am Parvati," she began, "I am Durga and Kali.
I am Diana and Hecate and Circe. I am Tiamat. I am the salt
waters. I am the great sow that births and devours her young."
"Ah, so you're really Canadian," he said.
She pushed him back down upon the bed and straddled him,
rode atop him as though he were only another steed, for that was,
he realized, all that he was and all that he would ever be.
But as long as he got off, hey, who was he to complain?
"You must learn to fly in a different way," she murmured,
and moved off the bed, stood staring out the window with her back
to him. "The time will come, soon or late, that I must face him.
It cannot be any other way. He has grown strong, and I have
grown weak. As I shall have my servants, so too shall he have
his. Things are not as they were."
Hmm. Interesting.
Suddenly, she spun back towards him. "But they shall be,"
she hissed through her white teeth. "As it was in the beginning,
so shall it be again in the end, and my brother shall learn once
and for all time what his role must be."
"Ah, but those that aspire to be nothing more than princes can never
triumph over those who would be kings."
Sorry about that. Mind's been playing around with a post Utena fic too (but
doesn't everyone's after seeing the end?). Figured out the basics and
title, but I got too much else on my plate and cannot consider starting on
'Ozymandias.'
Needless to say, ultimately this is all your fault, Alan. :)
"If you would fly," she said, without kindness or pity or
cruelty or scorn, "then you must be reborn. I require both a
priestess and a consort, and I shall love you both in ways you
cannot imagine."
Ah, how very forbodeing.
"To spread your wings, you must be reborn, consort," she
murmured. "And to be born again, first you have to die."
"Are you sure we can't skip that last part?" he asked.
He saw then that his love stood framed in the bedroom
doorway, and that she held a silver knife in her slim, pale
hands.
END
Notes:
I had the idea for a post-series Mikage/Utena story some weeks
ago, but didn't actually have a plot to go with it that
sufficiently interested me enough to write it.
Ah ha. So it's Mikage. There were enough clues I should have picked up on
it. I always liked him. Probably because he managed to be a survivor and
actually 'graduated'. Only Ruka really achieved that sort of level of
interest for me (Though Wakaba is still my fave^_^) , and that was largely
because he seemed to make himself outside of Akio's interests to me.
Excellent work. Very nice imagery and development on the relationship
between the two, and it is one I approve of wholeheartedly.
D.B. Sommer