Utenahiru's canon update. Poor, poor thing.
Begin spoilers for Revolutionary Girl Utena episodes 30-33, disturbing manipulation, and slight suggestive elements.
Ahiru watches Mytho, outlined in the rays of the sunset, walk on. The ring suddenly burns on her finger, feels weird and warm and more there than it ever has been. It’s not right to think this way. He’s happy with Raetsel, right? She has a prince, and he’s…
He’s…
*
Rue helps her home the next day, and Ahiru tries to keep from dragging her hurt ankle. It stings real bad; she shouldn’t have been so careless. Was she feeling so weird now that even seeing Mytho in the school window, that strong figure, white hair, gold pinpricks of his eerie eyes-that was enough to mess her up so bad she fell like that?
What’s wrong with her?
“Are you alright, miss Ahiru?” Rue asks.
“Yeah, sorry to bother you about it.” Sorry I’m feeling this way. Sorry I can’t get your brother out of my head. “There’s something I have to-”
Suddenly Mytho pulls up in his bright red sports car.
“Brother, Ahiru’s hurt,” Rue says.
Mytho gets out, then takes her in his arms and helps her into the front seat. He’s so strong, so kind. She relaxes, doesn’t even look at Rue as they leave.
*
Ahiru thinks he’s going to help her out, but instead he takes off her shoe, massages her ankle. He’s saying something about carrying her on his back since the doctor said she couldn’t walk.
“Mytho, you’re a real playboy,” she says, to cover the fact that she’s blushing. “You’re so good at making girls feel good. You don’t act like a chairman, you’re almost…dangerous.”
“You break the rules by wearing boys’ clothing, right?” he asks. His voice is deep and beautiful.
“Well, I do it for my prince,” she says. She thought that maybe if she said the word out loud, it would help her, but she still wants this.
He rises, looms over her.
“I should carry you in my arms,” he says, and his hand is on her face.
He kisses her.
The bells ring. She doesn’t know what they’re announcing.
*
The car’s engine throbs. Mytho is wearing his dueling uniform, and Fakir sits with him. Fakir holds Ahiru’s shoe. He leans back and lets the wind blow through his hair.
“You’ve fallen for her, haven’t you?” Mytho asks.
Fakir nods. “Losing to her was a shock for me. The only time I ever reconsidered how I lived my life.”
Mytho accelerates the car. The streetlamps pass quicker now.
*
“She’s my precious, irreplaceable little sister,” Mytho says, and swallows the shaved ice Rue feeds him.
“Big brother, your mouth is blue!” Rue giggles. “Say ‘Ahhh!’”
Ahiru looks to Freya, watching them from the other couch. Is Freya thinking about Fakir?
It doesn’t matter, really, they’re having fun. Ahiru is happy to be part of Rue and Mytho’s family.
*
Later, Ahiru and Freya are walking near the fountain. Freya’s being obnoxious, as usual.
“Most girls would be lovesick with a brother that cool, even Rue,” Freya says. She’s smirking like she knows everything about Rue and Mytho.
“You’re the only one like that!”
“You’re in love with the chairman, aren’t you?”
She wants to just act calm, but instead she’s blushing and sputtering. Freya shouldn’t know that. No one should know that!
Freya’s smile grows wider. “Oh my, I was right. Let’s both try our hardest, okay?”
And then she flounces off, leaving Ahiru confused and angry without knowing why.
*
Freya sits in the elevator of Mytho’s observatory. She is shaking. Her mind is a projector, playing reels of what she just saw over and over and over again. In moments it comes to her. Rue’s labored breathing, her hair down and splayed out under her. Mytho’s shirt is open, and he leans back so casually. Then they-
She has to get out of here. But she can’t go back to Fakir, when she’s nothing to him now.
So she shakes and remembers. She wants to shut her mind off. But still pictures of Rue and Mytho play.
*
Freya sits up as Hermia leaves, with her brother. Her perfect brother, his arm around the shoulders of backstabbing trash like her.
She’s in the greenhouse. The phone begins to ring in her pocket.
No, not trash like Hermia. Trash like her, Freya. Hermia pushed her to the ground, but Fakir didn’t help. He said she’d understand, but she understood now.
He said it himself. Every kiss on her forehead, every time he wrapped his arms around her, every “precious little sister”, was a lie. They aren’t related, and he doesn’t care.
And now she’s nothing more than-
Nothing’s left.
She sits in the greenhouse and sobs.
*
The chairman’s residence is dark. The projector flickers, and there are stars on the walls. Raetsel’s eyes are glass. Mytho takes her by the chin, opens her mouth.
Rue feeds her a slice of apple.
There are forks in the apple. There are swords in people’s hearts. And there is another thing here that is red and pierced through.
Raetsel swallows the piece.
Make that two other things.
*
Fakir takes Freya into the car, and they begin the drive.
This is scary and wrong. The man driving is Mytho, and Mytho does those horrible things to his sister. She tries to explain it to Fakir, but Mytho, now wearing a dueling uniform, tries to talk to her about reality and labyrinths and perception.
That’s all adult stuff. That’s all lies. She doesn’t want to hear anymore.
“But what you truly need does not lie here,” Mytho says.
She shakes her head, turns to Fakir. “What is he talking about?”
Fakir takes her in his arms.
It is different, this time. She struggles. He doesn’t let go.
She pushes him against the side of the car. She can’t look at him anymore. She leans over her side, feels like she’s going to vomit.
The streetlamps are starting to give her a headache.
“Isn’t that what you always wanted?” Fakir asks.
“No!”
“We aren’t really brother and sister.”
“That’s not what I want!”
“Then what? What do you want?”
Mytho accelerates. He says something about the world’s end, she doesn’t understand. She can’t hear. She has no ears. She has only streetlamps and the sound of the engine and Fakir smirking in the seat next to her.
*
Yeah, Ahiru thinks. I should’ve expected this.
Freya was acting weird, being angry. Duelists always act like that before they challenge you. But did she have to hit Rue?
“I’m not like her,” Freya says, and there it is again: that smug tone of voice. Like her thinking her better means she can stomp all over everyone else.
Ahiru helps Rue stand up.
They have a duel to win.
*
Ahiru leans back as Rue pulls her soulsword. On the other side of the arena, Fakir is probably taking Freya’s. So it was his fault all along. Well, Freya says it’s not, but she still doesn’t trust him. She’ll never trust him again.
From the dueling arena, the red cars begin to sprout, stuck at weird angles in the stone. They’re always so familiar looking, but she can’t put her finger on it.
They begin the duel. Freya’s even more animalistic now. Ahiru tries to talk some sense into her, but she’s babbling about her relationship with her brother. Then, the headlights go on.
Ahiru feels the spirit of Siegfried descend from above the castle.
She opens her arms wide.
Her eyes are closed, and still the headlights burn into her. She feels Siegfried enter her, fill her up.
Her prince.
She’ll fight for him, with him.
Before she knows it, the car driving around the arena has crashed, there are yellow rose petals in the air, and she’s defeated Freya. The bells are ringing.
“Do you feel better now?” Ahiru asks. Freya has to realize this is hurting everyone.
“What’s left for me? Am I just one more fly in the swarm? Anything but that…” Freya buries her face in her hands and cries.
Fakir is nowhere to be seen.
*
Ahiru finishes showering, wraps a blue fuzzy bathrobe around herself, and goes into the main hotel room. Mytho’s there, watching her. She remembers their kiss, blushes, turns away. It’s just a bathrobe. He can’t see anything. And they’re here because they had a great time at the carnival, only cooling down.
No, she’s here because of the roses. To deliver them, that’s why she came. They lie in the chair next to him.
He’s so handsome.
She sits down.
How he found an Othello board at this place, she’ll never know. But she played a little when she was younger; it’s fun to try her hand at it again.
She’s not very good. She keeps babbling to herself. Looking at him is making her nervous. Before long, a few of her whites are surrounded completely by his black.
*
Later that night. They’re on opposite sides of the bed, and Ahiru can’t lie to herself anymore.
She doesn’t need a prince, right? She has him.
He smiles, ever so softly.
She turns out the lamp, turns to face him. Under the covers, she undoes the tie on her robe.
*
They ride back, afterward.
While Ahiru is asleep, Mytho talks to Rue on the phone, after that odd gameshow. “It’s a beautiful, starry night tonight,” he says. “There’s no reason to be in the planetarium.”
“I didn’t want to look at the real ones,” she says. “Did you get tonight’s roses?”
Stopstopstopstopstop, says the road.
“Yes, I got them,” Mytho says. “Well done.”
He touches Ahiru’s cheek. She wakes. Something about her looks dead.
Excellent.
“The stars tonight were beautiful, weren’t they?” he asks.
She doesn’t answer.
End Utena spoilers.
[[That night, Utenahiru goes to sleep in her half-moon bed, after Mytho takes her home.
She wakes up in a much more luxurious the castle.]]
What...? Here again?
[[She looks around.]]
So this is the same dream as before, huh. I wonder if that Mytho I met knew that we would...
I guess...I'll go find...Rue.
The other Rue.
[[She shifts, sits up. Something's not right. She doesn't feel quite at ease here, and it isn't just because of the monster Fakirs.
Still, she gets out of bed and opens the door, to greet the morning. She's in her nightgown now. Maybe her uniform will be here, just like those clothes the ghosts gave her at the ball.
It seems forever ago.]]